How To Thrive When Your Company Goes LEAN

Your management team says your organization is going Lean … what are you going to do to thrive?  Here are some tips:

1. Be empowered to make change – Ever complain about frequently reworking the same stuff or waiting forever for somebody to move a task forward?  You can now take action to reduce waste to make your life easier at work.  Work with your manager and show where the waste is and how you propose getting rid of it.  Be engaged!
2. Don’t be married to your function – Your management should be respecting people and not using Lean to lay-off staff.  It is possible job functions may change and your role may become different.  See this change as an opportunity.  As knowledge workers, we only grow when we try new things.  Don’t be the person who refuses to be flexible.
3. Encourage others – Change is not easy for a lot of people.  Be there to help your team deal with the improvements that are being made.  Many people focus on problems.  Look for the benefits of the change and share them with others. 

Recommended:  A Changing Workforce by Lee Fried

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Career Sabotage

We always hear how to build our careers but how often are we warned about what can sabotage them?

Andrew Kordek’s blog helped me discover a great article from Global Knowledge called 10 Career-killers To Avoid.  The article states it is for an IT perspective but I think it applies to Project Managers and all other careers as well.

I believe all ten points are right on the money, but I will comment on the five I find most relevant for PM’s.

• Forgetting to give credit to others:  Providing positive feedback to a project team member’s manager will go a long way for both of you.
• Believing that you are irreplaceable:  See my Value Meal post for my thoughts on this.
• Confusing efficiency with effectiveness: Understanding how to manage the Triple Constraint can help balance time and quality.
• Failing to deliver results:  Deliverables are the name of the game for PMs!
• Not keeping your skills current: As knowledge workers, continued learning and growth is essential.

There are so many great authors and mentors around us to provide wisdom to develop our careers.  I hope this article is helpful to you.

Knowledge Economy

I was inspired last year when I read about the concept of the Knowledge Worker.  Here is a little bit of the concept from Wikipedia:

• The first wave was the Agricultural Age with wealth defined as ownership of land.

• In the second wave, the Industrial Age, wealth was based on ownership of Capital, i.e. factories.

• In the Knowledge Age, wealth is based upon the ownership of knowledge and the ability to use that knowledge to create or improve goods and services.   In the Knowledge Age, 2% of the working population will work on the land, 10% will work in Industry and the rest will be Knowledge Workers.

I truly love to learn and enjoy sharing knowledge. 

I hope to use this blog as a demonstration of the Law Of Duplication from John Maxwell’s The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.  I plan to capture the knowledge I have learned and make it available for my readers for their development. 

Together we can all increase our knowledge!