Our Management Training Workshops

By introducing our Management Training workshops to your staff we help ease the negative effect of change on both managerial and supervisory personnel. The change in job responsibilities, the change in personnel, job duties, and the rising challenge of developing subordinates are specific goals of our learning systems workshops. We are highly successful at helping Managers and Supervisors learn and adapt to the necessary skills and proper behaviors to be successful at work as well as in their personal lives.

For more information on our management training workshops please contact us.

As a part of our management training workshops, Managers and Supervisors will learn how to:

• Minimize the chance of miscommunication by understanding what people are really saying, and why
• Deal with difficult people, manage tense situations, and resolve conflict
• Make use of proven active listening skills to improve your ability to gain helpful information
• Be able to facilitate, guide, and close discussions in one-on-one or group settings
• Improve understanding and communication by giving and receiving good feedback
• Use ideas submitted by a member of the team without causing other members to be defensive
• Develop a comprehensive team building strategy that improves productivity of the whole team
• Emphasize the value of working toward common goals without devaluing individual accomplishment
• Define and set up a method to track staff activities
• Be able to manage time and work assignments effectively
• Conduct team meetings that capture and hold the audience’s attention
• Interview and hire the right person for the right job
• Save time and work more effectively through the use of a clear time management plan
• Understand and comply with proper hiring and managing requirements
• Communicate effectively with both superiors, peers and subordinates
• Become effective coaches for their work team
• Conduct accurate and difficult performance appraisals

 

Management Training:
Establishing Best Practices - Project Management Training

What is a best practice? For some clients, discussion has focused around putting policies and procedures in place for accomplishing projects. While other clients think of best practices as a means of ensuring that everyone is using the same terminology and templates and is better trained in project management technical skills. For yet another client, it was important to "get a handle on this project management thing."

Given today's economy, the focus for many organizations, especially around project management, is on doing more with less: shorter deadlines, tighter budgets, reduced human resources, and general uncertainty in what is going on in the organization overall. For some organizations, slashing projects is not out of the ordinary in these times, even some projects that are considered strategic in helping the organization move forward.

When organizations look at developing a "best practice" around the project management function, they usually mean one or more of the following:

Standardized processes

Standardized tools and templates

Standardized software

Development of competencies

Assessment of skills against those competencies

Effective resource planning

Development of specialized career paths

Development of strategic, long term training plans

Development of formalized mentoring and coaching plans

Support for and promotion of industry certification

Development and roll out of a PMO function

Their main question, "Where do I start??"

In a conversation with a new lead project manager at an organization who was hired to "get a handle on project management," he mentioned to me that the last three people didn't work out, and he was wondering why. In attempting to understand the points of failure of his predecessors, it became apparent based on conversations that the last three lead project managers went into the organization "guns a' blazing" to establish a PMO, along with standardization of processes, tools and templates.

This is an organization with nearly 100 project managers who, without a doubt, have processes in place for how they manage projects - whether formal (known and practiced by other project managers in the organization) or informal (known by the project manager him/herself and used regularly.) The last three individuals in the role made the wrong assumptions that there were no processes in place and they believed that they had the authority to enforce their agenda. While this may be the case, any good leader in an organization cannot force change without getting buy-in - even from their subordinates - in order to be successful. Their major problem - their approach was all wrong and was set up to fail.

Remember, key in establishing standards, whether around project management or any other function, is to get buy-in and consensus to ensure success. In this example, the new lead project manager will want to get to know how the project teams currently work on projects - what processes (formal and informal), tools, templates, standards are currently utilized now? How has it helped the success of the projects? Who else is using these methods of getting things done on their projects? Who have they shared their information with? Some sleuthing and data gathering is necessary here. I bet there are numerous processes in place throughout the organization - likely they just aren't written down and formalized within the organization. The "owners" of the processes are your champions for standards within the organization. You need their buy-in for the success of your endeavor - which is to put organization-wide standards in place around the project management function. And don't forget - these individuals have valuable information that can jump start what you are trying to do.

So...how do you start? In a nutshell...

Step 1: Do a bit of research within the organization as to how projects are getting done now. Get out there and talk to some of the project managers and project team members.

Step 2: Gather all the data you have found - look for similarities/marked differences. Get all of the process "owners" together to share information with each other and discuss their approaches.

Step 3: Document the conversation and meetings with the process "owners" based on their discussions: what works/what doesn't work, what agreement has been reached on sharing processes and making a standard from what already exists, what are next steps in bringing it all together to develop an organization-wide standard.

Step 4: Bring the rest of the organization into the loop - share the current processes in place, acknowledging the "owners" of the processes and highlighting how successful they been on projects because of their processes they have put in place. Then, discuss how standards may be developed organization-wide using a composition of processes already developed and being successfully implemented and filling in the gaps with new processes where needed.

Step 5: Think about how to incorporate industry best practices - such as the Project Management Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®) and/or APM Group's PRINCE2™ Methodology with the organization's standards.

The key in all of this is communicating throughout the organization. Share your knowledge and your long term goals, but most of all, listen and learn from others. You need them to be successful in implementing your goals.

Gina Abudi: link

Subject: Management Training

More Management Training Tips