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In this episode Jerry Manas gives us additional insights into the gray areas. Because his book is called Managing the Gray Areas, we are concentrating on the actual management process. The tools that Jerry recommends and which we discuss at length are

• Ideals - Standing for something
• Leading by Questioning
• Systems Thinking
• Empathy and Cultural Awareness

Since these are mostly tools from the softer end of managing the gray areas we then go ahead and also spend time looking at a number of hard tools.

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This is a special Episode of The PM Podcast in which we introduce you to a new project management related podcast called PMPOD, hosted by Sebastian Stücker at www.pmpod.de. Here is what Sebastian writes about this episode:

Today the PMPOD features its first interview, which I am very proud of. Also it is the first english episode. To all german listeners, who might be surprised, I explain everything in Episode 3. The topic for todays interview is Project Blame Management. Payson Hall, a management consultant based in Sacramento, California, proposes this as new knowledge area for the PMPOK Guide.

I had lots of fun doing the interview with Payson and I hope you have the same while you listen to this episode.

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Have you ever managed a project where everything was either black or white, yes or no, approved or not approved? You probably haven’t. If your projects are like mine then most decisions that are made are a compromise. You give a little here, you take a little there. In project management nothing is really ever black and white. So don’t adjust your project plan, for you have entered the gray areas. And “Managing The Gray Areas” is the title of the new book written by Jerry Manas, PMP, who joins us on the podcast today to talk about these gray areas and all the tradeoffs that we project managers have to make every single day.

In our Gizmos section we introduce you to a new project management podcast called PMPOD. You can find it at www.pmpod.de .

This episode is reserved for subscribers of the Premium Podcast. Learn how to subscribe to the Premium Podcast to access this interview...

In this episode we continue our discussion with Lee Fischman on experimental projects. However, we shift our focus a bit and discuss successful team management. Lee argues that in order for an experimental project to be successful your team will need to perform a number of roles or "themes". He identified 7 such themes that will make you successful and we are going to look at all 8 of them. And no, that wasn't a typo. Even though we discuss project team management in the context of experimental projects, Lee's findings and recommendations are applicable across the board. Managing teams would be a lot simpler Especially his recap at the end is excellent advice for managing your teams.