Whipping up a Really Good Brainstorm

by David Hinde on 28/10/2011

How many meetings have we been to where someone has lamely introduced the idea of solving a problem by “brainstorming” Usually this involves someone standing up next to a flipchart with a marker pen and barking out “Okay let’s have some ideas then team”. The resulting silence resembles one of those Spaghetti Western scenes where the camera pans around a lonely frontier town with tumble weed blowing in the wind.
To avoid that scenario have a look at this excellent presentation I found on LinkedIn the other day. (By the way have you noticed how much better LinkedIn is getting these days – lots more relevant content and groups to join)

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Tagged as: Executive Coaching, Management development

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Can We Just Add a Few Tiny Features Before Launch!?

by David Hinde on 11/10/2011

This video made me laugh. It shows an IT Project Manager meeting up with a Business Manager a day before launching a new software system. The Business Manager has got a few tiny requests he’d like to add in….

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Tagged as: Project Management

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How PRINCE2 Might Have Rescued the Fire Service Project (FiReControl)

September 23, 2011

This week the UK newspapers have been full of a report from a parliamentary investigation into the abject failure of yet another government project. The FiReControl project was commissioned in 2004. The objective was to consolidate 46 local fire control centres that co-ordinate fire and rescue services in the UK to nine regional centres linked [...]

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PRINCE2 Software

September 9, 2011

Many people ask me if there is any software available to help run a PRINCE2 project. One of the challenges of PRINCE2 is using all the management documents that the method recommends. A good piece of software would be ideal to help create and update the plans, the logs and the quality documentations. There are [...]

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Starting a Project Successfully Using PRINCE2 – Part 1

July 13, 2011

One of the more useful PRINCE2 ideas is its approach to starting a project. One of the greatest temptations in any initiative is to stop talking and planning the project and just get on with the real work. Wasting time with unnecessary analysis is of course a bad thing, but rushing into the work can [...]

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The 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Managers

May 27, 2011

This post on BNET made me laugh. I think a few people I’ve worked with have read this book! A few things I especially recognise is the advice of being vague about what is required and remembering that your ability to remain in power is directly linked to keeping your employees as confused and disorientated [...]

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How To Think Strategically – Part 2

May 10, 2011

I talked in the last part of this series about how more senior managers are often tasked with developing their strategic thinking. The first step to doing this is to be quite clear what strategy is. Strategy is all about the position your organization will take in its environment. The position should give it some [...]

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How to Explain “Stuff”

April 28, 2011

Hi. Sorry I haven’t written much this month. I am up to my eyes in work at the moment, mainly writing a book. Its all about managing projects, but I’ll talk more about it later in the year. In the mean time have a look at this article that appeared on the BBC web site [...]

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Storytelling in Business!

April 7, 2011

I recently started to teach a new senior management course written by a colleague of mine. There’s lots of good stuff in it: strategic thinking, dealing with politics, controlling large change programmes. But stuck right at the end are a few slides on story telling as a management tool. At first I just couldn’t see [...]

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How To Think Strategically – Part 1

February 25, 2011

As managers move up the levels of their organisations they are often asked to thing more strategically. But what exactly does this mean? In this series of articles I want to take a good look at this, often rather obtuse, subject area. What is strategy? How does it differ from tactics? It’s one of those [...]

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