Interim Executive Management: Challenge and ChangeWritten by Jakob Jelling
A position in interim executive management is one of most exciting and challenging jobs you’ll ever tackle. Because you have to slip into a position and immediately take up reins, you must be personable and intelligent. Because you need to be able to perform almost any executive job with little or no preparation, you’ll need to have broad-based experience and education. And because your position may require a wide variety of different skills and management techniques, you’ll need to be flexible and quick to learn.Interim executive management is, in short, more challenging than almost any CEO job you can imagine; and it’s a perfect way to prepare yourself to be a CEO. Character Counts One of most important traits of a candidate for interim executive management is good character. You’ll be entering a variety of different businesses, some of who may compete with one another, and you will be privy to many of their trade secrets. You will, of course, have to sign confidentiality agreements with each employer; but it will be your character that determines whether you will maintain letter of that agreement. Honesty is vital for interim executive management; you need to be able to tell your employer truth about his company, especially uncomfortable ones that no one else will say. Whether his executive vice president is incompetent and passes all his work to his assistant, or company’s finances are not quite as stable as CFO would like everyone to believe, or even if issues are more minor yet critical to proper function of company, truth needs to be told in order to begin to mend problems. Strength and willpower will be important when carrying out your main functions in interim executive management. As effectively a temporary employee, permanent executives may try to push you around. Only if you push back as hard as they push you will you survive. Education and Experience The most important part of interim executive management education is your former experience as an executive. Only by being an executive can you understand exactly how to fill role. Beyond that, an interim executive manager needs to be broad-based in his or her skills, so must learn everything possible about every aspect of business management. In today’s business environment, executive interim managers especially must be well-versed in technology, and understand how IT tools can maximize potential of a company.
| | Project Management TrainingWritten by Jakob Jelling
Project management is a very specialized and often complex task, and requires more training than average programmer or executive might expect in very specific organizational tasks. To meet this demand, professional groups such as Project Management Institute (PMI) were organized to set standards for training of project managers.In general, to become a project manager, you need lots of hands-on training. To be awarded Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM), a project management candidate must acquire at least 1500 hours of work on a project team or 23 contact hours of formal project management education. A project management associate is not qualified to run an entire project by themselves, only assist a project management professional in project management. The other project management training certification provided by PMI is Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, and is awarded upon satisfying education and experience requirements, passing an examination, and agreeing to adhere to a professional conduct code. To maintain this certification, PMP must also satisfy CEU requirements. The Best Project Management Training The best way to train for project management is to work closely with a project manager. Dozens of things can go right or wrong in a project, and only way to really learn how to handle them is to be thrown right into middle. You should seek hands-on training in following areas: 1. Project management tools – Gantt charts and other project management software and paperwork aren’t that hard to understand, but they are hard to use well.
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