February 2007

HTP, interview

Interviewing Your Manager

A reader emailed me and asked, “how do I interview a manager who will be my superior?”The short answer is the same way you interview peers. However, your feelings about your position or your potential boss’ position (or even someone “higher” than one level above you) will certainly influence how you feel and how you […]

MPD, personal

A Little Marital Humor

We’re on our way home from a ski vacation. Mark’s the driver; I’m the navigator. This morning (in the dark at 5:30am), Mark said, “I don’t need a GPS. I already have a voice to direct me.” I, of course, cracked up. Labels: humor, personal

management, MPD

It’s Too Hard to Bring New People Into the Organization

A number of my clients and colleagues are struggling with the problem of bringing people into their organizations. In Hiring the Best …, I recommend the buddy system for bringing people on. I wrote a little article, How2 Create a Buddy (Informal Mentoring) Program. But maybe you didn’t know that, or can’t figure out how

HTP, job analysis

Making Jobs Attractive, Part 0

According to my colleagues inside organizations, we are officially in a seller’s (candidate’s) market for technical jobs. Managers report it’s difficult to find people, and they want to know how to make the jobs attractive. I don’t claim to know a lot about sales (just enough to keep myself in business!).  Here’s the one thing

MPD

Estimating Tasks: How Much Time is in Your Day?

  I plan on about 6 hours of work in a regular day. That’s project work, not answering the phone, email, making arrangements for workshops or consulting or speaking, or invoicing, or any of the other things I do. Nope, that’s just project work. The other half of that question is how many regular days

MPD

Can You See Your Project's Dashboard?

  In the PM (it’s actually called “software methodology, but I assign a project, so students can experiment with methodologies) class I teach at TGI, I ask the students to create (and then use) a project dashboard, so they have a quantitative way to see their progress (or lack thereof). The students presented their dashboards

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