• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

A Solid Launch Consulting

Successful Leadership Comes From Leaning Into Your Own Style

  • Home
  • Blog Posts
  • Communication Friday
  • Services
    • Small Group Coaching Intensive
    • Private Coaching
  • About Us

Archives for December 2020

What Are You Having For Dinner Tonight?

December 29, 2020 by abuttiglieri

Antipasto by Judy

Imagine this: it’s Tuesday night and you’re making dinner – spaghetti and a salad. No big deal.

You take the sauce out of the freezer (you’re Italian. There’s no way you’re opening a jar). You meant to take it out in the morning to thaw, but forgot till right now.

You decide you will take the chance on microwaving plastic because your family is really looking forward to pasta. So you pop it in for just a few minutes then plunk it in a pot to finish heating.

Okay, onto the next thing…

You boil the water and go to the cabinet…there’s 1/2 a box of spaghetti left. Argh! Decision – make something else, order takeout, or go to the store?

You already started defrosting the sauce and your family is counting on spaghetti so you turn off the stove, hop in the car, and head to the store. They don’t have your favorite brand. Another decision – different type of pasta, another brand, or scrap it and head home empty handed?

You decide call your spouse because they’ll have a strong opinion. They want another brand… you stay on the phone with them while you figure it out (you’re not taking a chance the 2nd brand will be out of spaghetti!).

You head home, then start the water boiling again and open the refrigerator. You take out the salad ingredients but…you’re out of cucumbers. @#$%^! You were just at the store!

This time you make the executive decision: forget the cucumbers. You’ll live without them.

In the end, you got dinner on the table and everyone is happy…sort of: it’s not the brand of pasta they were expecting and your daughter loves cucumbers. Oh, and all those little mishaps meant dinner was over an hour late and that messed up the rest of your evening plans.

What’s the moral of the story?

A LITTLE PLANNING GOES A LONG WAY.

I don’t mean you need to plan a week of dinners every Sunday (if you can, kudos – I’ve never had that skill). But maybe the night before would have been enough. You’d have taken the sauce out to thaw and checked your ingredients… you could have planned to go to the store earlier or picked something else for dinner before your family was counting on pasta.

Let’s turn this around now and talk about leading your team.

Teams – like dinner – run a lot smoother with a bit of planning and organization.

Do you make sure they have the tools they need to be efficient…and to succeed? Are you thinking beyond “this meal” and helping plan their workload so they don’t get crushed next week?

If you’re in charge of a team, you can make the difference between on-time & efficient and late & stressed. So please – take a few minutes to think things through in advance before plowing ahead.

And…ummm…sorry about the craving for Italian tonight! 😉

Filed Under: Leadership Skills, Project Management, Team Leadership Tagged With: leadership skills, project leadership, team leadership

Practice Makes Perfect

December 27, 2020 by abuttiglieri

surfer wiping out

I started doing Facebook Lives recently and I am completely out of my element! I did my first one on the Stages of Team Development (you know, Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing)…and I said the acronym wrong! Not only that, but I said “ummm” entirely too much and there’s a distracting glare from my glasses!

Now, I know I need to run these Live Streams to get my leadership message out to a broader audience. I can’t make a difference if people don’t know about me! So I gather my courage and go Live.

I know that the way to get better is to just start. If I keep practicing then I will improve. I make mistakes, fumble around a bit, and continue to teach about project leadership.

Do you remember your very first project? Maybe you were a BA or perhaps a business resource. Did you know what the heck you were doing? (I sure didn’t!) Think about it for a minute. Perhaps these sound familiar: “What’s a requirement?” “Why do I need to write down every single step I test?” “How am I supposed to know how long it will take me?” “Why is it so important to hit my task’s date?”

What seems so obvious to us now was once unfamiliar and intimidating.

No one starts out knowing all and being good at everything. It can take some experience and more than a few mistakes to become proficient. And hopefully we were helped along by someone more experienced – maybe a Team Lead or our Project Manager – so lessons were learned more quickly.

Like it or not, every level of expertise we achieve is just a plateau to the next one. Wherever you are in your career – Junior BA or PMO Director – there are always avenues of growth that open up before you.

I encourage you to take a good look in the mirror: what have you mastered already? What skills do you need to hone in order to reach the next level of your career? And what opportunities can you take to start practicing them?

By the way – I am serious about my novice attempt at a FB Live – the information is good, even if my delivery is bad! Feel free to check it out for yourself: FSNP

Filed Under: Effective Leadership, Leadership Skills, Project Management, Team Leadership

Before Footer

  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact

Copyright © 2023 A Solid Launch Consulting LLC