PMI Global Insights

By Vibhu Sinha, PMP

Why should we care about learning how to pitch? Can you think of a situation where you want others to look at the world from your perspective? Perhaps you want your business sponsor to provide funding for a new project; perhaps you want to embark on an acquisition as part of an inorganic growth strategy and you need to convince the Board that the acquisition is worth undertaking; perhaps you want to convince the interviewer that you’re the right candidate for the job; or on a personal note, perhaps you want to convince your children that eating popcorn is bad for their health. All of these situations require making your stakeholders (even if they’re your children) appreciate your view of the world or your vantage point. If you can envision the possibility of being in the midst of one of these or other similar situations, you will need to learn the skills of pitching.

Often people perceive that pitching is about looking sharp, memorizing facts, and making an impression on the audience by demonstrating their business or analytical acumen. It is not so. These attributes will help but they will not “move” your stakeholders. Often people also perceive that pitching is about using elegant words and flowery phrases. It is also not so. Pitching is about telling a story…a story that only
you can tell. What do I mean by “a story that only you can tell”? It means that the level of authenticity, passion and relevance you would bring to your story, no one else would.

Perhaps you have been narrating stories your whole life or perhaps you’re new to it. The good news is that from the perspective of Behavioral Psychology, storytelling is less of an art and more of a science. There is a “formula” to storytelling that can be mastered and applied to pitching. And the formula is universal – applicable across industries, business sectors, geographical boundaries and cultures. 

If you’re interested in learning more, join me on October 20 at 11:25 a.m. EDT (UTC-4) at the PMI Virtual Experience Series, where we explore the concepts behind storytelling in greater detail and participate in Q&A. This presentation was originally scheduled for 3-hours under the category of “hot topic”, in the format of an in-person workshop, at the PMI EMEA Conference in Prague, Czech Republic, earlier this year, but with the onset of COVID-19, we transitioned to a 25-minute session at the Virtual Experience Series. Ergo, I will make my best effort to answer as many questions as I could within the allotted time.

By: Randall L. Englund

Success in any environment largely depends upon completing successful projects, and successful projects get done by skilled project managers and teams, supported by effective project sponsors. That depends upon building the Right Set of Skills for Greater Project Success. The integration of knowledge and skills makes the difference in achieving optimized outcomes. A Complete Project Manager integrates key people, team, business, technical, and organizational skills. It becomes possible to apply an organic analog from molecular chemistry and share insights, experiences, and examples intended to motivate action towards embracing an integrated approach to the complete project manager mindset.

While many professionals develop their craft through advanced education and on the job experiences, there comes a time when an enhanced skill set and a new perspective about working with people is necessary to advance to the next level of performance. How do you move beyond this plateau? We suggest a holistic approach to open eyes, minds, … and doors, so that changed thinking can be applied immediately within each organizational environment. The “right” set of skills to achieve “completeness” depends on individual starting points, aptitude, attitude, desires, and supporting context.

Many people are not aware of the need for them to change their thinking and how this mindset inhibits their performance. In time it becomes necessary to adopt, adapt, and apply a different approach, leading to more consistent, timely, and quality results. This can happen because project managers apply necessary leadership, influence, sales, and negotiating skills that had previously been overlooked or underapplied. With the conscious application of these skills, project managers get recognized through achieving business outcomes that had before now eluded them. The goal is to achieve greater levels of personal satisfaction and professional advancement.

The missing ingredients that will move professionals from good to great are the next generation of skills, mindsets, and processes that transform your performance as a project manager or sponsor. To become a more Complete Project Manager means integrating key people, team, business, technical, and organizational skills. Develop the leadership, learning, means and motivation (L²M²) to advance both personally and professionally.

The PMI SeminarsWorld® session on “Integrating People, Organizational, and Technical Skills: The Complete Project Manager” offers the opportunity for participants to share insights, experiences, attitudes, examples, stories and passion to motivate action. Now being offered virtually, participants immediately begin to apply these practices up, across, and down the organization, especially in politically charged situations. The goal is to assess and then integrate the knowledge and skills that make the difference in achieving optimized outcomes, increased satisfaction and bottom-line results. Close the talent gap between what is possible and what actually can be accomplished. This becomes real through a complete project manager mindset that is applied regularly, focused on integrating concepts and skills to create value.

My belief is that all leaders need to create healthy environments for people to consistently and sustainably achieve project success. Sponsors can do a better job of guiding and supporting project teams, and project managers can expand their people skills. My approach includes the behavioral, technical, business, leadership, influence, negotiation, political, conflict and change management aspects that create an environment for project success. The goal is to get greater, optimized results from projects underway or contemplated in the organization. An organic approach learns from nature and implements project, program, and portfolio management through tapping the inherent power of people to work in harmony, have fun, and be more productive. My co-facilitator (and co-author) is Alfonso Bucero. Alfonso believes in and demonstrates passion, persistence, and patience as his motto for everything in life. We bring complementary styles, experiences, and insights that we thoroughly enjoy sharing with others. Both of us come from practitioner backgrounds and now work with project professionals in all industries and functional areas, world-wide. Our goal is to create the right environment to “grow” people to produce their best work.

Completeness taps your passion, persistence and patience. Achieving outstanding projects and organizational skills requires passionate belief in your project. That takes time and dedicated effort. A complete project manager needs to persist, much like an infectious mosquito, to all project stakeholders and use your patience to get those results.

In contrast, many or perhaps most of us are incomplete when it comes to skills that lead to consistent project successes. As a consequence, project failures are all too common. We suffer from missed deadlines, insufficient resources and support, missed commitments, surprises, unhappy team members and customers, career stagnation, unfulfilled dreams and aspirations, perhaps even depression. We think we are doing our job, after all, we were trained as professionals, but we appear myopic and blind to the bigger picture. Struggles are all too common. We are victims of politics, disappointed that our ideas are not accepted, and do not get others on our side. Strategic goals are a foreign concept. No wonder we are stuck on a plateau. We often feel incomplete because of our continuous desire to improve. We strongly believe that continuously moving forward needs to be cultivated by every project manager.

There is hope. When operating in our strengths, regardless of being introverted or extroverted, quiet or loud, we can get along with others, share the credit, and complement each other. When we pair up with people and team members who possess complementary strengths and skills, we become more complete. Opposites can thrive in exquisite harmony.

It seems that the only constant thing in our society during the 21st century is change—technical changes, paradigm shifts, project manager behavioral changes. We need always to be ready to change. We can do so because of a belief that all of us are excellent. Today is a wonderful day to start; if you dedicate time and effort to open your mind and face new possibilities, tomorrow will be even better.

This organic molecule serves as an assessment tool and a summary of the complete project manager skillset:

We look forward to interacting with like-minded individuals to engage in continuous learning and productivity. Join us at SeminarsWorld®

By: Steve Salisbury

“Things are moving so fast we can’t keep up!”

Even in this season of Covid-19, things are moving fast. In the last few months, Brooks Brothers, JC Penney, Neiman Marcus, J Crew, and many other retail powerhouses filed bankruptcy. Even Walmart and Walgreen’s have announced they will close stores. Brick and mortar are giving way to the digital age. Amazon continues to grow at breakneck speed. Over ten years, Amazon’s revenue has increased about 12 times, whereas Target Stores’ revenue has increased about 1.2 times.

When we look at the retail industry specifically, and others more generally, it’s clear that traditional organizational structures are falling short. They are unable to keep pace with the demands of the digital economy.

The advancement of the Internet over the past two decades has taught us that we must run our organizations differently for our businesses to thrive, and perhaps even survive. This digital transformation is inevitable. To successfully move into the future, leaders need to strike a balance between organizational hierarchy and cross-functional coordination. While there still needs to be accountability for results, organizations need to be able to move faster to achieve these results.

In the late 1800s, Fredrick Taylor pioneered the idea of specialization to speed production. Before this, companies employed craftsman to build one product at a time. This was slow, tedious, and drove enormous variability in the quality of the end products. Taylor pioneered greater efficiency through organizational structure and discipline. No one person produced a product any longer. Through a structured organizational design, different workers had responsibility for small components of the product’s fabrication and construction. In time, this expanded to other parts of the organization. Payroll clerks computed payroll check amounts, and accounting wrote the paychecks. Order-takers received phone calls from customers who wanted to place orders, a warehouse clerk prepared the product for shipment, and a transportation clerk shipped the product to the buyer. All this structure drove phenomenal efficiency. One Fortune 150 company drove $160 million of annual cost out of their supply chain through these efficiencies. Throughout most of the 20th century, organizations employed Taylor’s ideas to drive more and more cost out of their production.

However, this specialization drove hierarchical adherence which in turn promoted cross-functional dysfunction – especially during times of change. If leaders wanted to deploy a new product design or improve business processes across the organization, they ran into huge amounts of resistance. This led to lots of failure of organizations to achieve results in desired time frames, if at all.

This means that organizations must reduce their dependence on hierarchical adherence and drive more toward teams that work more effectively cross-functionally. People in these organizations must operate at higher levels of cross-functional collaboration, requiring greater trust, healthy dissent, and greater ability to engage in informal accountability.

This starts at the top. The leader of the organization must be willing to give up traditional command and control in favor of a more facilitative approach. She must be passionate about her organization’s mission, must be humble, and must demonstrate greater trust and willingness to engage in healthy dissent.

In addition to these personal characteristics, these leaders must also:

1. Hold their leadership team accountable to strip away the armor and work cross-functionally – more than ever. She must model and require more openness, more willingness, and a greater propensity to challenge each other.
2. Promote and model the idea that employees across the organization work together more effectively to drive these outcomes and are willing to challenge each other to do so.

All leaders must give up the old command and control mentality that Fredrick Taylor inspired. They must become more of a coach, helping direct reports, and the entire organization drive to these new behaviors which in turn drives to a greater culture of cross-functional effectiveness. This is especially true now that more and more people are working remotely. It falls on leaders to help keep the team together and moving forward to achieve purpose.

Interested in learning more and furthering the dialogue? Join me on October 20 , at the Virtual Experience Series: A New World View: Our Global Impact and take part in the question and answers with me and the rest of the PM community.

By Norma Lynch, PMP

As 2020 began, we never realised that this global pandemic would be on the menu, invading both our lives and livelihood. As we try to process the implications of living and working under the shadow of Covid-19, we are all trying to rethink and reframe how we do business whilst at the same time safeguarding our lives. We are going through unprecedented change.

What is required is rapid innovation and time is of the essence. In the absence of a crystal ball, we have to consider all the possible scenarios and lead through strategic ambiguity. Success depends on moving the organisation forward precisely at times when the path ahead is hazy. We need to take pragmatic action in order to survive in this period of strategic uncertainty. We need to lead through change.

Communication is critical and leaders need to be visible and maintain frequent dialogue. It must be open and honest to maintain credibility. Even though leaders don’t have all the answers, communication is important to put everyone’s mind at ease and provide hope for the future. We need to communicate through change.

At the upcoming Virtual Experience event on 9 September I will be presenting the rollercoaster of emotions that people go through when adapting to change and how to successfully navigate through the crisis by leveraging change management principles. We explore:

• The Five Stages of Disruption Denial
• The Burning Platform
• Successful Innovation  
• Decisive Action
• Leading the New Strategic Direction

Interested in learning more and furthering the dialogue? Join me on 9^th September 2020 at the next PMI Virtual Experience Series event for this presentation and take part in the question and answers with me and the rest of the PM community.

By: Dr. Evelyn Brisibe, PMP, CBAP

Change management is key to implementing and sustaining frameworks and mindsets in any organization.

In today’s world where the word change is synonymous with the word adapt, we are constantly at the crux of influx of unprecedented disruption to our normal course of living and doing business. It is no wonder the one who leads and supports projects/programs may sometimes be disassociated from these changes. This presentation will highlight three areas the Project/Program manager needs to be aware of how these changes are impacting self. These include sustaining focus on the desired goal of the project/program, managing expectations of self and others and owning the message. As a professional that has witnessed three major shifts in management and focus around the implementation and sustainment of process management framework and mindset, whilst leading and supporting other projects, I am sharing how change management beliefs and tactics have kept me focused on the goal and ultimate prize.

As we engage with one another, we create experiences about whatever it is we are communicating, these experiences create beliefs about the subject that are acted upon to yield results.

As you lead and support project management efforts, you need to be aware that at every opportunity you have to engage, the principles of your project goals need to guide your interactions with others. Be aware that you may not have a second time to change the narrative about the subject. For example, when I was implementing a business improvement framework, the case was for simplicity; in addition, incremental improvements were critical pieces of the framework, so it was intentionally woven in every communication that I had with colleagues and management.

When you are impacted by a change, pause to DETERMINE what the change is. How does the change impact the current? When is the change taking effect? When you determine the change, DRAW the connection between change and the goal, then DEFINE the new strategy to achieve desired results. Then DECLARE what needs to GO; adaptation is at the heart of the agent of self. 
To achieve this, it is about having a strategic mindset to see the organization at 50,000 feet, be tactical in your approach to every required task while being operationally respectful at all times when supporting the organization.
Sustaining focus on desired results requires the professional to step up and be a Trusted Advisor, not just an expert consultant engaged by the business or organization to lead and support a project/program. What’s the difference between an expert consultant with many years of experience and skills, and a trusted advisor with a similar pedigree? Distinguished Professor Dr. Jagdish Sheth, the Charles H. Kellstadt Chair in Marketing at Emory University, offers these distinctions:

• Expert Consultants provide knowledge; Trusted Advisors provide depth and breadth of knowledge
• Expert Consultants tell; Trusted Advisors listen
• Expert Consultants provide good answers; Trusted Advisors ask great questions
• Expert Consultants control; Trusted Advisors collaborate
• Expert Consultants provide expertise; Trusted Advisors provide insight
• Expert Consultants analyze; Trusted Advisors synthesize

There shouldn’t be sacred cows in strategic and tactical approaches to leading and supporting short, mid to long term projects/programs. Determine, Draw, Define and Declare as you review and adapt self to planned, unplanned, seen and unforeseen changes. 

Interested in learning more and furthering the dialogue? Join me on Wednesday, 9 September 2020, 11 a.m. EDT (UTC-4) at the PMI Virtual Experience Series event for this presentation and take part in the question and answer session with me and the rest of the PM community.