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Letter from the CEO

Welcome to our June newsletter!

In this edition you will be introduced to:

Powerful tools for data visualization
Insights on artificial intelligence and project management
An Employee Spotlight on Program Manager Tiffany Hearn

As we enter the midpoint of 2022, I think it is important to measure your progress year to date against your annual strategic initiatives. We talked in January about the importance of creating quantifiable goals that are measurable and the importance of tracking your progress on a regular basis. In this month’s article, I want to focus on the importance of clarity, simplifying complexity, and making decisions based on data.

The world is becoming increasingly dynamic and complex, which makes it harder to understand and predict outcomes of any system or process, let alone the impact of any interventions. Thanks to new technologies and capabilities, including artificial intelligence, we have a huge onslaught of data, which we hope to use for better analysis, decision making and predictions. However, we still struggle to collect the right data, turn them into actionable insights and to become more data-driven in our decisions. I often hear clients say, “I don’t have any trouble populating systems, we have more systems that I can name but, where I have problems is getting visibility into that data to enable me to proactively make decisions.”

The power of data visualization lies in its ability to help us grasp the meaning of data more quickly, allowing us to see patterns and trends. With leading-edge data visualization tools such as Power BI, we can immediately see when trends might be heading in the wrong direction and intervention is needed. When we visualize the scope and scale of today’s enormous data sets, we can see details that may have been hidden, and extract insight from data’s previously untold story.

There are various ways that data-driven decision-making with models can improve your decision, such as:

Address dynamic behavior.
Affordable and safe trial and error.
Prepare for extreme or non-repetitive events.
Visualize a process.
Quantify and prioritize.
Avoid guessing.

These are just a few of the benefits of using data to make decisions. The key at the end of the day is to use the data to enable you to proactively alleviate any unnecessary schedule delays or negative cost impacts as you execute on your strategic plan.

- Misty Mayes

Simplifying Complexity: The Power of Data Visualization

As Sherlock Holmes once said, "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." But once one has the data, how do we translate it into actionable insight? While we may not have the preternatural deductive gifts of one of literature's greatest detectives, we can leverage Power BI, a data visualization tool we're using to change the way our clients think about their projects.

AI & PM: 3 Things That Will Change and 1 That Won't

While some may embrace the revolutionary technological change brought about by artificial intelligence, others may fear a robot-ruled dystopia. From a project management perspective, it's prudent to avoid extremes and take a pragmatic look at how the future of the profession may be impacted.

Program Manager Tiffany Hearn Graduates from Leadership Oak Ridge Program

One of our core values is 'Servant's Heart' - putting service before self, and serving the communities we live in. We would like to congratulate Management Solutions Program Manager Tiffany Hearn for her outstanding example of putting this value into practice with her recent graduation from the Oak Ridge Chamber of Commerce's Leadership Oak Ridge Program.

20 Year Anniversary Recognition

As we continue down memory lane over the past twenty years, we are excited each month to say thank you to those folks that enabled our company to be what it is today. This month, I want to recognize two long time partners that enabled Management Solutions to recruit and retain top talent. When building an organization, as you start to grow and add personnel, there are so many aspects that appear behind the scenes but play a vital role in employment decisions. Two of those include employee benefits and 401(k) programs. In the early phases, as a startup, insurance companies wouldn’t give us the time of day little own provide us with any kind of affordable plans. Thankfully, we were introduced to Alan McMichael, a long-time small business insurance broker. Alan partnered with us and marketed our small business to a variety of insurance companies, he explained all our plan options, and was able to secure our first holistic insurance offering which included medical, dental and vision. This was a huge step for the company and enabled us to recruit staff knowing we could provide a comprehensive insurance portfolio for each employee and their families.

In addition to being able to provide insurance, we knew to compete with other firms for top talent, we had to be able to provide comprehensive benefit packages that rivaled those of the “big” firms. We now needed a 401(k) plan. This may sound simple but as a startup company, very few people are willing to invest time and effort in helping you get something setup as the odds of a business truly being successful are slim. However, a longtime friend, Matt Graebel, took a chance on us and served as our third party administrator for all things 401(k) related. Again, this was a huge step for a small business to be able to offer this type of benefit.

I would venture to say today that neither of these gentlemen would recognize the significant impact they have had on the journey of Management Solutions. As I stated earlier, a consulting services company is only as good as the staff and resources they can offer. Because these two individuals took a chance on a small business that had a dream of becoming a premier offerer of project consulting services, we have been able to hire some of the top talent in our industry. You will hear more about some of these rock stars in the months ahead but this month, I want to say thanks again Alan and Matt for your willingness to take a chance of us; for that we will always be grateful.

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The term “solstice” comes from the Latin words sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still). At the solstice, the angle between the Sun’s rays and the plane of the Earth’s equator (called declination) appears to stand still. This phenomenon is most noticeable at the Arctic Circle where the Sun hugs the horizon for a continuous 24 hours, thus the term “Land of the Midnight Sun.” Source: Almanac.com