If you would have told Bob McGannon that his life would turn out this way, he would have never believed it. As the Founder and Principal of Mindavation, McGannon has managed to take his passion in helping others and create a consulting business to guide others in reaching their full potential.

Watch Bob McGannon’s Presentation

As a certified Project Management Professional by the Project Management Institute, an Executive Project Manager with IBM, and a Certified Project Management Coach for the Boeing Corporation, McGannon has more than 25 years of experience in IT, project management and project analysis. Through the experiences in his professional and personal life, however, McGannon figured out what he had always wanted to do: help people reach their full potential.

“It’s through these experiences that I was able to find out what I wanted to do professionally,” McGannon said. “I took the most enjoyable aspects of my career and the skills I had to start Mindavation.”

With McGannon’s history as a project manager, it’s not surprising that he continues to use his project management skills to train and consult businesses to increase their capabilities in portfolio management, program and project management, and business analysis space. Despite his years in project management, McGannon has always focused on the importance of communication skills in a project management setting that helps bring the right people and a project together.

“The most rewarding part of my job is when people tell me that the tools I gave them were useful,” he said.”That really drives me to continue to guide people to get the tools that they need to be successful.”

Since then, McGannon has provided services to businesses and government agencies throughout Asia Pacific and North America, with offices currently located in Australia and the United States.

Importance of Intelligent Disobedience

In McGannon’s Intelligent Disobedience Leadership Workshop that was conducted during the University of Maryland’s Project Management Symposium, McGannon discussed the importance of empowering team members to make the right decisions for the organization and to use “intelligent disobedience” when it is needed.

According to the Project Management Institute, intelligent disobedience is defined as “the act of defying authority with good reason of questioning the merits of decisions made by organizational leaders when they select and manage projects.”

McGannon facilitated discussions about situations where intelligent disobedience is encouraged. Through this discussion, project management professionals from different sectors of the industry were able to create strategies on ways to use intelligent disobedience for each situation.

Because all projects are different, McGannon stressed the importance of understanding the whole situation of the project. From the project to the people involved in the project, McGannon emphasized that projects are “never fixed and change from one situation to another.”

“It wasn’t until today’s discussion that I realized project management is all situational,” Mae Ridges from the Institute of Museum Library Services stated after hearing his presentation during the Symposium. “Each project does not have a one-sized-fit-all category for solutions, but it all depends on the project.”