Dinner Speech at PMAF Congress, Helsinki, part 2

PMAF Congress Dinner Speech: We suggest that you begin with Part 1 of this post.  It includes a summary of points made at the Dinner meeting of the PMAF (Project Management Association Finland) national congress.

3. Highlights of IPMA Services and Product

The IPMA Competence Baseline, ICB, is the foundation for advanced application of the practice of project management. It is our profession’s key to moving beyond tested knowledge, to demonstrate competence and business results. And it uniquely focuses not just on technical aspects of project management, but the essential ingredients of success. Our followers know our position on this: the interpersonal skills and contextual savvy it takes to achieve project success.

That said, our 4-L-C, advanced Four-Level Certification system, assesses and recognizes demonstrated competences. And, not just for one role, but for increasingly higher levels or roles. Those include:

  • Certified Project Manager
  • Certified Senior Project Manager
  • Program Manager
  • Senior Program Manager and
  • Projects Director

While recognizing individuals who produce results is smart, we don’t stop there. Successful project teams are the most valuable talent in any project oriented organization. Our Project Excellence Awards program recognizes the world’s most effective project teams. We participate in a rigorous evaluation, where independent, professional assessors evaluate both PM processes and business results. Successful teams can benchmark their performance against other winners, and further improve their results.

Highlighting IPMA-Delta

At the organization level, IPMA Delta assesses the strengths and areas for improvement of the entire organization. This helps Member Associations to grow stronger relationships with their corporate members. It also helps them to attract new ones, as they see the value in smarter use of their performance improvement funds. And, IPMA Delta helps participating enterprises in their marketing, offering a unique certification of the enterprise’s level of project maturity.

These three services or products, target individuals, project teams, and entire organizations. They all apply the same concepts and approaches; and they are just part of our services. We also offer an academic journal, the International Journal of Project Management. There exist a variety of IPMA’s opportunities in education and training, in research, and for young project managers, such as with our Young Crew program. You can learn more about these at the IPMA website, https://ipma.world.

4. The Importance of International Networks to PMAF and its Members

This Finland was an insightful experience; we have thinned already-mentioned portions, and summarize the list:

  • Global perspective and reach
  • Global contacts
  • Rich cross-cultural experiences
  • Benchmarking, gaining insights from others
  • Increased visibility for your achievements
  • And for some, an opportunity to be become an ambassador to the World of PM. This a reference to Matti Ahvenharju, who was immediately after the event, enroute to Beijing for the PMRC, IPMA-China Congress.

5. PMAF’s Role in the IPMA Family Network

Here we made some bold, yet truthful assertions. We pointed out that PMAF enjoys some of the greatest Thought Leaders in PM. This is true both within the IPMA family, and in the world of PM. Their work with Corporate Memberships, the stellar Project Perspectives magazine (thank you Kalle!), and the strategic thinking their leadership team brings to IPMA are just a few examples.

We mentioned the way PMAF leads by example, including some of IPMA’s best-managed events. This event had over 1000 participants, and their 2009 IPMA World Congress was one of our best in recent years. Their dedicated and expert certification assessors is a world-class exemplary certification program. Their membership strength is increasing, even in a difficult economy, a shining example to us all. And of course, PMAF brings a unique Nordic culture and style to IPMA.

6. What IPMA Would Like To Be in the Future

As part of our PMAF Congress Dinner Speech, we began with a play on words, caused by something PMAF President Heikki said over our welcome-to-Finland dinner. We heard, as he was discussing his vision for IPMA, “that IPMA can be greater than some of our parts.” Blame it on jet-lag, but we pressed for clarification. In his reply, it was clear that he meant that his vision is for us to “be greater than the sum of our parts.” An interesting insight from this discussion is that many other organizations are more the former than the latter.

To achieve Heikki’s and our own vision, we cited the following role for IPMA, today and in the future:

  • Key resource in organizational and societal change for the better
  • The Executive and Manager’s force for implementation of strategy
  • Recognized as the competence thought leader of PM
  • The clear leader in advanced professional PM qualifications

PMAF Congress Dinner Speech: All of this in one 15 minute, spirited dinner speech. Thank you PMAF! As a closing comment, we congratulated PMAF as the only IPMA organization that can say you successfully Finnish your projects!

Your Comments?