A Unique Challenge Yields a Unique Course

Bond University, located on the Gold Coast of Australia, presented me with an interesting challenge. Create a course to help project managers lead complex projects and take advantage of ever-increasing AI capabilities…while having students engage in the course online, and also providing the chance to address the unique circumstances they face in their particular workplace. 

The resulting course outlines various, and sometimes atypical, recommendations. For example:

• The best way to engage a key stakeholder probably isn’t to match technical or business skills – it’s to match work styles
• In complex projects, it isn’t whether to utilize agile or waterfall approaches; it’s what type of hybrid approach will work best for the project
• Digital transformations and the use of AI aren’t about changing or leveraging technology; it’s about changing how the processes, culture, and thinking of the organization need to change.

That is just a taste of the learning available in the course.

I am a supporter and promoter of education in various forms. Online courses, reading, classroom experiences, and talking with others to understand their experiences are just a few examples. However, there are topics that, in my opinion, require a deep dive. One of them is project complexity. I am proud of this course, and I look forward to every opportunity I have to interact with the students who take it. Here is the description of the course I, and the Bond University team created:

Projects are getting more complex - but your approach doesn’t have to. This course equips you with the tools, techniques, and AI-enabled strategies needed to lead complex projects in fast-moving environments. The course is designed for experienced project managers ready to take their skills to the next level. You’ll explore how to navigate shifting priorities, manage stakeholder relationships, and apply AI tools like large language models (LLMs) to simplify decisions and reduce complexity.

This AI-Enabled Complex Project Delivery course combines the convenience of studying from home with the benefits of face-to-face interaction with an experienced instructor/practitioner.  

Through a set of comprehensive videos and curated readings, you’ll learn hands-on techniques and strategies. Along with this, students can confirm their understanding of the learning and apply the concepts in their specific workplace conditions via 1:1 coaching with me or another Bond University staff member.

If you are looking for an opportunity to study project complexity in depth, so you can proactively address it and have the chance to work one-on-one with me or my Bond peers to apply these techniques in your environment, check out the AI-Enabled Complex Project Delivery course. Additionally, students who complete the course will receive a Bond University microcredential.  Get the scoop here.

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Coming up

Office Hours Event - To Manage Successfully, You Must Coach. Time and Date: August 21, 2025, at 10:00 am US CT

This Live session will focus on the coaching strategies every manager should have in their toolbelt to achieve a strong team culture and optimize performance. To manage effectively, a manager needs to learn how to coach - helping people develop the skills and behavior patterns necessary to make the team successful.  Join me and Lauren Schwaar as we explore this skill to accelerate your leadership capabilities and success. Here's what you'll take away:

- How to incorporate the "Sandbox arts" -- the biggest determinations of your team's success that no one talks about (Hint: these are more important than talent, budget, or project)

- Tactical ways to develop your team's culture (Hint: putting your "values" on a poster won't cut it)

- The exercise managers must do first to make improvement possible

- The deep wisdom that sport coaching can offer to managers and team leads in every industry and vertical

- The dog training concept that can transform your efforts from "just another team-building exercise" to a true culture shift

Click here to attend

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CHECK IT OUT! Bob has a new course and new, updated classes on LinkedIn Learning

Working Smarter as a Project Manager.

Course overview: The demands on project managers are expanding, and the presence of AI is expanding expectations even further, so project managers need to work smarter, maximizing efficiency to meet expectations. You'll learn techniques and tips for ensuring your project management efforts are focused on the right things at the right time and executed efficiently. Explore novel techniques for prioritizing the PM's work and matching work styles between project team members and key stakeholders. Learn about a model for acting decisively. Find out how to separate feedback from "distracting noise," track outcomes vs. hours for team members, plus much more. This course enables you to streamline project management workflows, prioritize tasks, and ensure seamless team collaboration to meet today's dynamic business demands. Check it out

Project Management Foundations: Budgets

Course overview: In this course, designed for project management professionals and other leads who need to get a handle on their costs, author and Project Management Professional (PMP®) Bob McGannon shows you how to build a solid budget around a work breakdown structure, work with costing standards, and examine capital versus operating costs. Bob then teaches how to build, manage, and monitor the budget and shares tips from the trenches of real projects. Plus, get practical advice on recovering from overruns and dealing with scope changes. This course is part of a Professional Certificate from Microsoft. Check it out

Project Management Foundations: Risk

Course overview: Without risk, there can be no reward. But if not managed properly, risk reduces your ability to achieve your project's goals and could derail it altogether. In this course, author and PMP Bob McGannon shows you how to anticipate, assess, and manage project risk, whether your project is large or small. Bob explains how the PMBOK seventh edition deals with risk and why managing risk is so critical for project success. Discover how to gauge your stakeholders' tolerance for risk, assemble a risk plan, build a risk register, and maintain project continuity as risks crop up. This course is part of a Professional Certificate from Microsoft. Check it out

Critical Roles Consultants Play (And the Skills You Need to Fill Them)

Course overview: New consultants are often surprised by how agile they need to be to fulfill client expectations. The role you play may vary from contract to contract, or even shift within the same engagement. This course helps prepare you for the many different roles a consultant must play and succeed in the challenging world of consulting. Bob McGannon explains how your role differs from your job and how you can assess the needs of your client right at the start of the engagement. He then reviews the seven major roles—technical expert, manager, team leader, follower, reviewer, critic, and implementer—explaining when each role is most useful to your client. Live-action scenarios help you see the roles in action and apply what you have learned. In the final chapter, Bob discusses how to close the engagement, emphasizing the value your role has provided in order to position yourself for the next one. Check it out

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Additional thoughts can be found in my project management and outsourcing classes on LinkedIn Learning, including:

• Project Management: Technical Projects
• Strategic Leadership: Deploying Intelligent Disobedience
• Outsourcing Fundamentals, the first of six courses on outsourcing. This series of courses focuses on defining services, performing service-level management, and helping figure out what is required to support a business in an outsourcing or service provider scenario.

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This article is part of Bob’s Reflections newsletter series, which discusses project management, outsourcing, and “intelligent disobedience”, a leadership approach. If you want more of this content, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article is posted.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library or check out http://intelligentdisobedience.com/

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