Brad Brezinski

”The role of the project manager is rapidly changing to that of a business leader. That’s good news, if you’re ready.”
~Mark Langely, CEO, PMI

As the saying goes, admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. Technical skills and credentials, though helpful, account for less than 20% of all project success. Those who have a knack for getting things done through the collective efforts of others have developed 3 desperate skills that have been shown to deliver results time and again. The good news is they can be developed by anyone who so desires. The bad news is most people don’t know what they are or how to develop them. Until now.

In this talk, Brad will discuss the 3 skills that every project managers needs to be successful in a complex and uncertain world and what you can do to develop them further.

Many managers believe that logically advantageous ideas will sell themselves; that the obvious benefits of a new idea will be widely realized by the rest of the organization, and that the idea will spread rapidly with great enthusiasm! Unfortunately, experience and statistics tell us this is rarely the case, and the underlying cause is frequently misdiagnosed.

There exists a hidden network of communications in every organization through which new ideas diffuse. And the larger the organization, the larger and more complex this network becomes. Yet, while the overwhelming majority of communications occur there, little (if any) consideration is given to it, especially in the early design stages of a new initiative. It’s the shadow network, and it could hold the key to understanding why many strategic initiatives fail and what management teams can do about it.

Henry Mintzberg has referred to strategy as “a pattern in a stream of decisions.”

For the manager, there are only streams of decisions – constant and unrelenting, with imperfect information. Everything else is context. Collectively over time, these decisions shape the behavioral norms of the company and establish its strategic nature. Yet, too few managers spend any time thinking about their approach to decision making, let alone how to improve their approach over time. This is particularly true where strategic decisions are concerned, which leaves us to ask (and answer): What makes and decision strategic? And, how should our approach to decision making change when faced with a strategic decision?