PMI Global Insights

By: Nikki Evans
Technical Team and CTO Leadership Coach
Ridgeline Coaching

Last week, I presented at the PMI Virtual Experience Series event held on 9 June 2022. This was a great event with featured speakers, exhibits and networking activities and amazing participants.   My presentation, “Is This Thing On?  How to Communicate So People Will Hear You,” focused on communication.  Communication is such an important topic because Harvard Business estimates that up to 87% of business issues are related to miscommunication.  Another study found that communication issues caused by errors of omission, misunderstanding, confusion, or non-communication cost organizations an average of $26,000/employee/year.  That’s an expensive problem, so we need a way to break it down and look at it that can improve our chances of being understood.

We discussed different styles and how to identify and adapt to different communication preferences.  I provided a simple framework to think about the pace of communication people prefer (Fast Paced or More Careful) as well as the focus that people use (Results or Relationships) when communicating.  I provided a description of these styles and how to listen for and adjust to a style that is different from your own to improve the chances that your message is understood.

During my presentation, I received a lot of great questions that we didn’t get a chance to cover, and my responses are below.

Question 1: Can your communication style can change or evolve over time?

That is a great question.  The way YOU prefer to be communicated with, or the way you like to get information, will remain stable over time.  The way you communicate with others may change frequently as you intuitively figure out what others need from you and flex and adjust your style.  You may be in an environment with norms and standards for communicating which require you to flex what is natural for you, so you adapt to fit the norms.  Your preference for how you like to receive information likely won’t change and flex as much over time, although you may adjust some to get your needs met.

Question 2:  Can you be a mix between two styles?

Yes, you can have a strong preference for two different styles.  That will mean that how you prefer to get information could shift between your preferences depending on the situation or type of information you are getting.  For example, you could be both Informational and Stability.  If that is the case, you like to be able to do a detailed analysis of information and prefer to have facts available to you and you also like instructions and a sense of safety in your communications and want to maintain non-confrontational relationships with others.  There may be times when relationship is more important to you and other times when getting a result is more important and you will flex between the styles accordingly.  If you have an equal preference for all four styles, or similar preference for all four, you are an adapter and will flex between all the styles easily.  In that case, it may be a little difficult to know what you need exactly in a communication.  When in doubt for an adapter, assume Information or Stability.

Question 3: How do you progress when you have all these in one team?  Is it important to have a mix of styles on a team?

Having all styles on one team can be great.  You can definitely get different perspectives and be more equipped to handle questions from outside your team, because your team will have all the styles represented.  To make sure everyone’s needs are met when you are working with all the styles, think about ordering your communication to start with summary and high-level key points for your faster paced people and then dig into the details for your more careful styles.  You may need to come up with some team agreements about how different types of communication will be done.  If you share with people that you are trying to meet their communication needs and you share the framework with them, people can generally tell you what they prefer and need.  You can also always check for understanding by asking people what they took from your communication.  It can certainly be an advantage to have many styles on a team but can also be the source of miscommunication if someone is always lacking the detail they need or getting overloaded with details that they don’t need.  I find that asking people what is best for them and letting them know you are sincerely working to help them get what they need is always welcome.

I was thrilled to offer you a chance to complete your own communication style discovery.  I noticed several of you started to take your discovery and have not yet completed it.  If you got interrupted and want to go back to finish your discovery – go to www.dnabehavior.biz and re-enter the email and password you created when you started the discovery to continue and you will be able to finish the discovery.

I had a great time presenting, I was blown away by your participation and feedback, thank you so much for a wonderful experience.  The full presentation will be on demand through 31 January 2023, and the presentation includes tips on communicating with each style and adjustments you can make to your own style to match another. Visit PMI Virtual Experience Series 2022 for more details.

By: Ahmed Zouhair
Project Management Training Consulting Corp. & The AZ Institute

I had the honor of presenting at PMI’s Virtual Experience Series 2022: 9 June, a global event attracting more than 28,000 attendees. Most of the sessions were very interactive and engaging. My presentation, “Using Project Management Skills to Be the CEO of Your Career” shared these key takeaways:

• Learn the ability to unlock your hidden project management skills.
• Application of the 3 P’s (Prioritization, Productivity, Performance) to your dream job.
• Application of the Double Diamond Design Thinking Framework.

I am responding to few questions posed during my presentation.

Question 1: What is the difference between vision and purpose?

The vision is a long-term aspiring wish like, for example, going to the moon and/or Mars. At the beginning, it looks unrealistic. While the mission is the steps you take to realize that vision, the purpose, however, is the “COLLECTIVE” feeling when you accomplish that vision. 

Purpose is when the values are driven by certain behaviors that create the kind of culture/tribe that is human-centric. And those behaviors create the feeling we want, not only when we have accomplished the big goals and achieved the outcomes we wanted, but in the process of doing so. For example, in his book The Infinite Game, inspirational speaker Simon Sinek compares a well-written vision statement to “a just cause.” When people believe in a cause strongly enough, they will do whatever it takes to make it happen. If you can get your employees to buy in to your company’s vision with a similar fervor, they’ll naturally show up and work hard for you every day. (A survey conducted by Dynamic Signal in 2017 revealed that employees who feel inspired by their employer’s vision statement are 18% more productive.) Sinek goes on to advise that your vision should be inclusive, resilient, and service-oriented. “Inclusive” means it is open to anyone who wants to help achieve the vision and does not leave anyone out. “Resilient” means your vision will be able to survive technological and cultural changes, or at least be able to recover and respond quickly. “Service-oriented” means that the focus of the vision is on the stakeholders—your customers, investors, employees, and partners. The best vision statements focus more on the communities you want to serve than on your business itself.

The purpose is always behind the reasoning of the question “why”. It is the reason why a person does something to reach an ultimate goal. For example, Patagonia’s vision is to “use of all its resources to protect life on Earth.” While their mission is “we’re in business to save our home planet,” their purpose is “We’re in the business to save our home planet.” As you can see, there is some overlap between the vision and purpose.

Question 2:  Outstanding presentation at the virtual experience series! That double diamond concept, fantastic - can it be explored any further?

Great question. I would highly recommend that PMI add design thinking in the upcoming PMBOK versions. Design thinking is a process for creative problem solving. It uses more imagination and innovation supported by one of my favorite quotes: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand” (Unknown).

Here are some resources for design thinking and Double Diamond framework:

• Design Council in the UK | https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/
• IDEOU | https://www.ideou.com/pages/about-us
• Google design school and university like Stanford University | https://dschool.stanford.edu/

I enjoyed participating, and my full presentation will be on demand through 31 January 2023. Visit Virtual Experience Series 2022: 9 June for more details.

By: Okoro Okereke, PMP
Project Management Consultant
Total Technology

During my session in the PMI Virtual Experience Series: 9 June, I will outline the problems that militate against the development and sustainability of necessary infrastructure in many developing countries and are not limited to various aspects of the scarcity of funds. They transcend whether the limited available resources are being judiciously utilized.  A third factor is the sustainability of the inadequate infrastructures. It could be stating the obvious to suggest that if it had been possible to sustain and use all infrastructures developed in the past years, the problem of underdevelopment would not be the international challenge that it is now and would not include inadequate development.

The reality is that the paltry infrastructures built over the years are not sustained. The communities in many developing countries seem to be facing deindustrialization as the years go by. The infrastructure being used today will fail over the next few years and will not be repaired or replaced. Thankfully, some of these communities do not surrender, rather they try to improve as best as they can.

In this session, I will discuss the efforts of a management team set up by a community in a developing country to solve vital infrastructural problems in the community. They were saddled with failing and failed infrastructures.

Despite the determination and enthusiasm of the members to do their level best for their community, the management team had other problems with which to contend. One problem is that they are all volunteers working in a system with no generally accepted organizational structure. They work as equals and giving instructions and directives to any person is not a part of their agreement or “what any of them signed up for,” as several of them shared at the beginning of the program.

Moreover, despite the determination, skills, and expertise of the team, without funds not much can be achieved. This scenario is one in which the team started and continues to work without any settled source of funds. It has worked for about two years with several achievements to show for the efforts of the professionals. Any professional who works in a developing country or is likely to do so will certainly have some helpful lessons to learn from the experience of this management team.

The session will examine the lessons learned by the management team, which has adopted program management to resolve their community’s problems. These include widespread unemployment, inadequate food supply, inexistent training for unemployed youths, poor infrastructure, etc. For example, the water supply network was in a poor and dangerous condition. The supply scheme installed by a government organization more than 11 years earlier had failed. No comprehensive maintenance was carried out on the three artesian wells and the water network since the scheme was commissioned. A serious backflow in the overflow piping caused flooding in the wellhead area, adjoining roads and houses. In addition, grid electricity supply was drastically inadequate, only available for about four hours a week.

Interested in learning more and continuing the conversation? Join me on Thursday, 9 June 2022, at 9:30 a.m. EDT at the PMI Virtual Experience Series: 9 June  program and participate in the question-and-answer session with me and the rest of the PM community.

By: Hilary Kinney, PMP
Project Director
Marriott International

These days, especially amidst the changes brought about by a global pandemic, parents, stepparents, guardians, and caregivers need a set of tools that can be used with children of any age to help them focus on their priorities, get organized, and boost productivity. My presentation, Project Management for Parents: Top Tips to Ride the Pandemic Parenting Rollercoaster, in the PMI Virtual Experience Series: 9 June, offers those tools. Project management is a discipline that is applied across industries from IT to construction, but it can also be applied to day-to-day situations like parenting.

From my presentation, parents and guardians can learn important principles that will transform their approach to any project at home. The presentation will help families strengthen their relationships and reduce stress. Attendees will learn techniques normally used by billion-dollar companies to streamline their busy lives at home.

We will discuss the project management principles of team collaboration, stakeholder engagement, change management, and risk optimization in a new light so they can quickly be applied at home. These project management concepts are simplified with key takeaways, talking points, and practical exercises. Topics covered include:

• How team building is an important first step in any project
• How to set and communicate goals to promote a collaborative family environment
• How to support family members emotionally and functionally as they deal with change.
• How the project management theory of constraints can help families effectively manage their busy schedules when facing both flexible and inflexible constraints, working within these limitations to achieve their goals.

The presentation also explains the concept of risk management, outlining the types of risks that families often face. It provides advice on how to discuss and manage risks as a family, using real-life examples like finding backup child-care and dealing with unexpected expenses.

In summary, Project Management for Parents: Top Tips to Ride the Pandemic Parenting Rollercoaster, clearly explains project management theories that families can immediately implement to experience the power of project management. Attendees will learn how to engage their families and effectively manage challenges, so they have more time to spend on what matters most.

Interested in learning more and furthering the dialogue on how project management can apply to parenting? Join me on Thursday, 9 June, 2022 at the PMI Virtual Experience Series event for this presentation.

By: Dimitrios Zaires, PMP-RMP
Lieutenant, Logistics and Project Officer
Hellenic Army

How do young people embrace project management to become leaders? How do you transition from a corporate to a startup project environment or vice versa? How do you select the mindset you belong to? We live in a highly dynamic environment where technology accelerates the pace of knowledge interactions and where young people fluctuate between complex corporate environments and lean startups. The “new normal” demands talent to handle the ambiguities.

During my session in the PMI Virtual Experience Series: 9 June, I will outline the trade-offs between a corporate and a startup project environment by giving insights from a complex supply chain design - redesign a corporate project versus a logistics project in an early stage B2B2C startup. I will compare these two relative mindsets - the corporate, which is related to fixed culture and the startup, which relates to a growing culture that suggests that every failure is a chance to learn. Growth experimentation and resistance to failure are the key outcomes to assist project managers in leading with agility in these challenging times by being customer-driven and focused on the market problem and addressing business acumen, not just being scope-driven. Using proof of concept via business models, not business plans, will transform project managers to project leaders to communicate deliverables to the stakeholders in the right manner. And we all need to support young leaders to address disruptions via the route of project innovation.

Regardless of your business, you must ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the single essential and adequate condition for a successful project or for your business in general?
• It is not a product, a technology or a customer need… But what does this practically mean for your business?
• Why young people enter the profession from different doors today?
• How the senior or C-Suite Level managers support all these new PMs...?
• What is intrapreneurship? Why entrepreneurs can exist in corporations, and why corporations need them more and more nowadays?

At the conclusion of this session, attendees will be able to:

• Differentiate between a corporate and a startup project environment by examining the insights from two supply chain and logistics projects; and
• Compare the logic of the business models vs. business plans and discuss the concepts of intrapreneurship in organizations.

Interested in learning more and furthering the dialogue? Join me on Thursday, 9 June 2022 at 8:45 a.m. EDT at the PMI Virtual Experience Series: 9 June  program and take part in the question-and-answer session with me and the rest of the PM community.