On Friday 6 November, I shared knowledge with my local PMI Chapter in the Netherlands. The topic was: Risk Management and it was a really lively and interactive session with 69 attendees. This was their highest attended session in 2020!

Topics covered:

I created brand new content for this session and spoke about how you can handle Risk during a pandemic and what are the important skills for a Project Manager at this time. I tried to ensure that we had a great platform for sharing knowledge so regularly stopped to answer and pose questions to the attendees. It was a really valuable source of knowledge and being able to see what works for others/ what tools people are using and how they are managing risk at the moment.

I also discussed how we have previously done Risk Management and why this has changed in the past 6 months. I also showed them ways that they could manage and reorientate the discussion around Risk in their organisations.

Questions asked:

I was very fortunate as a speaker to have such an engaged community attending! Here’s a summary of some of the questions asked:

• Risk is often seen as a negative thing. How can you change this perception?
  • It has to be a repeated effort to change the dialogue around Risk Management and Risk in general. Risk should be embraced as part of our daily working life and this means demystifying what Risk is in your organisation.
• What can we do to encourage our teams to be more proactive around risk?
  • I would recommend looking at bringing Risk into the daily /weekly discussions. Encourage them to ‘own’ Risk in their subject area and also that you will thank them for bringing Risks/issues to your attention
• What tools are the best tools to use for Risk Management Workshops?
  • Tooling is a difficult one because there are so many factors (such as security in your organisation, approved tooling etc). I would strongly recommend looking more at the activities that you’re doing with your team to keep them engaged and the time that you’re trying to spend on it. Workshops are not 2hour events anymore. You can use breakout rooms or shorter more focused sessions to focus on risk.
• How can I keep my team engaged virtually?
  • The important thing about engaging teams is keeping interactions: short, valuable and meaningful. I try to keep things short and focused as this can help with maintaining peoples concentration levels.
• Have you seen how onboarding of new colleagues has worked during Corona?
  • Yes, I’ve seen this in a few peer organisations and companies and it is working well but it is definitely more effort intensive than an onsite ramp up. A few ideas for success:
    • Assign a buddy to new hires to help and connect with them
    • Daily check ins with the new hire
    • Dedicated time with IT for ensuring access to softwares etc.
    • Virtual team meetings and introductions with videos

Important Lessons Learned

Here are some of the valuable take aways that I have from the session:

• The importance of training on tools and new technology is critical to the success
• Virtual working is here to stay but how to manage teams effectively is still an unknown for some
• Digital Transformation is ongoing and it’s changing rapidly
• Project Managers are proactively trying to develop and improve their knowledge (a massive positive to see!)

If you’d like to discuss more about Risk Management, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me!