Secrets of an Outstanding Project
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to interview a couple of my clients from the British Antarctic Survey: Linda Capper, who is the Head of Communications, and Andy Jeffries, the Programme Manager for the new polar research vessel, the RRS Sir David Attenborough. I was honoured to be invited to the launch of the […]
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It can only get better …
What is one of the biggest problems of anybody leading change? If you have tried it even once, I imagine you will say: “The other people involved.” It can seem like resistance to change is normal. As a result, many of us avoid dealing with these stakeholders. “They will only cause trouble.” This can make matters […]
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Breakthough on the Journey
If we are to make an impact with our work, it almost always involves bringing others along with us. Click to Tweet I believe that we tend to limit ourselves when we think about what we can achieve. Most of us have this tendency rather than the opposite: being over-ambitious. I’ve been sharing some work […]
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Colin and the Fawlty Mindset
Some years ago we conducted some research into high performers in project management, and one of the outstanding differences between them and the control group was a significant behaviour we called Leaning to People. The high performers seemed to get their results because they gave time to the critical relationships around themselves. This behaviour was an […]
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Why Training will NOT make You Oustanding
In my post last week, I wrote about a particular leadership skill – some would say the critical leadership skill – that of engaging and influencing people well. I looked at how the wrong mindset can get in the way, or even overlook people engagement as anything important. But there is another problem in our developing […]
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The Power of Engaging with a Visual Narrative
When we were colleagues in the same company, I remember dropping by one of Richard Rose’s qualification courses on AgilePM©. And I saw the diagram above drawn on a flipchart. I’ve seen this before and I’ve noted the way he does it.Richard tells a story as he draws what is a key diagram for AgilePM.And […]
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Think well of those you want to influence
“The customer community is very unreasonable,” my client told me. “They won’t listen to my ideas, and seem to reject them before I have finished explaining.”I’ve heard similar such statements from different clients more than once. There is pain in this. And also a little pride. Maybe it has a subtext of, “My customer doesn’t […]
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The Relationship Bank Account in Action
One of my projects right now is helping the opening of a new local school for 5 to 11-year-olds. Since the government likes the idea, much of this will be publicly-funded, which means we need to evidence demand for the school by getting parents to sign up before it opens. So, I was with another volunteer, […]
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Doing the Two-Step Engagement
In my book, Practical People Engagement, I use this illustration of the modes of engagement. Far too often, I find classical approaches to engagement and communications planning almost always overlook the power and versatility of the ubiquitous conversation. We, as human beings, have had all of human history and pre-history to hone the practice of language and […]
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Leading Effective Change: A 10-Point Checklist for the Busy Leader
Change management, or change leadership, as I like to call it, is a big subject. So many books have been written on the subject, and there are more every year. I know this because I was a contributing author to The Effective Change Manager’s Handbook, the standard reference of the global Change Management Institute. And we […]
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