Here’s a suggested agenda for a Project Excellence workshop with your complete team. Of course we can adjust the agenda to your specific wishes.
Generic learnings
These are the generic aspects that you and your team will learn in this workshop:
- Help your customers find the path to project success
- Always start meetings with questions (while laptops are closed 😊)
- The courage to ask confronting questions to uncover true motivations
- Act and present with more confidence
- The guts to name the elephant in the room
- Being able to inspire and talk to customers at C-level
- Focus on project success instead of (mainly) on your products
Day 1
Opening, goals and expectations
Part I - What’s happening in today’s international markets?
- What is happening in the markets, at the competition and in buying behavior?
- Why is customer centricity the most important trend in today’s markets?
- What are the high-level Microsoft product and distribution strategies?
- What are the most important concerns of the executives at your customers?
Part II – The business impact on your organisation
- What is the business impact of all these changes on your organisation?
- How to best manage customer expectations about project activity & outcomes?
- How to distinguish between ‘successful project’ and ‘on time & in budget’?
- How are you doing compared to other D365 partners and what can be the next steps?
Part III – The impact on your various departments
- With the move to a consumption model, how to keep your customers happy and prevent churn?
- What does the move from mega customizations to (more) standard solutions mean for your marketing, sales, implementation methodology and attitude in general?
- Cross team understanding of one another’s issues, pains, responsibilities and objectives
- How can you use Organizational Change Management to deliver more Project Success?
- Exercise: what would you do if you were the CEO for one day?
Part IV - The impact on your individual employees
- What does this all mean for the individual mindset and for skill sets?
- What are the most important substantive changes for the various roles in your company?
- How can you as an employee better co-operate with customers, colleagues and management?
- What can you as an employee do to deliver more added value in your job?
Wrap-up, conclusions and action points
Day 2
Opening, goals and expectations
Part I - Project success and what’s different from delivering products?
- What is project success? Why is it so important for the customer and for your organisation?
- What is the difference between delivering products and Project Success?
- Why is Microsoft moving from a product approach to a platform strategy?
- What can we learn from the drill and the holes?
Part II – Project challenges in cloud-first world
- What are today’s biggest project challenges and how to overcome these?
- How does the ‘modern buying behavior’ influence those challenges?
- Just modernise technology? Or both technology, business processes and organisation?
- Excercise: joint analysis of your 2 best and your 2 worst projects
Part III – What is a structured way that leads to project success?
- Project success always starts with your customers’ business – not with your products!
- What does the move from mega customisations to (more) standard mean for your services offering?
- Where to find the inspiration to inspire your customers?
- How can each individual department contribute even more to project success?
Part IV - Inspire and lead your customers to achieve project success together
- Why is it so important to educate your customer’s management?
- How to challenge the C-suite of your customers? And who’s job is that?
- How to support the customer’s management breaking their established patterns?
- How can you turn prospect education into a new source of leads?
Wrap-up, conclusions and action points
What do other D365 partners say about this training
“These Project Excellence workshops as delivered by Guus is, without a doubt, the single most effective way to engage the whole team. His content is relevant, insightful, provocative and - most importantly - based on real world experience! Everyone has come away feeling positively charged and eager to implement both personal and business-wide change.”
Paul Kerr | Business Unit manager 4PS (UK)
“The most important lesson for me from this great 2-days workshop was that I stand in my own way with my ingrained thought patterns. And thereby slow down the further development of the company. After the workshop, we immediately implemented the first findings and ideas. And we are already using them in our projects. Positive customer feedback shows that we are on the right track here.”
Marc Teuber | CEO of AGOLUTION (Germany)
“With his clear, straightforward and pragmatic way of getting to the heart of things, Guus has once again made us fit for this important transformation process. Away from complex projects with egg-laying lactic acid to business process optimising projects with a high degree of standardisation. His 30+ years of experience shines through again and again. And thus he can competently address the things that also cause some pain in tegos. Because we must transform ourselves as well in order to continue to make our customers successful. These trainings are important to make our company fit for the coming years. And continue to create #SimplyMoreValue for our customers. Thank you very much Guus!”
Andreas Kullmann | CEO of tegos Group (Germany)
“I will now prioritize small problems before they become big problems. Even if it means addressing unpleasant points directly and getting straight to the point.”
Project leader
“This workshop really helped me to let go of my politeness and to raise more brutal questions. I have also learned to ask further questions and no longer be satisfied with the first answer. This really helps me to get to the core.”
Sales professional
“Since our workshop there is a sticky note on my laptop that says ‘Outside In’ so that I don't lose sight of whether I have enough information about the customer needs that I'm trying to fulfill and to get more feedback from the outside.”
Consultant
“I have already started to communicate more and more openly with the customer, which is a crucial part that contributes to a trusting bond between the customer and me.”
Developer
“The most important lesson for me was that I stand in my own way with my ingrained thought patterns. And thereby slow down the further development of the company.”
Business owner