I just finished reading a new book The Trusted Leader by Robert Galford and Anne Seibold Drapeau. A few weeks ago I attended one of those networking breakfasts. You know the type...muffins, croissants, and bananas with OJ and bad coffee. This was the first breakfast of this type that I attended in over five years. I chose to attend to listen to the speaker, author Robert Galford. I got a free copy of his book. (Free that is, if you value the breakfast at $50.) Enough cynicism.

The session was quite good. Galford touched on the high points of the book, took questions, and did a fine job working the crowd. I left with the intention to read the book. The road trip with my son to Colorado offered the perfect opportunity.

First, take the trust test. It's free. I've had 2 doz people take the test and all are reporting they learned from it. Having said that, I expected more from the test. The authors could have done a better job with the descriptors.

The book offered numerous useful distinctions. One is a formula for trustworthiness:

Where:

T = trust

C = credibility

R = reliability

I = intimacy

S = self-orientation

Of course trust is not a formula. However, the authors have done a good job of showing the complex nature of trust. Try assessing your trustworthiness. Assign a value of 1-10 for each of the above variables where 1 is low and 10 is high. Make a note of where you are today. Then come back and do the rating again in a few months after you've given your attention to becoming more trustworthy.

Overall I think there are better books on trust. Robert Solomon's and Fernando Flores' Building Trust in Business, Politics, Relationships, and Life is my standard for comparing all other works. Against this standard, The Trusted Leader gets 4 out of 5 stars.

posted by Hal at 8:13 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

This Project e-Tip comes to us courtesy of Claude Emond. You might recognize the name. Claude has been one of the most prodigious commenters of my postings, although he's been somewhat absent for the last few months. Claude makes a great point about client involvement. I urge you to heed his advice. Make it your habit of engaging with your client on a regular basis and in different forums and settings. Project success depends on it.

The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week

016: Keep the Customer/End-User Involved

The Standish Group, in its 1998 Chaos Report, identifies user involvement as No. 1 in its Top Ten List of project key success factors. Yet many project managers shy away from this obvious tip, or, at the most, meet the customer at the start of the project to define requirements and will not 'converse' with him/her again until much later in the project, only to find a very uninformed, unpleased, and distressed party (and much to do to regain his/her trust). User involvement must be more than that. Successful project managers have realized long ago that, in this changing world of us, customers/users also change their mind along the way and must also understand that conditions in the project environment change for all sort of uncontrollable reasons. Both the project manager and his/her customer minds must be 'in sync', preferably in a continuous manner, in order for the former to satisfy the latter. Thus, get and keep your customer involved in your project as much as humanly possible and you will automatically get, time after time, high quality deliverables (and a highly satisfied customer) while keeping the risks of not meeting requirements as low as possible. Continuous end-user involvement: the obvious road still less traveled! Project e-Tip provided by reader Claude Emond. If you want a graphical illustration of how this might work, Claude suggests you ponder over the two figures presented at www.qualiscope.ca/familiar_vs_new_way.pdf

©2003 Hal Macomber | weblog.halmacomber.com | e-Tip Archive | PDF | Submit Tip

One of the two autographed copies of The Blind Men and the Elephant: Mastering Project Work is now on its way to Montreal. One more left (unless David Schmaltz donates more). Send me your best advice.

posted by Hal at 11:20 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

I've taken a bit of a hiatus from the e-Tip thing. It took a request to republish my e-Tips in a PMI chapter newsletter to get me off my butt. I've queued four topics. I'd love to hear your best thinking on what makes projects successful. There are no Purple Cow books left, but I have two autographed copies of The Blind Men and the Elephant, Mastering Project Work, by David A. Schmaltz, that I'm glad to offer if I publish your proposal. Send me your proposals!

posted by Hal at 10:15 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

The Lean Construction Institute is conducting a workshop Implementing the Last Planner System™ in Atlanta on December 4 & 5. The workshop answers the question, "How do I make lean construction work for my company?" These workshops are not just for construction professionals. Lean project approaches have been adopted in defense contracting, software development, and engineering. This program is a follow-on to LCI's Introduction to Lean Construction. Check it out.

posted by Hal at 10:14 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

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