Posts Tagged ‘project management’

If you were to pop open any social media platform or news app right now and scroll through a couple dozen posts, you’ll easily get the feeling that everything is #%&$ falling apart. Everyone is mad at something. We now use the term “doomscrolling.” In the past we had Yellow Journalism and we are there […]

I get a lot of enjoyment from the creative and innovative side of the work I do. Helping clients or my teams break out of the day-to-day and explore the unexpected. I’ve discussed innovation myths before and how to use lateral thinking to expand your pool of ideas in unexpected ways. One of my favorite […]

We’re just now finishing up the holiday season. At this time of year, I’m always intrigued by the magic of the holidays we celebrate, and the optimistic goals we set for the new year. Even the lies we tell ourselves. It amazes me how we collectively like to suspend reality for a bit, reflect, and […]

Consensus is most simply defined as a general agreement. Some definitions may include the phrases “broad agreement” or “unanimous”, but a tempered meaning is the acceptance of an idea. There are very few things in life that have a single right answer. And with such diversity in the world, you’ll almost never end up with […]

Success and failure – just like hot and cold, light and darkness, love and hate, or good and evil – these represent the ends of a familiar spectrum. Countless philosophical works have pondered these seemingly opposing concepts. My favorite view for all such opposites is that you cannot understand one without the other. They are […]

An innovation wildcard is a team member who is there to add a unique perspective that the rest of the team may not have. This person can be within the organization or pulled from outside. They may have deep expertise in other areas, or they may be new and more likely to question everything. Innovation […]

It’s a tale as old as time, or at least as old as Star Wars. I have “gone to the dark side” of project management platforms by dipping my toes in the Azure DevOps pool (spoiler alert, come on in! The water is fine). And while these two platforms can even be integrated with one […]

When you hear the word “constraints,” what creative images and stories does your mind conjure up? The word often leads people toward negative thoughts of confinement, limitations, obstacles, or not getting what you want. With this article, though, I want to talk about useful constraints and how they can encourage creativity and innovation. Common Views […]

The psychology of innovation is like any other area of life where our brains and emotions simply get in the way of our progress. We love to lie to ourselves. Even when we are aware of the pitfalls, they are unavoidable. Our brains are wired to fall into these traps. I recently wrote a blog […]

It was 2002 when I landed what I considered to be my first real professional job. I was hired by a small advertising agency as a graphic designer, though I mainly got the offer because I also knew how to build websites. At the time, I had not created any principles and would still often […]

We often hear the business analyst role described as a “Jack of all trades, master of none.” This is especially true in the consulting realm where this role spans all phases of a project from discovery to development to training and all the crevices in between. So when your project’s Scrum Master has to step […]

“We Should” is Said a Lot I’ve worked at a handful of companies throughout my career. If you split the years out, half of my time has been working within an agency and the other half has been in-house. The agency work has allowed me to see dozens of other companies as well. I’ve been […]