First, do no harm! Hire the right people.

The first thing HR or any hiring manager needs to do is hire the right people. Notice I di not say “good” people. I believe to the core of my soul there are very few bad people. Most people who are hired are “good” people. But why are so few “good” people the right hires.
What follows is my tried and true test questions of myself when hiring:

• Does the person fit with our company culture? I am not talking about any external cultural manifestations, I mean core beliefs and actions.
• Will they get along appropriately with others in the firm?
• Will they become bored, or worse, will their ambitions upset the harmony we have achieved. (I know many many firms thrive on dissonance, and I have worked and thrived in them, but MOST companies thrive in accord!
• Will they be satisfied with our company pay, promotion and transfer system?
• Will they criticize or bully others or push to hard for change?
• Will they need constant care (high maintenance) and praise feeding?
• Are they smarter than you, and if so, will they have the grace not to rub that in your face every minute of every day?

After you analyze the above, and you  might make a hire that doesn't exactly fit (be prepared to manage that problem if you judge the reward worth the headache.) then ask?
Do they have the skills, abilities and desires to do the job you ask them to do?
If they don’t, don’t make the hire.

Rule Number 8. Have Fun

Of my rules for Project Management. I think the most important one is Rule 8. Have Fun.

Project management is hard work, and the best project managers who get the scary projects aren’t always assured success. Scary projects have lots of risks, and sometimes the forces arrayed against the project are immense. So its essential to have fun with your work. If it is painful to go to work every day, then get a new job. I left Project Management due to my health and that of my wife. We made a great new life as academics and teachers and I make sure to have fun every day. The pay is less but so is the stress, and I get to consult and teach about something that I have spent forty years studying and practicing.

During a productive part of my youth, I spent a decade taking on broken projects, or first of a kind projects. I happened into it as an assistant project manager, when Ford Motor Company, pushed by Japanese auto makers on quality, decided that they could design and build a full paint shop ($150M, 1980 dollars) in one year. That was tall order enough, and then they forgot to get an EPA permit that put the project start back 14 weeks. When we asked for an extension, they said, sorry Dec 15th is still the deadline. It was great fun with 300 managers and supervisors pushing 3000 workers on a project that went 20 hours per day seven days per week. When we completed the work to deadline (within budget I think), an executive from Ford came to the plant and congratulated “we happy few, we band of brothers”, and then lowered the boom by stating that Ford Motor Company had their doubts about  the possibility of our completing the project on time but they were very happy with the outcome and henceforth all Ford Motor Co major plant construction would be done to similar schedules. Almost thirty years later I am still in contact with a handful of the living team members. My life has been blessed with membership on other fantastic teams.

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
    From this day to the ending of the world,
    But we in it shall be remembered-
    We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
    For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
    Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
    This day shall gentle his condition;
    And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
    Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
    And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
    That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Shakespeare Henry V

The take away:

If it hurts to go to work, find another job. Project Management skills are vital to dozens of different industries and hundreds of thousands of potential employers. I know that times are tight and a job is a job, but if you work yourself to death with stress what good is that to your family.

A former student and friend returned this year from a military tour in  Iraq.  Here was part of the message he sent me.

Dr. Rogers, I never knew how important home and the family was, until I was taken away from it. 

A good lesson hard learned. So Have Fun with your work and your family.

So you call that a project plan! or my “Eating Project WBS”

One of the fundamental roles of a project manager is putting together a coherent and understandable plan with the buy-in (consensus) of the team.

After you have a good plan, you need to be able to execute. That’s where a solid WBS pays for itself.

The size of the project is irrelevant. Grocery shopping, for me, requires a list. I make the list and then rearrange it into a hierarchy to suit my local supermarket layout. All vegetables together, cereals also together, etc. Its been a long time since I had to write a budget figure on the list, but with the economy as it is, that might happen again soon

I take the grocery list (or what you might call my “EATING PROJECT WBS”) with me to the market and as I complete a task like “lettuce to shopping cart”, it gets checked off. Without my “Eating Project WBS” I would probably return home with about 1% of the required work done, leading to extra costs and re-work, as well as a delayed dinner or two.

I have had this habit for almost my entire adult life. When I was a young man in college I lived about 30 miles from town and the campus without a car, the last bus stopped about a mile from my home at 8:00 pm. (this was in the pre cell phone era and certainly in the pre Internet era. When I went to town in the morning I had my “daily life project WBS” made before I left for town. If I wasn’t organized, I didn’t eat, or maybe even sleep in my own bed, and I certainly didn’t meet up with my friends.

The take away:

No matter how small the project a rudimentary WBS will make successful project execution more likely.