PMI Global Congress Attendees Say Business Skills are Needed
Deborah Bigelow Crawford has more than 20 years of experience in business management and handles the operational and administrative functions of PM Solutions. Ms. Bigelow Crawford also serves as Co-CEO of the PM College®, PM Solutions' training division, where she is responsible for the fiscal management and quality assurance of all training and professional development programs. Prior to joining PM Solutions, she served as the Executive Director of the Project Management Institute (PMI), and was instrumental in providing the foundation and infrastructure for the exponential growth that the Institute has maintained over the last 10 years. In addition, she served as the Executive Director of the PMI Educational Foundation. Over the last decade, she has authored numerous articles in PM Network, Chief Project Officer, and Optimize magazines. Ms. Bigelow Crawford is also co-author of the book Project Management Essentials. She has presented a variety of papers as a speaker at international symposia and conferences, and is a member of the National Association of Female Executives and the Project Management Institute.
<p>The 200-member audience validated our thesis that project managers today must develop business acumen.</p><p>It’s always a concern to me when I come to the end of a presentation and there are no questions! I wonder if I answered every issue … or if everyone fell asleep! But on Monday, after my presentation on business skills for project managers at the PMI Global Congress in Vancouver, although there were no questions there were plenty of folks lined up to discuss the issue with me. I spoke to 25 or more project management leaders who reconfirmed for me that the topic of training project managers in business skills is a timely one indeed. When I asked the audience what had attracted them to the presentation, almost everyone indicated that the pressure to drive business results was a new theme in their organizations, surfacing within the last two years. This is a hot, new topic, and one driven by current conditions in the marketplace. (One indication how timely was the number of quotes from the presentation tweeted by <a href="https://twitter.com/PMIcongress">@pmicongress!</a>)<br /><br />If you tuned into our <a href="http://www.pmcollege.com/content/demand-webinars">webinar on this subject </a>last week, you’ll remember that we polled the audience on several questions during the course of the program. One thing we found out was that the webinar audience, like the respondents to our <a href="http://www.pmsolutions.com/resources/category/research/">2012 State of the PMO</a> study, worked in close communication with executive management. I informally polled the approximately 200 attendees in my session Monday on the same question and their response validated our earlier findings: organizations have flattened, removing levels of hierarchy and bringing project managers “up close and personal” with vice-presidents and C-level leaders in their organizations.<br /><br />What does this mean for project managers? Well, their communication skills, business acumen, and ability to drive results are all on daily display. Where once “on-time, on-schedule” was the success mantra, today’s PMs must work to align with corporate strategy and deliver customer satisfaction.<br /><br />Here at PM College, we continue to help companies help their project management staff meet these new challenges as they come. Read our <a href="http://www.pmcollege.com/content/request-form2">new white paper</a> on this topic and keep in touch.</p><p> </p>
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