Archive for February, 2014

Feb 26 – Take Off Your Mask

Wednesday, February 26th, 2014
Who are you when you take off your masks?

Who are you when you take off your masks?

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

February 26 – At times you may wear masks in how you relate to others – this is a persona you’ve adopted over time to protect yourself in some way. The better you can understand your mask and why you are wearing it, the more you open up the space to connect with others in a spirit of creativity and collaboration.

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

In Gay and Katie Hendricks’ work on “Conscious Living,” they delve into this idea we live in these triangles with other people. We play one of three roles in these triangles – the hero, victim or villain. And in these roles we are wearing a “mask,” also known as a persona. The challenge is for most of us is that we get so accustomed to wearing these masks, we think these are who we really are and we defend them as part of our identity. Think what would happen if you removed the mask – what would happen to the most “cherished” parts of who you think you are?

For me, one of my masks was that of a successful Aerospace Engineer. I had, after all, worked extremely hard to become an Aerospace Engineer. After about ten years, I found the actual practice of being an Aerospace Engineer did not fulfill me nor was it how I wanted to continue to craft my day-to-day existence. I don’t even remember how I stumbled upon the book by Paul and Barbara Tieger, “Do What You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type, ” but it was this exploration that gave me the permission to evaluate if my mask as an Aerospace Engineer was really still for me.

This same journey happens for all of us. This is why we make understanding who you really are – outside of the masks you wear in your life – an integral part of becoming a Cheetah Certified Project Manager. People always ask me how I can get so much accomplished. It’s really very easy – I live in alignment with the true nature of who I am. When I find myself on the triangle with anyone and not in a creative and collaborative space, I evaluate: what mask am I wearing that is keeping me from moving on from this? When I spend more time living an authentic reality for me and less time protecting some version of myself, I have more time to work on those tasks truly important in the moment. You can learn how to do the same and consistently move fast like a cheetah. Become a Cheetah Certified Project Manager.

Feb 25 – The World is a Stage

Tuesday, February 25th, 2014
How Do You Want Your Life to "Play" Out?

How Do You Want Your Life to "Play" Out?

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

February 25 – Look at the world as if it were a play and you are one of the characters. What happens when you take a more detached perspective on your current abilities to achieve your goals?

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

We are all the leading ladies and gentlemen of our own lives. You can write your own success story at any time. What do you want it to say about the leading character of YOU? What is your “hero’s” journey? How have you stuck with what was important to you and prevailed?

I learned a great “create the future” technique from a roommate when I was younger who liked to get her, myself, and one other person together to do what she called “Mastermind.” This was where we each made up three goals we wanted to achieve at some point in time in our lives. Then the other two told stories about how we would be making that happen. In one of our Mastermind sessions, we decided we wanted to get a hot tub for the house we were sharing. We both had it as one of our goals. What was interesting, we both had birthdays in the month of February and one of the stories was that we would get the hot tub in the week between our birthdays. This was in November and our birthdays are in February. A week before the first February birthday, my neighbor stopped by. I had helped him create a flyer for his business and he still owed me for the work I did. He said, “I’m working on this house and they have a hot tub they don’t need anymore. It works fine and everything, they said I could have it. Would you accept it as payment for what I owe you?” WOW – we had created our story and we got our hot tub.

Granted this was just a hot tub – but is has happened thousands of times for the various people I’ve since taught this technique to. Try it, it might just work for you too!

Feb 24 – Independence = Innovation

Tuesday, February 25th, 2014
Fostering independence through creativity and stability can significantly improve the quality of your life.

Fostering independence through creativity and stability can significantly improve the quality of your life.

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

February 24 – Foster relationships in which each party can maintain their independence. This creates the environment that stimulates both innovation and stability.

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

Independence is the foundation of both innovation and stability in every relationship. Let’s take children – the more they are encouraged to seek their own path in life (i.e have their independence), the more creative they become. Additionally, they gain the necessary skills for them to lead stable adult lives not continuing to be dependent on their parents or other adults. The same is true for friendships, romantic interests, employment, and other family members. I have a friend who runs this business called Eldercare Success – it takes creativity (innovation) and a stable set of capabilities for people as they age to keep their independence. Yet, it is this very characteristic of independence that many seniors crave as they move into their later years. The more you can foster independence in every relationship in your life through your abilities to be innovative while creating a stable base of capabilities for yourself and others, the better the quality of your life.

Feb 23 – Keep Agreements

Tuesday, February 25th, 2014
Make the agreements that truly serve your best interests

Make the agreements that truly serve your best interests

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

February 23 – When it is your consistent commitment to keep all your agreements, you make far fewer agreements.

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

This reminds me of what my children used to do with me when they were younger. They would ask me for something when my head was firmly buried into some writing project on my computer. Without really even being conscious of what it was they were asking, I would have said “yes” to taking them on a trip to Antarctica in July or something equally unappealing. Come to think of this, they still do this from time to time when we find our way into the same location on the planet. It’s like not reading the small type on a contract – yet with children, the results can be far more unpleasant.

The unfortunate reality is it does take time to read the small print and to pay attention to people who need and deserve your time and attention. But what I’ve found is by taking this time, I am actually able to create agreements that are good for me to keep instead of being blindsided into agreeing to something that is extremely counter to my best interests. I’ve learned that a good agreement is something that significantly benefits all parties making the agreement. One of my agreements I had made with myself in college was if I had children, I would save up the money they needed to go to college. I wanted to make sure they could get their start in life without being strapped with huge student loans. This agreement forced a level of discipline with saving money that I still tap into today when I need to pursue big goals. PLUS – both my children finished college with no student loans. I met friends along the way who shared with me their family’s ways of making sure their children’s college was paid for and it reinforced that this was the right agreement for me to make.

In the Cheetah Certified Project Manager program, you learn how to make the agreements and pursue the goals that are right for you.

Feb 22 – Prepare twice, meet once

Sunday, February 23rd, 2014
cheetah_feb22

Make sure your meetings are set up to make the most of your time together.

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

February 22 – When meeting with others, respect your time and theirs. When all parties take twice the time to prepare as is set for the meeting, the meeting is more productive and focused.

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Michelle LaBrosse CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

My first day as a Research Scientist at United Technologies, I was invited to a meeting for a web development project a group of engineers wanted to consider. I got to the meeting at the scheduled time. It was to last from 2 PM to 4 PM. Since it was my first day on the job, I was not sure how many people were to be attending this meeting. In the conference room at 2 PM, I met one of my co-workers. I said, “Wow this is a small meeting – we could have just met in either of our offices.” His reply: “Oh, no, this is a group of about ten of us.” By 2:30, nine of the people who needed to be at the meeting were present. I asked what I thought was a very simple question: “What is the agenda?” The other folks looked at me as if I had three heads. By 3pm, the tenth person arrived and we could finally start the meeting. For the next hour, we had a very loose brain storming of what we liked about other websites. People started leaving at 3:30. By 4, it was just three of us. I inquired, “is this how meetings are run here all the time?” The answer, “yes, pretty much – we’re ‘research.'” Hmmm, I thought, what type of research is really going on here?

The next day, I was invited to another meeting for the same purpose in another week. I took the initiative to create an agenda ahead of time. I sent it to all the participants if this would be acceptable to them. I got full consensus. When the meeting started, I decided to start my own “research” project. I jotted down people’s names as they entered the room and the time they entered the room. At the top of the list, I put – “Meeting Starting Time: 2 PM.” The last guy to show up was one of the big wigs – his name was Ed. Ed showed up at 3:15. Even with Ed’s tardiness, we had a much more productive meeting. In my haste to leave the meeting, I left my “research” project on the white board. The head of the research division liked to walk around the facility from time to time and noticed my “research project” on the white board in the conference room. He had a weekly meeting with his direct report Ed the next day and inquired why, for a meeting that was to start at 2, did he showed up at 3:15? Believe me, I got an earful from Ed, but Ed was never late again to one of my meetings. Ed enlisted my assistance with running his meetings from there on out. I became known as a go-to person for running important meetings at the Research Center. A year later when they disbanded my department, they kept me on to make sure the meetings there were productive and cost effective. How you run a meeting DOES matter.

Next time you’re in a meeting that is a slow road to no where, start to figure out how much money this meeting is costing. Even if it’s a volunteer meeting, there is an opportunity cost in what else you could be doing with your time. My favorite type of meeting format these days is the Agile daily sprint meeting. But to work, this takes a commitment to doing an Agile Project Management process and working in a two-week sprint format. Every day of the Agile Sprint, you do a daily stand-up meeting lasting no more than 15 minutes where you check in with each other how you’re doing on your two-week sprint project and what you need to give or get from one of your team members.

If it’s important enough to have a meeting, it’s important enough to make it matter. As a Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM), you learn how to run effective meetings for every stage of your project. You even learn how to set up meetings so negotiations go more in your favor. Think about how much this alone would be worth to you? Become a CCPM and make the most of your time and that of everyone else you know.

Feb 21 – The Polite “No”

Friday, February 21st, 2014
Say Yes to your dreams means learning how to say NO to what won't help you get there.

Say Yes to your dreams means learning how to say NO to what won't help you get there.

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

February 21 – When you are clear about how you are using your time to pursue your important life goals, it is easier to decline invitations, requests for assistance, and other opportunities. Thank people for considering you, and politely decline.

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

What a nice problem to have – more invitations for engagement than you have time to fulfill. But yes, it can and does happen to many of us at some point in time in our lives. (It might not always happen, so relish the times that it does). As you learn how to say “no” to those things that don’t serve you, you make room to say “yes” to those things that do.

I had a very interesting experience of this when listening to Keith Ferazzi, author of “Never Eat Alone.” I was at a Yale Women’s Alumni meeting in New York City. A mutual friend of Keith and I invited me to hear him speak. Now, I need to explain, Keith was here speaking to a group of fairly successful women all around the age where most had at least one child, if not several more, they were juggling raising with the demands of a successful career. Keith made it clear that he was a very “out” gay male with really no significant interests in caring for children. So it was pretty clear from the get-go he wasn’t that in touch with the needs of his audience. Keith’s suggestion is that you make time every week for at least five professional networking events. How, pray tell, is a woman who is managing a busy career and raising children supposed to fit this requirement into the mix? Networking for most of us moms with children in school happens around the children’s activities (which is why where your children go to school REALLY matters). I inquired how a busy mom was supposed to fit this in, hoping to hear some sage advice from the king of networking. And his reply was, “if it’s important enough to you, you’ll do it.” Well there you go – we all get to choose what is important enough to us. Lucky for my children, I consistently picked them. I got ample opportunity to learn how to politely decline the many networking opportunities I was invited to, but had to miss.

It’s critical to have a solid moral compass on what is most important to you in life. Make time for that and be extremely particular on all the other “optional” events you could do. In the Cheetah Certified Project Manager program, you learn how to assign a value to what various measures of success mean to you and weigh how well your opportunities in life will help you achieve that success. Become a CCPM and discover where you not only say “No” in your life, but how to make room for all the places you want to say “YES.”

Feb 20 – What If Your Life Was Headline News

Thursday, February 20th, 2014
When considering your actions, contemplate how it would look if it was headline news.

When considering your actions, contemplate how it would look if it was headline news.

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

February 20 – Interact with others as if anything you say or do with them could appear on the front page of the newspaper and you would be honored to see it there.

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

When I was an Air Force Officer, this was the common litmus test for us to check on our behavior to determine how whatever we were doing would look on the front page of the newspaper. I was stationed at the Air Force base that was responsible for research and development of new Air Force systems. We dealt with billions of dollars of contracts with defense contractors all over the world. We were stewards of a large base of government funding and responsible for the entire development chain of new systems. Everyday we were faced with decisions that had serious, long-term impact on the lives of so many people – defense contractors, their families, the long-term safety of our country, and the judicious use of our tax dollars. It was easy to guide ourselves in the most appropriate behaviors with this headline news litmus test.

Where are you tested in life to do the right thing? When you find yourself in these situations, consider the headline news test. For me, if I don’t want to see it on the headline news, I reconsider my course of action.

Feb 19 – Create Your Dream Team

Wednesday, February 19th, 2014
How do you nurture and support those closest to you so they become your "dream team?"

How do you nurture and support those closest to you so they become your "dream team?"

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

February 19 – Who is on your “dream team” to help you achieve your most important goals? What do you have to do to attract and support that dream team so they support you?

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

There are two business adages I’ve learned in my 27 years of running a business that have stood the test of time. The first one is that it is the business model more than the product that creates your ultimate success or failure. The second one is that who is on your team and what they are doing can make success easy or impossible. You have to get and keep the right people on the bus, doing the right things, and get the wrong activities off the bus, FAST.

Even if you don’t run a business, you still have life goals you pursue. How you pursue those life goals and who you have in your corner and what you are doing together makes a huge difference on your ultimate success or failure. This can extend to the community in which you live. For example, areas that have a thriving public library system have a higher level of entrepreneurial support, as they have more start-up resources entrepreneurs can access at no cost. Additionally, lower barriers to entry for going into or staying in business from the perspective of government regulations and taxation significantly helps small businesses succeed or fail.

Take stock of the people who are closest to you – how are you supporting them so they can support you in the pursuit of your big goals in life? What type of “tax” does this mutual support cost? What would be happening differently from how it is right now that would better help you pursue your big goals? The more clearly you can define this, the more likely it is you will be able to create your dream team and align your actions in the right direction.

As a Cheetah Certified Project Manager, what I’ve learned is that my “dream” team happens with whomever is closest to me when I know how to best use their innate strengths. In the Age of the Internet, when the “ideal” team member is just a key stroke away through a variety of job placement services, how do you best use the talents of those already closest to you? It’s not like you can just “plug and play” with people as if they are interchangeable parts. Creating a dream team takes a concentrated effort to get to really know the strengths and talents of the people who already surround you. It’s an exciting daily discovery.

How can you best align your innate strengths with those of the people already in your life to go after your big goals? To learn how to create your dream team, become a Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) – www cheetahcertifiedpm.com

Feb 18 – Appreciate Your Inner Circle

Tuesday, February 18th, 2014
What do you do to cultivate the important relationships in your life?

What do you do to cultivate the important relationships in your life?

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

February 18 – The maximum number of relationships people can sustain is 150. Most of us have an inner circle of no more than 7 people. How you cultivate and nurture those relationships is a critical success factor in achieving your goals.

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

Who is in your inner circle of important people in your life? What have you done for them lately? And how can you better show how much you value and appreciate them in your life? These are critical questions when looking at how you can cultivate and nurture these important relationships.

A year or so ago I was spending time with two of the most important people in my life – they are both in their early 20s. As young girls often do, they were talking about who they would have be in their bridal party. I found this dialog fascinating as they were in fact discussing who was front and center in their lives. I started to think – who would I have in my “bridal” party? Being older, I have a lifetime of significant people that I would include on this special day – my number was an astounding 17. And it got me thinking: what do I do for them, and how do I let them know I appreciate and value them in my life? So then and there, I made a commitment to make sure on their birthdays I sent them a small present to let them know I valued and appreciated their existence. But I do a lot more than that – I connect with them in all types of unique and interesting ways based on how I move through the world with each of them.

How do you cultivate the relationships with the important people in your life? Comment on the Cheetah Learning FB post – http://tinyurl.com/l4zx8n2

Feb 17 – Accept Yourself, FIRST

Monday, February 17th, 2014
When you cultivate unconditional positive regard for yourself, it's easier than to accept others for who they are as well.

When you cultivate unconditional positive regard for yourself, it's easier than to accept others for who they are as well.

Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) Tip of the Day

February 17 – How you think of yourself trumps what anyone else thinks of you. When you can accept yourself unconditionally, it doesn’t matter what others think of you. (Though you might find others accept you more as well).

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP

When my children were younger, they struggled with the challenges of the meanness of their peers in the public middle school. I didn’t like what they were experiencing and I was the one who moved them back to the East Coast to further my career. I found a small private school that was different than most other private schools in the area, as they recruited and educated based on kindness and unconditional positive regard. It took very creative financing to fund that crucial education but it was worth every penny as they learned the life affirming concept of “self-advocacy.”

In a world where the anonymity of more impersonal communication approaches such as emailing and texting allows people to be far meaner than they ever would be in person, the concept of self-advocacy is something we need to practice at every age. Self-advocacy means you speak up for yourself in a way that is both affirming and kind when you need something different than what is occurring. It means you are able to seek out others who will support you in your journey, you know how to reach out to others when you need help and friendship, and you have the self-confidence to pursue your goals, dreams, and aspirations.

Learning who you are is a critical component of self-advocacy. The more you know why you do the things the way you do them, the better you can advocate for your best interests. As a Cheetah Certified Project Manager, you learn how your unique personality type impacts how you learn, do projects, and negotiate. Being able to say, “this is the best way I learn, this is how I can excel at doing my projects, and this is how I can most effectively negotiate,” creates solid footing to pursue the big goals of your life. It is this strong foundation that leads to strength of character to shake off any ill will others may have towards you. Plus, unconditional positive regard towards yourself helps you expand it to others. When you master this, you find it helps create amazingly positive relationships that makes it even easier to achieve your dreams and goals.