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Project management workshop for Life Science Zurich Young Scientist Network

  Ka Yi Hui

 

 

 

Author: Ka Yi Hui, PMP

On Saturday 27th April 2019, despite the wind and rain, more than 20 PhD students and post-docs from the Life Science Zurich Young Scientist Network(LSZYSN) participated in a 5-hour project management workshop organized by the PMI-Switzerland chapter social good team (Agata Czopek, Ph.D., PMP; Ana Zelaia, MBA, PMP, Ka Yi Hui, Ph.D., PMP and Veronika Galic) at ETH, Zurich.

Life Science Zurich Young Scientist Network(LSZYSN) is a non-profit organization created and run by a group of graduate students & post-docs of the University and the ETH Zurich. They aim to contribute to the local and global life science community by bridging the gap between academic research and industry. They host events like Zurich Life Science Day, Career chats, Company visits, and Life Science Week to allow young scientists to learn more about the biotechnology and pharma industry.

Managing their scientific research projects and the events at LSZYSN, they face numerous challenges in project management, such as leading the team, holding productive meetings, and giving feedback. Our workshop aims to equip the students with the essential tools and techniques for making their projects successful.

We first explained some key concepts in project management and then we focus in-depth on leadership and communication.

pict1

classroom

After we discussed the theory, the students had the chance to practice what they learned by doing some hand on exercises. One of the most striking activities is "Find the ball", where the students need to find a hidden ball according to different feedback styles, for example, the silence feedback, the only positive, the only negative and specific feedback. The feedback givers got to experience the effect they have upon the receiver. The take-home message was clear: only the student receiving specific feedback was successful in finding the hidden ball.  This powerful illustration also showed the students, how feedback could affect performance and to never be shy to ask questions when they are at the receiving end.

The team

Moving on, we have covered more on team dynamics, including personality, cultural influences and conflict resolutions. Finally, the students put into practice what they have learned by competing in the tower game (freely available on PMIEF website, pmief.org).  We are always amazed by the creativity of students with simple materials like plastic cups, bamboo sticks. To conclude the day, we reflected on their ah-ha moments and things they would start implementing in their projects.

workshop

concentration

 

 

PMI Switzerland for Social Good

Event report - “Cultivating Your Creative Confidence”

Author: Chiara Nenci, PMP

Chiara Nenci

Basel, 21st March 2017

What is creativity, can it be developed and are we all capable of being creative?

We explored answers to these questions, and more, during a highly interactive session with our speaker Eli Fumoto - coach, facilitator and PMP.

Creativity typically leads to something original, meaningful and useful. Literally anything intangible or object-like satisfying those qualities can be claimed to be creative. As such, creativity is deeply embedded in our everyday life and as human beings we continuously use it, often unconsciously, to pursue our personal and professional ventures.

Creativity is also highly complex and hard to quantify. And even though we are all able to be creative, we are not automatically so.

Creativity is in fact a “habit” that can and must be exercised in order to flourish. The brain is quite obviously the “muscle” that must work out to develop capabilities such as diagnosing gaps and difficulties and seeking solutions.  So if you think you are not creative, you may simply not be training your brain enough. But how can we change ourselves from being lazy practitioners to creativity advocates and habitués? 

Eli Fumoto explains how to make creativity a daily habit.

An exploration of our personal attitude to creativity, our learning style and our own preferences could be used to identify a set of individual creative habits, which should be practised daily in order to build our confidence in being able to increase our creativity.

In order to develop what Eli defined as “our own creative device”, we must:

1) Have a deep level of self-awareness;

2) Observe what happens around us;

3) Use enough time and the appropriate space to reflect;

4) Be committed to change and learn.

Creativity is thus a high expression of our truest, most authentic self. It seems in fact that human beings become fully engaged, efficient and resourceful, only when they think on their own and have complete control over their decision power: as an example Eli mentioned that people often read self-help books but never implement this written advice, possibly because it originates from the authors’ individual habits, not from those of their readers.

Following the sharing of these ideas and guidelines, Eli paused and gave the opportunity to each attendant to identify and write down 3 creative habits to be implemented in one’s daily routine. 

audience

The attendants writing down their creative habits.

Further into the evening, we were introduced to the concept of “thinking environment” – a high quality communication flow happening between two persons. Working in couples, one person listened with sustained attention and without interrupting the other’s speech; then the roles of listener-thinker vs. speaker were switched and eventually both expressed appreciation for each other.  While practising this little exercise, we directly experienced how the creative engagement of the listener increases as he/she must listen without distraction, emitting a sound or turning away from the speaker. In essence, it is a “think before speaking” approach which limits the expression of insecurities and fosters better collaboration. While sharing afterwards experiences and challenges encountered during this exercise with the rest of the audience, many were highly appreciative of having been listened to, or found it very challenging having had to remain silent; some used their creativity to find about what to say, while others used it to break the rules established for each role!

At the end of Eli’s highly engaging presentation, we were all left with the following closing remarks:

- Everybody is creative, each in his/her own unique way, and at any age

- Creativity must be constantly exercised

- Project management is a highly creative profession. The PMBOK offers standardized guidance but it is up to the project manager and the team members to find the best way to drive their unique project. By showing the most creative and committed self in an environment where the quality of communication is high, a project manager can establish strong collaborative ties and truly set the team on the path to success.

thanks

Lucy Osoegawa, the host of the event, thanking Eli for the inspirational talk.

Apero time

The conversation on creativity continued during the networking aperitif.

For additional questions on the event or other inquiries, please feel free to contact Eli via:
LinkedIn    https://www.linkedin.com/in/elifumoto  
Website:  http://www.eli-fumoto.com

 

How to rescue a troubled project

Author: Carmello Dimotta, PMP

CarmeloDimotta

Tuesday, 21st of March, 2017, 18:30

Location: PwC Zurich, Birchstrasse 160, 8050 Zurich

Interesting topic, that raised my interest already when I came to know about this event. And Marc Lahmann, director of the Transformation Assurance Division, and Manuel Probst, senior project manager at PwC Switzerland, have definitely met my expectations. You find so many whitepapers and articles about problem solving. The PMI also teaches various techniques to analyze and resolve problems. But I was happy to have the opportunity to attend this event and enrich my project management tool set.

That many projects - or even most of them - face a failure during their lifecycle, is well known. Project failure can happen and it does especially nowadays, that the definition of success has changed. The standard project management triangle of scope, time and cost is not enough to define key performance indicators. The so-called "added value" and "stakeholders expectations management" have become even of more importance. The overall project context has become more complex and, with this, also the ways to handle difficult situations.

In the today's environment, the project can be in one of the following stages:
- challenged, normal project management zone. Each project, per definition, can be considered a challenge
- struggling, when the project shows first signals of deviation from baselines
- troubled, it's clear that the project shows signals that something can go wrong
- critical, the project is close to fail
- failure, no options or ways to bring the project back to normal.

The bad news is that projects can quickly go from challenged to troubled. The good news is that troubled projects can be rescued. Key is to have a clear strategy, a structured way to assess the situation and apply the recovery process. A process that, basically, consists of four steps:
1. Direct report of the emergency, answering the what, when, where questions and informing the stakeholders about the issue
2. Anamnese, initial high-level pre-assessment, that helps to bring the project back to trackable
3. Diagnosis, going deeper to the fundamental layer to identify the root cause and plan the recovery
4. Therapy, inform the stakeholders about the recovery and execute it.

After the interactive presentation, at the apero, I could also share my experience with my colleagues and learn from theirs. We were discussing on how to practice the learnings and I had the feeling that we all were looking for ways to develop new issue management techniques. Risk management can be used as mitigation and reduce the likelihood that project issues can arise. However, it's quite normal to face troubled situations in a project and each project manager should have a clear strategy to bring the project back on track. Many thanks to Mr. Lahmann and Mr. Probst for sharing a solid technique to keep available and use when necessary.

Kind regards,
Carmelo Dimotta

Event Report - Managing Stress and Emotions @ Work

Author: David Fowler, PMP

David Fowler

Event Report - Managing Stress and Emotions @ Work: Concrete Tools

Tuesday 4th April

"We are going to explore our minds, let go, be cool !"

Anyone who thought they were going to just sit back and listen to Frédéric Kerautret talking about stress management was in for a surprise: “Everybody stand up for our first exercise”. And there we were, staring into the eyes of our neighbour for an uncomfortably long period of time.

It was an excellent icebreaker and introduction to a highly interactive event. The key message was that we connect with many different groups of people in our daily work. How do we cooperate and behave with these people? In order to understand each other better, we must first work on ourselves.

 Frederic 1

 

Frédéric guided the audience through tools and techniques to manage emotions, increase self-awareness and improve behaviour towards others.  Several  excercises kept the audience fully focused, concluding with a “Lion” and “Tiger” workout to shake off the stress of the day and prepare for the apéro.  

Whilst not all the answers could be provided in a short presentation, there were plenty of topics to whet the appetite and leave the audience eager for more.

 Frederic 2