Everyday Project Management

Over the past week I’ve seen several cars with “We Believe” painted in their back window. I am assuming this refers to the belief in that jolly guy from the North Pole who flies through the night with a sleigh pulled by reindeer to deliver presents worldwide. It got me thinking, why not spend as much time and energy this season in improving a belief in ourselves to achieve the challenges before us? I’ve been in business 21 years - time after time, when I’m faced with challenges, I’ve had to dig down deep into my own internal sense of self, reestablish the base of my strengths to find the path up the next mountain. I’ve been blogging about these concepts this entire week:

Leverage your strengths to pursue opportunities - see the Creating Meaningful Work posting.
Create value from your unique differences - see the Standing Out from the Crowd posting.
Find the opportunity from adversity - see the Concerned About Keeping or Getting a Job in Today’s Environment posting.

In this “Believe in Yourself” day, that we are dedicating to helping others harness a belief in themselves to pursue their life’s challenges, my Cheetah Team and I have created a number of fun activities (for participating we have selected several courses you can take for free that will help you enhance your capabilities to climb that next mountain in your life):

1. Share your own story of how a belief in yourself helped you rise to a challenge in your life. On December 19, 2008 we will pick a winner. The winner will get a free 60 PDU course or a free PMP Online Exam Prep course. Just for participating, you will find out how you can take our Cheetah Action Project or PM of Weightloss online courses for half price.

Share Your Story.

2. Participate in our survey to learn how you and others improve a belief in yourself. Just for participating, you will learn how you can take our free 1 PDU online course called Believe to Achieve.

Take our Survey

3. Download our Free Believe In Yourself assessment to develop the base from which to chart the path up the next mountain in your life. By completing the assessment, you will learn how to take a free 2 PDU online course called PM Myth Buster - where you explore the common myths facing project managers today and how to move past them. You will also get an offer for 50% off two of our most popular and newest online classes: Project Prosperity and Cheetah Family Office.

Download the Free Believe in Yourself Assessment

4. Listen to our Believe In Yourself Podcast where Michelle LaBrosse and Bryne Edwards share their ideas of how to use a deep understanding of your own capabilities to overcome risks and thrive where others see adversity. For listening, you will learn how to take our 20 PDU online course Cheetah Family Office for free.

Listen to our Believe in Yourself Podcast

WE BELIEVE IN YOU, DO YOU?

My friend Joy Baldridge gave me Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers - the Story of Success. FANTASTIC read. He talks about what makes work meaningful - autonomy, complexity, and a link between effort and reward. It’s not about the money - yes we all have to make a living. It’s better for your overall well being though to take the lower paying job that gives you more meaningful work than to take the high paying job of repetitive labor with no autonomy where you are shut down at any turn for innovation and effort. It is by paying your dues with the lower paying work where you develop meaning (and skills) for your life, where the opportunities for significant advancement arise.

For the past four months, I have been advocating that we all learn how to leverage our four sources of capital as a way to muscle past the current worldwide credit crisis. By leveraging your four sources of capital - you will be creating more meaning in your life. You will be creating the tools that can help you thrive in any environment. Here are some examples of how to better develop and leverage your four sources of capital:

Social Capital - this is your relationships. How do you build good relationships? CARE about others. Find opportunities for them to be successful. Be grateful for how others help you. If people slight you, forgive them FAST. Grudges make you old, mean, and slow. I like to apply two of the four agreements here - don’t take things personally and don’t make assumptions. Most of us judge others by their behavior and ourselves by our intent. Reverse that and you will have relationships that stand the test of time.

Knowledge Capital - this is what you know and how you can use it. How do you build your knowledge capital? Do what you love and do it and do it and do it. Practice makes perfect. Gladwell points out in his Outlier’s book that for people to rise to any level of success in a field, they have to have at least 10,000 hours of practice in what it is they are doing. If you are doing what you love to do, that 10,000 hours goes by in the blink of an eye. Also, learn how to learn - the faster you can learn, the faster you can change. When you get to the level of mastery in what you love, the learning happens effortlessly and often. You will then start to find the opportunities all over the place to apply what it is you have mastered to help others every place you turn.

Brand Capital - this is your credentials and your reputation. How do you build your brand capital? This is where I live by the other two of the four agreements - Be impeccable with your word and always do your best. Word of mouth of your capabilities is the best endorsement you can get. Yes you have to get the requisite credentials in any field you want to go into. But credentials will only get you in the door. To keep finding open doors, your reputation needs to be rock solid for being able to deliver on what others need from you. This is where I find being great at doing projects comes in especially handy.

Operating Capital - this is your infrastructure for delivering value to others. If you rely on your car to get to locations where you create value for others, you better make sure you keep that car in good working order. The same of your computer systems, your internet connections, anything you need to keep yourself operational. Over time you can create more infrastructure to create more value - but that takes time and maintenance. Only create and maintain that which you truly need to create value for others. For example, when I started my company, I thought I needed bricks and mortar - at one point in time I had six training centers. These did not create value commensurate with their cost. Now my company is essentially virtual. I have one small training center in a city where it is the more cost effective route than using public venues. We still create tremendous value for our students, my team is much happier working virtually, and my overhead and risk is way down. My main infrastructure is my web system that enables me to support my business worldwide. We take extremely good care of that and are very vigilant in it’s performance and upkeep.

For more information on how to create meaningful work, check out my free downloads.