Resilience is a must-have for teams delivering projects in today’s disruptive and volatile world. So how do you build resiliency on teams? We discuss this with:

Ray Jones, PMI-ACP, PMP, program manager, SMX Technology, San Antonio, Texas, USA: Jones discusses the new context for resilience in a more complex and ambiguous world, how project leaders can build team resiliency by leaning into a learning mindset, how he helped make a team more resilient by changing their work processes and environment, plus how a diversity of skills and perspectives makes for a more resilient team.

Carlos Augusto Fernandes Filho, senior director for commercial aviation programs, Embraer, São José dos Campos, Brazil: Filho shares how resilience can help drive results in an organization and motivate teams, the skills he’s looking for to create—and develop—a resilient team, and how multidisciplinary, collaborative teams help build resilience.

Key Themes 

[01:44] Resiliency’s role in a volatile, uncertain environment

[03:33] Building resilience through experiential learning and empathy

[08:55] How a diversity of skills boosts team resilience

[12:21] The benefits of resiliency—and the pitfalls of lacking it

[13:17] Creating teams with resilient members, plus how to help them further develop their resilience

[17:37] How division within teams—and organizations—can hinder resilience

[21:11] Looking to encourage team resilience? Create a culture of moving forward

For International Women’s Day, Projectified® hosts a roundtable with three women project leaders to discuss what it’s currently like for women in project management, how teams benefit from diversity and how organizations can better support women leaders, plus questions they had for one another as fellow project leaders.

Our guests include Janete Faustino, PMP, PfMP, portfolio management leader of operations strategy and performance, TAP Air Portugal, Lisbon; Bharti Ochani, PMP, IT project manager, Halian, Dubai; and Maeve O’Brien, project manager, DDB, Chicago.

Key themes

[02:00] Three women project leaders on the state of women in project management

[05:00] The benefits of diverse teams

[06:16] Top skills for project managers: stakeholder management, accountability and conviction

[09:43] Ways organizations can support women leaders

[13:22] How do you keep moving forward in the face of obstacles on projects?

[18:54] Advice to women project leaders: Network, be the driver of your own career, be genuine

Financial services companies—from established giants to new startups—face disruption from all sides. And as organizations explore new innovations to meet evolving customer needs, they must do so while considering risk management. We discuss this with: 

Ashley Butao, PMI-ACP, PMP, project manager, Capital One, Toronto: Butao discusses the biggest disruptions she’s seeing in the financial services sector, how agile approaches allow her teams to experiment and adapt fast, and how knowing your organization’s risk appetite can help teams balance innovation and risk management.

Stanley Jacob, PMP, chief executive at Stanbic IBTC Financial Services Limited, and VP of the Fintech Association of Nigeria, Lagos: Jacob talks about why teams must be constantly encouraged to innovate—and exposed to new innovations—plus the must-have skills for project leaders in financial services: knowledge of regulations and design thinking.

As we kick off 2023, project leaders are looking ahead to new challenges and opportunities as well as looking back at what they accomplished in 2022. Projectified® reconnected with previous guests to discuss the biggest changes they have seen in the world of projects over the last year, their top lessons learned, plus what they’re excited about—and the skills project managers need to succeed—in the year ahead. 

Guests include Elton Soares, PMP, project manager, General Electric, Florianópolis, Brazil; Nontobeko Mathenjwa, project manager, South African National Roads Agency Limited, Johannesburg; Kierstin Gray, PMI-ACP, PMP, program director, Argodesign, Brooklyn, New York, USA; Manuel Segura Pérez, PMP, head of project and construction management, Repsol, Madrid; Malong Dong, PMP, enterprise portfolio manager, Reserve Bank of Australia, Sydney.

Key Themes 

[02:05] Changes in 2022: an increasing focus on delivering value

[04:59] How project leaders can adapt to changing stakeholder involvement and expectations

[12:32] Tips for 2023: improving communication skills and team agility

[17:07] How teams can build resiliency and embrace new tech and ways of working

To deliver an organization’s strategic objectives, project leaders must be able to look across the portfolio and decide which projects provide value and should be pursued, which go on the back burner and which are abandoned entirely. We discuss this with:

Sunando Chaudhuri, PMP, PgMP, PfMP, director of IT, Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company Group, Abu Dhabi: Chaudhuri discusses why project leaders must understand their organizations’ goals to best prioritize projects, the different types of business value projects can deliver—and how that factors into project portfolio decisions—along with ways project managers can keep executive leaders aligned, even in the face of personal agendas and pet projects.

B. Firat Dengiz, PMP, PgMP, PfMP, program leader, Turkish Aerospace Industries, Ankara, Turkey: Dengiz discusses the metrics and data he considers when making project portfolio decisions, how he factors stakeholders into his decision-making process and ways to build buy-in from the C-suite. 

Key themes

[02:57] The different ways to calculate business value 

[04:14] Ways to manage pet projects and personal agendas

[07:10] Ensuring project portfolio decisions align with organizational strategy

[10:28] Metrics to consider when prioritizing project portfolios

[12:01] Engaging stakeholders to build support for decision-making

[14:38] Tackling challenges project managers face when prioritizing portfolios

[16:36] Determining how to build buy-in with different C-suite leaders

From feats of engineering and art to exploring the unknown, the 2022 Most Influential Projects showcase innovative and creative efforts from teams across sectors and regions. We discuss two of these projects with:

Alicia Tkacz, partner and architect, Stufish, London: Tkacz discusses how producers, animators, architects and pop superstars ABBA collaborated to create the immersive ABBA Voyage show and the bespoke ABBA Arena, how clear decision-making processes kept team members aligned, and how the show and venue could impact the future of entertainment.

Steve Hebda, VP of farm development, Crop One Holdings, Newport, Rhode Island, USA: Hebda discusses developing Dubai’s Emirates Crop One, the world’s largest vertical farm, how team members collaborated and built trust with one another from across the globe and how this project will inform future vertical farm efforts.


Key themes

[01:24] PMI’s 2022 Most Influential Projects

[02:16] Creating the ABBA Voyage concert experience and ABBA Arena

[06:21] Problem solving to design and build a fully demountable venue

[08:40] How ABBA Voyage and its bespoke arena could change entertainment

[10:10] Building the world’s largest vertical farm in Dubai

[11:46] Creating cohesive teams with clear communication and trust

[15:06] Lessons learned for future vertical farms: Scalability and automation

Project management offices (PMOs) are evolving, taking on a greater strategic role to deliver value. We discuss this with:

Fiona Lin, PMI-ACP, PMP, VP of the enterprise PMO, agile PMO and business transformation, Snap Finance, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA: Lin discusses why PMOs must support organizations across projects, programs, portfolios and processes, the importance of including PMOs in strategy planning, and how PMOs can help adopt and encourage new ways of working.

R. Rooban Annamalai, PMP, project management and PMO lead, Christie’s, London: Annamalai explains how he’s seen the PMO’s role evolve to include more strategic decision-making, how PMOs can help push teams and organizations forward and his vision for the future of the PMO.

Key themes

[01:12]
The PMO’s evolution: Taking on strategy creation and project execution

[02:56]
Creating PMOs—and building buy-in—at a fintech company

[06:00]
Spreading the PMO’s role across projects, programs, portfolios and processes

[07:52]
3 ways PMO leaders help teams adopt new ways of working

[14:59]
How PMOs use lessons learned, business acumen to push organizations forward

[16:50]
The ROI of PMOs with a strategic role

Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept. Project leaders are putting AI to use on everything from automating day-to-day tasks to analyzing risk. We discuss this with:

Milie Taing, founder and CEO, Lili.ai, Paris: Taing explains how project leaders’ perspective of AI has changed over the last few years, how AI is helping project leaders deliver more value and what impact a larger AI ecosystem will have on project management moving forward.

Syed Ahsan Mustaqeem, PMP, senior engineer, Pakistan Petroleum, Ltd., Karachi, Pakistan: Mustaqeem talks about how AI-driven tools help him automate processes and glean insights from data, how these tools allow team members to reallocate time toward more strategic and problem-solving tasks and challenges project leaders might face using AI on projects.

Key themes

[02:20] How AI is adding value to projects

[04:26] The future of AI: Moving from early use cases to an AI ecosystem 

[05:23] How AI is changing the role of project leader

[11:01] Using AI-driven tools to boost efficiency and glean insights from data

[13:45] Why AI is pushing project leaders to further develop power skills 

[15:24] How AI can help project leaders—not replace them

It’s time to lean into the power skills—communication, problem-solving, collaborative leadership and strategic thinking—that help project leaders influence stakeholders and deliver successful projects. We discuss this with:

Swapna Yadavalli, PMP, PgMP, PfMP, VP of technology program management, Mastercard, Pune, India: Yadavalli discusses how leaders with power skills help their teams succeed, how strong communication and collaboration helped her team deliver a large-scale program and ways fellow project leaders can further develop their own power skills.

Manuel Segura Pérez, head of project and construction management, Repsol, Madrid: Segura Pérez shares why communication is a critical power skill for all leaders and how he helped foster greater communication and collaboration on a joint venture.

 
Key themes

[02:04] How power skills boost collaboration on cross-functional teams

[04:49] Using communication and collaborative leadership to deliver a successful program

[06:30] Ways project leaders can develop power skills

[08:14] Using empathy to improve power skills within teams

[11:00] Selecting future leaders with power skill potential

In today’s uncertain business landscape, companies must be more agile than ever, embracing new ways of working and nurturing a changemaker mindset across teams. We discuss this with:

Anne Cherouny, organizational change management leader, Boeing, Arlington, Virginia, USA: Cherouny discusses the benefits of organizational agility, how a lack of coordination and structured change management can hinder organizations’ agility, and how project leaders can embrace new ways of working on their teams.

Amol Pradhan, chief transformation officer, services integration hub cloud advisory and enterprise agility, IBM, Singapore: Pradhan discusses challenges organizations face when building organizational agility into company culture, why it’s important for leaders to communicate and prepare teams for organizational change, and how IBM built agility into its HR teams’ operations.

Key themes

[02:13] The ROI of organizational agility

[04:21] How lack of coordination and collaboration hinders organizational agility

[05:56] Boosting agility on teams through a shared vision and new ways of working

[12:50] How to communicate with and prepare teams for organizational change 

[14:20] How IBM built agility into its HR operations