Project mentoring & consulting

Be the Difference. Remain Curious. Shine.

Will projects boost your career or turn into a career-limiting factor?

Are you part of a project organization and committed to a project? Is the project about to start or already in motion? Is your role managing one or more projects or a part of it? Are you the project sponsor or project owner? 

Good luck! No matter what role you will play, the success of your project is likely to become the career booster you might be looking for. This is the good news. The bad news is that equally so could a failing project become a career-limiting factor for you. 

Project success depends very little on methodologies, frameworks, tools, or company standards. In a Forbes article, none of those were mentioned at all as a step to project success. The discussions about the right methodologies, standards, tools, etc. create more confusion rather than practical advice. There is no cookbook for your project, to a large degree, you write it yourself.

You are an experienced functional manager who suddenly needs to play the role of “project sponsor”? Or as “senior user” or any other higher-level project function? You might not be clear about what is expected from you and how to be successful. Project Management is very seldom part of executive training, and business gurus hardly speak about it (more here). But still, you will be associated with your project’s success as well as its failure. Plus all the consequences it will bring with it. 

Project participation is often seen as a stretch assignment. A perfect opportunity to develop beyond your capability as a functional expert towards a more managerial and change-oriented role. Are you asking yourself where best to start and what really matters?

Or you are considering becoming a project manager and wonder if it is a good career choice. What skills are required to even get started? How is project work different from “normal” work, what should you expect?

If you want to discuss any of this, please get in touch. I am welcoming your eMail.

Project Success : Better Project Managers and Project Sponsors make better Projects 

There are many facets of project management. You are unique, so is your project, your organization, and your project team. No book, no training, no certification will teach you what your project really means in your specific circumstances. You only understand when you are experiencing it.

Yet, there is a shortcut: I have nearly 40 years of project management experience that I am happy to share with you.  Either as mentor or consultant. I have seen and made mistakes that you do not need to repeat, had successes that you could adapt. Maybe you need a mature and independent expert view on the overall health of your project (or portfolio of projects) or some specific areas of it. You want to rest assured that the right things happen at the right time. Looking for solid advice when, where and how to get started or improve to make success more likely?

It does not matter what stage your project is at. I can help you grow faster, especially when you are new to project work or project thinking. Better project managers and better project sponsors make better projects. Planning a project well before it is formally kicked off is critical. But how? It is equally important to address the many risks you will encounter during project execution. How is the team doing, who do you need to work with? How are changes communicated to the user community that will be impacted? Your project might be in bad shape with a high risk of derailing. As a consultant, I can help identify root causes and ways to fix it. Or even better, how to avoid it as much as possible right from the start. How do you think about organizational readiness and change management?

Are you overloaded with initiatives, draining resources at an unsustainable level? Do you have the right resources on board? Maybe it would be better to stop this project (more here)? But how? Or cancel another one to give priority – but which one? Do you have the necessary visibility to make those decisions?

There will be many more questions you will discover during the project journey. All of them need answers on time. I can help you find them and be a resourceful sounding board.

As mentor, I help you to become a better project manager or sponsor, as consultant I help you manage your initiative towards success.

Please drop me a line to explore further where I can add value to yourself, your team or organization.

Want to know more? Read on.

Interested or wanting to share a comment, simply get in touch via eMail.

If you are not yet involved in projects but are thinking about your career in general, check here.

#1 - Most work will be project-based

Projects are fascinating, dynamic things for many reasons. They are means to solve problems, and they will introduce change. It could be that people´s life or the future of a whole organization depends on it.

The world of work has changed dramatically through the various stages of industrialization. Projects have become an important element to implement technical innovations and organizational changes efficiently. As the need to innovate has evolved, so has the discipline of project management. 

The management of projects is characterized by planning, executing, monitoring, and finalizing the work to deliver a defined objective. It is constrained by time, budget, and quality among other factors. Project tasks are typically structured along a couple of different phases. Working in a project context is different from performing repetitive operational, day-to-day tasks. Projects are unique initiatives with a defined start and end date. The project organization exists only as long as the project is in progress. It will be dismissed once the project is finished.

Since the definition of modern project management in the 1950s, the way projects are run has been further refined and new approaches have been tested. Today, many tools exist that seem to make project management a simple administrative task that can be learned quickly. 

Right on time, one might think, as due to the dynamic, ever-changing world, more and more of everyday work becomes project-based. We even speak about “projectization” of work or “Management by Projects” (MBP) instead of the decades old “Management by Objectives” (MBO). 

This has major consequences for societies, organizations as well as the individual. More and more people find themselves in the business of managing projects — even if they are not traditional project managers. They lack some needed skills or recognized qualifications that can be certified by e.g. the Project Management Institute (PMI). According to a study by the international consulting firm Bain & Company, by 2027 most work will be project-based. 


“With most activity automated or outsourced, almost all remaining roles will be mission-critical. 

Most work will be project-based” [more here]. 


With this development, more and more project management positions are becoming available. According to a recent PMI report,  they estimate that 


“Demand over the next 10 years for project managers is growing faster than demand for workers in other occupations.” 

“By 2027, employers will need nearly 88 million individuals in project management-oriented roles.” [more here]


Good news for project wannabes and the project management community. Bad news for organizations, as project management competencies will continue to be short in supply. [more here]

This development raises questions in two directions: What does it mean for an individual and how should organizations respond to it.

As an individual, you will ask yourself:


As an organization, no matter how small or large you are and what your products or services are, you are confronted with some of the following questions:

All those questions have one common underlying question: How can I increase the chances to succeed with the project. Success will not happen by default. Even if failure for most projects is not an option, success is still rare.

Made with love and coffee in Brussels

Creé avec de l´amour et du café à Bruxelles

Mit Liebe und Kaffee in Brüssel entstanden