I have recently stumbled upon this quote and I did like it so much, I tweeted it and found that many people have retweeted it in a short time, it is a quote of William L. McKnight (1887 – 1978), a former CEO of 3M company, who saved 3M from bankruptcy and made it a multinational and most importantly innovative company!

Have you watched Saving Private Ryan? If not it’s time to watch that great movie, in Saving Private Ryan a group of soldiers have been sent behind enemy lines to look for a solider called Ryan, and bring him back home, it was like searching for a needle in a haystack, soldiers were calling the mission a FUBAR (Fu**ed Up Beyond All Recognitions) , your project may also be FUBAR!

Do you always say YES? It’s time to say NO! many project mangers intentionally play this role of a doormat, they mistakenly think it would make them successful or at least get seen as obedient and trying to always please each and every stakeholder, being a doormat destroys the professional image of the project manager it also exhibits some stereotypes of project failure

Every job imprints some of its characteristics onto its practitioners and project management is no exception, I personally feel a real joy when applying project management principles to my life, a risk would be a great example, if you, as a project manager, try to apply risk management to all your life aspects, not only will it make you a better manager, but also it will make your life better, the following comic strip is based on a true story

In part four of Why Projects Fail series, we will examine the procurement root cause and see how it can cause the project failure, procurement involves establishing a relationship with a vendor to build the project’s deliverables, if a wrong vendor is selected, the entire project will be threatened, the project manager has to have robust knowledge and vast experience with the procurement process, in this post I will discuss procurement mistakes and how to avoid them.

You cannot manage people from an ivory tower, you have to interact with your team, speak with them on daily basis and melt the ice that may stand as a big demotivator in many organizations, Management By Walking/Wandering Around (MBWA) is a simple yet effective technique to have a robust relationship with your team built on mutual trust, understanding, and agreement.