Are You Getting Projectified?

 

Have you checked out Projectified with PMI yet? This new podcast features lively, insightful conversations about emerging trends impacting your world — the world of project management. Projectified was created with one mission in mind: to inform, to inspire and to prepare you for success — today and tomorrow.

In our first eight episodes, we've explored a wide spectrum of timely topics, including artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and agile adoption. Many of these discussions — guided by our perceptive, engaging host Stephen Maye — provide an introduction to subjects that are complex or novel (and often both). We make sure to describe the landscape in general terms, to be sure, but we also dive deeper to make real-world connections that will resonate with project leaders and their teams. We outline the challenges, the possibilities and, most important, the opportunities.

In every episode, we strive to bring you new ways to approach your work, your career and your future. One of our most downloaded episodes to date has a mountain of down-to-earth, hard-earned advice from a rising project management star on how she developed her own leadership style. She shares insights on building relationships based on trust, asking awkward questions, learning from executive stakeholders, and ultimately believing in yourself.

One of my favorite episodes explores the often neglected role of creativity in project management and how to bring fresh thinking to process-oriented environments. Creativity, guest Scott Berkun says, isn't something mystical or fuzzy. It's about problem-solving. And every project needs that.

Among many helpful nuggets throughout the conversation, Berkun suggests keeping a journal.

"You need to invest in your relationship with yourself and what you think about your own ideas," he says. "Because if you're afraid of what might come out of your brain then the odds of you discovering something unusual is so much smaller because your inhibitions are really high. Reducing those inhibitions increases [when you write it down], which will increase what you'll have the confidence to pitch your co-worker or your boss. So I am convinced that one of the best tools you can have for thinking — forget creativity, just thinking — is to keep some kind of a journal."

And he says project managers should encourage their teams to embrace the same approach to enliven meetings, collaboration and brainstorming exercises.

"If you have a hard problem to solve, you want to allow people in the room to say things that don't quite make sense, or that are weird, or that are possibly embarrassing — because that's where you're gonna find an idea that might lead to a solution. If everyone in the meeting only says things that they are 100 percent confident make sense, you're not gonna find anything that interesting." 

That's good stuff, and there's a lot more like it in every episode. These conversations deserve to be heard. They feature people who are passionate and knowledgeable. Listen for yourself and get Projectified!

You can find all Projectified episodes at pmi.org/podcast.