Strategic Project Leadership®

Execution Excellence and Winning in Market Place

One Day Executive Seminar

Background and Objective
Organizations spend billions in creating brilliant strategies and yet studies suggest that less than 10% of effectively formulated strategies carry through to successful implementation.  Senior leaders in organization have to deeply engage with project management, the organization systems that surround it and the behaviors and terminology required to lead strategic transformations.  Most strategic initiatives today are unpredictable, changing, and involve a great deal of uncertainty and complexity; as a result, these initiatives/projects today often do not achieve their business results or are not aligned with their company’s strategy.

The traditional approach to project management is rarely addressing these problems and it seems that a more modern approach is needed on top of what we know from the traditional body of knowledge. This research-based industry-proven practical seminar is designed to add this perspective.  

Strategic Project Leadership®
Strategic Project Leadership® is a new approach to project management that focuses projects and programs on creating value, competitive advantage, and winning in the marketplace, rather than just meeting time and budget objectives. This one-day executive seminar discusses the new role of executives who are required to guide project managers to be leaders that look at the global business aspects of their projects and provide vision and inspiration to their project teams.

The seminar is based on two central concepts, first, that one size does not fit all projects and you need a flexible and adaptive approach. And second, that project must be managed to achieve business results. It introduces a comprehensive framework and hierarchy of five components, which need to be applied by project leaders during project planning and execution: strategy, spirit, organization, process, and tools. It then presents a list of practical principles for implementation of the SPL approach in the organization.

What will you learn in this Seminar
The seminar will share with you how to go beyond the traditional approach to project management and deal with your project in a flexible and adaptive way. It will also enable you to maximize the business results of your projects or programs. The seminar will provide the frameworks and tools to build a strategic project plan for managing and controlling your project’s entire lifecycle process in a business-focused way.

Seminar Topics

• Focusing Projects on Business Results
• Why Meeting Time and Budget Goals is not enough
• What is the strategic approach to projects
• Executive roles in the strategic approach
• Project Portfolio and Selection
• Turn Project Managers into Leaders of Business
• The adaptive and flexible approach to project management
• Building your project charter and strategy
• Building your project spirit and organization
• Reinventing Project Management in your organization
• Implementing the 12 principles of Strategic Project Leadership®

Faculty - Dr. Aaron J. Shenhar

Dr. Aaron J. Shenhar is a Professor of Technology and Project Management at Rutgers Business School and Director of the PSM program at Rutgers University. Until 2008 he was Institute Professor of Management and the founder of the project management program at Stevens Institute of Technology.

Previously he was at various positions at the Universities of Minnesota and Tel-Aviv. He holds five academic degrees in engineering and management from Stanford University and the Technion in Israel. He was the first recipient of the Project Management Institute Research Achievement Award, and the IEEE Engineering Manager of the Year Award.

Prior to his academic career, Dr. Shenhar accumulated 18 years of technical and management experience as an executive at Rafael, a leading organization in the defense industry in Israel. In his research he is focused on project management, innovation management, and the leadership of professional workers in technology-based organization. He is a consultant to leading high-technology organizations such as 3M, NASA, Honeywell, Dow Jones, and the US Army.

He is co-author of the book, Reinventing Project Management: The Diamond Approach to Successful Growth and Innovation, 2007 Harvard Business School Press. The book was selected among the best five top business books of 2007.

Dr. Shenhar is also the CEO of The Technological Leadership Institute, a consulting firm focusing on aligning business and technology.