Meet Our Coach


Bob Maksimchuk is the founder and Principal Consultant of Project Pragmatics, LLC.  He focuses on bringing leadership and professional development, software development best practices, and process improvement to companies, large and small, in many industries.  He is a successful consultant and certified coach who thrives on finding creative solutions to complex business and systems problems by leveraging his penetrating analytical skills, his broad experience in many industries and his unique, practical approach to delivering pragmatics solutions.

What makes Bob’s services unique?

He is an innovative problem solver: “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”   - Albert Einstein

Such creativity is often sparked from different and sometimes orthogonal perspectives to the problem at hand.   Unlike most consultants, Bob is a lifelong multi-discipline learner in diverse areas such as organizational change management, psychology, technology, leadership and human behavior, brain neuroscience, adult learning, team building, quantum physics, communications and leadership.  He brings to bear the lessons learned as an engineer solving difficult problems in high-tech industries.  All this combined with his broad consulting experience across many industries, working with small companies to the Fortune 10, enables Bob to create, adapt and apply concepts and solutions from various fields to clarify and resolve client’s problems.

He is an accomplished communicator - Even the best ideas can't be used effectively if they can't be communicated effectively.

As a Certified Leadership Coach, Speaker, and a Dale Carnegie graduate and four-time award winner, Bob understands the importance of effective communication, particularly in complex and often abstract business challenges.    

As an external spokesperson and subject matter expert for IBM, Bob traveled worldwide as a featured speaker in numerous technology conferences and running workshops and seminars.  Bob also served as corporate spokesperson for Unisys, implementing a communications program that advanced the visibility and position of Unisys in the marketplace.  He regularly briefed industry analysts, press, clients, and strategic partners.  In addition, he served as liaison to numerous government agencies on large programs.

He is Practical, Pragmatic, and People-Centric: “Theory is good … but only in theory.”   - Bob Maksimchuk

Many processes and best practices may be beneficial, but of what use are they if your team doesn’t fully understand how they should be properly applied?  What about the pitfalls that come along with unintentionally misapplying such techniques?  Do you have the time and the resources to make those mistakes or would it be better to learn from those that have walked that path before you? 

Any solutions to your business challenges must be made practical; they must be made pragmatic (not just theoretical), and they must be made people-centric, tailored to your specific team’s way of working.  These are the three key principles that are woven into the work Bob does with his clients.

See what the people Bob has worked with say in the Recommendations page.

Bottom Line:  Bob is committed to your success and has the unique mix of creativity, experience, knowledge and “soft skills” to deliver real value to your organization.


Notable Accomplishments:

·        Coached and mentored hundreds of corporate professionals, live and virtually, in the areas of leadership, communication, team building, relationships, behavioral patterns, prioritizing and achieving goals, and other professional / personal development areas.

·        Guided agile organizational transformation initiatives for large Fortune 500 companies and coached dozens of leadership, business, and development teams in the adoption of agile practices and adaptation of their existing development processes to Agile / Scrum / Kanban / hybrid approaches.

·         Transformed a client’s staff from being compartmented and inflexible to one that was collaborative and responsive to their customer’s needs, by customizing a full-lifecycle process, blending their existing software development process with agile practices.

·         Advanced the requirements and testing practices of an internet marketing software company by introducing user stories, Scrum, and other agile practices.

·         Extensive experience on large systems development programs.  Performed business systems analysis, business case creation, requirements elicitation and analysis, project planning, customer liaison, feasibility studies, risk management, system and process modeling, architecture, design, software construction, and requirements verification & validation.

·         Enabled a client to meet 36 critical customer milestones on a very compressed schedule (20 weeks) and to expand their product line by creating a unique product line variability practice and establishing a lightweight change management process.

About Bob

I am asked these three questions most often:

What do you do?

I orchestrate change.  Just as an orchestra conductor works with individual musicians, sections, and the whole orchestra to bring them all together to improve performance, I work with people, teams, and organizations to help them break free from the self-limiting beliefs and ineffective behaviors that keep them from reaching their full potential.  The goal is to empower people and unleash all their untapped creativity, drive, and confidence so that they can achieve more than they ever thought possible.

How do you do it?

When people work with me they get three things: a guide, a catalyst, and a partner.

First, they get a deeply experienced guide who not only has successfully coached dozens of teams, but who has 30+ years of experience of corporate experience in many different industries.  No coach can give you what they don’t have.  I’ve been where you are – from the cubicle to the boardroom.  Having a guide that understands the entire terrain of the journey is a tremendous advantage.

Second, they get a catalyst for the change they are seeking – not just a consultant coming in with a canned answer saying “do this”.  In nature nothing changes without a catalyst.  Change is about working with individuals and teams, educating, guiding, and influencing so that we can unlock their potential, empowering them to be that change they want for the organization.

Third, they get an open and honest partner who will walk this path beside them, not with pre-conceived ideas and answers, but one who listens to their unique concerns and who works with them to co-create a solution that is tailored for their particular situation.

Having and experienced guide, a persistent catalyst, and a pragmatic partner provides a powerful advantage on their journey.

Why do you do it?

I want to free peoples’ minds so they can follow their passions.  I want to help people break free of their own limiting beliefs.  Help them unleash their true and full potential.  For our society’s future we must escape the limited Industrial Age thinking and advance to Information Age thinking.  We need everyone contributing at their best.  Empowering people to realize their highest potential is critical for our society to not only advance and survive, but to thrive.

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