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Did You face situations when You had to let go of
great jobs because You lacked certain Skills? You need to
prepare in advance to seize the Opportunities that life
deals You. Let us see what knowledge, skills, talents and
strengths You require to gain the Winning Edge at every
Stage of Your Career.
Let us see what knowledge, skills, talents and strengths YOU
require to gain the Winning Edge as you grow in experience
and expertise.
Phase One (Self)
=========
When you get your first job, all that is expected of you is
technical skills, a good understanding of the theory and
concepts of your domain area. You are expected to execute
instructions reliably and accurately.
You soon become a technical wizard and a storehouse of
domain knowledge. You become an expert in whom the freshers
and youngsters just out of college could find a mentor and
guide; and peers a consultant and helpmate.
Phase Two (Tools)
=========
After a couple of years, you start to question and find out
better ways of doing your activities. You want to accomplish
more, faster and with less effort. You are young, energetic
and enthusiastic. You have an abhorrence of repetitive and
monotonous tasks.
So you either create the tools or find out what is available
in the market. Thus knowledge of available tools, their
usage and mastery became a necessary part of your portfolio
of skills.
Phase Three (People)
=========
When you have gained technical mastery over your domain area
and have a good grasp of tools, your performance will be a
lot better than that of your peers. So the company you are
working for decides to promote you to the management cadre.
You become a Line Manager -- a Project Manager.
In some companies 2 different streams of Career growth exist
a purely technical ladder and a management ladder. You may
reject the Project Manager's responsibility and opt for the
Technical Expert or Consultant's position.
Whatever be the option, at this phase of your Career you
will find that your peers with good people management
(manipulation?) Skills do get faster rewards, quicker
promotions, and fatter salary packages. So in Phase Three
whether you are directly responsible for the output of a
team or are a consultant and guide to multiple projects, you
do require People Management Skills.
Inter-personal relationships nurturing, high EQ Emotional
Quotient, Negotiation, Motivation, Mentoring and Guidance to
youngsters explicitly as a Project Manager or implicitly as
a Technical Expert become the need of the hour. Excel in
these aspects and you will be more effective, more efficient
and move faster and effortlessly towards success.
Phase Four (Customer)
=========
One of the most important relationships and expectations
that you will handle is that of your customer. Read the
article "Communicate and Cooperate to Satisfy Your Customer"
to get an idea of what customer relationship building can
entail.
The other customer whose expectations and relationship you
should keep in mind is that of your Top Management - your
boss, his peers and his supervisors. What do these two
important 'customers' think of you? Are you an invaluable
resource to them?
You will find that in life the person who keeps his customer
happy and delighted gets more recognition, faster rewards
and promotions. One good referral from the customer is worth
more to any company's Top Management than a thousand praises
from your boss.
Phase Five (PM tools & techniques, Process methodology)
===============================
Nowadays with emphasis on quality of the deliverables, each
company uses a plethora of Project management tools and
techniques to achieve better productivity, more consistent
outputs. You need to master these PM tools and techniques in
order to provide the information Top Management requires.
Moreover keep an eye on ways and means to improve process
and increase productivity. You should ensure that each and
every staff member is alert to recognize and voice out ways
of improving the processes. It is the worker in the front
who knows how best he can do a better job. For this
involvement, you will need a conducive atmosphere of Trust
where people work in a happy, stress free environment.
Learn how you can create such an environment by reading my
book "Project Serenity - How to gain happiness and peace"
available at
www.pm4all.com/serenity.html
Phase Six (Cross functional Teams, Large Complex projects)
=============================
When you manage cross-functional teams, you need much more
than people, project and tools skills. You require a lot of
support from the company's culture and way of working. You
should be able to reward and recognize the contributions of
any member of the cross functional team.
The giving-sharing, collaborative culture is a pre-requisite
for success of such teams. The politics of borrowing
resources, cross-functional authority will pose threats to
the success of the projects. Here the focus moves towards
being able to define PM process at an organizational level.
While handling large complex projects, you will require
negotiation and motivation skills, communication and
persuasion skills in a larger degree. You will require
a good eye for potential risks, the skills of reporting,
escalation and ensuring that the necessary follow-up action
is taken. For large projects, profitability should be
tracked more closely. Does the organization have the tools
to do this?
Else you should be able to define the measures and check
points, the escalations that should be addressed in what
time frames so that the complex, large project remains
financially profitable.
Phase Seven (Business Unit Manager)
===============
As in the case of large complex projects, as a Business Unit
Manager you should keep an eye on your profit margins. The
company defines long-term and short-term gains and
objectives for the Business Unit. You should know how to
define them yourself keeping in mind the market, your
existing and potential customers, your team strengths and
weaknesses.
The market scene keeps changing. The existence of change is
the only thing that does not change. Customers come and go -
their project needs change. Technology changes also affect
your projects. You may need to keep track of obsolescence of
components of your systems and plan for contingency
components. Training needs of your team should be planned in
advance so that you do not reject good projects just due to
a lack of skilled manpower.
Thus as a Business Unit Manager, you start tracking trends.
One good resource to help you in your study of market,
technology, and customer trends is my article "10 ways to
Research or Google a Topic".
These are the 7 levels of knowledge and skills that you need
to become proficient in. These are 7 Ways to Reach Success
At Any Stage of Your Career as you utilize your natural
talents and strengths to reach success at every stage of
your career.
Related reading
========
10 Ways to Research or Google a Topic
www.123projectmanagement.com/crm-research-google.html
Communicate and Cooperate to Satisfy Your Customer
www.123projectmanagement.com/crm-communicate-cooperate.html
Copyright @ 2003, Project Dioxide Consultants (P) Ltd.
Naseem Mariam is the editor of "Management that Soars"
Newsletter & author of "Project Serenity - How to gain
happiness and peace". Let her guide you towards Faster
All Round Success and a Stress Free, Joyous Life. Her
free ebook and Newsletter tell You How. Subscribe with
a blank mail to mailto:projectdioxide@s....
Visit her at
www.123projectmanagement.com
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