Welcome to the APM podcast, brought to you by the chartered body for the project profession.

This episode is part of our series of senior leader interviews hosted by APM Chief Executive Professor Adam Bodison.

This time Adam is in conversation with Pierre Le Mann, President and CEO at the Project Management Institute, or PMI, a worldwide professional organisation representing the project profession that's headquartered in the US.

An experienced CEO has worked across several sectors.

Pierre was born in France into what he describes as a family of entrepreneurs.

He moved to the US 12 years ago and has also spent time working in Paris and London.

With Vietnamese heritage on his father's side, Pierre shares how his multicultural background has given him an appreciation of the diverse strengths of different cultures across PMI's international community of members.

Listen on to hear him chat with Adam about his career journey, growing, the recognition of the project profession and why leaders need to stay calm in a crisis.

Hello, Pierre, and welcome to the APM Podcast.

It's a real pleasure to have you with us today.

How are you?

Hello Adam, Thanks for having me.

I'm doing great.

Actually, I'm just back in New York from a trip to Asia and the weather is fantastic, so who can complain?

Well, you know, as British we like to talk about the weather a lot, but usually not for good reason.

That's why I was trying.

I was trying to adjust.

Very good, very good.

Well, you know, this is an APM first really to have the CEO and president of of PMI on the podcast.

So, you know, it's it's a pleasure and privilege to have you on and we've got a whole range of things to ask you about today.

So we will we will get started straight away.

One, one of the things I think people are really interested to know about Pierre is your kind of career journey.

We obviously know where you are now in your current role, but I'd be really interested to know, you know, what led you to this point, how you first kind of decided to become ACEO and then later on to make that decision specifically to become CEO of PMI.

So when I made the decision to be ACEO, that's not an easy answer.

It it didn't really work that way.

You know, carry all our life are usually quite intimately linked.

And in my case, I was born in France, I'm Asian by blood.

My father is from Vietnam.

I always say I'm Asian by blood, European by culture and American by choice.

I was born in a family of entrepreneurs.

My father, my grandfather, my uncle, every, everyone had their own companies and I was the product of the French system.

You know, we have this system called the Gronzico, right?

The schools that are, let's say, the epitome of the French educational system, very centralised.

So I went to that.

And then after that I had, I still have to do my military service at the time.

So I went for a year.

Actually, I was lucky.

I was sent to Canada to work in the French economic intelligence in Montreal.

Then I came back, studied in consulting.

You know, I was not very clear about what I wanted to do.

And at the time it felt like being a consultant was a good way not to make any choice.

But then I felt very quickly the need for autonomy, the latitude to do things according to my own views, you know, build organisations and, and products in my own way, shape the culture that I wanted and I I felt this is how I would feel accomplished.

So I went to smaller companies where I could immediately be in a decision making role, part of the C-Suite, actually went to a nonprofit company to be the CFO managing copyrights for actors and singers.

So very different world.

And then from there, things almost happened naturally and, and I became the CEO of a publishing company that wanted to move to digital and they want, they thought that someone who was my age, 31 year old at the time would be a better choice than someone who had already a lot of experience in a world that was completely disrupted, right?

We were talking about the end of the 90s when everything became digital.

So that's how I studied as ACEO.

And then, you know, being ACEO is almost like a profession, right?

Once you do this, you, you just try to be better at it.

You do it in different companies.

There are some stages though, you know, when you go from running one specific business to a portfolio of businesses or different geographies as well different countries.

And then you learn along the way how to handle different shareholding structures.

You know, I work for listed companies, family owned, private equity owned and you know, you got increasingly involved also into international global businesses, scaling them up worldwide.

And yeah.

And then I came to PMI because I thought I could help precisely scale and transform the organisation.

It was very strong brand, maybe a little bit in a need for refreshment and renewal and I thought I could really help doing that.

And I also love the focus on people, the global side of it, the for purpose mentality of the the organisation.

And I also believe truly that successful projects can change the world for the better.

And was a great calling for me almost.

Fantastic.

We definitely have a lot in common there in terms of what we feel about the impact that projects can make and in terms of professional bodies and the and the kind of the purpose side of things.

You talk there a lot about the different countries and geographies that you've worked in, the different sectors, different industries.

I guess you know, one of the things for me that's interesting about the project profession is that breadth that it's got.

So I guess that was very helpful in terms of coming into this role that you had all of that to draw from.

One of the things we're obsessed about in the project profession is learning lessons and applying lessons.

Are there any kind of leadership principles or lessons that you think are common across all of these sectors and geographies and so on?

You know, I, I define leadership as ultimately the ability to inspire others around you to take action and, and drive change.

So that is not industry specific.

It's about everywhere in and it's not even business specific.

On the personal side, I feel that you have to at least I try to be authentic and not being overly scared, you know, not to say the right things.

And, and, and also I believe it's important to to avoid platitudes and thinking and saying the same thing as everybody else, right?

You have to form real personal opinions on things.

A sort of a vet and Shaweng like German people say you this kind of vision of the world that is more personal to you and that helps also coming across as more authentic and being real, right.

When it comes to leadership in the corporate world, I think it's very important to focus on the long term purpose and values.

You know, things that are universal that people will follow even when the lights go off right and and define their own way without a blueprint.

It's not always easy because people often ask for a blueprint and you try to resist that and and really show them the long term vision, the purpose, because you want them to find their own way.

To an extent.

It's more effective than trying to tell everyone, especially when you run large organisations, what they have to do right.

I think it's important also, and I learned that to focus on teams, not just the individuals, but the the team dynamics.

And you learn this a lot from sports.

If you're interested in sports, you see that my favourite team, PSG has great individuals and now they finally have a team.

Maybe the individuals are not as well known, but the team works at least as well as before.

And so that dynamic of the team, how you build something that where the sum of the parts exceeds the parts themselves is so important to me.

And also always think about how you raise both the ceiling and the floor, right?

So the the minimum performance that is expected, but also make sure that you bring some inspiration and, and get people to trust to have the confidence that they can deliver things that they would would never even think they could.

They would be able to.

I actually formalised all of that in a, my personal philosophy that I call the three SS.

In summary, you know, it's just three words, right?

Solidarity, substance and standards.

And, and it's each of the SS is a, a combination of two, is a tension in fact between two different things.

Like the first one, solidarity is both personal accountability and collective ownership.

You know, so I, I tried to summarise all of that and I actually wrote this out across PMI now.

Oh, wow, OK.

And, and that's great when you as a leader can have that kind of personal influence as well.

And I think that speaks to the point that you're making around, you know, somebody else couldn't just step in and, and lead the organisation in the same way.

It's it's the leader's personality, I suppose that, you know, their their identity is kind of woven into the fabric of the organisation in some way.

I, I like that you talked a lot there about earlier on about your own cultural identity and your cultural background.

One of the things about PMI, of course, is that as a global organisation, you're working with many, many different cultural, cultural backgrounds and expectations.

And some of those can be, I suppose at, at in tension with each other as well.

How, how do you, how do you kind of balance the, the different expectations?

They're both in a a personal respect as a leader, but also in terms of I, I don't know the offer that you might have as an organisation as well.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Before my career, it's my personal life that has shaped me as a multicultural person.

You know, I have 51 first cousins on my dad's side.

My grandfather was very prolific.

He had many children and themselves have many children.

So I have first cousins in in France, of course in the US, many of them in Vietnam, in Australia, and I'm close to to many of them.

I even have a son who is a British citizen.

He went to study in the UK more than 10 years ago, 12 years ago now, and he stayed and became a British citizen.

So I think it's all about leveraging differences instead of trying to eradicate differences.

So it's not about having everyone behave in the same way.

It is really trying to accept that by leveraging our differences and accepting differences, we would be stronger.

So I always try to make people feel proud of their culture and, and their country.

Even Americans, believe it or not at PMI, of course, because we're very global, there's always this hesitation to come across as American.

And, and I always tell people you don't have to, to worry about that.

It's, it's not a problem.

Like you have to be proud of your own roots and identity and culture, but then at the same time value others and be curious about it and, and make sure that we leverage all this, all this richness of the different cultures that form PMI in our community.

You know, and, and you'll see this in my, I try, of course, it's sort of easier for me because nobody knows where I'm from.

You know, when I'm on the West Coast in the US, people talk to me in Spanish.

They assume I'm probably Hispanic.

When I'm in Vietnam, people ask me sometimes in Vietnamese and I, I don't speak Vietnamese, but I do understand that they ask me if I'm, if I'm sort of a little bit the same way as they are in France.

Of course, people when I speak French people and, and French.

So it's like people can't place me.

So it helps me in a way.

But you'll see that on my social media, for instance, on LinkedIn, I, I always talk about different countries.

You know, I take any opportunity to expose the world, how each region, each country has their own strengths and specificities and, and where they're really good at to promote that.

You know, I think that PMI, we PMI can really be a unifying factor in the world and actually is a unifying factor factor, you know, across all product professionals and, and I, I see this as a, a part of my own mission in life, if you will.

Fantastic.

And, you know, I reflect back on my own kind of journey through leadership and I can probably think in my mind, there's probably, you know, 3 or 4 key moments where I'd say something happened, usually not something that's planned, right?

Something happened as a surprise, which I had to deal with.

And it could be an opportunity, it could have been a challenge, but something's happened.

And it's kind of shaped my whole approach to leadership.

And you know what I believe in and so on.

I guess that's something that all leaders go through these, these pivotal moments.

Are there any that stand out on your journey that have shaped your own approach to to leadership?

So you have those moments when you are outside of your comfort zone and this is when you, you learn, right?

There's, I mean, there's a, an old say that anything doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.

And I, I think nothing is more true than that.

It's, it's just you have to develop the resilience when things are going really wrong to remember that and that, you know, you fight and then one day the sun will rise again and you'll be in a better shape.

And it's in these curves, right, that you have the opportunities to improve more than in the straight lines.

So I had moments in my career, of course, where I had to step up, you know, and the pandemic, for instance, five years ago taught me a great deal, as I think it taught us, many of us a great deal.

You know, it helped me become more resilient.

Also, you know, I have a tendency to be very calm when in situations of danger.

I, I don't know why, but it's always been like that, even when I was a child.

So that actually helped me And, and I, you know, I think that if you communicate with, with determination and calm when things are really not good, while still being able to make tough decisions, that actually makes field people safe or safer.

Like they feel they have a, a strong leadership and, and it calms them down as well, right.

And that's what you need when those situations arise.

I've had also like a totally different level, you know, when I, when I started, when I moved from running one specific business to running several businesses, either because I was running a conglomerate of different companies like which with like a limited synergies between them or because I moved from a running a business in one country to running businesses in multiple countries.

This was a tough step for me to be honest.

Like I, that happened to me the first time about 25 years ago.

And the first time that happened to me for a while, for a year, a year and a half, I had no clue what to do right.

I didn't know what my job was, if I was supposed to be involved in the details or not at all involved.

And it's only after some practise that you understand how to do both, right.

So being involved sufficiently hands on and the same time giving a lot of autonomy and, and focusing on the, the choice of the people you have and, and the dynamics of the teams, not on execution, right, but be quite involved in the details of the design and, and direction and strategy and you know, that kind of stuff.

Look, we've had moments, at least people of my generations, where we saw things go up and down very quickly.

You know, we had this first Internet bubble.

I mentioned my first year old was at the at the time when the bubble was was getting bigger and then it exploded.

So we all had to go through that very interesting period where stuff was crazy and suddenly a disaster.

And it kind of shaped my sense of heightened sense of risk, you know, when things go too well.

So I've kept that, you know, and, and when things go well, I know that it's temporary.

And I try to make sure that nobody remains complacent.

People find me nicer when times are tough than when they're not.

And because when they're not is when I, I feel on the edge almost that something is going to happen.

And we know that, you know, trees never grow to the sky as we say in French.

And at one point things will not be as good, right.

So, and then personal things, you know, when I moved to the US 12 years ago, a bit more than 12 years ago, I came here because we in the company I was running at the time, we had made a big acquisition and, and we had some integration issues in the US, which was by far our largest market.

So I moved to the US to fix that, and I thought I would say 2-3, four years and then see I'm still here and I change companies.

My life has actually evolved.

But when I moved, although I knew the US culture very well, I had worked for U.S.

companies before and I had had US teams before.

It is still different, right?

It's a big adjustment.

I worked in Italy for a while.

I learned the language and I found it not so difficult.

But the US is actually a slightly bigger stretch, at least for someone who grew up in Europe.

And so, you know, it forced me to adjust.

And I do remember my first years were not easy.

The first two years business was not easy.

I came because we had problems.

And indeed, we did have problems.

We had a very quick decline of our largest client.

And then, you know, I found ways to overcome that, you know, with another massive client later in the tech industry.

But I, I was really not enjoying myself.

And I do remember one day walking in the streets of Manhattan to the subway so early in the morning.

And it was some, I don't know, sometime in spring and and it was amazing around me, right?

And I felt I'm so privileged, in fact, to be here.

So I have to enjoy myself more because if I don't, then I would make everyone miserable as I am miserable.

And I think, you know, I don't know if it's the reason, but from there things started to go much better.

And, you know, it's also a lesson I learned, right?

When things are not easy, try to enjoy yourself a little more and, and, and that will help, right?

It will help your environment.

Yeah.

I think it's very good advice.

Interesting your point around being calm in a crisis is is well made.

I, I, I always say to that to my team.

I said the day when you see me panic, everybody should be worried.

I said, because, because then was really got something to worry about.

I said, but probably you'll never see that because, you know, I think it's part of our job as as leaders, isn't it, which is to hold steady in times of, of, of turbulence.

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Because when projects succeed, society benefits.

We haven't talked a lot about the project profession yet and given that an area we are both passionate about, we should probably spend a bit of time on that.

There's a lot going on.

I wonder if you might give us a sense of what you think the current project landscape is and and in particular how individuals and organisations should be adapting to the changing world around us.

I still believe that it's almost a no brainer of the project economy as we call it.

So let's say 1/3 of the global economy is is growing faster than the global GDP because the need for transformation is constant and in fact accelerating, right?

We have of course climate emergency because it's not because you're looking the other way that the problem goes away, right.

So the emergency is here, AI transformation obviously and technology disruptions.

You, you see also an increased fragmentation in many areas, right?

I mean, it started with digital media that created so much fragmentation of commerce, of advertising, of media, you know, so everything has started to fragment that way.

But the consequence of that is that it made it easier for small businesses to succeed in areas that before where very protected for large players, right?

So the, the benefits of skill are not as obvious as they used to be.

And, and, and you need to fight constantly against new players and, and even definitions of your markets that are getting more blurred, right?

So it's puts a lot of pressure, a lot of stress and it drives, of course, a lot of transformation.

That's the right side for project professionals, right?

So we're we're seeing a lot of demand.

And now, of course, with the world geopolitical reconfiguration that we're attending at one point, of course things will stabilise one way or another and, and investments would be made to adjust to this new reality.

Right now, people are still waiting to see what's going to happen because it's not very clear.

But once it will get more clear, there will be also, I think a significant amount of investment that will come from from that reconfiguration.

So I feel there's a, a big way to ride for project professionals.

But obviously, and we might want to talk about that the profession is changing and definitely we will see project professionals being successful in their career if they have more than just project management skills, right?

They have to, I mean the technical skills, if you will not very technical, but the the traditional skills of project professionals in execution are table stakes.

But to succeed you, we need much more than that business acumen, ability to communicate, to convince stakeholders, and really to go beyond the strict definition of project management.

Yeah, I I think that's true.

I was having a conversation actually just earlier today about the the blurry lines, if you like, between different professions.

So as an example, you take project management and product management and change management.

You know, there are, you know, interdependencies between all of those, but but actually they are all, you know, things in their own right.

But actually a really effective project professional has that kind of wider set of skills and experiences to be able to draw from, including in the, as you say, in the leadership space as well.

So I think it's a a point well made.

One of the things, Pierre, that you've introduced PMI is the more framework initiative, which I think it's encouraging project professionals to rethink their roles and in particular to redefine success.

It's something we're talking a lot about at APM as well.

I'm really interested if you tell us a bit more about that and in particular the impact that you think that will have.

Yeah, more, or we call it sometimes MORE because it's an acronym is, is simply a broader vision for the profession and, and what it can accomplish.

So we, when I joined, we redefined our purpose, our strategy and, and, and, and one thing that we, we tried to make clear is that we were more interested in project success than just project management success.

So we launched this largest research in PMS history.

We formed a group of experts from the academia practitioner C-Suite, interviewed in depth 150 people and then went on with a survey of 10,000 people.

And, and, and so talking about their projects and, and also redefining what is project success, right?

Where we came up with this definition of project success being that value successful projects deliver value that is worth the effort and expense.

So this idea of a continuum and an equation, right?

You it's always about fighting waste, trying to focus on the value that you deliver.

This is a little uncomfortable.

So because, well, some people will say, we've always said that, although it's not necessarily true, but but it's also a little bit uncomfortable because it puts the project professionals in a situation of being accountable for stuff that they don't fully control.

But you know, as Aceo Adam, that unfortunately or fortunately, we are all the time and the C-Suite is all the time responsible for things that they are not fully in control of.

You know, that's part of life when you want to elevate yourself.

So you still have to accept that risk and and still do something and influence and try to really focus on the long term and the short term execution as well.

So all this tension is complicated, but you know, it does add and that's also uncomfortable perception to hard facts, right?

It's not just about the triple constraints.

Measuring to a business gaze, measuring to a scope, measuring to a budget, measuring to a schedule is way beyond that.

It's managing the perception of stakeholders, you know, not just by the way, understanding the perception they have, but shaping it right and, and and convincing people because in the end, perception is also reality.

It it's, it's about also this ability to constantly reassess, you know, the value that you deliver.

Be flexible with mandates, not necessarily execute something that doesn't make any sense and brought in a broader way.

And that's the E of more right?

Expand your, the context in which you operate, right?

See projects in the broader business and, and even world context as much as possible.

So yeah, that is the broader vision we have the mindset that we think can have a major impact first of all on making projects more successful, but also on elevating the profession and getting more recognition and and more influence.

And that has LED us by the way to expand the boundaries of PMI.

So you mentioned before areas that are adjacent, you know, when we made this acquisition of Cognitica and AI integrated the Agile Alliance, the project measures without bother acquired PMOGA, etcetera, etcetera.

So you know that's how this materialises in what PMI does.

But the bigger picture and the most important thing is this broader vision we have for the profession.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And the thing about value as well in this often in the conversations I have here, Pierre, is this, this idea that sometimes the value that you create isn't the, is unintended, It's it, it wasn't in the business case, you know, and that's because the context can change so much that sometimes you, you don't deliver the value that you you intended, but you do deliver some of the value that was unintentional.

And so trying to then articulate the extent to which something was, you know, as, as you say, worth the time and, and expense, that's something which can be a long term endeavour.

You know, sometimes it could be decades after you finish something to really be able to say for sure with that Longview back.

You know, if we were back twenty, 30-40 years ago making that same decision again, yes, it would be worthwhile.

Despite all of the pain and whatever else we've been through, it would still make sense to do it.

Yeah.

And and by the way, Adam, in reality we, we understand that depending on the type of project, sometimes it's very difficult to to be fully in charge of the success if it's a very long term success, right.

We understand that it's it's not the same if you manage an internal IT project or a very large government LED infrastructure project.

But still, there's always a way to think about more right?

How you manage perceptions, how you maybe try as much as possible, stretch as much as you can, your ability to change the parameters of the project, when the projects parameters should be changed in the in the interest of the community you serve.

And that's the kind of business agility point that you're making it a small like a small like agility there.

But but you know, the point I was going to make is that I think for for those larger organisations and government funded projects, you know, publicly funded projects, I think they are probably the best placed to be able to take that Longview back sometimes.

But I, my hunch is that they don't really want to do that because, you know, the priority is what's happening today and tomorrow, not what happened 30 years ago or something.

But, but probably there is some value in, in, in doing that by, by the way as well.

I, I, they have this great expression in the Netherlands where I'm sure you will have heard this before, which is where they describe a situation where a project delivers into the triple constraint.

You know, it delivers, you know, on time, within budget and so on, but actually delivers none of the benefits that were intended because the, because the world has moved on.

The classic being an IT project, for example, where everything was delivered on time, but it's not needed anymore.

And the, the, the expression they use is the operation was successful, that the patient is dead, which which which always makes me laugh, you know, but it's, it's, it's, it describes a number of projects that I've seen, certainly.

It's a good summary and in a very Dutch form of humour.

Absolutely.

Well, well, let's talk about the future.

What do you think is going to happen over the next decade in terms of the evolution of the project profession?

And you know, what should you know, PMI and APM, what should we be doing as, as, as professional bodies to help shape that future or prepare the profession for what's coming?

You know, I know that.

I know that crystal ball.

I don't even know how the world would be in one year from now.

But one thing that I think is a safe bet for us, at least it's a bet that we made at PMI, is that AI will transform the knowledge economy in in a significant way.

So it's not just project management, right?

It's, it's broader than that.

It's the whole knowledge work, which is, I don't know, 1 billion people in the world and most of the jobs that our audience today are involved in.

And so that transformation coming from AI, of course, generates a lot of anxiety.

It's not the first time that we have these disturbing moments right in the history of humanity.

And I love to take the examples of when, you know, Galileo discovered that the Earth was not the centre of the universe.

That's was a very disrupting thought and disturbing thought for for humans, You know, when Darwin established that, you know, in fact, the man was an evolution from and the animal, right.

We're not particularly exceptional when Freud discovered that we don't fully control consciously our acts, right?

It's, it's, it's those moments of questioning about the, the sense of humanity and what does it mean to be human?

And now with AI, we have the same thing, right?

So it's like, why are we even here if a machine can do a better job than us at many things?

And it's definitely disturbing, but we've always adapted in the past, right.

So I'm sort of betting on the fact that we would be able to adapt to that reality as well.

It does mean that we need to elevate the ceiling, right?

Because I was talking about elevating the floor and the ceiling AI is going to elevate the floor like the most of the executional task of project management will be automated.

So the question for us is how do we elevate the ceiling?

How do we elevate the profession to a level where it does things that AI won't do?

And a good example of that is accountability in particular, right?

In the end, someone has to be accountable.

It's hard to make a machine accountable.

Like someone has to be accountable.

So if we refuse accountability, including of things that we don't fully control, then it's going to be hard for us to elevate the ceiling and we'd be caught up by the floor, right?

Raising, right.

So definitely for us, a PMPMI, we have to help project professionals to elevate their role.

Yeah, that makes, that makes good sense.

Now one of the things in the UKI talk about a lot is the kind of image problem, if that's the right expression that the project profession has.

And, and I'm particularly thinking of those who are in senior C-Suite roles, probably not in project delivery organisations, but I'm, I'm thinking more broadly where the project profession is seen as a, I don't know, a technical function or a backroom function.

It's not seen as a strategic function.

It's not seen as relevant to leadership or strategy execution.

My personal view is that it is relevant.

Is that just the UK thing?

Is that something you're seeing in the US and, and globally from your, you know, PMI context and your, your own kind of world travels?

No, I, I don't think it's a, it's AUK thing at all.

It's global and, and, and frankly, I don't think project professionals are the only ones who complain about that.

Like, I've been working for different professions in my life and I sort of felt that any profession feels at one point that it's not recognised enough, right?

But yes, definitely this is a very common feeling across our profession and actually even a driving force of our project success work and our more framework at PMI.

It's precisely to elevate the profession so that it gets more or better recognised.

You know, one thing that I read, sometimes people are asking me or you to make sure that project professionals have a seat in the C-Suite, that we create chief project officers positions and things like that.

Asking for it in itself won't work, right?

We, we have to be realistic with that to gain recognition as a profession, we need to expand our impact, right and accountability.

We need to speak the language of the C-Suite.

We have to think about business imperatives behind the projects that we need.

We have to connect to strategy.

We have to really create the positive impact for the organisations that we work for.

And then yes, of course, PMI and APM can advocate and we should advocate.

But in the end, the C-Suite execs need to see a change, an improvement in the value they get from project professionals and then naturally they would recognise the profession even more.

By the way, just to be clear, in some industries this problem doesn't fully exist, right?

People who manage big programmes in the military or infrastructure, you know, they are well recognised.

But it's true that in some other areas where they are more involved in internal projects and things that may not be at the same level of at the same stake maybe or don't have the same stake, there's sometimes this recognition problem.

But again, if we stick to execution reporting, we won't be able to elevate the ceiling and, and and get the impact that we should have.

And, and then it's getting more difficult to be recognised as well.

It's a two way St.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And so, so it's, it's action, not just words that you're advocating for that I agree with that.

And interesting.

The words are a problem, aren't they, that you mentioned the terminology.

I, I, I, I, I've sometimes had conversations with CEOs, C-Suite and so on.

And, and I see that as soon as I talk about project management, I see the shutters come down, you know, but if I have exactly the same conversation, but I replace the words project management with strategy execution, and I could say exactly the same thing, they're interested.

So that kind of, as you say, talk the language of the C-Suite is important.

Yeah, I mean, not, not all.

I mean, I don't know if all project management is strategy execution, but I think if we talk about projects, if we talk about transformation, if we talk about project professionals, you know, we're fine.

In the end, I don't think the C-Suite has anything against project management, but they do sometimes associate project management or project managers with stuff that is not in their own focus, right?

It's like, OK, people have to do that probably, but that's not my problem.

Because they don't see that transformation is at stake here.

Like it's not going to happen.

Their whole strategy is not going to be executed.

The whole transformation ideas and vision won't be executed if the projects are not successful.

And that they all understand that.

They all understand that projects have to be successful.

Now, if they see people who can actually help, they'll like these people.

Recognition won't be an issue at all, right?

So it's all about what you actually deliver.

I think I read in APMI, I'm pretty sure it was APMI report around the kind of global shortage of the number of project professionals that are going to be needed and and from memory I think the number was 25,000,000 by 20-30.

I'm sure you'll correct me if I've got that wrong, but but the point is we, we don't have anywhere near the number of project professionals that we're going to need.

What do you think APM and PMI need to be doing to make our profession more attractive, make it more inclusive to kind of get this volume and calibre of people that we're going to need to deliver on the world's kind of global ambitions?

Yeah.

We actually just reset the number of those numbers, right, that you mentioned before.

Yeah, because we, we thought we should as part of our strategy, refocus on people who are really doing project work, project work as a, as a, their main professional activity, right.

So not, not people who need some project management abilities or skills to do their jobs, but people who actually do project work most of their time in their professional life.

So we narrow down to about 40 million people in the world.

And so by definition, we'd need a little less in terms of growth, but there would be more, there would be actually people who do project work.

There's still a, a, a good, a good need for, you know, new people because in particular in some of the most mature markets like the US or the UK, we have people also retiring and they need to be replaced.

And again, the project economy is growing faster than than than the global GDP, right.

So there's a a lot of work here that would be, would have to be done and, and that requires people to do it.

And, and of of course, there's always the risk that if we can't elevate the profession, then that work would be done by other people like consultants or, you know, people who not necessarily have the skills to actually manage properly a project.

So it's very important that we attract people to the profession, just like you said, you know, in my opinion, part of the issue is the way we talk about the profession.

If you talk to a student about project management or being a project manager, they might be mightily excited, not necessarily negative, but mightily excited by that.

But if you talk about projects, they get very excited when they see the examples of things that actually transform the world.

They get very excited by that.

So talking about project management as a calling, the ability to affect real change, to elevate our world, how you can affect positively economies, communities, your country, a certain activity that you have passion for.

That's how you get people to project.

And if they come to projects, then of course they understand that if you want to make a project successful, you have to learn how to do that.

And that's exactly what is project management.

I also believe that expanding the industries that we we talked to and we address can play an interesting role.

So at PMI, we've really started to put more emphasis on industries outside of the, you know, traditional software, construction, utilities, etcetera.

So we now work a lot with companies in marketing and fashion, in music, you know, where a lot of project success is necessary as well.

And, and that also makes the profession a little more sexy, right?

And gives a different face to project professionals.

And that works.

You know, we talk to them on TikTok, we talk to them on Instagram.

So we meet people where they are and in a way that I feel is compelling.

And you know, frankly, we have a lot of programmes, I'm sure you do as well for young professionals.

And I see very excited young professionals who have big ambitions to change the world and own the future of the world and take it from our generation and and that's exciting to see.

Final question for me, if I may, Pierre, there'll be lots of people who are very enthused by what you've had to say today and you've got this opportunity to give them a piece of advice.

What would you say to project professionals they could be at any stage in their career?

What one piece of advice would Pierre Le Man from PMI give to these project professionals?

Well, first of all, don't stop learning.

It it, it is a constant.

We learn every single day.

We have to keep learning.

You have to learn techniques.

It's not just about doing leadership training.

And you know, you have to learn all the techniques and understand how AI is shipping all of that.

You know, at PMI, we have a tonne of resources.

I'm sure you do as well at 8:00 PM.

So keep learning.

I think it's very important to attend events in person events virtual as well, but in person it's so important meeting your peers, learn from them, network, connect, give back to our profession.

You know, sometimes when it's six, 7:00 PM and I have some event like I feel I don't know if I want to go.

I'm not done with work, I'm tired.

But then you go and the moment you're there talking to other people, learning from them, giving back, you don't regret, right?

So make that effort.

It's so important.

And then?

Just one very simple thing, be ambitious and be confident.

Be confident that as a profession, as professionals, we can do more and it really depends on us well.

I think they are very sound words of wisdom.

I've written them down myself, Pierre.

Well, look, I think that's all we've got time for today.

Pierre, thank you so much for giving up the time and talking to us today.

It's a pleasure talking to you and I'll see you soon.

Thank you, Adam.

Thank you very much.

Thanks to Adam and Pierre for taking time out to share their conversation with the APM Podcast.

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