Viewing Posts by Karthik Ramamurthy
Agility, Generativity, Terrific TED, and a Sparkling Shiny Surprise! Terrific Third Day of #PMIEMEA19
Dia daoibh ar maidin! (“Good morning all” in Irish/Gaelic) Agility, Generativity, Terrific TED, and a Sparkling Shiny Surprise! These phrases bring out my key learnings from what I felt was a terrific third day of #PMIEMEA19 at delightful Dublin. Agilely Vaulting Over Waterfalls – Sripriya Narayanasamy and yours truly. My day three started the same way that day two had ended: Presenting an EMEA Congress session on a completely different topic.. Many PMs mistakenly think that Agile and Waterfall are like oil and water that don’t easily mix, However, as Jesse Fewell, Agile Evangelist once wrote, “Many of us have been told that agile approaches are an all-or-nothing collection of techniques. However, true agility is defined by the agile manifesto… Don’t fall into the trap of only-this and only-that. A little agile can help anyone! I presented two stories of Walter the Waterfall PM and Agata the Agile PM to highlight eight points on how Agile techniques can be used in Waterfall projects and vice versa:
Creating Collective Value through Generativity: A Leadership Approach for Complexity Stefano Setti, President of the PMI Northern Italy Chapter spoke of the challenges project managers face in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA) world. Emphasizing the difference between “Complex” and “Complicated, he spoke of the relevance of Complex Adaptive Systems to project managers. The speaker then discussed “Generativity,” a term coined by Erik Erikson in the book “Childhood and Society.” Generativity denotes “a concern for establishing and guiding the next generation.” Comparing Erikson’s work with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, he said that both conceive a person as moving from a “self-centered” to “other-centered” orientation. Stefano emphasized the importance of “Servant Leadership” in Agile projects, mentioning 12 key virtues. He concluded by stating that the real mark we can leave as leaders is to have project team members grow and flourish. Closing General Session with Roberto Toledo and TED Talks curated for PMI Roberto Toledo, member of PMI’s Board of Directors, opened the closing session. Stating the vision statements of PMI (Making Ideas a Reality) and TED (Ideas worth spreading), he mentioned that this partnership was indeed “a match made in heaven!” Session attendees were then treated to five fabulous TED speakers, each enchanting us with amazingly amazing and practically useful ideas. I’ve added brief summaries. You can view the entire talks in their entirety through the YouTube links I’ve added for each speaker: Mona Chalabi emphasized the importance of being skeptical about numbers. She said it was important to determine whether one could see uncertainty and relate to data. She said it was also critical to check the veracity of data by carefully looking at whether sample sizes were representative. Mona also showed us excellent examples of how information could be effectively presented to us, including, visuals, voice, animation, and so on. Interested? Watch a full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwwanld4T1w Anab Jain started with the startling statement, “I visit the future. Not one future, but many possible futures. I don’t have a time machine!” She spoke about how she’s almost like the Avengers’ Dr. Strange, working to visualize many possible outcomes of the future based on current trends. Anab gave us details of how she created a case study of a possible future lawsuit based on trends in genetics, insurance rates, and crime. Fascinated? Watch more at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYjWLqE_cfE Mark Pollock & Simone George This amazing couple’s extremely inspirational and moving story brought most in the audience to tears. Simone had met Mark when he was blind. They fell in love and married. Tragedy struck when Mark fell from a second-story window, taking him to the doorsteps of death. Mark and Simone narrated the extraordinary story of how he miraculously survived. He spoke about how realism, determination, and an undying spirit helped him achieve what doctors had said was impossible. He exhorted attendees to follow his mantra: “When the going gets tough, succeed as a REALIST rather than fail as an OPTIMIST!” You can watch and get inspired by this amazing story at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvfydcUeXls Julia Dhar spoke passionately on the importance of healthy debate. She spoke about her journey from her early stages of debating to being a motivational TED speaker. While it was important to convince the audience of one’s extreme position, she said it was key to be “intellectually humble.” Julia exhorted project managers to disagree respectfully, separate ideas from personalities, accept that they could be wrong, and find common ground. Learn more at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phgjouv0BUA Ingrid Fentell Lee spoke about her experience as a design student. She narrated how terrified she felt when a group of professors examined all her design work in a full year. When one of the professor’s verdict was “your work gives me joy”, she could not quite understand. Ingrid said there was a difference between “joy” and “happiness. While “joy” was a little "feel good right now, " “happiness” was "feel good over a longer period of time." Joy could begin with sensual insights such as pops of color, rounded shapes, patterns, and symmetry She stressed the importance of actively and frequently looking for several small moments of joy rather than keep searching for elusive long sequences of happiness. To get more on Ingrid’s excellent advice, you can watch her talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_u2WFTfbcg The session ended with a very sweet surprise. Roberto Toledo spoke about PMI’s “Global Celebration of Service” pledging 50,000 hours towards the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) 17 Sustainable Goals. What had happened in under five months? Watch here: https://youtu.be/jHvny4MlYPw and here: https://youtu.be/FfOz9s0frlg If you didn’t watch, you really missed something! Roberto Toledo announced that PMI volunteers all over the world had exceeded the 12-month goal of 50,000 hours of Celebration of Service in under five months! “We’re doubling in Dublin,” he said, adding that the new goal was now 100,000 hours. Confetti was showered on the delegates and hundreds of coloured balloons of various descended on us. We erupted with applause. For a while, we all became kids, throwing the balloons at each other and enjoying every moment of the sweet surprise! I hope you have enjoyed the continuous coverage of the EMEA Congress 2019 by our team of Correspondents Team of Emily Luijbregts, Stephanie Jaeger , Moritz Sprenger, and me, Karthik Ramamurthy. In addition to tweets by @PMInstitute @ProjectMgtCom and @PMIEvents, we provided regular updates through Twitter handles of our team members, @heykristinj, @Em_the_PM, @StephanieJaeg10, @moritz_sprenger and yours truly, @KarthikPMO. Please follow, like, comment, and retweet our continuous coverage on Twitter (https://twitter.com/KarthikPMO), LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/kramamurthy) and Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/forkarthik ) See you soon with a wrap-up of my overall experience with #PMIEMEA19! Meanwhile, have a great day, or as they say in Irish, “Bíodh lá maith agat” Keep smiling, keep shining, and keep inspiring! |
AA & Mi7 (Ambition, Achievement, Motivation and Inspiration in Seven Steps). My Day Two at #PMIEMEA19
Categories:
Agile,
Volunteering,
Strategy,
Innovation,
Leadership,
Ethics,
Talent Management,
Communication
Categories: Agile, Volunteering, Strategy, Innovation, Leadership, Ethics, Talent Management, Communication
Dia daoibh ar maidin! (“Good morning all” in Irish/Gaelic) Ambition, Achievement, Motivation, and Inspiration! These phrases bring out my key learnings from Day Two of #PMIEMEA19 at delightful Dublin. Turning Ambition into Achievement – A Workshop by Jamil Qureshi Jamil Qureshi was truly a Rockstar of this event. On 13th May, my fellow team member Stephanie Jaeger and I had enjoyed his exclusive workshop for alumni of PMI’s Leadership Institute Master Class (LIMC). Jamil started today’s workshop with the thought-provoking group activity to suggest global impacts of all humans mandatorily changing sex at age 30. Several impacts came up: a. Increased gender neutrality b. Increase in sales of unisex clothing c. Booming demand for sex-change surgeries, with specialist doctors becoming billionaires! The speaker stressed how important it was for project managers to provide time & space for team members to get their work done. “It's about driving productivity, not simply activity,” he said. Jamil pointed out that it was perfectly normal for people to make mistakes. Excellent lessons could be learned from detaching the action from the person. Having several bobble-heads on the team is detrimental to project success. Instead, he recommended that project managers could play the imaginable/provable game to explore ideas. The game was a safe way to generate healthy conflict. Mi7! Motivate and Inspire with Seven Proven Leadership Techniques for Project Success by Sripriya Narayanasamy and yours truly. It was now time to reverse roles. To take the stage, presenting the first of my two sessions at the #PMIEMEA19 event. It was extremely gratifying to see almost a hundred people in our session. My co-presenter and I felt bad that there were almost 20 people who had no chairs for our session. Here’s a summary of what we presented:
The tips were an acrostic that forms the word “SUCCEED” I hope you’re enjoying the continuous coverage of the EMEA Congress 2019 by the Community Engagement Team. In addition to tweets by @PMInstitute and @PMIEvents, regular updates are available on the Twitter handles of our team members, @heykristinj, @Em_the_PM, @StephanieJaeg10, @moritz_sprenger and yours truly, @KarthikPMO. Please follow, like, comment, and retweet our continuous coverage on Twitter (https://twitter.com/KarthikPMO), LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/kramamurthy) and Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/forkarthik ) On the last day of the conference. I plan to attend and cover these great sessions. Look for detailed coverage of these sessions tomorrow!
I will also be presenting this session at 9 am (first session of the day).
See you soon with updates of the final day. Meanwhile, have a great day, or as they say in Irish, “Bíodh lá maith agat” Keep smiling, keep shining, and keep inspiring!
|
First Day of PMI EMEA Congress 2019: Agilely Playing Games with Rogue Monkeys using Social Intelligence?
Categories:
PMI,
Agile,
Volunteering,
Strategy,
Career Development,
Innovation,
Leadership,
Benefits Realization,
Ethics,
Talent Management,
Communication
Categories: PMI, Agile, Volunteering, Strategy, Career Development, Innovation, Leadership, Benefits Realization, Ethics, Talent Management, Communication
Dia daoibh ar maidin! (“Good morning all” in Irish/Gaelic) Can you Agilely Play Games with Rogue Monkeys while using Simulations of Social Intelligence? That sentence about rogue monkeys may sound bizarre. Why do I have it there? It includes the broad themes of the sessions I truly enjoyed on the fabulous first day of the PMI EMEA Congress 2019 at delightful Dublin! Got your attention? Please read on for my key takeaways from each of those sessions. While it is impossible to cover all the great insights and learnings in one short blog piece, I will try my best. Short video interviews with speakers from three of the sessions are available at these Youtube links: Priya Patra: https://youtu.be/7Z70-vlxNzo Simona Bonghez: https://youtu.be/L_jkeLysZuU Ruth Pearce: Video will be added soon… Warm welcome! Entering the Dublin Convention Centre, we were welcomed by two jovial gentlemen, each 12-feet tall. How? They were on Irish stilts! They threw me a few “PMI50” stressbuster toys. The packed meeting hall was welcomed by Beth Partleton, member of the PMI Board of Directors. She introduced PMI’s new CEO, Sunil Prashara. He was asked why he moved from the business world to head a not-for-profit. His reply was amazing: “I prefer to say PMI is a ‘For Purpose’ organization. And its purpose can make a meaningful difference all over the world!” Jamil the Scribbler and Celebrity High-Performance Coach “I don’t use Powerpoints. I just scribble. I’m Jamil, the Scribbler! There, I feel so much better!” That was the rousing start to the Opening Keynote of #PMIEMEA19. In an amazingly inspirational, humorous and practically useful session, Jamil emphasized the importance of inner thinking. He exhorted attendees to make just one degree of difference. He mentioned how two perfectly parallel lines could be made to meet by rotating one of them by just one degree. Jamil spoke about “Rogue Monkeys,” people who are 1/78 of the human population. These are people who are invaluable since they think differently. The speaker exhorted all attendees to encourage “rogue monkeys” in their teams, adding that every valuable invention in history came from such thinking. Gamify to Amplify! Priya Patra displayed high-energy in presenting the session titled “Project Managers – Get Your ‘Game On’ to Usher Success." She emphasized the critical importance of gamification to project success. Priya spoke about how gamification elicits six key human emotions: Achievement, Altruism, Competition, Cooperation, Recognition, and Self-Expression. In highly stressful projects, project managers could leverage this tool very effectively, adding a fun element to deliver superior results. Playing to Win Vered Holzmann and Daniel Zitter presented the next session, “Mastering Project Management Technical and Leadership Skills Through a Simulation Games.” Each group of nine people played the PMZone game. The game featured three projects simulations with three elements: Cost, Resources, and Value. Players could be hit by issues, benefit from opportunities, and had to plan carefully to succeed. Social Intelligence, anyone? We’ve all heard of Intelligence Quotient (IQ), Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). But have we heard of Social Intelligence (SI)? In a session titled “Social Intelligence: Why We Need It and How to Get It,” Ruth Pearce, spoke about the importance of understanding others well enough to relate with them. Ruth presented 24 hum strengths, and the amazing results she had got from taking the time to spot other’s strengths. She ended with a powerful story written by a fellow course attendee on her experience dealing with her husband’s sudden heart attack. Agility Simona Bonghez is a seasoned speaker at PMI events. Following-up on her “Little Drops of Agility” session at the Berlin Congress in 2018, she presented the session, "The Journey Towards Agility: Lessons Learned From Successes and Failures." Simona stressed on the importance of learning from failures and recovering quickly. She presented case studies of her experience with large organizations. Simona asked attendees to consider what would happen if you were asked to play a game of chess with some pieces completely removed from the game, the knight moving like a queen and the rook like a bishop. Would you decline to play the game? To win, your only option would be to be flexible, adjust to the new rules, and try to outwit your opponent. This, she said, was the essence of Agility and Agile Thinking! I hope you’re enjoying the continuous coverage of the EMEA Congress 2019 by the Community Correspondents Team. In addition to tweets by @PMInstitute and @PMIEvents, regular updates are available on the Twitter handles of our team members, @heykristinj, @Em_the_PM, @StephanieJaeg10, @moritz_sprenger and yours truly, @KarthikPMO. Today, I plan to attend and cover these great sessions. Look for detailed coverage of these sessions tomorrow!
I will also be presenting this session at 3.15. If you are at the conference, I’d love to see you there! Mi7! Motivate and Inspire with Seven Proven Leadership Techniques for Project Success by Sripriya Narayanasamy and Yours Truly! Please follow, like, comment, and retweet our continuous coverage on Twitter (https://twitter.com/KarthikPMO), LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/kramamurthy) and Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/forkarthik ) |
Date with Delightful Dublin!
Dia daoibh ar maidin! (“Good morning all” in Irish/Gaelic) Forty days back (Rewind)… Time certainly flies when you’re having fun or anticipating it! Forty days back, an unexpected email tantalized me, promising a date with delightful Dublin, a date that would last at least five days! As a PMI volunteer and volunteer leader since 2005, I’ve been an attendee to 30+ events in several countries, presenting at many. Every single one of them gave me valuable opportunities to learn, share, network, and grow. PMI was inviting me to cover the EMEA Congress 2019 in Incredible Ireland, a country that I had never visited before! My mother tongue is Tamil, the world’s oldest living language. Skeptical? Go ahead -- Fact check it online! “Do you want to be paid to eat sweet, delicious sugarcane” is a well-known Tamil phrase. Would anyone in their right mind refuse this offer? First steps… Registration was very simple. However, it wasn’t at all easy to select sessions from the amazing variety of topics and speakers for each time slots. You can't have your cake and eat it too, can you? 40 Shades of Green! It was exhausting traveling on a red-eye flight to London, waiting at Heathrow for four hours, and then learning that the connecting flight to Dublin was delayed by an hour. All that fatigue cleared when the pilot announced that we'd shortly land at Dublin. Acre upon acre of many shades of green told me that Dublin was certainly delightful. 'Emerald Isle” is certainly a very apt name for Ireland! Celebrity singer Johnny Cash certainly wasn’t exaggerating when he famously sang about Ireland’s “40 Shades of Green.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0oTDS9ur_U) Ireland's charm was further enhanced by the genuine warmth of everyone I met, from the immigration officer, the airport employees who guided me to the taxi lines, and the staff who cheerfully and efficiently arranged cab rides. Mohan, the cab driver, told me how the area around the Dublin Convention Centre had transformed from a seedy area with crumbling warehouses. It is now a thriving Finance and IT hub with swanky modern buildings! Let me fast forward back to the present! Day One of the big event has dawned! I really look forward to joining my amazing team members, Emily Luijbregts, Stephanie Jaeger. and Moritz Sprenger in taking you, our valued PMI community member in front of, and behind the scenes of PMI EMEA Congress 2019. We'll cover the key points made by speakers in all important sessions, interview speakers where possible, chat with your peers. Our team coverage will be on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. On this blog too! Stay tuned to for continuous updates all day! Give us feedback and ideas on how we can make our coverage even more exciting! Meanwhile, have a great day, or as they say in Irish, “Bíodh lá maith agat” Today, I plan to attend and cover these great sessions:
Please follow, like, comment, and retweet our continuous coverage on Twitter (https://twitter.com/KarthikPMO), LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/kramamurthy) and Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/forkarthik ) |
Day Three, a Truly Triple Treat at #PMIEMEA18
Guten Tag (Good day in German)! The third day of #PMIEMEA18 gave me and Berlin Congress attendee a truly Triple Treat! I learned about TMOs, the Half-Double technique, and the Copernican revolution in Project Management. A terrific bonus was the thought-provoking closing keynote by Inma Martinez. For those who could not be there, here are short videos interviews that summarize the key takeaways from some of the sessions: Michael Ehlers & Per Svejvig, “The Half Double System for Project Success”: http://bit.ly/MPEMEA18 Olivier Lazar, “Ethical Leadership & Decision Making: The Business Case & The Construction Tools” bit.ly/OLEMEA18 Jack Duggal, “The Copernican Revolution in Project and Business Management”: The TMO (Testing Management Office): Amruta Oak We’ve all heard of PMOs. What are TMOs? In a fascinating session, Amruta Oak made the case for Testing Management Offices. Here were some key points in her session:
The Half Double Project: Michael Ehlers & Per Svejvig Achieving DOUBLE productivity in HALF the time? That is indeed a bold proposition! Michael and Per presented concrete results from the bold “Half Double Project” initiative to significantly improve project success rates. Key pointers from their session:
The Copernican Revolution in Project and Business Management: Jack Duggal What does Copernicus have to do with a revolution in Project and Business Veteran PMI Conference speaker Jack Duggal started the session with this interesting question. Jack made this important point. Copernicus controversially postulated that earth orbited around the sun. Today’s most successful projects and businesses put the customer at the center of their compared to others that have their projects or businesses at the center. Other key points in the engaging presentation:
Developing Creative Approaches in the Workplace in the Times of Accelerated Digitalization – Closing Keynote Speaker Inma Martinez Are robots set to take over our jobs, maybe even the world? What will then happen to humans? In a terrific keynote laced with excellent humor, Inma Martinez candidly answered these questions that are in the minds of many.
I hope you enjoyed the continuous coverage of the EMEA Congress 2018 by the Community Engagement Team. In addition to tweets by @PMInstitute and @PMIEvents, regular updates were also posted on the Twitter handles of our team members, @PriyaPatra, @KarthikPMO, and @Em_the_PM Meanwhile, have a wonderful day, or as they say in German, “Ich wünsche ihnen einen wunderbaren Tag!” Please look for my summary of the Conference in the next blog post. Look for a special surprise on a thought-provoking conversation with a project management legend.
|