Business, Management, and Office Skills

You’ve been there. You know you have. You’re plugging along, doing your job, making progress, and then all of a sudden…bam! You feel like the victim of a hit-and-run (and to some extent, you are). You’ve just been nailed by office politics.

During this presentation, Timothy Johnson will share the GUST process to understand your office politics situations better. You’ll see how much control you have over the game, learn the importance of understanding the players and motives, determine the best strategy for addressing your specific situation, and then figure out how to take action without compromising your integrity.

From bullies who overstep their bounds to office prima donnas who think everything revolves around their egos, from passive-aggressive types to saboteurs, you’ll see new approaches for framing and handling your office politics situations.

Timothy L. Johnson is Chief Accomplishment Officer of Carpe Factum, Inc. (Latin for "seize the accomplishment"). He has almost two decades of experience in project and program management, business solutioning, creativity, executive and management coaching, and strategic facilitation. His clients include Harley-Davidson Motorcycles, Wells Fargo, ITA Group, Teva Neuroscience, Principal Financial Group, Marsh, and many small businesses and not-for-profit organizations.

He is an adjunct professor in the MBA program at Drake University in Des Moines, IA, teaching classes in Project Management, Creativity for Business, and Managing Office Politics. His first book, Race Through the Forest—A Project Management Fable, was published in 2006. His second book, GUST— The "Tale" Wind of Office Politics, was released on 13 April 2007. He is also a contributing writer on www.office-politics.com, an online advice column for office politics situations, as well as www.iowabiz.com, an online resource for small business owners.

When new processes are implemented, new work flows designed, and new collaborative structures called for, the logical way forward—a direct line from here to there—inevitably encounters the speed bumps and detours of resistance to (cultural) change.

While planning ahead and anticipating problems is good project management practice, some of the less obvious issues can still catch you completely unawares.

This presentation addresses what could go wrong, how to prevent it, and—if you can't prevent it—how to shift into damage-control mode and minimize the delaying effects.

Emma Hamer is the founding principal and senior consultant at eHamerAssociates Ltd. Career & Performance Consultants (www.hamer-associates.ca). She has successfully helped over 500 middle to senior managers transition from one career to the next, in a wide range of industries, but she tends to prefer working with geeks. In addition, she's worked with hundreds of managers and executives to improve their effectiveness as leaders.

Her field of practice is human performance improvement, both for individuals and for corporations; her passion is systematically removing obstacles to success. All are firmly founded on in-depth root-cause analysis of human performance gaps and the subsequent design of creative interventions to close those gaps.

As we plan and implement our projects, we are bombarded by more information than ever before. Add the increase in collaborative project development and management, and the stress increases exponentially. Tempers fray and opinions become entrenched, and the stakes for every project seem to spiral upward. How to cope with this escalation? Return to basic critical thinking skills and argue logically to effective—and calmer—solutions.

This session will review basic critical thinking tenets, including the anatomy of an argument, and provide a brief review of fallacies most commonly found in business arguments.

Bonni Graham has spent 16 years as a practicing technical documentor. In 1994, she started Manual Labour, a technical documentation outsource provider.

Bonni is also the Documentation Manager at Scantron Corporation. Scantron helps education, commercial, and government organizations worldwide measure and improve effectiveness with assessment and survey solutions. Bonni also teaches technical communication to engineers for the Engineering Department of University of California, Riverside and to other technical communicators for the Technical Communication Certificate program at University of California, San Diego Extension.

Negotiations are simply a part of life. We all find ourselves negotiating for what we want, whether we're trying to secure additional resources, decide on a movie with a friend, manage the scope of a project with your boss, or ask for a raise.

During this session we will cover the basics of negotiation, including:

• How to prepare for a pending negotiation.
• How to set the stage for success
• How to get what you really want in a negotiation.
• When to cut your losses and just walk away.

Jack will draw on experience as both a buyer and seller of corporate services and will share “war stories” from both sides of the negotiation table in this entertaining and informative session on workplace negotiation skills.

Jack Molisani started his career as Project Officer in the Space Division of the USAF where he negotiated $100k+ contracts with leading defense contractors.

Jack then went on to start ProSpring, Inc, an outsource writing company with a staffing division specializing in contract technical writers (www.ProspringStaffing.com). He also produces The LavaCon Conference on Career and Professional Development (www.lavacon.org).

You are constantly entering into agreements and contracts, from simply following the speed limit to agreeing on workplace deliverables.

What are you supposed to do? By when? What are you supposed to get in exchange? When are you supposed to receive it? How much? When?

The document recording the agreement may be an email, a letter of agreement, a project plan, or a full-blown contract, but in any case there should be something in writing to document the agreement.

During this session we will cover the basics of negotiation, including:

• The importance of recording agreements in writing.
• Defining project scope and deliverables.
• Defining payment and payment terms.
• Specifying what happens if something goes very wrong…or very right!
• Covering “what if” scenarios.
• And more!

While Jack is not a lawyer nor will he be giving legal advice, he will share real-life examples and lessons learned as an employee, an independent contractor, and finally a business owner—stories and examples that will illustrate the points covered in this session.

Jack Molisani started his career as Project Officer in the Space Division of the USAF where he negotiated $100k+ contracts with leading defense contractors.

Jack then went on to start ProSpring, Inc, an outsource writing company with a staffing division specializing in contract technical writers (www.ProspringStaffing.com). He also produces The LavaCon Conference on Career and Professional Development (www.lavacon.org).