I have just come away from another workshop, with another group of clever and hard working project people, in another “fast paced” global firm. Wherever I go I try to get the same simple message across: THINK SLOW AT THE START AND MOVE FASTER LATER. Despite Aesop and countless other story tellers before and since, […]
Tag Archives | How NOT 2
Conflict in action
With our latest video, Conflict in Action, we’ve taken a slightly different approach. The idea is that you try and work out which Conflict Preference the characters are demonstrating in four different “scenes”, and then think about how they could have achieved a better result. It’s ideal for using in a workshop as well as […]
The futile Project Review
The name “Project Review” gives a “How NOT2” Project Manager every excuse to make it a monumental waste of people’s time. Okay, there are things to be gained from reviewing the past, but why not write those up (succinctly) and pass them round before the meeting? Unless the team has a time machine, not much […]
How NOT 2 plan a project. A cunning plan?
What is it we have against putting a plan together? Why does thinking something through seem to be so dimly viewed? Leadership? – “I didn’t get where I am today by thinking about things”. Often the people I meet in Middle Earth (somewhere between first day newbies and the Chief Exec) are perfectly able and […]
How NOT 2 set SMART objectives
Most of us have come across SMART objectives, and we kind of get why they are a good idea. If people are working towards well formed objectives, it tends to improve their performance somewhat. How else did we get the 4 minute mile (set 60 years ago this month, as it happens, by the great […]
How to mess up “continuous improvement”
This Blog is the first of a series I have planned that are dedicated to the multitude of “How NOT 2’s” I have witnessed in the world of project management over the years. The biggest problem I have as I stare at my screen is: “where do I start?”! Let’s give “continuous improvement” a poke. […]
What does bad innovation look like?
“If we’d tried to invent it, it wouldn’t have been anything like as good!” [on the invention of SMS] So joked an Acision engineer I worked with last week. Believe me this guy was smart so, this was more than a humorous throw-away. When I describe How NOT 2 to friends it sounds like a […]
Make Collaboration…..not War
The How NOT 2 team is big on Win/Win and Collaboration, so we were really interested to hear the story of a 15th Century Chinese mariner called Zheng He. He is not well known in the West and certainly not as read about as Sun Zu of “Art of War” fame, although both built their philosophies on […]
What are the top 5 mistakes a salesman can make?
We’re just lining up our next set of videos to shoot before Easter, and How NOT 2 sell has come out at the top of the list as a hot topic. We’ve been discussing what we think the TOP mistakes are, and came up with this list (in no particular order): Interrupting – so you […]