If I had a dollar for every time a service delivery leader told me their team has "great communication skills" right before a project went off the rails, I could retire twice over. We have a tendency in this industry to categorize communication as a "soft skill." We group it in with personality traits like empathy or charisma. We hire Project Managers because they are articulate and Senior Consultants because they are approachable. Then, we assume that because everyone is nic

I’ve seen it a hundred times. A senior executive corners a service delivery leader in the hallway and asks, "How are we looking on the Acme Corp implementation? Are we on budget?" The simple question triggers a not-so-simple, manual fire drill. You pull the original SOW from the CRM, find the latest timesheet data from a series of spreadsheets, check the project management tool for percent complete, and try to reconcile expense reports from another system entirely. By the tim

I’ve seen it a hundred times. A project manager, beaming with confidence, walks into a steering committee meeting with a status report that’s green across the board. They present their risk log, a tidy list of potential technical hurdles, third-party delays, and client feedback bottlenecks. Everyone nods, feeling a sense of control. The problem is, this feeling is a complete illusion. That risk log, the very document meant to protect the project, is often the biggest liabilit