PMI Global Insights

By: Greg Githens, PMP

I’m looking forward to presenting about resilience at the 9 September Virtual Experience Series: A Deep Dive in Organizational Agility: Adaptability, Resilience and Learning.

In case you haven’t heard the phrase, “skills stack,” it is similar to how organizations use the jargon of “technology stacks” or “solution stacks.” It is a way of inventorying and describing the capabilities that can be brought to bear on the needs of a situation. The concept of an individual skills stack is particularly important because the workforce of the future is more focused on matching skills to situations rather than role (position descriptions) to situations. So, rather than searching for a generically-described “project manager,” organizations will look for people with specific skills.

For an example, imagine an organization that is trying to incorporate resiliency principles in its work. It would benefit from managers who are skilled in recognizing emergence and learning from experimentation.

Celebrities and writers everywhere are talking about resilience and I believe it will be the word of the year for 2020. Resilience is not another word for perseverance, “grit,” or optimism. The fundamental feature of resilience is that it is a response to trauma. I use the word trauma to capture a range of concepts: discomforts, injury, insults, unpleasantries, anxieties, etc.

It’s helpful to note that resilience is not limited to individual psychology. Personal resilience also has aspects of physical and financial, manifesting in a person’s disease resistance or in their choices to hold funds in reserve for the unexpected.

When we enlarge our view to larger systems, we find that resilience is found in ecosystems, for example, a resilient forest will quickly show emergent growth after a forest fire. Business continuity and disaster preparedness are also expressions of resilience.

Now, to the skills stack for resilience. There are three microskills that are particularly important for resilience. They are ambition, anticipation, and reframing.

The microskill of ambition captures an individual’s desire to make a positive impact on her world. Individuals with higher levels of drive have more personal resilience. They prevail over adversity. They are determined to achieve their goals.

The microskill of anticipation is that of looking into the future, knowing that your decisions today will bear their consequences in the future. This microskill is developed by identifying and examining yours and other’s anticipatory assumptions. What do you think the future will be like? What “pockets of the future” are now emerging? When you are hopeful, what is the source of your hopes? When you despair, what is the source of your despair?

The microskill of reframing is a behavior of intentionally adopting new points of view and explanations. An example of a reframed understanding is seeing how a threat to safety might become an opportunity for growth. Another reframing is the observation that trauma helps individuals and societies grow stronger.

You can increase your resilience by developing these microskills. As a bonus, you also enhance your strategic thinking, which is a rare and valuable competency that can help you have more influence and impact in your organization.

There are three resilience capacities of individuals and organizations. They are absorption, adaptation and transformation (AAT). Sometimes we need to be stronger so that we can absorb the trauma and keep functioning. Sometimes we need to pivot and work around the trauma.

Resilience includes adaptation, but adaptation alone is insufficient for the demands of the coming decade. Sometimes, we must embrace fundamental change by taking a new and unproven path to growth.

Our capacity for resilience helps us – individually and organizationally - bounce forward to a better future. And it’s worth emphasizing: it is much better to bounce forward than it is to bounce back. The future is going to be different and we want to be proactive in making choices that are going to better ourselves and our organizations.

Our society is in a period of great change. Project managers need to step up to the challenges and consider that resilience is welcoming emergence every day.

I close with this observation,

“Ordinary leadership involves perfecting the known, whereas the chief task of extra-ordinary leadership is imperfectly seizing the unknown.”

Interested in learning more about resilience, bouncing forward, and extra-ordinary leadership? Join me on 9 September at 11 a.m. EDT (UTC-4) for The Skills Stack for Resilience at the PMI Virtual Experience Series. I’ll be providing pragmatic tips for improving resilience and I look forward to answering your questions.

Conversations, dialogue help garner perspectives outside of what has been seen as normal. Similarities, contradictions, opinions; just some of the possible outcomes.

When we think about capacities for conversations, we have our home, workplace, and social events. But every so often, an opportunity comes along to be a part of something bigger; something completely new that is at its very core, a synergy of great minds in an encompassing industry.

Imagine an event that offered accessibility to deep experience and unlimited potential. Imagine that the purpose of this event was for sharing and collaborating. Imagine that the event was also dedicated to a select group to explicitly summarize their insights into a verbal narrative.

Don’t lose sight of the vision just yet. What if this event also were to offer the prospect of meeting individuals, of whom, only had been built virtually?

This is the picture PMI’s 2019 Global Conference painted for me. An absolutely fantastic experience that was amplified by the amazing folks I got to spend it with. Certainly, not discounting the great food and drinks either, and even with all the interesting sessions, for me, the takeaway were the personal relationships, individual conversations, and shared experiences.

Thank you to Kimberly, Laura, Marjorie, Kiron, Lori W., Dave D., Lorelie, and Dave M. And thank you to those that signed up to speak with me. I truly hope I was able to provide you with valuable insights and recommendations that help to make your path to success just a little less bumpy.

Andrew Craig

I just returned home after a fulfilling three days at the Global Conference in Philadelphia. Having had the opportunity to attend the 50th anniversary event made it that much more special, especially as it was the venue in which the new PMI brand was launched.

Having been invited to provide some early feedback on the new brand a couple of months ago, it was not a surprise to me, but what was surprising was how much I saw it with fresh eyes upon seeing the logo and positioning statements everywhere - on posters, screens, clothing, you name it!

Another outcome I will remember for a long time was the opportunity to re-connect with members of my extended PMI family whom I had met over the years as well as the chance to finally shake the hands of or hug the active participants in this community whom I have communicated frequently with over the past couple of years but never met.

The keynote sessions were thought provoking and a number of the track sessions were well designed and presented. What struck me most was just how much agile has been woven into the fabric of the offerings - it shows that PMI's commitment to tackling delivery complexity through agility (and maybe in the future anti-fragility) is not superficial.

But what I cherish the most was the chance to work with a team of talented, like-minded, highly supportive experts to share our experience and ideas with the many (brave!?!) attendees who took the time to book sessions with us or who dropped by to ask us questions ranging from career development to challenging organizational blockers.

Dave, Dave, Lori, Lorelie and Andrew, we were a heck of a squadron with excellent ground support provided by Marjorie, Kimberly and Laura.

"I'll be your wingman, anytime!"

As I write this, I look back over the first day of PMI's Global Conference and have a hard time believing how much I've learned and experienced within a single day!

The day kicked off with an energizing, humorous and candid session by Adam Grant on how to better champion new ideas.

During our "Ask an Expert" sessions I had the privilege to meet with a couple of our community members, Jennifer & Ed, to discuss a couple of topics near and dear to my heart - PMOs and personal development. It was a wonderful opportunity to share some of the hard lessons I've learned from leading PMOs and the (sometimes random) path I've taken through my career. 

I was also delighted to meet a number of folks who I have interacted with virtually through this community, the PMI LinkedIn discussion group and other online networks which only reinforced my support for the sixth principle of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.

Throughout the day, I was impressed by the impact of the new PMI brand - it has really grown on me!

If this was day one, I can't wait to see what day two brings!

ProjectManagement.com has again pulled together a group of experts to help answer any questions you may have about Project Management and Projects in general.  I'm proud to be one of them!  

It's pretty easy to ask us stuff.  You walk up to the desk, a friendly PMI person will talk to you, figure out who can help you the most and make an appointment.   What can you ask us?  Just about anything.  Our group has a very wide range of knowledge and experience.

Here's a small mind map of who we are and what we can help with.  

Please stop by and visit with us!  We're all proud to have been selected as experts and we're even more proud to offer help to anyone that asks.   

I'm the Dave with "trouble" by his name.  :)