Workshops and Seminars
y workshops
and seminars are designed to provide lasting insight and permanent
skills improvement. I do this using an experiential/cognitive
educational style. Every workshop comes with no-fee
options intended to prepare workshop participants for an
experience that will make a real difference in how they do their
jobs. Click on the title of each workshop or seminar to see more
detailed descriptions of content, structure and goals.
Read what people say about my programs.
Most of these topics are also available in teleseminar format.
The Race to the South Pole: Ten Lessons for Project Managers
On 14 December 1911, four men led by Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole.
Thirty-five days later, Robert F. Scott and four others followed. Amundsen had
won the race to the pole. Amundsen's party returned to base on 26 January,
1912. Scott's party perished. As historical drama, why this happened is
interesting enough, but to project managers, the story is
fascinating. Lessons abound. This program provides some much-needed relief from the
sometimes-dry presentations about project management.
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The Politics of Meetings for People Who Hate Politics
There's a lot more to running an effective meeting than having the right room, the right equipment, and the right people.
With meetings, the whole really is more than the sum of its parts. How the parts interact with each other and with external
elements is as important as the parts themselves. And those interactions are the essence of politics for meetings.
This program explores techniques for leading meetings that are based on understanding political interactions, and
using that knowledge effectively to meet organizational goals.
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Team Communication in Enterprise Emergencies
In a single day, your brand can collapse — or it can re-emerge stronger than ever. From Tylenol to JetBlue, nobody is
exempt. The outcome depends on how well you communicate to each other. Enterprise emergencies almost always entail
complex technological issues. Some of us understand them, but most of us don't. That's the technology divide. To
successfully communicate within an emergency management team, team members must know what non-technical leaders need;
ask for what they need from technical leaders; prepare for the emergency environment; deal with situations that run off
the rails; listen to others and manage their own responses; and manage the risks of metaphors. And most of all, they
must recognize that the emergency environment is unforgiving. Learn what it takes to succeed as a team in
enterprise emergencies.
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Great Teams Workshop
Occasionally we have the experience of belonging to a great team. Thrilling as it is, the experience is rare. In part,
it's rare because we strive only for adequacy, not for greatness. We do this because we don't fully appreciate the
returns on greatness. Not only does it feel good to be part of great teram — it pays off. It pays off, but it takes
work.
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Organizational Politics for People Who Hate Politics
Have you ever felt powerless to implement an important new idea? Have you ever been "blind-sided" at a meeting?
Have you ever lost two good employees because you could find no way to keep them from attacking each other? These are
some of the issues of organizational politics. Many of us have become enmeshed in politics from time to time, but we've
also known some people who seem to be able to engage and prosper. How is that done? The good news: we
can learn how.
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Human-Centered Risk Management
Too often, risk management plans address technologies and markets, and fail to address internal issues such as
reorganizations, workplace politics, toxic conflict and reductions in force. In this program we explore a framework
for addressing the issues that arise as a result of human behavior — and misbehavior.
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Distributed Team Assessment Services
Driven by acquisitions, strategic partnerships, and your broadening reach into expanding markets,
your organization's team efforts have become gradually more distributed over the country or the globe.
Yet, you're unsure that the management techniques you're using are as effective as they could be, even though they
worked pretty well in the face-to-face environment. A Distributed Team Assessment identifies your opportunities
for improvement.
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Managing Virtual Teams for Real Results
For years, your organization has perfected project management, and you got
pretty good at it. Then one day, you decided to execute a project using a distributed team.
Eleven time zones, three languages, five countries. It was a disaster, or at best,
well below your organizational standards of performance. Want to get better at managing
distributed teams?
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How to Say No to Power
Knowing how to say no — and hear no — effectively is a critical
skill for project people. Often, pressured parties tire of the tension, or fear sets in, and we
"cave" — we yield to the pressure. Or when we have organizational power we allow ourselves to
hear "yes" when we know that "no" was the right answer. At times, this leads to an
agreement that simply cannot be fulfilled, which then threatens the project's success, and can even
threaten the enterprise. When this happens, saying "no" — or hearing "no" — is
best for the health of the project.
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Interpersonal Communications
Misunderstandings and unintended offenses are just some of the ways interpersonal communication can go wrong.
When we communicate with each other, we run great risks. Analyzing information flow using the Satir Interaction Model,
we gain insight into the elements of the communications process, and we come to a new understanding of how it can go wrong.
In this fun and interactive session, we explore how our communication system works — and doesn't. We'll emphasize
communication under stress, where the most expensive failures occur. And we might just change
how some of us send and receive interpersonal communications.
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Technical Conflict Workshop
Technical teamwork frequently involves conflict.
Although technical conflict is much like other forms of workplace
conflict, it has some special characteristics that sometimes
make it difficult to deal with. This workshop introduces participants
to basic skills for dealing with conflict, and prepares them
for the special situations that can appear in the technical context.
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Who's Doing Your Job?

A common problem bedevils any of us who "wear
two hats" — inherent conflict between the roles we play.
If your job requires that you play two or more roles that inherently
conflict, it makes sense to ask "Who's doing your job?"
Is one of the roles dominant? If you can achieve the right balance,
you can be more effective at all of the roles your job requires.
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Advanced Project Management
Your organization understands project management.
You have schedules and budgets, you get frequent status reports,
and every project manager is an ace at using one or another project
scheduling software package. But projects still come in late
and over budget, people are working long hours most of the time,
and you spend entirely too much time fighting fires. Why? What
does it take to get things to run smoothly? What are you missing?
This workshop in Advanced Project Management is intended for
organizations that have a project orientation, and have solid
experience applying project management skills, but somehow find
that the results they're getting are disappointing. We explore
possible causes, define their relationship to project success,
show how conventional project management practice fail to address
them, and give participants practice with the interventions needed
to mitigate their effects. More
Spreadsheet Models for Managers
Whether you are a manager responsible for people
working on business models, or whether you build models yourself,
this course is invaluable. Learn how to model business processes,
how to construct models that are easier to understand and maintain,
and at the same time, more useful and reliable. Course includes
tools, macros, tips and techniques to make life easier for modelers
who use Microsoft ® Excel.
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Statistical Methods for HR Professionals
Whether your specialty is compensation, training/development or benefits,
statistical analysis tools offer powerful methods for measuring and
monitoring organizational performance. This workshop shows HR professionals how to use
Microsoft ® Excel to calculate and present statistics on benefits usage, compensation, evaluations
and a host of other data sets that you deal with every day. And it includes a set of macros
that make Excel's built-in capabilities much more convenient to use.
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Spreadsheet Clinic
Spreadsheets are everywhwere. But are they "right?"
Can you build them as fast as you need to? Are the spreadsheets
you build easy to use? Or is your company now completely dependent
on the authors of key spreadsheets used every day for tracking
projects, budgeting, or reporting? The Spreadsheet Clinic shows
you how to build spreadsheet models and tools that are easier
to use, cheaper to maintain, faster to develop and above all,
more reliable.
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Technical Emergency Management Planning Workshop
Much of the available advice about emergency
preparedness makes the assumption that somehow you have succeeded
in making preparation a priority when there is still enough time
to do it in a routine manner. Since that is rarely the situation,
this workshop assumes that the emergency is either already upon
you, or that it is imminent, and there is not enough time to
prepare in the usual take-forever, yet-another-meeting, plan-then-plan-some-more
manner. We'll assume that you're in a situation in which business
as usual just won't cut it. Which leaves just one place to go — business
as
unusual. More
Technical Leadership Development Workshop
The Technical Leadership Development Workshop
is designed to give participants the tools they need to make
their projects more manageable, less conflicted, and more predictable.
By looking at the project itself as a system — that is, by applying
systems thinking — we move to a viewpoint that enables workshop
participants to recognize new perceptions and behaviors that
can be the basis of project success.
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