Retrospective 2013

In this podcast, Ricardo makes his retrospective of 2013. Again, a year with mixed feelings. A good year for some, a tough one for others. One of the points highlighted by Ricardo was the dangerous excess of expectation, from companies, governments and professionals, about what really project management can bring as a result, when well executed. In the next podcast, he will talk about the perspectives for 2014.

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Episode transcript

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Hello everybody welcome to the five minutes BM podcast today, a very special Podcast like I recorded every end of the year, since 2007. It's my Retrospective after 2013. And of course this year was a year of Again some mixed feelings. And I heard a lot of people telling me all, this was a fantastic, great ear. Other people telling me, Oh, this was not, So such a great ear. It was a, a little bit .

And I want just to explain to you is that many times we need to understand, and that project management is not the solution for all problems. Do you know? There is a lot of perceptions that, okay, I want to implement the project management process. I wanted to implement a project office and then Mike bumpy wrote my bumping roads with a lot of terms, a lot of braids or a lot of risks. We'll become a seven line highway.

This is not true. And this is not what we are trying to propose with the user project management project management is the technique and the ability to help you to understand better the road you are running, it will help you to understand better. The turns better. The challenge is so you can prepare yourself in order to achieve your results better, but people love this misperception of what does project management.

You know, it's some kind of an illusion we love to be eluted that? OK, now your problems are over because now you have project management that will solve all your problems. This is not true. And there's of course led to a lot of people to some kind of frustration of, because they said, Oh, OK. I was expecting to solve all my problems with this project office, but the problems are still there. And do you know the answer? The problem we'll be always their, the way you handle the problems is what differentiates you from other organizations.

So you need to understand this and you need to understand better the risks you need to understand better, the relevance of proper planning. This will help you to drive better in that bumpy road. You need to understand that this miss at fillings is part of, a lot of people said this was a great ear with a lot of opportunities. What do people say? No, this was a very challenging year. I heard a lot of companies recruiting project managers with a completely wrong set of criteria.

Oh, I want the project manager with all the technical skills in this, that, and that this is not what project management is about. Project management is an integration role. It's not an, a specific lad role. So we see that. Do you have a long way to go to educate people and the work that we need to do it for sure, not easy, but it's doable. We need to understand this. And of course for me, I had a great year, a lot of the time accomplishments, both in the personal and in the professional side.

But of course it's not perfect. I was not a hundred percent in all my projects because this is not feasible. This is not natural. So it's very, very important. When we think about looking back, looking back is a great way to help us to understand what is going ahead, because next week or two, you want to talk to you about how do I see the perspectives for 2014 and how we can prepare ourselves better. This is a great time of the year to do that because it's a time to celebrate what we did, but it's also a time to reflect and prepare ourselves to the future because who is better prepared, you have better chances in the future.

I'm talking on the companies, I'm talking on government, I'm talking on NGOs and I'm talking about professionals, so you need to be prepared. So this is a great time for you to think about that. And I want also to wish you on this time of the year for all Christians, a Merry Christmas, and for those who are not Christians, it's a great time for you to join your family, to celebrate the life and to celebrate the success and the challenges of life. And it's a great time also to prepare ourselves for what is next, what is our next project professionally and personally.

And this is what I want to share with you a little bit next week on our last podcast of 2013, I wish you Merry Christmas, happy new year and all the best to all of you and see you next week with another five minutes BM Podcast.

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