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Episode Summary

This discussion focuses on the crucial topic of project meetings, featuring insights from expert guests Rich Maltzman and Jim Stewart. Rich and Jim, both seasoned project management professionals, share their extensive experience in transforming inefficient and unproductive meetings into powerful tools that drive project success. With decades of experience between them, they reveal actionable tips and strategies that every project manager can apply to rescue their meetings from the brink of chaos.

Rich Maltzman and Jim Stewart

Rich Maltzman (LinkedIn Profile) and Jim Stewart (LinkedIn Profile) are back on the program today to talk about Goblins… no… wait… [furiously checks notes]... Ahhh… no. Sorry. My fault. No goblins today.

Instead, the focus is on preparing a facilitated project planning meeting. We look at resolving any looming unaddressed issues before the meeting starts, how to make sure that the financial investment of a planning meeting actually pays off, and then Rich and Jim talk us through about 8 actionable activities they recommend you do in order to plan the meeting right. These tips are important to get the most out of your meeting so you come out of it with enough useful information to create a realistic project plan.

The interview is based on Chapter 8 : Preparing for the Facilitated Project Planning Meeting of their book How to Facilitate Productive Project Planning Meetings - A Practical Guide to Ensuring Project Success. Therefore, we close the discussion with the number one thing that each of them has personally learned about running a good project planning meeting while they were researching and writing the book… good stuff.

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Rich Maltzman and Jim Stewart

Planning your project right from the start is a big factor for future success. It’s definitely not everything, but doing the planning right goes a long way. And most planning is done in meetings. And that again means that you really want to make sure that those meetings deliver.

That is where the book How to Facilitate Productive Project Planning Meetings - A Practical Guide to Ensuring Project Success can help. It was written by Rich Maltzman (LinkedIn Profile) and Jim Stewart (LinkedIn Profile), and yes, it does indeed contain Goblins.

We have chosen to focus on chapter 6 “The Zen of Facilitation”. We talk about what is wrong with the way many planning meetings are being facilitated today, what facilitation and facilitative style means, and we have many good tips for you. And yes… we will talk about the goblins.

What you'll learn in this interview will help you put together a better and more accepted project plan.

Lastly here is what one reviewer on Amazon wrote: This book read [sic] better than a textbook as it was full of humor and step-by-step tips for immediate application. The authors provide insight on Agile project planning, tips on facilitating status meetings and lessons learned meetings, and even their appendices provide additional information on topics such as Project Management 101, meeting war stories, and access to their templates.

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Kevin Wozniak and Cornelius Fichtner

Got Meetings?

This interview focuses on effective meeting management. It covers one of the project management basics that is most difficult to handle - managing stakeholders using different combinations of direct, dotted line, and influential management.

This interview with Kevin Wozniak was recorded at the creative Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference 2018 in Los Angeles, California, as part of our leadership podcasts series.

In the interview we demonstrate how to effectively lead meetings and manage participants using various management styles and explain how to actively engage meeting attendees to participate in meetings in a valuable manner.