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LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE
SPECIAL REPORT
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Friday Facts on the Scene – EMEA Leadership
Institute Meeting
Building a Network of Friends and Colleagues
for Years to Come |
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View a gallery of photographs from the
meeting…
 “At PMI we will have a great organization
because the leaders will make it great into the
future.”
—Gregory Balestrero, PMI President and
CEO
Cultural diversity, networking, institutional
knowledge and delivering value to the member—these were the goals of
PMI volunteer leaders who convened for the 2008 EMEA (Europe-Middle East-Africa) Leadership Institute
Meeting, held 16–18 May in Portomaso, St. Julians, Malta. An
EMEA record of 160 attendees from 33 countries throughout the world,
36 chapters and 14 specific interest groups participated.
“We’ve built a global profession that allows us to
share a common language across the world,” said PMI Board of
Directors Chair Philip R. Diab, MBA, PMP, as he welcomed
participants at the opening session.
Leadership Institute Meetings are truly special
gatherings that attract new leaders and veterans alike, he went on.
“You begin to build a network of professional colleagues that will
be friends and colleagues for years to come.”
PMI President and CEO Gregory Balestrero shared with
attendees how much he values the meetings. “They are among my best
opportunities to sit down with leaders and listen,” he said.
Growth and transformation are vibrant themes for the
profession and PMI, and Mr. Balestrero expressed excitement and awe
when he described a recent trip to nine countries in nine weeks. “I
visited volunteers helping to transform services they provide to
members and, literally, their governments and their nations.”
An emergent emphasis is the need to embrace social
responsibility through PMI members worldwide. The PMI Educational Foundation is the manifestation of
PMI’s commitment to address social responsibility.
Suresh Chandra, PMP, General Secretary, PMI Pearl City
Hyderabad Chapter, who graduated with the Leadership Institute
Masters Class at this event, said he is enthusiastic about social
responsibility and project management. “Let’s take the best of the
processes and see where we can implement them. If you look in India
there are so many places where we can implement them.” The new PMI
India Office will support this endeavor.
Mr. Balestrero honored Agnes Laville, PMP, of the PMI
France Sud Chapter, who was among the first recipients of the new
regional PMI Volunteer of the Year Awards. Ms. Laville was
recognized for development of partnerships with universities and
companies that advance the profession and support chapter programs.
Yossi Ghinsberg, the keynote
speaker, told a profound and personal story of his dangerous
journeys through unmapped jungles that proved, above all, to be
journeys of the soul. His adventures and experiences of fear and
deprivation led to profound inner exploration. Ultimately, he “went
from being in a field of agony to a field of joy…the most uncharted
place is our inner world.”
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| Activities Affecting
Components |
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In addition to Yossi Ghinsberg’s keynote address, PMI
staff members reviewed activities including the Leadership Institute
program itself and PMI enterprise architecture and how these affect
PMI communities.
PMI General Counsel William Scarborough discussed the
PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. The
purpose of the code is “to help you be the best you can be,” he
explained. "It guides decision making and sets limits on behaviors,
among other benefits.”
Ed Andrews, PhD, PMI director of academic and
educational program and services, presented on the importance of
project management education and the role of research in advancing
the project management body of knowledge. He said that the findings
of an important study on the value of implementing project
management will be presented for the first time in July at the PMI
Research Conference in Warsaw, Poland.
The study will measure qualitatively and
quantitatively the value of project to organizations regardless of
their industry, size or geographical location. Dr. Andrews expects
the findings will help yield reliable and credible guidelines to
organizations to evaluate return on investment (ROI) for
implementation of project management.
Mark Langley, PMI executive vice president and COO,
and David Sabol, M.Ed., PHR, virtual communities program developer,
presented on the Virtual Communities Project (VCP).
Mr. Langley discussed how PMI’s knowledge strategy of
credibility, relevance and accessibility will be supported
by VCP. Mr. Sabol detailed the two models for
virtual communities:
- The community of practice, dedicated to the
development, exchange and deepening of knowledge; and
- The forum, a place for public discussion and an
easy way for members to engage and apply practical knowledge to
their daily work life. Forums will incubate emerging ideas that
could become communities of practice.
The PMI Human Resources SIG is piloting the community
of practice model. The PMI International Development SIG is piloting
the forum.
 Attendees were able to participate in a
three-part workshop in association governance to gain experience
with the strategic alignment scorecard, the multi-year business plan
and the performance management framework.
Najib Ben Seffaj and Ahmed Ikbal Ben Brahim from
the proposed PMI chapter in Morocco noted “...this event allowed us
to quickly get our hand on valuable tools like the strategic
alignment scorecard and the multiyear business plan that will help
us to quickly translate our vision and passion in a concrete action
plan, by benefiting from other components’ experience and PMI
knowledge.”
Dave Arnold, MBA, manager of the PMI Leadership
Institute, reviewed its mission and direction. Present emphases are
to expand global content and facilitation by globally diverse
individuals, better define expectations and help participants find
more ways to enact what they learn. He welcomed feedback and ideas,
and said the Leadership Institute would be responsive and flexible.
Frank Schettini, PMI vice president of Information
Technology, discussed PMI’s enterprise architecture and its guiding
principles. The PMI IT team is making significant strides on several
major, near-term initiatives. These include new features on PMI.org,
the Virtual Community Communities Project, enterprise data
management and migration of Bluestep, which is the system that
supports the component online community.
He invited leaders to e-mail webcontent@pmi.org if they would like to
participate in usability testing for PMI.org to be executed by Eye
Square, which is based in Germany. He encouraged more members from
EMEA to contact him, to apply for a seat on the new
Technology Member Advisory Group. |
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| Sharing
Experience |
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Component learning and sharing is the heart of
the meeting, a time for leaders to exchange ideas, concerns and
experiences. Some leaders reported increasing levels of member
participation within their components.
Individual leadership development was also an
essential element at this meeting, and a number of sessions were
under this umbrella. Cultural diversity emerged as a key
theme—fostering, maximizing and integrating it. Many attendees
appreciated a cross-cultural workshop led by Petra Goltz, PMP, vice
chair, PMI IT&T Specific Interest Group.
Many leaders, including Palaniappan Meenakshisundaram,
PMP, vice president of the PMI Chennai Chapter, said they attended
specifically for networking, to meet contacts that could provide
help or ideas. |
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| Leader-to-Leader and
Networking |
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 Following tradition, the popular
leader-to-leader session was the final formal session. Attendees
approached the microphones to ask questions of a panel that included
Philip R. Diab, Gregory Balestrero, Mark Langley and several members
of the PMI Board of Directors. Vice Chair Yanping Chen, MD, PhD,
PMP, moderated the session.
Many leaders said they attended the Leadership
Institute Meeting specifically for networking, to meet contacts that
could provide help or ideas.
Irene Bayliss, PMP, newsletter editor for the PMI
United Kingdom Chapter, plans to expand the chapter’s newsletter
coverage to include news from chapters in neighboring countries. “I
want to share with U.K. members what other chapters are doing, and
while I’m here I want to develop contacts for contributions and
information sharing,” she said.
The 2008 EMEA Leadership Institute Meeting wrapped up
with a networking reception and evening cruise to Malta’s sister
island, Gozo. If you have not yet attended a Leadership Institute
Meeting, the next one will take place in São Paulo, Brazil on 9-10
August. |
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| Graduation Day for the
PMI Leadership Institute Masters Class |
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Fifteen accomplished leaders became graduates of the
Leadership Institute Masters Class on the evening of 16 May. The
class is a journey of learning and discovery. It’s designed to
provide intensive ongoing training, development and support for a
limited class of participants so that each participant receives
focused attention and support throughout the program.
Standing before the graduates and attendees including
most members of the PMI Board of Directors, Philip R. Diab said to
the graduates, “The Board commits to you we will do everything we
can possibly do to give you the best resources possible, to help you
be the best leaders in the world.”
He expressed that a graduates’ journey “… may begin
with a selfish quest of ‘how do I get better?’ and is answered by a
most unselfish lesson in how do I help others get
better.”
“A real leader is one that makes other leaders, that
helps other leaders to grow. It’s about the greater good, not
personality or ego.”
—Yossi Ghinsberg
A reception followed the ceremony and was a time to
relax, enjoy live music and celebrate the accomplishments of the
graduates. “It was a very good feeling to have the opportunity to
participate in this program,” said Patrik Bergstrom, a graduate. He
found the class to be a route for inner change and also noted, “You
are supporting others to grow their leadership.”
Ivy Liu-Hsin-Yi, a graduate who has lived in Taiwan,
South Africa and now Norway, said she was glad to share with her
classmates some of the insights she learned from these different
cultures. “It was a very good experience learning from each other.
It was such a dynamic group,” she said.
Her advice to future participants: “Share what you
can. You are learning from each other, and people are learning from
you.”
Graduates of the May 2008 class are:
Patrik Bergstrom, PMP (Sweden) –- PMI Sweden Chapter
Suresh Chandra, PMP (India) –- PMI Pearl City Hyderabad Chapter
Aileen Ellis, PMP, PgMP (USA) –- PMI Mile-Hi Chapter
Andrea
Georgopoulos Bach (USA) –- PMI Government SIG
Ivy
Liu-Hsin-Yi, PMP (Norway) –- PMI Oslo, Norway Chapter
Mark Ives
(Australia) –- PMI Code of Ethics Implementation Advisory
Committee
Sandeep Khanna, PMP (USA) –- PMI Metrics SIG
Thomas Kroupa, PMP (USA) –- PMI Chicagoland Chapter
Robyn
McGregor (USA) –- PMI Metrics SIG
Peter Monkhouse, PMP (Canada)
–- Community Development Member Advisory Group
Shobhna
Raghupathy, PMP (USA) –- PMI Atlanta Chapter
Jennifer (Tharp)
Russell, PMP (USA) –- PMI San Francisco Bay Area Chapter
Zbigniew Traczyk, PMP (Poland) –- PMI Component Mentor
Nathalie Udo, PMP (USA) –- PMI San Francisco Bay Area Chapter
Frank Walker, PMP (USA) –- PMI Delaware Valley Chapter
Maura
Webber, PMI Component Relations Administrator
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| PMI Volunteers are
“Plugged In” to Growth of the Persian Gulf Region |
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PMI Region 12 Component Mentor Yahya L. Khader, PMP,
recently hosted Gregory Balestrero on a tour to see projects and
meet with organizations served by the PMI Arabian Gulf Chapter,
which covers Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and United
Arab Emirates. Mr. Balestrero was seeking to learn how PMI can
better support the Persian Gulf. The trip was his sixth in a series
of fact finding visits conducted in the past eight months.
Projects in the Persian Gulf “are of a scale and scope
I never dreamed of,” said Mr. Balestrero during his opening remarks
on 16 May at the EMEA Leadership Institute Meeting.
“Volunteers and leaders are plugged in to the work there — it only
reminds me of the importance of volunteer leadership.”
“PMI is about adding value to help in any way
possible,” Mr. Khader told Friday Facts while at the
meeting. PMI’s resources can help projects operate “more
efficiently, with better safety and more systematically.”
Mr. Khader sees in the Persian Gulf region a growing
awareness of the need for more credential holders to serve on
projects of all sizes. He cited as one example the presence of 12
Project Management Professional (PMP®) credential holders
employed in the office of the Ministry of Works, in Bahrain.
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