One of my favourite things to do is to give a presentation. 

I love public speaking. It fills me with energy and it's the crowd that feeds me with it. 

But I used to hate public speaking. 

In my first year of university, I had to present on a marketing project in front of the class - about 90 people - and I remember how nervous I was and how my nerves got the best of me. I was sweating, my voice was trembling, I couldn't look anybody in the eyes and I don't think I managed to transmit my message to my public. I was ashamed when it was all over. 

My initial reaction to this 'failure' was that I was never going to do public speaking again. I was terrified and I never wanted to experience this again. 

But after a couple of days, my attitude changed. I decided that I was going to overcome this fear and I was going to become a terrific public speaker. 

I don't know if I am a terrific public speaker but I can certainly say that I no longer loathe giving presentations in front of small and large groups, I love it and I welcome it. The more, the better. 

So how did I do it?

When I was working at HubSpot, one of the most popular tools (if not the most popular) for project management was the DARCI model. 

It almost became synonymous with project management because it allowed to define who to work with and in what capacity when you needed to execute on a project or an initiative in an organisation that is quite complex when it comes to working cross-functionally.

But the DARCI framework is just a part of project management if you choose to use it. There's so much more to managing a project as I've covered previously so with this post I want to explain what the DARCI model is and give you my recommendation on how and when to use it. 

So what's DARCI in Project Management?

DARCI stands for Decision-Maker, Accountable, Responsible, Consulted and Informed.

There are other versions of it such as RACI which is what you'll find in PMI's PMBOK for project management. RACI is the same as DARCI but excludes the Decision-Maker.

In essence, the DARCI framework serves to identify the roles and responsibilities of a given project.

I've worked in Customer Experience or CX most of my career. 

My current job at Cisco is in CX, my first two and a half years at HubSpot were in Customer Success followed by two+ years reporting into Sales and before HubSpot I held several account manager roles in agencies which I'd still count as CX since I was responsible for the success of my client's PR campaigns and social accounts post their purchase of our services. 

Has it been easy to work in CX? Not always. And I'll tell you why. 

Traditionally, the powerful function of a company has been Sales. Sales has usually had the final decision-making and driven the company forward simply because Sales brings the money which is what execs look at. 

But over the last few years, there's been a shift towards the need for a stronger CX focus and organisation and I've seen first-hand how companies are beginning to invest a lot more in CX and listen to what CX has to say. 

As HubSpot's flywheel explains, existing customers have become the biggest source of new business and hence growth.

But few companies have transformed their business models and how they operate to reflect this new reality and nurture the customer journey.

Republished with permission from Leighton Interactive. 

I'm a millennial in marketing and a former TV journalist who geeks out over the concept of Inbound Public Relations (PR). Never heard of it? I'm about to blow your mind with simplicity. Here I go: 

TELL YOUR STORY FIRST.

In other words, don't wait for someone else to realize how great you are. Get the word out, and fast. The PESO model is still alive and well, but too many companies are ignoring one major part of the timeless marketing model - Earned Media. I'm a fan of cliche quotes. Here's one of my recent favorites. Literally, I want to shout this from the top of the tallest building in Downtown St. Cloud for all to hear. 

I see amazing marketing strategies in action as they create robust owned content, social media strategies, paid efforts, video, photo, and more. What many companies lack is third-party validation,

One of the most important areas of project management or any work that involves people for that matter is stakeholder management.

In fact, the main reason why projects fail is the lack of good stakeholder management.

There are a ton of tools you can use to identify your stakeholders and perform a stakeholder analysis. 

I've often used such tools not just to manage projects but also whenever I'd started a new position. It's hugely important to know who your main stakeholders are, who your supporters are, who the people that you can learn from are and who your potential challengers would be. You need to know how they tick, what's important to them, how they like to communicate and make decisions and how they like to work with others. 

Today, I want to show you a model for stakeholder analysis that I learned about when I was studying for the PMI certification. 

It's called the salience model and serves as a tool to define and analyse stakeholders for your project.

What is the Salience Model for Project Management?