May Peace & Love Surround You
At Christmas Time & All The Whole Year Through!

Its been another amazing year …

As we Start our 6th year – I recognize how very blessed I have been to meet and chat with so many of our INCREDIBLE READERS all over the world.

This year I focused my energies on sharing lessons learned with our readers on influence, engagement and how culture change can turn around projects as well as organizations.

Read in over 185 countries, I have experienced so many stories of creativity, engagement, culture change and diversity by our readers.

I am constantly learning from all of you and for that
I Thank You!

Since we began we have suggested over 5000 PDU learning opportunities and connected with educational professionals to make a positive and inspiring difference to our profession.

It is connecting with our incredible community and learning so much about all of you and your practice of the profession that is the reason that this venture is such a joy for me.

I genuinely want to thank all of our readers and our volunteers
who make this site possible!

Thank you So Much – I have learned so much from you all!

– Martin Chernenkoff Editor PDU Of The Day

Our readers are of many diverse backgrounds and faiths and I wanted to find a way to best express my thanks and best wishes.

The lyrics of this song express my thoughts and my prayers to all of you so much better than I can express.

YOU ALL make this possible! Blessings to you all!

My Christmas Card To You

Written by Tony Romeo Sung by: David Cassidy Discography

To you and all your family, your neighbors and your friends
May all your days be happy with a joy that never ends
May peace and love surround you
at Christmas time and all the whole year through

I’m looking out my window at the softly falling snow
that dances in the early morning light
I got my guitar right before me, strummin’ a beautiful sound
watching it a-comin’ down, all around
on the fields and the farms and the road to town

And I’m thinkin’ up a letter that I’m writin’ in my head
a Christmas card to all the folks I love
Instead of lettin’ the postman bring it, I decided I’d rather sing it
especially for you, for you

To you and all your family, your neighbors and your friends
May all your days be happy with a joy that never ends
May peace and love surround you
at Christmas time and all the whole year through

May your life be filled with sunshine, may your every wish come true
May you find the sweet fulfillment in everything you do
May your days be blessed with the very very best
both now and the whole year through
it says so in my Christmas card to …

You and all your family, your neighbors and your friends
May all your days be happy with a joy that never ends
May peace and love surround you
at Christmas time and all the whole year through
at Christmas time and all the whole year through

Online Webinar – Recorded October 8th, 2014
Duration: 1 Hour Credits: 1 PDU Category C  – Free PDU
Presented by American Management Association (REP 1294)
Although the AMA is an REP this opportunity may not have a course number Contact the AMA for further information.

Inspiring Lessons For Leaders Everywhere

When Fortune announced its list of the World’s Greatest Leaders, the top spot was awarded — not to a captain of industry — but to the new pontiff.

• How did a man who spent his life laboring in slums far from the Vatican manage to do this and so quickly?

The answer lies in his humility
And the simple principles that spring from it.

Since Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis in March of 2012, he has shown the world a new way to lead. Not with bluster or bravado, but with humility and humanity.

Pope Francis has, without a doubt, been the most humble leader on the world stage of the modern era.  There isn’t even a close second.

As someone who has studied leaders and the topic of leadership for more than three decades, Jeffrey Krames has long believed that humility is the most under-rated of all leadership qualities.

In his newest book Lead with Humility: 12 Leadership Lessons from Pope Francis Jeffrey Krames explores how the incredible power of humility has healing powers for a fractured organization.

The webcast  digs deep to reveal the key business tenets that Pope Francis has exercised to create his own brand of  leadership and Pope Francis’s ability to inspire the world is unprecedented in modern times.

Examples include:

• Guard against insularity:
  • Many heads of corporations and states fall prey to the “bubble” phenomenon, meaning that they feel imprisoned by the trappings of their positions.
  • To make sure that Pope Francis did not lose his broad perspective, he put together a makeshift “board of directors.” Dubbed the Vatican-8, or V-8, these eight Archbishops from all over the globe serve as his consulting body.
  • None of Francis’s 265 predecessors ever amassed such a consultative body.
• Live on the frontier:
  • To “live on the frontier” is to push the envelope and live outside of your comfort zone.
• Run your organization like a field hospital:
  • Francis feels very strongly that members of the clergy must go anywhere and everywhere, no matter the risk, to tend to their flocks.
  • The same tenet works well in business. Instead of a reliance on email, Twitter, etc., what is needed are more face-to-face meetings.

Explore how Francis has combined humility with power to become the most fascinating pontiff in modern memory.

Join Jeffrey as he explores the power of his methods and how anyone can take these lessons to lead with grace and greater authenticity.

Presenter: Jeffrey A. Krames (LinkedIn profile) has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Financial Times, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times and been interviewed by Fox News, CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, A&E’s Biography, the BBC, and  the bestselling author of:

• What the Best CEOs Know: 7 Exceptional Leaders and Their Lessons for Transforming Any Business,
• The Unforced Error: Why Some Managers Get Promoted While Others Get Eliminated
• The Rumsfeld Way: Leadership Wisdom of a Battle-Hardened Maverick ,
• The Welch Way: 24 Lessons From The Worlds Greatest CEO ,
• Jack Welch and the 4 E’s of Leadership, Formula to Work in Your Organization
• Inside Drucker’s Brain
• and other popular business books including his latest – Lead with Humility: 12 Leadership Lessons from Pope Francis

Click to view Lead with Humility: Lessons from Pope Francis

Online Webinar – Recorded  March 22nd 2011
Offered by ASPE (REP 2161) 1 Category A PDU – Free PDU

Let’s reduce the too often “fire-fighting” method of risk management.

We’ll focus on the 10 empirical, simple rules of risk management.

What’s a discussion of risk without recognizing that a great team is vital in the success of every project? Yet the challenge of creating and maintaining a high functioning team is getting progressively more difficult. We are tasked with different work styles, different cultures, and even different generations.

We’ll review myth of management verses secrets of leadership.

Presenter: Dolores Thomas, PMP, is an accomplished Seminar Leader with n 30 + years of experience in IT and training. Dolores served in various capacities managing projects from initiation to acceptance. She’s been recognized for her achievements in managing technical projects. She assisted countless organizations build their success and has developed & delivered Project Management seminars to business leaders. Delores also holds certifications in CompTIA, IT Project Management Microsoft Project Expert, and certified ScrumMaster.

Click to register for  Success vs Folklore in Project Management

Online Webinar – Recorded May 23rd 2014
Offered by ASPE (REP 2161) 1 Category A PDU – Free PDU

PLEASE NOTE: In spite of what the ASPE page states this Session Is ONLY 1 hour and 1 minute long the session IS NOT 3 h.ours 1 minute long and does qualify for only 1 PDU.

Leaders often proceed under the mistaken belief that as organizational or technical experts, they can simply think their way through difficult problems.

Yet experimental evidence has time and again illustrated that so-called experts often do no better than non-experts in such analytical situations.

The Critical Thinking Skills course is focused on providing practitioners with both the whys and hows of proper analytical techniques.

It provides a detailed presentation of the ways in which practitioners may consider alternatives and challenge assumptions, all the while illustrating how evidence-based techniques can greatly improve judgmental forecasting and decision making in any type of organization.

You will learn:

• How to decompose information into smaller elements in order to arrange these into a logical pattern
• Employ rigorous brain storming techniques that encourage a broad range of perspectives, including minority and dissenting opinions
• Improve your performance as a leader, manager, and analyst
• Master techniques to generate hypotheses that explain available information and can be used to perform tests to confirm/deny
• Demonstrate an ability to assess cause and effect and then perform a critical review of the premises, assumptions, and logic of the analysis
• Know how to properly structure and test your hypothesis
• Recognize biases and prejudices that get in the way of reliable analysis
• Learn how to select the best analytical tool for a situation from an array of analytic techniques

Dave Caccamo PMP, (LinkedIn profile) has three decades of experience in engineering, economics and project management. With a BSc from the United States Naval Academy and a Masters of Economics from North Carolina State University, Dave has demonstrated time and again his ability to make complex business and engineering concepts understandable to executives, managers and technicians through his fundamental modeling of subject matter.

Click to register for Critical Thinking Skills: A Practical Guide to Structured Analytics Techniques

Online Webinar – Recorded
Duration: 1 hour webinar Credits: 1 PDU Category A – $12.95 USD PDU
Presented by: Solutions Cube Group (REP 2451)

This webinar is fourth in a 4 part series series on “Risk Management” by Solutions Cube. Although this module is a part of the series – each module in the series can be taken individually.

Successful project teams understand the importance
Of incorporating ongoing Risk Management and Monitoring activities
Through out the life of a project.

Treating risk management as a one time identification and assessment activity leaves the project effort exposed to many avoidable and manageable project risks.

Developing and utilizing a Risk Communication Plan further enhances the Project Manager’s ability to engage the right level of stakeholder involvement throughout the risk management effort.

The Risk Management Series of in depth webinars will introduce participants to techniques for defining a Risk Management Process and using this process to progressively build a Risk Register including: identifying risks using a Risk Meta-Language, Assessing Risks with quantitative techniques, understanding the 8 risk responses and selecting the appropriate Risk Response for the project risks and monitoring risks throughout the project.

Solutions Cube Group’s Monitoring and Managing the Successful Risk Plan webinar will help your project teams understand the characteristics that lead to effective project risk management.

They will learn how to evaluate the success of risk responses and what to do with Secondary Project Risks as they occur. The will learn the difference between managing risk and responding to problems and issues resulting from risks that occur.

In the Monitoring and Managing the Successful Risk Plan webinar, participants learn:

• How to recognize the organization’s Risk Maturity level and use this knowledge to manage risk appropriately on projects.
• How to develop a Risk Communication Plan that identifies the unique needs of each project stakeholder
• How to engage the right stakeholders in risk management activities
• Which Critical Success Factor has the most impact on successful risk management actions
• How to identify and respond to Secondary Risks as they occur throughout the project

PLEASE NOTE:  If you are on the Solutions Group Site and receive a message that your cart is empty when you go to check out – this is because you are not yet signed in to your account on their site – or you have not registered for a free account on their site.

To resolve this issue simply click the “person” icon on the top of the course description page and either sign in or register.  You can then return to the course Description page and add the course to your cart.

Click to purchase Monitoring & Managing The Successful Risk Plan

Online Webinar – Recorded  May 28th, 2014
Duration: 1 Hour Credits: 1 PDU Category C  – Free PDU
Presented by American Management Association (REP 1294)
Although the AMA is an REP this opportunity may not have a course number Contact the AMA for further information.

Secrets That Only Top Negotiators Know

Negotiation is a different form of influence.
There is a time to influence and a time to negotiate.

Have you ever LOST a negotiation?

• Most people have and don’t even know it!
• What underhanded tactics are other negotiators using on you?
• How can you counteract them?

The worst time to learn a negotiation skill is when you need it.

Negotiation must be mastered before it is needed, or the opportunity is lost forever.

For example, are you tired of:

• Losing business deals
• Not closing sales
• People not listening
• Being told no
• Losing negotiations
• Not getting your way

There are 7 negotiation blunders you are making right now that cause people to resist you and your offer.

This webcast will get down in the trenches and reveal the secrets that only top negotiators know.

Each blunder is like driving around town with your emergency brake on. All the time, you are wondering why your car (or negotiation) never has much power.

These problems are simple to fix, but expensive to have. Negotiation has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. And ironically, some of these negotiation blunders are still being taught in expensive courses as the techniques to use!

This webinar is certain to open your eyes to the NEW world of negotiation and influence.

What does it take to negotiate with power in any encounter?
  ….  Think about it    ….

• When was the last time you didn’t get something you wanted?
• What happened?
• Did you fail to get your point across?
• Were they influenced by someone else?

Here’s a sampling of what you will discover:

1. Dirty deeds unscrupulous negotiators will use against you
2. Discover negotiation secrets only known to seasoned negotiation professionals
3. Top blunders average negotiators frequently make
4. How following your natural instinct will cost you millions
5. How to establish instant credibility (even when you don’t have any)

You will find this webinar TRANSFORMATIONAL!

Kurt will help you to internalize these techniques and start using them as soon as possible.

While attending this program is FREE, reservations are required – However most AMA webinars are recorded for later viewing.

We encourage you to register even if you are unable to attend live; you’ll receive replay information following the event.

Presenter: Kurt W. Mortensen (LinkedIn profile) is one of America’s leading authorities on persuasion, negotiation, and influence.  He has spent 15 years researching persuasion, negotiation, and motivational psychology, and e teaches on the university level.  Kurt is the author of Persuasion IQ: The 10 Skills You Need to Get Exactly What You Want and the best-selling book, Maximum Influence: The 12 Universal Laws of Power Persuasion.  His latest book is The Laws of Charisma: How to Captivate, Inspire, and Influence for Maximum Success.  You can  check out Kurt’s site here.

PDU Category C (PMBOK 5) documentation details:
Process Groups: Executing
Knowledge Areas: 4- Integration 5 – Scope 8 – Quality

• 5.6 Control Scope
• 9.3 Develop Project Team
• 12.2 Conduct Procurements
• 13.3 Manage Stakeholder Engagement

As a Category C ‘Self Directed Learning Activity’ remember to document your learning experience and its relationship to project management for your ‘PDU Audit Trail Folder’

Click to register for Top 7 Negotiation Blunders Certain to Kill Your Deal