Gina Abudi, MBA has 20+ years’ of experience in helping global organizations develop and
implement strategy around projects, processes and people. This includes both consulting as well
as training at global organizations. Gina is President of Abudi Consulting Group, LLC and an
adjunct faculty member at Granite State College (NH) teaching in both the Masters of Project
Management and Masters of Leadership graduate degree programs.
Gina writes a number of white papers, case studies, and articles on various management and
project management topics, which can be found on her blog: GinaAbudi.com. She is lead author
of Best Practices for Managing BPI Projects: Six Steps to Success (J Ross Publishing, 2015.) She is
a contributing author to Project Pain Reliever (J. Ross Publishing, 2011). Gina’s next book on
Organizational Change Management will be published by J Ross Publishing in the summer of
2016.
Gina received her MBA from Simmons Graduate School of Management.
Facilitating effective meetings with virtual teams takes a significant amount of preparation and leadership in order to ensure you accomplish objectives, every team member participates, and decisions can be made.
The ability to communicate with executive stakeholders in ways that works for them, utilizing a variety of communication channels, enables for you to gain the commitment and buy-in you need to be successful in launching or implementing any number of projects and initiatives within the organization. Of key importance in communicating effectively up the ladder is to have strong working relationships with executive stakeholders. Strong relationships and the ability to communicate effectively enables for you to get problems solved and drive decision making at the executive levels.
Change can occur any time, and frankly, should be a regular occurrence in any organization. In fact, nearly every organization goes through change regularly - both internal (changes in processes and procedures, new products and services, a new market, etc.) and externally (new competition, changes in the industry, loss of customers, etc.) It is, however, common to believe that change only occurs when there are problems to be solved. Too often organizations tend to react to problems that occur, therefore causing the belief that change only occurs when there is a problem that needs to be solved. Change is, essentially, making something different. It does not have to be a major difference; it could be a small, incremental difference.
Change is different now than in the past. Today, the pace, amount and complexity of change has increased due to competition and an increasingly global marketplace. Given the greater competition for new products and services to meet customer needs and the impact of the internet on businesses, organizations need to be quicker in responding to change and in launching change initiatives in order to keep ahead or abreast of the competition. To sustain change over the long term, it is essential that emotions are considered and dealt with - this only adds to the complexity of change initiatives. However, too often management staffs launch change initiatives erroneously believing that everyone in the organization understands the need for the change and is supportive of the change. That is rarely the case! The most successful change leaders share vision and long-term goals and help employees to see the value of change to the organization but, more importantly, for them as individuals.