The Project Management Podcast

Premium This is a preview of our premium episode. Full access is available only to premium subscribers. Click here and learn about the Premium Podcast to access this interview... Play video preview episode | Play audio-only preview episode | Play on YouTube | Play on Spotify Episode Summary Flexible leadership sounds straightforward until a project leader has to decide what to do differently when the situation changes. Kevin Eikenberry, author of Flexible Leadership: Navigate Uncertainty and Lead with Confidence, returns for a second conversation focused squarely on practical application. Kevin explains why project leaders often fall back on autopilot, how habits and even leadership identity can make flexibility difficult, and why the phrase "it depends" should serve as a trigger to stop and consider the context before acting. He also challenges the assumption that consistency and flexibility compete with each other. Effective leaders can remain consistent in their values, purpose, and project boundaries while adapting how they lead. That becomes particularly important when projects operate in uncertain or complex environments where leaders cannot know every variable, established practices may not produce the expected results, and new information can require a different response.

Play audio-only episode | Play on YouTube | Play on Spotify Episode Summary David Luria, author of Flatten the AI J Curve: Your Unfair Advantage in the Race to Enterprise Adoption, brings a practical conversation about what happens when an AI pilot moves into real operational use. Luria, a vice president and business manager at T. Rowe Price and a Six Sigma Black Belt, explains the AI J curve: productivity can fall before it improves, especially as teams learn new workflows, run old and new processes in parallel, and adjust to changing responsibilities. He argues that project managers should set expectations before implementation begins, keep early scope narrow, and use short stepping-stone projects to learn quickly. He also explains why culture matters. AI often removes tasks that people associate with their expertise, so adoption requires more than access to a chatbot. Leaders and project managers need to create room for experimentation, communicate what will change, and help people understand how their roles can shift toward higher-value work. Luria calls for business ownership close to the work, supported by leadership, IT, and risk teams, rather than treating AI transformation as a technology handoff.

Play video episode | Play on YouTube | Play on Spotify Episode Summary There is a decent chance your employer has already paid for your next 14.5 PDUs. You just have not claimed them. My course Artificial Intelligence for Project Managers has been added to the Udemy Business collection. If your company subscribes to Udemy Business, that course is already sitting in your account: 14.5 hours of video, 14.5 PDUs toward your PMI credential renewal, and a certificate of completion when you finish. No purchase, no expense report, no approval needed.

Premium This is a preview of our premium episode. Full access is available only to premium subscribers. Click here and learn about the Premium Podcast to access this interview... Play video preview episode | Play audio-only preview episode | Play on YouTube | Play on Spotify Episode Summary Sara Gallagher returns to examine a frustrating reality for project managers: organizations can employ smart, experienced, well-intentioned people and still produce the same bad outcomes again and again. Sara, president of The Persimmon Group and creator of the Big Dumb Questions newsletter, brings more than 15 years of consulting experience to a discussion that starts with artificial intelligence and quickly expands into how organizations make decisions, manage transitions, respond to change, and structure project leadership. She explains how she separates work into simple, complicated, and complex categories when deciding what to give AI, and why simple and selected complicated work offer the most practical opportunities today. From there, Sara and Cornelius examine decision latency and the danger of judging a decision only by its eventual outcome. Sara argues that leaders should focus on whether they made a defensible decision based on the information and criteria available at the time. They also examine project handoffs, where weak preparation can allow value to leak away and risk to increase just as the project reaches a critical transition point.

Play audio-only episode | Play on YouTube | Play on Spotify Episode Summary Artificial intelligence can now appear in PMP exam scenarios, but that does not mean candidates need to study AI technology. In Episode 557, Cornelius Fichtner starts with the PMP Exam Content Outline and separates what PMI actually says from what many candidates may assume. AI appears in the introduction as one of the trends PMI evaluates when researching changes in professional practice expectations, but it does not appear as a task or enabler in the People, Process, or Business Environment domains. That distinction matters because the PMP exam measures project management competencies, not technical mastery of the tools a project manager may use. AI can show up as a project risk, a deliverable, or a tool that a team wants to adopt, while the underlying exam question still asks whether you can manage risk, evaluate a tool, address a stakeholder concern, handle change, or make an accountable project decision. Cornelius also shows the kinds of questions candidates should not expect, including technical questions about generative versus predictive AI, prompt-writing techniques, and AI model selection.