Author: Stefania Tanasescu, PMP

Dear Project Management enthusiasts,

Do you want to learn more about Social Project Management? Are you wondering what exactly Social Project Management is? In this case, please register for the following 3h online workshop with Peter Taylor on 15th September which is published on our webpage www.pmi-switzerland.ch/events.

Social Project Management 

A project is a temporary endeavour where people come together to work towards a common

goal and purpose; it is therefore a temporary endeavour that must rely on a social system of

communication and collaboration in order to succeed.

Social project management is a non-traditional way of organising projects and managing

project performance and progress aimed at delivering, at the enterprise level, a common

goal for the business but harnessing the performance advantages of a collaborative Community.

There is a paradigm shift ongoing in many organisations that is about finding a practical

balance between the challenges to traditional project management made by Project

Management 2.0 - which encouraged a move away from centralised control of projects and

instead promoted the value of team collaboration – and the practical recognition that large

scale projects do require a stronger form of centralised control and governance.

Who should attend?

The remote workshop is directed at anyone leading projects or leads a community of project

managers, and who are keen to understand, and be prepared for, the transformation

towards Social Project Management.

Benefits

You will learn about the paradigm shift to ‘Social Project Management’ and what the benefits

are, as well as the challenges and opportunities.

At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Clearly describe the Project Management 2.0 world and the progression towards Social Project Management
• Understand the benefits of a decentralised and collaborative project world
• Appreciate what a project manager needs to understand about harnessing this social world and what the obstacles can potentially be, and how to overcome them
• To have ‘top ten’ list of things to do and to avoid when taking your project team ‘social’

About the speaker - Peter Taylor

An experienced Change and Transformation Specialist who has operated at a global scale within many industries, for organisations ranging from small to enterprise.

Peter is the author of the number 1 bestselling project management book ‘The Lazy Project Manager’, along with many other books on Project Management, PMO development, Executive Sponsorship, Transformation Leadership, and Speaking Skills.

He has delivered over 380 lectures around the world in over 25 countries and has been described as ‘perhaps the most entertaining and inspiring speaker in the project management world today’.

www.thelazyprojectmanager.com

www.thepmtribe.com

Author: Miguel Hurtado, CAPM

We are already in June. Indeed time keeps going even in times of crisis. Some countries have begun to recover to a normal time, face masks and social distance are nowadays habits we are used to seeing in our daily lives. Hard times means opportunity: online events, home office or delivery are growing and adapting to this pandemic situation.

PMI Switzerland made several online events with great success such as "PMI Online Coffee" and "Open Spaces: Project Management in a Remote Environment". We are pleased to have more due to the high demand and interest. For us it is a great success to know we can keep working for you also in hard times and in a virtual environment. In "PMI Online Coffee" we have the opportunity to meet our members while we enjoy a cup of coffee (tea is also accepted) and have a friendly morning chat, a great way to begin a new day. Feel free to join us.

I would like to ask you to keep healthy, body and soul. After the storm, the sun will come back. We made it before, we can do it again. Be positive and keep strong, for you and your family. 

I wish you a great time. Follow our social network profiles to keep informed.

"Fall seven times and stand up eight." - Japanese Proverb.

Author: Dr. Zorana Boltić, PMP

It was a privilege to be able to participate in the first online event organized by the PMI Switzerland Chapter attended by over 100 participants from different countries, including Serbia. Especially in the disruptive environment caused by the pandemic situation, the topic of resilience was very relevant and the participants themselves were able to share different stress factors they might have not experienced before. 

Even though the challenges we are facing everyday such as workload, uncertainty, frustration and information overload are present in all times, it seems that there is a completely new dimension brought by this crisis. It is therefore obvious that we need to build our resilience now more than ever, as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties and toughness we are exposed to severely nowadays.

Resilience and why do we need it?

The panel discussion brought together the professionals devoted to giving back and sharing their ways on how to manage resilience and stress. There was certainly a rich experience on the table in order to help the participants understand what resilience really is for them and discover what works best for each individual.  

If we define the resilience as the capacity to be comfortable with the uncomfortable and bounce back from instability, insecurity and fear, all the panelists agreed that the most important step is to validate these feelings first and begin with the awareness about our emotions. It’s only then we can enable ourselves to think about things we can control, since resilience may as well be perceived as a kind of “psychological personal protective equipment” where we learn to focus our attention to what is important to us. It is also a concept of transformation and an opportunity to become a better self.

“Being” before “doing”

How do we practice then and what do we actually need to do to build our resilience? The discussion led to a common conclusion that the starting point is always to understand what makes us stressed and then think about what we can control in order to decide what to focus on and make the actual shift towards learning. This means that before jumping into strategies, it is of the utmost importance to deal with “being” before “doing” and pay attention to reasons why the feeling is there rather than thinking about how to get rid of the emotion. Even if we split resilience into physical, mental, psychological or even spiritual, the main tool to deal with it is acceptance. This is how we nourish ourselves on all these levels before implementing the actual fixing mechanisms. Only after reaching the state of acceptance, can we turn our attention to what we can control, where sometimes creating rituals to reduce uncertainty can help, as well as using the agile mindset to develop sustainable strategies that work best for us through iterations. On the other hand, the question may arise what to do with things that we realize are not under our control? All the panelists agreed that pushing those back only makes them stronger, emphasizing that acceptance is key and that whatever we decide to focus on can become our reality if we embrace the change and manage to release the worst case scenarios we can imagine.   

Practical advice you can use today

There was a lot of practical advice from the panelists on how to use our micro skills and introduce them into our daily routines, such as “taking the frustrations for a run”, making micropauses in this greater pause and practicing different habits in order to develop positive patterns in our brains.

Visualization was suggested as a technique to apply in micropauses and a short exercise was a valuable gift from one of the panelists. It was an extraordinary experience that made me realize how words can be powerful in employing all our senses resulting in a truly liberating state of mind. Some coping strategies were also shared by the participants, such as walking, yoga, jogging and meditation, as well as supporting applications proposed by the panelists like Headspace and Yoga Nidra, Loving Kindness Meditation to cultivate compassion and build resilience.

The panel was closed summarizing some of the main points to keep in mind for managing our resilience successfully encouraging the participants to acknowledge their emotions, understand what is behind, reframe and take advantage of the situation. The importance of faith was also emphasized at the end because it means trusting ourselves that we can handle things and that we are in fact able to connect to our creative side, always ensuring space holders to improve. In conclusion, a good piece of advice is accepting “one foot in front of the other”, which is something most of us are not used to. On the other hand, once we connect our purpose to our values and what is important to us, we minimize the risk that this will be determined by external factors, accepting the ownership of taking care of ourselves.

Author: David Fowler, PMP

Thursday 24 August 2017

"Today is a good day"

It was indeed a good day for those who attended the first PMI event in Lausanne after the summer break. The speaker, Olivier Lazar, needed no introduction as a former president of the PMI Switzerland Chapter and well known presenter at distinguished PMI events worldwide.

The evening kicked off with an open question to the packed audience: “do you work for an ethical employer”? This thought-provoking introduction set the scene for an enlightening journey along the theme of ethical leadership and decision making.

Why is ethical leadership a key differentiator in today’s competitive workplace? Why is it so important for the employer to be trusted by its employees (a significant reduction in both staff turnover and absenteeism were among some of the reasons according to latest research). Why are more and more companies creating a Code of Ethics and how does shared accountability bring greater rewards? These were some of the many questions addressed by Olivier during the evening, with entertaining videos and an absorbing group exercise to support his business case.

There were plenty of questions from the audience and a positive vibe during the apéro, clearly demonstrating the high level of interest in the subject of the talk and appreciation for the eloquent way in which it was presented.