Project Management Happy Hour

132: Why Your Most Supportive Stakeholder is Ruining your Project, with Dawn Mahan

Projects rarely fail from a lack of templates — they fail because of people. Author Dawn Mahan reveals the animal avatars that help you spot the cheerleader, the finicky

131: Don't be the PM everyone hates, with Rachel Losser

Your worst project management habit might also be your superpower — the trick is knowing which one you're wielding, and when. What actually separates a great project ma

130: Rigged bids, fake deadlines, and going 181x over budget

A $6.9 million estimate. A $1.25 billion catastrophe. How fake deadlines, a rigged bid, and a steering committee allergic to bad news turned a routine payroll migration i

129: How Credibility Starts with Curiosity, with Noel Nicole Ransom

Why do perfectly logical, well-researched project plans still fail to win people over? It's one of the most frustrating forms of project failure—not a broken schedule or

128: Your project can't possibly be as bad as working for Mr Beast, Part 2

Ever worked on a project that felt like a complete disaster... only for leadership to call it a huge success? In Part 2 of our Mr. Beast series, Kim and Kate dig into t

127: Your project can't possibly be as bad as working for Mr Beast, Part 1

Ever worked with a stakeholder who changes direction faster than your project plan can keep up? Then this episode may feel a little too familiar. Kim and Kate dive into

126: "What's your AI Strategy?" Handling the Executive who wants AI in everything

You know the moment. Your project plan is solid. The scope is defined. The team is ready. Then an executive walks by and casually asks: "Can we just make this AI?"

125: How to survive the AI landscape as a PM with PMI's Dr Kelly Heuer

AI is changing work fast enough to give every project manager emotional whiplash. New tools, new workflows, new expectations… and somehow you're still expected to hit dea

124: Drowning in Tasks: How Successful PMs Organize the Chaos

If your to-do list is 47 items long, your Slack won't shut up, and you ended the day thinking, "Cool… but what did I actually accomplish?"—welcome. You're among friends.

123 - Hungry Hungry HPPOs - managing loud personalities with Evan Unger

If your weekly calendar looks like the loser in a state fair quilt competition - just solid blocks of mismatched colors with no room to breathe - this episode is for you.

122 - Kate puts Kim through the worst meeting hells our listeners could dream up: a PM HappyHour role play

Boss fights and boardrooms. Kate puts Kim through meeting hell in this tabletop roleplay episode. Kate: "Help me torture Kim." That was the prompt. What followed wa

121 - Top Shelf Replay: Embracing the Escalation

Escalation: it's a word that can make even experienced project managers tense. But what if you approached it as a tool rather than a threat? In this Top Shelf Replay of P

120 - How smart teams talk themselves into Failure, with Dr. Bill Brantley

Why do smart teams still deliver failed projects? Most project failures don't begin with a catastrophic mistake. Instead, they begin with small deviations—minor comprom

119 - TSR: They told me I'm 'too nice'??

Have you ever gotten feedback that made you want to flip a table because it was both insulting and totally useless? In this Top Shelf Replay, we revisit "They Told Me I

118 - PM Turf Wars: Sharing your projects with other Project Managers

"Three PMs walk into a bar: a business PM, an IT PM, and a Vendor PM…" Sounds like a bad joke, but if you don't get it right - the joke will be your project. Very often

117 - Top Shelf Replay: Say No by Saying Yes

Project managers are constantly told they need to "learn how to say no." But in the real world—especially when the ask comes from a sponsor, executive, or important cust

116 - How to quit your job and completely fail as a PM contractor

Thinking about going contractor? Kate and Kim share how they each left corporate and made the leap—two very different stories (burnout vs acting early) with the same core

115 - Top Shelf Replay: Trust Bricks

As project managers, we spend a lot of time talking about tools, processes, and delivery frameworks—but far less time talking about the invisible structure that holds pro

114 - Happy Hour Chatter: What PMs Really Do, Fear in Decision-Making, and Lessons from Going solo

Kim and Kate settle in for a classic PM Happy Hour episode — the kind where the drinks are metaphorical, the conversation is wandering in the best way, and the insights s

113 - Top Shelf Replay: Stage direction in the boardroom

What happens when you drop a senior project manager into a room full of attorneys, tribal leaders, political operators, and massive personalities? In this Top Shelf Rep