PROJECT LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT FOR MODERN ORGANIZATIONS
Strengthen Project Leadership
Build the leadership, capabilities, and culture needed for stronger delivery performance.
Projects succeed when leaders at every level understand how to guide people through uncertainty, communicate effectively, make better decisions, and create environments where teams can do their best work.
Project leadership offerings are led by Dawn Mahan, PMP, award-winning consultant and author of Meet the Players in Projectland.
Reduce the heroics required to turn strategy into results.
Whether you need a targeted course, tailored workshops, or an embedded advisory partner, we meet your people where the work gets difficult. They receive practical guidance for live initiatives, support for strengthening sponsor-lead relationships, and a common way to surface risks, frame tradeoffs, and keep important work moving. What they learn remains inside your organization.
THE COST OF LEADERSHIP & CULTURE GAPS
Do these symptoms look familiar?
If even a few of these sound familiar, people, culture, and alignment may be limiting project success more than process, methodology, or tools.
Every project feels like priority one
Projects stay green until they suddenly turn red
Project leaders spend more time putting out fires than preventing them
Milestone dates are suggestions
Sponsors disappear after kickoff
Success depends too heavily on heroics
Teams hesitate to raise concerns
We’re supposed to be on the same team, but it doesn’t feel that way
People nod in meetings, then keep doing things the old way
Everyone seems to have their own way of doing things - Choose-your-own-adventure, anyone?
Project successes are quickly forgotten while problems get all the attention
Lessons learned rarely become lessons applied
OUR SOLUTIONS
Built for the Realities of Projectland®
Choose the level of support that fits your organization: coordinated leadership alignment across an active transformation portfolio, stronger executive sponsorship, or practical development for project leads and professional project managers seeking to strengthen their skills, credentials, and career credibility.
Enterprise Transformation Delivery Partnership
Align C-suite champions, project sponsors, and project leads across high-stakes initiatives through a six-month, senior-led advisory partnership.
Project Lead & Project Manager Development
Build practical project leadership skills through role-based courses such as our Practical Project Management (PPM) Certificate Course, prepare experienced project managers for PMP® certification, or address specific needs through targeted workshops shaped around your people and their work.
RESEARCH SHOWS
Most projects still do not deliver as promised.
For decades, major studies have revealed a stubbornly persistent problem:
organizations initiate important projects, but very few deliver everything originally expected.
In a 2004 global study covering approximately 10,640 projects, PwC found that only 2.5% of the companies surveyed had every project finish on time, within budget, within scope, and delivering the intended business benefits.
Nearly two decades later, Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner reported findings from more than 16,000 projects in How Big Things Get Done, which Inc.com called “The Most Important Business Book of the Year”:​​​​​​​
Methodology alone is not the differentiator.
PMI’s research found that project teams perform comparably across predictive, hybrid, and agile approaches. It also found that equipping employees with the right skills and empowering teams with flexibility can strengthen innovation, agility, and efficiency.
As Dawn Mahan writes in Meet the Players in Projectland:
“Successful projects happen when the right people are assigned to the right projects at the right time and are afforded the time and space to focus.”
Tools, methodologies, and standards matter. But they cannot replace project leads who are prepared to lead across departments, sponsors who understand how to support them at the right level, and executives who create the conditions for candid communication and timely decisions.
That is why PMOtraining develops the people responsible for turning strategy into results, not just the processes surrounding their work.
Sources: PricewaterhouseCoopers, Boosting Business Performance through Programme and Project Management (2004); Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner, How Big Things Get Done (2023); Inc.com, “The Most Important Business Book of the Year: ‘How Big Things Get Done’” (2024); Project Management Institute, The Future of Project Work: Pulse of the Profession® 2024; Dawn Mahan, Meet the Players in Projectland: Decide the Right Project Roles & Get People On Board.
Her practical approach doesn’t just build project management capacity in your organization—it helps change your culture.
Rich Negrin, Esq.
Former Pennsylvania Secretary of Environmental Protection and C-Suite Executive
Dawn’s ‘sponsor school’ unlocked some critical insights that served as rocket fuel in our journey to greater organizational and strategic clarity, collaboration, and efficiency.
Tanya Carlson
Deputy Chief of Strategy
A unique way of explaining project management that doesn’t feel like I’m at the dentist!
Raoul Davis
CEO, Ascendant Group | Author | International Speaker
Ready to Strengthen Project Leadership?
Let’s talk about what your people are being asked to deliver and where the right support could make a difference.
CASE STUDY
Building Project Management Capability Across the City of Philadelphia
See how practical, focused project leadership development helped supervisors across city departments apply improvements immediately, build a more consistent approach, and strengthen cross-departmental teamwork.
The program earned excellent ratings across every evaluation area from 450 participants at the supervisor level and above.
RELATED INSIGHTS
Go Deeper
Practical guidance for aligning teams, strengthening sponsorship, and choosing the right development path for your people.
READY TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP?
Let’s find the right support for your people.
Tell us what your organization is trying to accomplish, who is responsible for leading the work, and where delivery is getting difficult. Together, we’ll explore whether a targeted course, tailored workshops, or an enterprise advisory partnership could be the right fit.