I wonder if the cattle-driving skills I learned as a child growing up on a farm in Minnesota influenced my interest in group facilitation. Long before the catchphrase “herding cats” became popular, I had come to enjoy pulling and pushing strong-willed people through challenging processes. Based on that experience, I firmly believe that the art [...]

As a Change Agent, one of my most common roles is that of “Facilitator”.  One moment I will be asked to guide an executive team as they make tough decisions. The next, I’ll help resolve a personality dispute that’s blocking team success. As a neutral Facilitator, I’m often called to help an individual or a [...]

This is Wendy Appel. She’s one of the world’s foremost experts on a tool called the Enneagram which sheds light on people’s underlying core beliefs and motivations. Even more importantly, it can help people use this understanding to be more effective in nearly any setting that requires humans to interact. So What’s an Enneagram? The [...]

It may seem like an obvious thing to do, but many organizations begin rolling out big changes with no clear definition of what they’re changing or who needs to know about it. Here are a few pointers on how to effectively define your change: Write it Down: Capture the definition of your change in writing. [...]

Change Agents can learn a lot about what not to do when negotiating by studying the actions of our US Congress over the past few weeks. Their cliff-hanging, economy-threatening, bad-mouthing lack of progress brought the government to within a couple hours of a shutdown. In my last post I listed a few of the negative [...]

Over the past couple posts, I have shared best practices that teams can use when they participate in virtual meetings.  For the uninitiated, virtual meetings involve one or more attendees participating from a distance. Participants typically use a web connection to share materials and a teleconference line for audio. I started by describing the key [...]

In an earlier post I shared some effective ground rules that your team can use to get along and be productive.  I’m sure many of you have more good team guidelines that have worked for you – and I’d encourage you to agree on a similar list when you kick off your next team project. [...]

Anyone who’s participated on a project in a team setting has probably heard the term “ground rules” tossed around.  Sometime the term applies to a useful set of axioms that cooperative team members follow to guide their civil and productive interaction.  Sometimes it refers to a nice poster on the wall of all company conference [...]

People, People, People!  Project Management would be so much easier if it were not for the challenge of managing people, right? Today’s article will focus on the human side as we wrap up a list of project management best practices I’ve learned from the kitchen. Context: The 1933 cookbook “All About Home Baking” suggested 6 [...]

A few years ago I read the autobiography of former US Secretary of State and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Four-Star Army General Colin Powell. Agree or disagree with his politics, one cannot help but be struck by four compelling traits he has demonstrated in his public and private life: his humility, [...]

In a previous post, I shared what core activities should be in a good Organizational Change Management (OCM) Plan. Now let’s look at how to do the work of planning for your OCM project. The Art of Planning: I’m going to use the word “plan” as a verb here.  When I say “plan for OCM” [...]

One common thread I’ve seen in many organizational change disasters is the utter lack of a PLAN to guide the work.  In an earlier article, I laid out common reasons that Organizational Change Management (OCM) initiatives fail and this risk is right at the top of that list. There’s an old project management adage that [...]

Could your team use a good Gorilla?  How about a Fox or two? Take Inventory: One of the first things I like to do when working with a team engaged in making a big change happen is to take stock of the group’s natural teaming skills and prevailing personalities. I don’t typically have everyone take [...]

Those in the trenches know that quite often a Project Manager doesn’t get to choose the make-up of their team.  Sometimes the best a PM can do is influence who the Sponsors or Business Owners decide to put on the project team. Why’s that so important? Team makeup can have a critical impact on everything [...]