The Project Management Podcast

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A few weeks ago, Cornelius Fichtner was interviewed by Martin Berneburg and Oliver Lehmann of the Project Business Foundation about his career as a project manager, project leader and experience in project busines management. Here is the announcement:

For many practitioners in project management, Cornelius Fichtner is a household name. He is known mostly for the digital offerings of his company OSP International LLC, such as the PM PrepCast for project managers heading for the PMP® certification of PMI®, the Project Management Institute.

Meanwhile, his lineup of exam preparation tools was expanded by a family of further podcasts, augmented with simulators and inhouse offerings for corporations.

Much less known are his personal roots in project management and particularly in project business management.

Interviewed by Martin Berneburg and Oliver F. Lehmann, he will tell us the most interesting stories of his years as a consultant and project manager under contract, working hard to make the customer happy, but also with the obligation to make the project profitable.

Andrew Kallman, Executive Coach

In the previous episode, Andrew Kallman gave us an introduction to the concept of Flow from the book that he and his brother wrote.

And today, we are going to open up the book - which is called Flow: Get Everyone Moving in the Right Direction...And Loving It - and we are going to look at chapter two more closely. This chapter discusses "Vision" and how that relates to the flow concept.

Some of the topics you'll hear about are prioritization, aha moments, leadership, how flow can be used in scaling of Agile, the importance of trust in the process, and of course, there is always my favorite question at the end of the interview: How can we apply all of this on our projects today?

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Andrew Kallman, Executive Coach

Last week, I must have missed the start of at least three scheduled meetings. In each case, I saw on my calendar that the meetings would start in an hour or less, which meant that I could probably start and finish another task before I had to be at those meetings. And each time, I got so involved in the task I was working on that I lost track of everything around me and the meetings started without me.

In positive psychology, this is called a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone. This is the mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time.

Wouldn’t it be great, if we could apply this to all our projects and everyone working on it? You can.

To see how flow can be applied to our projects, we are welcoming Andrew Kallman to the program. He and his brother Ted Kallman wrote the book Flow: Get Everyone Moving in the Right Direction...And Loving It and Andrew is here today to give us an introduction.

Here is how someone describes the effect flow has had on their projects: Flow is when you know where you are headed, know what your goal is, and know the steps necessary to get there. It's like running a race. You don't plan each step along the way, but you keep your eyes on the finish line, and everything you do moves you toward it thanks to your training.

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The views expressed by Shyam Ramanathan in this interview are his own and not those of his employer

Shyam Ramanathan, PMP, CSSGB, AINS, AU

We live in troubling times. We are facing a global pandemic with many of us following stay-at-home orders, and we see civil and political unrest erupting. There are some political leaders who are stepping up to the challenge, and others not so much.

But what about us project leaders? What can we do to help our project teams, colleagues, organizations and even our social circles face these challenges?

I have invited Shyam Ramanathan to the program today and discuss leadership during crisis and turbulence. Here is what Shyam writes:

In times of crisis like this, we look to leaders for inspiration, hope, and direction. The last word is the key as the first thing to suffer in a crisis is direction. Leaders have a guiding vision for the future and turn to hope when others can only see mud. Let’s hope in this time of enormous crisis it also unearths true leaders who can navigate the turbulent times and move us into a greater future however distant that may seem at this time.

These are the opening words of his article 27 Traits of Strong Leaders in Times of Crisis and Turbulence that we explore in this interview.

Matt Mong and Henrik Lerkenfeld

Matt Mong and Henrik Lerkenfeld of Adeaca are back on the program today to discuss project business from the corporate perspective.

As a reminder, if your company’s products and services are delivered to your clients through projects, then your company is a project business. If we compare this to another industry, then a company that sells consumer goods is a retail business.

In this premium interview, we are going to be discussing the 7 challenges of a project business:

1. Acceptance of Status Quo
2. Failing to identify as a Project Business
3. Optimization of Project Management silos has maxed out
4. Inadequate communication among key stakeholders or “Lack of stakeholder collaboration”
5. Lack of governance/Lack a structured, standardized system of organizing their data
6. Lack of automation
7. Lack of real-time insight