Project Management ConsultingWritten by Jakob Jelling
Projects are, in general, specific tasks that run on a finite schedule: building of a new headquarters, for instance, or development of a new accounting system. Once project is over, you no longer need a roject management consulting team, and by extension, you no longer need a project manager.Project management consulting, therefore, is a job of frequent changes and travel. It is demanding on project manager, and company hiring a project management consulting team needs to ensure that they choose right person first time. Choosing Project Management Consulting Your project manager is your primary hiring consideration. Your project manager should have experience in your industry, and he or she should be able to describe to you how they were successful with previous consulting jobs. Most crucially, they should be able to tell you how they put together a team. Your project manager is going to be head of his or her team, and will be making hiring and distribution decisions for project management team. They will be telling you which members of your team they’ll need for project, if any, and how much stress it will put on your organization to lose their skills for amount of time they are crucial to project. Your project manager should also be able to tell you who they have in mind for other team members, and what their track record is. By time you hire a project manager, you should know not only who they are and what they’ve done, but what kind of project management consulting team they will be putting together and how they will work together and with your company to successfully complete your project.
| | 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.
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