Leadership for Project and Executive

Business and projects are complex systems. The people that run them need to create organizations and teams that can learn and grow. This classic business book is a great treatise how to become a better lead and run a better project.

This revised edition of Peter Senge ’s bestselling classic, The Fifth Discipline, is based on fifteen years of experience in putting the book ’s ideas into practice. As Senge makes clear, in the long run the only sustainable competitive advantage is your organization ’s ability to learn faster than the competition. The leadership stories in the book demonstrate the many ways that the core ideas in The Fifth Discipline, many of which seemed radical when first published in 1990, have become deeply integrated into people ’s ways of seeing the world and their managerial practices.

This book is currently under review, more details will be added when available

Tired of hearing about change and how your project is implementing it, but have no idea how to make it happen? ADKAR is the gold standard process to follow to help make that happen. This, and a little leadership, will get you ahead of the pack.

Why do some changes fail while others succeed?

How can you make sense of the many tools and approaches for managing change?

How can you lead change successfully, both in your personal life and professional career?

Excellent project managers are relationship builder both with the project team and the stakeholders. You need to continually build those skills and build trust.

Leadership is an art. As a project manager you need to become a better leader. You will not find that in any single book or class. You need to learn, study and practice. It helps you develop tools to better understand the difficult situations you face daily.

Since its original publication in 2000, Leadership and Self-Deception has become a word-of-mouth phenomenon. Its sales continue to increase year after year, and the book ’s popularity has gone global, with editions now available in over twenty languages.

Through a story everyone can relate to about a man facing challenges on the job and in his family, the authors expose the fascinating ways that we can blind ourselves to our true motivations and unwittingly sabotage the effectiveness of our own efforts to achieve success and increase happiness.

Do you need to persuade someone that your project is worth doing? Maybe you are the CEO and need to sell a new vision and the project to go with it.. If so, you need to Start With Why. Too often your first reaction is to start with what and that will not inspire people to meet your dream.

Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty?

Projects drive change and you need to get people to switch to that change to make your project successful. Switch is a great book on how to help make that happen.

Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives?

Or... I Think I Can

I have a book that sits in the bookshelf behind my desk and has been there for as long as I have had a desk—The Little Engine That Could, by Watty Piper. I have read it numerous times to each of my children and soon to my granddaughter, Kennedy. Each time I open it, the smell takes me back to my Dad's lap and a time when life was much easier. A time when my vocabulary was devoid of the word project. I am not sure if there is a direct connection between that word and life's simplicity, it is probably just an coincidence.

The west coast of the United States is where I call home. Many refer to us as "left coaster" because... well... that is how it looks on a map and many of us are politically a little further to the left than others. Around here, common thought is that everyone should be open-minded. A sentiment that I proudly subscribe to as I lack most prejudices. You can imagine my shock when I found out that my unbiased presumptions are not only undesirable, but also undeniably wrong.

There I was, in a posh Montreal hotel conference room, two customers on one side of the table, and my client and me on the other. Taped to the back of my laptop lid was a conference-center supplied piece of paper with a hastily scrawled note on it. The entire message consisted of only two letters followed an exclamation mark. The letters were "N" and "O." They sent a succinct message that was hard to ignore as the customer incessantly strove to get a little more functionality brought into the failing project's scope. For every request, I would drop my chin slightly, look over the top of my glasses, tap my right index finger on the top of my laptop, and they would relent. Instead of being a pessimistic curmudgeon, I was bringing realism about the budget and timeline and doing what leaders do—making hard decisions.