Inspired Project Teams

Let’s face it. It’s almost impossible to inspire and motivate people who don’t have the simple skills they need to do their jobs! If your project team isn’t literate in the basics of project management (PM), they are quite likely frustrated and ineffective. So why not train them in PM basics?

This may be the only PM Training your people need! And it's FREE!

Unfortunately, some senior managers believe that PM is so complex that it requires many days of formal training. Paradoxically, the very people who need this basic training are the ones who “don’t have the time” because they are struggling (due to lack of basic PM skills) to keep their projects moving.

So why not break the cycle of PM ineffectiveness and frustration? These 8 free videos (just under 1 hour total!) are designed to help you apply “just enough” project management (PM) to manage your projects effectively — without burdening your team (and you!) with a bunch of unnecessary PM administrivia.

Whether you show these at lunchtime or set them up to run in the break room, they will provide the PM basics in an easy-to-assimilate form. By exposing your team to these videos, you’re likely to raise their PM consciousness, increase their effectiveness, and — just maybe — elevate their sense of professionalism. And that, after all, could be quite inspiring!

P.S. — Did I mention that I teach customized, on site PM classes? So if you decided to “dig deeper” and set aside a couple of days to focus on your team’s PM skills, let me know! (See: About Michael Greer’s Customized, On Site PM Workshops (“First do no harm!”)

Audio: Tend Your Gardens of Thought [Time - 7:35, File Size - 7.3 MB]

“A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild. But whether cultivated or neglected, it must and will bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein and will continue to produce their kind.”
– James Allen in As a Man Thinketh

Wow! “…whether cultivated or neglected, [the mind] must and will bring forth.” When I consider this quote in the context of my project management, I am reminded of this paradox: The most productive, the most creative people… the ones you really want on your project team… are also the ones who have the greatest potential to take you far astray from your contracted deliverables and your carefully laid plans!

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Audio: Just Say No [Time - 9:45, File Size - 9.3 MB]

In most of these Inspired Project Teams posts and podcasts, I’ve tried to focus on the positive. We’ve examined optimism, happiness, trusting your inner voice, embracing your work, joyfully taking risks, and generally saying “yes!” to the challenges you and your team face. However, while it might make sense for individuals to say “yes” to life as often as they can, there are critical moments when project teams have just gotta say “no!” Otherwise, your team could find itself swamped by chores that you never agreed to and that are not tied to the essential project deliverables.

As Stephen Covey says:

“You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, non-apologetically, to say ‘no’ to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside. The enemy of the ‘best’ is often the ‘good.’”  – Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Then there’s this from journalist Herbert Bayard Swope:

“I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”

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Audio: Practice Mindfulness [Time - 22:10, File Size - 20.8 MB]

[Acknowledgement:  The main inspiration for this post comes from various interviews and articles featuring Jon Kabat-Zinn, Professor of Medicine Emeritus and founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.  Kabat-Zinn started his career as a scientist at MIT and it is with this scientific perspective (along with his clinical research to support many of his positions) that he shares his thoughts on the power of mindfulness. He teaches mindfulness meditation as a technique to help people cope with stress, anxiety, pain and illness. You can check out the links below for more about Jon and his work.]

In this post I hope to convince you of the power of mindfulness — the practice of bringing your full awareness into the present moment. This is very different from that “kinda sorta” awareness that you have while you are attending a meeting, firing off a text message, and eating lunch all at the same time. And it is different from the awareness you experience within a conversation while you are trying to stifle clever or fearful or angry or resentful thoughts that are clamoring for your attention. And it is different from the awareness you experience when sitting alone at your desk, working to solve a problem while thoughts of past difficulties and future fears challenge your concentration. Instead, it is a cleaner, simpler kind of awareness. It is simply being fully present, with all your attention. It is, in the words of Jon Kabat-Zinn, “paying attention, on purpose, to the present moment, without judgment.” This is mindfulness.

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Audio: Accept What Is [Time - 16:45, File Size - 15.8 MB]

Imagine this situation: You are in your beautiful, newly remodeled kitchen wiping the counters clean after dinner.  Out in the hallway you hear your big labrador retriever galloping toward you. In a flash, he bounds across the tile to the table, plunks his meaty front paws up on a chair and begins sniffing the dinner plates for leftovers. Stopping your clean-up chores, you whirl to see what he’s getting into and bam!… his big nose knocks over a nearly full glass of dark, purple grape juice left untouched by one of the kids. The tough plastic tumbler bounces all over the place, spritzing the walls with purple droplets, while a big puddle of juice begins expanding across the tile. It’s flowing straight toward your new beige living room carpet.  Do you:

• A. Deny that this is actually happening, telling yourself that you are a good, hard-working person who doesn’t deserve this kind of misery?
• B.  Find your spouse and begin an angst-filled review of your family’s history of owning this dog, bemoaning the fact that while the dog is lovable, he has always caused too many minor disasters?
• C.  Sit down with your wife and kids and imagine a future that has in it no potentially staining leftovers and no dog anywhere near the kitchen?
• D.  Run across the room, placing yourself and your counter-cleaning sponge squarely between the expanding puddle of purple and the new carpet, thus preventing the major stain?

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Audio: Just Do It! [Time - 15:47, File Size - 14.9 MB]

It is my intent in this post to convince you of the tremendous liberating power of simply taking action. I want to encourage you to get moving… to get unstuck… to just do it! If you and your project team members are sometimes plagued with fits of analysis paralysis or procrastination, accompanied by worry over all the bad things that might happen when you take action, then this post (podcast) is for you.  Let’s start with some a couple of powerful quotes:

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Audio:  Act As If [Time - 12:45, File Size - 12 MB]

If you are a regular PBS viewer or a reader of self-help books, you’ve no doubt come across Wayne Dyer’s famous words of encouragement from his book, The Power of Intention: “Act as if everything you desire is already here… treat yourself as if you already are what you’d like to become.”

If you’re like me, you find these words inspiring, encouraging, and motivating! When I hear them, I say to myself, “Yeah! I can do that! I can imagine myself doing a great job at that next presentation, or training session, or marketing call, or whatever.” And for a while, I feel buoyed up by these thoughts, hopeful, and somewhat empowered. And I set about creatively visualizing my performance in that powerful new state of being. Eventually, however, the voice of my skeptic pipes up and says, “Well now… exactly what does this mean ‘Act as if your desires are already here…’ Just what is that supposed to accomplish?”

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Audio:  Do What Your Fear & Grow Stronger [Time - 12:25, File Size - 12 MB]

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“Always, always, always, always, always do what you are afraid to do… Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain… Do the thing and you will have the power.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Audio:  Spend More Time in Quadrant 2 [Time - 9:55, File Size - 9.4 MB]

Stephen Covey’s classic The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is one of the best selling business books of all time. Early in my career, I worked my way through this amazing text and also spent a substantial amount of time listening to the audio version, narrated by Covey himself. In these works, Stephen Covey describes a brilliantly simple grid for analyzing, and ultimately changing, the way you spend your time. Covey’s grid may be the best time management tool ever invented! Like millions of others working to become successful, I spent a substantial amount of time applying this grid to my own activities, sorting and reprioritizing them to make the most of my time and efforts. So, on an individual and personal level, I know this tool really works!

But how about applying this grid to project management? After giving it some thought, I’ve come up with some suggestions for how you might use the grid to better focus the time and efforts of an entire project team. In this post, I’ll share these suggestions with you.

Four-Quadrant Matrix Applied to Project Teams

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Audio:  Get High on Kindness [Time - 5:14, File Size - 4.9 MB]

“The positive effect of kindness on the immune system and on the increased production of serotonin in the brain has been proven in research studies. Serotonin is a naturally occurring substance in the body that makes us feel more comfortable, peaceful, and even blissful. … most anti-depressants… stimulate the production of serotonin chemically, helping to ease depression. Research has shown that a simple act of kindness directed toward another improves the functioning of the immune system and stimulates the production of serotonin in both the recipient of the kindness and the person extending the kindness. Even more amazing is that persons observing the act of kindness have similar beneficial results. Imagine this! Kindness extended, received, or observed beneficially impacts the physical health and feelings of everyone involved!” — Wayne Dyer in The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-Create Your World Your Way

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It’s simple: Wayne Dyer’s The Power of Intention is part of my everyday life. And for good reason. He weaves together the profound with the everyday and manages to leave you stimulated with your own ideas about how to apply his concepts in your life. For example: The simple, yet profound, idea from the quote above means that with a little practice (i.e., real, thoughtful practice… actually generating and encouraging small acts of kindness) you can create an entire project team or organization of high-on-serotonin, happier people. Wouldn’t that be great?

Greer’s Challenges...

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