Blog

Recently I heard a coworker use the phrase, “a lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”

I definitely resonated with this idea the first time I heard it, because I love planning and I love good boundaries. But over time I’ve come to realize its...

There’s a tough conversation I’ve been meaning to have with a coworker for several months, but I put it off.

I put it off partially because I wanted to ask her to change how her team does some things. My reasons are noble: I want her team to do things more consistently with standard...

Projects regularly have setbacks, problems, or need some other type of update or regroup. When that happens, how often do people come to you with this information, or how often do you need to find the disconnect on your own by digging through project software, records, etc.?

As project managers,...

Last week, I asked my boss for help.

I’ve written extensively about the techniques I’ve used on my own to gain back capacity and reduce stress in my job as a project leader. I’ve implemented mindset shifts, practical tactics, and everything in-between. And it’s all made a...

In the last year or two, I’ve started supporting projects in areas of my company that do technical work I don’t understand well: software, data, and finance. I add a lot of value to these teams with my skills in leading people through a process. But understanding the steps that need...

I don’t know that I thought too much about decision-making growing up, because it wasn’t until I reached adulthood that some decisions started to feel genuinely hard. Maybe that’s because as a kid, I found myself within a structure that generations of adults before me had...

The job of a project manager can be described in many ways. One of those ways is “problem solver,” as we are constantly solving problems on multiple levels. In the course of monitoring the progress of our projects, we solve problems to keep them moving. In the course of developing...

Project managers: have you had the experience of being brought into a project too late?

Maybe everyone else on the project team has already been informed about the project and begun work, and someone finally thought to contact you “so somebody can keep track of things.”

Or maybe...

As a project manager who supports over 100 active projects at a time, I have a decent volume of personal tasks or actions to manage in order to keep those projects on track.

This isn’t easy, and I’ve developed and combined many strategies in my 8 years in the field to keep my own...

Project managers deal in a lot of processes. We lead teams through them, and many of us also create and/or implement them. And while some organizations strive to have a unified process for all projects, the Project Management Institute increasingly emphasizes that much of a project...