International Young Project Manager Award 2010

Nominations are now open for the 2010 IPMA Young Project Manager Award. Introduced in 2006 at the IPMA Young Crew conference in Shanghai, China, the IPMA Young Project Manager Award recognizes rising talent in the project and program management industries by honoring young project managers for their accomplishments early in their careers. These honorees have demonstrated invaluable impact to both their profession and their companies, and are on the fast track to becoming influential project leaders on an international scale.

Unlike Before is thrilled to be a member of the esteemed award jury who will be assisting with selecting the finalists for this award. ”Being asked to participate in the selection process for the 2010 IPMA Young Project Manager Award is an enormous honour.” says Deanne Earle, Director of Unlike Before Ltd, ”It’s critically important to recognise talented project managers early in their careers as through their success we can sustain strong project leadership into the future.”

All prospective applicants should complete the online application. Initial applications will be accepted by the Award Committee until midnight, 30 June 2010 Eastern Standard Time (EST). Details about the application procedure, assessment criteria and award jury can be found on the IPMA website.

Read more or submit your application here.

When Urgent isn't Urgent at all

In January I was chatting with someone I know who asked if I knew anyone who could ‘operationalise a project’. What he meant was that his company needs help with business readiness and handover of what has been a very long project. Of course I reminded him who he was talking to and started asking questions about what was needed and the timeframe. Our conversation concluded with a mutual understanding that the need was urgent.

Now urgent to me means that the situation is important enough to require immediate attention; straight-away, no mucking about, decision made, let’s get on with it. Even the online Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as:

urgent    adjective   1) requiring immediate action or attention   2) earnest and insistent

Pretty clear really isn't it? Apparently not...

Mind the Gap – Where emotional intelligence rules

Anyone who’s been on London’s Underground will have heard the world famous warning for passengers. “Mind the Gap” was introduced in 1969 to warn passengers about the space between the train carriage and the platform. Just like passengers in a hurry or who think they know best run the risk of falling between the two, businesses need to maintain conscious awareness of the very real and tangible gap existing between their strategy and desire to achieve effective operational change.

Business Strategies are specific when it comes to the organisation's mission, vision and objectives; Direction is clear, ROI specified, and growth expectations and market share targets listed to support both. Now the challenge starts. This beautifully constructed well thought out strategy must be turned into operational reality and if the strategy is one that sees the business moving through previously uncharted waters, there will be the inevitable changes along the way to operational practises.

What's all this got to do with emotional intelligence?

Close the Gap

Readers Survey - Results

There are very few instances in fact I struggle to think of even one example, where an IT-led project will not impact the organisation through some sort of structure, people or process change. Time and again I see a gap existing between the delivery of a project and the organisational change it inevitably creates. Often companies will engage expensive consultants to help with the organisations cultural and process changes; sometimes they do this at the same time as running an IT project, however even if the two are running in parallel they’re generally tracking along their own path and seldom if ever come together.

Because I specialise in this area I wanted to understand if the critical success factors and challenges this gap presents to a business have changed with the global economic climate. I was also interested in the actions or processes you are taking or putting in place to reduce this gap. Hence the December Survey - Organisational Change and IT-led Project Management Processes.

So what did the survey tell me? Well, some very interesting things actually but you'll have to read on to find out.