Project Management Happy Hour

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 a blown budget, but a smart solution that nobody trusts. Kim and Kate dig into that exact problem, exploring decision-making, risk management, and team performance through the lens of one hard-earned leadership lesson: being right is not enough. If you've eve...

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 the reported chaos behind Beast Games—from weather disasters and safety concerns to unhappy contestants, lawsuits, and production challenges. But here's the twist: despite all the problems, does the sponsor spin it as a win? If they did...

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 the rise of Mr. Beast and the making of Beast Games through a project management lens—not to critique content creation, but to examine what happens when vision outpaces execution. From sponsor behavior and scaling challenges to agile gone sideways...

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?"

Suddenly you're no longer managing a project. You're managing expectations, buzzwords, corporate excitement, and whatever article someone just read on the flight home from a conference.

In this episode, Kim...

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 deadlines, manage stakeholders, and explain for the fifth time why the project scope changed after leadership changed the entire business strategy.

In this episode, Kim and Kate sit down with Kelly Heuer from Project Management Institute to talk ab...

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.

In this episode, Kim and Kate take on the very real, very unsexy side of project management: figuring out how to manage your own work when everything (and everyone) is demanding your attention.

This isn't about fi...

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. Today, we're joined by facilitation expert Evan Unger to talk about a topic that Kate and Kim geek out over: meetings. Specifically, why most of them are terrible, how they drain organizational productivity, and exactly what you can do to fix yours.

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 was a meeting dungeon built from listener-submitted horror stories, tabletop chaos, and the exact kinds of project meetings that make smart people question their career choices.

In this April Fool's episode of Project Man...

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 Project Management Happy Hour, we revisit the classic episode "Embracing De-escalation," exploring how savvy project managers use escalation to enhance visibility, make informed decisions, and navigate risk—without losing their cool.

...

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 compromises that seem harmless in the moment. A warning sign gets ignored. A shortcut becomes acceptable. A risk is acknowledged but tolerated because "nothing bad happened last time." Over time, those deviations quietly become the new normal...

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'm Too Nice" and break down what that kind of vague feedback is really doing (sometimes gendered, almost always inactionable), why it hits so hard, and how to respond without spiraling - or people-pleasing your way into a personality transpl...

"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, you aren't the "one PM to rule them all" on your project - you may have other PMs involved that you need to work with. But how do you decide who does what, and how do you prevent turf wars from turning your project into a slow-motio...

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 customer—just saying no often isn't productive, strategic, or even possible.

In this Top Shelf Replay episode of Project Management Happy Hour, Kim Essendrup and Kate Anderson revisit one of the show's earliest "Appetizer" episo...

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 truth: contracting is built on relationships, reputation, and value… not job boards and commodity rates.

We cover how to know if you're ready, why sales is part of the job, what to watch out for (hello, 2008), and how to avoi...

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 projects together: trust.

In this Top Shelf Replay episode of Project Management Happy Hour, Kim Essendrup and Kate Anderson revisit one of the show's earliest and most enduring concepts: Trust Bricks. Originally recorded in 2018, this ...

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 sneak up on you. This one covers three big themes that hit close to home for project managers, leaders, and anyone who's ever had to keep a project — or a career — moving forward despite chaos.

It starts with a deceptively...

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 Replay, Kate & Kim revisit one of the most beloved—and re-listened—episodes in PM Happy Hour history: "Stage Direction in the Boardroom" featuring master facilitator Sheila Morago.

If you've ever wondered how elite ...

Kate didn't plan to measure their burnout by the number of bags of pink-and-purple Mother's animal cookies consumed at their desk…but here we are. Kim's clue was a rotating cycle of stomach aches and "maybe these aren't panic attacks but the room is definitely spinning." And our guest, Norlander Wilson, talks about showing up to work without showering or brushing her teeth for days because she literally couldn't...

Ever freeze up in a tough project conversation? Or worse—blow it up? In this episode of Project Management Happy Hour, Kim and Kate revisit their all-time favorite: Crucial Conversations by the team at VitalSmarts (now Crucial Learning). This book completely changed how they lead, negotiate, and manage conflict. Learn how to spot when a conversation turns "crucial," stay in dialogue instead of defensiveness, and ...