Project Management is weird. You can have the same job title and be a very tactical execution-minded project manager - which is the way most of us start. Or you can be a strategic part of the leadership team, recognized for your ability to help executives make their vision a reality. 

So, how do you develop yourself from tactical implementer to strategic partner? 

This episode we are joined by two experienced leaders, Ralph Kliem and Gregg Richie, who have made this transition, and rose to provide pivotal strategic partnership roles with executive teams to help them develop Disaster Recovery capabilities. In fact, they wrote the book on it: Business Continuity Planning: A Project Management Approach. Ralph and Gregg will talk us through how to step beyond the mindset of a tactical project manager and engage with our leadership teams as a strategic partner.

About our amazing guests, Ralph Kliem and Gregg Richie

Ralph Kliem, M.A.,PMP, CBCP, is the author or co-author of twenty books, including the Management Lessons of the Great Explorers; Political Risk Management and the Global Supply Chain; Business Continuity Planning; and Leading High Performance Projects. He has also published in the Project Management Journal and PM Network. 

He managed numerous business continuity projects and programs for major airplane programs at The Boeing Company as well as financial, operational auditing, and information systems projects. He is now retired after over 40 years in the private and public sectors. 

Gregg D. Richie, has over 40 years of experience in project management.  His education includes a MBA with a specialization in Project Management from Indiana Wesleyan University, a BS in Workforce Education and Development from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and a Master’s Certificate in Applied Project Management from Villanova University.

He has managed, participated in, or consulted on more than 1200 projects in his career, and  He authored three books on Microsoft Project.  As a retired member of the US Navy SEABEES, he uses real-world experiences in teaching project management concepts.

You can follow or connect with Gregg at: 

 @GreggDRichie

https://www.linkedin.com/in/greggrichie/

You can find their book on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Business-Continuity-Planning-Management-Approach/dp/1482251787/ 

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Meetings. Love them or hate them, they are core to what we do as project leaders. We need to pull people together (real or virtually) to discuss, plan, check-in, and get things done. But as we know, when we get people together, sometimes their misbehaviors - “goblins” - tag along, too!

Being able to manage effective meetings can make or break us as PMs. And learning how to manage these misbehaviors in meetings can make or break each meeting. Fortunately, we have help! This episode we are joined by Rich Maltzman of Boston University. Rich and his colleague Jim Steward wrote the book, “Great Meetings Build Great Teams: A Guide for Project Leaders and Agilists.” In this book, Rich and Jim write about these “meeting goblins” - how to identify them, and how to respond effectively to keep your meeting on track. 

Join us and learn how to tame the meeting goblins! 

You can find Rich’s book on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Meetings-Build-Teams-Agilists/dp/1637424752/

And check out the website here: http://projectmeetings.us

You can connect directly with Rich and his co-author, Jim on linked in here: 

Rich: https://www.linkedin.com/in/exclaim/

Jim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimstewartpmp/

And if you would like to study project management with Rich at Boston University, you can read about their globally respected program here: https://www.bu.edu/met/programs/project-management/

About our amazing guest, Rich Maltzman

Rich considers himself a ‘pracademic’ – and is now Master Lecturer at Boston University, an author, and a consultant, providing clients with a deep learning experience and improved results. He had a 40-year career in telecom, mainly in engineering and project management.  At the University level, his focus is always on converting weaknesses into strengths while teaching clients/students how to apply learned skills to everyday situations. 

Rich co-founded EarthPM, LLC, a company devoted to integrating sustainability thinking into project management. His integration of a holistic, global view of project management has resulted in international consulting and speaking engagements in which the focus is the long-term success of projects, with an eye towards ecological and social systems. His blog at the projectmanagement.com site has become very popular.

A co-author of seven books on project leadership, Rich is a former VP of Professional Development for PMI Mass Bay (the Boston area PMI Chapter), and was on the Review Committee for the 7th Edition PMBOK® Guide, helping to assure that sustainability thinking finally made it into the Standard and the Body of Knowledge.

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“What percent done are you?” 

Status reporting is a core skill (and responsibility) of project managers. It is an opportunity for you to check in with your team, and to build rapport and engagement with stakeholders. But it’s also something we often take for granted. 

In this episode, Kate and Kim talk about how to approach status reporting whether your project is big or small, and how to leverage this key communication point to help with overall project success.  

• Why Status Reporting? 

  • Essential for communicating project progress and challenges

  • Builds trust with stakeholders by demonstrating progress

• Tailoring Status Reports

  • Reports should be adapted to audience needs

  • Understanding the audience (executives, team members, stakeholders) is crucial!

• Components of an Effective Status Report

  • Executive Summary: A clear, concise overview

  • Accomplishments: Completed tasks or milestones

  • Upcoming Tasks: Planned activities or next steps

  • Risks and Issues: Key challenges and potential problems

  • Go-to-Green Plan: Strategy for addressing significant off-track areas

  • RAG Status: Red, Amber, Green indicators for project health

  • Budget Status: Financial overview (where applicable)

  • Timeline Overview: High-level graphical representation of key events

• Approaches to Percent Complete

  • Debate on the utility and accuracy of percent-complete metrics

  • Preference for tying status to key milestones over percent completion

• Status Report Frequency and Medium

  • Weekly status meetings with teams

  • Different report cadences for different audience levels (e.g., executive status monthly)

  • Possible mediums: Email, PowerPoint, Slack, or other communication tools

• Challenges in Status Reporting

  • Ensuring stakeholder engagement and consumption of reports

  • Potential pushback on RAG status, especially when reporting red or amber

  • Importance of team input and alignment on report content

• Additional Recommendations

  • Focus on highlighting value and progress in reports

  • Importance of clear, effective communication in status reports

  • Using status reports for accountability and project alignment

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Being a project manager is tough. You are assigned a team of people who may never have with each other (or you) before, and you need to lead them to accomplish a task, solve a problem, or create a new deliverable. And by definition, this is a unique task - so it hasn’t been done before, at least not in this way, for these stakeholders. 

In among these challenges is perhaps the toughest one: you have to lead this group of people. As project managers, these people almost never report to us - someone else is their boss. So, how do we provide leadership and direction to a group of people when you are not their boss? How do you tell them what to do? 

Sure, we could talk about servant leadership and how a PM is a facilitator, who should be working to enable, motivate and coach the team. But in the real world, you need to get these people to get stuff done, or you are all going to fail. 

In today’s episode, Kate and Kim talk about this conundrum, and offer advice based on their real-world challenges trying to get people to do things - who don’t report to them. 

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We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at [email protected] or on Linkedin and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

It can be hard getting a project started correctly: getting the right executive and stakeholder sponsorship and support, getting them all to agree on the scope and approach, getting funding, approvals, and all the other things required to get a project off the ground.

You negotiate with other departments and get committed resource assignments and timelines. You finally get your amazing project off the ground, you’re humming along then, BOOM! The organization changes. 

Your stakeholders change. Your executive sponsors change. The structure or ownership of the organization changes. Your resources are all moved to different teams. 

And you’re caught-out like a PM with a flip-phone at an iphone convention. 

What now? What do you do? How do you re-align your project and ensure its success in the new (or ever changing) organizational environment? This is the problem that Kate and Kim are painfully familiar with, and tackle on this episode. 

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We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at [email protected] or on Linkedin and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

Projects are hard. And a lot of them - maybe most of them - fail to live up to their expectations. Missed timelines, quality issues, budget overages, customer dissatisfaction - it seems sometimes like projects miss the mark more often than they hit it. But why is that? What can we learn from all those past projects that can help us make future projects more successful? 

This is the question Jim Johnson set out to understand. In his years with the Standish Group, he and his team set the benchmark for one of the most respected analysis on project outcomes: the CHAOS Report. Join us in this short chat with Jim, as he tells us about the CHAOS report and some of his most important findings over the years. And maybe like Kate and I, you can also learn some important lessons from all those past project challenges.

About our esteemed guest, Jim Johnson Jim Johnson is the retired founder and past chairman of the Standish Group, a globally respected source of independent primary research and analysis of IT project performance. He is best known for his research on why projects fail, as well as on system costs and availability. He is also a pioneer of modern research techniques such as virtual focus groups and case-based analytical technology.

Get your copy of the CHAOS report here: 

https://standishgroup.myshopify.com/ 

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Creative decision making is key to what we do in all our projects. According to FourSight, there are 4 distinct voices in the decision making process. Do you have these voices in the room when you make decisions? Do you know when you need all 4 voices - or only a couple specific ones? 

We are joined today by Teresa Lawrence who gave one of the most fun and engaging talks at this past year’s PMI Global Summit in Las Vegas. She talks us through the FourSight approach to creative problem solving, the 4 voices in decision making, and also reveals the results of Kim and Kate’s FourSight assessment on the air! 

Best of all, you can do this too! Check out our page at https://pmhappyhour.com/foursight and sign up to get your own FourSight assessment and join Kim, Kate, Teresa and your fellow Happy Hour fans as we get our results and learn how we can better approach creative problem solving ourselves and with our teams. 

About our amazing guest, Teresa Lawrence, PhD, PMP, CSM Teresa Lawrence is an influencer and SME on the integration of creativity and Creative Problem Solving (CPS) into Project Management. Since 2017, she has facilitated, trained and consulted to over 85K people since 2017. Investing years of experience in you.  She was a 2019 Small Business Administration Home-based Business of the Year. A cognitive diversity trainer, she joins us today from Florida.

Find out more about the Teresa’s work and FourSight

• You can read more about Teresa's work and even engage her to help facilitate your team here: http://internationaldeliverables.com/ 
• You can read about the FourSight assessment here: https://www.foursightonline.com/ 

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We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at [email protected] or on Linkedin and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

“I know the world is ending, but do you have wifi here?”

Sounds funny, but it’s deadly serious. Natural disasters impact critical infrastructure that we depend on every day: shelter, fresh water, food distribution, and power. These are the ones we think about. 

But what about communication? 

How do relief agencies, police, fire, and government coordinate a disaster response when there is no power, no cell signal, no wifi? How do community members communicate with each other, find out where to get aid, or reach out to loved ones who are worrying about them if there is no functioning communication infrastructure - or even a place to charge your phone? 

Enter the ITDRC! The Information Technology Disaster Resource Center is a non-profit organization that sends teams and equipment to disaster areas to provide communication and technology services. The PM’s involved are truly project management heroes, and we get to hear from one of them today, Charis Mayhorn.  

About our amazing guest, Charis Mayhorn

Charis Mayhorn is a Network Architect.  In her day job, she designs IP networks, advises leadership and boards on infrastructure best practices, and guides cross-team collaboration.  In her free time, she volunteers with ITDRC.

Find out more about the ITDRC here:

• Volunteer and read more about the ITDRC on their website, https://itdrc.org/ 

• Check out this video of a 2 day ride along during Hurricane Ian response: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgbzRiqHnvE  

• Read about the ITDRC’s other activities at https://medium.com/@ITDRC 

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STUMP THE PM’S!

We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at [email protected] or on Linkedin and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

Decisions make or break your project - starting with the decision of whether or not to even do your project. Beyond that, we have planned decisions / phase gates and ad-hoc decisions that happen throughout the entire life of our project. And if you’ve been around long enough, you know that one bad decision can sink your whole project - or at least have it taking on water, fast. 

So, how should we approach decision making in a logical way which helps ensure that:

1. The right decisions get made

2. Decisions get made by the right people

3. Decisions are not revisited any more than they absolutely have to

To help answer these questions, this episode we are joined by Project Management mentor, consultant and YouTube PM star Kandis Porter! If you don’t know Kandis, you must check out her extensive youtube channel covering a lot of great Project Management topics. 

In today’s episode, Kandis will help us understand: 

• Why should we care so much about project decisions? 

• How should you approach decision making? 

• Kandis shares her “D.I.D.I.” framework for decision making

• How do you ensure your decisions stick? 

• What are some “worst practices” for decision making that we should avoid

And along the way, we may throw in some horror stories about bad decision making that we can hopefully learn from

About our amazing guest, Kandis Porter

Kandis Porter is the Founder and Managing Director of Effective Flow Connections (EFC), a management consulting company that helps transform organizations through project management, process improvement, change management, facilitation of key meetings, and training. Kandis also works one-on-one with clients, focusing on Leadership development and growth. EFC enables organizations to do what they do, even better! 

Kandis Porter has more than 18 years of experience managing people and large projects in both the government and private sectors. She has supported clients in various industries, to include the Department of Defense, Federal Aviation Administration, utilities, medical device, health care, non-profit, and learning & development. 

Kandis has a Master of Science Degree in Project Management (MSPM) from The George Washington University and Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Human Resources. In addition, she is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), PMP Exam Prep Course Instructor through Project Management Institute, Prosci Change Manager, and Six Sigma Green Belt. She is also certified as a Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Practitioner, Thomas-Kilmann Instrument (TKI) Practitioner, and is a Wiley DiSC Workshop facilitator. 

Before joining the consulting industry, Kandis proudly spent more than seven years on Active Duty in the United States Air Force and is passionate about giving back to veterans and their families. 

Check out some of Kandis’ amazing content here:

YouTube: Kandis Porter - YouTube

Website: Kandis Porter - effectiveflowconnections.com

Kandis also has a book being released in early 2023 called ‘Good Decisions Equal Success’; coauthored with good friend and CEO, Damon Lembi

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STUMP THE PM’S!

We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at [email protected] or on Linkedin and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

Yeah! One of our favorite guests, Tim Creasey, returns! This time we are talking about what happens if you realize, too late in the game, that you really didn’t consider Change Management enough in your planning cycle. 

It’s such a universal experience of a project manager to not have change management, and so many of us end up in these situations where we struggle to see the real benefits of a change we’ve implemented.  We figured: why not start where most of us end up: in trouble!

Join Kate and Kim as we talk with Tim about how to recover.

About our amazing guest, Tim Creasey

An author, researcher, change expert and human, Tim focuses on the people-side of change with process, wit and vigor. Tim’s work forms the foundation of the world’s largest body of knowledge on change management. His role as Chief Innovation Officer at Prosci gives him unparalleled insight into change management challenges, trends and futures. Having spoken to hundreds of thousands of people around the globe, Tim is authentic, knowledgeable and unassumingly funny. He enables audiences with valuable data and actionable information.

And here are some links to some of Tim’s other amazing content:

8 Alignment Hacks That Enhance Change Management Today

While formal approaches to Change Management are a must for people-dependent projects and complex transformations, sometimes simple adjustments can help teams and colleagues remove roadblocks and enable rapid change during uncertain times.

Why Change Management

People are the common denominator for achieving project success and business outcomes and the research is clear: Initiatives with excellent change management are six times more likely to succeed.

Taking Charge of Change Training Program

Prosci’s Taking Charge of Change 1-day program will help you get started on delivering change success through people.

Tim’s LinkedIn Profile

Connect with Tim on LinkedIn and keep the change management conversation going!

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STUMP THE PM’S!

We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at [email protected] or on Linkedin and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

As a project manager, the time you get with an executive sponsor is critical: you don’t get much of it and you cannot blow it! For many of our listeners, you may be new to executive meetings. But, how do you get the most out of these meetings and give a good impression so you can get the confidence of your executive sponsors? It’s something we ALL struggle with and can all get better with. 

On today’s show, Kate and Kim talk through how to win with these meetings. Jokingly the 30/60/90 minute plan (30 minute meeting after 60 hours of preparation and 90 pounds of stress eating), we talk you through: 

• Knowing your audience
• How to present to execs 
• How to tell your story

JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR!

Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership

STUMP THE PM’S!

We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at [email protected] or on Linkedin and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.