Project Management Happy Hour

Kornelia Homewood, a seasoned Project and Portfolio Management Consultant with Kolme Group, shares her expertise in change management. She introduces the ADKAR model, breaking down its five key elements: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement. Kori emphasizes the importance of clear communication and emotional engagement for effective transitions. She blends her project insights with her passion for yarn crafting, showcasing how personal hobbies can add humor and relatability to serious topics, making change management both engaging and essential for project success.

Whether we realize it or not,  we all have bias in the way we think about things. Maybe you have a bias to be overly optimistic in your estimates, or under estimate the impact of risks. Planning fallacy, illusion of control, confirmation bias - the list goes on of different ways bias can mis-shape our perceptions and our decisions   This week’s amazing guest, Jennifer Chandler, brings her depth of experience as a project manager and expertise in organizational leadership to help us understand bias and how to manage it   OUR AMAZING GUEST! This week’s guest, Jennifer Chandler, received her Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute in 2008, even though she had been managing projects for decades before that. She managed information technology projects for federal agencies (e.g., the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the U. S. Secret Service; the U. S. Navy; and the U. S. Army), international corporations (e.g., Motorola), and for national not-for-profit professional associations (e.g., the Association of American Medical Colleges). She has also managed and mentored teams of project managers as well as one-on-one mentoring of project managers.  She has also conducted assessments of other organizations' project management practices and developed curriculum and taught project management in organizations. JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership   STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour

Hiya listeners, in this episode we share what we’ve been up to and why we’ve been a bit quiet, some amazing PDU stats and share some things that we’re thankful for.  Cheers! And thanks to our amazing listeners   JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership   STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

For this episode the tables are turned - Kate and Kim get interviewed! Arizona State University student Krystal Ebadi contacted us and asked if she could interview us for her PM class about the realities of studying PM and getting a job. Of course we said yes! And Krystal let us share that interview with our listeners. Thanks Krystal! Join us as we talk about studying project management in a University, how to prepare to get a PM job, and how to break into the field. This episode covers some of our most frequent listener questions ABOUT OUR AMAZING GUEST KRYSTAL EBADI Krystal Ebadi is currently a junior at Arizona State University (Go sun devils!!!!!!) She is majoring in organizational leadership project management, and aspires to become a future Project Manager APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE! Kim was getting his house painted on recording day (OOPS!) and there's a bit of noise in the background. Sorry! JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership   STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

This episode we talk with one of our amazing listeners, Josh Mildren, who shares his story about how he became a project manager - or rather, how he realized he was a project manager all along. Like a lot of our Happy Hour listeners, Josh was looking for new ways to address challenges his organization was struggling with, and found that a pragmatic approach using Project Management principles has a huge impact - so much so, that it propelled him to employee of the year! Congrats Josh!  Join us as Josh shares his journey - one that we think a lot of Happy Hour listeners can identify with! We'll talk about how to recognize how and when to leverage Project Management disciplines in your job - and how to recognize if you are, actually, a Project Manager even if that's not your official job title. ABOUT OUR AMAZING GUEST JOSH MILDREN Josh Mildren has been working in helpdesk services for 15 years and has been a Client Onboarding Engineer for the past 2 and half years with Dataprise out of Rockville MD. Josh has taken his experience with helpdesk support, client services and documentation to provide new client information and expectations of support services to his company, while setting up managed solutions and monitoring support services for their new clients. In order to ensure our clients have a smooth transition, Josh trains both his TEC staff and the client on submitting issues, reports and escalations and answer questions all while trying to meet Go-Live dates for support.     JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership   STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

This episode we talk about that make-or-break moment in project closing: handing over your project deliverables. If you plan your project right, this can be a moment of victory for your team, your stakeholders, and for yourself. But if you don’t plan for it, handover can become a never ending death march to nowhere. Kate and Kim talk about how to setup this key transition for success, and talk about some pitfalls you are going to want to avoid! JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership  STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

We love our listeners, and we love to answer your questions! In fact,  this episode comes straight from a call for help we received from one of our listeners. She shared with us that her manager told her that she was “too nice” with her project team, and asked us for help in how to deal with this ambiguous feedback.  Most of us have received ambiguous feedback like this. “You need to be tougher,”  “you are too abrupt,” “You need to present better to executives,” or something else like that. But how do you turn that vague feedback into action, and gain confidence back?  In this episode Kate shares her personal experience with some recent “inactionable” feedback she received, and shares how she worked through that feedback to achieve a positive outcome.  JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

Ever have a project that costs money? Well, this podcast is for you! In this episode, Kate and Kim give you the quick and dirty rundown of basic project financials - not just within your project, but how money gets to your project, and how your finance team may view those financials. In a study Kim’s company did at PMO symposium, they found that tracking project financials correlated with success by every measure of project success - scope, schedule budget (obviously), resource management, customer satisfaction and ability to get the project done. So, financials are important! Check out Kim’s webinar recording here: https://kolmegroup.com/surveyresults/ JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

Communication is a critical part of a Project Manager’s job, and perhaps no aspect of comms is more important than ensuring that what is communicated is correct and truthful. But when someone is not being truthful - to themselves or others - how do you call that out? Or, as we say, how do you “call bullsh!t” on someone without it wrecking your relationship or the support you need from that stakeholder? This episode Kate and Kim get really, really real about calling out BS when you see it - why it’s our jobs as PMs to do it, how to do it and, where possible, how to do it in a way that ends up being positive for everyone. Well, as much as possible, anyway. And, yup, we do talk a bit of B.S. in this episode! JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

Many Project Managers are on a trajectory that takes them from a more technical or tactical focus to a more leadership focus in their career, possibly transitioning from Project Management eventually to the Board Room. But how do you do that? How do you make the transition from being known for technical execution to strategic leadership? Well, one of the main things to consider is how you brand yourself. To help us learn about personal branding and growing from a tactical role to a strategic one is our special guest on this episode, Sonia Mundra. Sonia has successfully made this transition, and gives us some amazing coaching to help us grow into leadership  as well! OUR AMAZING GUEST, SONIA MUNDRA Our guest, Sonia Mundra is the President of Chenega Analytic Business Solutions (Chenega Analytic), an Alaska Native Corporation (ANC) and Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB).  Ms. Mundra helps federal and commercial agencies implement records and IT solutions. She has served in a variety of operational, financial and executive roles at Chenega.  In addition to leading Chenega Analytic, Ms. Mundra dedicates a significant amount of time to volunteer associations and activities which help educate and empower the regional technology community. She has spoken for various organizations, including CompTIA, ISACA, PMI, National Contract Management Association (NCMA), and Virginia Society of CPAs (VSCPA). Ms. Mundra is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and Project Management Professional (PMP). JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership   STUMP THE PM’S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/pmhapyhour and we’ll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we’ll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.