Professional development and your career

Posted on July 23, 2013 by Michael Madden

Professional Development

In my twenties, I finished a four-year bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with a major in Accounting. I thought that was the end of my college experience and my professional development for awhile. But a few years later, I found myself working as a project manager at a financial services company that mandated all project managers must be PMP-certified. So, for the next several months, I found myself reading the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) and taking several preparation courses for the PMP (Project Management Professional) exam.

I remember how relieved I was when after studying for several months, taking a grueling three-hour exam, and knowing that passing the exam was a requirement for holding onto my current position within the organization that I saw the words: “Congratulations! You have passed” on the computer screen. What a relief! That, I thought, must surely be the last of studying and exams for a while.

After a few more years, I began to think that an MBA might be helpful to my career development. After all, many of my colleagues were either registered in graduate programs or had already graduated. This became even more important after the economic downtown, so I registered for an MBA program. I am now only four classes away from graduating and can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

You might think that by now that would be it? But no, I am already thinking of studying for another exam – the CPHIMS (Certified Professional in Healthcare Information and Management Systems).  This is because after many years of working in the financial services sector, I now work in the healthcare industry. The CPHIMS program seems like a great way to learn more about healthcare IT.

I write about all of this because last week I was talking to my dad and he jokingly asked, “What are you studying for now?” In my dad’s “days”, college seems to have been it for the most part. Nowadays, it seems like there are degrees and certifications for literally everything, even bartending!

The bar is constantly being raised.  I’m sure somewhere down the road another “opportunity” for learning and advancement will arise, which I will once again sign on for. But I wonder, is all of this learning worthwhile? Should I be spending more time enjoying life and slowing things down a bit? Learning has been extremely rewarding and enjoyable to me. In my earlier days, I must admit that it did seem like a chore, but as I get older I do it because I want to learn more about my career and my industry.

But I wonder about the future. The current cost of a four-year degree program is well over a hundred thousand dollars. I have two daughters and wonder what the cost of college will be for them and how will we afford it. When is it all going to stop?

Do you share these sentiments or have your travels taken a different path? I’m curious to hear your thoughts on where all of this is going.

Posted in Accomplishments, Communication, Learning, Lessons Learned, Motivation, Time Management, Training, Work Life Balance | 2 Comments

Can You Picture Your Job?

Posted on July 2, 2013 by Deb Cote

I recently read a piece on Boston.com by Paul Hellman that I thought was clever. The problem it pointed out was that for most occupations, when someone asks what you do, your answer is gibberish to them. A handful of jobs are known to most of the population – for example a doctor, a policeman, or an attorney. If you haven’t encountered someone in that position, you’ve likely seen someone play one on TV!

But what if you’re a lab technician, an arborist, or a billing specialist? Does your title or your verbal description sound too complicated? Will the person you’re talking with remember what you do?

Take the saying “a picture paints a thousand words” to heart and try to paint a picture of your job in words. Instead of giving your title of industrial engineer or explaining how you optimize complex processes or integrated systems as your audience’s eyes glaze over, try painting a visual picture.

“I am like a TV repairman, but instead of coming in and fixing your TV so that it works better, I come in and fix something a company is doing that can be done better, faster, cheaper…”

Or instead of putting your companion to sleep explaining that you teach people how to speak in a structured, deliberate manner intended to inform, influence, or entertain (zzzz), how about explaining that you are a teacher of self confidence, showing people how to stand in front of crowds like Martin Luther King, Jr., Susan B. Anthony, and Abraham Lincoln to share their passion. (public speaking consultant)

If you describe your occupational therapist role as Wikipedia quotes… to work with a client to help them achieve a fulfilled and satisfied state in life through the use of purposeful activity or interventions designed to achieve functional outcomes which promote health, prevent injury, or disability and which develop, improve, sustain, or restore the highest possible level of independence… you’ll lose them almost immediately after your lips start moving. Illustrating your profession as a human mirror, showing patients over and over how to move their hands, fingers, and other parts to accomplish daily tasks, will surely keep that analogy in their head.

Sure, these descriptions are simplified, but that’s the point. You’re not training someone to do your job; you just want them to remember you study something in a microscope vs. balance departmental budgets.

For me, I’m in project management. I’ve tried to visually explain my job as “an orchestra conductor like Keith Lockhart, leading a team of professionals like musicians with individual areas of expertise, ensuring each knows what each other is doing and when, so that together, they create a successful symphony.”

Try it! How would you verbally create a visual image of your job?

Posted in Communication | 1 Comment

A Pleasant Evening Highjacked

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Ron Munroe

I recently traveled to join a friend and his family at a college graduation. The night before, we were to meet for dinner and then go to the outdoor dance on the campus. Seemed straightforward enough, but the evening went much differently than I expected.

The dinner at a nice Italian restaurant was excellent. We then took a taxi to the dance, where 10,000 people were expected. When we got as close as we could to the entrance, we hurriedly paid the fare, jumped out of the cab and got into line. We opened our umbrellas as the night’s rain persisted. The crowd was dense and it took a long time to get through the entrance and to our table. I put down the umbrella to check my iPhone to see whether the rain might stop soon. But, to my shock, where my iPhone would usually sit in my pocket was emptiness. What? Despite the fact that I always keep it in the same pocket, I feverishly checked my other pockets. Nothing. I lost my iPhone! I racked my brain. Where could it be? In the last half hour, we were only at two places – the restaurant and the taxi. I remembered using it at the restaurant, and thought I may have left it on the table. My friend let me use his iPhone to try to recover mine. I called the restaurant; they looked around our table, but did not find it. So I hoped that meant it was in the taxi. I called the cab company and the dispatcher curtly replied that he could do nothing until morning. I asked him if he could contact our cab driver and he said no. What? I could do nothing until morning? I’ll be preoccupied with this the rest of the night? (I do not compartmentalize well.) I hated the thought of someone finding my phone, getting past my login and into my electronic world.

Then I remembered seeing an icon on Apple’s iCloud site called Find My iPhone. I found the app and downloaded it to my friend’s iPhone. I logged in as me, chose my cell phone number and it showed a map with my iPhone located on Rte 195! So I concluded it was still in the cab. But what now? Should I call it? I hesitated to do that because then someone would definitely find it and keep it. My best chance was for it to remain hidden in the cab and I could recover it the next morning. I was feeling vulnerable and tempted to use a button that I saw on the Find My iPhone screen that would remotely erase my data. Then I thought I was being dumb; calling my cell phone was the most direct route to recovering it. Why not opt to trust? I dialed my number and the taxi driver answered. He said the fare after me found the phone and gave it to him. He was willing to drive it back to me, but wasn’t sure when we could meet because he still had to respond to assignments from his dispatcher. We eventually connected about an hour later, and he returned it in perfect working order. I was so grateful and relieved!

Reflecting on the experience, I am thankful for Apple’s Find My iPhone tool and am surprised that I remembered it in the midst of my torment. It is now a permanent addition to my cell phone risk management satchel. Also, I’m embarrassed that my first instinct was to distrust and am happy to have been proven wrong. An honest person found the phone and gave it to the cab driver, who returned it to me. I hope this experience builds my faith in my fellow man. Would you have been cynical or trusting?

Posted in Risk Management | 4 Comments

The Path to Highest Enjoyment

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Meagan Turner

Lately, my to-do list has been daunting. My days are filled with meetings, where more to-do tasks are discovered and added to the list. One of my favorite things to do is cross things off this list. And if it is done before they are due, it not only makes me happy, but makes my customers happy as well. Not all of the tasks on this list are “fun” or things I enjoy doing. But all are necessary.  Some get procrastinated until they feel urgent and that causes undue stress.

So how do I keep momentum, cross off tasks, and stay productive? I recently read an interesting theory on Lifehacker that suggests an approach of completing tasks in the order of most enjoyment.

http://lifehacker.com/jump-start-your-productivity-with-the-path-of-highest-476967006

If tasks aren’t sequential, why not do the ones that give you the most enjoyment first? You can ride that momentum into the tasks that aren’t as enjoyable.

What are your thoughts? Do have an approach that works for you?

Posted in Productivity | 1 Comment

Getting Ready for the Next Catastrophe

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Sandie Kimball

Where were you on the day of the 2013 Boston Marathon? You will probably never forget what you were doing that day. Who could have anticipated that bombs would forever shatter the futures of so many people just out for a day of fun and fulfillment? Even in a post-9/11 world, when we have become hyper-conscious of the potential dangers around us, it was impossible for us to imagine our lives could be endangered so close to home, simply by sharing an annual tradition with friends and family, or even just going to work.

One of the hardest things about risk planning is that you have to get specific about all the terrible things that could happen. In everyday life, if we sat around worrying about the possibility of getting hit by a bus on the way to the supermarket or contracting a case of flesh-eating disease, we would never go anywhere or do anything. But for project managers, it’s our job to spell out the worst case scenarios. For instance, an earthquake could damage a data center, causing vital information to stop flowing to the hospital. I had a friend who was a power engineer for the Longwood Medical Area, and he had a huge list of problems that could occur to shut down all the life-saving machines in the ICUs of all our hospitals. Today that list probably contains a scenario involving a terrorist attack.

Are we so brave in our project risk planning? I’ve noticed that a lot of risk plans contain generic scenarios, like “users won’t be able to adjust to the new system” or “we won’t have enough resources during project implementation”. But what are the real risks here? If the new system involves receiving claims payment, the real risk is that claims won’t get paid, thus jeopardizing the hospital’s ability to stay open. And if the unavailable resources cause physicians’ orders to stop flowing through the system, patients won’t get the proper care. At Dana-Farber, that’s a matter of life and death.

My favorite blogger, John Halamka (geekdoctor.blogspot.com), CIO at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, shared that seven of his staff members were volunteers at the medical tent and finish line on the day of the marathon. None of his staff was harmed, but he wrote that “as we think about risk planning in the future, we’ll need to consider the events of last week when told something as innocent as ‘the majority of the database administration team is going to volunteer at the marathon.'”

It brought to mind one day in August 2011 when many of us in the office felt our chairs rocking. The first thing we did was to wonder aloud what it was. Next, we got on the internet and confirmed that we were feeling the ripple effect of a 5.8 magnitude earthquake that had hit Virginia. The third step, however, was unsettling. After a few minutes of reading the internet updates, I looked around and noticed that I was completely alone. It turned out that everyone had run outside, but no one had stopped by my desk to let me know. By the time I figured out what was happening, all my colleagues were out on the street. I have to tell you, I was doing some serious risk assessment in my head and it wasn’t pretty!

So the week after Boston was locked down during the manhunt for the bombing suspect, our team talked about how we handled our response to these events. We pieced together a series of emails in which we had informed each other of our whereabouts and our plans for the day. Luckily, we all fared well and stayed safe. But we asked ourselves: could we do anything differently during the next catastrophic occurrence? Our conclusion was simple enough: one person would be responsible for calling anyone we hadn’t heard from and report back to the group. This simple plan made me feel a lot better about the next time.

None of us will forget the 2013 Boston Marathon, and we all hope it will turn out better next year. But as Liz Walker, former Boston news anchor and now Presbyterian minister, told the Globe in an interview  following that fateful day, “part of the healing process may be learning to live with fear.”

Risk planning is not just an exercise; it’s a way to prepare for a future in which we all must manage fear on a daily basis.

Posted in Risk Management | 1 Comment

Are Women Still Fighting for Equality?

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Amy Tatton

I was recently responsible for coordinating Dana-Farber’s Women’s History Month celebration. It wasn’t something I felt strongly about heading into the month, but few others volunteered, so along with a great IS colleague, I jumped in. We had limited time and resources, but we pulled off a wonderful event including many lively book club discussions on The Feminine Mystique and webcast interviews with some very talented and successful DFCI women. Learn more about the events.

While coordinating the celebration, I felt engaged and inspired. The women I met were remarkable, warm, open, and insightful. It had me very energized but also puzzled. Why hadn’t this interested me much before? I could even go so far as to say that I was apathetic about topics related to women’s rights and equality until this point. How could that be? Is it something my generation of women takes for granted?

For the others I met, that didn’t seem to be the case. But for me, it was. I can’t recall it being an issue for me growing up. Perhaps it’s because I only had brothers – one biological, two step-brothers, and one adopted through the Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) program when I was in college. Though it sometimes seemed I had more chores than they did, what I remember most is trying my hardest to be as tough as them. I was quite proud of myself when playing tackle football at age 7 that I bloodied the lip of a much bigger boy down the street. I recall being successful at every sport I played. I think I got better grades than my brothers and I was the only one of us to go to college. (Now my brothers are doing well and my youngest through the BBBS program has since completed college.) So for me, being a girl didn’t seem to make it harder to succeed. If anything, my social economic status growing up was a much bigger hurdle. Thank goodness for a full-ride scholarship!

Reflecting back on more recent times, I see that perhaps women’s rights do currently play a role in my life. Despite my scholarship, I came out with student loans that I just paid off last year. My husband, on the other hand, took his second semester off of college to work and never went back. He had no student loans and is four years younger than me, but makes more money than I do. It could be his field and that he’s in the for-profit world. It also doesn’t hurt that he’s insanely smart and never forgets anything he learns.

But something dawned on me when I attended a Simmons’ Leadership Conference last month. During a session on negotiating, we were given a scenario to try to negotiate. In my group, we didn’t decide to march into the boss’s office and make our demands. We knew the company was in a hard position and wouldn’t likely give us what we wanted, so we negotiated down. The facilitators gave us stats and figures where men and women went in and negotiated for the same thing, but men came out much more successful and with much higher pay, despite no better bargaining chips or credentials. Of course I’ve heard before that women undersell their value, while men sometimes inflate it, but I wasn’t sure that was true for me, until this scenario.  I now recognize that women still have work to do if we want to be treated and paid fairly. This really simplifies things, but we have to know and be able to express our value, and perhaps be less concerned about the other person’s circumstances. Easier said than done, right? However, one of the best pieces of advice I ever received from a very influential woman in my life is, “You never know until you ask. The worst they can say is no.”

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Project: Road Trip 2013

Posted on April 15, 2013 by admin

In December, my one and only child, my daughter, dropped the bomb that she was moving to Portland. I initially thought . . . that’s not so bad. I love Portland, Maine. I soon realized that it was Portland, OREGON! There would be no more Sunday afternoon walks or hanging out sipping tea watching The Great British Bake Off or donning our silly matching ruffled aprons and trying our hand at baking the recipes from the show.

I had a pity party for myself for several weeks and eventually allowed myself to put it into perspective. She was not moving to Haiti. (One of my friend’s kids sold her worldly possessions and moved to Haiti to do mission work.) She was not moving to Australia, which apparently had been a possibility.

Emily is an avid cyclist and Portland is very bike-friendly. They have well-marked bike lanes and cyclists are everywhere, so people are used to looking out for them. Before the move, she was riding her bike a few days a week from Framingham to her office in Burlington. Anyone who knows the area can appreciate that the risk was pretty high that she would hit a pothole or be struck by a car. She had one collision that I am aware of (she tried to keep it from me) where a car crossed her path. There was no way that I, her mother, could mitigate or avoid this risk. It was all up to her. She assured me that experienced cyclists think differently – they are always looking at cars, pedestrians, and other cyclists thinking about what they might do. The cyclist might actually change their path in anticipation of a stupid move by a driver – sort of risk management by the seat of their bicycle pants.

Getting back to the move… Emily then broke the news that she’d actually be driving cross country and was wondering if I would be interested in joining her. There was no way that I was going to let her make this trip alone; of course I would join her! And then she told me the drive was likely to happen the first week in February. February?! Red flags shot up. What about snow and ice storms in the mid-west and how the heck were we going to get across the Rocky Mountains?! Emily was in charge of planning how we were going to get from point A to point B, but I was all about identifying and managing the risks.

What if we hit bad weather and the trip were to take longer than planned? It was highly likely that this would happen. We could have avoided this by going a more southerly route, but it would have extended the trip a great deal – we would have had to go very far south to avoid the mountains. So we chose to accept the risks and go over the Rockies. I let my manager know this was a possibility and I made sure that I had my VPN token and laptop with me just in case we were holed up to wait out a storm along the way.

Worse yet, what if we were out in the middle of nowhere and got stranded in a blizzard? We packed lots of protein bars and had a good-to-25-below down sleeping bag just in case. We also surmised we could increase our mileage during good weather, possibly even put in an all-nighter, to offset delays due to bad weather.

We set out on the Monday after the Super Bowl and hit lake-effect snow as we drove across New York and into Pennsylvania. On day two, we hit more of the same as we passed from Ohio into Indiana and Illinois. We even saw a car up ahead spin out into the median and come to a stop up to its axles in snow. Luckily, no one else was involved and we cautiously pushed on through extremely poor driving conditions.

After two days of driving through less than optimal conditions, we made it just over the line into Iowa and found ourselves behind schedule. We did the math and knew that for us to reach Portland by Friday afternoon, we would need to put in two 700-mile days, but thankfully no all-nighter would be needed, at least not yet. An uneasy feeling hung over us as we contemplated driving across the rest of Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, and corners of Utah and Idaho, reaching 8,000+ feet above sea level somewhere along the way.

On day three, after traveling 740 miles (nearly 2,000 miles total), we made it to Cheyenne, Wyoming. At this point we had seen herds of deer and antelope, flocks of migrating birds, and even a majestic bald eagle! We celebrated each 1,000 miles driven by eating King Kones!

The weather looked okay for the days ahead and we managed to cover another 760 miles as we passed safely over the Rockies with panoramic views and great relief! On Friday, we made it to Portland by mid afternoon, on time and within our budget, having traveled a whopping 3,133.7 miles.

P1010930

Many things about this trip parallel our work as project managers. We identify resources, we set goals and define scope, we create schedules, we identify possible risks and ways to mitigate them, we celebrate milestone accomplishments along the way, and conclude with lessons learned.

Unfortunately, all too many projects are cancelled when they run into problems and/or run out of money. I have never experienced it, but I imagine that in some instances, risk can be so high that a project may be canceled before it gets off the ground. Sometimes a project is quite risky, but must go on. What has your experience been? Have you ever had to cancel a risky project? What would you have done differently?

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Project: Road Trip 2013

May the wind always be at your back

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Michael Madden

An old Irish saying includes the line “may the wind always be at your back”. I was reminded of this a few days ago while cycling to work along Boston’s esplanade. With a stiff breeze off the Charles River, it made the journey that much more difficult and unenjoyable. While I’m not yet crazy enough to suggest that one can change the direction of the wind (I tried that once using a shamanic ritual but it didn’t work), I can recommend some project management tools to align the wind to be at your back. Using these tools can make your project journey that much more enjoyable and successful.

Some of these tools include a well-written and sponsor-supported project charter. The charter document starts the team off on the right foot, communicates the project at a high-level to the team and other stakeholders, and authorizes the project to begin. Another great tool is a communications management plan. This document enables the team to identify who needs project information, when they need it, how often they need it, and in what format.

A work breakdown structure (WBS) is another wonderful tool the team uses to break down the work into manageable tasks (typically with duration of one week or less). Each task can then be estimated and assigned to a resource. By using a WBS, it is possible to get an idea of the overall duration of the project, and it can be used to plan the entire effort.

A project manager’s toolbox contains many other tools to align the wind to your back. Some of these include a responsibility matrix (RACI document), status reports, risk planning, team building exercises, etc. The good news is that all of these tools are available on the PMO’s website.

By using these tools, the team can minimize strong head winds and turbulence. Proper planning with the right tools can and does make all the difference on projects. I’m still not sure what methodology to deploy to avoid cycling against the prevailing winds of Boston, though. What might you suggest?

Posted in Knowledge Areas, Work Life Balance | Comments Off on May the wind always be at your back

Finding inspiration in a long winter

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Ron Munroe

In the first days of February, it seemed like we were going to get off easy this winter. We had gotten well below normal snowfall in December and January and winter’s end was in sight. Then, starting with the blizzard on February 8th that dropped two feet of snow, we had snowstorms three weekends in a row. By the end of February and early March people seemed glum. They had had enough and were ready for winter to be over.

I know I reached that point. I count myself among those people whose mood tracks the weather to some degree. When it’s cloudy and cold, I’m a bit sullen. When it’s sunny and warm, I’m more buoyant. I’ve heard the theory many times that our outlook should not be at the mercy of external circumstances like the weather. We are supposed to be inner-directed, the master of our own moods and attitude. That makes a lot of sense and sounds great, it just does not come naturally to me or, from what I can tell, a lot of people.

But such people do exist! I feel lucky to have had encounters recently with people who do seem self-possessed, cheerful and unaffected by circumstances in the way that many of us are. Each brightened my day just by being around them. The first was a postal worker. I went to the post office at noon to mail my tax return. Two attendants were at the counter and I chose the one who met my gaze and therefore seemed more welcoming. I handed her the envelope and asked to buy postage for it. She said “Oooh, looks evil”, with a little smile, because it was addressed to the IRS. I laughed and agreed. Next, while I intended to buy basic first class postage, I was ready for her to sell me on the extra options, like insurance and tracking. And she did, but each time I declined, she immediately replied with something funny. Her jokes were pretty lame and she seemed to know that, but she broke me out of my IRS haze and did get me to laugh and feel lucky to have chosen her line. It seemed like a routine she repeated many times a day, but it was funny and turned a mundane transaction into a pleasant experience.

The second person was the Sunday front desk attendant at my gym. She has had a similar effect, but in a different way. When people enter the gym, she greets them and smiles. But such encounters are not frequent on Sundays because traffic is low. The rest of the time she impresses by her non-stop activity. That is notable because I’ve observed a number of attendants over the years. Most sit at the front desk and work on the computer and occasionally wash towels when the supply of clean towels gets low. But this particular attendant hardly ever sits; she is either washing or folding towels (the supply never gets low when she is working), cleaning exercise equipment, or talking to customers. She is a dynamo and always seems happy. She appears to be one of those rare people who puts her all into everything she does. She’s inspiring.

These two people reminded me that, even while doing un-stimulating chores or enduring a particularly challenging winter, we each can choose to respond more positively to it. I’m not sure I can rise to the challenge as gracefully as these folks, but I’m inspired to try.

Posted in Motivation | Comments Off on Finding inspiration in a long winter

My Happiness Project

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Deb Cote

Awhile ago, I started thinking about what my passion was. I work a great deal because I enjoy it, and I spend a lot of time with friends and family because I love them. But I don’t support a cause, have a dedicated hobby, or dedicate my free time to any type of sprituality or greater meaning of life.

I envy people who have those. They seem to have a purpose.

I work to live and live to work. But am I missing out on Something Big in Life?

I read articles about finding one’s passion. I talked to colleagues and friends. Nothing jumped out. Can you create a passion? What if I don’t have one?

Then I stumbled on The Happiness Project, a book by Gretchen Rubin. One day Rubin wondered if, although she was happy, she could be happier. Was she taking her life for granted? In order to determine that, she embarked on The Happiness Project, a year-long pursuit of increasing happiness in various aspects of her life.

Now here was something I could relate to. Perhaps it’s not exactly finding a passion, but what better way to take a step in that direction for a project management professional than structuring that journey as a project?!

I’m just getting started with my Happiness Project. In addition to choosing subjects of focus for each month (e.g., Friends, Work, Attitude, Love, Health, etc.), one of the first steps is to come up with overarching principles, what the author calls her Twelve Commandments. Hers include such things as:
1. Be Gretchen.
2. Let it go.
3. Act the way I want to feel.
4. Do it now.

So, I’ve started my list of personal commandments. They are not tasks on a to do list, but words you want to strive to live by. Some of mine include:
1. Simplify.
2. Appreciate what and who I have now.
3. Be present.
4. Accept what I can’t change.

I’m still refining my lists. Then I will come up with a plan, like any good project manager would, for the year-long effort. A couple of friends have agreed to join me in their own Happiness Projects.

So far, it’s been a good experience. What are some personal commandments that would be on your list?

Posted in Work Life Balance | 4 Comments