Hire Jerry Manas to Speak

Jerry’s unique and colorful spin on topical management and leadership issues makes him a sought after speaker at events worldwide and for individual organizations and teams.

His topics range from breakthrough resource management and capacity planning practices to leadership lessons from history to a variety of other leadership and management topics.

Below is a partial list of available speaking topics. All of the sessions below are available as keynotes, half-day, or full-day workshops, or as webcasts.

To inquire about booking Jerry to speak at your next event, or for information on consulting services, email us today!

Topics

Napoleon’s Six Winning Principles

In this lively and interactive session (adaptable to various timeframes and audiences), Jerry 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 the flyer for the Napoleon Keynote or Workshop.

Dowload the flyer here

The Capacity Quadrant™ – 4 Keys to Demystifying Resource Management

Resource Management and Capacity Planning are frequently cited among today’s top pain points faced by organizations worldwide. Indeed, trying to optimize limited organizational resources in a climate of rapid change and constantly shifting demand can be challenging at best. Yet information on how to navigate these often murky waters has been scarce - until now.

This session introduces the Capacity Quadrant model, a framework that allows for quickly achieving maturity in resource management and capacity planning in four key areas:

Visibility – broadening your view to gain a more holistic picture of demand, a truer picture of capacity, and a better sense of the variables that impact resource productivity and workload.
Prioritization – understanding which work is most important, and how it relates to strategies, goals, and value.
Optimization – focusing on making the most efficient use of your resources across the right mix of work.
Integration – planning in cycles at multiple levels of the organization to keep people, work, money, and strategies aligned in the face of constant change.

Learn how the Capacity Quadrant can help smooth the way to greater business agility, fewer fire drills, and passionate, productive people.

10 Proven Military Strategies for Breakthrough Resource Management

Do you feel like you’re constantly being asked to do more with less? Are your people frequently being pulled off of strategic work to address emergencies, pet projects, and other interruptions? If so, you’re not alone. Indeed, with pressures mounting and competition increasing, there seems to never be enough resources to tackle what needs to be done.

It may feel like you’re being asked to do battle, but there’s no need to fall on your own sword! Look no further than the great military strategists – from Sun Tzu (500 BC) to Napoleon – for how to wage war with limited resources.

This session takes an in-depth look at some timeless lessons from a thousand years of military strategy to address today’s most common resource problems. In this webcast, you’ll learn:

How to not get overmatched, by prioritizing the intake of work or limiting its scope to a more manageable size
How to protect your resources from being over-booked, over-used, and burnt out
When projects should be delayed until you have the necessary resources
How adequate training, skills, and tools can make the difference between success and failure
Why “divide and conquer” and multitasking often fails

Learn these timeless insights on how to improve your resource planning and not feel like you’re going into battle every day.

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 and organizational business goals. 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, and more.

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, Strategic PMO

The concept of a Virtual and Strategic 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. No longer can a PMO be perceived as a “methodology police” or bureaucratic roadblock. Rather, to be relevant, it must be perceived as a strategic enabler, helping the organization align and maximize resources toward high value activity.

In this workshop, based on principles explored in his bestselling books, The Resource Management and Capacity Planning Handbook and Managing the Gray Areas, Jerry Manas shares tools and considerations for creating a more flexible, scalable, and influential PMO for modern times.

Planning, Selling, Engaging: Gaining Buy-In from Ideation Through Delivery

In this engaging presentation based on his popular white paper, 50 Ways to Lead Your Users, as well as updated content from his new book, Jerry reveals breakthrough techniques for increasing adoption and engagement, whether for recently implemented software and processes; established implementations that need another kick start; or simply for addressing resistance before it happens.

Learn vital strategies for getting your initiative off on the right foot; insightful tips for communicating in a way that grabs people’s attention and interest; and practical tools for getting people involved and engaged, including senior business leaders, middle management, and staff at all levels.