Beyond the Buzz: 2 Communication Lessons I Learned in Transformation
Fatima Touré is a Geneva-based project manager and business originator, with over 10 years’ experience spanning the information and communications technology (ICT) and oil and gas industries. With international experience, attention to detail, and organizational and people skills, she has successfully managed high-level projects. Ms. Touré holds a bachelor’s degree in international business, a master’s degree in international development, and is a Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification holder.
We love our buzzwords in project management. They populate our steering committee slides and feature in our lessons learned workshops.
I remember the first buzz phrases I came across at business school, but it wasn’t until I led two very different transformation initiatives during my career—one an enterprise performance management (EPM) transformation, the other the enhancement of an existing product offering—that those well-known phrases stopped sounding like clichés and started proving operationally critical.
Here are the lessons that have helped me navigate change successfully, under pressure.
Buzz Phrase 1: Behind Technology and Processes are People
A few years ago, I was a PM working on the implementation of a new enterprise performance management solution as part of a broader company transformation. The platform in question enabled unified financial consolidation, planning and reporting.
Technically, it was best-in-class. Senior finance stakeholders agreed that while still strong on compliance, the organization had outgrown its era of Excel files and legacy tools.
However, during project execution, we hit resistance.
Very early in the design workshops, I noticed something subtle: stakeholders were not debating the choice of the platform itself. Instead, some conversations arose around concerns about data accuracy, segregation …
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