Bob McGannon

Senior Coach - Project Management, Leadership, Business

Bob is focused on working with leaders to maximise their capability to produce better business outcomes by presenting a balanced approach to business goals and caring for the people who work with the leader to enhance results. When this occurs, people grow, organisations thrive, and the environment in which we live and work is enhanced. We all become healthier.

“I help leaders present themselves authentically to their management team, peers and the people they lead. More importantly, I work with leaders to create an environment where each leader’s team members can present themselves authentically in the workplace, which enhances business performance, personal growth, and causes morale to soar.”

Bob has worked on three continents, managing teams as small as nine and as large as 460 people. He believes in the creation of processes that enable the best outcomes, for both people and the business. However, he also is a passionate advocate for engaging in “intelligent disobedience;” understanding when processes and business standards will not produce the desired outcomes, and bending, breaking or deriving new rules, when possible, to maximise results. The origin of intelligent disobedience comes from the world of seeing eye dogs; you don’t want the seeing eye dog to follow its master’s every command, as they might get hit by a truck! Bob loves working with leaders on intelligent disobedience techniques to change their views on processes, and expand the ways they can help their people grow to produce the best results. Working with teams to productively and wisely engage in intelligent disobedience to optimise results and celebrating the victories that result for his clients are what launches Bob out of bed every morning! Bob’s presentation of pragmatic leadership skills and intelligent disobedience, through storytelling, humour and passionately caring for the people he works with is what Bob presents to the world. He does this through consulting, delivering workshops, facilitating team improvement, writing and coaching.

Bob’s diverse career started with IBM, where he spent 15 of his 18 years as a technical and general manager. With training in project and program management Bob has driven change and improvement initiatives in a variety of industries, including finance, education, public utilities, medical technology, hospitals and aerospace. Bob changed direction and became an entrepreneur in 2000 and has launched three successful businesses in the training and consulting space in the United States and Australia. Bob has held technology management, program and portfolio management, training design and facilitation, and coaching positions for small and large client organisations. He is the author of Intelligent Disobedience: The Difference Between Good and Great Leaders, and a contributing author to The Keys to Our Success: Lessons Learned From 25 of Our Best Project Managers, compiled by David Barrett and Derek Vigar. 

One of the highlights of Bob’s career was working with the team that digitised the use of Medicare cards in Australia. Prior to the Medicare Digitisation Program, manually filing paperwork was required to obtain refunds for expenses occurred when receiving medical care and pharmaceuticals. This process is now as simple as swiping a Medicare card, and the paperwork and payment is processed automatically.

“My passion is creating outcomes, while caring just as passionately for the people. Seeing the Medicare outcome directly benefit people is very rewarding, be it one person or a community. Having virtually every citizen of Australia benefit from the program results is amazing and humbling – it is my ultimate experience (thus far!) of a “mission that matters” that I strive to inspire in leaders around the world.”

Qualifications

  • Bachelor’s Degree – Operations Research and Mathematics, Sacred Heart University, Connecticut, USA

  • Certified Project Executive – IBM Corporation

  • Certified Project Coach – Boeing Aircraft Corporation

  • Master Project Coach – Association of Project Coaching

  • Certified Project Management Professional – Project Management Institute

  • Numerous Program and Project Management courses – Project Management Institute

  • IBM Middle/Senior Management School

  • Certificate - ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) Foundations

  • Certified PRINCE2 Practitioner (project management methodology)

  • Honorary Adjunct Professor – Bond University

  • Accredited Trainer – Courageous Follower Development Program

  • Mentor – University of Sunshine Coast Innovation Centre

  • Mentor – Business Mentoring Noosa

  • IBM Delivery Excellence Award

  • Author – Intelligent Disobedience: The Difference Between Good and Great Leaders, published by Routledge, Oxford, 2018 (Book nominated for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award)

  • Contributing author to The Keys to Our Success: Lessons Learned From 25 of Our Best Project Managers, compiled by David Barrett and Derek Vigar, published by Multi-Media Publications, Ontario, Canada, 2013

  • Author and Trainer – LinkedIn Learning – over 20 courses covering project management, consulting, business ethics, budget management, risk management and starting a new business

  • Keynote speaker at over 40 conferences worldwide