Dr. Deepak Chopra published the Part 2 of his series on stress management (I posted about Part 1 in a previous post) where he dives deeper into the details, and it becomes really interesting.

Stress isn't a disease but the strain of everyday pressures that cannot be escaped, which if narrowed down to the workplace, falls into three categories: time pressure, peer pressure, and the pressure to perform. Since it's pretty rare to be without these pressures, our only choice is to adapt as good as we can, which most often translates into highly ineffective ways to deal with stress:

• React emotionally (and blow up)
• Complain about the pressure (to people who aren't causing it)
• Unload the stress (on someone else)
• Blocking people out who are causing the stress (as much as you can)
• Put up with the stress (until you get a chance to unwind)
• Create even more pressure (it makes you stronger and more competitive)

While these behaviors are unconscious, the choice to interrupt this feedback loop or influence its input (the stressing factor), or its output (your response to the stressing factor), by being more conscious about the whole situation.The more consciously you intervene, the higher your chances of reducing the bad effects of stress. Start by assessing what makes stress damaging in your situation. Psychological studies identify 3 big factors here: repetitiveness, unpredictability and uncontrolability. To deal with stress consciously, break it down into these three components to minimize them in your feedback loop and to assert control where it counts, and to make peace where control is impossible.

I'll continue to summarize this series as and when he publishes next articles, but Dr. Chopra digs deeper into those concepts in his post so I suggest you read it if you have interest in the subject.

Denial is endemic to most project management disciplines. You can find it at all levels of management, in Risk Management, Scope Management, Cost Management, etc. and this is the main reason why the monitoring & controlling functions of a PMO are most often failing. Managers are rather showing a weak green indicator on a report, than acknowledge an amber (or even worse ... a red). But problems that are visible have a better chance of being resolved. Learn how to recognize and reform denial behaviors before they damage your project by reading Saira Karim's post titled Denial in the Project Environment on PMI's blogs.

I read a very interesting article from Dr. Deepak Chopra on LinkedIn titled The Conscious Lifestyle: Facing Your Stress. Since stress is a subject close to my heart (no pun intended), I found it very interesting and wanted to share it here as a personal development item.

Dr. Deepak makes two important points: 1. Stress isn't good for you. 2. The vast majority of people do not deal with their stress effectively. Well, welcome to the club. While each of us is structuring a unique response to stress (there are people with high tolerances for stress and people with low tolerance), if you put soldiers under the high stress of battle, eventually all of them will become shell-shocked unless they are given time away from the front lines: The hormones released in the body's stress response are meant to be temporary. Their effect is to galvanize the fight-or-flight response, which is triggered in a primitive area of the brain. In the stress response, a privileged pathway is opened for dealing with emergencies, while at the same time the brain's higher responses are temporarily suppressed.

No one can healthily sustain the heightened alertness, quick burst of energy, rapid heart rate, elevated blood pressure, and other marks of the fight-or-flight response. Physically, the hormone rush must come to an end, leading to the opposite state - you become drowsy, lose energy, and have a hard time remaining alert and focused. When you are under stress, your mind closes down as an act of self-defense. Stress contributes to hypertension and coronary artery disease, along with susceptibility to infections, insomnia, and much else.

Don't try to make stress your ally, either by toughing it out or turning your back on the problem. Highly competitive people, who boast that they thrive on stress, are living in a fantasy world when you consider the potential for damage to their bodies. The conscious choice is to recognize that modern life is a battleground of low-level stress, sometimes peaking into high stress, that will have a damaging effect over time unless you deal with everyday stressors in a consistent, effective way. I can't wait for the next posts about the best ways to manage stress...

It has been a while since last time I posted, and I apologize to the 43 readers of this blog :p. The reason for my absence from here is that I devoted all my "free" time (whatever that is) to the PMO Symposium 2011 that was held in Orlando last week. I have been involved in the organization of this event for quite some time, but this year I was privileged enough to be the 2011 Program Chairman. That gave me the opportunity to work with a fine cast of speakers for this year's event, and to build and deliver a program that I believe best depicts the current "state-of-the-art" of the PMO's for 2011.

Their thought-provoking presentations really make this event the worldwide reference in the field of PMO's; starting with our two Keynotes from Jim Furfari and Iain Fraser (pictured above on the left, with Rommy Musch, President of the PMI PMO CoP, myself and Craig Letavec, PMO Symposium Chair). For the first time, we have webcasted Iain Fraser's Keynote that you can replay for free during the next couple of weeks. If you could not attend, please give it a shot, it is worth your time.

Another first this year was the launch of the PMO Symposium mobile application, available on iPhone, Blackberry and Android platforms, with all conference details (floor-plans, schedule, speakers bio, and networking feature), which has been warmly welcome by the attendees, despite some challenges due to a late launch. I guess there is only that much we can do.

While I will try to take a couple of hours of rest before going back to my day-job tomorrow, I would also like to extend a big THANK YOU to the PMI PMO Community of Practice leadership team (Craig, Rommy, Art, Darlene, Dan); to the team of volunteers who supported us during the event (Karen, Audra, Elise, Debbie, Scott, Paul and Doug); to the staff of Swank AV and the Loews Royal Pacific for their outstanding service; to the fantastic audience that attended the Symposium this year; and of course to our sponsors and exhibitors who enabled us to bring this conference to you.

Stay tuned, for over the next couple of weeks, I will provide some insight on what has been discussed during the PMO Symposium this year, with some invited guest bloggers.

In March 2011, ESI International conducted a Global PMO Survey: The Global State of the PMO: Its Value, Effectiveness and Role as the Hub of Training. Some of the key findings of this survey were highlighted in a recent seminar I attended in Dubai (Risk Management Practices for Establishing and/or Sustaining a Project Management Office by Raed Hadddad):

• There is a paradigm shift from PMO Maturity to PMO Value and benefits realization
• There is a general struggle in measuring the PMO effectiveness, and in defining the appropriate metrics for this measurement
• The PMO sometimes acts as a hub of project management training, but does not measure the impact of this training in effective performance
• Most of the PMOs operate more at a tactical level and are not involved in portfolio management or benefits realization

All those topics and more will be covered during PMI's 2011 PMO Symposium in Orlando in November. If you are interested in getting more out of your PMO, make sure you do join.