PMI Global Insights

According to Prudential Financial’s Pulse of the American Worker survey, 1 in 4 workers are preparing to look for opportunities with a new employer once the pandemic threat has subsided. And more than 40% of people who responded to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, a global survey of over 30,000 people in 31 countries, said they are considering leaving their employer this year. Article after article, discuss employees leaving their jobs, seeking new opportunities with organizations that will provide more career advancement, substantial employer-related benefits, healthier work-life balance, better company culture, and remote work options. If you have been questioning your current role in project management, you must attend PMI’s upcoming Virtual Experience Event 6-7 October to help you navigate your career pathway.

In addition to attending inspiring sessions featuring Fatima Ibrahim, Global Citizen's UK Hero of the Year, Gitanjali Rao, Young Inventor, Author and TIME Magazine's 2020 Kid of the Year, and Jordan Chanesta, LGBTQIA+ Rights Activist, who come together to discuss spearheading impactful global movements to make real change, PMI’s Virtual Experience will debut its CareerHUB to help you with your career change. The CareerHUB helps you at every stage of their career journey.  Based on your experience, it will offer a wide variety of professional tools, resume building and advice to help future-proof your career. By attending the Virtual Experience Event in October, you will have access to all the tools available within the CareerHUB such as the CareerHUB Theater, Career Expo, and Career Navigator.

CareerHUB provides access to PMI’s “Brand You Theater: to help define yourself as a successful project manager and the best ways to promote career-boosting content. “Brand+Brain+Wellness” topics are 15 minute On-Demand sessions to help you prepare for your next job in project management. Sessions include “Building Your Brand: What’s Your Value Proposition” to help you develop a plan that will help you to stand out and define your unique value proposition; “Plan Your Career Flight Plan” will help you to create an actionable career plan and goals to improve or enhance their professional journey; “How to Amplify Your Resume/CV will help you showcase your best self in your resume and online presence;  “How to Interview Like a Pro” will provide helpful tips to be better prepared and confident for an interview.

Career Navigator focuses on personalizing a career path for you based on your previous experience. You can enter all your previous jobs, projects, and skills with a free assessment to receive a personalized action plan that matches you with the perfect growth opportunities. By identifying your aspirations and career goals, Career Navigators builds a complete picture of all elements you need to achieve your next step in your project management career.  This platform also allows you to track your success and see your development from week to week, so you see how you are growing towards your goal.

Finally, Career Expo allows you to create a profile to promote your resume and successes so hiring managers can find you easily. With Career Expo, you won’t miss an amazing opportunity!  You can browse available job postings from companies looking specifically for project managers and apply for open positions that fit your career goals. Career Expo also provides an opportunity for you to connect live with companies on the event day.

We are so excited for this powerful virtual event because we know how much change happens when our incredible community comes together from around the world to share these experiences. We are sure you will become inspired about your role in project management and learn how to make your next career change.  

Join us.  Free for PMI Member, US$79 for Non-members. Register Now and we look forward to seeing you there!

As offices thought they had a plan to get back to offices in September and October, plans have been delayed. If these past 18 months haven’t been hard enough, now your organization needs to transform its business to adapt and succeed in the new normal world. Equipping leaders to quickly anticipate and react to the speed of change is one of the most challenging issues for organizations. At this point, burnout and attrition are other key challenges faced by organizations today. Do you need inspiration on how other project managers are dealing with change? If you do, you need to attend PMI’s Virtual Experience 6-7 October to rejuvenate your project management skills and learn from leaders to think differently so you can lead your organization through an ever-changing environment!

Hear from prominent rising leaders around the world who are spearheading impactful movements to determine what is needed to make real change. These inspiring sessions will help you to think differently and look out of the box to develop the solutions needed for your organization. PMI’s Virtual Experience has brought together a diverse group of influential speakers to share their experiences and outcomes. Get inspired by Fatima Ibrahim, Global Citizen's UK Hero of the Year, Gitanjali Rao, Young Inventor, Author, and TIME Magazine's 2020 Kid of the Year, and Jordan Chanesta, LGBTQIA+ Rights Activist, come together to discuss spearheading impactful global movements to make real change. Hear from author Peter Hinssen as he discusses his book, The Phoenix and The Unicorn: The Why, What and How of Corporate Innovation, and how organizations aren't afraid to reinvent and adapt to the new normal of digital disruption.

Join breakout sessions to hear how other project management leaders are managing change and learn from their best practices and mistakes. Sessions include:

• Measuring the Maturity of Your Digital Transformation Efforts: Christine Aykac,  Transformational Coach, Akuna Consulting
• Tools to Identify and Fix Trust Breakdowns in Project Teams: Yoram Solomon, Founder Innovation Culture Institute, LLC
• Change or Get Left Behind: Why Organizational Change Management Is Imperative Now: Nancie Celini, President, THINK-OCM.org
• Collaborative Leadership in the Age of Artificial Intelligence; Erik Agudelo, Founder of Play Learn and Develop.

In addition to all the great sessions and speakers, Virtual Experience Series 6-7 October has multiple ways to connect and network with the PMI global community. The Lounge chat is where you will meet attendees from all around the world. Join industry chats where you drive the conversation! Chats are focused on the following areas: Construction, Energy (Electric, Gas, Mining, Oil), Financial Services, Government/Legal, Healthcare/Pharmaceutical, IT, Manufacturing, Telecom, and Training/Education.

We are so excited for this powerful virtual event because we know how much change happens when our incredible community comes together from around the world to share these experiences. We’ve had past attendees tell us they’ve never felt more connected virtually — and that is something we are truly proud of and will continue to strive for.

Join us. Free for PMI Member, US$79 for Non-members. Register Now and we look forward to seeing you there!

Hi everyone, thanks for following me all through the Congress and reading my blogs and Tweets about the Congress. It really has been a privilege to be Community Correspondent for the #PMIEMEA19.

It is a lot of fun, but also hard work. During all sessions you attend, you listen, take notes, tweet and keep your Social Media Updates going. That takes a lot of concentration. Even during the Networking events, you take notes and keep track of who you meet and what you do. Then in the evening when everyone orders their second beer in the Pub of choice for the day, you go back to your hotel room to write a blog about your day.

What an experience! I thoroughly enjoyed it. Especially tweeting on Twitter was a new experience for me. I only opened an account successfully about 1 month ago.

What an eventful few days it has been!

I was privileged to listen to Jamil Qureshi twice, once during the PMI LIMC Alumni Workshop on Sunday and then on Monday again during the Keynote. So much information in such a short time! Then during the Opening Session to hear from Jim Snyder, that his best memories are all about the people. Not the Mega Milestones and achievements, no, the people! Yes his best memories are about you and me. I actually agree with him. Yes in PMI events I have always learned a lot, but the best has always been the people. And you keep meeting again at events. For me they are also the go to Network when I need advice or help.

Meeting Sunil Pashara and seeing him attending sessions, mingling with people and freely networking with delegates was special. Knowing that he is a true citizen of the world, born & raised in Kenya, worked in almost every continent, living in London, working in Philadelphia. When we talk to him, he can relate.

Every session I attended, even then one I felt lost in, since the discussions used a Scrum Vocabulary, that is Greek to me, I took important lessons from. They are all in my notebook, but if I share them all, this will be a book.

So what are my 3 biggest lessons:

1. We need to identify and dismantle belief systems that hold us back. Jamil Qureshi talked about it, but it came up in several other sessions as well. What really hampers innovation and progress is belief systems. Things like “It can not be done”, “It has never been done”, “this is not how we do it here” and “It will never work” to name just a few, is often what holds us back. We need to figure out what our own belief systems are and those in our team. Then we need to identify the rogue monkey, whose urge to succeed is bigger than the belief system and is willing to try. If we work together with the rogue monkey and achieve even only this 1 degree change, we will succeed.

2. The future in Project Management in my eyes lies in hybrid projects and virtual teams. We will all handle be involved in hybrid projects and projects with virtual teams at one point or another. When I reflected on it some time back, I realized a lot of my projects ended up using agile elements due to the unique project needs. Often we had at least one Technical Expert who was not in the country (see the virtual team right there). Volunteering with PMI you often end up in a virtual team.

    For both hybrid projects & virtual teams you need to scale your                        communication up a notch. Hence I will concentrate on improving my communication skills and my EQ skills, both will come in handy for both environments. I want to become a Project Motivator and of course I bought the book by Ruth Pearce during the Congress.

3. There is evidence of successful project management everywhere, just look for it. The seeming side shows of the Congress, like Networking events, including the tours through the host city and off site learning sessions, as well as your own trips exploring the city and surroundings are full of successful projects, with lessons for us to learn.
   1. During Networking Sessions you get to know new people and make new friends. In your exchange with them you hear about their project successes, but also the failures. And you learn right there
   2. Think about the Host Chapter together with the Congress Organizing Team and the PMI Staff involved. Think about how much work they put into the Congress Project. Finding and recruiting the right entertainers, finding and recruiting the right caterers etc, all that are major deliverables in this project. Recruiting and organizing all the volunteers who worked so hard in making us feel welcome, takes a lot of PM skills.

Hat’s off to the Host Chapter, the PMI Ireland Chapter for a job well done.

3. When we were taking the Teeling Distillery Tour and heard how the Teeling Family, after selling off their old distillery, that had moved out of town, worked on building a new – but old style – distillery in Dublin, I was thinking about the enormity of the project they were undertaking. While the guide was telling us about the history, he did touch on a lot of points from their project planning and some of the risks they encountered. What a project!  
4. Dublin is full of successful projects. Look at Christ Church Cathedral, which dates back to the time of the Vikings. Look at Guiness Brewery, but also look at the City’s history, where the different centuries can be seen in the different parts of town. Look at the history of the Irish people – in Epic Center you could find more of it, see where Irish Emigrants settled, what they achieved and you could also trace your family if you have Irish roots. Look at the successful city expansion in Dublin into the docklands & quays – recovering land, that was previously thought of as not inhabitable. Look at the Famine Boats – that helped evacuate thousands of starving Irish people into other countries for a better future. There are museums and statues that remind of it everywhere. Imagine the logistical nightmare. And did you know that Landlords paid for their starving squatters to emigrate? Next time you go through your city look for the historical epic projects and think about the risks and unknown unknowns they faced. That puts your own projects in perspective.

It was also very exciting to see and be inspired by live TED Talks. I am looking forward to seeing more of the new engagement between PMI & TED. Karthik had shared the links to all the original TED Talks, so you can watch them yourself.

This was for me the first time attending the PMI EMEA Congress. I had previously only attended PMI Africa Conferences, the first day of 2 PMI Global Conferences and a host of Leadership Institute Meetings (LIM, RLIM). What they said is true. Each Conference / Congress has its own character. In Africa it is all about Networking and the social events are attended by all, it is like a big carnival with learning sessions. In the US it is more about Business, and the Conference is so big (up to 5000 people), that you are happy to see your Network Friends. However it is fun, and somehow you do meet your friends. The EMEA Congress I had been told is all about the Learning and the PDUs. But in Dublin I saw that the fun counts as well in Europe and the parties were great. I think each has its big positive sites and I will definitely attend any of them again.

See you at the next Congress:

Today was another packed day and you could see that everyone was getting tired but was still energised to take part in the sessions and contribute.

Session 1: Cutting Edge Project Management: the future of Technology in Project Management - Dan Lefsky

My first session was with Dan Lefsky. I have a great admiration and respect for Dan as not only does he provide a lot of practical advice but he really goes all-out in a session including some wonderful live demos to see how things could be done in reality. During his session on: Cutting Edge Project Management: the future of Technology in Project Management, he showed possible technical solution to build out your solutions within your company. He really challenged us with how we work today and what the limitations could be in the future with regards to the reliability of data/ questioning the data that we have. This really resonated with me during the TedTalks Closing keynote as one of the presenters was talking about how we can critically look at the data and studies that we see in every day life.

Dan gave me a few minutes of his time to record a short video about his session. You can find it here.

Networking lunch:

During today's lunch session, I sat with some of my peers and discussed 'conflict resolution'. This came about as one of the table was working during lunch on an escalation and asked the table: How would you handle this sort of situation? Where a vendor is more focused on the contract than delivering the project? It really gave a lot of valuable insight into how other Project Managers would handle the situation and we had quite a lively debate!

I also managed to catch up with Laurel and got her insight into the conference, you can view the video here

Ted Talks - Closing Keynote:

I will first admit that I am a massive fan of TED Talks and regularly use them to learn about new topics/interesting topics. During this closing keynote, PMI and TED partnered together to cover a series of talks that covered every aspect of Life, Career and the possibilities of the future.

This end to the PMIEMEA Conference was not just an inspiring end to a fantastic conference but also an amazing opportunity to be inspired to what is really possible.

In the final closing, we found out that the goal that PMI had set itself at the start of the year to record 50,000 hours of volunteering had been met ALREADY! So they announced that it was going to be increased to 100,000 hours. I really hope that you'll get involved in the Year of the Volunteer to be able to contribute to the UN Goals. This is my video of volunteering for PMI when I was in Philadelphia earlier this year.

Over the next few days, I'll be writing a summary post of my time at PMIEMEA19, so if you have any questions, please feel free to write them below and I'll answer them in the summary post.

Do you want to know what the food was like? What was it like to network with so many people? How were the breaks? There's nothing off limits! 

Are you a champion of change? Do you set a good example to your team, your colleagues and your company for how change should be managed? During the recent PMI conference, I've been learning more about what i can do to become a champion of change and using what I've learnt at the conference to benefit me and my projects. There was a lot of great presentations and keynotes and for me, it really motivated my desire to push myself to become a better change advocate and "Change-seller". 

During this blog post, I'll give you some ideas for what you can do to become a champion of change and what you can do to make a difference within your own "world" but I'd also like to start a discussion in the chat about what YOU do already to make change work in your projects? What helps makes you unique?

Here's some of my suggestions:

1) Be active, open and transparent

Change is scary and frightening for most people. But not for you! You thrive on change and to do this, you are active about communicating the change and being transparent about what's going on. This has to happen with everyone you see in your working day to be successful!

2) Show the value

With any sort of change management, you're on a PR selling mission. One way to promote the change is to show the value to the interested parties. Make it relevant to them and relevant to what they need to know and it'll help you get the message across. Perhaps ask yourself the question: "What's in it for them?" and "Why is this important for them?". This always helps me think about how I can best show them the value.

3) Communicate, communicate, communicate! 

One thing that you can't do enough of is communicate. Communicate in an effective manner, in the right ways (for your industry, company) and look at the best way of delivering your message. Communication doesn't just need to be verbal! A recent idea was to communicate the upcoming project go live over the company screensavers. So that every time you shut your PC or were idle, you'd get a visual showing you the Go Live date and some important graphic information. It's given us an additional way of communicating to people and something that they'll see several times in their day. If you can make it eye catching, all the better!

4) "Be the change you want to see in the world" - Ghandi. 

This is true for many areas of your life and especially when it comes to projects! If you're stalling, being negative, talking negatively then it'll transfer to your team and that's not worth it! 

5) Look at what you can do differently

Try different things, different strategies to see if your team/ organisation reacts to that more positively. When I'm coaching Project Managers I say: There is more than one way to get from A to B, if the first way doesn't work, then try another way". Sometimes to see what could be done, you need to think outside of the box for what might work with your team. This could be different visuals, broadcasting in different ways, using other media (instead of powerpoint slides, use video).

Summary:

Being a champion of change is something all of us can strive to achieve and strive to accomplish. How do you make yourself a champion of change? Let's connect and discuss more.