As a result it’s becoming more difficult to keep track of all the moving parts in an organisation. Because of this we are drifting increasingly towards a functional silos approach. Not only do we have the traditional silos of manufacturing, marketing, distribution, sales and finance, but we now have IT management, risk management, quality management, work health and safety management, environmental management, innovation management, portfolio management, program management and project management within many organisations.

Because of the overabundance of specialisms we are losing the holistic view of organisations; we can’t see the forest for the trees.

Today’s new breed of business modelling tools allows us to model the business so we can respond to the factors that breed complexity but at the same time keep us from getting mired in the weeds. In essence they let us do the following:

• Prepare and maintain a repository of concepts and their relationships that match all our mental models.
• Bring seemingly disconnected domains of knowledge together into a repository that allows the purpose of an organisation to shine through rather than just being a collection of people, activities and policies.
• Show those responsible for management what they need and want to see without imposing an unreasonable reporting burden on the people doing the work.
• Provide a means for participants in each of those domains to contribute to that repository thereby reducing the fractures that normally occur.

Managing mental models

The first hurdle these new types of business modelling tools help to overcome is the gap between fantasy and reality; enter the mental model.

We all carry a cloud of mental models in our heads for various purposes and with just enough clarity and extent to avoid making a mess. It doesn’t always work, though, and as the pieces of the puzzle become smaller and more numerous it quickly becomes impossible to keep ordered. Also, others in an organisation may have their own mental models of the same reality which are likely to have little in common with our own.

These modern business modelling tools allow us to build a consistent and coherent framework for our mental model—also known as a metamodel—that you can share with all relevant stakeholders. Put another way, a metamodel is model containing all the parts you need to build a model in a particular domain.

A good modelling tool will not only come with various metamodels suitable for building models in various domains such as projects and programs, standard operating procedures, organisation charts and corporate strategy, but it will also come with the tools for you to create your own custom metamodels in cases that your needs are not covered by the standard metamodels provided out of the box.

So, in the case of program and project management, a metamodel needs to deal with the following concepts:

• A project needs to communicate that it might be managed by a program.
• The project also delivers products that enhance capabilities and achieve outcomes.
• The end of the chain is a realised benefit and its support of an organisational objective.

This will result in a metamodel that delivers a common dictionary, ideally built on widely used mental models.

On top of the conceptual view, new breed modelling tools provide the means to record the attributes of the concepts in our model. The benefit of recording characteristics like planned delivery date, forecast delivery date, project manager, budget and expenditure is you can start to extract information about the model that can help people do their work.

Domains of knowledge

The thing that distinguishes the new breed of business modelling tools from the current crop of project management and other business tools is these new tools can model across many domains of knowledge. What that means is we can join them together to multiply the amount and quality of information available.

You can look from the perspective of a project to find out what IT systems will be affected by your project and who might need to be trained in some new legislation or organisational policy. Also, you see which organisational change initiatives will affect you and which new regulatory or compliance obligations you have to meet.

The observer effect

The observer effect argues that if you measure something you invariably change the quantity you are trying to measure from its original value. For instance, measuring a project by producing reports about it changes the project’s work rate. There is a certain amount of meta information that is beneficial to a project for choreography and coordination, but if it is overdone it becomes burdensome without adding value to the project, even if there are some benefits to a broader program.

These new business modelling tools provide the means to capture the concepts and relationships and share them without imposing an unnecessary burden on the project. They provide a framework for low impact reporting of exactly what is important to the key stakeholders.

Contributing to the big picture

Most business improvement methods include the concept of feedback and measurement to maintain and improve the things you do. Today’s new modelling tools are no different.

Web 2.0 technology allows us to plug into the audience of our compelling, cross-domain, coherent and consistent models. By doing so these tools turn what is often a print-and-forget approach to management into a rich and enduring conversation using collaboration features that keeps the models alive and kicking.

If you add all that up it can seem like quite a bold claim being made on behalf of business modelling tools. But consider this, relatively simple molecules combine under the right circumstances with others to form DNA and ultimately you and me. Similarly, the simple concepts in a business model combine to form knowledge domains and then a complex model of a functioning project or business.

Even though the show Hoarders exemplifies the clutter problem to the extreme, most of us, if we were being honest with ourselves, would say that we hold on to more stuff than we need. In today’s world of consumerism, it can sometimes seem counterintuitive to get rid of things. Or to not acquire things that we don’t really need. Every day we are being told too by expert marketers that “more is good” and that we need more ‘stuff’ regardless of whether it is the truth. Take a stand to clutter, in both your home and in your mind.

Project De-Clutter

Have you ever had very good intentions of tidying up, but the results that you imagined never quite materialised? That is because intentions are not a plan! Three in four projects end up failing due to poor project management. Use the project management skills you have honed in your office to tackle your cleaning tasks. Define what deliverable you’d like to achieve, and what success will look like when you achieve it. When you treat your de-clutter goals like a serious project, your changes of success significantly increase.

Engaged commitment

What people in your life also have a stake in your cleaning project? These are your project stakeholders for Project De-Clutter. This is an aspect of cleaning that is often overlooked by the person heading up the task. When you face cleaning alone, it can appear very daunting.

Don’t go at it alone. Enlist help, and when you play to your stakeholder’s strengths, you will be surprised at how willing they will be to help. Is your partner a fantastic salesperson? Have them organise a garage sale and see how much they can get rid of and how much money they can make using their awesome sales skills. Is your son super excellent at playing video games? Okay, that might not help, but perhaps you could restrict his games until he has given you all the clothes that he no longer wears anymore so you can pass them on to charity.

You get the point. Rally the troops! A part of being a good leader is in the ability to effectively delegate tasks and speak to the self-interest of those that are helping you.

Timebox to tidy

Okay we get it—you’re busy! You’re much too busy to clean out your entire garage. But, are you too buys to clean off and organise that one shelf in the garage?

The key to successfully achieving your goals is to set micro-goals, and then achieve them again and again. Give yourself an hour to tackle one small project, and don’t let any distractions deter you from your progress. Do this once a day for a month, and you will be amazed at the progress you make.

More organisation = more time

Imagine your garage is in disarray. You are running around trying to find your tennis racquets and soccer ball from the kids’ lessons, and while running around sweating in the summer heat, you trip over the debris that is accumulating in your garage and sprain you ankle. And you were supposed to go to the beach tomorrow!

When you are organised, you create more time for yourself. Time is the most valuable thing that we have, so make sure that you preserve it when it matters most. Get organised to gain hours of free time this summer to do what is important to you.

Success breeds success

When you achieve success in this year’s cleaning project, you will have set up a standard process and expectations for future years to come, and each year it will become easier to implement Project De-Clutter.

Co-authored by Kristen Medina

It’s well-documented that IPros are a valuable resource to employers because they allow an organisation to remain flexible and adaptable to new opportunities or shifts in market demand. However, IPros’ worth goes beyond the ebbs and flows of business conditions. Here I explore and explain the supplementary value that IPros bring to organisations wanting to build a powerful workforce strategy.

Cost effectiveness

There is a common misconception that IPros are more expensive than permanent employees. Though the hourly or daily rate of an IPro is typically higher than that of their permanent counterparts, cost cannot be measured solely on time-based rates.

Permanent staff expenses run deeper than salary; they also include recruiting fees, personal leave, annual leave, redundancy payments, bonuses, company share schemes and other fringe benefits such as car parking, anniversary gifts and alike. An IPro’s hourly rate appears to be higher as it takes into consideration that they are not offered the many benefits inherent with a permanent role.

No business can afford to carry the costs of over-staffing, yet there has to be a capacity to respond quickly to periods of peak demand or to develop and implement new initiatives. Engaging IPros reduces the overhead associated with onboarding and integrating a permanent employee into the organisation, providing flexibility to adjust resources or skills at short notice and is a convenient way for employers to maintain efficiency while ensuring responsiveness to changing market conditions.

Increased productivity

Labour productivity is all about the quantity and cost of the people needed to produce goods or services. If an organisation can cut its labour requirements while maintaining or improving its productivity, then it is the best outcome for the organisation. IPros facilitate this by providing an on-demand workforce that lessens the financial overheads which are typically associated with the permanent workforce.

Furthermore, it’s well-documented in academic literature that workers’ engagement is the key to productivity. From the IPro Index 2012*, we know that IPros are in fact very engaged in their work, as the past four years of reporting have consistently shown that the highest attitudinal IPro Index score is for measures surrounding engagement in work. These results reveal that far from being disinterested workplace participants, the vast majority of IPros perceive that they are productive contributors to their client organisations and consider themselves trustworthy, professional, efficient and effective in their client dealings.

Specialist skills and innovation

A major drawcard in engaging IPros is that they bring a breadth of new skills and expertise into an organisation, supplementing in-house capabilities and extending resident knowledge.

Generally speaking, IPros have a wider portfolio of skills and experience due to exposure to different organisations, challenges, roles and industry sectors. This experience has the potential to bring about a fresh perspective to your organisation that is particularly critical in diffusing innovation and knowledge throughout the entire workforce.

What’s more, because an IPro’s entire livelihood centres on the unique expertise that they offer to your organisation, it’s rare that they will let their skills stagnate. This is particularly evident in the use of IPros working in IT roles that have to step in with little notice and deal with new technologies and different applications every day.

Knowledge management and transfer

The IPro Index also reveals that another benefit of many IPro-client relationships is knowledge sharing. The process of knowledge sharing is not a replacement for scholarly or formal learning, but it is a way of providing very efficient, specific, context-based and on-the-job training. It gives permanent members of staff the knowledge and confidence they need to continue their development or to manage the project into the future. Often, it may be the first step in encouraging a staff member to seek additional training and formal skills certification. Most importantly, it adds to an organisation’s store of resident knowledge.

Rather than leaving the process of knowledge sharing to chance, organisations should consider formally incorporating knowledge sharing into the relationship through the use of verbal or written knowledge sharing obligations in work contracts or by creating informal organisational knowledge networks which involve IPros.

Neutrality

Perhaps one of the greatest reasons for using an IPro is that they are a neutral resource. As the name suggests, they are ‘independent’ and in the unique position to observe systems and processes within an organisation and deliver outcomes that have their client’s best interests at heart. Because IPros are often brought in short term and stand outside the fray, they come without an emotional predisposition to certain situations, so they can take on the role as a neutral observer.

As a neutral observer an IPro examines the facts of a situation, rather than from an emotionally driven perspective, allowing them to gain understanding and make rational and open-minded decisions about how to respond.

Having a neutral resource frees businesses of prejudice and offers flexibility to adapt and respond to changing business conditions.

IPros are not just a useful source of additional, temporary labour or skills. They inject new blood into teams without incurring long term fixed costs and can be an extremely effective way of bringing new vigour to a stalled project, adding resourcefulness to a project team or even a way of enabling permanent staff to focus on more exciting and rewarding work.

* The IPro Index is an annual study of the attitudes and experiences of Australia’s white collar contingent workforce, developed by Entity Solutions in conjunction with Monash University.

The other fundamental question associated with mega project success is, what level of confidence is there that they will meet forecast needs in 10-20 years, given their typical decade-long delivery programs and the paradigm shifts occurring in society due to the influence of megatrends?

We believe the key elements that set the foundations for project success are:

1. Clear definition of the project vision and rigorous testing of the assumptions underlying the vision.
2. Clear definition of the project scope, risk and opportunities.
3. A project delivery plan that matches procurement to project definition and risk; provides clarity in the communication of the project definition; and establishes a framework for high performance outcomes.

A new formula for success

Test the project vision: the influence of megatrends
Megatrends are large-scale, sustained changes in society, technology, macroeconomics, environment or political landscapes that influence our culture, economy, business or personal lives and thereby define our future world.

The study of megatrends is important in long term forecasting as today’s project decisions affect project success on a 10-20 year horizon.  The inter-relationship of megatrends is complex and trends rise and recede depending on the influence of other trends.

The distillation, analysis and adaptation of these trends within a given project context provides the opportunity to explore the opportunities and implications of a range of project scenarios and possible futures to ensure forecast needs are met.

Match information to procurement and risk project definition
With a clear project vision, the project now needs to be defined and decisions made on who will assume the delivery and performance risk.

We are finding there is a move away from alliance contracting back to ‘hard dollar’ contracting that shifts design responsibility back to the client group. The capacity of clients, management teams and design teams to handle this shift is yet to be tested.

We advise adopting a strategic approach to procurement analysis and risk management to identify the issues and provide solutions that deliver outcomes commensurate with the appetite for risk. We recommend adopting the following robust four-step approach to procurement analysis:

1. Understand and define the key project objectives
2. Identify the project complexities and constraints
3. Identify the key project risks and risk tolerance
4. Determine a procurement strategy that aligns risks and responsibilities

The risk analysis phase of the procurement study is the key to successful project definition. It also sets the framework for the delivery of risk management throughout the course of the project and as such remains a dynamic process. The key elements of risk analysis in the project definition phase include:

1. Identifying risk sources
2. Developing response strategies: making the intolerable tolerable
3. Implementing mitigation options
4. Continual review and control

Incorporating this understanding into the procurement strategy ensures the appropriate marriage of risk and responsibility.

People make projects
The best-defined and structured project relies on the efforts of a multi-disciplinary team of professionals and contractors to work together seamlessly to deliver unique outcomes in a high-pressure environment. These are made up of organisations of different cultures and competing economic frameworks with significant legal responsibilities and liabilities. This is, typically, not an environment that engenders trust, teamwork and co-operation.

An often forgotten key ingredient to major project success is investing in the creation of a high performance team environment. The essential characteristics of which are:

• Clarity: A clear understanding of the common purpose, goals and direction of the project.
• Culture: An embedded value system of integrity, trust, support, honesty and commitment.
• Alignment: The interests of all team members are aligned and focused.

The successful delivery of mega-projects is the exception and not the norm. Contemporary wisdom points to the systematic failure to adequately structure and define the project in the initiation phase leading to the manifestation of significant risk in the delivery phase.

We need to overcome our industry’s obsession with mobilising tangible physical delivery as early as possible at the expense of considered and structured project initiation. The failure rate of mega projects is certainly a compelling argument that something has to change.

The simple fact is 88% of spreadsheets have errors. While Excel makes it easy for anyone to do the kind of number crunching once reserved for accountants and statisticians, the world’s best-selling spreadsheet software has also contributed to the proliferation of bad mathematics.

Ray Panko, a professor of IT management at the University of Hawaii and an authority on bad spreadsheet practices points to a 2008 analysis of multiple studies which suggests that “spreadsheets, even after careful development, contain errors in 1% or more of all formula cells”. These mistakes not only lead to miscalculations in family budgets and distorted balance sheets in small businesses, but may also result in questionable rationales for global fiscal policy. The problem is so widespread that there are dedicated groups devoted to stamping out spreadsheet snafus, such as the European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group.

There’s no question that spreadsheets are a powerful tool, essential to the functioning of the modern world, the European group’s chairman, Patrick O’Beirne, says. “People don’t take safeguards to ensure their work is correct – in fact, in many cases, all it would take to catch these spreadsheet errors is a second set of eyes… Chainsaws are also a very good tool, but who would use one without a chain guard?”

Big errors in little cells

One of the more telling spreadsheet errors in recent times (of particular interest with the Australian budget and federal election looming), is the theory national debt is bad for economic growth. The well-known ‘fact’ trotted out almost any time a debate breaks out about the sustainability of debt, is that once a country gets past 90% on the public debt-to-GDP ratio, the economy will suffer.

This ‘finding’ is based on a study by Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff that appears to have overstated the impact that debt burdens have on a nation’s economic growth by failing to include certain spreadsheet cells in the underpinning calculations. Like most well known facts, this assertion is merely a commonly held misconception.

A recent blog by the Roosevelt Institute details a new research paper critiquing Reinhart and Rogoff. According to the blog, the Excel error excluded Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, and Denmark from their analysis, which causes the average GDP, once debt-to-GDP exceeds 90%, to be 0.3 percentage points worse than it should be.

The new research paper by Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin, also finds other questionable methods in the Reinhart and Rogoff paper. And their new finding? The average growth rate for countries carrying public debt-to-GDP in excess of 90% is actually 2.2%, not -0.1%.

Whether this new paper will change the political debate is another matter. Even if Reinhart and Rogoff are wrong, there’s obviously still a case to be made for keeping debt levels manageable; and Herndon, Ash and Pollin also found lower growth at debt-to-GDP levels above 90% (but not negative growth).

Reinhart and Rogoff are not the only people to have difficulty using Excel. One of the reasons behind the so-called London Whale incident at J.P. Morgan, in which the bank took a $6.2 billion trading loss, was a spreadsheet error in their model.

These errors really hurt! If there is no urgency to keep the debt-to-GDP ratio below 90%, as Reinhart and Rogoff insisted and as policy makers around the world embraced, the double dip recession in the UK, the American budget cuts and the severity of the European contraction may all have been unnecessary (see more at: Prediction is very difficult).

So why does this matter? I would suggest if the ‘top end’ of town can cause recessions and lose billions or dollars  due to spreadsheet errors, what are the chances your project has similar nasties lurking in some formula cell? What are you going to do about it?

Peer review is the gold standard in academic research, and the best self-protection for users of spreadsheets in project management—possibly another job for the PMO—alternatively there are many software tools, such as XLTest, to find structural flaws in spreadsheets.

Hope is not a viable policy: now you are aware of the extent of the problem worldwide, basic risk management suggests independent checking of your project’s spreadsheets is essential!

There is a growing trend in active leadership and participation approaches where staff are part of the solution formation as part of planning and strategising processes. The active participation method would vary based on the size of the organisation. Decisions need to be made about who is best to be part of these active processes, in my experience a vertical slice is always beneficial with careful selection of staff who can contribute both positive and negative critique and viewpoints.

Strategies might include:

• Panels
• Appreciative enquiry approaches
• Action research
• World café
• Advisory committees
• Staff reference groups
• Design workshops
• Value workshops
• Strategy workshops
• Knowledge centres
• Shared document processes
• Participatory leadership
• Review teams

There are a variety of different strengths for using active participatory approaches in organisational change processes, but rarely is there much time allocated for them. There must be sufficient time allocated for the new ideas from staff to emerge and a level of trust in the organisation that they are seriously considering the views of staff and committed to building the new future with them.

Active engagement models need to be carefully facilitated and the clarity around power and control elements determined early. In some organisational contexts these models may not be as successful given the boundaries around legislative or commercial decision making processes.

Best case organisational change management processes have both information, consultation and active engagement processes that are carefully planned for, resourced and evaluated.

Evaluating the success of any engagement process is crucial to also determining the impact of the engagement method on staff and how the engagement is moving people up the awareness curve towards accepting the change and actively engaging in the new future reality.

A social, people-central project management environment centralises communication, gives team members visibility into every phase of their projects, grants individuals responsibility and autonomy for their interconnected tasks, and removes teams from the silos of email. As a result, everyone’s time is used more effectively and efficiently and no one is wasting time chasing down updates or being left in the dark guessing about the status of your project.

Teams using a non-collaborative scheduling tool, those that are centralised or managed by one person, suffer a number of frustrations: unclear priorities, people working on tasks that aren’t the best use of their time, and missed deadlines because one person is picking end-dates without a clear picture of how long tasks take: the list goes on.

As a result, businesses are now implementing project management software that is more social for several reasons. Collaborative project tools provide one location for all interactions—reviewing documents, making comments, assigning tasks—and eliminate the patchwork of planning tools that often includes email, spreadsheets, and sticky notes. When it comes to project administration, many hands make better and more manageable work, and a more accurate schedule. If updating the schedule is solely the project manager’s responsibility, it falls quickly out of date due to daily firefighting, coordination, meetings, and vacations.

Social project management provides transparency into the production cycle and project needs to meet a deadline. This open plan structure creates a clear understanding of how all players are contributing to the team, which encourages the commitment and participation from team members required for success.

Teams prefer technology for internal collaboration that aligns with the use of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and instant messaging software. This means incorporating commenting features that support team members communicating throughout the lifecycle of a project or task; showing conversation threads as a bird’s eye overview of what all team members are saying about their projects (think Facebook wall); having one location to store documents and all their revisions, and receiving notification alerts when work is ready.

Eliminating email overload

Less email clutter is another benefit of collaborative project management.  Email overload is a common affliction that comes with the following costly side effects: huge amounts of wasted time, difficulty locating information, and ‘lost’ business intelligence. When projects are overseen by a single manager, they’re often dependent upon email to move things along. I don’t have to remind you what a drag it can be to get an inbox filled with 20 email threads on a single project or task.

Ask me about the future of project management, and I’ll tell you that social planning tools will be the new normal for high performing teams. Instead of referencing outdated Gantt charts, people will be crossing off checklists and referencing real-time schedules. The scatter of emails, spreadsheets and manual updates will be replaced by projects managed in one space that holds every comment, conversation, document draft and team member who’s involved.

The benefits are already striking at the core of our clients’ businesses. Tangent Engineering saw a 30-40% increase in the amount of projects they could handle after using our social project management scheduler. Beneport, an enrolment solutions business, went from capturing 20% of a project’s tasks in individual spreadsheets to 100% of their task details using a social and collaborative tool. In a third example, a team leader at Rotork, the world’s leading manufacturer of industrial valve actuators, reported that managers and directors had more confidence that projects would meet estimated deadlines after his team started managing projects in one central planning location.

If you’re looking to help your team to heighten performance and to maintain its competitive edge, take a good look at the tools and processes you use to get work done. You might find that a shift to social project management is just what you need to move the needle.

These are the questions that run through one’s mind when deciding to attain Project Management Professional (PMP) certification not. They are normal. And they are very good questions.

At first, I wanted to write this article on why you should get your PMP because I believe that in most cases, it can only help you in your career and in your life. But isn’t that so typical? Me, the CEO of a training company that profits from people earning their PMPs, writing an advocacy article about how great the PMP is? How authentic is that?

So instead, I want to focus on arguments that I have seen out there lately about why having your PMP does not matter, and why taking an exam prep class is a bad idea, and address those. Here we go!

Reasons not to earn your PMP

1. Maintaining your PMP is time consuming to keep active
Rebuttal: When you earn your PMP credential, you do not just join a fraternity or sorority in which all that is required is an initial energy dump and then you are a member for life.

The PMP credential signifies that you are a member of an elite and professional organisation that is characterised by each member’s dedication to project management and their commitment to continue learning and growing in their profession. This is why to continue being a PMP, you are required to earn 60 hours of professional development over three years (see how to earn Professional Development Units or PDUs).

The more effort required from you to maintain your PMP credential, the more emphasis and goodwill is placed on having your PMP. And it is the people who hold the PMP credential the longest who are the highest project management earners in their respective industries.

2. Getting your PMP is expensive
Rebuttal: Not earning your PMP is expensive. The cost of the PMP exam is $405 if you’re a PMI member and $555 for non-members. PMPs typically earn $10,000 more a year than their non-PMP counterparts. This means that in just one month you have more than paid for the cost of the exam due to your increase in salary. Also, as mentioned above, the longer you keep your PMP, the more your salary increases.

Not having a PMP can also be expensive in the lost opportunity costs associated with not being considered for a job or promotions simply because you do not have your PMP. Those are immeasurable, but we have heard it time and time again that having the PMP credential helps people get in the door so that they have a chance at the job of their dreams.

3. Earning a PMP doesn’t mean you are a good project manager
Rebuttal: Just because you have your licence doesn’t mean you are a good driver. But if you don’t have your licence, you can’t drive—period.

More and more jobs are not even considering someone who is not PMP certified. Why? Because the reasons to earn your PMP far outweigh any excuse you may have to not earn your PMP. So when a prospective employer looks at your resume, and sees the potential for a PMP but not the actual credential, this will raise a red flag as to  why you didn’t go that extra mile to show dedication to your profession.

The bottom line is that while the PMP can only say so much about your project management skills, it says a whole lot about your character and your dedication to your personal and professional growth, which does matter when you are looking to change jobs or move up in your organisation.

Reasons not to take a PMP Exam prep course

1. Exam prep courses focus on memorisation
Rebuttal: To pass any exam, memorisation is required. As students in school, we know this. We had to memorise all the chemicals on the table of elements to create it later on an exam. We had to memorise all the states and capitals, and where they were located on a map. And what did we get from all this information? While not a perfect memory, I am guessing that most adults today could tell me that Cu is the abbreviation of copper on the table of elements. And we can thank memorisation for this.

Memorisation is an important part of learning. The fact that you are memorising does not mean that you are not learning; it is a deeper form of learning that is ingraining the information in your brain so that you can reference it later, and is absolutely crucial to passing the PMP exam.

2. Exam prep courses just focus on passing the exam
Rebuttal: It is called an exam prep course for a reason! If you wanted to learn how to make home-style Italian meatballs, go to an Italian meatball cooking class. If you want to learn how to pass a specific exam and don’t want to spend months and months preparing, go to and exam prep class that is focused on that one thing only: passing the exam.

While I know this may sound harsh, the reality is that time is a scarce resource. Most exam prep institutions like Cheetah Learning value learning beyond obtaining your PMP credential. By providing a direct service of allowing you to learn what you need to know to pass the exam, we are providing a way to take less of your scarce resources (time and money) and giving you what you need (PMP credential).

So while you read over these and wonder if the PMP credential is right for you,  make the right decision for you based on facts rather than emotional responses and go from there. Best of luck.

Co-authored with Kristen Medina

By the second day of PMIAUS13, Project Management Institute’s Sydney conference held last week, the theme of 21st Century Leadership had come to fruition. One secondary theme that was both hinted at and explicitly stated throughout the keynotes and sessions was the emergence of innovation in project management when leadership is ‘done right’.

We so often think of leadership as an asset when things go badly, because this is when leaders show their true colours: in making tough decisions, dealing with conflict and getting projects back on track. Tension and uncertainty, funnily enough, can also give rise to innovation, according to keynote Ron Douglas, Global Head of Projects and Technology at Orica. Douglas pointed out that many processes which have become standard project management practice were forged during times of war or great political pressure.

This post is not about tough times and project management scars but about how we, as leaders, can foster innovation all the time by cultivating the right attitude among our project team members. The best advice actually came from a speaker who was not a project manager, but a manager of Sydney community radio station FBi*, Cassandra Wilkinson.

Wilkinson emphasised that leadership was allowing a team to feel safe, even if it failed. “If you aren’t failing very often, you aren’t trying very hard,” is a cliche, she said, but too few organisations actually practised this, punishing those who tried something new if it did not reap a return. Her main message about innovation was to lead beyond the project and get the team to latch onto ‘the dream’. “If Martin Luther King had said ‘I have a plan’ people would have asked ‘how long will it take?’,” she quipped.

So my question to you is: does your team have the confidence to fail, or are you missing out on innovation in your project?

* Declaration of interest: I am a card-carrying ‘Passionate’ FBi supporter.

Stage 1: Information

Information in a change management context is making sure people have the level of information they need in relation to change. That is, it is timely, easy to access and, most importantly, easy to understand.

Information must also be culturally appropriate to the staff involved, for example for staff where English may not be their first language. Therefore information may need to be in other languages to ensure that information is understood. This is particularly important when it comes to safety information changes.

Strategies might include:

• Articles in staff newsletters
• A website or intranet site dedicated to the project
• Staff briefings
• FAQs and fact sheets
• Education and awareness sessions
• A dedicated email address and phone line
• Displays
• Staff meetings

In my experience. a range of different strategies are important to plan. Information needs to change for target groups and also based on the stage the change has reached. Information might be dynamic, but stay in line with the vision and key messages determined in early planning stages.

Stage 2: Consultation

The decision to have consultation approaches needs to be based on the change team and sponsors wanting a two-way relationship, where staff have the ability to not only receive information but actively put forward their views on how the change will impact them, and what they need.

Strategies might include:

• Interviews
• Facilitated workshops
• Surveys and consultation processes
• Discussion groups
• Open forums
• Social media forums
• Roadshows

The rules must be clear as to what the boundaries of the consultation processes are, what will happen to the information received. Ideally the loop is closed where the staff involved get informed of the final decisions made and how the feedback they gave affected the direction.

Ideally you should have a mix of information and consultation processes in an organisational change process.