All of the sessions below are available as keynotes, half-day, or full-day workshops.
Napoleon’s Six Winning Principles
In this lively and interactive session (adaptable to various timeframes and audiences), Jerry Manas teaches the art of leadership and project management as seen through the successes and failures of one of history’s greatest leaders, Napoleon Bonaparte. Gain the ultimate business advantage through this colorful approach to learning the skills needed for success in today’s workplace.
- Learn to apply Napoleon’s research, record-keeping, and organization methods to your own projects for better results.
- Gain an upper hand by understanding the dynamic between project management and strategic leadership.
- Learn to apply the wisdom of this military leader in your own personal and professional spheres of influence.
Download a flyer for the Napoleon Keynote or Workshop.
Service-Oriented Project Management (SOPM™)
Service-Oriented Project Management (SOPM) is a lean, high level framework and mindset that focuses the project team on better understanding the goals and client needs throughout and beyond the project. This workshop introduces the SOPM framework and offers techniques that can be immediately put to use.
Find out how the four simple steps of Understand, Prepare, Iterate, and Transform (UP-IT) can translate to higher project success rates and a better customer experience. Jerry created the SOPM model to address gaps inherent in traditional project management thinking, resulting in a framework that fosters a relentless focus on the client and a better understanding of project objectives. Discover how the SOPM model works, and begin putting it to use in your projects immediately.
Managing the Gray Areas: Broader Perspectives, Better Questions, Clearer Communication
Based on his book, Managing the Gray Areas, Jerry Manas explores the most difficult dilemmas leaders face, and offers powerful guidelines for making decisions and examining issues from broader perspectives.
As a result of this workshop, attendees will gain an upper hand through an understanding of three primary concepts:
- Leading by Questioning – Attendees will see how a leader’s job is not to have all the answers, but to ensure the right questions are asked.
- Examining Issues from Broader Perspectives – Attendees will learn valuable leadership tools for practicing systems thinking, holistic ethics, and information-based management.
- Integrating Opposing Values and Concepts – Attendees will learn how to reconcile their own ideals with the ideals of others, resulting in empathetic solutions that better meet the needs of multiple parties.
High Performing and Co-Creative Virtual Teams
The need to work virtually and/or remotely is expanding exponentially due to increasing trends, such as telecommuting, off-shoring, greater travel restrictions, consolidating markets, and global expansion. In addition, as more organizations offer flexible work environments, it is fast becoming the expected norm—and a requirement for retaining the best people.
Vital success factors such as alignment, commitment, productivity, trust, and engagement, are challenging in their own right, and especially so with regard to virtual teams. Adding to the challenge is the confusion about how best to leverage emerging technologies, such as social networks, wikis, blogs, mobile alerts (e.g. Twitter), and virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life).
Organizations that recognize these unique challenges and learn to avoid common pitfalls will be ahead of the curve and best prepared for scalable, long-term success. This workshop is designed to help participants meet the unique challenges inherent in virtual teams, with regard to evolving technology, cultural alignment, and productivity.
The Virtual PMO
The concept of a Virtual PMO (Project/Program/Portfolio Management Office) is gaining wider recognition as three parallel trends emerge: stakeholders and project teams becoming more dispersed across greater distances; the role of the PMO expanding beyond project and program oversight to take on a more strategic role; and the PMO being asked to operate with little or no direct resources.
In essence the PMO is being required to do more with less, and do it while influencing a larger, more distributed audience. Thus, the PMO is becoming more reliant on cross-functional teams, relationships with senior management, and resources outside of its control.
In this workshop, based on principles explored in his bestselling book, Managing the Gray Areas, Jerry Manas shares tools and considerations for working more effectively in such a virtual environment, creating a more flexible, scalable, and influential PMO for modern times.
Conquering Complexity through Simplicity, Clarity, and Focus
In today’s tough times, where speed and agility are the name of the game, complexity can be a real killer. There are three areas where organizations struggle with complexity most:
- Overly complex or burdensome processes
- Verbose and/or unclear communication to team members and stakeholders
- Lack of focus, leading to distraction and diluted efforts
In this interactive workshop, Jerry Manas helps participants discover ways to simplify processes, clarify communication, and sharpen their strategic focus—both on an individual and organizational level.
