Archive for the ‘Project and Programme Management’ Category

Mastering Skills

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

Watching the Masters golf over the weekend, and putting aside the Tiger Woods controversy, I was fascinated with the precision of the player’s shots.  When going for the hole, they are hitting the ball the length of a football pitch or further, AND getting within inches of their target.  This is a very visual demonstration of the application of skill.

So what is skill? One excellent definition is:  “the learned ability to consistently bring about a pre-determined result”

Implanting this definition into the business world and thinking about Indigo’s range of training workshops, I want to focus you on the key words in this sentence:

  1. LEARNED – Yes there is natural talent at play, but you acquire new skills by breaking down the sets of behaviours that make up that skill and learning how to apply it for yourself. Have you seen a great communicator or creative person at work and thought – how can I learn to be like that?
  2. CONSISTENTLY – At the heart of consistency is practice. Without it, you will never be able to re-produce your best on a regular basis. When you have your moments of brilliance are you ever left asking – why can’t I do that all of the time?
  3. PRE-DETERMINED – Luck… there is only one type when it comes to skill – Labour Under Correct Knowledge. When was the last time you got asked a question and wish you were better prepared to respond with more precision and persuasion?

Indigo’s workshops are extremely practical and based on years of combined Business Leader experience. They help you master the skills of:

  • Creativity – have ideas “on demand” that solve your personal and business problems and help you generate new opportunities.
  • Communication – deliver precise, powerful and persuasive business communication that gets your message heard.
  • Project delivery – get things outside your normal day job done. The successful delivery of projects gets you noticed and is often a fast-track to career success.

Call a member of the Indigo team now to hear how you can master these skills for career progression and recognition.

Tel: +44(0) 20 7924 8760, or e-mail info@indigobusiness.co.uk

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Lean project management – isn’t that the point?

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

When an organisation needs to make a strategic improvement, it needs to flex its project management muscles.  Good project managers get to work defining and planning the project – identifying key deliverables.  The deliverables are the benefits that will be derived from the successful implementation of the project.

Now I am certain that, at this crucial scoping point of the project, no-one takes the opposing view to the Lean principles and says: “let’s make this project as expensive as possible, take up huge amounts of time and not deliver the value to the organisation and its customers”.  Surely, every organisation wants to deliver projects as efficiently as possible with excellent results???

Herein lies the problem.  Every organisation wants to do this, but most do not usually know how.  It requires creativity.  There, we said it.  The discipline of project management, which is often perceived as a ‘hard skill’ and filled with templates and Gantt charts, needs creativity to be delivered with a lean approach.  Does your organisation know how to take creativity seriously and come up with new ideas?

de Bono’s Simplicity workshop applies Lateral Thinking™ tools to come up with new ideas to streamline process and projects.  It’s a value-based model that delivers not just a ‘lean philosophy’, but also systematic methods for turning this into a workable solution.

Stop just talking lean, and get your organisation down the gym.

James.

James Arnum-White

Senior Consultant

t. 020 7924 8760

e. jamesaw@indigobusiness.co.uk

 

 

 

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Delivering the Olympic “Project” – London watches Beijing

Monday, August 11th, 2008

Stopping for a quick bite to eat at the Indigo offices on Friday, I caught a glimpse of the lavish opening ceremony of the Beijing’s Olympic Games, confidently playing out its carefully choreographed scenes on the TV in our office reception.

Whatever your political persuasion, it was hard not to be awestruck by the size, precision and sheer “people power” of the project taking place before my very eyes. A mammoth project in fact, delivered on time, with enormous funding, on an incredible scale.

My thoughts though while watching the ceremony, fast-forwarded a lot closer to home. I couldn’t help but think –

How are the London 2012 Olympics going to compare,

And what can and will the London 2012 organisers learn from the Beijing experience?

As a member of Indigo’s project team, and albeit working on slightly smaller scale projects than the Olympics (!) – assessing and analysing the cost, risk and benefits of our clients projects is a daily challenge of ours. So I will be fascinated to see how London 2012 manage over the coming years.

Failure to prepare? Prepare to fail

At Indigo, we specialise in helping our clients, who include no less than a number of high-profile worldwide Olympic partners, to become better project and programme managers.

When “delivering” a project, three key questions any good project manager will continually ask themselves are –

Will the project be delivered on time?

Is the project on budget?

And is the project on target?

Projects on time… With Beijing, and a “drop-dead-date” such as the Olympic Games, their project had to be, and therefore was, delivered “on time”. The same of course will have to be for London 2012, no question! Missing the deadline would be like celebrating Christmas in June!

Projects on budget… Projects like the Olympics don’t tend to let a “little thing like money” get in the way of a great finished product (some £20bn down the line in Beijing’s case).

For London 2012, with more limited resources than Beijing, and threats of spiralling costs already – putting my project manager “hat” on, focus must be made on careful project finance, planning and operations if their resources don’t dry up before the first gun has sounded.

Projects on target… The scale of the Beijing Olympics may prove to be unique in the history of the Olympics. No Olympics may ever spend or build more than Beijing. London has to realise this, step out of Beijing’s shadow, and provide a model which future Olympic Games can follow. This can be London’s project target, and a great legacy of the games.

It’s these “soft skills” of communicating and “selling” the value and benefits of the Games which will be London 2012’s challenge to convince us of over the coming years. I wonder if the sheer spectacle of Beijing is causing London to re-think its project plan!

 

 

Adam

Senior Consultant - Indigo

adamp@indigobusiness.co.uk

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Avoiding the pitfalls and risks with Project Management!

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

I recently came across a series of quotes regarding Project Management and thought I would share them! In essence, they take a humerous angle to the potential risks with Project Management. Enjoy!

- “A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected - a well planned project only twice as long as expected”!

- “A two year project will take three years, a three year project will never finish”!

- “Any project can be estimated accurately (once it’s completed)”!

- “If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong”!

There are however ‘other ways’ in working through the complexities, time and budget pressures with Project Management delivery and successful completion. If you’d like to know more, drop me a line so I can share with you Indigo’s practical, proven project solutions!

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