Philip Diab's Thoughtstream
Blog Post, Articles, Podcasts, & Videos
Contracts and the Project Manager – Podcast
Contracting is often considered a huge challenge for project managers. Some even consider it a waste of time. Developing a rich, detailed understanding of the contract's terms and conditions is vital to ensuring that the organization is protected. Asking the project...
What is more important for Project Managers, EQ or IQ? – Podcast
Emotional intelligence has taken the business world by storm. Organizations find it vital that employees have EQ to work together in a harmonious and effective way. But is good, old brain power sometimes necessary in running a project? It is enough to be able to get...
Project Team Member Skills Development – Podcast
Organizations in the US spent over $70B last year on professional development and training for their staff. In the context of skills development whose job should it be to help team members advance? More specifically, do project managers play a role in coaching and...
What’s more important facts or stakeholder perceptions? – Podcast
In project management circles, a significant amount of time and money is spent trying to ensure proper delivery of projects. Companies and professional associations spend scarce resources trying to ensure project success through better methodologies, approaches, and...
Formal Training Versus On the Job Experience – Podcast
Organizations differ widely in their approach to developing their human resources. Some feel like placing them in a classroom to get knowledge from an instructor will deliver the greatest gains for the business. Others think that learning tasks and new ideas on the...
The Project Manager’s Role in Strategy Setting – Podcast
Few questions in project management are harder to answer yet vitally important to address than the role of the project manager in strategy. Should the PM know how to work with executives to develop strategy? Perhaps they need to understand how to translate strategy...
Corporate Culture, Projects, & Transformation – Podcast
Peter Drucker famously said that strategy eats culture for breakfast. Best practice typically has dictated that new strategies and project management methodologies must be created with the corporate culture in mind to ensure adoption. In this episode we explore the...
Project Teams and Organizations – Podcast
Building teams that enhance project success by their strong performance is a worthy goal for any organization. Deliberate work on building teams that perform at a higher level can foster success in projects and beyond, but then what? Some organizations approach high...
Innovation in Project Management & Methodologies – Podcast
Innovation remains a hot topic across industries, with organizations and professionals trying to find the key to finding an innovative new product or service. This is just as true in project management as in every other profession, innovation on projects and in...
How does traditional risk planning fail us?
I was listening to a news program last night about current events. One of the commentators said something that caught my attention and I thought that it is a perfect way of describing the challenges that project management practitioners have with risk planning. While...
Executive Sponsors & Project Managers – Podcast
Get any group of project managers together and ask about the importance of the executive sponsor and you will get likely get two reactions. First, they will say that a great executive sponsor is a key for success. All Project Managers will typically agree with this...
Accidental Project Managers Versus Intentional Project Managers – Podcast
In the world of project management, there are two types of professionals, those who choose the profession intentionally and those who find it by accident. Much has been made of the accidental project manager, often an exceptionally strong performer who is rewarded...
Is Cultural Diversity Bad for Projects?
Conventional wisdom in today's business environment is that diversity is good for business. If your organization is marketing a product, it would benefit greatly from having cultural diversity within its team because it would be more aligned with potential cultural...
Shifting assumptions, big picture or details?
Last week I had an out of town meeting, about an hour away from my house. About 45 minutes out my car started making a funny noise and my dashboard flashed the low pressure tire sensor light. I found a place to pull over into a run down gas station. When I checked my...
Project Managers & Industry Knowledge – Podcast
Project Management Debate Podcast Introduction
I am pleased to announce the launch of a new podcast titled Project Management Debate Podcast that includes weekly episodes exploring different topics related to project management, transformation, strategy, and leadership. The format of this 15-20 minute...
Puzzles and Project Management
A few days ago a friend of mine shared a post from "puzzled" which includes a picture with hidden words that readers are encouraged to find. What fascinates me about this type of picture is not the fact that it was shared over 800K times on Facebook, although that...
PMO Structure or Process
The reasons behind setting up a PMO are diverse but often are linked to a set of challenges related to organizational projects. Many of my clients have articulated an inability to keep track of progress on projects and a lack of visibility to enable proactive...