Common Lessons Learned Mistakes, Misconceptions and Things Left Unsaid By Rick Edwards and Shawn P. Quigley Why organizations fail to exploit their own lessons learned. “There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience”.   – Archibald MacLeish Lessons Learned – Really? Too many organizations understand Archibald’s […]

Why Lessons Learned are vital to the long-term vitality of organizations To best discuss any topic, we must first establish a common foundation from which to build. Let’s start by defining some key terms: 1. Lesson: an activity that is done in order to learn something; also: something is taught, a single class or part […]

By Shawn P. Quigley More on Maslow In our previous discussions we have referred to Maslow’s Theory of Human Motivation (Hierarchy of Needs) and how this relates to work place motivation. To best continue our discussion we must first review some of the tenets of Maslow’s theory in more detail and dispel the misconception that […]

Talent Planning and Project Management In many cases, succession planning only identifies individuals that are to replace existing individuals as they move up the ladder or out of the organization. This process is a “matter of fact” and does not include major planning for the individual to replace, but more like a placeholder. Grooming of […]

LinkedIn Education Post Reading a Linkedin post from Michael Milutis on continuous education made me stop briefly and consider how I got where I am today. Career My professional “career” has been as varied as it has been bumpy.  I have been employed in fast food restaurant and with a moving company the first few […]

Project Manager and Talent A project’s success ultimately is with the talent of the team and the project manager.  There are more team members, only one project manager, and the team carries the bulk of the work even if the project manager is responsible.  The composition of the team is the very important.  Talent constraints […]

Organizational Learning Differences for the Team and Management (Mental Models) By Shawn P. Quigley In a previous post, we discussed the five principles behind Organizational Learning (L.O.). In this post, we will discuss how the different levels of an organization view the principles and why these different views make it difficult to obtain a learning organization. […]

What is the meaning of conflict and problem? Let us start our discussion today with a few definitions of the words “Conflict” and “Problem”. There are so many definitions and we needed a common starting point to allow for an informative discourse. Conflict is defined by Merriam-Webster as: “A struggle for power, property, etc., strong […]

By Shawn P. Quigley Office Politics is defined as: “(business) (functioning as singular or plural) the ways that power is shared in an organization or workplace, and the ways that it is affected by the personal relationships between the people who work there” (Collins English Dictionary, 2014) Let us first state that Office politics is […]