the smart pms blog http://thesmartpms.posterous.com Most recent posts at the smart pms blog posterous.com Mon, 25 Jun 2012 17:04:00 -0700 Work to Live or Live to Work? http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/work-to-live-or-live-to-work http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/work-to-live-or-live-to-work

Working with multigenerational project teams has taught me that commitment is a common attribute for team members of every generation. 

But every team member approaches commitment in a different way. Different generations place different values on pursuing work-life balance. 

A strong work ethic is a characteristic of the older members of the project team, part of the silent generation. Members of this generation tend to want to work a reduced number of hours to be able to devote time to personal activities.

Baby boomers, the generation referred to as workaholics, consider work a high priority and greatly value teamwork. In my opinion, they are focused on their achievements and are willing to work long hours to achieve project success. 

Generation X is good at controlling their time. This generation has a desire to control and set a career path, personal ambitions and work time. 

Generation Y is driven by a strong preference for work-life balance. Many Gen Yers look for jobs that provide them great personal fulfillment.

In my opinion, one of our tasks as project managers is to find ways to shed the stress in our project team members' lives. Part of that is to better understand the work-life balance needs of team members from different generations. 

To bring a better work-life balance to any generation, define more accurate project schedules based on flexibility, telecommuting and time off.

Tell us about actions you have adopted to meet project goals and still accommodate team members' work-life balance needs.

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Tue, 22 May 2012 15:25:00 -0700 Overcoming a Significant Age Difference http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/overcoming-a-significant-age-difference http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/overcoming-a-significant-age-difference

As a project management professional for 20 years, I've managed IT projects in a variety of industries and regions, including North America, Latin America and Europe. Most of the projects were regional or global, and the project teams included members from different nationalities, cultures and generations.

Although complexity was a common denominator in these projects, it wasn't because of technology. It was because the people had what I call the "multi" factor: multinational, multicultural or multigenerational project teams.

The "multi" factor plays an important role in projects, and project managers must be prepared to address team issues related to this phenomenon.

The multigenerational work force has created what I call the "21st Century Organizational Ecosystem." Many organizations may find themselves dealing with generational clashes between a 60-something program manager, a 50-something project manager, a 30-something project team leader and a 20-something project team member. This could just be one facet of this ecosystem.

Project managers should understand the significant age difference among team members at the outset of a project. Age differences will be translated in generational gaps and identifying those gaps at the beginning enables the project manager to discern the preferred communication methods, interpretation of hierarchy and authority, as well as the perception of personal and work time.

In addition to technical skills, project managers must master interpersonal skills in order to analyze situations and interact appropriately, since the project team environment has evolved over the last 10 years a new interpersonal skill is required, not only for project managers but also for team members and stakeholders: multigenerational awareness.

Generations as cultures are based on invisible values, beliefs, attitudes and assumptions created by shared experiences and events. These differ across generations, and each will likely feel or behave differently in the same situation. The lack of cultural awareness may lead to a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the situation.

With the inclusion of Generation Y to the workplace will experience a significant age difference. As the children of baby boomers, Generation Y may not always fit the behavior you see in many organizations, but that shouldn't impede how you leverage their talents and competences when working as team members on a project.

These 20-something new graduates, or "millennials," have lived in a technologically ubiquitous world. They've always been recognized independently of their abilities and have mastered virtual collaboration skills.

Their attraction to technology may cause some project managers to find it challenging to communicate with millennials who don't follow traditional business formalities. For example, those that favor sending task and project status via text message rather than standard report templates.

In the project environment, millennials are closer in temperament and outlook to baby boomers. They look for smart mentors who don't talk down to them. When these types of relationships mature, boomers will show millennials how their wants can align with an organization's needs.

Millennials bring much to project environment: the ability to rapidly adapt to change, the ease with which they embrace diversity and a strong collaborative spirit. They've grown up in a changing and diverse world and have mastered many abilities that are important to projects.

Leading a multigenerational project team can be like riding a roller coaster or a day at the beach. It depends on how quickly project managers can enhance their multigenerational behaviors and values to creating the synergy required to have a successful project team.

How have you experienced the multigenerational factor in project teams? How has working with different generations affected your projects?

 

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Mon, 21 May 2012 07:57:00 -0700 Are you a Technologically Reliant Project Manager? http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/are-you-a-technologically-reliant-project-man http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/are-you-a-technologically-reliant-project-man
In the professional world where technology is omnipresent, we as project and program managers are used to tying our personal and professional lives to technology and gadgets like smart phones, tablets, GPS, etc.

 As a result, some organizations are trying a "day without email" on Fridays and/or weekends to encourage more face-to-face and phone contact with customers and colleagues. How do you think this would be received by a multigenerational project team?

For baby boomer and silent generation team members, face-to-face may be a preferred communication method. But for members of Gen Y, not communicating by email may make them feel like a fish out of water because of their preference for virtual communication.

 As the "day without email" idea progresses gradually, employees in these organizations are probably realizing that business functions are about human relationships. This is an opportunity to foster a coaching environment in which Gen X and Gen Y will be able to hone their interpersonal skills supported by senior project team members.

For those project team members who use technology frequently, discuss alternatives that will reduce the dependency of email in their daily activities.

How much do you depend on technology for your daily activities? How would your project team survive the "day without email" policy? Would you enjoy having a day free of email?

 

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Sun, 20 May 2012 07:54:00 -0700 Managing Multicultural Teams http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/managing-multicultural-teams http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/managing-multicultural-teams


Having the opportunity to work for a company that operates in more than two hundred countries

Having the opportunity to work for a company that operates in more than two hundred countries and territories and is a global leader in logistics has given me the opportunity to lead large global and regional information-technology projects. While technology made the work complex, the element of culture, both national and organizational, amplified the complexity.

A Global Project

The objectives of my first assignment were to lead the convergence of existing invoicing applications hosted and managed by country IT teams to a centrally managed single platform hosted in one of the regional data centers, and to standardize operations and processes. The new invoicing platform would be used by all countries in the Americas region; changes would follow a formal change-request process.

Although the existing invoicing applications shared core functionality, IT departments in individual companies had customized them by adding nonstandard functions that often did not comply with regional guidelines. This uncontrolled behavior led to new functions and processes that disrupted the standard operations at country and regional levels.

The technical team supporting the countries was challenged by reported incidents that often related to the customized functions, not core functionality. This was a source of conflict between the country IT teams and the technical support team, which many times was unable to address the issue. Business users did not produce invoices on time and their level of satisfaction was low. All this affected country and regional cash flow.

The Americas management board sponsored the project and mandated that all countries stop using any feature or function not aligned with the regional invoicing standards.

The Project Team

The project team consisted of stakeholders, the deployment team, and a technical support team. Stakeholders were the permanent regional management board and rotating country officials, including general manager, finance officer, and IT officer, who joined when the new platform was deployed in their particular country. The core deployment team was the same from project inception through completion and consisted of a project manager, technical-support team lead, and subject-matter experts in technology and invoicing. The rotating team members included country resources, both technical and end users. The technical support team, remotely located in Asia, supported day-to-day operation during the Americas business hours.

During team formation, team management became complex as some stakeholders and members of the deployment team changed when a new deployment started. New members came on board and others departed as the deployment in their countries was completed. I had to understand how to integrate new members into the team smoothly, convincing them to accept change and promptly collaborate with the project.

I learned that I needed to develop cultural competencies to manage the project team effectively and establish connections with team members when they came on board. A kick-off meeting to explain the purpose and benefits of the project helped establish the bond between new team members and the project. The most important part of connecting was stressing the importance of their roles and how their local experience would enrich the project, as this created a sense of belonging that translated into engagement. But the connection was strengthened by understanding and respecting the different communication styles and preferences of the national cultures involved.

There are many books about national cultures, but few resources explain how to deal with national cultures in project teams. While attending project management congresses, I was able to connect with other project management professionals who had faced similar challenges and learn from their experiences. I also learned from my own mistakes. During my first visit to Asia, I met with the technical-support team lead and his team and inadvertently broke the local meeting protocol when I started asking direct questions of team members. After catching the nonverbal cues of team members that showed they were asking the team lead for permission to answer, I switched to directing questions to the lead. He then selected the person to answer the question. At the end of the meeting, I apologized to the team lead and team members for my oversight and made it clear that my intention was not to make them uncomfortable or violate local meeting standards. I quickly shared what I learned with the rest of the deployment team.

Speaking foreign languages is a must in a global project environment, but language skill alone does not make a cross-cultural expert. It is necessary to understand other cultures’ values, beliefs, and communication preferences. Knowing how they manage and resolve conflict is essential, for obvious reasons.

During my first visit to Asia, I met with the technical-support team lead and his team and inadvertently broke the local meeting protocol when I started asking direct questions of team members.

It is also important to understand your own culture’s norms and behaviors. That knowledge helps guard against interpreting other cultures’ behaviors in terms of your own unexamined expectations. Reflecting on your own culture helps you understand and interpret why people from other cultures act the way they do.

With those recommendations in mind, I looked for ways to improve my cultural awareness in order to better understand my team members. As the project progressed and my cultural awareness improved, my connection with international team members became closer and more robust. When I had to spend more than two weeks in a country, I usually spent my weekends visiting popular spots where locals met: restaurants, farmers’ markets, coffee shops, and occasional sporting events where I observed people’s customs, traditions, and behaviors. My observations in those settings helped answer my questions about culture. When in doubt, I asked questions either of the locals or my colleagues.

Intracompany Networking

I often met with country management boards during the course of the project; these meetings offered good opportunities to establish long-lasting business relationships. I learned the importance of doing “my homework,” gathering all the relevant information prior to any meeting and knowing the audience in advance. Having established strong relationships in the initial phase of the project helped me get insight into country officials from people who had already dealt with them. Knowing the preferences and sometimes the opinions of a country’s management board about the project helped me to build the right deployment strategy and know what to expect from meetings.

In every meeting with country management boards, my team and I wore business attire and arrived on time. Board members arrived gradually and the general manager usually arrived late, demonstrating his status. The meeting started with preliminary discussions that helped build rapport. Deployment discussions occurred only after rapport was established. Usually, the first meeting exceeded the original allotted time and a second meeting was required to make the final decisions.

In this kind of project, it is important to have a well-defined circle of people who can influence the outcome. It can be like having “invisible” team members who support important functions and contribute to project performance.

Relationships should span all levels of the organization and not be limited to the higher ranks. Establishing a good relationship with users gives you feedback regarding the operation of the application and how it can be enhanced. For instance, Costa Rican users helped solve a common problem: end-of-day activities that involved several steps that required constant attention and, often, work after regular business hours. They suggested assessing the feasibility of automating these tasks. The assessment was positive and the tasks were automated, enabling Costa Rica and the other countries to avoid overtime payment.

A New Project Manager’s Role

In an environment where organizations depend on global projects for benefits that contribute to strategic objectives, the project management professional needs to explore new ways to lead, execute, and deliver projects supported by dispersed and diverse teams. Technical expertise is not enough. Project managers must adopt a business-oriented approach and cultural awareness and other soft skills. The most important knowledge and skills include the following:

  • Strategic Management. Understanding an organization’s strategy will provide the backdrop for future assignments and an understanding of project selection criteria. Only projects that help the organization fulfill its intended purpose should be selected.
  • Mindful Communication. Communication is crucial to project success. Communication needs to be customized to the specific cultures involved in a diverse project team. Good communication influences and inspires project teams and helps build strong relationships across the organization.
  • Adaptability. New leadership styles that fit the global project are required when working with diverse and dispersed teams located across time zones.
  • Resilience. Realigning or repairing projects facing unexpected hardship because of miscommunication and problematic behaviors as well as cross-cultural issues and conflicts will be a regular part of the project manager’s task.
  • Transparency. Adherence to an organization’s values and culture as well as professional codes of ethics is mandatory in global projects. The state of the global project needs to be shared promptly with relevant parties whether the project is in good shape or facing hardships.

In this new role, the project manager will turn into a perennial learner striving toward excellence, a great communicator, and a business partner who ensures that projects will produce the benefits the organization is seeking.

Key Questions

  • As a global project manager, how do you deal with cultural issues in your project team?
  • What is your strategy to deal with conflict in a cross-cultural team?
  • Do you enjoy the challenge of being a global project manager?

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Mon, 19 Mar 2012 10:00:00 -0700 Multigenerational Team Infographic http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/multigenerational-team-infographic http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/multigenerational-team-infographic

Infographic inspired from the video "We all Want to be Young"

 

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Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:40:00 -0700 Hot From the Press: The Silent Generation on Project Teams http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/hot-from-the-press-the-silent-generation-on-p http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/hot-from-the-press-the-silent-generation-on-p

Check my recent collaboration with PMI's official blog Voices on Project Management http://blogs.pmi.org/blog/voices_on_project_management/2011/08/the-silent-generation-on-proje.html

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Sat, 16 Jul 2011 10:50:00 -0700 Working with Multigenerational Project Teams - Voices on Project Management http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/working-with-multigenerational-project-teams http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/working-with-multigenerational-project-teams

My first collaboration with Voices on Project Management http://blogs.pmi.org/blog/voices_on_project_management/2011/07/working-with-m...

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Fri, 13 May 2011 18:37:00 -0700 Why I am greatful to Be a PMI Volunteer http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/why-i-am-greatful-to-be-a-pmi-volunteer http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/why-i-am-greatful-to-be-a-pmi-volunteer

Conrado Morlan, EzineArticles.com Basic Author

Merriam-Webster definition of "Volunteer": a person who voluntary undertakes or expresses a willingness to undertake a service.

Not many people, including members and non-members, know that the Project Management Institute (PMI) is supported by volunteers from across the world. That was my case when I joined PMI in 2005; I did not know that I would act locally; supporting the local chapter, and globally being part of communities of practice and participating in projects with global reach.

I decided to act globally and learned about the large extent of services undertaken by PMI volunteers including writing PMI standards, preparing questions for certification exams, organizing global congresses, and presenting at PMI sponsored events. And the list goes on and on and on.

I, as one of many others, wondered why these people offer their time to volunteer activities. It wasn't until 2007 at the PMI Global Congress Latin America where I met a Mexican volunteer who shared his experience in an item writing session in Barcelona. He explained how well coordinated the event was: from travel arrangements, venue, and volunteer team to afterhours activities. For him was a valuable experience meeting a selected group of Spanish speaking practitioners from around the world that joined forces to update the certification exam.

Wow! I was immediately sold on the idea. That volunteer opportunity encompassed my enthusiasm for traveling, meeting other people and sharing my experience as practitioner.

I could not wait to become a global volunteer and before the congress ended I was already registered. The first opportunity came three or four months after my registration: an item writing session in Philadelphia. At the beginning, I had a daunting feeling and too many questions. Would I be able to deliver? Am I experienced enough? Would I be called again after this session?

When I arrived in Philadelphia, I put that feeling away and got ready to spend three days with a selected group of experienced practitioners from the United States and Canada. The session was quite productive; we shared our personal experiences and produced great material for the next version of the PMI certification exam. The experience was one of a kind; I could not believe everything I learned in three days and for FREE.

I kept looking for volunteering opportunities and chose to be a presenter at the 2008 PMI Global Congresses in Latin America and North America. My two presentations were selected and I had the opportunity to visit two interesting cities, São Paulo and Denver, to meet practitioners from different latitudes and to share my experience in working with multicultural project teams.

Then, I had the opportunity to attend additional item writing sessions in Dallas, Mexico City, São Paulo and Washington,DC and to write exam material for PMP and PgMP exams. I continued to look for other opportunities and supported the Spanish translation efforts of the PMI Project Management Methodology for Post Disaster Reconstruction led by the PMI Madrid Chapter and was a member of the presentations reviewer pool for the PMI Global Congress 2010 - North America.

In 2009, at the global congress in Orlando, I tried something new: writing columns for the congress edition of PMI Today, which gave me the opportunity to develop my writing skills. I had already co-authored articles for PMI Community Post and continue submitting collaborations on quarterly basis.

If you still wonder why I am grateful to be a PMI volunteer, try it and give yourself the opportunity to live your profession with passion, being a true practitioner and not only applying project management knowledge at work but also sharing experiences with other colleagues, while developing and mastering your skills in a friendly environment.

What are you waiting for? Make your mark and join the local or global volunteer team to grow and advance the project management profession.

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Mon, 03 Jan 2011 14:05:00 -0800 Use the “Chinese Army Approach” When Scoping Project Resources http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/use-the-chinese-army-approach-when-scoping-pr http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/use-the-chinese-army-approach-when-scoping-pr

As a project manager, you will need to identify the resources to be included in the different tasks of the project. This activity may turn difficult and may become a roadblock in the selection process.

My recommendation is to use the “Chinese Army Approach,” which literally has unlimited resources, and assign roles or skills required instead of names of resources.

When this activity is completed, the project manager will have scoped all the required resources and then will be able to identify the internal resources that can fulfill the role or the skill; and those that cannot be fulfilled can be sourced from other groups or vendors.

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Tue, 02 Nov 2010 10:38:00 -0700 PMI Madrid Chapter Leads Reconstruction Methodology Translation Team http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/madrid-chapter-leads-reconstruction-methodolo http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/madrid-chapter-leads-reconstruction-methodolo

Project management plays a vital role in dealing with the aftermath of natural disasters around the world. When disaster strikes, countries and individuals promptly respond to help those affected. But although immediate needs may be fulfilledm there is still more work to be done after disasters.
Read more at http://www.pmitoday-digital.com/pmitodayopen/201011/?folio=11#pg10

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Sat, 23 Oct 2010 17:46:00 -0700 Managing a Multicultural Team - Part 2 http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/managing-a-multicultural-team-part-2 http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/managing-a-multicultural-team-part-2

Haptics studies the physical contact in nonverbal communications.
For humans touch is an extremely important sense since it provides information about surfaces and textures and is an important component of nonverbal communications in interpersonal relationships.
Touching varies in cultures and range from low/moderate to high contact cultures (i.e. Latin countries are high contact)
Not any area of the body can be touched and this also varies depending on the culture. It's common to identify non vulnerable body parts (NVBP) and vulnerable body parts, which would be inappropriate to touch in any social setting.
In this segment the call center manager wonders why he cannot "connect" with his team.
Is appropriate for him touch his team members in the office environment?
Is appropriate to keep his "American office environment" behavior with his Indian team mates?
Check the video and decide.

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Sat, 23 Oct 2010 17:26:00 -0700 Managing a Multicultural Team - Part 1 http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/managing-a-multicultural-team-part-1 http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/managing-a-multicultural-team-part-1

NBC is broadcasting the sitcom "Outsourced" in which an American call center manager is transferred to India to run the call center. 
The new manager's cultural intelligence is very low and he does not know how to approach his new team formed by locals from different geographic areas from India. 
In the sitcom some cultural situations are shown and due to the lack of cultural background may seem funny but this is a real issue that project managers face when managing a multicultural team.

Note the call center manager's "first impression" of India and how he greets the call center team members. In some cultures the "touching" for some cultures may be misunderstood and may be a source of conflict.

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Fri, 22 Oct 2010 18:02:00 -0700 Project Management Meets the World http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/project-management-meets-the-world http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/project-management-meets-the-world

In the last four weeks I had the opportunity to attend two PMI congresses. One was the 5th Central American and Caribbean Project Management Congress held in San Jose Costa Rica and the PMI Global Congress 2010 – North America.

In both congresses, I had the opportunity to interact with project management professionals from different latitudes and continents. I tried to learn from those interactions and identify the personality treats which set a difference for the project management professionals from around the world.

We manage projects, follow project management guidelines and apply methodologies to their day to day work. In a way we “play by the book”. But in a multicultural environment the project manager professional needs to adapt because an expression, a word or a gesture can be interpreted in multiple ways.

Interacting with project managers I was able to identify different communication styles which were tied to their cultural background among them:  different ways of greeting each other, table manners, personal space, perception of time and many others. All this elements of communication have a great impact on the project execution.

 Multicultural teams should pay particular attention to the risk of miscommunication. Recommendations to the XXI century project managers are described in the article http://bit.ly/9gmJdP.

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Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:01:00 -0700 The Risk of Miscommunication in a Global Project Team http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/the-risk-of-miscommunication-in-a-global-proj http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/the-risk-of-miscommunication-in-a-global-proj

The Risk of Miscommunication in a Global Project Team

by Jamie B. Gelbtuch, MBA, PMP, and Conrado Morlan, PMP, PgMP

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8:30 a.m. Members of your global project team are all in town and you arrive at your office for the 9:00 a.m. meeting, which by your U.S. standards should begin promptly at 8:55 a.m.

Agenda? Check. Technology working? Check. Breakfast on its way? Check.

At 8:50 a.m., you head to the meeting room and find Lucy, who arrived five minutes earlier and is casually preparing with her feet up on the table, but nonetheless ready to go.

8:55 a.m. Vijaykumar from India, Abdul Azim from the Middle East, and Masao from Japan arrive engrossed in a conversation that you cannot really understand due to the different English accents.

It’s 8:59 a.m (you are already four minutes behind schedule, you think to yourself) and Fatima from Brazil arrives.

In what seems like an eternity, 20 minutes pass, and you receive a phone call from reception asking permission to allow your last colleague Iván, from Argentina, permission to come upstairs.

Before the meeting even begins, the obvious question starts to percolate in your head: How will this team finish the project on time when they cannot even agree on the meaning of “9:00 a.m.”?

Project managers should count risk identification and prevention among their most important activities. In a global project context, risk management becomes more complex. Multicultural teams should pay particular attention to the risk of miscommunication.

Here are three ways to mitigate this risk:

Timing is everything
For some cultures, time is money, and each minute can be assigned a value of loss or gain. Other cultures are more comfortable with less-structured senses of time.

The realities of life across the world impact how people’s time is used: Traffic makes arriving on time a near-impossibility in one location, but efficient transportation networks make that a non-issue in another.

It is essential to be cognizant of other cultures’ theoretical views and daily realties concerning time. As a project leader, you need to suspend judgment when the members of your project team seem to be operating not only across different time zones, but also different time realities.

Is that a “yes – yes” or a “yes – no”?
 When lacking the advantage of a shared language, a common tactic is to boil communications down to simplistic levels, often resulting in an excessive amount of yes/no questions. However, many cultures, in order to avoid conflict, tend to use a “yes” response to indicate that they hear you, even when the answer to the question is “no.”

The “yes” may be accompanied by subtle contextual cues (tone of voice/silence, eye contact/avoidance, facial expressions) that indicate that it is, in fact, a “no.” Keep yes/no questions to a minimum and opt for more open-ended questions instead.

“You can say you to me”
There is a famous account of former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl meeting the late U.S. President Ronald Reagan for the first time and proclaiming, “You can say you to me.”

In order to understand the humor of this statement, consider that many languages distinguish between formal and informal words, titles and grammatical constructions for “you.” Chancellor Kohl was implying a friendly relationship and demonstrating it through the “informal you” that gets lost in translation to English—where there is only one “you.” 

While learning the language of every colleague is neither a viable option nor a necessity for most, knowing whether a language includes elements such as this will provide insight into how that person might view working relationships with others.

Today's project managers need to not only focus on how to mitigate risks associated with project requirements, but also the risk of miscommunicating within the global project team. As Einstein said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

As part of the plan for your next project that includes a global team, integrate a cultural awareness component to mitigate communication risks stemming from different cultural attitudes, experiences and behaviors. If you treat the risk of miscommunication in your project as "one size fits all", you might soon find yourself without a project to manage.

Jamie B. Gelbtuch, MBA, PMPJamie B. Gelbtuch, MBA, PMP, is founder and principal consultant of Cultural Mixology, which designs, delivers and facilitates cross-cultural and language training programs in academic, business, and expatriate environments. She is fluent in English, Spanish and French, with a working knowledge of Portuguese. She has particular expertise in working with Latin American cultures and French-speaking countries. For questions, comments, or feedback, please contact Ms. Gelbtuch.

 

Conrado Morlan, PMP, PgMPConrado Morlan, PMP, PgMP, is the regional program delivery director at the global market leader of the international express and logistics industry. He has more than 15 years of experience managing programs in the Americas, Europe and Asia and has led multigenerational and multicultural project teams. He is a contributor to INyES Latino and thesmartpms blog as well as an avid PMI volunteer. For questions, comments or your feedback, please contact Mr. Morlan.

 

Project managers should count risk identification and prevention among their most important activities. In a global project context, risk management becomes more complex. Multicultural teams should pay particular attention to the risk of miscommunication.

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Fri, 08 Oct 2010 16:46:00 -0700 How great project managers inspire action http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/how-great-project-managers-inspire-action http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/how-great-project-managers-inspire-action

Take a look to Simon Sinek's video and take his recommendation. You as project manager must inspire action to the project team and stakeholders. Try to use the golden circle and the question "Why?" in your next project status or stakeholder meeting and see the diference

The video is available at http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html (subtitles available in different languages).

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Fri, 08 Oct 2010 15:16:00 -0700 PMI Members check for the next issue of PMI Community Post http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/check-for-the-next-pmi-community-post http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/check-for-the-next-pmi-community-post

The next issue of the PMI Community Post will include the article "The Risk of Miscommunication in a Global Project Team". My colleague Jamie Gelbtuch and I collaborate on frequent basis with the PMI e-newsletter. This will be the third article focused on how project managers deal with diverse teams.

 

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Fri, 08 Oct 2010 14:53:00 -0700 The Cultural Challenges of Matrix Organizations http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/the-cultural-challenges-of-matrix-organizatio http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/the-cultural-challenges-of-matrix-organizatio

Managing projects in any type of organization is not an easy task. Structures vary from functional to projectized to a blend of both, the matrix organization.

How do you face the challenge? Here some recommendations. http://www.pmi.org/eNews/Post/2010_07-23/The-Cultural-Challenges-of-Matrix-Or...

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Sun, 26 Sep 2010 15:25:00 -0700 Speaking Engagemet at V AP-CON 2010 Congreso Centroamericano y del Caribe de Administración de Proyectos http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/speaking-engagemet-at-v-ap-con-2010-congreso http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/speaking-engagemet-at-v-ap-con-2010-congreso

V AP-CON 2010 Congreso Centroamericano y del Caribe de Administración de Proyectos. 

Jamie Gelbtuch and I were guest speakers at the V AP-CON 2010 Congreso Centroamericano y del Caribe de Administracion de Proyectos (5th Central American and Caribbean Project Management Congress) organized by the PMI Costa Rica Chapter  and  Colegio de Ingenieros Civiles.  

The event took place in San Jose, Costa Rica on September 23rd and 24th and brought together more than two hundred project managers from Central America and the Caribbean.

The presentation topic was "Formando un Equipo de Proyecto Multigeneracional de alto Rendimiento" (Developing a High Performance Multigenerational Team).The audience included project management professionals from Guatemala, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Brazil and the United States of America.

Jamie and I decided to combine our personal experience in cross-cultural and project management environments to which we had been exposed throughout our professional careers. During a discussion, we concluded that today's project managers not only wrestle on a daily basis with budgets, schedules and team issues, but for the first time in many decades with a new element of diversity  — the management of multigenerational teams.  

The outcome of that discussion was the article “Multigenerational Teams and Their Impact in Project Management” published in April's PMI Community Post. The article was well accepted by the project management community and as a result we were invited by the PMI Global Diversity Community of Practice to conduct the August 2010 Monthly Webinar.

The presentation used in the webinar was the adapted for the 5th Central American and Caribbean Project Management Congress in order to address the Central American and Caribbean audience.

The event was very well organized and Jamie and I would recommend that you consider attending the congress next year.

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