Negotiations often stall when people focus on interests: I’m willing to pay $10,000. No, it will cost $15,000. I need it done by Monday. That’s impossible, we can’t have it ready until Wednesday. While such interchanges are common during preliminary negotiation discussions, managers must prevent this initial posturing from becoming polarized. When such positions are…
Category: Project Management
Negotiation Framework: Mutual Gain and Objective Criteria
I have to say that this may be the simplest and yet one of the most powerful negotiation framework out there. I have done some reading on the subject in the last few weeks and I have ended up to the conclusion that Fisher and Ury have something in this 4 step approach that has…
Training Team Members
Many new managers believe they must know how to perform every job in their area of responsibility. It’s as though they feel that if some key person quits, they might have to get out there and personally perform the task. If you believe in that philosophy and carry it to its logical conclusion, then the…
Building a Team Dynamic in 6 Easy Steps
In recent years, getting work done through teams has become standard practice in many organizations. This is true for a couple of reasons. One reason is synergy. Generally it has been proven in workplaces that groups make better decisions than an individual working alone. Another reason for having teams is that in today’s world of…
Negotiating – Uncovering It’s Secrets
Effective negotiating is critical to successful collaboration. All it takes is one key problem to explode to convert a sense of “we” into “us versus them.” At the same time, negotiating is pervasive through all aspects of project management work. Successful Negotiating – Requirements Project managers must negotiate support and funding from top management. They…
Negotiation – 4 Key Points To Increase Your Effectiveness
The introduction to the art of negotiation can be found here. I encourage you to read that first to get the an introduction to the topic and then come back to this article. I have provided links between the two for easy navigation. Negotiation Framework Fisher and Ury from the Harvard Negotiation Project champion an…
Outsourcing Project Work: Why, How, When?
…being a good partner has become a key corporate asset. I call it a company’s collaborative advantage. In the global economy, a well developed ability to create and sustain fruitful collaborations gives companies a significant competitive leg up.—Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School professor It is rare in today’s flat world to find important projects…
Outsourcing Project Work – 7 Best Practices
This is the second part of a short guide on outsourcing. If you have landed on this article via a Google/Bing search then I encourage you to take a look at this article first and then follow the links to read the entire guide. This article describes some of the best practices I have observed…
Outsourcing Project Work – 4 Advantages and Disadvantages
This is the first part of a short guide on outsourcing. If you have landed on this article via a Google/Bing search then I encourage you to take a look at this article first and then come back to this one. Outsourcing Overview The term outsourcing has traditionally been applied to the transferring of business…
7 Easy Ways You Can Rejuvenate Your Project Team
Over the course of a long project, a team sometimes drifts off course and loses momentum. The project manager needs to swing into action to realign the project team with the project objectives and step on the pedal. What options are there for the project team? There are both formal and informal solutions. Informal actions:…