Work on your Strengths

Sometime back, I blogged about one video of Maxwell’s conference under ‘Success Lesson’ title. I got impressed with his statement – ‘work on your strengths & not on your weaknesses’. Human life has a mix of both strengths & weaknesses. To my knowledge starting from childhood every human is programmed to tackle their weaknesses & not to work on their strengths. Our teachers and parents advise us to concentrate on subjects with low score & not to the subject with high score. There is a sure interview question on strengths and weaknesses of you. I know few people who told truth about their weaknesses not got selected for the job. We feel guilty about our weaknesses, spend whole life to overcome it & die without achieving anything. But in history, you can see those who really understood how to improve their strong talents were(are) the Champions. They are the one who diminished their weaknesses by outperforming on their strength areas.

The whole world is there to talk about my weaknesses. But how to find my strengths? how to make use of my strengths? I searched for more info on this topic. I got a reference about one book ‘Now, discover your strengths’ by Marcus Buckingham. Though I tried a lot on getting the online assessment that comes along with the book, it took almost a year for me to get that.  Today I did the online assessment using Strengths Finder 2.0. I got top 5 strengths of mine. When I shared the list to my wife, she got really amazed on the reality of the assessment results! It is exact reflection of me  in a PDF report! Along with the list I got dozen of action plans for every strength.

Now, I feel a lot better, that too in the beginning of 2010, with my top 5 strengths known to me & action plans ready to work for next 11 months to make this new year a best year in my life. I encourage everyone to take the online assessment. It costs me just 600 bucks (Indian Rupees or USD$20) which is cheaper when compared to the results you are going to achieve for the entire lifetime.

Project Management Process Groups & Processes (PMBOK® 4th Edition)

For past few months I presented number of mind maps on ITTO of different processes in project management. In Continuation to that here is the complete ITTO Mind Map created with ALL Project Management Processes according to Process Groups with reference to PMBOK 4th Edition. It is hosted in MindMeister online mind map sharing site.

MindMeister Mind Map URL

* Note# 1: There could be some typo or presentation errors. Please reply back for any corrections.

* Note# 2: You can use this for personal use (like studying for PMP Exam or PM activities). But don’t share this in common forum or web sites.

Fishbone Diagram – A Project Management Tool

I thought of writing about this tool, but I found millions of web page result in my search engine! I decided to put a fishbone diagram with links to pages which I found useful to everyone of us.

Fishbone diagrams otherwise called as Ishikawa diagrams (or cause-and-effect diagrams) are diagrams that show the causes of a certain event. In project management, this tool is used in Quality Management & Risk Management processes. Here I depicted causes for ‘PMP Exam failure’ Effect.

 

You can read more about this in following links:

1) Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram

2) Leankaizen – http://www.leankaizen.co.uk/fishbone-diagram-i-ishikawa-diagram.html

3) This one on 5 Why cause -effect analysis: Know the root cause for any problem within 5 whys

Measure of success

Whenever we are stepping into a new year, we review all our previous year plans, achievements & of course failures. For the new year, we set new goals, renewed old goals, great wish list. No matter where you are what you do, you measure success in that activity. Success produces happiness. To me, the measure of success is -

“Your success is not measured by outsiders praise but by your rejoicing heart”

Benchmark set by our mind will vary from our manager’s expected level. They praise(or scold) you for every activity you performed based on their expectation. But, sit back and think how do YOU feel about the outcome? Do you feel happy? Then you achieved it.

In case you feel unsatisfied, then also you need to be happy as you learnt a new way to get higher level of satisfaction.

Last year was a great year for me. I enjoyed connecting with you all by blogging about leadership, project management. I did lot of study about various topics. This gave a me a different dimension about things I already knew. I interacted with many blog readers. It gave me more enthusiasm to share more informative, useful articles/post. Late last year, I started tweeting. Today I integrated that with this blog too.

As I mentioned in my earlier post -

Success is not a single peak point just everyone likes to touch, it is a journey in a never ending upward path where every step you progress can be termed as ‘Success’.

In my success journey, you are having an important role. Thanks and welcome to you! Come let us progress in right direction & develop ourselves as ‘Leadership Champions’.

My Success Quotes

* Success is not a single peak point just everyone likes to touch, it is a journey in a never ending upward path where every step can be termed as ‘Success’.

* Perform any activity well with your full satisfaction; Success will catch a flight & knock your door.

* Are you not able to see success when you are working? Hey, it is hiding behind you & checking out how you are performing.It shows the face once you are done the work PERFECTLY.