Michelle LaBrosse

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, is an entrepreneurial powerhouse with a penchant for making success easy, fun and fast. She is the founder of Cheetah Learning, the author of the Cheetah Success Series, and a prolific blogger whose mission is to bring project management to the masses. Michelle also has a BS in aerospace engineering, MS in mechanical engineering and Harvard OPM. Cheetah Learning is a virtual company with 100 employees, contractors and licensees worldwide. To date, more than 50,000 people have become "Cheetahs" using Cheetah Learning’s innovative project management and accelerated learning techniques.

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Articles by Michelle LaBrosse

• Hiring project managers? Make sure they have these 8 qualities

  Thursday, March 02, 2017

  If you have found yourself in the position of needing to hire a new project manager for your team, congratulations! Not only does this mean your organization is doing well enough to afford to bring on a new employee, but also that you have a new opportunity to re-energize your project team with fresh, savvy and competent new leadership.

• 3 ways to leverage your innate strengths to advance your career

  Wednesday, January 11, 2017

  Jane is an amazing photographer, but after her family's holiday party she was offered a job in her sister-in-law Kerry's company calling clients to collect on invoices. No one in Jane's family feels her photography skills are going to help her earn a living for herself.

• Slowing down for the holidays

  Monday, December 05, 2016

  For many businesses, winter is a busy and frenetic time of the year. It just so happens that the need for increased productivity — whether it's to finish end-of-the-year projects, or adjusting to increased demand for your product — also coincides with fewer work days to do the work, since many holidays fall during this time.

• Achieving your organization’s vision with a cohesive strategy map

  Monday, November 28, 2016

  When you’re knee-deep in the logistical details of managing a project team, it can be easy to lose sight of the big picture: your organization’s vision. We use established and proven strategies at Cheetah Learning to help us achieve our vision in each course we offer. For example, the vision for our new program is pretty simple: With the right training and systems, most people can efficiently and cost-effectively grow their own food year-round.

• Keeping the dream alive with your dream team

  Thursday, October 13, 2016

  Let's say you've found the perfect mix of people to staff your new project. They gel great together, and everyone is a top performer in his/her respective field. They are all gung-ho to get going. But then something happens. First, one starts showing up late to meetings. Then, someone else plans a vacation he absolutely must go on. Next, you have another who leaves the company altogether for warmer waters.

• Trusting the process: 3 key features of effective project management

  Friday, September 16, 2016

  According to well-known business executive Don Tapscott (see his TED Talk above), the technological development that will most impact the way we live in the next few decades is not the newest iPhone or flying drones or self-driving cars. It's a technology many of us may not have heard of: blockchain.

• Improving project outcomes through a customized process

  Friday, August 12, 2016

  The first step to success in your projects is to be sure they are the right projects for you at this time. A project is "right" when it moves you closer toward achieving your long-term goals, aligns well with your unique strengths, and is achievable given the resources and people you have available to you.

• From responsibility to independence: 3 lessons from project management

  Thursday, July 07, 2016

  ​Having more independence requires taking on more responsibility. It's a lesson teenagers hear again and again from their parents, yet it rarely seems to result in teenagers actually bearing the burden of more responsibility.

• Finding freedom as a project manager: Aligning your work with your core values

  Thursday, June 16, 2016

  After studying systems dynamics modeling for three decades and from first-hand experience, I’ve realized when you establish several key core values, you can create an entire self-replicating system for your organization. Identifying those core values that drive your own leadership style as a project manager will help you thrive through times of change in your organization, and, most importantly, will give you enormous freedom to develop into the unique style of leader you want to be.

• Finding the best value in online education

  Thursday, May 12, 2016

  Online classes can be a great way for busy professionals to pursue their educational goals while balancing a full-time job and other responsibilities. They can also, unfortunately, be a big waste of time and money. Many online classes are little more than a slideshow presentation with a quiz at the end — an uninspiring format that does little to help students learn.

• Making conscious choices in high-stakes environments

  Wednesday, April 20, 2016

  Each one of us starts with the best intentions: eat well, exercise, do our best work at our jobs, get along with our co-workers, etc. Unfortunately, those good intentions don't always translate into actually doing what we say we'll do. Why is this?

• Spring cleaning: Set up a productive workspace with the 5S method

  Thursday, March 10, 2016

  Your project teams seem to have all the right pieces — team members' technical proficiency, good internal communication, an organized project manager — but something still isn't quite right. Your team still struggles to get projects done on time and is not as productive as it could be.

• What happens when success is your only option

  Friday, February 05, 2016

  When you run a small business — as small as even just yourself — does failure ever really occur? I hear often in the media about this or that business being "too big to fail," but isn't "too small to fail" more realistic? I ask this question of myself, more rhetorically than anything. I've been running a small business in one form or another for almost 30 years now. Yes, I've stopped offering some services and stopped making some products. At one point, I took a job with a paycheck — but even then I still had a small business going on the side.

• Are your new goals the right goals for you?

  Tuesday, January 12, 2016

  For many people, January is the time of year to pursue new goals. As the years go on, this yearly goal-setting becomes routine. Even though you have new goals you're passionate about pursuing each year, your faith in your ability to accomplish them or your awareness about why you're setting goals in the first place may diminish.

• Creating habits for success: 5 strategies for staying on track

  Wednesday, December 09, 2015

  What habits do you need to develop to become a more effective project manager? Maybe you need to get more organized with your paperwork, or change how you spend your time each day to stay on track with your projects, or shift how you respond to stressful situations.