PMI InsightsA publication for members of the PMI Chicagoland Chapter

PMI Chicagoland Chapter • P.O. Box 1183 • La Grange Park, IL 60526www.pmichicagoland.org

JUNE 28, 2019

OPENING KEYNOTEAlan Mallory

Project Everest: A Hybrid Approach for Reaching New

Heights in Project Management

POST LUNCH KEYNOTEJacy Imilkowski

The Brilliance of Resilience: Beating Burnout on Our

Most Challenging Projects

CLOSING KEYNOTERuth Pearce

The Strategy of Character: Measuring and

Aligning Character for Success!

How to align strategically to achieve competitive advantage through discipline, planning and execution

9TH ANNUAL PM SYMPOSIUMFriday, October 18, 2019

7:00 am to 5:00 pm

Meridian Banquets & Conference Center 1701 W Algonquin Rd

Rolling Meadows, IL 60008

HURRY, REGISTER BY JUNE 30 TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE SUPER EARLY BIRD OFFER!

REGISTRATION FEES:Super Early Bird (April - June 30) $199 Members $224 Non-membersEarly Bird (July - August) $249 Members $289 Non-membersRegular (August- October 14) $299 Members $319 Non-members

Corporate/group rates, student and military discounts available. For pricing, contact Tracey Zupke: dirpmsymposium@pmichicagoland.org

Don't miss this Learn and Earn opportunity!

The 9th Annual PM Symposium’s theme is “How to align strategically to achieve competitive advantage through discipline, planning and execution.” This signature event offers attendees the opportunity to make new connections, identify what is trending in our profession, learn from subject matter experts and earn up to 8 PDU’s.

To learn more and register, visit: www.pmichicagoland.org/PM_Symposium_2019

PM SYMPOSIUM CONTACTS:

General Questions : Tracey M. Zupke, MBA dirpmsymposium@pmichicagoland.org

Speakers & Sponsorship: Pitch Balasubramanian symposiumspeaker@pmichicagoland.org

Volunteering Opportunities: Shyamala Ekambaram, PMP, CSM, ITIL symposiumvolunteers@pmichicagoland.org

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JUNE 28, 2019PMI Insights

Leadership Forum 2019 Volunteer team

On the morning of May 3rd, nearly 200 senior leaders from Chicagoland organizations gathered in a beautiful sunlit room at

the Chevy Chase Country Club in Wheeling. Everyone arrived early, with many productive conversations filling the room as the group enjoyed breakfast.

Event chair Brian Donovan kicked off the meeting and kept us on track with his leadership and humor, encouraging us to network like crazy but get back in our seats on time.

Greg Harmeyer, our first keynote speaker, CEO and founder of Tier1 Performance, spoke to Activating Strategy through Project Leadership. He said that strategy is an ecosystem, including markets, business models, people, culture and systems. Project management helps to evolve all elements of the strategy system by unifying them and helping them fit together. Greg clarified that authentic leadership is not the organization chart; it is the influence that gets people to do what needs to be done. People follow leaders as they provide stability, compassion, trust, hope and communications. Communications is key when rolling out a new strategy – no news is not good news! Plus, it helps to integ-rate the communications to cut through the tremendous noise that is present today; messages with similar timing, audiences and goals must be bundled. Karla Mans Giroux, Global Head of End User Experience for Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, spoke to the challenging rollout she

did with the help of Tier1 Performance. Takeda rolled out 15 cloud-based collaboration and communications applications to 30,000 employees in 70 countries. This deployment was successful because the vision was arti-culated in a theme that employees could relate to, communications were bundled and controlled, and technology ambassadors were recruited to solicit and provide peer feedback on how things were working in the wild. The real-world Takeda example truly helped the audience understand Greg’s approach and how it can be applied.

Brian Donovan then lead the five panelists in a lively discussion on Translating Strategy into Execution. The panelists, Amy Martin, Brian Kemper, Lauren Perazic, Mary Hibbard Ramirez and Joseph Zhang, encou-raged us to lead from the seat we are in and not wait for senior manage-ment to lead for us. The ability to change is a key differentiator, as the volume and pace of change continues to grow geometrically; fostering a culture of change can make or break an organization’s success. We must push stakeholders to define goals and accountability metrics; we should not tolerate fuzzy goals. And we should not be afraid of making mistakes – if we aren’t making mistakes, we aren’t moving fast enough.

Spencer Horn, our second keynote speaker, President of Altium Leadership in Las Vegas, spoke on the Ownership Factor – Leading your Team from Strategy to Execution. He focused on the fact that behaviors are key to successful strategy implementation. Ninety percent of

Leadership Forum 2019 Draws Enthusiastic Crowd

"It was a great event, well organized and I got to learn

a lot from this event. The networking session was great,

and I made new contacts. Keep up the awesome work PMI

Chicagoland Chapter. Looking forward to attend such

future events as well.”

continued next page

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JUNE 28, 2019PMI Insights

FRIDAY MAY1 2020SAVE THE DATE FOR NEXT YEAR'S FORUM!

LEADERSHIP FORUM 2019 – continued from page 2

business challenges are linked to behavior, with a low ownership factor being a root cause. Often employees are unclear on the company values as well as their role and their responsibilities. Management ignores cultures and attitudes and sets unrealistic goals for strategy imple-mentation. To be successful, organizations must hold people account-able and develop a culture of positive behavior; this positive behavior is infectious and can spread throughout the organization. Individual values must be aligned with corporate goals: he provided the example of three bricklayers who saw their roles very differently; one was laying bricks, one was building a church and one was building a house of God. It is key to develop a culture of ownership; helping people achieve their goals can undermine this as they no longer feel accountable. Spencer had several audience members come up front for a challenging group activity, which comprised of working together to lower a long pole to the ground. There was a lot of enthusiastic commentary as the group struggled to fulfill the goal. It was amazing how difficult this task was! It very much hit home the fact that team members must work together cooperatively and respectfully, especially when goals are challenging and not well-understood.

The Leadership Forum provided on-time delivery as the session ended at noon per the schedule, giving people the rest of the day to get back to work or to enjoy the beautiful weather.

The event could not have succeeded without the tremendous support from our sponsors and volunteers. Sincere thanks go out to Elmhurst College, Tier1 Performance and IIL as well as the team of volunteers that worked tirelessly for over six months to plan and execute the event.

Feedback from the participants was excellent: “It was a great event, well organized and I got to learn a lot from this event. The networking session was great, and I made new contacts. Keep up the awesome work PMI Chicagoland Chapter. Looking forward to attend such future events as well.”

Two names were randomly drawn from all who participated in the post-event survey: Miles Hommel and Khuzaan Screwvalla received free registration to next year’s forum. Mark your calendar for Leadership Forum ‘20 on May 1, 2020!

THANK YOU TO OUR EVENT SPONSORS:

First keynote speaker Greg Harmeyer Leadership Forum 2019 Panelists

Second keynote speaker Spencer Horn

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JUNE 28, 2019PMI Insights

Job Fair Participants Enjoy Face TimeThe Career Development Job Fair on June 12th was an exciting evening for the PMI Chicagoland Chapter. More than 130 participants were able to interact with the 30 recruiters representing a large variety of recruiting companies at our Career Development Job Fair at the Abbington Banquets, Glen Ellyn IL.

At the end of the event, a raffle was held for a $50 gift card. Attendees also filled out a survey for their feedback on the event.

Not only did the attendees remark on the diversity and high quality of the recruiting compa-nies, they also found the location easy to find. As an added bonus, there were several comments regarding participants enjoying “face to face time” with the recruiters and the opportunity to get advice from the four different resume’ reviewers.

This year’s attendance was significantly higher than in the previous years. Per survey results and feedback at the event, there is a significant interest in attending more of these events in the Chicagoland area.

Please contact Anjali More at dircareerdevelopment@pmichicagoland.org for any questions on this or future Career Development events.

RECRUITING COMPANIES THAT PARTICIPATED:Agile N2N Collabera Inc. CRS Group Gallagher Geval 6 HCSC (Blue Cross Blue Shield)HegemonyIconic Staff Solutions Inc.Randstad TechnologiesSwoon GroupTranstech IT Staffing

Resume Reviewers from the following organizations reviewed resumes and provided feedback:Indiana TechTek SystemsBetty Flasch ConsultingDenis Curtin

CAREER DEVELOPMENT JOB FAIR

JUNE12This event was made possible by the collective efforts of the volunteers from the Career Development team. Pictured from L-R: Len Marchese; Anjali More; Susmita Sharma; Keith Voss; Ann Fisher; Priyanka Cyriac; Ray Bravo; Ruth Allen. (Not in the picture: Joan Everett; Enkhzul Chinbat).

Good things happen when you stay involved with your PMI Chicagoland Chapter!

www.pmichicagoland.org

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JUNE 28, 2019PMI Insights

MENTORSHIP

OverviewIncrease your marketability by improving your leadership skills. Serve the project management community. All through participating in PMI Chicagoland's mentoring program. The Core PM Mentorship Program is a 20-week program. Program requirements are as follows:

Required attendance at all Program Events • Kickoff• Mid-Session Peers• Closing Celebration

Submit and maintain Mentee's Development Plan for the duration of the program, to be created by the Mentee and approved by the Mentor

Between 2-4 mentoring contact hours per month

Submission of Program Documents at defined Program Checkpoints consisting of evaluations, mentoring reports and surveys.

CostThere is no application fee. Mentees pay a nominal registration fee to cover the cost of mentoring guidebooks. Registration Fee is paid online after acceptance into the program. Only Mentees admitted into the Program Session will be able to register.

Mentors participate free of charge. Registration is still required. Mentors accepted into the Program Session will be provided with a promotion code to waive the registration fee.

ContactFor more information about this program, please email: DirMentoring@pmichicagoland.org

Career Development Summer Networking EventThe PMI Chicagoland Career Development team invites you to a Summer Networking Event on July 16, 2019. Enjoy great networking with PMI's project manager members! Refreshments will be served and there will be a raffle of a $50 gift card.

Cost Free. The Swoon group has graciously provided their venue for this event and will also serve refreshments! Registrations will be limited to 70.

This event will be held in their Chicago office across from the Willis Tower at 300 South Wacker Dr. #300, Chicago, IL on July 16th from 5:30pm – 8:00pm.

Register at pmichicagoland.org under Events.Please keep checking the PMIChicagoland.org website and emails for event details.

About Swoon:Swoon is a career hub that’s unlike any other; a place where the focus is on the people first and the placement second. We live by our mantra “Listen. Place. Care.” To us, it is essential that we listen to our clients and candidates needs and put in the legwork to make sure that our place-ments are always a perfect match. We form relationships, not just connections, and we pride ourselves on our contractor care initiatives. Are you ready to be Swoon’d?https://swoonstaffing.com/

Please contact Anjali More at dircareerdevelopment@pmichicagoland.org for any questions on this or future Career Development events.

SAVE THE DATE!

TUESDAY

JULY16

When:July 16, 20195:30 PM CDT – 8:00 PM CDT

Where:Swoon Group 300 S Wacker Dr., #300 Chicago, IL 60606-6607

2019 MENTORING SESSION

WE LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING FROM YOU SOON!

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JUNE 28, 2019PMI Insights

Chapter LeadershipThe Leadership Team consists of two groups. There is an elected Executive Board made up of the President, Past President and Vice Presidents. The primary function of this board is to set the strategic plan for the chapter and to oversee the execution of that plan by the Directors and their volunteers. The Directors are appointed by the Executive Board and are responsible for the execution of the strategic plan through the tactical day to day operation of the chapter. The Directors coordinate the efforts of chapter member volunteers to accomplish the activities of the chapter. If you are interested in serving your PMI Chicagoland Chapter, contact our Director of Volunteers for more information.

Past President John Duggan, PMP

President Jonathan Lee, PMP

VP Finance Gayatri Kalluri, PMP

Director, Finance SupportPhilip Riesterer

VP Operations John Kica, PMP

Director, Logistics Paul Pronti, CAPM

Director, RegistrationJames Fisher, PMP

VP Technology Venkata Sanaka, PMP

Director, Website Karmen Williams

Director, Infrastructure Mallikharjuna Valluri, PMP

VP Business Outreach Ura Puranda, PMP

Business Outreach Chief of Staff OPEN

Director, Corporate Outreach Annette Harris

Director, Executive Council Ryan Siegel, PMP

Director, Career Development Anjali More, PMP

VP Community Outreach Parita Kanevskiy, PMP, CSM

Director, Academic Outreach Parthiv Zaveri, PMP

Director, Professional Association Outreach Detris Brown, MBA

Director, Social OutreachReagan Bayer, PMP

VP, Professional DevelopmentGwen Nichols-White, PMP

Professional Development Chief of Staff OPEN

Director, Programs Claudia Gamboa

Director, Certification Catherine Kolecki, M.ed., PMP

Director, Professional DevelopmentChetan Thakkar, PMP

Director of PM SymposiumMarco Ramirez, MBA

VP, Marketing & CommunicationSrinivas Saineni, PMP

Director, Social Media Ninos Youkhana, PMP, PMI-RMP

Director, Advertising Mandar Kulkarni, PMP

Director, Communications Vidhi Khandelwal, PMP

Director, Marketing/ Public Relations Linda Billhymer, PMP

VP Membership Ravi Avasarala, PMP

Director, Member Analysis Jean-Yves Kainic, PMP

Director, Member Relations Anand R. Girap, PMP

Director, VolunteersMagda Markowska

Director, Mentoring Skip Depner, PMP, CSM

Director, Knowledge Sharing Jaz Madhani, PMP

The PMI Chicagoland Leadership Team is made up of dedicated volunteers who constantly strive to add value to the membership and to forward the best interests of the chapter. Please feel free to contact any member of the Board or Directors with any questions, concerns, or suggestions you may have.