It’s the first of December and that means Advent calendars. And, despite the grey hairs, I have an advent calendar – with chocolates in each door. Why should the nippers have all the fun?
This year I not only get a little chocolate first thing in the morning, but also a “joke”. Note the inverted commas.
Today’s offering.
What do you get if you cross a shark and a penguin?
All projects should be run properly with due regard for objectives, deadlines, budgets – all that good stuff.
Some projects are big and complicated and need detailed plans to make sure they work.
Then there are some smaller projects which don’t need the big tools, and to use those big tools would be serious overkill.
For those projects a simpler tool is required and today I uploaded a video to outline a method you might like to try for a simpler project. It’s called (inspiringly!) the Simple Planning Tool.
You can catch the video here and download the tool itself from here. I recommend you download and print off the example before you watch the video.
I hope it’s useful to you. Any comments are welcome
Yesterday I delivered ‘Running Successful Projects’ in London. A good say. For some reason only a small number of delegates on this course which allowed lot of time for discussions and swapping experiences. You don’t get that with larger numbers, but you do get more different experiences to share.
Where to strike the balance? I reckon between 12 and 15 is just right. It’s enough for people to spark off each other but not too many that I can’t give everyone some attention.
To those who attended yesterday – hope you had a good and worthwhile day.
PS – to South Eastern Trains and First Capital Connect – it’s just as well you’re not running a brewery.
Here’s a little known fact about Powerpoint.
There comes a time in any presentation when you want the audience to stop looking at the screen and look at something else. That screen is hypnotic and no matter how exciting the other thing is, their eyes will be drawn towards your slide. It’s as if there’s an eerie power keeping them focussed on the screen.
You need to turn off the projector for a couple of minutes. But that’s not really on, as it’s bad for the projector and you never know if it will all go horribly wrong when it restarts. You could just block the light from the lens for a while.
If the projector is at desk height, you could lean a pad of paper against the lens. It works but it’s clumsy. And if the projector is mounted to the ceiling, then you might have to resort to climbing on the table and gaffer taping your pad to the lens. No, probably not.
Fortunately, there is a much easier way. Provided you’re in slide show mode, you can type “B” on your computer keyboard and the screen will turn black. No image – nothing to look at except you. Sorted.
Press “B” again, and the slide reappears.
If you prefer the screen to go white, then just use “W” instead of “B”.
Easy. Impressive. No climbing, no gaffer tape.
One of the features of many projects is lots of stuff going on at once. It’s what makes project management fun!
One of the downsides to this is that there’s … lots of stuff going on. And you need to keep on top of it all. Can I strongly suggest keeping a logbook? A hardback book with numbered pages is the best, as it’s very hard to lose a vital page if it’s bound in such a book. And write in ink because pencil can fade and be rubbed out. You might need these notes later…
Why lumber yourself with something else to carry around and keep up to date? Because you can’t remember everything and it’s sometimes really useful to be able to recall a telephone conversation that happened 4 months ago.
Also keeping notes can help with subtle problems. Let me explain with an analogy.
My friend Sid had some niggly little health issues; a runny nose, a minor headache that just wouldn’t go away, a sore foot and a few other bits and bobs. In themselves none of these symptoms were terribly serious, or even serious at all; hardly worth wasting a doctor’s time. But put together, his GP came to the conclusion that Sid was suffering from “galloping wormy head-rot” or some equally strange and dreadful disease. Since he caught it early, he was able to fix it easily and painlessly. Had he waited much longer, he would have needed an arm transplant, or six months of some ghastly treatment. *
That’s a deliberately silly example, but projects can have the same sorts of things going on. Silly little issues can crop up, none of which are very important in themselves. But put them together and …
If you keep a logbook and make a note of things going on in your project, you may very well see a number of silly little issues that together have the potential to scupper your project. And even if you don’t, it’s good to have one place where you note telephone conversations, discussions about changes, etc etc.
So you have a choice. Carry a relatively light notebook around, and use it, or just wait until the disaster happens. A long time ago I opted for the book. And it’s been worth it.
*NB galloping wormy headrot is not a real disease. I don’t have a friend called Sid. I made it all up.
I find it staggering to think that there are some people who think that ‘retard’ is an acceptable descriptor for someone with a learning disability. It’s just not!
I find it staggering to think that if I used a certain word beginning with ‘N’ I would be hit with the full force of anti-racist law (and rightly so) but it’s still apparently ok to call someone a retard. It’s just not!
It’s time the R word went the same way as the N word, and is treated with the same level of severity.
“Oh, but it’s only a word – don’t make such a big deal of it”
Nuts!
It may be just a word, but it stands for so much. It stands for an attitude that places people with a learning disability as second class citizens, and encourages discrimination against them. It stands for freedom to bully and taunt.
Let’s make a stand and make the R word unacceptable. Once that’s happened the next step is to take bullying and mindless discrimination off the streets too.
I urge you with all the urge I can muster to go to the r-word website and take action. Now!
I need to get this off my chest – Microsoft Access’ least helpful help facility.
I’m building an Access database. It’s nothing fancy, and I haven’t built one for a while, so I’ve created a table that I want to delete. I can’t see easily how to do this, mainly because I’ve had to migrate to Office 2007 which is the LEAST intuitive thing Microsoft have ever produced. So I turn to the Help facility.
After spending a couple of minutes scratching around I finally find the entry I’m looking for, only to be taken to a VIDEO to explain to me how to do this. And to cap it all, before I’m allowed to see the damned video, I have to watch a 48 second commercial for Chevrolet cars! Which I can’t buy ‘cos I don’t live in the USA, and which I wouldn’t buy anyway because by now I’m steaming! Oh, did I mention that I didn’t have the right Flash player installed, so I had to wait while that downloaded and installed too. The whole exercise took over 5 minutes.
All I need to do is right click on the table, and select ‘Delete’.
Would it not have been a whole lot simpler just to tell me that? In text. In 10 seconds.
Please, if anyone out there has anything similar, comment. I’d be interested to know if there are other instances of stupid unhelpful help out there.
Everyone says that charities are becoming more like businesses, and they’re right. Like it or not, we have to think more commercially these days. It’s not all bad. There are some very good tools and techniques we can learn from business.
In the first of a series of articles, we present the Boston Consulting Group’s method for analysing the value of investments in a company’s portfolio, but with a twist to make it helpful for those of us in the voluntary sector.
Continue reading ‘We can learn from the commercial sector – part 1’ »
The Challenging Behaviour Foundation has published a new information sheet for family carers which we are very happy to plug.
‘Ten top tips’ provides
It will also be useful to families concerned that their relative is receiving poor quality support.
The information sheet has been written for family carers whose relative is aged 18 years or above and has severe learning disabilities and behaviour described as challenging. Each ‘top tip’ is accompanied by action points which family carers can take to ensure their relative receives good support and services.
To download a copy of the new information sheet visit the Foundation’s website
The link to the sheet is on the lower left sidebar, under “Resources”
Click on the image to find out more about this remarkable book
