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KEYNOTE 01
50 Shades of Yellow: From Red to Green and Nothing in Between
The prevention keynote. Spot trouble before it goes red.
A project is rarely red or green. It's yellow, and yellow is where you still have options. So why does almost every status report force a binary? Because four forces keep people from saying the uncomfortable thing out loud: Denial, Fear, Apathy, Incentives. Brian calls them the Suppression Factors, and he's watched all four sink projects that everyone knew were in trouble. Drawing on 30 years of rescues and the Standish CHAOS data, this talk shows audiences how to read the signs versus the symptoms and build a culture where yellow gets called early enough to matter.
WHAT YOU LEAVE WITH
- The four Suppression Factors, and how to spot them in your own meetings
- Signs versus symptoms: reading trouble before it becomes pain
- Why binary status reporting hides risk, and how to restore the yellow middle
- A "call yellow early" habit the team can adopt Monday morning
FORMATS
45-minute keynote60-minute keynote with audience interactionHalf-day or full-day workshop with the live pen-in exercise
SAMPLE OUTLINE
- 01The open: $800,000, 8 months, every box checked, and no one used it
- 02The binary trap, and why the yellow middle disappears from reporting
- 03The four Suppression Factors: Denial, Fear, Apathy, Incentives
- 04Twin Troubles: why Denial and Fear do the most damage
- 05Signs versus symptoms, and how to read trouble early
- 06Interactive: call yellow on a live scenario
- 07Close: if you can see yellow, you can save the project