What’s in Your Trophy Case?
💡 How do you emotionally prepare for a high stakes negotiation? 💡How do you deal with the stress of delivering a presentation to your executive team? You build a Trophy Case 🏆 Here’s an example that has served me well. During my years as a …
How Many Tough Conversations do You Have in a Day?
Have you ever considered how many tough conversations you have in a typical day? Some days, it seems like an endless series of negotiations and meetings. How do you think you’ve been handling them? Could you do better? As soon as I start feeling my …
Top 7 Traits of Highly Effective Project Managers…and How to Hire One
Hiring a Project Manager is a critical decision for any organization aiming to execute complex technology initiatives successfully. This role not only requires technical acumen but also demands exceptional leadership, strategic thinking, and adeptness in managing both resources and risks. As businesses become increasingly reliant …
De-Risking Recruiting
Finding and hiring the right candidate is challenging. Even after all the background and reference checks are done, it may be take months to realize your new hire isn’t a fit. 🔍 Interviewing Tip: Asking About Challenges 🌟 Question: “Describe one of the toughest days …
Has Collaboration Left the Building?
Have you ever met with a business partner or vendor that continued to quote terms from the contract you had just signed? Did you leave that meeting feeling optimistic about the project or the vendor? From personal experience, every time a vendor has quoted a …
Heavy Metal Connections
I recently returned from a trip to Montreal where I attended two Metallica concerts with my son (his first rock concert!). This post won’t be a review of the shows ( they were awesome! 😁😁😁) The city was buzzing for days before the concerts. I learned …
Great Contracts or Grief?
What’s the point of this post? Everyone from Sales through to Operations benefits from well written Statements of Work. How I learned this lesson A few years ago, while working on a large transformation project, I attended weekly stakeholder meetings where members of our project …
Embrace the X
A consequence of being a leader is inevitably wearing a target on your back. You’re going to make difficult decisions that will not be popular with every member of your team. When I started delivering projects years ago, I used to dread that aspect of …
Are You Comfortable?
The term resilience is being used a lot lately. It’s hard to find a post on LinkedIn without it. A search on Google produces the following definition: The capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. Resilience is a core requirement for courageous …
The Opportunity Dictates the Strategy
During my years of intensive MMA training, I was taught that: The opponent dictates the fight. This was a liberating concept as it removed the pressure to remember ‘moves’ or complicated combinations. The concept was relatively simple; the opponent would present openings through his positioning …