Episode 189: Tips, Tricks & Lessons Learned for Social Media in Project Management (Free)

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What would you say is the biggest problem on projects today? Is it the ever increasing complexity? Is it project sponsors who are absent?  Is it the impossible expectations that our customers have?

Robert Szilinski and Michael Krebs (www.esentri.com and www.social-pm.com) say that it’s neither of these. Instead, our top problems are all internal to our project teams. They are communication, collaboration and integration of all team members and their knowledge into the overall project.

Robert and Michael’s answer to help improve project management is to enable our teams to work on a level that is more integrated, based on sharing and trust. Much of this in connection with Social media tools for project management. We’ll get a ton of tips, tricks and lessons learned from how they have used these social media tools on projects.

Episode Transcript

Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.

Podcast Introduction

Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome to Episode #189. I am Cornelius Fichtner. This is The Project Management Podcast™ at www.project-management-podcast.com recorded in the rainy but still beautiful town of Solothurn in Switzerland. Nice to have you with us.

What would you say is the biggest problem on projects today? Is it the ever increasing complexity? Is it project sponsors who are absent? Is it the impossible expectations that our customers have?

Robert Szilinski and Michael Krebs say that it is neither of these. Instead, our top problems are all internal to our project teams. They are communication, collaboration and integration of all team members and their knowledge into the overall project.

This episode of The Project Management Podcast™ is sponsored by The PMP Exam Simulator™ because nothing prepares you more for the PMP® Exam than being able to sit down and take a realistically-simulated PMP® Exam. Go to www.FreeExamSimulator.com, get your free 3-day access, and see for yourself what the PMP® Exam is like.

Robert and Michael’s answer to help improve project management is to enable our teams to work on a level that is more integrated based on sharing and trust. Much of this is in connection with social media tools for project management. We’ll get a ton of tips, tricks and lessons learned on how they have used these social media tools on their projects.

And now, please click here to share this episode on Facebook with your friends. Enjoy the interview.

Podcast Interview

Female voice: The Project Management Podcast’s feature Interview: Today with Robert Szilinski and Michael Krebs from Esentri.

Cornelius Fichtner: Hallo Michael. Hallo Robert. Recht herzlich willkommen zum on Project Management Podcast.

Robert Szilinski: Hallo Cornelius. Danke fuer Deine Einladung zum Podcast.

Cornelius Fichtner: Well, you have a straightforward position when it comes to where is the problem in project management today. You say that companies as well as project managers and their teams are facing problems these days.

So let’s take a look at this. Robert, I think this is a question for you: What problems do companies face these days in regards to project management?

Robert Szilinski: Well Cornelius, that’s no big news. I think enterprise globalization and networking causes enormous search in the efforts required for coordination and communication and at the same time, mutual knowledge for company’s taxes becomes increasingly important in making close cooperation between individual corporate members is essential.

Enterprises must continually adapt to new conditions due to rapid technological developments and unsteady markets and definitely have to display high degree operability to ensure successful long-term positioning on the market. And in general, the trend moves towards more parallel running projects at project level that additionally enhance the previously-described challenges in the areas of communication, collaboration and agility. And I guess that’s one of the main problems companies have nowadays.

Cornelius Fichtner: Okay. You also mentioned that there’s a lack of key performance indicators, right?

Robert Szilinski: Of course. Because the projects in the company is usually get controlled by multiple project managers and because of the tool usage and the lack of processes maybe, companies are not able to define key performance indicators and to control them regarding the project management area.

Cornelius Fichtner: Okay! So those are the general problems that companies face today. And what about us poor project managers, what are our problems these days? Not our personal problems but our problems managing projects.

Robert Szilinski: Well good question to be asking, Cornelius. I guess some of the problems may be also personal problems but without doubt I think the world gets more complex everyday and we are faced to faster decisions and we have usually less time in our projects. Of course the already mentioned unsteady requirements and fast changing priorities are another issue we have to deal with.

On the one hand, we have the classic project management methodologies and on the other hand we have HR concepts and both should work together and as a project manager, we are always working in between these areas so that’s quite hard for us I guess.

Cornelius Fichtner: When we originally talked about this topic, you also told me that you think that there’s a lack of motivation in the project team themselves, what did you mean by that?

Robert Szilinski: The motivation of teams is essential to the project success. Unfortunately nowadays, it’s not always possible to deliver the best results and to use all the knowledge and power in our teams. Because by contrast, often team members are demotivated and because they don’t see the overall context and there are sometimes even an atmosphere of distrust because people cannot participate.

Cornelius Fichtner: Okay. So those are the general problems that companies are facing, we project managers and the teams are facing. And on top of that, you also have a very clear opinion in regards to the number one reasons why projects get killed. Tell us about that.

Robert Szilinski: Well, in our opinion, it’s definitely the communication that is the project killer number one. Every time we say that, people usually are surprised by the mention of communication because nowadays, we have more ways to communicate maybe than ever. We have emails. We have Twitter. We have blogs. We have text messages. But nevertheless, we send millions of mails everyday and we’re not able to handle all these information.

But the main point is it’s not the communication between the team members and not the technology especially, but it’s the problem that people are not really involved. There’s the one-way communication problem you mentioned in your latest podcast also and I think people want to participate. That’s the way our Social PM as a concept comes in.

Cornelius Fichtner: Yes, and your solution to all of these now is social media, right? I can now hear many of our listeners go, they start groaning. They go: “Ah, my God, another social media podcast” because social media these days is touted as the cure-all, be-all, end-all solution to all of these problems.

Michael, I think this is a question for you. Why do you feel social media can be the solution to the problems that we have heard from Robert?

Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete PDF transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.