Play Now: Our recommended Project Management Professional (PMP)® Exam Prep: Jay Payette, PMP Projects are the tool businesses use to take a strategy and turn it into reality. So your project better be aligned with your long term business plan. All of them! This interview about strategic alignment with Jay Payette was recorded at the Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Congress 2016 in San Diego, California. We discuss his presentation and white paper Making it Happen - How Project Managers Can Drive Strategic Alignment and Strategy Execution. Here is the abstract: Good strategy can be critical to organizational success, however in order for strategy to transform from ideas into results it must be successfully executed. In order for organizations to successfully formulate and execute strategy they must achieve sufficient strategic alignment. Project managers and project team members can make a critical contribution to their organization’s strategic alignment. This paper examines strategic alignment through the frame of three strategic functions: formulate, align, and execute and how they interact with each other. Additionally, three strategic alignment frameworks are presented and recommendations are made as to how they may be used by project managers to contribute to organizational strategic alignment at the project-level. PDU Tip This interview is 29 minutes and 30 seconds long. This means that it is 30 seconds too short and you can "legally" only claim 0.25 PDUs for listening to it. However... if you first listen to the interview and then also read the white paper on which it is based, then you can go ahead and claim 0.50 PMP PDUs! Click to download the white paper Episode Transcript Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Cornelius Fichtner:  Welcome everyone. You are listening to the Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com . We are coming to you once again live from the 2016 PMI Global Congress in now not-so-sunny San Diego in Southern California and with me standing here in the hallway is Jay Payette. Podcast Interview Cornelius Fichtner:   Hello, Jay. Jay Payette:   Hello, good day! Cornelius:  So, the Congress has just ended. We have heard the final keynote with Wesmore. How was the Congress for you? Jay:  Oh, it was a phenomenal Congress. I felt –unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend last year in Orlando but I was able to attend in New Orleans the year before and I find every year, participants become even more engaged with the speakers. They tend to ask even more and more questions and the participation level, it just continues to go up. So, I’m really excited to see that kind of enthusiasm amongst practitioners to pick your brains and learn new things. Cornelius:   Excellent. The title of your presentation is: Making It Happen: How Project Managers Can Drive Strategic Alignment and Strategy Execution. How was the presentation for you here? Jay:   The presentation was wonderful. Cornelius:   Well-attended? Jay:   Very well-attended. It was a full room, Standing Room Only in the back. I did have the benefit of presenting on the first day so sometimes when you’re the last group in the last day you’ll get people flying home but I did have that kind of first mover’s advantage so the attendance was fantastic. Cornelius:   Alright. The subtitle of your presentation is How Project Managers Can Drive Strategic Alignment and Strategy Execution. Allow me to begin with a somewhat critical question because many of us project managers feel that we are not necessarily in a position where we are asked or even considered when strategic alignment and strategy execution is being discussed. We’re kind of left out of this discussion. People don’t come to us, the C Level, they