Ron Krukowski's Blog

Recently, I have been grappling with joining Toastmasters International. For those of you who are not aware, Toastmasters International is a world leader in communication and leadership development. I have been working in Corporate America for more than 25 years. I have had 15 years of success as an employee within major financial firms rising through the management ranks. Since 2001, I have enjoyed and continue to enjoy much success as an independent management consultant. Along the way, I have given many PowerPoint Presentations to various levels of management both as an employee and now as a consultant. I continue to get asked to speak at various events and really enjoy sharing my knowledge, insights, and stories from my life and business experiences. It really inspires me when someone comes up to me and says that something I have said is relatable and helpful to them. I have been getting requests to increase my speaking engagements. With that, the thought oc...

Have you ever been in a meeting that was totally out of control? In that meeting, did you notice that there was no formal agenda? In that same meeting, did it keep going off point and end up going down the road of too many tangents? During this time, was someone allowed to pontificate on things that had nothing to do with the advancement of the current meeting? In that meeting, was it apparent that the key people needed were not there since every item needed to be followed up on with someone who wasn’t at the meeting? Anytime during this meeting, did you feel that this meeting was going nowhere, your time was being wasted and that you should be doing something more productive? After the meeting, did you notice there was no communications regarding what was discussed, no key decisions or next steps? And finally, at the next follow-up meeting, were you totally "checked out" because the same things were being re-hashed from the last meeting with no evident progress? If you an...

I have personally managed many projects and now in my consulting practice work for clients assisting them in the Creation, Buildout and Management of Project, Program and Portfolio Management Offices. In my experiences, I have been amazed at what various organizations accept as a means to determine the health of a project. I have witnessed organizations where a verbal, "We Are On Time, On Budget and There Are No Issues to Report" statement by a project manager as an acceptable status without any quantification. I have also seen the reverse where a panic is created based on a manager stating, "We Are Behind Schedule, Over Budget and There Are Major Issues!" Again, based on a verbal status update without providing the evidence to support the statement. Conversely, I have witnessed organizations rally around the Earned Value concept which is widely taught to project managers. Crunching numbers to eventually come up with the Cost Performance and Schedule Performance Met...

As football season is upon us, I can't help but notice all of the interviews I have heard on the sports news, read in the paper or seen on the internet. If I had one dollar for ever time the words "game plan" were used, I would have a nice sum of money put aside. Many coaches credit their team's win or loss for the week as a direct result of the preparation and their game plan. Although execution on the filed of play is the ultimate in what makes a team win or lose, it is amazing to see the weight a football coach attributes to the game plan. In football there are budgets, salary caps, drafting to obtain the most talented players and goals set that map to the ultimate destination...the Super Bowl. Head coaches are appointed before the start of training camp and the coaching staff is selected. Team and individual assessments are performed to determine strengths and weaknesses in the team and where training or new personnel are needed. Prior to the start of the ...

During my career as a management consultant, I have witnessed many areas of corporate management practices that could be improved upon. One of the most important areas is along the lines of "transparency". All to o often I have encountered managers who are reluctant to report an accurate status out of fear. There is a general fear that upper management does not want to see or hear bad news. In fact, at a previous client of mine I was told not to report a RED status on anything (no matter how dire the situation) because it would get too much attention from upper management. So it strikes me as funny that although many corporate cultures embrace the traditional RAG (RED/AMBER/GREEN) Status, the only colors they want on a report are GREEN and AMBER. This is not only a bad management practice, it contributes to many failed projects. In my experience, it is my strong belief that you should Let Them See RED! Notice the dashboard sample posted with this blog. The RED gets attention...

Typical Project Management Challenges Day-to-day, project managers face some typical challenges in their quest to deliver successful initiatives. Some of these challenges include tracking budgets/resources, mapping outcomes to synergy targets, nailing down/documenting project scope, risk m anagement, motivating teams, controlling project assets, documenting processes, adhering to tight deadlines, effectively communicating, keeping track of the “big picture” and producing effective status reporting for senior management. Traditional Project Management Tools Many managers use traditional project management tools on their mission to tame these challenges. Such tools include handwritten notes, documents, calendars, eMail, to-do-lists, contact lists, spreadsheets, flowcharts, project plans and presentations. These are all great tools except for one main challenge…they only support linear thinking. And linear thinking is limited. Why not Let your mind run free and a dd Mind Mapping...