Anthony Reed

Did you know that there’s a direct link between managers and marathoners? They’re both Type T’s. Managers are “mental” Type T’s. And marathoners are “physical” Type T’s. And Type T’s are thrill seekers. They thrive from taking calculated risks to achieve a goal. Successful endurance athletes and business managers exhibit the same characteristics to thrive. They manage change by taking calculated risks and gradually expanding their comfort zones. This is how a miler becomes a marathoner and an individual contributor becomes a successful manager. They must incorporate change, manage risk, and motivate people to go up hill at a time when they want to quit. All of this must be achieved in a stressful, challenging business environment. Companies today are struggling to maintain morale while doing more work with fewer monetary and human resources. This isn’t an easy task. Preparing for and completing a marathon is the perfect backdrop for examining the problems and challenges faced by today’s managers. Whether you’re in a high-pressured meeting or encountering predators on Kenya’s Lewa SafriCom Marathon course, you must be able to react quickly to make critical decisions with limited information. You should weigh the advantages of a short-term sprint with finishing in the long run. You must become a marathoner, who successfully uses their knowledge to embrace the uncomfortable, to push towards new limits mentally and physically, and to conquer challenges. The presenter is a former Fortune 500 executive, 132-time marathon finisher, and two-time National Distance Running Hall of Fame inductee.

As AI becomes embedded in our lives, soft skills have become more critical for us to be successful in our personal and professional lives. These skills allow us to build better relationships, work more efficiently, and maximize our potential. They also guide us through very tough and challenging situations. Although a person may be technically knowledgeable and competent, they still must interact with their team members, internal and external customers, vendors, and individuals who don’t report to them. The leader must avoid the AI helmet fires to focus on the task at hand and remain a creative problem solver. The presenter shares how the same soft skills were critically important to his success in education, business, sports, and moviemaking where he • Earned two graduate and two undergraduate degrees • Became a Fortune 500 international technology executive • Won over forty film festival awards for writing and directing documentaries • Was inducted into two National Distance Running Halls of Fame • Has artifacts from his historic marathon in the Smithsonian Museum • Became one of eight recipients of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition Hero Award. SOFT SKILLS MAKE HARD PROJECTS POSSIBLE.

When was the last time that you worked on a project under perfect conditions? That’s to say that there were no constraints, such as • Resources (Human, Material, and Money/Budget) • Time • Scope All of the unlimited resources were available at your beckoned call. You had more monetary resources (budget) than you could spend. You had so many people (human resources) clambering to get on the project that you had to turn people away. And all of your materials, such as software and hardware, arrived on time, was installed without any problems, and was ready to run out of the box. There were no delivery dates or deadlines. And the project scope/requirements never changed because scope creep never occurred. Or you were able to change the deadline to correspond with scope changes. Chances are great, that you worked on projects that went through the “perfect storm.” You faced resource problems. Too little money was allocated, the money evaporated too quickly, or the budget was cut for more important projects. Hardware was delivered late and there were problems with installing the software. And you either didn’t have enough people, the right people weren’t available, and/or you experienced turnover of key people during the project. Furthermore, you faced the quagmire of an unmovable deadline and a movable scope. For the most part, we must manage projects during the perfect storm. This presentation is based on over thirty years of first-hand experiences in managing highly visible IT projects and directing films. The projects were for small businesses, Fortune 500 companies, quasi-governmental, and governmental agencies. The documentaries won over thirty film festival awards in the US, Canada, Sweden, and India. Sometimes, our ship capsized during the storm (i.e. the project was abandoned). Other times, we sailed through the storm and survived (i.e. the project was in trouble, but we recovered and it was implemented on time). And we even sailed around the storm and had the perfect project (i.e. a $12 million project was completed for $2.6 million).