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Many aspects of culture are invisible, yet culture has an enormous impact on our projects. If ignored, these aspects can lead to misunderstanding, stress and conflict. Alternatively, if attention is given to the invisible aspects, it can enhance productivity, improve project teamwork and create more joy on the job.

Dealing with cross cultural issues on a multi-national projects can be like trying to control an invisible elephant. The issues are real and crucial as we journey into the new era of increasing globalization.

That is why I am very happy to welcome Tom Verghese (www.culturalsynergies.com) on The Project Management Podcast. Tom is the author of the book The Invisible Elephant - Exploring Cultural Awareness. We are going to discuss, what culture is, how cultural awareness and cultural intelligence will help you to better deal with your project teams, and Tom will give you some very specific tips on how to increase cultural synergies on your projects.

In this episode we are giving away 2 copies of his book, 1 copy of his CD "Raising your cultural IQ" as well as 2 copies of his CD/DVD "Sourcing Across Cultures". Listen in to learn how to participate.

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In this episode we feature an interview between Cornelius Fichtner and Corbin Links, host of the Identity Management Podcast. The interview was originally recorded for Corbin’s show but is also being released here on The Project Management Podcast.

Corbin and Cornelius discuss the essential skills needed to manage large, multi-year, multi-million-dollar projects and explore how the role of the project manager evolves into that of a project leader. Cornelius emphasizes leadership, communication, motivation, and even political acumen as critical success factors for project leaders.

The conversation also covers the role and value of the Project Management Office (PMO), based on survey findings from over 500 project managers. Cornelius shares that PMOs deliver the most value through company-wide standardization of project management practices and improved consistency across teams.

Other topics include the Standish Group Chaos Report findings on project failure, the impact of restarts, cost and schedule overruns, and strategies to improve project success rates. Cornelius also discusses the importance of user involvement, executive support, clear requirements, and realistic expectations.

Later in the discussion, Cornelius highlights the opportunities created by economic downturns, the risks of relying too heavily on tools ("a fool with a tool is still a fool"), and his perspective on the growing importance of project management as a profession. He also introduces his PMP training program, The PM PrepCast, which helps students prepare for the PMP exam through podcast-based learning.

Topics discussed include:

• The evolution from project manager to project leader
• Essential leadership and communication skills
• Managing politics on large projects
• The true value and purpose of the PMO
• Common causes of project failure (based on the Chaos Report)
• How to recover from restarts and maintain momentum
• Why “a fool with a tool is still a fool”
• Opportunities for project managers in tough economic times
• Overview of The PM PrepCast and PMP exam requirements

Listen in for practical insights, a few laughs, and timeless lessons about leadership and professionalism in project management.

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In December of 2008 I was invited to be the host at the 2009 PMO Summit in Coconut Grove, Florida. As the host, it was my privilege to set the tone of the day and begin with a short, 10 minute keynote presentation to set the tone for summit.

I decided that (because I had never seen anything like it before) that I would create a short survey to determine the value of the PMO. I did so and over 500 people responded. This video shows the results of this survey.

It was at that PMO summit that I met Terry Doerscher from Planview and you have heard him as a guest in the previous 2 episodes. In one of them he presented the PMO 2.0 Survey Results. So it was indeed interesting for me to see that other people had done similar surveys and it was also interesting to see that our surveys both complemented and contradicted each other a bit. This was definitely due to the fact that his survey was much more in-depth while this one here was really just trying to take the pulse of the podcast audience.

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In our last episode we heard Terry Doerscher discuss the results of the Planview PMO 2.0 Survey Report.

So I decided this week to follow up with Terry. We discuss what PMO 2.0 means to him, where PMOs bring the biggest benefit to a company, whether they should be centralized or decentralized and we discuss the 8 functions which he says are the primary functions that a PMO should support: gathering Information, managing demand, perform analysis, coordinate collaborations, identify issues, manage capacity, provide processes & tools and deliver internal consulting.

Oh… and we also discuss PMO 1.0 and PMO 3.0

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In this episode we welcome Terry Doerscher, who is Planview's Chief Process Architect and we discuss the PMO 2.0 Survey Report that was released earlier this year. The survey was sent out in September of 2008 and it contains 455 responses from a diverse group of companies. It was a rather large survey that required a lot of patience from the respondents.

Questions in the survey focused on PMO performance, operational challenges, organizational challenges, and the organization's future plans. The most surprising result that Terry found was that the PMO had increased the scope of the service within the companies. It is no longer just a Project Management Office, but that they are now reaching out to broader involvement of resource and operations management throughout the complete organization.

In our last episode we announced the giveaway of 2 PM Lectures Leadership Challenges of Complex Projects. And the winners are: Joseph Horowitz (Premium Podcast Subscriber) and Mohammed Amin (Free Podcast Listener). Congratulations!

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"Why on earth did you decide to write about failing on a project?" is the first question that we ask Leadership Expert Stan Levanduski in this interview on his essay "The Fine Art Of Failing... And Living To Tell About It". The essay is part of the book The Advantage of Leadership, which Stan co-authored.

Once we have this important question out of the way (and Stan's answer may surprise you), we discuss why we fail on our projects, how we normally react to such failures, why we need someone to blame, how to be proactive and most importantly how to recover from such a failure both professionally and personally.

We also continue to give away two copies of Stan's PM Lecture Leadership Challenges of Complex Projects. This is a 4.5 hour long, in-depth project leadership training for our subscribers. Listen in to learn how to participate.

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One major factor that is making a larger project more difficult to manage than a smaller project is complexity. On a larger project you will have a larger product scope, a more extensive budget, a more intricate project schedule and not least of it all also a lot more people. All of these add to your project’s complexity.

Stan Levanduski, PMP argues that the linear way of managing a small project does not scale up to a large project. Large projects have exponentially more complexity and therefore require a different, non-linear approach. He and I did a 4.5 hour long PM lecture on this topic and this interview gives you a glimpse into the complexity of complexity.

This discussion is based on Stan's PM Lecture Leadership Challenges of Complex Projects. We are giving away 2 copies of this 4.5 hour long, in-depth project leadership training to our listeners. So listen in and participate.

Stan is also the co-author of a book called The Advantage of Leaderhip.

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This is Part 2 of a presentation by Margaret Meloni.

About a month ago, Margaret Meloni, PMP sent out an email that was titled “Congratulations You’re Out of Work”. Of course I immediately opened and read it because it was such an odd subject.

This email led to a discussion between us and I quickly realized that what she has to say can be of enormous help to the project management community. After all, not a day goes by on which we don't hear about yet another company that is reducing their staff by several thousand. Some of you may be affected. I decided to bring Margaret back. So here is part two of Margaret Meloni’s discussion on how you can turn being laid off into a positive experience.

I encourage you to visit Margaret's website at https://pmstudent.com/ to check out her blog and her take away programs.

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Last week you heard part 1 of Margaret Meloni’s excellent discussion titled “Congratulations, you’re out of work” and part 2 will be coming your way next week.

For this premiium episode, I decided to give Margaret a call and dig a little bit deeper into the subject, with an emphasis on what we project managers can / should do when we get laid off.

You may now be thinking “Hey… I still have a job and I don’t need this” and I would beg to differ. Listen in to what Margaret has to say. She is so incredibly positive about this and even if you have a very secure position, I bet that you know a project manager whose project was recently finished and he/she is out of work. I certainly do and I promise you that I will paraphrase what Margaret says and help my friends deal with their situation.

If you want to hear part 2. visit Episode 114: Congratulations You're Out of Work (Part 2)

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About two weeks ago, Margaret Meloni, PMP sent out an email that was titled “Congratulations You’re Out of Work”. Of course I immediately opened and read it because it was such an odd subject.

This email led to a discussion between us and I quickly realized that what she has to say can be of enormous help to the project management community. After all, not a day goes by on which we don't hear about yet another company that is reducing their staff by several thousand. Some of you may be affected. I decided to bring Margaret back. So here is part one of Margaret Meloni’s discussion on how you can turn being laid off into a positive experience.

Part two will be published in about 2 weeks.

If you want to hear part 2. visit Episode 114: Congratulations You're Out of Work (Part 2)

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In this week we revisit Episode 34 of the PM Podcast.

That particular episode was released on May 27, 2006 and it was an interview with Kristine Hayes Munson on her methodology of managing projects in an organizational environment where the project team has no formal authority. It was called "Getting It Done". Until today, the episode has been listened to just about 31,000 times and Kristine’s presentation on the topic is nearing 50,000 downloads.

So we thought that it might be a good idea to revisit the process of Getting It Done and see what she has learned. After all, almost 2 years (and not 1 year as I claim during the interview) have passed, Kristine has presented her process to a number of professional organizations in the USA and she has tweaked and perfected it. So here are the Lessons Learned from Getting It Done.

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In today’s episode I am talking with Kristine Hayes Munson, PMP.

Kristine was my first ever interview guest and she has been on the program several times since then. She has come back because of some recent developments on her team: They have had some layoffs and her team lost a number of people. “How do you deal with that?” is the question of the day and many of you may have to go through a similar situation.

You might be leading a project team that loses some of its members or, like Kristine, you might be the manager of a team of project managers and the economy is forcing you to shrink. Kristine and I talk about the approach that she has found effective in helping your team cope with this situation.

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This episode is is a continuation of last week's discussion with Eric Landes on how to use Kanban in Project Management. Last time we looked at the theory of Kanban and today we look at the practice. Specifically we are going to discuss how Eric introduced Kanban in their department at Robert Bosch as a case study.

We’ll start out with the overall goal they had set themselves and then move pretty quickly to the hands on of how it was implemented, how the team received the change, how the customer received the change, the learning curve, the metrics used, improvements as compared to before and Eric will also give you his recommendations of what worked and what didn’t work for them so that you can try implementing Kanban yourself but avoid some of the pitfalls.

And then you are even going to hear a segment of our discussion from AFTER we stopped the official recording.

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Kanban is a concept related to lean and just-in-time (JIT) production. The Japanese word kanban is a common everyday term meaning "signboard" or "billboard" and lacks the specialized meaning that this word has acquired in English. According to Taiichi Ohno, the man credited with developing JIT, kanban is a means through which JIT is achieved.

It was out of a need to maintain high level of improvements that the kanban system was devised by Toyota. Kanban became an effective tool to support the running of the production system as a whole. In addition, it proved to be an excellent way for promoting improvements because reducing the number of kanban in circulation highlighted problem areas.

In project management, Kanban can be described as a signaling system to trigger action. We welcome Eric Landes (https://aspadvice.com/blogs/elandes/default.aspx) and we get a wonderful introduction to Kanban. We discuss what Kanban is, what its benefits are, how it overlaps with project management, what you see when walking into a Kanban environment, if it works in an environment where no physical products are produced and we introduce you to a great number of resources.

And in our Gizmo's segment we present The Project Perfect Whitepaper Index. It contains about 100 white papers on project management topics. Sign up for the Project Perfect White Paper Mailing List and you will receive an email whenever a new paper is published. Highly recommended.

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Another year has gone by and it has been full of exciting, boring, successful and (yes) failed projects that have been managed throughout the world. And it has been my pleasure to bring some of these projects and the means by which we lead and manage them to you.

But now it’s time to close out the year 2008 and have some project management fun. This means that I am opening up the vault of bad recordings and in this episode of The PM Podcast you are going to hear all the things that didn’t go as planned during the production of The PM Podcast.

Yes, this is the bloopers show, in which I lay bare all the ah, uhm, coughs and the times when I stumbled over difficult word combinations.

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The new PMBOK® Guide 4th Edition will be available on Dec 31 2008. We take this opportunity to talk about one of the bigger misconceptions that people have about the PMBOK® Guide: They think that is is a methodology.

In this regard, you may hear many people say that they are "using the PMI Methodology" on their project or that they have "implemented the PMBOK methodology at work". In this presentation we explain why the PMBOK Guide is not a methodology, but a framework.

This is one of our Premium "Overtime" Episodes, which are normally reserved to the subscribers of the Premium PM Podcast. However, this is also the first of many presentation style episodes that we will publish, so it is made available to everyone, so that you can see what you would receive with your subscription to The Premium PM Podcast.

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From December 8-10 I attended the PMO Summit 2008. This event was organized by IQPC who had asked me to chair the event. I agreed and so I flew to Florida and acted as the Master of ceremonies (so to speak) for 2 days.

The event itself was a success. We had 2 days full of presentations & workshops. I met a lot of new people, hopefully gained a few more listeners for the Podcast and I had a fabulous Italian dinner and you’ll see part of that dinner during the show.

I already did a similar review with Mark Perry from the PMO Podcast and that discussion was released to the listeners of the Premium Podcast. If you want to become a premium listener and receive additional episodes of the PM Podcast then please stop by at the website and click on the  Premium Subscription button at the top left

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A couple of days ago I returned from the 2008 PMO Summit in Orlando Florida. It was 2 days of excellent presentations that have taught me many new and current concepts of Project Management Offices (PMO) but which have also confirmed much of what I knew.

Mark Perry from The PMO Podcast also participated at the summit. I invited Mark to come on the program and give me his views of what he has learned. So he and I got together to discuss what we have learned from each presentation during the conference.

This is the first of two reviews that I am going to do on the summit. This one with Mark is only for the Premium Subscribers.

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Everywhere you turn these days project management experts are talking about the need for us all to move from project management to project leadership. Here at The PM Podcast we have tackled this subject a number of times on previous leadership podcasts in the past and today we will continue this journey by taking a look at The Advantage of Leadership.

The Advantage of Leadership is the name of a book that contains words of wisdom from various leadership experts. It was born of the belief that you can never have too much information. It brings together the knowledge and wisdom of individual leaders from across the field, offering a most comprehensive resource for the reader. It contains 11 chapters, each written by a different expert. It covers a broad spectrum of topics like leading with motivation, leading a team, servant leadership or learned leadership.

To discuss a number of concepts from the book we welcome leadership development expert Stan Levanduski, PMP. He is the driving force behind The Advantage of Leadership and helped bring it all together. Stan is also one of our lecturers on PM Lectures, where he teaches us how to respond to Leadership Challenges of Complex Projects.

As always when we discuss a book on the program we are giving away 2 copies of the book. Please listen to the episode to learn how to participate.

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If someone asks you explain what you do as a project manager, do you sometimes struggle to explain it? It’s easy to explain the hard tasks like building houses, changing processes or developing software, but once I get to the less tangible items like project team motivation or relationship management I usually begin to lose the listener. It gets even worse if you have to explain the value of project management to your senior management. It is very difficult to find solid facts that we can use to show that there really is value in our work.

This problem has puzzled our profession for a long time. That is why the PMI has funded a study on the value of project management and it’s results have been released.

We can finally and with scientific certainty say that there is indeed value in what we do.

Our guest today is Mark E. Mullaly, PMP, President & Chief Organizational Therapist of Interthink Consulting Incorporated. He is the co-lead investigator on this study and you can look forward to hearing a great interview.

And don't forget to stop by at PM Opinions to write a short review for The PM Podcast. Even just one sentence will help!