In this week’s pod, we welcomed Sunchana Johnston. We discussed why good planners are like gold dust. Originally from Croatia, Sunchana is a Chartered Program Professional, with over 25 years of experience consulting on complex transformational initiatives such as Brexit Programs in the financial industry, Fintech, EMEA telecoms, water utilities and UK civil service.

The main topics we discussed on the podcast were as follows:

• The best planners need to demonstrate a level of secrecy given the volume of information they see

• Effective planners are effective storytellers

• Focus on whether you believe a candidate has a high level of intuition when trying to fill planning vacancies

• A senior planner should be able to demonstrate management of a 40,000+ line schedule and how they were able to shape it

• It is important for planners to not own their schedules. They need to be able to quietly influence the actual owners

• The most effective storytellers when discussing Brexit showed the day in the life of a prawn from capture in Scotland to a restaurant in Spain

• Effective planners will look for the business case to understand why their project exists

• The ability to transition between industries often depends on the speed of change. IT/Finance industries are evolving constantly whereas construction and defence industries are showers to change

• Always be learning! People need to constantly improve their skillsets to make themselves more employable

• The best planners will know their worth in the market. Companies will pay well for the best employees therefore it is important not to undersell yourself

• AI is coming, this will change how planning works. The industry should embrace this

Here are links to some of the topics that were discussed:

Good Planners are like Gold Dust – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/good-project-planners-like-gold-dust-sunchana-johnston/

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Join us next week where we’re joined by Dave Snowden to discuss Project Management under conditions of inherent uncertainty.

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