PMI Global Insights

PMI wrapped up the 2020 Virtual Experience Series this month. The VES is a new virtual event series that offered monthly virtual experiences from June – December this year. More information can be located at https://www.pmi.org/virtual-experience-series. You can still register for one of seven events or the entire on-demand series to gain access to all of the amazing speakers and content and up to 68 PDUs through 31 January 2021.

In the November program, I hosted sports strategists Katie Sowers and Craig O’Shannessy who discussed how they use data and insights to improve the play and outcomes of their athletes. By far, the number one takeaway of our virtual participants was the sharing of strategists’ “Why.” We received feedback such as:

• “The WHY is the fire that moves you every day to go from one point to another, looking forward for a better world.”
• “Thinking about your ‘Why’ when you do an activity or work helps us accomplish our task with good motivation and clarity”
• “The ‘Why’ has provoked deep thinking”

It is interesting how the “Why” prompts a journey into who we are and what motivates us. Nowadays with our COVID-19 challenging work environments, and the push to build new capabilities and skills, those individuals and organizations who are guided by purpose are shown to be more resilient, have stronger well-being and are more engaged (McKinsey)  . The list of benefits goes on.

“People don’t buy what you do. They buy WHY you do it.” ~ Simon Sinek

The “Why” is your purpose, cause, or belief.  And it’s not new.  Simon Sinek has been talking about “Why” for years. Remember this video? It’s hard to believe that Sinek’s groundbreaking Why video is now 10 years old!

“Inspired leaders and inspired organizations think and act from the inside out.”  ~ Simon Sinek

A few years ago, the PMI leadership team performed an exercise to each identify their why, recorded their word and explanations, and posted it to our internal social media group for all staff to view. It was bold, vulnerable, and thought-provoking. My executive leader took his operating group through the exercise, inspiring thought, alignment and action. Every now and then, I’ll have a colleague update me on their “Why” as they clarify their purpose or even change it based upon a life event.

We are experiencing for the first time in history a movement whereby all generations are more likely to purchase from a purpose-driven company. If you are a leader in your organization, you need to clarify with your audiences your strategic vision, your purpose, and your values. Your #1 stakeholder group - your employees - want to understand your company’s mission for long-term value creation. Employees engaged in their company’s purpose and values are less likely to look for a different job. And you can help them by facilitating a workshop on finding their own “Why.”  Linking employees' passion to the organization's purpose is bound to increase engagement in the workplace.

Discussion topic for readers: As a project leader, we need to possess the leadership skills to drive our projects and teams. How does your “Why” fuel your work? Or if you haven’t explored your “Why,” how might knowing your why, and the why of your team members, impact your approach to the way you work?  

By Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin
Editor-in-Chief
PM Solutions Research

2020! That’s it - my whole argument for more agility in organizations. The PMO can play an outsized role in helping organizations become more resilient, nimble, and adaptive in uncertain times. But how do you know where to start, or if your strategy for adding agility is sound? Luckily, The State of Project Management 2020 research study provides PMOs with a checklist of the practices used in high-performing organizations.

A little backstory: in 2018, in response to the new Sixth Edition of the PMBOK® Guide’s fresh emphasis on agile and adaptive environments, we conducted a study to determine the adoption rate of agile/adaptive practices, and see if we could get a handle on which of those practices organizations were finding most useful. The resulting report, The Adaptive Organization, identified the practices that were most often used in “high-performing organizations” – those that scored in the top quartile of the study respondents based on an array of ten organizational performance measures.

Flash forward to early 2020, before we knew what a testing ground of agility this year would prove to be. In January, we asked respondents in a new study, The State of Project Management 2020, which of those adaptive and agile practices they were using in their PMOs. By the time the study results were published in April, the world was smack in the middle of a crisis that would require adaptive strategies more than ever.

One finding that surprised us was that not only were PMOs in high-performing organizations in the study more agile, but they scored far higher on every single adaptive or agile practice we had identified! In the space of just two years, our study population had gone from experimenting cautiously with a few agile or adaptive practices, mostly in hybrid environments, to adopting full-scale agile/adaptive approaches. The most stunning difference was in the area of training and development, where PMOs in high-performing organizations were training three to four times more than less-successful organizations, and on a wider slate of topics (see graphic), as well as providing mentoring, coaching, and other development services to their organizations.

PM Solutions Research. (2020) The State of Project Management 2020. Chadds Ford, PA: PM Solutions, Inc., p. 8.

If you are interested in learning more, please attend my presentation, “Today's PMO: Agility Required!,” on 9 December at 10:20 a.m. EST (UTC-5) in the PMI Virtual Experience Series event and rate your PMO on the identified “lucky 13” agile/adaptive practices. Take part in the question and answer period with me and the rest of the PM community, and receive a full-data copy of the 2020 research study that you can use to compare your organization with high performers and craft a path to agility.

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin is Editor-in-Chief of PM Solutions Research, and a contributor to over 20 books on project management, including the PMI Literature Award winner, The AMA Handbook of Project Management (with Paul Dinsmore.) She received a Distinguished Contributions Award from PMI in 2007.

When PMI staff moved to remote working on 12 March 2020, it quickly became apparent that the planned 30-day remote work arrangement would extend into the future, and it did. One of the areas experiencing opportunity and disruption was our professional development group, and namely, the Live Learning area that hosts in-person events. Having to postpone, cancel or reinvent the remaining year’s events was no small feat. A bright spot soon emerged: the creation of the Virtual Experience Series, or VES, featuring a fantastic line-up of talent, hosted by TV personality Tamron Hall. These speakers have relayed how the work that they do translates within the Project Economy.

PMI has a track-record of hosting virtual conferences around topics such as organizational agility, business analysis and talent & technology. In November, we took the business analysis program and invited two sports coaches to talk to the PMI community. I interviewed San Francisco 49ers coach Katie Sowers and tennis analyst Craig O’Shannessy to discuss how they use data and insights to improve the play and outcomes of their athletes. This Virtual Experience Series event is free to PMI members and can be located here https://www.pmi.org/virtual-experience-series/registration. Just register for the event to gain free access and up to 7.75 PDUs through 31 January 2021.

The Project Economy is one in which individuals have the right skills and mindsets to turn ideas into reality, no matter what type of initiative they are working on. It’s where organization decision-makers understand how to staff teams with the right skills to deliver value and drive strategic outcomes. In research conducted for the 2020 Pulse of the Profession report on “Tomorrow’s Teams Today,” project professionals rank collaborative leadership and empathy for the voice of the customer as the most essential skills for project teams.

Listening to Craig & Katie talk about their experiences, it’s evident they are more than just coaches or analysts — they are strategists. They take the whole of their experiences and break them down into increments in order to analyze performance. They are reimagining how games get played and athletes develop, and in a time where fans are not physically present and future events are uncertain.  As PMI’s research shows, “fast and flexible is the name of the game for teams in The Project Economy.”

How do you view project management as a life skill? What is one day you have incorporated PM into your lifestyle? Have you applied a PM approach to a sport that you play and what have you learned from it?

If you are interested in learning more about Katie & Craig, here are two podcasts that provide a view into their stories:

Katie: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/26-nfl-49ers-coach-katie-sowers/id1430100480?i=1000430742208

Craig:  https://parentingaces.com/numbers-dont-lie-craig-oshannessy-brain-game-tennis/

By: Te Wu, PMI-RMP, PMP, PgMP, PfMP
CEO, PMO Advisory LLC

Congratulations on being a project professional.  As I am sure you already know, project management is an exciting place to be.  Just think about the many positives: 1) Projects are rarely boring as they are often unique; 2) projects have a lot of challenges to keep you on your toes; and naturally, with every challenge, there are opportunities to build your skills and enhance your visibility; and 3) if you are certified, then you have probably heard about the compensation advantage.  The advantage with certifications like the PMP is so well known that even CNN wrote an article about this a few years ago.  Just Google the terms “poor man’s MBA” and you can find that article.

But as a project professional, chances are you are very busy with confronting the latest problems and tackling risks. How often have you sat back and wondered about your career in project management? What should be the next step? Should you pursue certification? How do you turbocharge your career?  If you are already asking about these questions, then my presentation at the upcoming PMI Virtual Experience Series event on 9 December is for you.

This presentation is designed for project professionals of all levels, and it strives to accomplish three goals:

1. Highlight the challenges and opportunities in project management. In short, the performance of project implementation today is still poor across many sectors.  For example, PMI’s most recent study in its Pulse of the Profession showed that 11.4% of all money spent on projects is wasted. But with every crisis, there come exciting opportunities.
2. Next, I will present a career roadmap that covers the broad spectrum of progression from entry-level to the chief project officer. I will describe the key accountabilities and responsibilities and how professionals climb the career ladder.  Just as importantly, I will map the PMI certifications to this ladder.
3. For career growth, I will apply Edward Deming’s quality improvement wheel that includes four steps for continuously building your career. Through Plan, Do, Check, and Act, project professionals can continually refresh, examine, and achieve the next stretched goals.

In the final part of the presentation, I will provide concrete ideas on how project professionals of all levels can jump-start their career development immediately and start climbing upward.  With the project economy growing ever larger and projects taking center stage as the primary vehicle for value creation, all of you have the potential to reach the topmost level of the project management career ladder – becoming the Chief Project Officer.

Excited?  Please join me on Wednesday, 9 December at 11 a.m. EST (UTC-5) at the PMI Virtual Experience Series event for this presentation and take part in the questions and answers with me and the rest of the PM community. I am looking forward to seeing you at the event.

By: Christopher DiBella, MBA, CSM

Within the definition of empathy – the ability to understand and share the feeling of others – our feelings are invoked. We must connect, listen, show compassion, and truly hear what someone else is trying to say while stepping into their shoes to gain a better understanding of their subjective experience. Empathy goes beyond wondering, “How would I feel in someone else’s situation?” to listening to how that person thinks, feels, and understands their own environment. Empathy is grasping facts, feelings, and significance of another person’s story, but more than just understanding others, empathy is the ability to convey that understanding through our words, gestures, and even our facial expressions.

Does our body language say we care? Or do we seem disinterested? Are we focusing our undivided attention on that person? Or do we seem more interested in other things taking place around us? Empathy involves creating a safety net for those who are sharing their experiences. We must remember that their story is about them, and not about how we feel about what they are sharing. Furthermore, being able to communicate your accurate perceptions to another person involves finding ways to let them know you are there to support them without any predetermined notions or biases you may have.

We have this inherent instinct (either consciously or unconsciously) that we immediately know how to solve everyone else’s problems. In fact, it’s almost human nature for us to feel this way. However, when people are sharing something with us – either a bad experience or some other heartfelt emotion – they are looking for more than a quick fix to their problem. They want someone who understands and empathizes with them when they need it most, which involves the receiver becoming more self-aware of their own empathy skills. By becoming more self-aware, we can then improve the perception of how others view our empathy skills. In turn, this will help to strengthen bonds between employees and create a stronger company culture.

Empathy is no longer a soft skill. In fact, it’s one of the hardest to learn. It requires compassion, consideration, and genuinely caring and understanding what someone else is going through and wanting to help them through it. When trying to understand what someone else may be going through, there is an invisible boundary, or set of limits, that we need to be aware of so we can identify whether we fall within the box of full understanding and awareness of how someone else feels. Simply going through something similar does not necessarily put you in someone else’s shoes for how they may be feeling, but it gives you an emotional starting point to build a high level of rapport and trust.

Everyone has the power and the ability to change the dynamic of their environment, as well as the world we live in. And the most powerful tool you have at your disposal is the belief in the idea that you can make your environment better for everyone in it. Within that belief is the notion of starting a movement that can change the lives of everyone, including yourself, but that belief is meaningless if you decide not to act upon it. Maybe some of you have even already tried to implement this belief into others, and maybe it was rejected for whatever reason, but there still needs to be a conscious effort made to gain a better understanding of how to implement empathy into your respective environments in a sincere and genuine manner.

I will be presenting a session entitled “The Art of Empathy: Cultivating More Effective Communication in the Workplace” on 12 November. This engaging presentation will look at the most underrated (yet most powerful) skill you need in the workplace today. Understanding and sharing the feelings of others requires more than just voicing your thoughts and opinions on a topic, but rather it involves active listening skills for you to provide the appropriate level of support needed. We will also look at empathy mapping to help find the right balance of cognitive, emotional, and compassionate empathy you can use to develop stronger bonds in the workplace, and touch on key topics such as:

• Why empathy is important and why it is a must-needed skill in the workplace.
• How body language, tone of voice, pacing, and other verbal cues impact the experience of others.
• How to demonstrate reflective listening.
• Applying techniques to increase listening skills.
• Relating to disheartened, confused, and disgruntled stakeholders through empathy.

In this session, attendees will gain a better understanding of how and why empathy can improve organizational culture through practical application, and then use empathy for changing behaviors and building better relationships while boosting their own critical-thinking skills. Key learning objectives and takeaways include:

• Develop an action plan using empathy mapping to improve empathy skills.
• Apply techniques to increase listening skills.

Interested in learning more and furthering the dialogue? Join me on November 12 at 10:05am EST at the PMI^® Virtual Experience Series event for this presentation and take part in the conversation with me and the rest of the PM community.