Organizations that invest in strategic prioritization deliver 40% more value. This seems like reason enough to invest in improving the project prioritization process, yet many organizations don’t realize that their current process is broken; it’s evolved over time, it worked last year… But this is like the proverbial frog in a pan of water. The environment is changing around us all the time, and if we don’t have a well-structured process for recognizing and reacting to the change… well, to combe back to the frog analogy, you get boiled but don’t notice until it’s too late. So in this blog, we’ll …

Emergence of CPOs.We think 2016 is the year of that the CPO position – or Chief Project Officer – begins to get real traction. In the late 1980’s many technical experts and business leaders were suggesting that Chief Information Officers (CIOs) would be the next critical C-level position in organizations. It happened. We’ve also seen the emergence of CFOs in the last decade and now CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers). My prediction for the next big C-level position to emerge is the CPO. It may mean the end of PMO directors and/or centralized project management offices (PMOs)…we will have to see …

Christmas is special, in part, because it only happens once a year. Building on that concept, Mark Horstman, co-founder of Manager Tools, coined the “Christmas rule”: “If you do it rarely, and it’s important, you’re likely to underperform.” Christmas is a major activity for many of us. Since we don’t look for decorations and cook a turkey every day, it’s no wonder that we struggle with planning Christmas. Planning projects have just the same difficulty. The Christmas rule means we can’t expect to be highly proficient at tasks that we do infrequently. That’s why it feels so difficult when we …

Some experts say that if you aren’t on LinkedIn, you don’t exist. This could be true, but it does seem a little extreme. My existence as a professional is void because I don’t have a LinkedIn account? As it turns out, there are many reasons why career experts and hiring authorities speak so highly of LinkedIn. Here are the top five reasons why maintaining a strong LinkedIn presence is so important for every professional. The Networking Possibilities Roughly 380 million professionals from around the world are on LinkedIn, which means the opportunities for establishing new business and career connections through the platform are almost endless. There …

It was a Thursday night at 5pm. As I drove to pick up my 16-month old son from day care, I spoke to a client who was in a bit of a pickle. He needed help with an urgent sales proposal. It needed to be presented to a bigwig, potential client at lunchtime the next day. As he spoke, my mind raced to work out if, and how, I could fit in helping him. My fiancé was working late that night. I still had to go home, cook dinner, feed my son, bath him then put him to bed. Time …

In the 1979 movie, The Life of Brian, the Monty Python crew all asked the question, “What have the Romans ever done for us?” It seems that PMOs are getting the same treatment. According to recent research by ESI, 72% of PMOs are being called into question, mostly by senior management. Putting the most negative spin on this, it means that nearly ¾ of PMOs are simply not seen to be delivering the goods… Ouch! So let’s unpack that a little. Top Three Reasons The following are the top three reasons that PMOs are being questioned: 1) In 44% of …