Absentee leaders are managers who are physically present but psychologically absent. They are incompetent and disengaged, to the extent that they don't support their teams adequately. If you have an absentee manager (and don’t have the luxury of seeking another position), here's how you can try to handle the situation.

Project managers recommend how much should be invested to address various risks based on their understanding of project context, but the final decision about what to do and when those efforts are sufficient belongs to the sponsor. Risk management requires executive input, so sponsors need to see all risk data you have.

Organizations must embrace new technologies in their product engineering efforts to stay ahead of the curve. But there is another quality that will be key this decade to giving product teams a proactive advantage: design. Design thinking should be embraced not just by designers, but by everyone involved with a product.