Michelle LaBrosse Blogs

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

I am considering using cooking to help people develop project management as a habit. I’ve often wondered if you become a good cook because you’re good at project management or if you become a good project manager because you’re good at cooking?

There are five phases to every project – initiation, planning, execution, control and closeout. Every meal or dish you create is itself a project – you get an idea for what you want to make (you initiate it), you have to figure out the ingredients and equipment, go procure anything you need to prepare the meal, and figure out when and where you’re going to make it (this is planning), then you have to prepare the meal (this is project execution), then you have to make sure it tastes like you wanted it to (project control), then you assess how you can make it better the next time (project close out).

I have found time and time again, that the more successful people are with the smaller projects of their life, the more likely they will be successful with the larger projects of life. So it just makes sense to teach people how to be more successful with the smaller projects of their life – like cooking.

For the first attempt to teach project management with cooking, I am going to revisit a concept I posted several days ago on flu remedies, my recipe for Chicken Noodle Soup.

Project Initiation is the first phase of the Chicken Noodle Soup Project.

In initiating the Chicken Soup Project, I wanted to do a bit of research as to just why Chicken Noodle Soup has been a cold and flu cureall for centuries. I had my trusty intern – Erica research this. Here is what she found:

We have all heard that when we are ill, a bowl of chicken noodle soup is a comforting remedy. Chicken noodle soup has a long history of relieving symptoms associated with various illnesses. During the 12th century, healers began recommending ‘the broth of fowl’ to their patients. Also around this time, Rabbi Mosche ben Maimonides, an Egyptian Jewish physician and philosopher, wrote about the many benefits of chicken noodle soup. He used chicken soup to treat a variety of illnesses including respiratory problems like the common cold.

Present day researchers have set out to determine whether or not chicken noodle soup actually does have medicinal uses. One pulmonary specialist, Irwin Ziment, M.D., who is also a professor at the UCLA School for Medicine, found that chicken soup contains contains an amino acid that is similar to a drug called acetylcysteine that is prescribed for respiratory illnesses such as bronchitis. This amino acid is released from the chicken when it is cooked and heated. Another pulmonary specialist who has spent time studying the benefits of chicken noodle soup is Stephen Rennard, M.D. He is the chief of pulmonary medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. Rennard found that chicken soup has anti-inflammatory properties. Colds and respiratory illnesses are many times caused by inflammation from neutrophils (inflammatory white blood cells) that travel to the bronchial tubes. Rennard used a chicken noodle soup recipe from his wife’s grandmother to show that neutrophils were less likely to accumulate when chicken soup was added.

Chicken noodle soup is also a useful cold remedy because it contains bacteria and virus fighting ingredients including garlic and onions. Garlic is a natural antibiotic for which the body does not develop resistance. Onions contain an anti-oxidant called quercetin that also acts as an anti-inflammatory.

Even though chicken noodle soup is not a cure for a common cold, it has been proven to alleviate many symptoms that come along with a cold. It keeps you hydrated, can clear your nasal passageways, and acts as an anti-inflammatory.

To read more about the research conducted by Rennard, you can read the entire study at http://www.chestjournal.org/content/118/4/1150.full

To learn more about the health benefits of chicken noodle soup, you can go to the following websites:

http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/05/12/14/does_chicken_soup_have_healing_powers_004.htm

http://chetday.com/coldfluremedy.htm

After I had my curiousity sufficiently satisfied that Chicken Noodle Soup was a good thing to make and a good recipe to share with others, I got about planning how I would make it.

Project Planning – to make the chicken noodle soup I had to do a number of preparations – like I would for any other project.

Make sure I had all the ingredients:

Whole Chicken
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
2 quarts of water
2 tsp iodized salt
2 tbs whole peppercorns
2 tbs butter
1 bunch of celery
1 large onion
5 cloves of garlic
1 cup dry whole wheat egg noodles

Use the correct tools to reduce risk and improve the quality of the final product

1 roasting pan
2 pot holders
Oven pre-heated to 450 degrees
Apron
Cooking safety glasses
4 quart stock pot
Clean cutting board and sharp carving knife

Set my schedule and budget. Usually I make chicken noodle soup from the leftovers from a roast chicken meal so the cost of the extra ingredients are minimal. The most important thing though is the schedule as to develop the most savory broth. I usually let the chicken carcass simmer on very low heat overnight. So making chicken noodle soup definitely is a “project.”

Project Execution – here are the steps I take to make Chicken Noodle soup:

1. Roast the chicken – clean and dry one whole chicken, sprinkle it with pepper and place it in the roasting dish. Put roasting dish in the pre-heated 450 degree F oven. Cook at that temperature for 15 minutes then turn temp down to 350 degrees F. This sears the skin keeping the interior meat moist. The chicken is done when you can easily pull the drumstick off the chicken.

2. Remove most of the meat off the chicken carcass. Either serve the meat for dinner, or cover and put into the refrigerator – you will use it later for the soup. Toss the chicken carcass and the roasted skin into the 4 quart stock pot. Fill enough water to cover the chicken carcass.

3. Put the whole peppercorns, the salt and three whole stalks of celery into the stock pot with the chicken carcass. Cover and put on low heat overnight or for at least 5 hours.

4. In the morning or after 5 hours or so, strain the chicken broth, Keep the liquid and discard the bones, peppercorns and celery stalks.

5. Put in the refrigerator until you return home from work or after 5 or 6 hours. The chilling allows the fat to rise to the surface where it’s easier to skim off to make a lighter soup.

6. Chop the celery and onion into small 1/4 inch pieces. Saute in 2 tbs butter until the onions are translucent.

7. Put in the chicken broth. Crush the cloves of garlic and add them in the chicken broth.

8. Bring the chicken broth to a boil and add the noodles. Cook until the noodles are done.

9. Dice up the remaining chicken to 1/2 inch bite size pieces. (this is the chicken you pulled off the chicken before making the broth that you refrigerated). Put at least 1 cup of it into the soup.

Project Control

Salt to Taste – everyone’s taste for salt varies so it’s better to let people spice up their soup on their own. Tabasco sauce in the soup is also good.

A big part of cooking (and project management) is quality control. It starts with getting high quality ingredients, having the caliber of tools that help you create better results and using techniques that provide a higher quality outcome. The more you do both project management and cooking, the higher quality output you create. And when you combine the two, in the spirit of creating a high quality product, you get better at both.

Project Closeout

At the end of a meal, I review how I did and if I should do anything different the next time. One time, I put yams in my chicken noodle soup – they were an over powering presence. I have found the same with carrots. This is why I just stick with onions, celery, garlic and noodles.

For this go round with my chicken noodle soup – I was just showing my intern how to make it and we were testing out the idea of creating a video around this as well. I learned, that usually I make chicken noodle soup more as just part of making a roasted chicken dinner and doing it as a demonstration project – I ended up with a LOT of left over chicken. I am going to use it to make chicken salad for lunch tomorrow.

The soup came out GREAT – we served it with whole wheat saltines.

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

I’ve been working virtually for the past 20 years – by choice. I set up Cheetah Learning so everyone else can work from wherever too (we had an office and no one wanted to go to it so we got rid of it). We created a course two years ago to teach others what we have learned running our entire 200+ global company virtually – it is called Virtual Project Teams.

Faced with the prospects of area schools closing due to a flu scare, and other social distancing policies that will impact people’s abilities to go to work, it just makes good business sense to have a work from home strategy.

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

My co-host of Power Learning, Scot Nichols sent me a link about a book called “Positivity.” The book details the research of Dr. Barbara Fredrickson that shows the ratio of positive to negative emotions of greater than 3 creates your own tipping point in life to flourish. You can participate in her research at www.positivityratio.com.

by Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

Like most Americans, I am pretty riled up by the greed of Wall Street and how this whole situation has been handled by the US Government. I am on a group on Linkedin called the Global Economic Crisis to better understand the current climate and how to best help project managers capitalize on the times. I came across this ten minute video presentation, on the Linkedin group, by Jonathon Jarvis. It is an exceptionally good visual presentation on how the credit crisis was created. http://vimeo.com/3261363?pg=embed&sec=

Project managers are in a fantastic position because they are the people who help others get things done. What I have found in my travels and interactions with other project managers is that as a group, we have been uniformly conservative with our own credit management and were exceptionally good at risk management. As a group, we have lived by the “new” rules that others who lived by the ‘old” rules are just learning how to adopt.

by Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

My blog sidekick, Kristen LaBrosse, CAPM opened my eyes to the fact that the Generation Y folks really are the Y-Not generation.  Why not just go for it young and get all the education and credentials you can to be as successful as you can as soon as possible.   She is meeting all types of generation Y types who live by this credo.   So I decided to give them an extra boost and created a certificate program for people just starting their careers to give them a boost into higher levels of management faster.   I was lucky when I started my career – I was an Air Force ROTC graduate and the Air Force tossed me right into a management position overseeing multimillion dollar testing programs.  I got to deal with people at high levels of industry from around the world in a unique position – as their customer.   I learned VERY fast how to move in those circles, the lingo, the look, the tools.    By the age of 25, I had enough guts and know how to set out on my own and hit a block buster success with my first business.    Yes, I had subsequent failures as I spread my wings into areas where I did not yet know how to fly – but once I learned the solid foundation of project management, I was able to easily soar with my business pursuits.    Had I known at the age of 25 what I know now, I would’ve prevented the sputtering stalls I had in my mid-30’s.   I want to give the Gen Y folks the tools to surpass my success story and that is why I created the PM Fundamentals Certificate Program that helps people just starting in their career the tools to have very fast and enduring success.   It’s a five part course that teaches you how to leverage your innate strengths, how to get your projects done fast, teaches you how to pass the certified associate in project management (CAPM) certification exam so you have a credential that shows you have the requisite knowledge for PM, and then you learn how to use your PM skills to get your foot in the door and move up the career ladder fast.   I put together the program I wish I had in my 20’s.   And best of all, it passed the Kristen test.   She liked it.  (believe me she would let me know if she thought it was lame).

Carey Earle has captured the top trends facing us in business now. She was a guest on our Capitalize on The Recession radio show today. On that show, we explored how these trends can be used by project managers to capitalize on the recession. Here are the top ten trends we explored on the show: Economic Slim-Fast, Whole life living and healing, Entertainment as escapism, Back to the basics, Novel perks, DIY, The Full Monty, Generation G, Redefining Community, and ECO-Buzz.

See more on Carey’s Top Ten Current Trends.

Listen to the Capitalize on the Recession Radio Show to see how Project Managers can capitalize on the recession using these trends.

I’m sitting here at Bradley Airport in Connecticut waiting for my flight. I’ve spent probably 1/5th of my life the past twenty years waiting in airports. Okay, maybe it just seems like 1/5th of my life. It has been a considerable amount of time. I’m pretty much set up to be productive wherever I am – that is IF I have access to a power outlet.

On my wall of shame in this department are the United concourses in O’Hare. I have had the misfortune of being stranded in O’Hare more often than I care to remember. I have scads of frequent flyer points to allow me to lanquish the hours away in those swanky airline clubs – but for some reason whenever I get into O’Hare – wherever I have the most recent membership tends to literally be a mile or so walk. Since the ONLY reason I’ll hang in the membership club is if the flight is delayed AND I need to get some juice to my laptop lifeline, I typically opt for plugging in near my gate. Strangely enough – in the United Concourse a plug for the laptop is next to impossible to find. In my last adventure through there, I managed to find one outlet in a remote hallway between United Concourses.

Lets fast forward to today. I’m enjoying my wait for a Southwest Flight sitting in a nice club chair in their gate waiting area with a plug conveniently placed just to my right. Across from me are two bars set up with space for six road warriors. This is an airline that cares about it’s customers. Yes, they have unique boarding policies, and if you like to fly first class, that option is not available. HOWEVER, I swear they have a comfortable amount of room in their planes. You don’t have to choose between the obscene price of first class or the cramped cattle class of coach when you fly Southwest. And I swear Southwest pays attention to the needs of business travelers more than anyone else based on how they schedule their flights between the cities where business travelers frequent. I’m not sure how the other airlines pick their routes – might have something do to with the hub and spoke commitments they made years ago that have nothing to do with how business travelers move today.

When a company sets up practices and policies based on the comfort of their customers it shows. And this is what Southwest Airlines does consistently. This is what I have and continually strive to do with Cheetah Learning as well. It does appear we succeed at that based on these random customer surveys people do on my company from time to time (GSA did a survey a few years back that showed Cheetah Learning had a 96% customer service approval rating). But it has to be a continual focus as what people need does change over time. I’m sure when the United Concourses were designed, having readily available plugs for road warriors was not something in high demand. Now, not having those just well, doesn’t give you that oh so loving feeling from the airline.

For Cheetah Learning, we’re working on enhancing how quickly our students find new project opportunities after finishing their latest project and find good people to help them on their projects as well. I’ve started a group on Linkedin for Cheetah Alumni so that we can share ideas and opportunities. We do find that our students are in high demand because of a proven ability to reach their goals, FAST. Helping them better connect with each other in a way that is easy to do, shows we care about them as well.

When times appear hopeless, and you show up offering hope and solutions, everyone wins.   As Project Managers we have the skills needed to pull us out of this recession.   This is why Cheetah Learning just did our March Know How Network article titled – “Are You Shovel Ready?” and the podcast “Calling All PMPs to Rebuild America”. And it’s why we are doing a live radio show today called Capitalize on the Recession.  It relates to being ready as a Project Manager to pounce on opportunities as they emerge.  Here is how you can capitalize on the recession as a project manager:

1. Be prepared to create value for other people FAST.   The faster you can create value, the more demand you will create for yourself.   You can learn how to do this by mastering Cheetah Project Management – this is a technique I created over 8 years ago to complete projects of significant value in under three months.

2. Know how you can leverage your innate strengths to be of the most service to others.   We are all different and those differences are what create the most value for others.   You can learn how to leverage your differences to create more value for others with our PM Strength Builder course.   

3. Make sure the commitments you are considering pursuing will make sense in another week, another month, and another year.  A good way I have found to do this sense making is with doing a project agreement on goals I am considering pursuing.   You can get a free project agreement template from the Cheetah Learning PM Tools Page. 

4. Learn how to best manage resources so you can complete your projects with a variety of non-financial capital (i.e. you don’t have to sit around and wait for the credit markets to unfreeze to pursue your goals).  I teach you how to do this in the Capitalize on the Recession online course. 

5. Ferret out the emerging opportunities that offer the most chances for you to create value.   This is based on how competitive you are in the area where the opportunity is emerging.  Not every opportunity is right for every person to pursue.   The better you can establish your competitive advantage, the more value you can create, faster.   We discuss how to do this on the live Capitalize on the Recession radio show and in the online course.

by Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

In honor of today’s worldwide twestival on Clean Drinking Water, Cheetah Learning is dedicating this day to teach people how to use Cheetah Project Management to successfully launch Clean Drinking Water projects. Now in case you just think this is a problem “over there” – consider that according to the ASCE Infrastructure Report Card, the United States scored a “D-” in their infrastructure for delivering clean drinking water.

Besides just teaching people about doing project management on clean drinking water projects we are also donating 5% of everything we sell today using the promotion code Twestival to http://www.charitywater.org/twestival for clean drinking water projects.   You can help us participate by registering for any Cheetah Learning’s award winning project management courses using the promotion code Twestival (you also get 20% off Cheetah Learning’s great courses with this code).  * We raised $2300 for clean water so we are running this promotion for a week now.

So, how do you get started with a clean drinking water project? First you do a project agreement. In your project agreement you identify:

1. The Scope of Your Project. This includes the reason for doing your project.
2. The Major Deliverables of Your Project and When they Will be Complete
3. Your Communication Plan with your Project Participants.
4. The Risk Tolerance Of Your Overall Project
5. Your Project Constraints (Time, Schedule, Performance)
6. Who Needs to Be On Your Project Team

Next, depending on the size of your project, you’ll want to further flush out your project plan (no pun intended). You might want to create the following expanded plans:

1. Risk Management Plan
2. Change Management Plan
3. Quality Management Plan
4. Work Break Down Structure
5. Deliverable Dependency Schedule
6. Labor and Material Cost Estimates.
7. Communication Plan (that includes your escalation policies and how you will be reporting on project performance such as Schedule and Cost Performance Indices and Earned Value).

Then you can start on the execution phase of your project. Ensuring we all have Clean Drinking Water requires more than just having a twestival about it – it requires focused and well orchestrated ACTION. This is where the rubber meets the road. Developing well thought out project plans are the first step. Following through and executing the plan is crucial. While you’re executing the plan, you need to do Risk Management and make sure that your team has what they need to meet their project deliverables.

While you are executing your project plan, you dramatically increase the chances of success if you have a way to monitor and control your project. This is where Project Management Professionals (PMPs) come in especially handy to lead your projects. Taking the measurements on project performance – with key project performance indicators such as Schedule Performance Indicators (SPI) and Cost Performance Indicators (CPI) make sure the project stays on track and moving forward. What gets measured gets done. To improve the chance of project success, as part of becoming certified, PMPs learn how to make these measurements. The PMPs who go through Cheetah Learning get an added advantage as they learn how to get the project done fast. And we can’t dilly dally when it comes to completing Clean Drinking Water projects as this is a matter of significant importance to every living human on the planet.

The last stage of your well run Clean Drinking Water project is with correctly closing out the project. There are others around the world who can use what you have learned by doing your clean drinking water project so it’s a very good idea if you document and share your lessons learned. The more we share what we learn with each other, the smarter we all become. In the area of having clean drinking water, this is imperative. We all float or sink together here as Clean Drinking Water impacts all of us all over the world.

You can get a free Project Agreement at our Free PM Tools Downloads. You can learn how to quickly launch and implement your Clean Drinking Water Project by learning Cheetah Project Management. For today’s Twestival, you can register for any Cheetah Learning course and get a 20% discount – use the promotion code Twestival.

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

My sister-in-law has been working in the public library system for the past two decades. She was sharing with me how her town wanted to reduce the public library budget by 20%. This is a public facility that over 10% of the town’s citizens use every month. Public libraries are the hub of small business development in many areas. Most have internet access available free. Many employ reference librarians that are a fantastic resource for anyone starting or expanding a business. When I started my first business 22 years ago, it was a reference librarian who pointed me to the resources that helped me get the company going. Many have community rooms that people can use to teach classes and hold meetings. They also host their own training programs to teach people how to use the computer and do research Not adequately funding the public library really hurts an area’s ability to rebound in difficult economic times. Whereas, studies show that when state and local governments invest in libraries, it enhances the quality of life in communities and helps build a stronger state economy. During difficult economic times, libraries need to be open longer and offer more services, not fewer.