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Project work dominates how organizations grow, transform, and compete, yet many projects still fail to create meaningful impact. This conversation examines why delivering plans, schedules, and outputs no longer defines success for project managers. As expectations shift toward value creation and strategic impact, the role of the project manager expands beyond execution into leadership, influence, and decision-making. Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, a leading authority on project leadership and organizational transformation, explains how organizations have become project-driven and what that shift demands from those leading initiatives.

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Leadership is not defined by rank, title, or position, but by how well leaders take care of their people. In this conversation, Cornelius Fichtner speaks with Sergeant Major Jill E. Johnson about leadership grounded in service, trust, and responsibility. Drawing from more than two decades of military experience, including deployments and senior enlisted leadership roles, Jill explains how effective leaders build commitment by focusing on people before personal advancement. She shares how early career experiences, unexpected recommendations, and continuous preparation shaped her leadership path, even when she did not initially plan to pursue a long-term military career.

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Project requirements rarely change because teams lack discipline. More often, change starts long before a project manager ever joins the work. Early product decisions define priorities, assumptions, and constraints that quietly shape delivery outcomes. In this conversation, Cornelius Fichtner speaks with Lee Fischman about why project managers so often inherit projects that feel impossible and how product thinking influences what gets built, how success is defined, and how much flexibility exists when reality shifts. The discussion connects product management, project execution, and leadership behavior, showing how unclear intent, untested value assumptions, and early commitments lead to ongoing requirement changes later in delivery.

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AI is changing how projects operate, but speed and automation also introduce new risks that are easier to miss and harder to challenge. This conversation examines how artificial intelligence accelerates existing project warning signs and creates confidence without evidence. Cornelius Fichtner welcomes Matthew Oleniuk, author of The Seven Red Flags of Failing Projects, to revisit four critical red flags through an AI lens. Together, they discuss how AI-driven reporting, task automation, and decision support can intensify output-focused thinking, hide weak outcomes, and create polished narratives that mask real project health. The discussion emphasizes that AI does not introduce entirely new problems but magnifies behaviors that already exist in project environments, especially overconfidence, automation bias, and reduced human challenge.

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Projects rarely fall apart because of tools or templates. They struggle because leaders lack clarity, adaptability, awareness, and strong communication habits. Author and coach Scott Barnard joins Cornelius Fichtner to share a practical leadership framework built on four pillars that help project managers guide their teams through turbulence. Drawing from more than three decades of recovering troubled initiatives, Scott explains how these pillars help teams anticipate disruption, reduce stress, and keep moving toward meaningful outcomes. His experience spans major global programs, complex software projects, and large organizational transformations, all of which reveal a consistent pattern: when leaders strengthen these four pillars, chaos loses its grip and teams deliver more confidently.

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Subtle problems often start long before a project shows obvious signs of distress. Leaders feel the pressure to deliver momentum, teams shift toward activity over outcomes, and stakeholders slowly fade as competing priorities pull them away. In this conversation, Matthew Oleniuk brings his experience from overseeing large public sector projects and highlights seven early indicators that signal when a project is heading toward trouble. He explains why these issues are easy to ignore, how they quietly compound over time, and why strong leadership vigilance matters more than any dashboard color. He also describes how patterns like output beating outcome, performance theater, and risk box ticking show up in real projects and why they are so harmful when left unchallenged.

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The eighth edition of the PMBOK Guide has dropped and it represents another significant evolutions in PMI’s standards. This conversation takes listeners directly inside its development. Jesse Fewell, who chaired the PMBOK Guide 8 effort, offers a detailed look at how tens of thousands of data points, practitioner feedback, and extensive review cycles shaped the newest edition. He explains how the standard brings greater clarity, a more intuitive structure, and practical guidance that aligns with the way projects actually unfold rather than how we might idealize them on paper. This episode also highlights major updates, including a fully revised definition of a project and a modernized view of project success that emphasizes value, perception, and consensus across stakeholders, even when budgets or schedules are challenged.

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Project leadership is more than delivering on time and budget. It is about leading people with honesty, awareness, and courage. In this episode, leadership coach and author Susanne Madsen joins Cornelius Fichtner to discuss how project managers can transform their project outcomes by developing authentic leadership. Drawing from her acclaimed book, *The Power of Project Leadership*, Susanne explains the Project Leadership Matrix, how to assess whether we are proactive or reactive, and how self-awareness is the foundation of great leadership. She also unpacks how leaders can balance people and task focus while recognizing that reactivity often stems from corporate culture rather than personality.