Day 3: #PMIcon17

 

I've just finished my final slot on the "Ask the Expert" booth and it's been a jam packed morning! The overriding theme this morning has been coaching people to understand what their value is and what they really want from their careers and lives. It's been a really interesting journey to see how people want to develop and progress in their professional careers and how differently that this looks across the Project Management spectrum. Here's a quick summary of who I met with today*:

• Frank: Frank has been in the same job for over 27 years and been a Project Manager for the last 12 years. He's looking for a change and a different challenge and has been thinking about becoming a consultant and what this means in reality. We spoke about the reality of life as a consultant and the different mindset that is required from his current position. We also looked at understanding the different culture of consultancy and discussed the next steps for him. What was interesting for Frank was that this discussion was based around: "What does he want to do?" He has no monetary concerns and could happily have no job but he wants to work and he wants to. It's a great position to be in and one that I think a lot of more Senior Project Managers are going through at the moment.
• Mohammed: He's been working in his current organization and has worked his way up from a technical role to being a Project Manager. He's looking to keep moving forward with his career and wanted advice as his company was theoretically supportive of his growth plan and where he wanted to go but in practice, they were not and were trying to box him into a smaller position that wouldn't be fulfilling for him. Mohammed left with some ideas and plans for what he can do with his management moving forward to secure the growth that he wants in the organization and what he's able to do now to keep learning. We spoke about working with his local chapter on volunteering and improving his soft skills to move forward into a Management opportunity.
• Sharon: She's currently unfulfilled in her current job and looking at: what next? She's interested in perhaps going independent and we spoke about the initial steps that she needs to do and what to consider before she becomes freelance in: how to market yourself, what do you want to do and what is important to consider in being an entrepreneur in the US.
• John: John came to see me about the best way to empower his team through their agile transformation and how to get his team more empowered to own their change. We spoke about how the could get the team to own their change and their work across distributed locations.
• Olivier: My last talk of the day and Olivier is a brand new Project Manager and wanting to know how he can progress and develop as a Project Manager successfully. It was really interesting to help him with his initial career plan and where he'd like to see himself in 5 years.

Here's some pictures from today:

*Please note all names have been changed for privacy reasons.