Boosting Business Performance

Spring Is the Season for Project Magic

Project planning and funding are usually high on our priority lists, whether for kicking off a new business endeavor, supporting a worthy community effort, planting a spring garden, or reorganizing our places of work.

The month of May also heralds a remarkable annual effort by our local university’s project management students, an undertaking known as the “PolyHouse Project” that is coordinated by Dr. Roya Javadpour.

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Estimating Is an Incredible “Mind Game”

This week I gave another talk on estimating at a meeting jointly sponsored by my local chapters of STC and PMI — two proactive professional societies with which I have long been associated.

During that event, I thoroughly enjoyed engaging the participants in the same fun estimating simulation I described in Part 3 of the discussion on estimating, the series that just wrapped up in my last newsletter.

Once again, the answers from the audience on how long it should take to complete each of three simple tasks ranged from barely a few minutes to several hours. As always, audience members were amazed at their range of views on how long they thought they’d spend on seemingly “no-brainer” tasks.

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Why Is Project Estimating Such a Hot Topic?

From time to time, I enjoy giving a presentation on estimating to professional groups or clients. Whether it’s to very savvy and seasoned project professionals or to people with very little project experience, we recognize that we all have a big challenge in common: estimating accurately.

During these events, I enjoy facilitating an experiment to find out how long each person believes it would take to perform a short series of tasks that have to do with measuring the sides of a building. Here’s what happens…

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We’re Coming Full Circle Again!

Spring offers the perfect time to “imagineer” everything we aim to do in the year ahead.

It’s also a chance for us to ask ourselves, “Have I learned anything from my project experiences during the last year? Were there any discoveries I should review to better predict my results for this year?”

When we make an effort to address these areas, even if it uses time and energy that we’d rather spend on something else, we’ll position ourselves to launch future projects with much greater clarity and minimal distractions or doubts.

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Introducing a Set of Estimating “Best Practices”

It’s exciting to imagine how many great new beginnings the remaining months of 2011 will bring! At this very moment, if you’re anything like me, you are probably incubating several novel ideas that you would love to hatch this year.

Estimating how much time and effort it will take to bring our “brainchildren” to fruition, however, is the next challenge we face in the manifestation process.

In fact, the practice of estimating involves so many variables and stumbling blocks that some of my clients have asked for a set of estimating guidelines that can help them arrive at more accurate predictions.

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Is Your System Becoming a Drag?

Whenever I talk about productivity, many folks think I’m referring to what efficiency experts do. Efficiency experts get things done with less time and effort.

They use time-saving tools, techniques, devices, and software to trim, condense, eliminate, combine, or otherwise shortcut laborious, tedious, and time-consuming tasks.

They also know how to organize files, desks, computers, and electronic gizmos. They divide up their schedules into highly productive chunks.

Although I greatly value this domain of professional expertise, I prefer to aim my efforts in slightly different directions.

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The Power of Engaging Both Employees and Customers

As the New Year gets into swing, many organizations are looking for every possible advantage to counteract the current economic uncertainty. If your group is one of them, then I have terrific news for you — there is much more valuable information yet to glean from the wealth of recent employee engagement research, the subject of my last newsletter issue.

Whether you’re a member of a small, medium, or large organization, thinking through how to take the pulse of your workforce is essential to applying the powerful findings that link engagement levels directly to your levels of productivity and profitability.

Today’s newsletter introduces another critical aspect of this topic: customer engagement.

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It’s Time to Aim Beyond Job Satisfaction

Today’s newsletter focuses on the important topic of employee engagement — a great subject to kick off the new year. Companies are looking for every possible competitive advantage during our protracted economic recovery, and this is one of them!

But what exactly is employee engagement, and why does it matter?

Well, it turns out that a powerful correlation exists between the level of employee engagement and the degree of financial viability of an organization.

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Preserve Your Organization’s Intellectual Assets

In today’s issue, we continue exploring the timing, tools, and techniques for developing the strengths and talents of your personnel. Should you train or use a different approach to close an achievement gap? And when you do train, how can you make sure that the training “sticks”?

My last newsletter introduced the topic of training transfer, which refers to the many conditions that managers must satisfy to help learners successfully apply training to their jobs. Since training produces a short-lived result unless accompanied by transfer support, it pays to plan carefully and follow through systematically.

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Management’s Role in Setting the Conditions for Success

In my last newsletter issue, I discussed two types of organizational improvement techniques: training and “tune-ups.” Each has important applications that should be weighed carefully before use.

Today’s issue is devoted to exploring the roles that management can and should play in ensuring that training — as well as other types of improvement interventions — produces the best possible results. Rather than leaving success to chance, “the boss” can systematically engineer a positive outcome.

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