Thanks to the thousands of participants of my seminars and workshops, and clients from organizations around the world who have engaged, questioned, challenged, experimented, and applied the ideas discussed in this book, and helped me fine‐tune them over the last seventeen years. I am grateful for your stories and examples of transforming your organizations, creating magic with your teams, facing challenges and setbacks, winning awards, getting promoted, starting new endeavors and exploring what's next for you, that have inspired this book.

I am grateful to Margaret Cummins from Wiley for seeking me out after attending one of my talks, and supporting and standing by to get this project completed. Thanks to Jayalakshmi E T, Kalli Schultea, and the entire editorial and production team at Wiley.

Thanks to the many clients and practitioners—executives, PMO leaders and project, program and portfolio managers who have helped me to engage with them to create theories from practice and experience, rather than the other way around—Alina Grossman, Annika Andersson, Chris Richard, Colin Smith, Daniel Steeves, Elaine Barrera‐Nicholson, Heather Pinto, Jayne Odom, Julie Allison, Julia DeSouza, Ken Jeans, Kurt Baraniecki, Mary Donnici, Mohamed Hammadi, Neeta Mhatre, Ray Woeller, Ricky Aladort, Shernette Barham, Stella Estorga, Steve Andersen, Veronica Thralls, Wayne Maddox, and many others who wish to remain anonymous. Appreciation for Sarina Arcari who applied the DNA of Strategy‐Execution and won the PMO of the Year award and continues to evangelize and practice the ideas discussed in the book. Also, thanks to the Project Management Institute (PMI) and the PMI staff who I have had the opportunity to work with over the years.

Thanks to Dean Miller and Cory Sauls for sharing their practices in execution and governance as they continue to apply and transform their organizations. Also thanks to Bruce Harpham and Jeremy Gantz for lengthy discussions and assistance with a couple of chapters. Thanks to Beth Taylor for patiently reviewing parts of the manuscript and providing valuable feedback. Also, thanks to Beth and Leslie Maness for applying and evangelizing the ideas in different forums.

Special thanks to Laila Faridoon who has made a difference not just in her organization and her country, but is impacting her region and beyond by applying and living the principles of next‐generation project management and leadership espoused in this book.

I also thank my friends and colleagues, who supplied hours of inspiration, feedback, ideas and encouragement: Brad Malone, Carl Pritchard, Dave Po Chedley, Gary Heerkins, Greg Githens, Harbeer Malhotra, James Patsalides, John Watson, Laxmi Parmeswar, Lisa Di Tullio, Markus Earhart, Maria Kolenda, Michel Thiry, Nick Shufro, Regina Sggir, Sat and Sweety Duggal, Stig Villadsen, Suchitra Ramani, and Thomas Steinwender. Appreciation for Jonathan Gilbert for friendship and brotherhood as we began the journey of recognizing the DANCE and learning to surf on the edge of chaos a long time ago.

Also, eternal gratitude to Jai and Nina for being part of my DANCE and challenging me to deal with it better each day, while I was in the air for long stretches, juggling many things, while working on this book.