Lee Towe, PMP              

Trainer, Speaker, Facilitator

 

Lee Towe is President of Innovators International, Inc., a 12-year-old training and consulting firm specializing in project management.  Innovators, Inc. is one of PMI’s Charter Registered Education Providers.  Lee has been managing projects for more than 20 years and delivering training workshops for 12 years.  He earned his Project Management Professional (PMP) certification through the Project Management Institute and Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degree from Drake University.

 

Lee Towe has been a conference speaker in places such as Seattle, Miami, New Orleans, Indianapolis and Kansas City.  One national conference had such regard for his speaking that they placed Lee on the program between television personalities George Will and Bryant Gumbel.  Participants at a recent project management conference ranked Lee’s presentation at the top among session leaders from six states.

 

Lee’s book on creative thinking in the workplace, Why Didn’t I Think of That?, premiered at the 1996 American Society for Training and Development national conference.  The association’s bookstore sold out twice during the conference.  The book continues to sell well.

 

His current list of workshops includes:

 

 

Lee develops most of his own training simulations and activities.  His leadership simulation SynerVision is being used by community leadership programs across the country to demonstrate the ways in which shared vision leads to consensus and win-win solutions.  Hotspots is a role-playing activity Lee created for his workshop on influence that helps people assess their skills of persuasion.  Other training activities developed by Innovators, such as Q Avenue, AnticiPation, ProjectVision and What’s My Motivation?, continue to receive high marks in Lee’s training evaluations.

 

Here are some comments people have written regarding Lee’s work:

 

“We just wanted to say thank you for making another successful presentation for us.  We’re particularly pleased with how well customized the whole workshop was for our purposes.  Thanks in particular for making time to probe areas we wanted to cover, for helping set objective for the workshop, and then for following through and meeting those objectives as if you were a staff trainer.”

 

“I wanted to write to tell you how much I enjoyed meeting you and listening to you speak in Kansas City.  Your speech was absolutely sensational!  At the Wednesday night banquet, my wife and I both agreed that you speech even overshadowed the comedian [Brad Garrett of CBS’s Everybody Loves Raymond] who entertained that evening.  To me, it seemed to set the tone for the rest of the national conference; positive, upbeat and confident with a little humor thrown in.”

 

“Enclosed is the final tabulation of the evaluations from the Certificate in Management class The Innovative Manager.  You scores are outstanding.  This is the kind of response we like to see in our classes.  Thank you for a job well done!”

 

“Your presentations, materials and discussions were very informative (yet fun) and I am anxious to share the problem solving tools with others in Customer Service.”

 

“I really appreciated the time you devoted to making sure you were on target with our group.  The fact that you were willing to do a trial run for Steve, Terry and myself says a great deal about your commitment to quality.”

 

“I liked the hands on projects.  It helped decipher which pieces I could utilize in my position.”

 

Would you recommend using this speaker for future workshops?  68 yes, 0 no   [Evaluation summary from Service Excellence Workshop for the Institute of Financial Education]

 

“I liked his flexible style, meaning we could take his suggestions and tailor them to our needs.”

 

“THIS is what I come to conferences for! Many thanks.”

 


Presentation Summaries

Presentations are listed by degree of interaction, starting with the most interactive.

 

Negotiation Techniques for Project Managers – 90 minutes

Project managers negotiate a lot during the course of a project.  Business managers need persuading to make team members available.  People with the purse strings may need convincing that funds are necessary.  Even team members sometimes need to be sold on the merits of the project, not to mention the negotiating that goes on with suppliers, the sponsor and other project managers. 

 

Participants in this entertaining session negotiate for funds associated with a popular, new product called Hotspots.  Several project managers and other key people compete in a setting that brings out natural negotiation tendencies.  After the debriefing period, several negotiation strategies are discussed.

 

 

A 360 Degree Feedback Tool for Project Teams – 45-70 minutes

(Being presented at Iowa’s PMI Professional Development Day October 5)

Successful project managers are proactive troubleshooters.  They anticipate and uncover potential problems before they get too big.  In this session, practice using a reproducible questionnaire that polls people surrounding the project team.  Learn how to get timely information from seven possible stakeholders: customer, sponsor, project manager, team member, team member co-workers, business manager and supplier.  Use this information to keep your project on track and stakeholders happy.

 

 

Think In Analogies to Anticipate More Project Risks -- 50 minutes

(Being presented in Nashville for PMI’s World Conference, November 2001)

Many people have trouble anticipating risks because their thinking is too literal.  Some of the lessons learned from a previous project are lost because similarities are not recognized.  Or lessons that could be pulled from projects in other industries are perceived as irrelevant.  In this session, you will learn how to help others think conceptually in order to improve your odds of expecting the unexpected.  You will receive a reproducible analogous thinking assessment as part of the handout.

 

 

Links and Loops for Diagramming Business Systems

If you are responsible for analyzing, documenting or improving business processes, system dynamics diagramming is an indispensable tool.  With it you can create a model of what is actually happening so that it can be communicated to others effectively and appropriate action can be taken.  This introductory session includes interactive demonstrations of causal links, stocks and flows, and reinforcing and balancing processes.

 

 

 

 

Use a House of Quality to Prioritize Product Specifications – 45-60 minutes

(Being presented at Minnesota’s PMI Professional Development Day September 21)

The “House of Quality” is a matrix from the discipline of quality function deployment.  Technical specifications are rated according to customer requirements.  The results help to determine the project’s optimum scope and, if necessary, identify the product features that could be cut in order to meet a deadline.  Participants will work through one example and receive reproducible blank forms.