April 2020 | Building the skills of the resilient project team presented by Jonathan Norman

Whilst many project organizations focus effort on lessons learned and avoiding past mistakes, a resilient project organization is one that is based on equipping its project teams to learn for the future.

In this session I will explore the following:

• Learn from the past, present, and future. The key factors that enable assimilating the lessons of the past, learning ‘in the now’ and building resilience.
• Create a Rhythm for Knowledge Sharing. The analogy of the Drum Kit for project communications.
• Build a Network of Brokers. The role of key individuals in influencing behaviour and encouraging learning.
• Add Social to Your Organization’s Routines. How social learning can be added to the mix.
• Create Tools for Immediate Sharing. Tools and techniques to support immediate knowledge gaps.
• Build Resilience. Future-focused activities to build project and team resilience.

The mix of models, ideas, and techniques should provide you with food for thought as well as actions and activities with which you can experiment and then adopt or adapt to your own project environment.

Jonathan Norman manages the Major Projects Knowledge Hub on behalf of the Major Projects Association.

After 30 years as a business book publisher, during which he published a number of ‘milestone’ titles on projects and programme management under the Gower imprint, and designed and launched the GPMFirst community of practice for project managers, Jonathan joined the Major Projects Association in 2017.

Since then he has been responsible for managing the knowledge repository, designing and developing a series of activities, events and processes to facilitate knowledge sharing. Working with Association members who are managing a number of the UK’s largest and most high-profile projects has given him a rich experience of the challenges of knowledge sharing in projects and a platform to experiment with a range of tools and techniques for addressing both explicit and tacit knowledge; effectively, the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of major project management.

Slide #9: Build Your Network of Brokers
Ref: Katrina Pugh–Sharing Hidden Know-How: How Managers Solve Thorny Problems with
the Knowledge Jam: link

Slide #13: The World After Midnight
Ref: Eddie Obeng: link

Slide #18: Project Resilience
Ref: Elmar Kutsch–The Art of Organizational Resilience: Revisiting the Fall of France in 1940: link

Slide #19: Intelligent Disobedience
Ref: Bob McGannon–Intelligent Disobedience: The Difference Between Good and Great Leaders: link

Slide #20: Red Teaming
Ref: Bryce G. Hoffman-Red Teaming: How Your Business Can Conquer the Competition by Challenging Everything: link