Stuart Ritchie, the talented guy behind 1.00 FTE has this beautiful insight to share:
My immediate take from this was:
If you can’t articulate it, you can’t deliver it.
If you are planning to deliver a project output but you can’t say what it is, what it will look, feel and smell like when it is complete, you will not be able to successfully deliver it.
Think about it!
About 30 years ago, Bruce Feirstein wrote a book called “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche,” a spoof of our notions of masculinity. Among the gems and pebbles was the Real Man’s Resume, which referenced a couple of years with “the federal government” and the description, “The exact nature of my work for Dr. Kissinger remains classified.” I could tell you, but then you’d have to pay me more money. Maybe you should, anyway …
Unrelated story: I worked on a consulting project years ago for a group of people who liked to communicate in acronyms and buzz words. After hearing one guy use a particularly odd term several times, I finally asked him for a definition. He stammered a bit, postulated a guess, and finally admitted he didn’t know. We then asked two of his colleagues, who offered different guesses. One of them knew where we could look it up. As it turns out, someone had transposed two of the letters at some point, trying to make it pronounceable, and the others had simply repeated it. The good news was that once we understood what the Hell we were talking about, delivery was much easier.
Dave Gordon recently posted..New PM Articles for the Week of February 25 – March 3
Haha, love your second story, so typical of people falling into misuse of plattitudes and acronyms. Makes you wonder how many people REALLY know what they’re talking about.
Pingback: New PM Articles for the Week of March 4 –10 | The Practicing IT Project Manager