PMI Global Insights

One of the greatest pleasures of attending a congress is meeting new people and meeting people from all over the world. However, being a first-time attendee, and showing up alone can be tremendously intimidating.

What I saw today, on our first day of #pmiemea17, was the beginning of the evolution of a group of strangers into a band of friends.

What started out as someone remarking keynote speaker Gabor George Burt’s fancy socks turned into the #fancysockschallenge and had this first-timer wandering up to complete strangers asking if I could photograph their socks! Talk about an ice-breaker! I can’t wait to see where our antics will lead us tomorrow!

If it’s your first time, you’re here by yourself, and maybe fancy socks aren’t your style (haha – sorry I couldn’t resist), here are a few more tips to help get the ball rolling for you, too:

• Look for other first-timers and people attending alone

You’ll notice our #pmiemea17 first-timers by the bright green ribbon they can choose to attach to their conference badges – go up and say ‘ciao!’, introduce yourself and ask about what conference session they’ve enjoyed the most so far.
Often, people who aren’t with people will be lurking in corners, or playing with their phones. You know, all of the same things you do when you feel awkward. Say ‘buongiorno!’ to them, too (ok, I am running out of Italian). A stranger’s just a friend you haven’t met and nobody likes to be alone in a crowd.

• Use open-ended questions and have common answers at hand

You know the questions to avoid: anything that can be answered in a simple yes/no. This sounds easy, but I think when we’re stressed, or working in a second language, it bears remembering.
I also find having answers to questions like ‘What’s the wifi password?’ ‘Where’s the bathroom?’ ‘Is there a tour of downtown being offered today?’ can make welcome additions to many conversations! (pro tip: read through the FAQs on the conference app)

• Immerse yourself in the content

This is actually a rare opportunity for you to be uninhibited by an entourage. You can be unapologetic about getting excited about a statistical presentation, asking the speaker a million questions afterwards, challenging an idea during the Q&A session, or becoming a complete fan-person during a book signing. Nobody’s going to pull you away because they want coffee or they just saw someone else they know. This time is all about YOU and expanding YOUR knowledge.

• You’re not really alone

Each of us on the Community Engagement Team would love to see you! The speakers are eager to hear your feedback, chat about their topics, and share their experience.
During lunch, we are mixing up the networking opportunities.
Today, it was by region: I couldn’t find Canada, but Laura and I sat with Northern Europe (similar climate? well, similar hemisphere …) and had a lovely time meeting Brigitte, Catherine, and Nicole. We had such a nice time that we forgot to take photos!
Tomorrow, we’ll be learning to communicate in Italian without talking, which sounds like it will be hilarious.
On Wednesday, the tables are arranged by industry, so we’ll have a chance to see how much ‘Italian communication’ we remember from the day before.

The slide decks from each presentation shown at #pmiemea17 will be available for download in PDF format on the My Congress page of the EMEA Congress webpage until November 2017.

So relax, ask questions, share your experiences, and enjoy yourself!

Ciao-ciao!

Attending PMI EMEA Global Congress was an amazing opportunities!

Three are the key elements of a PMI Congress: knowledge, networking, fun!

Knowledge

My favourite was: Optimising Stakeholder Engagement by Understanding the Human Side of Complexity" by Dave Gunner

He started analysing PMI Pulse of the Profession 2016 (available here) and he started analysing of many cause of project failures can be linked back to complexity and the human side. But what is "complexity"? It's a concept quite hollow to grasp. He explained it using a clear example: a planted seed can grow, or not, depending by several factors, the ground, the weather, etc. this is complexity.

He then provided the audience with some extremely useful tools:

• Human Behavioral Complexity Sheet
• Conflict Resolution Style Self-Assessment

These tools can provide a first indication about how we are currently reacting to conflict; in fact, the same test taken in a different period can provide different results.

He than shared some tactics fon minimising conflict with:

Senior Managers

• Position yourself in their shoes
• Take solutions as well as problems
• Keep them informed of progress
• Consult Them
• Observed them

Project Team Member

• Understand team members personal goals
• Ensure they understand goals of projects
• Give praise and recognition
• Encourage openess to discuss issues
• Develop tolerance to failure

and remember, we should not shy away or avoid conflict: it helps generating new ideas and avoids hiding frustration!

Networking

Attending PMI Events always gives me the opportunity to reconnect with old friends and meet new ones.

These kind of relationships are valuable and meaningful not only during the congress, but during the year, exchanging opportunities, thoughts and expertise we can rely on.

Fun

During the Reception we had the great pleasure to talk to James Snyder, one of PMI Founders!

He is a very interesting man, with so much knowledge, and wisdom, and he has also a lot of humour

That's all for today, see you tomorrow!

Presenter: George Pitagorsky

I think ideas presented are quite interesting. They included:

Intelligence

IQ is not enough. Intelligence is more complex than just IQ. There are also cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, social intelligence...

Success

Success is not only about capability to do something. What is the attitute, the mood that you are bringing to a situation? Is it compatible or incompatible?

Performance factors

Performance factors are more complex than we usually envision them. They include: cognitive readiness, personality, intelligence, motivation, knowledge & experience, perspectives, mindful awareness (being awake, knowing what's going on purposefully)...

Mindfulness meditation

Mindfulness meditation: enhance attention (Eastern) to make distinctions (Western countries) and make better decisions. Mindfulness is a matter of physical attitude: observing outside and inside the body.

From ideas to practice

The irony is that I have the impression that instead of getting more aware during the session, people got more and more asleep... Then suddently my neighborgh behind, from Venezuela, asked a question and he awaked the audience.

New to some project managers

According  to the questions, it looks like the topic is interesting over all and people are willing to learn and above all to PRACTICE at next PMI congresses!

Presented by Joy Gumz

Scope definition is like iceberg

You don't know all about the project until the end, when it's to late to make decisions...

• 5% to 15% of resources are spent inplanning
• 2% to 20% in design
• 65% to 93% in construction

Problem: what if there is a change to the project in the middle or at the end of the project? It will make a major impact.

PDRI

When you cannot go agile, here is the tool you should use. It's called PDRI: project definition rating index. It comes from the construction industry in 1996 in the oil & gaz industry in Texas. It is based on questions:

1. Are we doing the right project?
   1. business strategy
   2. owner philosophy
   3. project requirements
2. Are we doing the right requirements? and Are we doing the right project?
   1. site information (where it's built)
   2. building programming
   3. building and project design parameters (large? complex building?)
   4. equipment 
3. Do we have the right project management approach?
   1. procurement strategy
   2. deliverables
   3. project control
   4. project executions plan

Each element is rated from 5 (incomplete or poor) to 1 (complete). At the end, the goal is to have the lowest score (< = 200) between 70 and 1000. It's better if the assessor is not the PM.

Risk: PDRI is not a project manger assessement. Some people hide the information not to be evaluated. 

Benefits

• Perform the right project
• Higher probability of meeting cost and schedule
• Lower percentage of change order
• Improve predictibility
• Consensus between project stakeholders
• Handle complex projects, large projects
• ...

Who uses PDRI:

Saudi Aramco, Chevron, Nasa, Bechtel, ABB Lumus, Black and Veatch, KBR, Aecom, Exxon-Mobile...

During the discussion, I heard the following sentences. "In my industry where innovation is key, we need to adopt it rapidly and we expect PMs to embrass and support change." "Being creative is natural to people"

Don't you find it weird? Please, have a look at it again. Personally I find is contradictory. Let me show you why.

Innovation is key

Yes! In most (if not all industries) innovation is key to make a difference with competitors.

Adopt it rapidly

Yes! The principle of innovation is to put something new into the market. And the faster you do it, the more benefits the company makes compared to competitors. Once competitors have something equivallent, there is no longer any advantage. 

PMs should embrasse ad support change

Here we understand that decisions are made at the top, which is a traditional way of running a business. And when I say traditional I mean a 20th century way to lead a large corporation. Is it the best way to innovate and go fast in such an organization? It would means that ideas are, if not generated, at least selected at the higher level of the organization. Then once decisions are made, PMs are supposed to silently obey and make it possible as fast as possible... Who would like to commit to such a job? Not me.

We are all creative

If this is true (personally I believe it is), people want to use their own ideas. They don't want to ask for authorization, which would leave room for a possible "Next time you have a stupid idea, please keep it for you". Nobody wants to be told what to do, unless you are learning something new: everyone wants to proudly show that they are capable of doing things by themselves rather than beaing treated like a child.

I believe that in large 21st century companies, people should be given clear guidelines and trusted to make decisions in their jobs to decide how to make it. Once you agree with guidelines, you should be free and responsible for reaching the objective. 

I believe that when we use words like "embrassing change" or "resistance to change" is an indication that companies don't have clear guidelines and don't trust people to do their job their way. I understand that for such companies innovation is a problem. But I don't know if they have a long future.