Do you or your organization have older Mac equipment that basically works but isn't being used? Kids receiving cancer treatments can put it to good use.

Any iPads, or MacBooks or MacBook Airs or MacBook Pros just collecting dust or ready to get replaced? Cancer kids can put them to good use.

If your organization has any used but basically "working" MacBooks (regular, pros or airs), or iPads, please consider sending it to me for my "Macs for Cancer Kids" campaign (I can fix some things, but working is preferred). Contact me here or email me.

I've seen firsthand what kind of helpful distraction this type of equipment provides in clinics and hospitals when receiving painful and nauseating chemo treatments, transfusions and lumbar punctures.

My 11 year old son was diagnosed with Leukemia 16 months ago followed by many painful and nauseating clinic and hospital visits and more to come over the next several years including the above referenced blood lab work, transfusions and lumbar punctures. In fact, I'm sitting next to him at his cancer clinic right now while he receives treatment and I've witnessed two of his worst days since the initial treatment just after his original diagnosis and hospital stay over the past couple of days. 

It's no joy ride. But this equipment can help keep their minds off these painful procedures and distract them when they feel miserable with gaming like Minecraft, etc. It can also help them do their school work online when necessary because they often can't be in school with immune systems at zero during these necessary treatment years. Please consider and contact me through my contact form or just email me if you want to help and can help. Thank you!!

Also remember, you can just send a $$ donation to the campaign through the GoFundMe campaign here.... thanks for considering - please donate what you can today!   

Macs 4 Cancer Kids: https://gofund.me/13dc64b9​

Managing your team should be easy because you’re dealing with trained professionals, right? But that's not to say there won’t be difficult personalities along the way. Our project resources are skilled professionals…with egos. Each has their own unique talents that they bring to the engagement. Likewise they each come to the table with their own unique experiences, behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs about how things should be done.


Each team member presents a different challenge to the project manager. I'm not saying you'll always have control issues with project team members on every project. Many projects can go off without a hitch in terms of project team members’ behaviors, compliance, and cooperation. However, sooner or later you will encounter a situation where your authority is challenged or conflict arises with another project team member or a team member just isn't following through on the tasks assigned to them and they are not focusing well on the project as a whole. What you have is a control issue. You're the project manager and you've now lost some degree of control over that resource or your project team in general. That is definitely not a good thing and you must correct the situation quickly if you hope to maintain your reputation as a good project manager and leader in your organization.


In order to keep your project on track, you must take swift action. There are three general steps to take, in order, to resolve the situation or remove the problem behavior: a one-on-one meeting with the problem team member, a meeting with that individual’s direct manager, and removal of the problem team member from the project, if necessary. Let’s examine these three in more detail…


Meet with the resource


As an experienced leader, you must know that your first and best course of action is to go directly to the source of the issue – the project resource that is causing harm to the team and the project. Discuss the situation with him, let him know – once again – who the project leader and primary decision-maker is, and layout what the next steps will if be if compliance does not begin immediately. How firm or friendly you want to be during this ‘session’ will likely depend on a few things: how desperate the situation is, how much longer you have to work together on the engagement, how destructive his behavior has become, and how he seems to be reacting to your corrective intervention. Hopefully, this discussion will resolve the issue and set his behavior back on the right course. If not…


Meet with the resource's supervisor


The next step, if the first doesn’t work, is to meet with his direct supervisor. After all, this is the person directly responsible for hiring him, firing him, and evaluating his performance. Let the supervisor know there is a problem on the project and that this resource is still not falling into compliance even after you’ve had a one-on-one discussion with him. Let him make the next attempt at corrective action.


Have them removed from the project


Finally, if the situation has either gone to far that the individual can no longer be trusted on the project or if the first two steps fail to correct the situation, then the only option left is to remove the individual from the team. Put in a request immediately for a skilled replacement, discuss the situation with the project customer if they are not already aware of the problem, and onboard the replacement resource as quickly as possible. It’s critical that the transition be smooth in order to keep customer confidence and satisfaction as high as possible.


Summary


You hate to go to extremes. It can be disruptive the team, to the customer and to the forward progress of the project. However, it is far worse to lose control of your project and the team as a whole and that's where you'll be heading if you don't take swift corrective action. You must show both your team and your customer that you can keep the project on track in order to maintain their confidence and cooperation.

I've been a self-employed IT consultant and author for a long time - more than a dozen years to be exact. But 2020 came along and changed things a bit. The COVID-19 pandemic changed how many of us work, where many of us work, and 2020 also changed my family's life significantly as cancer entered our family in March 2020 in the form of our 11 yr old son's Leukemia diagnosis. 

There's nothing like learning your own child has cancer - after two weeks of strange pains and illnesses I remember exactly where I was when the blood tests came back and the doctor called my phone. Just like when I heard about 9/11, John Lennon being shot, and the Vegas mass shooting nightmare killing 58 concert goers (and my 20 yr old daughter was not at home!)... you remember where you were when... but it's 1000x times worse when it's your kid+cancer.

The Need

Fast forward to May 2021 and I've informally started "Macs 4 Cancer Kids." The ultimate goal - get Mac equipment (MacBooks, MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, and iPads) in the hands of kids receiving cancer treatments - starting with the great institutions giving them daily, weekly and monthly treatments. I've watched my son go through his treatments sitting one foot away from me through chemo, infusions, transfusions and lumbar punctures and these drugs that help also hurt in the form of nausea, dizziness, vomiting and pounding various organs in your body into submission and dropping your immune systems to ZERO. Chemo may be keeping cancer in check or in remission or headed toward remission, but a cold next week may kill them or land them in the hospital for months. It's a rollercoaster.

This tech helps distract them while they receive treatment. It helps them do homework or schoolwork or even online teaching/learning lessons when they are getting treatment or have to stay somewhat isolated from the rest of the world because they have no immune system and therefore no way to fend off what others could pass along to them.

What You Can Do Today - Don't Wait... Cancer Doesn't Wait

Here's how you can help. Do you have new or used (and basically working) Mac equipment laying around? Send it to me for this program - I will get it into the right hands. Still want to help but don't have any equipment? Money will be needed to support this - batteries will need to be purchased, power cords, RAM, other fixes, delivery costs and operating costs as this process grows. Everything will help. So, if you feel led, there are 3 main ways to help... 4 actually...
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• Prayer
• Equipment
• Funds
• Passing this info to others who can help

More info soon - but for now... thank you!!!  And donate and/or pass this to more and more colleagues... Email me or contact me through the contact form on my site and I will get you the information on how/where and what to send. But please consider helping! Today.... not next week or next month... you can make a huge difference in someone's life and make a doctor or nurse's job easier as they are treating a distracted and not screaming child! I've heard the screams - every trip to the cancer clinic and hospital has them... it's the things nightmares are made of and you can help make that better. Make lives better! SPREAD THE WORD! Thanks!

Two ways to donate right now: 

Send your un-needed tech equipment to me ASAP - contact me for address details

OR

Donate to the Macs 4 Cancer Kids GoFundMe campaign right now.

Thank you!!

Remote management and virtual teams work. And we are seeing more of that movement and preference in 2020 from the pandemic and 2021 both from the pandemic and preference to continue. Workers preference and organizational preference.

​One current LinkedIn survey is asking respondents where they prefer to work from: Office, Home or Hybrid of Both. With over 10,000 responses so far, it’s clear that the preference is at least partially from home. The numbers look like this: Hybrid 49%, Home 36%, and Office 15%. So a whopping 85% prefer to work at least partially from home or feel that’s where they do their best work.

Basic risk management on projects hasn’t changed much over time. During the planning phase of any project, the project manager and team need to plan for risks. Plain and simple. Do we manage risk on every project? Sadly, no… or at least not in enough detail. Should we? Definitely. Risk management should be part of every project – even simple projects. Whether you give it an hour or you give it two weeks – risk management always deserves at least a cursory consideration on the project planning checkoff sheet. For detailed and high-tech projects, you will be gravely sorry if you don’t include an adequate amount of time for risk management. For any risk management process there are several key steps to consider as you plan for a successful project.

Document a risk plan​

As the project manager, it is your responsibility to formally document (at the very beginning of the project) how you and your team – along with the customer’s help – will go about identifying, documenting and reacting to risks throughout the project. Gain the customer’s buy-in and sign- off and use it as the yardstick of reference as you move along in your risk management process.

You think you know all there is about project management or can learn it in two weeks if you lack the experience. How hard can it be, right? You’ve managed resources before, right? Ok, let’s move forward and look at what goes into managing a project….
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Statement of work. Project budget. Project resource plan. Project charter. Project communication plan. Project schedule. Project test plan. Project implementation plan. Technical project documents like the functional design document and technical design document. All of these are put in place just to make the project manager’s life very complicated. That isn’t true, of course, but it seems that way sometimes. Let’s consider what I believe to be are five key things that you need to know right now about managing a project that may clear your mind and help you go into a big project with the right expectations and frame of thought…