PMI Global Insights

According to Prudential Financial’s Pulse of the American Worker survey, 1 in 4 workers are preparing to look for opportunities with a new employer once the pandemic threat has subsided. And more than 40% of people who responded to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, a global survey of over 30,000 people in 31 countries, said they are considering leaving their employer this year. Article after article, discuss employees leaving their jobs, seeking new opportunities with organizations that will provide more career advancement, substantial employer-related benefits, healthier work-life balance, better company culture, and remote work options. If you have been questioning your current role in project management, you must attend PMI’s upcoming Virtual Experience Event 6-7 October to help you navigate your career pathway.

In addition to attending inspiring sessions featuring Fatima Ibrahim, Global Citizen's UK Hero of the Year, Gitanjali Rao, Young Inventor, Author and TIME Magazine's 2020 Kid of the Year, and Jordan Chanesta, LGBTQIA+ Rights Activist, who come together to discuss spearheading impactful global movements to make real change, PMI’s Virtual Experience will debut its CareerHUB to help you with your career change. The CareerHUB helps you at every stage of their career journey.  Based on your experience, it will offer a wide variety of professional tools, resume building and advice to help future-proof your career. By attending the Virtual Experience Event in October, you will have access to all the tools available within the CareerHUB such as the CareerHUB Theater, Career Expo, and Career Navigator.

CareerHUB provides access to PMI’s “Brand You Theater: to help define yourself as a successful project manager and the best ways to promote career-boosting content. “Brand+Brain+Wellness” topics are 15 minute On-Demand sessions to help you prepare for your next job in project management. Sessions include “Building Your Brand: What’s Your Value Proposition” to help you develop a plan that will help you to stand out and define your unique value proposition; “Plan Your Career Flight Plan” will help you to create an actionable career plan and goals to improve or enhance their professional journey; “How to Amplify Your Resume/CV will help you showcase your best self in your resume and online presence;  “How to Interview Like a Pro” will provide helpful tips to be better prepared and confident for an interview.

Career Navigator focuses on personalizing a career path for you based on your previous experience. You can enter all your previous jobs, projects, and skills with a free assessment to receive a personalized action plan that matches you with the perfect growth opportunities. By identifying your aspirations and career goals, Career Navigators builds a complete picture of all elements you need to achieve your next step in your project management career.  This platform also allows you to track your success and see your development from week to week, so you see how you are growing towards your goal.

Finally, Career Expo allows you to create a profile to promote your resume and successes so hiring managers can find you easily. With Career Expo, you won’t miss an amazing opportunity!  You can browse available job postings from companies looking specifically for project managers and apply for open positions that fit your career goals. Career Expo also provides an opportunity for you to connect live with companies on the event day.

We are so excited for this powerful virtual event because we know how much change happens when our incredible community comes together from around the world to share these experiences. We are sure you will become inspired about your role in project management and learn how to make your next career change.  

Join us.  Free for PMI Member, US$79 for Non-members. Register Now and we look forward to seeing you there!

As offices thought they had a plan to get back to offices in September and October, plans have been delayed. If these past 18 months haven’t been hard enough, now your organization needs to transform its business to adapt and succeed in the new normal world. Equipping leaders to quickly anticipate and react to the speed of change is one of the most challenging issues for organizations. At this point, burnout and attrition are other key challenges faced by organizations today. Do you need inspiration on how other project managers are dealing with change? If you do, you need to attend PMI’s Virtual Experience 6-7 October to rejuvenate your project management skills and learn from leaders to think differently so you can lead your organization through an ever-changing environment!

Hear from prominent rising leaders around the world who are spearheading impactful movements to determine what is needed to make real change. These inspiring sessions will help you to think differently and look out of the box to develop the solutions needed for your organization. PMI’s Virtual Experience has brought together a diverse group of influential speakers to share their experiences and outcomes. Get inspired by Fatima Ibrahim, Global Citizen's UK Hero of the Year, Gitanjali Rao, Young Inventor, Author, and TIME Magazine's 2020 Kid of the Year, and Jordan Chanesta, LGBTQIA+ Rights Activist, come together to discuss spearheading impactful global movements to make real change. Hear from author Peter Hinssen as he discusses his book, The Phoenix and The Unicorn: The Why, What and How of Corporate Innovation, and how organizations aren't afraid to reinvent and adapt to the new normal of digital disruption.

Join breakout sessions to hear how other project management leaders are managing change and learn from their best practices and mistakes. Sessions include:

• Measuring the Maturity of Your Digital Transformation Efforts: Christine Aykac,  Transformational Coach, Akuna Consulting
• Tools to Identify and Fix Trust Breakdowns in Project Teams: Yoram Solomon, Founder Innovation Culture Institute, LLC
• Change or Get Left Behind: Why Organizational Change Management Is Imperative Now: Nancie Celini, President, THINK-OCM.org
• Collaborative Leadership in the Age of Artificial Intelligence; Erik Agudelo, Founder of Play Learn and Develop.

In addition to all the great sessions and speakers, Virtual Experience Series 6-7 October has multiple ways to connect and network with the PMI global community. The Lounge chat is where you will meet attendees from all around the world. Join industry chats where you drive the conversation! Chats are focused on the following areas: Construction, Energy (Electric, Gas, Mining, Oil), Financial Services, Government/Legal, Healthcare/Pharmaceutical, IT, Manufacturing, Telecom, and Training/Education.

We are so excited for this powerful virtual event because we know how much change happens when our incredible community comes together from around the world to share these experiences. We’ve had past attendees tell us they’ve never felt more connected virtually — and that is something we are truly proud of and will continue to strive for.

Join us. Free for PMI Member, US$79 for Non-members. Register Now and we look forward to seeing you there!

What a last day at the PMI EMEA Congress 2019. The last two days have been packed and I am somewhat exhausted due to information overload. But there is still room for another full day of promising sessions and hopefully inspiring TED Talks.

After a very large and strong coffee I was energized for the morning session with Erik Agudelo. Erik provided some insights on his research on transformation projects: “50% of large organisational transformation projects fail. One reason is poor collaboration between small and medium sized projects in a company that are not visible to large and well-structured projects. The smaller unstructured and invisible projects can undermine, diminish, and oppose large-scale change initiatives”. These results led him to develop serious training and coaching games to better simulate the challenges of project collaboration.

 Thank you Erik for all the practical examples and the fun and interactive session. You transfer passion for what you do, and this really engaged the audience.

I will remember the second session for a very long time and will certainly address the key take-aways in my own organisation. Nicholas Clemens is training governmental officials to be able to manage multi-billion dollar projects.

“PMI can take credit for one of the most important element in supporting the profession: developing a worldwide acknowledged standardised vocabulary for project, programme, and portfolio management.” Nicholas now urges PMI to standardise terminology for agile practices beyond the small task group level. Agile will and does transform the way organisations manage the 3Ps. During his session he checked how the four prominent agile methodologies cover the 4 levels of organisational governance (Scrum@Scale ®; Large-Scaled Scrum (LeSS®); Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®); Disciplined Agile (DA)).

A top take-away of that very interesting session: Check on what level you operate and tailor your approach within the 3Ps, apply focused agile processes where best suited, and avoid the baggage (overhead).

At lunch I met Miranda, a project manager from the states with a very difficult but rewarding challenge: To develop a PMO for a university online library. Great to hear that she will visit my home town Hamburg for a conference next month.

The third session raised the highest amount of questions from the audience, as it is something that affects all project managers: Robotic Automation of Project Processes and its effect on the PMO. Robert Allen and Rhys Lancaster provided a good testimony on how they have transformed their customer facing PMO. “We have made the decision to invest in a really flexible platform, on which we are able to quickly and without much coding effort automate processes through effective machine learning.” However, they pointed out three very important pre-requisites: You need to have structured and quality data, you need to have very mature processes, and the more repetitive they are, the more value you can create by automating them.

And finally: TED Talks!

The three talks I were able to attend were astonishing. They inspired me to change the perspective, become realistic about the world we live and work in, accept this world, and from this new stance: Make the world better for me and everyone around me one step at a time. Nothing is impossible: Mark Pollock’s story is incredible - he became paralysed and now is fighting together with his wife to cure paralysation within his lifetime. Accepting the circumstances and being realistic about the probability of success he fights a new fight everyday – and is again enjoying life.

All in all, it was a great experience. I have a learned so much from fellow project managers and speakers. I will go back to work with a long bucket list of things I need to address.

Thanks to Kristin, Emily, Stephanie, and Karthik for their correspondence and support during the three days.

I will hopefully see you all soon.

Today was another packed day and you could see that everyone was getting tired but was still energised to take part in the sessions and contribute.

Session 1: Cutting Edge Project Management: the future of Technology in Project Management - Dan Lefsky

My first session was with Dan Lefsky. I have a great admiration and respect for Dan as not only does he provide a lot of practical advice but he really goes all-out in a session including some wonderful live demos to see how things could be done in reality. During his session on: Cutting Edge Project Management: the future of Technology in Project Management, he showed possible technical solution to build out your solutions within your company. He really challenged us with how we work today and what the limitations could be in the future with regards to the reliability of data/ questioning the data that we have. This really resonated with me during the TedTalks Closing keynote as one of the presenters was talking about how we can critically look at the data and studies that we see in every day life.

Dan gave me a few minutes of his time to record a short video about his session. You can find it here.

Networking lunch:

During today's lunch session, I sat with some of my peers and discussed 'conflict resolution'. This came about as one of the table was working during lunch on an escalation and asked the table: How would you handle this sort of situation? Where a vendor is more focused on the contract than delivering the project? It really gave a lot of valuable insight into how other Project Managers would handle the situation and we had quite a lively debate!

I also managed to catch up with Laurel and got her insight into the conference, you can view the video here

Ted Talks - Closing Keynote:

I will first admit that I am a massive fan of TED Talks and regularly use them to learn about new topics/interesting topics. During this closing keynote, PMI and TED partnered together to cover a series of talks that covered every aspect of Life, Career and the possibilities of the future.

This end to the PMIEMEA Conference was not just an inspiring end to a fantastic conference but also an amazing opportunity to be inspired to what is really possible.

In the final closing, we found out that the goal that PMI had set itself at the start of the year to record 50,000 hours of volunteering had been met ALREADY! So they announced that it was going to be increased to 100,000 hours. I really hope that you'll get involved in the Year of the Volunteer to be able to contribute to the UN Goals. This is my video of volunteering for PMI when I was in Philadelphia earlier this year.

Over the next few days, I'll be writing a summary post of my time at PMIEMEA19, so if you have any questions, please feel free to write them below and I'll answer them in the summary post.

Do you want to know what the food was like? What was it like to network with so many people? How were the breaks? There's nothing off limits! 

I can't believe the congress is over already. However there is so much we have learned, so much we need to digest.

Today I started my day by attending another session on Virtual Teams. Dr. Mike Oliver brought us the session #603 "Enhancing Virtual Project Leadership Effectiveness". He has worked many years from home and virtual teams have become second nature to him. However globally more and more PMs realize they can work anywhere, anytime. After laying out for us why we are having more and more virtual teams and what the characteristics are of virtual teams are, he helped us think through the challenges of virtual teams. The 3 interactive functions of the Complexity Leadership Theory 

- administrative Leadership

- adaptive Leadership 

- enabling Leadership

need to be balanced and the PM needs to know when to use which and how. 

His practical tips:

1. Communication needs to be much more detailed, to ensure everyone gets the same message. Situations like the one in this video need to be avoided:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNz82r5nyUw&t=11s

2. If budget allows, it is best to meet at least once physically with the whole team as early as possible during the project.

3. Set very clear rules that touch on meeting etiquette, use of social media etc

4. Build trust and keep affirming it. 

In Session #609 "Governance: A framework for applying Agile Practices within Projects, Programs & Portfolios" Nicholas Clemens showed us that progressive elaboration has been part and parcel of the PMI Standards since the first PMBOK Guide. The use of Planning Packages helps tackle the unknowns. "Change is your job security", hence we best embrace it. Nicholas reminded us of the Movie "Dead Poet Society" and the central message that changing once standpoint can give us a totally new perspective.

In Session #614: "Collaborating with the Sales Team to delight your Customers" Neil Shorney gave us a refreshing insight into what Sales Teams and PMs think of each other, how they can complement each other and how they should work together. Sales People are not the ogres but the biggest source of information. Their job is:

1. Understand

2. Propose

3. Gain Commitment

They should provide all relevant project information through SPACE CHAMPS. If you ask the right questions following this acronym you get all the information you need. If you contact Neil through LinkedIn he will share the question list with you.

The Closing Session of the Conference was a series of TEDTalks, which were meant to build us up and help us focus on the possibilities not the problems. Often this is shackled by our belief systems and we need to overcome these. 

Mona Chalabi showed us how with 3 simple questions you can check if statistics are trustworthy or not.

1. Can you see uncertainty?

2. Can I see myself in the data?

3/ How was the data collected? - was the sample size representative? For example a sample of 600 might not be big enough if you try to assess the entire population of a country like America. Where key words defined and do all understand it the same way?

Anab Jain  visits the future for a living. No she does not have a time machine. However she and her husband are hired to imagine possible outcomes in the future. They then simulate these in extensive laboratory set-ups and simulations. With that they help clients to find ways of preventing the negative outcomes.

Mark Pollock & Simone George: Mark lost his sight with 22, when he met Simone he was "only" blind. Later he broke his back through a fall from a window. His biggest message is If you can't change the circumstances, you have to change yourselve". He is involved in amazing research and development of robotic walking aides and new approaches. He has seen the possibilities on his own body, including when well aimed electrical shocks made him be able to move his limbs again without the robotic exoskeleton. Now when he walks it is becoming less of the robot walking him and more of Mark walking. 

He stressed that the Optimist often get frustrated along the way. A Realist however accepts the brutal facts and moves on. Be a realist when the going gets tough!

Julia Dhar showed us how debate is healthy if done right. Engage yourself respectfully, separate the ideas from the person and accept that you may be wrong. If there is conflict about an idea / a situation / an issue, have a face-to-face meeting and discuss in the prescribed manner. Practice intellectual humility.

To practice this in your team you can start by devoting 10min in every meeting to debating and idea or issue.

Ingrid Fentell Lee showed us easy ways to find joy. Joy is a little short blimp of "feel good right now" as apposed to happiness which is "feel good over longer time". Joy begins with the senses. Pops of color, rounded shapes, patterns, symmetry, abundance will put joy back into your life. This will then lead to your team being more alert, more productive and happier. Each moment of joy is small, but these joyful dots add up and have many positive long term effects. Look for joy in your life, don;t chase the elusive happiness. It will come by itself.

Roberto Toledo, of the PMI Board of Directors brought us the great news that the pledged 50,000 hours of community service for the UN global sustainability programs has already been reached! The Goal has now been doubled. Lets all work together to reach 100,000 hrs - check on PMI.org for details, or ask your chapter!