…seems to be flavour of the month. I’m in the process of closing off two fairly large projects (neither of which I was the main project manager for) with lots of lessons to be learned – I’m not sure those lessons are going to be transfered with identified lessons being dismissed by senior managers with “well that should never have happened in the first place” and “its obvious we’ll never do that again”.
I’ve also been asked to prepare and deliver a couple of practical workshops on budgeting and return on investment measures as part of a CIPD accredited postgrad course. I’ve run a couple of sessions on this course before, it always interesting as the mix of students (nationalities, work experience, academic experience) can be a challenge and it seems to end up with about three people dominating – at least one because they know what they’re talking about and another one who doesn’t get it and dominates the Q&A – and the rest are nodding and writing but only after the session will ask (usually very good) questions. Its a challenge I never feel I’ve got right (so far. he says hopefully). However, I’ve now been asked to design and develop the content for a blended learning verison of the course with a direct remit to improve the transfer of learning – following my post here that should involve reflective exercises.
I’m also facing a similar challenge with coaching a team through a project start-up process and in particular engaging a couple of members who just want to say the ‘right’ thing and then dump any decision no matter how trivial on to the project manager. As a result, project momentum gets dragged down, people get frustrated and the potential of the project (especially as a learning mechanism) dies out. I’m under pressure now to isolate these two into their technical areas and almost construct a core project team with these two technical areas ‘outsourced’ with the two ‘difficult’ individuals treated as external advisers. Not the best solution form my point of view as they’re more important to the project in my view than is realised. However, the team needs to deliver and at some point that has to override other considerations – my issue is judging where that point is.