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This interview with Samad Aidane was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2013 North America in New Orleans.

Cultural intelligence, the ability to adapt to new cultural contexts, is becoming an increasingly important skill for project leaders. Our interview with Samad Aidane (http://www.neurofrontier.com/) will give you an understanding of the key insights emerging from cultural neuroscience research and their application to leading global projects and designing culturally sensitive change initiatives that stick.

We begin our interview with the question of what neuroscience has to do with project management and leadership, and how this understanding will help you in your daily project challenges. Then we discuss how culture impacts how we think & act and how this relates to the team members working on our projects. We close the discussion with several tips from Samad in regards to how you can use the results from this neuroscience research to improve your project successes starting today.

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This episode is sponsored by The Agile PrepCast for The PMI-ACP Exam:

This interview with Jesse Fewell was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2013 North America in New Orleans.

In this follow-up interview with Jesse Fewel (http://jessefewell.com) we talk about two recent publications that he worked on. One is "big" and he was a co-author and the other is "small" and he is both author and publisher.

We begin with the "big" one, which is the Software Extension to the PMBOK® Guide Fifth Edition. This PMI reference work brings together the project management approaches from the PMBOK Guide with adaptive approaches such as agile that are more commonly used in software development. We look at how it was developed and what it means for those managing software development projects. Remember, we're not talking about project management software, but about making software, so IT-led and software development projects.

Then we move on to the "small" book that Jesse wrote and self-published called "Can You Hear Me Now?". This mini-book fits into the palm of your hand and is a fast read. It walks you through tips and benefits for working with people outside your office. The book is the synthesis of researching today’s trends, together with personal stories from his colleagues and his own experiences of working abroad.

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This episode is sponsored by The Agile PrepCast for The PMI-ACP Exam:

This interview with Jesse Fewell was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2013 North America in New Orleans.

One of the stereotypes for agile approaches is that they only work for small projects. Ten or 15 years ago, that might have been the case, but things are vastly different today.

In this interview with Jesse Fewell (http://jessefewell.com/) we discuss how Agile techniques now are used as part of day-to-day project operations, from the largest telecom in Europe to the largest DotCom in the United Kingdom. But how does self-organization work for a thousand people? How can you possibly run a large program without any documentation or architecture? Jesse Fewell gives us the answers by looking at recent trends as well as actionable tips for growing out of small agile to big agile.

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This episode is sponsored by The Agile PrepCast for The PMI-ACP Exam:

This interview with Stephen Townsend was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2013 North America in New Orleans.

Every project introduces change to the performing organization. It is therefore no surprise, that change management is a concept that we project managers have to embrace and master. PMI's latest publication "Managing Change in Organizations: A Practice Guide" helps us project managers learn more about and apply best practices from this field.

Stephen Townsend (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/steve-townsend/5/886/340) is the Director for Global Alliances & Networks with PMI and we met up with him to learn more about the Practice Guide. We learn why and for whom it was developed. We discuss the basics of change management and then look at the characteristics of change management at the portfolio-, program- and project level. And we close the interview with Stephen's recommendations for the #1 thing that you need to apply on your projects in regards to change management.

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• Last updated on 06 March 2020.