On May 14th I had the great pleasure and honor to be part of the Emirates Group PM Forum 2018.
A forum where Emirates Group celebrate their best projects over the past year, and at the same time set the scene for continuous improvement by inviting interesting speakers to the stage, and in a panel debating important topics for project management.
This year the main theme was “Project leaders as entrepreneurs,” so clearly a relevant first speaker choice was Mr. Mudassir Sheikha, co-founder and CEO at Careem. It was very interesting and engaging to hear him talk about how Careem manages to focus on the people, on being agile and on entrepreneurship while continuously growing in a competitive market.
The second external speaker was Her Excellency Sarah bint Yousif Al Amiri, Minister of State for Advanced Sciences sharing her insights and thoughts regarding the future of the UAE, and how entrepreneurship, innovation, science and of course good project management and agility can help reach the goals set by Government.
After the calibre of speakers on stage I felt very honored to be part of the panel discussions. Besides me, in the panel was Her Excellency Sarah bint Yousif Al Amiri, Christoph Mueller, Chief Digital and Innovation Officer at Emirates Group and Gary Chapman, President of Group Services & dnata, Emirates Group.
Before the forum, the panel moderator had asked project managers and participants to prepare questions for the panel, and at the same time during the discussions the attendees had an opportunity to add more questions. This allowed a very open and enjoyable debate. The main topic was still entrepreneurship, but we also managed to discuss important topics like agility in big corporations, the focus of fun in project teams and collaboration across divisions. On top of this, Her Excellency Sarah bint Yousif Al Amiri shared her thoughts about the National Advanced Science agenda 2031, and how companies like Emirates can support that vision.
After the forum I had been asked to conduct a workshop for interested project managers about how to apply an agile mindset in PMI / classic project framework. It was a fun and
interesting afternoon with a great debate about agile values and about how ‘you’ with the right agile mindset can improve your projects – despite the process or framework you are following, and not only for projects, but in your everyday work.
The presentation from the workshop is available here: Emirates Airline – Workshop – Agility in PMI
All in all, it was a great day at Emirates HQ, and I thank all involved for letting me be part of their forum, and of course for their appreciation. I couldn’t be happier with my very own signed aeroplane.