Recently, Harvard Business Review published an article about what the next generation of project management will look like. The article highlighted 10 next-generation skills:

1. Organizational awareness
2. Data acumen
3. Cross-functional collaboration
4. Decision-making
5. Willingness to explore and adopt new technology
6. Financial acumen
7. Process and framework expertise (i.e., business process improvement, agile, organizational change management, risk)
8. Growth mindset
9. The ability to coach and motivate teams
10. Customer centricity

Now, these are all good skills for today’s project manager to focus on to be relevant tomorrow. There is one item on the list that piqued my interest the most.

Read More at ProjectManagement.com .

I worked for three companies in my professional career: Accenture, Microsoft, and my own company, Consetta Group.

In my 11 years at Accenture, I worked on gigs in the oil & gas, food distribution, technology, retail distribution, aerospace & defense, software product management, and outsourcing industries. At Microsoft I worked in IT, corporate procurement, corporate planning, and HR over a nine-year span. I not only got a rich education in different industries and functions, but was able to go deeper in areas I liked.

And it all largely happened despite my lack of planning.

Particularly in my career at Accenture, I mostly took the gigs that were given to me. I really had no idea what skills I wanted to build or industries I wanted to work in. What my experience at Accenture imprinted on me was to stay in a job for about 18 months then look for my next opportunity.

This continued at Microsoft as well as my own consultancy. After about 18 months I would get bored and need a change. Even to this day, I occasionally get an itch to do something different and new.

I’ve looked at a lot of LinkedIn profiles over the past several years. My first inclination is to go to the experience section and see not just where people have worked, but how many companies and how long they worked at each company. This review provides first impressions for me:

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

So let’s say you went through the 12 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Becoming an Independent Consultant—and you still want to take the plunge. This article will give you the must-do items to complete before opening your doors.

It’s common to be excited about getting your consultancy going and landing that first gig—passion is great! But you absolutely need to get a few things in order first. I can’t stress this enough: If you skip over considering the 10 steps below, you are setting yourself up for potentially big problems later. This is a “measure twice, cut once” thing. (I think you get my point by now…)

My experience is setting up a U.S. company in the state of Washington. You should use the advisors and other suggestions that are right for your consultancy’s location.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com

In my four decades as a professional, I’ve worked as a consultant at Accenture, hired consultants at Microsoft, and engaged with many clients while running my own firm. I’ve seen consulting from many different vantage points—some very positive, others not so much.

Of all these, I have by far enjoyed working in my own consultancy the most. I’m in no way trying to dismiss Accenture or Microsoft; I’m still on friendly terms with them, and strongly advocate them as employers. But going off on my own worked out best for me.

Hanging your own shingle is a bit like a bungee jump: it’s exciting, exhilarating and scary all at the same time. I’ve learned that branching off as an independent consultant isn’t for everyone, and that the most important first step anyone could take is to do some honest introspection on whether being an independent consultant is for him or her.

To that end, I have developed 12 questions that I believe are important to ask if you want to be your own consulting boss:

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

So check this out.

Recently I received an email from someone who found me on LinkedIn. The person wasn’t a connection of mine, so I had no idea who he was or where he worked.

Let’s go through some of the items on the email (indicated by red letters A-F) and how it influenced my impression of this person. I changed personally identifiable information and will call him John Doe.

A LinkedIn interaction from some time back still sticks with me today. Why? He and I connected, then he immediately asked to review my personal finances so he could do for me what he had allegedly done for so many other “thrilled customers.” I told him “No thanks.” He replied back asking me why. Being the direct guy I am, I told him I thought it was insincere to connect with me and immediately want to review my personal finances and try to sell me on his service. He said he never asked me to send my personal finances through LinkedIn. At this point, the discussion was no longer about him trying to sell me a service; instead, I wanted to provide a teachable moment for him. I told him that sending personal finances through LinkedIn wasn’t the issue, but I didn’t want to divulge my personal finances to someone I didn’t even know who connected with me only 30 minutes ago. After another couple of interactions, he told me that “nice people” would agree to meet with him (I guess I’m not a nice person) and that he was rescinding his offer to meet (even though I already told him I didn’t want to meet with him). It was kind of like “you can’t break up with me because I’m breaking up with you first”. He then wished me the best. He made an impression on me for sure, just not one he wanted.

In a recent phone call I told the CEO of my insurance brokerage that after being a loyal customer for 15 years I had moved all my business to other providers. Given our long-standing relationship, I felt I owed him an explanation; not because I wanted to see someone fired, but because I wanted him to know my reasons for leaving so he could put any lessons learned to use.

It started about seven years ago when the person assigned to my business insurance seemed to lose interest in me. He wasn’t on top of my renewals, made me do work that he could have done for me, and didn’t competitively bid my insurance. I moved all of my business insurance to another agency. A similar issue happened in the past year with my personal insurance; I simply didn’t feel that I was important to my agent. The final nail in the coffin came when my bank notified me that my homeowners’ insurance had lapsed two months earlier without any notification from my insurance agent. I then reached out to another agency, who quickly bound coverage for me at 10 p.m. on a Saturday evening.