Yesterday was day 1.

The Highlight of the day was on the project management tools. Quick take aways from the top of my head are the following. 1. The difference between Innovation projects and implementation projects. 2. Taking risks is necessary but as you do, there are still some aspects that need to be well covered. These are Financial, organisational, legal and partnerships. 3. There are 2 ways to respond to Risks: (a) Avoid, by prevention of evitation and (b). Acceptance, by coping or adaptation.

We also learnt that some of the issues or 'things' I encounter in the process of the projects actually can be 'named' and are better described. This is different than the long verbose statements normally used on describing entities or situations.   For example,

"How do you handle a stakeholder that has quite the means and would really determine on the project's success, whether it will be a success or a failure, but they really need some form of motivation (mostly money) to buy in and also take ownership?"

The universal Project management  lingua franca would be..."How do you engage a High Influence, Low Interest stakeholder". Short, simple, precise and understood by all. 

Day 2.

Today's training was focused on the different personalities and how they affect how the different individuals  should operate and deal with each other as they work together. These differences also run through nations as cultures, therefore nations can also be described as having some 'personality'.

Knowing this is important to projects whose members are drawn from different nationalities. An Example. In the Kenyan context, when somebody responds with the word 'interesting' he does not mean what he has just heard makes sense or he actually needs to hear more, but rather he is politely disagreeing or understood totally nothing. The same expression might be taken as a positive invitation to hear more in other cultures.