Mr. Vandersluis has spoken on a wide variety of topics to groups that have ranged from dozens of attendees to thousands. He has worked in onsite, onsite/simulcast and video environments.
Topics typically focus on producing results in a light annecdoctal style drawing on the many years of experience Mr. Vandersluis has had. Attendees are typically left with something to think about and things they can take action on immediately. Speeches can last from as little as 30 minutes to as long as several hours. Here are just a few of the more popular topics:
Tracking Resource Actuals
Audience: CFOs, CIOs, CEOs, Controllers, Project Msngemement Office Managers
Planning alone was once sufficient to put an organization ahead of its competitors. That is no longer the case. It is not enough to just plan or to know how much time your staff spends at work. To be competiive and provide good governance, management now needs to know what the staff worked on and how much time they spent working on it. Tracking Resource Actuals has been a part of project management for a long time but it has never been as critical a factor as it is now. This topic brings 30 years of timesheet methodology into focus as a key source of management decision making data.
Enterprise Project Management (EPM)
Audience: CPOs, CIOs, Project Management Office Managers, Project Managers, Project Portfolio Managers
There are a wide range of speaking topics in the EPM category which Mr. Vandersluis can speak on. These include: Resource Capacity Planning, Multi-project scheduling, tracking projects in-progress and managing labor actuals, and the benefits and challenges of creating a Project Management Office.
Project Portfolio Management (PPM)
CIOs, COOs, CEOs, CPOs and Project Management Office Managers, Project Portfolio Managers
The Harvard Business review reported that over a 3 year period, American organizations spent $130billion on technologies they never used. It is this disconnect between selecting projects of that generate benefit and those that do not that makes Project Portfolio Management such a topical subject. How do organizations choose the projects that should be activated and the projects which should be delayed? How does the organization choose the appropriate business criteria which can be used against future ideas?
Business Prioritization
Audience: Senior executives, division managers
So many organizations make business decisions based on a gut-feel or by looking at one criteria at the expense of many others. Yet, the most successful organizations are able to balance multiple business criteria to determine what they should focus on. This topic targets senior management who must establish the criteria that will be used to prioritize business or project challenges from the very highest level.
Solution Buying
Audience: IT Solution Account Executives, COOs, CIOs and other senior management who select major organization solutions
Solution selling has been a popular topic among ERP, PPM, CRM and EPM system vendors for many years. The vendors know to focus on the organization’s problems and how they can solve them in order to sell their system. But what about the organization itself? How does an organization become a solution buyer?
Generating a mission document
Audience, Senior Executives
Creating a mission statement is all too easy. A group spends a day or an hour or a few minutes on it in a focus group and the resulting statement is bronzed and mounted as a plaque on the building but it is less common to generate a mission that impacts the organization. This talk opens up the concept of creating a mission “document” that includes a bold mission statement but also mission standards, methods and concrete goals that will help the mission be realized. This topic is often conducted as a one or multiple day workshop.
Causing a Breakthrough
Audience: Performance executives, performance athletes and performance coaches
Developed from many years working with performance-oriented volunteers, this topic is popular with those who are committed to perform beyond the norm. A breakthrough is a discontinuous result; a result that is not just incremental. The Anatomy of a Breakthrough talks about how to condition your environment to generate the conditions for a breakthrough and, once a breakthrough occurs, how to recognize it and stabilize it .