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Welcome to the Mindavation online project management newsletter.
Our commitment is to share news about project management upcoming events, tips & tricks of the trade, recommendations for reference and inspirational materials, and Mindavation course offerings.
Let's kick off 2005 with great plans! Better yet - let Mindavation help you with those plans by providing you a project lifecycle checklist to help you get your projects started off right. Check out our 2005 public offering schedule on the web - three outstanding courses are being held in five U.S. cities.
| Free Template of the Month |
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Each month Mindavation will offer a template from our Project Templates CD free of charge. Don't miss out on this opportunity!
This month's download is our Project Lifecycle Checklist template.
This full lifecycle template can be used to start your projects off on the right foot by planning for key deliverables and project processes up front.
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| Book Recommendation of the Month |
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Crucial Confrontations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron Mc Millan and Al Switzler
Recently, we strongly advocated reading Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott. This book is a perfect companion to "Fierce". The authors compiled over 20 years of research in working with people who were both successful and not successful when dealing with the need to address "broken promises, violated expectations and bad behavior." The result is an easy to read text that addresses how to identify and address the high priority problem in a given situation, how to engage a person in a crucial confrontation without violating their "safety" and how to gain acceptance for your concerns.
Whether you are comfortable with these "crucial confrontations" or not, there are tidbits in this book to make every conversation more effective. Definitely worth every minute of reading time - even for the busy project manager. We like to be pragmatic in our recommendations - this book can help address those everyday - and not so everyday - issues we face with our stakeholders.
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| Coming Soon to a City Near You... |
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January 26-28, 2005 Boise, Idaho "Complex IT Project Management"
February 16-17, 2005 Madison, Wisconsin "Recovering Troubled Projects"
February 24-25, 2005 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma "Intelligent Disobedience"
March 7-8, 2005 Colorado Springs, CO "Recovering Troubled Projects"
Looking for a class to attend? Would you like to meet us face to face? If we are in your area, feel free to contact us to schedule a meeting.
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| This Month's Article: "Stealth" Team Building |
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By Bob McGannon
The thought of "team building" often creates very diverse reactions from project team members. Many people enjoy the potential for increased camaraderie and getting to know more about their peers. Others have a very negative reaction - rolling their eyes and making statements like "oh no, we're going to hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya'".
The astute project manager can prevent such negative reactions by NOT holding team building sessions! Rather than a team building session, the effective project manager takes advantage of every opportunity the team gets together to develop team synergy - a "stealth" approach to team building!
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| Mindavation Project Templates CD Available |
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Mindavation offers 30 customizable project templates and tools to make your life easier! The CD includes full project lifecycle templates and tools.
Documents are in MS Word, MS Excel, MS Project 2000 (and Adobe). Modify each template to suit YOUR business and project needs.
Price (including shipping & handling): $100
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Reach Project Maturity with "ConsulTeaching" |
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In 2005 as all of us look for new ways to grow by sharing "trade secrets" with fellow project managers, Mindavation is doing the same.
Mindavation's philosophy of instilling great project management habits and developing outstanding project managers is enabled by a concept we call "ConsulTeaching". Creating a successful project management environment requires first understanding the current environment, including practices and tools, through an environmental assessment. The process continues with creating and/or modifying (as the assessment results indicate) a customized suite of processes and tools to increase consistency and productivity in your organization. The next step is to arm the project management staff and leadership teams with the right tools and concepts through highly interactive case-study based project management training. What really makes a difference is to then work with the project managers and leadership on-site with follow-up consulting, mentoring and coaching to ensure the new standards are being adopted effectively.
This combination of consulting and teaching - ConsulTeaching, is what builds long lasting, great project management habits!
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