These are field notes from more than 25 years of running high-stakes projects and building the teams behind them. Every post starts with a real problem from a real job: scope that drifted, a vendor lock that held, a handoff that broke, or a schedule that stayed honest. Use them the way I wrote them, as working tools you can bring to your next project meeting.
Looking for a term? See our construction glossary for plain-English definitions built for project owners.
When the owner doesn’t carry in-house crews, the responsibility for directing the work in the field lands on the vendor project manager. That person has more direct control over executing the deliverable than anyone on the owner’s side. Get that alignment wrong and the owner’s project manager spends the job managing the relationship instead of the…
One-on-one meetings are simultaneously the most important and overlooked aspects of team management. Rarely are they used as intended. When done, they are short, problem-centric, and generally very ineffective. And it’s sad because when handled correctly, one-on-one meetings are the most powerful tool in any manager’s arsenal. They unite, encourage, and center the team in a…
Becoming a manager for the first time in your life is a really big deal. You have to detach yourself from the value of your individual performance and tune into something bigger. Your value system, the way you navigate challenges, and how you do your job all have to adjust. And that change can feel overwhelming. …
Team performance management might seem like a fantastical idea consisting of lists, expectations, and lofty goals, but it’s so much more. In its purest form, it’s about showing your team they can exceed the limits they’ve set for themselves and that they have way more potential than they realize. It’s so much more than a way…
A team lead and a manager are different jobs, even though plenty of org charts blur the two. In a typical org structure, the team lead sits in the frontline layer, working inside the team and usually without hiring, firing, or budget authority, while the manager sits a level up and answers for the team’s results.…
Developing a team is a tentative, complicated process, but building a virtual team is even more tricky. More often than not, management is suddenly called to put a team together that can work remotely. They are asked to change everything about the way they work as well as everything about the way their team works and…
Team management is a tricky balance between motivation, control, and support. But when you add dispersion to the mix, things get a lot more complicated. Managing virtual teams that rarely meet in person and can span across the globe is an amazing feat of technology and progress, but it still has its challenges. In this post,…
As with most things, your efforts will be scrambled when you work without intention. Without direction, you can easily get stuck moving in circles. Team management is no different. When handled without direction, intention, goals, and care, a team transforms from a resource into a liability. They could be moving effectively toward your goals or stuck…
Every single day, we communicate. Unless you are out on the fringes of society, you exchange some kind of a message with someone every day of your life. Even for those on the edge, you’ve probably scared off a bird or two—and that counts. And over the course of our lives, whether your audience is birds…
Agile project management has a weird reputation. Some see it as a “magic” solution that suddenly makes all their problems disappear. Some see it as the work of satan that can’t be trusted and will lead to the immediate demise of your company. We think the real answer lies somewhere in the middle. We even think…