Transformation & Leadership - Insider Tips

Within PMI’s online community, ProjectManagement.com, a group of volunteers organizes monthly webinars on the topic of Change Management. To complement this webinar series, they also maintain a blog, Shifting Change: Insider Tips from Project Leaders, featuring lessons learned and diverse perspectives from experienced professionals. This team is currently looking for someone to assist with their endeavors to advance conversations around change management and provide tips and tools to the online community (in a volunteer capacity).

The volunteer blog & webinar coordinator is responsible for sourcing, working with, and facilitating presenters through:

1) the webinar development process and

2) the blogging process for the Shifting Change blog  

He/she will host practice sessions for presenters and help facilitate live webinars for the team in the area of Change Management. The volunteer will also work with presenters to contribute change management content to the blog. The volunteer should be an active team member who is enthusiastic about providing great webinars and blog posts to the community on ProjectManagement.com

This volunteer will:
• Meet with team on a regular basis to discuss plans for webinar & blog program
• Assist in planning webinars and provide updates as necessary
• Coordinate scheduling of webinars and complete PMI presenter forms for each webinar
• Coordinate and facilitate presenter practice sessions
• Host live webinar sessions (about one webinar per month)

• Coordinate scheduling of blog posts for the Shifting Change blog, and review blog content to ensure compliance with User Guidelines

The estimated time commitment is 4-5 hours per month with weekly team meetings - all virtual. The volunteer should have strong project, program, and/or portfolio management skills and understand and commit to PMI’s objectives and goals around increasing member value and knowledge delivery. PMI membership is required for this role. This is a team of volunteers, so flexibility is needed, and experience with Webex is strongly encouraged. PDUs for Giving Back can be claimed in accordance with the policies outlined in your credential's handbook.

If you are interesting in volunteering, please contact Laura Schofield via the Inbox on ProjectManagement.com with:

-your statement of interest

-an explanation of any experience that you have facilitating webinars

by 30 June 2020. An interview with shortlisted candidates and the volunteer team will be conducted.

Text Content from KK Diaz; Interview conducted by Nic Jain

The late Alvin Toffler is famously quoted as having said: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” And today, as we entered a new and mostly unknown business environment, these words couldn’t be more relevant.

Many business leaders were caught off-guard and unprepared by the sheer devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic. And it will not be the leaders who know it all but those that want to learn it all who will seemingly have a better chance of surviving what is seemingly going to be a new normal for business.

Even before the pandemic hit, the average lifespan of a company listed on the S&P 500 Index had already decreased by more than 50 years in the last century, from 67 years in the 1920s to just 15 years today.

In the last few years, we’ve seen “too big to fail” industry behemoths unexpectedly replaced by smaller, leaner and smarter businesses. This is as a result of, and supported by, the forces of globalisation, intense competition, evolving customer preferences, the power of the internet and the speed at which technology had been and is always changing.

Today, companies have to better position themselves to avoid failure. And one way to do so is through digital transformation.

What is digital transformation?

Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing, and improving, the way the business operates and delivers value to its stakeholders, customers and communities. Moreover, it represents a cultural change that requires organizations to continually challenge the status quo, experiment, and get comfortable with failure.[i]

Research from Accenture supports the need for businesses to intensify their digital transformation efforts. The research states that:

• Only 6% of global companies made significant progress in digital capabilities but failed to translate that into financial strength.
• 70% are considered laggards in terms of digitalization.
• Only 18% of global companies are identified as digital leaders.
• Digital high performers enjoy, on average, 32% higher revenue growth, compared to other companies

This clearly means that it is more important than ever to prioritize the relevance of your value proposition and the sustainability of your business. To achieve this, you must look at two fundamental dynamics:

1. Evolving customer preferences, and
2. Technology.

Evolving customer preferences

The way in which customers find, buy and use products and services has evolved significantly over the last decade.

Their expectations are driven by:

• Instant gratification;
• On-demand delivery;
• The subscription economy;
• Product and service personalization; and
• Stiff global competition.

Businesses which wish to continue growing their customer base must align to these trends and changes.

In order to cater to evolving customer expectations and remain relevant, businesses must adapt to, meet and deliver on these expectations. Because these expectations are driven primarily by the internet and technology, businesses also need to adapt their technology accordingly. And since the Covid-19 pandemic, this need has been forced become a critical necessity.

When it comes to digital transformation, technology is more of an enabler than a destination. In other words, technology is merely the vehicle that’ll take your business to the ‘digital transformation’ destination. You still need a leadership-driven purpose and vision of where the company is heading; an inspiring vision that galvanizes an entire organization to work together to reinvent itself and to deliver new and even greater value for its shareholders, staff, customers and community. This vision will ensure that all these stakeholders embody the values and culture needed for the business to arrive at its new destination.

Digital transformation is not an easy project to undertake and will either make a or break a company and its leadership. It is a challenging, never-ending process that necessitates much from the brave business leaders who choose to take their companies on this journey. These leaders need to help their organizations develop the ability to innovate and to reinvent themselves as needed.

Most importantly, they need to imbue organizational agility within their businesses by ensuring that they have the ability to:

• rapidly change or adapt in response to changes in the market; and
• respond successfully to the emergence of new competitors, the development of new industry-changing technologies, or sudden shifts in overall market conditions.

Sometimes, for this to happen, leadership needs to reimagine everything from the ground up.

References

[i] https://enterprisersproject.com/what-is-digital-transformation#q1