Breakthrough Project Management
Ask any project team to list their frustrations and they will point to things like unrealistic deadlines, inadequate resources, expanding scope, constant fire fighting, poor planning, and miscommunication. Participants discover how to clear these barriers during this two-day course by planning an actual project using the breakthrough principals. Teams leave this experience with a clear idea of both what to do and how to apply these new insights so that they will get the results they want.

Day One - AM

• Identifying the Project Barriers
• Anatomy of a Project Nightmare
• The Triangle of Constraints
• The Impact on Team Development
• The Project Game - A Self- Assessment

Day One - PM

• Selecting Live Projects
• Defining the Goal - A Team Process
• Using the Trade-Off Matrix
• The Ground Rules Checklist - How to Anticipate Breakdowns

Day Two - AM

• Bottom Up Planning
• Creating the Work Breakdown Structure
• Implementation Discussion

Day Two - PM

• Creating the Dependency Diagram
• Using the Critical Path - Three Payoffs
• Optimization Checklist
• Risk Analysis & Contingency Planning Exercise
• Clearing the Project Barriers - Implementing What We've Discovered

• The Communication Triangle
• SMART criteria for goal setting
• Situational Speaking
• Clearing listening blocks
• The Three Levels of Listening
• How values filter what we hear
• Listening through difference

Effective Meetings
This one-day course shows participants how five basic tools can handle all the classic meeting complaints including: they are unfocused and take too long, you revisit the same issues and fail to produce action items, people come late and leave early, the same few people dominate, and some people resort to personal attacks. You will discover how to resolve all these issues, cut the time spent in meetings in half while dramatically increasing the overall quality and participation.

Topics include:

• Agenda Time Management
• The Power of Ground Rules
• Separating Status Review from Problem Solving
• Using Group Memory to Maintain Focus & Flow
• Handling Difficult People

Collaborative Negotiating
In this one-day course, participants discover how to shift from win-lose to win-win strategies that enable both parties to come away from the table with more than either of them had hoped for. Through a series of classroom negotiations, participants discover practical approaches for countering the tactics of the hard negotiator and keeping negotiations from slipping into rights or power-based conflicts.

Since the biggest obstacle to negotiating success is the fear of being "ripped off" we develop a systematic four-stage process of interests, options, alternatives, and credible criteria that increases both the skill and confidence of everyone who attends the class. Defining the boundary conditions for any successful negotiation, applying the three levels of listening that are key to resolving core issues, and the ability to anchor a negotiation within the zone of agreement provide participants with the essential skills to reach a mutually satisfying outcome.

Collaborative negotiating dispels the uncomfortable feelings associated with negotiation, and the fear that getting what you want means making enemies and keeping the peace means surrendering your own interests. You will come away from this workshop with more confidence than you ever expected.

Topics Include:

• Cooperation vs. Competition
• The Power of Credible Criteria
• Fairness: Fact & Perception
• Shift From Positions to Interests
• The 3 Levels of Listening
• Using BATNA to Your Advantage
• Navigating the Zero Sum Game
• Anchoring the Zone of Agreement
• The Four Negotiating Approaches
• Your Personal Action Plan

Conflict Resolution
Conflict makes us uncomfortable by triggering our fight-or-flight response. Attacking damages our relationships while avoidance traps us in a pattern of surrender. This one-day class helps people discover a third approach by understanding how conflicts operate on four separate though related levels - observations, interpretations, feelings and needs. The power and simplicity of this four-layer system empowers participants to resolve even the most stubborn conflicts both at work and in their personal lives. You'll learn how to surface hidden agendas with proven techniques that encourage openness and trust. You will also apply these techniques to your own work related conflict situations, and work with them to produce more effective outcomes.

Topics Include:

• Using the Model to Stop Pushing
• Getting Unstuck by Surfacing Interpretations
• Practicing Direct Communication
• Dealing With Difficult Feelings
• Delivering Difficult Messages
• Knowing What You Need and Asking for It
• Real World Application

Nonlinear Problem Solving
This one-day class is designed to help solve those chronic problems that, despite everything we've tried, just won't go away. Distilling the best practices of systems thinking into simple terms that are easy to apply, we identify a number of real-world problems faced by participants and form problem-solving teams to discover their hidden causative factors. By the end of the day, participants are ready to return to work with renewed energy and ideas for clearing these persistent obstacles.

Topics Include:

• Targeting a Chronic Problem
• Problem Analysis Model
• The Five Whys
• Fundamentals of Systems Thinking
• Understanding Process Maps
• Mapping Quick Fixes
• Balancing & Reinforcing Loops
• The Five Archetypes & Archetype Strategies