Inexperienced Project Manager

Posted on 17 September, 2010 at 11:45 PM by with 3 Comments

What would you do if you had engaged an inexperienced project manager?

Recently, I had engaged a new project manager. For anonymous, will call him Jimmy.
During the interview, Jimmy had presented many good project management experiences.

However, after bringing Jimmy on board, discovered his interview speech does not match his actions.

To name a few,

He is not communicative to the stakeholders.
He is not able to manage stakeholders, team members and vendors. Weak leadership.
He over-promised and under-delivered in terms of schedule and project cost.

My senior team member and I had discussed what to do with him.

We decided to pass Jimmy some simpler projects but he managed the project from simplicity to a highly complex state.

We provide regular

  • PM training and guidance
  • Show him the past project files
  • Share ideas
  • Brain-storming together

Nothing comes to his mind.

The team is having a hard time to pass him some bigger projects because I am afraid Jimmy will messes up the project. This will cause the Project Management image to be ruined.

Lessons Learned:
Need to carefully scrutinize each candidate during the interview phase.
Give actual provide scenarios and determine how he reacts and responds to the situation.

If the candidate is not up to the mark, straight away go for the next better candidate. Even though the candidate may be your friend, don’t sympathize. It will hit your team morale in the long run if you engage him.

The team and I are still discussing what to do about this.

What is your suggestion? Please share your comments.

Articles, Business Communication, Training Workshops

Communication Cycle

Posted on 13 November, 2009 at 10:45 AM by with

What is a Communication?

Communication is a message transmits from Point A to Point B in a medium (environment). The cycle is only complete when Point B responds to Point A that he/she receives the signal.

Many people nowadays are very well informed of the current affairs because of the advanced technologies. They just switch on their computer and head to the popular search engines. Click on the topic and tons of information will fly in. Thus people are knowledgeable. They are willing to voice out their opinion.

More and more people are willing to speak up. Thus if there is any information they find that is debatable. They will start to speak up. Thus one way of communication is no longer the mode. The communication cycle have not even finish, the response already kicks in.

Thus a complete communication cycle always take plenty of planning and execution.

In a classroom environment, the teacher will transmit the knowledge from his/her perspective down to the students. Teachers will ensure the students understanding the topics by asking the students to perform some exercise so as to ensure they understand. The act of exercise could be a form of responding to the communication cycle.

In an office environment, taking email for this scenario, communication cycle begins when sender mails out information to the other party. If the recipient did not respond, sender will get worried and excited. Communication cycle has suddenly paused.

Remember communication is not complete until the recipient responds.

Thus the sender will tick the delivery receipt option; read receipt option and whatever means to ensure the recipient get to open up the sender’s mail. Alternatively, sender will picks up the phone and contact the recipient to reinforce the sending signal had been received.

If you are the sender, please do some actions to ensure the recipient responds to the message. If you are the message recipient, please help the other party to complete the communication cycle. In a mail, just respond to the sender that the message was received and actions will be followed shortly kind of similar message back to sender.

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