Presentations

Below is a list of our most frequently requested speaking topics. Connect with us to schedule a presentation for your organization or association. We also customize or create entirely new programs based upon your timely and relevant input. Use the connections page to book an event or to make suggestions or requests for a customized program.

Working With Humans
While most managers excel at “how things work,” many of us are greatly challenged in the realm of “how people work.” While such things as schedules, budgets, deliverables, and requirements management are all critical to business success, an over-emphasis on how things work at the expense of attention to team leadership, team and sponsor buy-in, and stakeholder management also dooms results.

This session empowers you with models and insights to provide dynamic team leadership. You will learn frameworks for assessing the development of your team members, and for appropriately leading them to success through core coaching skills.

Interest Negotiation in a Project Environment
This session explores the “Getting to Yes” framework for successful negotiation in any environment. Since projects always involve give and take around cost, time, quality and resources, this is an ideal model for surfacing interests in a non-combative way.

Interest negotiation is an approach that shifts a negotiation from one based on position (having the characteristic of only one potential outcome) to one based on interest (having the characteristic of more than one way.)

During this presentation, we will explore the various styles of managing conflict and examine the “Getting to Yes” framework. Participants will practice the art of true collaboration by planning for and conducting a live negotiation using the 5 steps for getting to YES!

Ten Biggest Mistakes Project Managers Make
Those who are not aware of the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. This session explores the most common mistakes project managers everywhere make. More importantly, we will discuss what to do about them. The session begins with participants identifying a top ten list based on their experience.

Buckle Up for Xtreme Project Management
This is not your daddy’s project management anymore! Many 3rd millennium projects exist in an environment of uncertainty. In this session you will learn how to proceed in environments of uncertain goals and uncertain requirements. We will discuss traditional, adaptive and Xtreme models and apply them to projects you may have been a part of in the past.

Creating a Powerful Three Year Vision
The year after the year after next – have you thought about where you wanted yourself or your business to be exactly three years from today?? We present the importance of having an idea where you are headed, and give you the tools you and your team need to get there. Create a powerful three year vision – for yourself as well as your business. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will do!

Plan the Time to Plan
The single biggest obstacle that our clients report in the process of making transformational change is ‘lack of time’. There is no such thing as ‘lack of time’ – only an inability to prioritize time effectively. Allocating the time – well in advance – for strategic planning, strategic thinking and strategic action is one of the most important habits that you can develop, and it’s what this session is all about.

Lead a Championship Work Team
Our belief is that you should focus on your unique ability and delegate (but not abdicate) everything else.

We believe that you should be spending 80% of your time pursuing your unique ability and 20% leading the support staff,  who have the responsibility for carrying out everything else. In this context, everything else means financial control, sales strategy and targeting, marketing the practice and day-to-day operational control. We believe that this philosophy applies from the large multi-partner practice down to the single-handed owner.

In this session, we will show you how to recruit, train, motivate and compensate that championship support team.

Marketing Your Enterprise the Low Cost/No Cost Way
What is your marketing plan? How do you grade your customers? How do you propose to ‘add value’ to the top 20% of your clients who generate 80% of the profit? What is your system for obtaining a steady flow of recommendations? Do you maintain contacts with centers of influence who can regularly introduce you to new customer opportunities? How do you network in your local business and professional community?

Most business owners tell us that they have tried marketing at some stage, but stopped because ‘it didn’t’ work.’ Rarely do we hear that there is a marketing plan – a systematic, low-cost approach where events are scheduled up to a year in advance and driven by the marketing funnel.

In this presentation, we shower you with ideas to help you establish your own marketing strategy that will move you and your organization from isolation within your communities to become unabashed self-promoters.

Financial Control: Planning to Succeed or Planning Not to Fail
Lack of financial control is a miserable place to be. This session centers around seven steps to take to gain control over your personal or organizational financial well-being.

This session will cover living within your means, preparing for both business and personal expenditure a year in advance, to be preparing management accounts at the end of each month and to be comparing actual v. budget and taking corrective action on a monthly basis.

We believe the most attractive people in business are those who are debt-free and have reserves. We will be asking you to begin the journey to this destination.

Creating the Future: 8 Strategies to More Profit in Less Time
With due thanks to Michael Gerber (in his magnificent book ‘The E-Myth Revisited ) it’s just not good enough any more to be a good business technician. To survive in the next 30 years you’re going to have to learn how to be good at business as well.

Small business in the US is making the same metamorphosis that has been made in all other forms of business. The reaction of entrepreneurs to these changes will fall into three groups:

• those who bury their heads in the sand and refuse to recognize that change is taking place
• those who allow changes to ‘happen to them’ and are tossed and turned by the tide
• those who recognize that those changes represent a springboard filled with opportunity for the future

In this session, 8 Key Strategies for helping business leaders create more profit in less time are presented. You will learn a systems approach to developing your business perfect for those who are ready to start working ‘on’ their business and tired of simply working ‘in’ their business.

Create WOW Customer Service
Customers no longer tolerate the conditions which exist in some businesses. Poor location, difficult access, sub-standard décor, low morale staff, out of date equipment and lousy literature will simply drive customers into the arms of those who are willing to invest in success.

In this presentation, we show you how to create a better environment for yourself, for your support team and for your customers without becoming involved in massive capital expenditure.

Bury the Billable Hour Forever!
Are you operating your business based on the billable hour? Think that’s the only way to go about it? In this session we discuss a better way to structure your business operations – one based on the value you provide rather than time you spend on a project or service. Your customers will love it as they realize their desired outcome and no longer have to “watch the clock.” You will love it knowing you can conduct business that improves the service to your customers and better leverages your time. Learn how to generate more profit, serving fewer customers who are more willing to pay for your services!