PMI Houston Galleria: "AI – Use Cases Benefitting Project Managers"

Pre-Dinner Presentation:  Leverage Behavior Management to Increase Your Project Management Leadership Effectiveness

Paul Fjelsta

Over forty years of consulting, Paul has assisted Fortune 1000 clients measurably improve quality, costs, and productivity through development and delivery of major change programs focused on business process improvement and management, business-driven technology deployment, and leadership development.

Paul’s journey began in the 1980’s with a focus on applying Deming and Japanese TQC methodologies. In the ‘90s, Paul joined The Rummler-Brache Group (RBG) delivering engagements utilizing RBG’s Best Practice Business Process Improvement & Management methodology (clients included 3M, Applied Materials, Brown & Root, Cargill, Chevron, Citibank, Haliburton, H-P, Imation, Kraft Foods, US Intelligence Community, and Toyota).

Paul launched accomplir®, Inc. in 2003 to develop next-generation improvement toolsets integrating Behavior Science into process improvement and IT / digital deployment methodologies. Over the last fifteen years, these toolsets have been used in numerous engagements to improve change initiative people-dimension outcomes, results and ROI.

Topic Synopsis:

Decades of research show that the majority of improvement initiatives fail to meet performance expectations. We believe this performance expectation disconnect occurs because:

• lack of leadership involvement and ongoing, effective engagement, and
• specific desired behavior changes are not adequately identified and prioritized.

Typically, we see organizations speaking about behavior in a generalized manner. They use “behavioral” clichés and general behavioral statements and do not define specific, pinpointed leader and performer desired behaviors.

Behavior Management (Behavior is defined as “what I say or do”) complements Change Management’s focus on people’s thoughts, feelings, and attitudes. It is Behavior Management that has the most immediate impact and lasting effect on behavior change and sustainability by:

• Pinpointing desired behaviors; specified behaviors are observable and measurable
• Incorporating positive, reinforcing Consequences into leadership behaviors and the management systems / rhythms, thus
• Emphasizing that behavioral data and dialogue are the most effective levers for accelerating and sustaining behavior change

We have demonstrated that engagements leading with Behavior Management and supported by Change Management dramatically improve user change acceptance and yield more sustainable results, especially in white-collar, technical, service, and professional environments.

accomplir® has pioneered next-generation improvement toolsets by embedding key Behavior Management concepts into Lean Sigma, Business Process Management, and technology deployment methodologies. Refining these toolsets in numerous change initiatives over the last fifteen years, has enabled us to:

• Effectively drive business ownership of the change.
• Explicitly identify, specify, and prioritize desired behaviors for both performers and leaders
• Increase Leaders’ active involvement and accountability for sustaining behavior-change
• Achieve a 90%+ behavior change success rate across an array of PEX/OE and technology deployments

Incorporating Behavior Management into your Change Management strategy will allow you to fully develop and leverage your people-centric, human-side change capabilities.

This presentation takes a practitioner’s viewpoint focusing on Behavior Management key concepts and selected tools applicable to both the participants’ personal PM leadership behaviors as well as their change initiative project management roles and responsibilities.

Learning Objectives:

1. Learn the essentials of Behavior Management and the importance of (1) pinpointing behavior and (2) providing positive consequences and feedback to accelerate and sustain behavior change

2. How to pinpoint and activate their personal leadership development priorities

3. How to more effectively engage Key Leaders throughout all project phases

4. Understand what the key accomplir® Integrated Methodology tools used in a change initiative project context

PDU Triangle: 

     

Dinner Presentation: AI – Use Cases Benefitting Project Managers

Peter Contreras

Peter Contreras has over 25 years of success in delivering complex IT and Business Process projects throughout Latin America, North America, APAC, and Europe. He obtained his PMP certification in 2006. Industries include Oil and Gas, Consumer Products, Aviation, and the Public Sector.  He is based in Houston, Texas.

 

Topic Synopsis:

Peter shares a summary of the latest on AI and offers various use cases that could benefit project managers and their stakeholders.

Participants will get a refresher on how we got to where we are in the AI journey, and then will get to deep dive into a few use cases that could benefit project managers.

Use cases involve different Large Language Models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s chatGPT4 and Microsoft’s Copilot. Remember, a name like “chatGPT” is like the “Kleenex” brand of tissues. LLM is the tissue. There, we’ve used a metaphor that statistically speaking, makes people remember concepts much better! That’s a tangent discussed in past talks given on communicating effectively, but it’s a bonus for today’s talk!

Back to the topic at hand, Peter will be supported by colleagues influential in the AI space. We will review material prepared by Mladen Milanovic, VP of Automation at Presidio, and by Michiel Lemaster, Database Administrator at Baylor College of Medicine.

Learning Objectives:

1. the various types of AI tools.

2. Use cases that are beneficial to them and their stakeholders.

3. Where to go for more information and continuous education.

PDU Triangle: