Professional Adventures

When last did you try something new? Obviously, I expect that you try new flavors of coffee every now and then, read a book on a new topic by a new author and read articles about project management that you don't normally read.

However, in addition to these adventures, when last did you look at facebook and consider the benefits of facebook to develop relationships with team members and stakeholders? I am posting one topic of project management advice on facebook every day and getting feedback that people enjoy reading my postings. I also find that I know a lot more about project management that I typically have opportunity to disclose in day-to-day interactions. Facebook provides me with the opportunity to teach team members about project management in the informal setting of their own facebook account.

Facebook is the undiscovered tool to build informal relationships and teach project management to the benefit of project success. I find that building relationships with project stakeholders and team members on facebook is improving project communication on my projects due to the fact that team members have a stronger relationship with me as result of communications on facebook.

Therefore, my advice is "Review your facebook account and use it for informal communications to have better project outcomes".

In the same vein - what other professional adventures have you undertaken recently? Please don't tell me that you are doing the "same old, same old" and still filling out the same stupid spreadsheets that you were using five years ago.

Review how much effort you are putting in to manage your projects and think of ways to:
1. Reduce your labor intensity. (How can you get the same results with less effort and time?)
2. Get better results for the same time investment.
3. Identify tasks that don't need to be done. (This is the fastest way to free up time - stop doing what doesn't need to be done).
4. Review the status reports that you are creating manually, and investigate the ROI of implementing a computer system to generate regular status reports.

Variety is the spice of life. Your career needs professional variety. Take new views on your project activities, and add in some spice. Project management is only a bland profession, if you choose to make it so.