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Back to School, Back to Learning

Thank you,

LeighAnne Martin

President, PMI Great Lakes Chapter

president@pmiglc.net

Golf Outing 2026 — More From the Course

It's PDD Season: Three Ways to Make Professional Development Actually Matter

There is something about fall that has always felt like a fresh start to me. Maybe it is a Michigan thing. The air changes, routines settle back in, and calendars that looked reasonably peaceful in August suddenly begin filling up again.

For project professionals, fall also brings another season: Professional Development Day season.

Across PMI chapters, project professionals are gathering for Professional Development Days, symposiums, workshops, and chapter events. This year, those of us in Michigan have an especially exciting opportunity with PMI Global Summit coming to Detroit. Whether you are attending a local chapter event for a day or joining project professionals from around the world at Global Summit, there is no shortage of opportunities to learn, reconnect, and step away from the daily pressure of delivering projects long enough to think about how we are doing the work.

Over the next four weeks, I'm excited that I will speak at five PMI chapters. That means I am getting a concentrated dose of PDD season, and I am reminded every time why these events matter. The formal sessions are important, of course, but some of the best learning happens in the spaces around them. It happens in the question someone asks that changes the direction of a conversation, over coffee with someone who is facing the same challenge you are, or in the hallway when a speaker says something that finally gives language to an issue you have been trying to solve.

There is one catch. Professional development creates value only when we do something with it.

Most of us have attended a conference, filled pages with notes, collected a few handouts, returned to an overflowing inbox, and gone right back to business as usual. It is not because the event was not valuable. It is because learning has to compete with meetings, deadlines, changing priorities, stakeholder requests, and all the other things waiting for us when we return.

Project professionals are usually very good at managing deliverables for everyone else. We are occasionally a little less disciplined about managing our own development.

So, as PDD season gets underway, I have been thinking about how we can make these opportunities count. Here are three practices that can turn a good professional development experience into something that continues creating value after the name badge comes off.

1. Attend with a question, not just an agenda

When we arrive at a professional development event, it is tempting to begin by studying the agenda and choosing the sessions that sound most interesting. There is nothing wrong with that, but I would suggest starting somewhere else.

Before you choose your sessions, identify something you want to get better at.

Maybe your projects are struggling with stakeholder engagement. Perhaps your organization is introducing AI, and you are trying to figure out what that means for the way projects are planned and delivered. You may be working with sponsors who are supportive at kickoff but harder to find once implementation begins. Perhaps you are preparing for a larger leadership role and want to strengthen your strategic thinking or business acumen.

Go into the event with a question you genuinely want to answer.

Once you have that question, the agenda looks different. Instead of asking, “Which sessions sound interesting?” you begin asking, “Where might I find something that helps me solve this?”

It also changes the way you listen. You are no longer trying to capture everything a speaker says. You are listening for the idea, tool, phrase, story, or example that connects with the work waiting for you when you get back.

Over the years, I have become much less interested in filling in an entire notebook at a conference. I would rather leave with a few ideas I know I will use. One practical idea applied well is more valuable than fifteen pages of notes that never leave the notebook.

That is particularly important right now because our profession continues to expand. Project professionals are being asked to understand technology, strategy, people, risk, change, data, and business outcomes, often while managing increasingly complex initiatives. No one PDD, workshop, or conference can teach us everything we need to know, and it does not need to. The goal is not to leave knowing everything. The goal is to leave better prepared for what comes next.

2. Talk to people you don't already know

I realize this advice may cause the introverts among us to reconsider attending altogether but stay with me.

One of the greatest advantages of being part of PMI is access to other people who understand project work. They know what it is like when a perfectly logical project plan encounters an organization full of actual human beings. They have worked with the difficult sponsor, the shifting scope, the new technology, the impossible deadline, and the stakeholder who somehow missed all nine previous communications.

There is an enormous amount of experience sitting in the chairs around us at a PMI event.

Yet it is surprisingly easy to attend a conference with colleagues, sit with those colleagues, go to lunch with those colleagues, and leave having met almost no one new. Familiar company is comfortable, but professional development events give us permission to expand our professional community, and that community becomes more valuable over the course of a career.

Instead of thinking about networking as collecting contacts, think about it as collecting perspectives.

Ask someone what they are working on. Find out what is changing in their organization. Ask what session they attended and what they took away from it. If someone asks a particularly thoughtful question during a presentation, introduce yourself afterward and continue the conversation. You do not need a clever opening line or a networking strategy worthy of its own project plan. Curiosity works just fine.

Some of the best professional relationships begin because two people started talking about a problem they both care about.

This fall, we have an unusual opportunity to combine those benefits with PMI Global Summit in Detroit. Project professionals from around the world will be coming into our backyard. We can learn from people working in different industries, countries, and environments while also strengthening the relationships within our own local PMI community. That is an opportunity worth using intentionally.

3. Decide what you will do differently before you leave

This may be the most important practice of all.

Before you close your notebook, pack up your laptop, or head home, identify one thing you are going to do differently because you attended.

Not something you want to think about later. Something you will do.

Maybe you heard an idea you want to introduce at your next project meeting. Perhaps you discovered a better way to engage a sponsor, facilitate a retrospective, communicate risk, or use AI to support project work. Maybe a session made you realize that your team has been measuring project completion when you also need to understand whether people are using what the project delivered.

Whatever it is, translate the learning into action while the idea is still fresh.

If possible, put the next step directly into your calendar. Schedule the conversation. Download the tool. Share the article with your team. Contact the person you met. Try the technique at your next meeting. Give the idea somewhere to go before your inbox gets a chance to bury it.

Professional development becomes valuable when learning changes behavior.

I see this in change management all the time. We sometimes assume that because people have received information, something has changed. Project professionals know better. Awareness is not adoption, and attendance is not application.

The same principle applies to us. Listening to a terrific speaker does not automatically improve our leadership. Taking notes about a new approach does not improve our projects. Even earning the PDU, satisfying though that little addition to the dashboard may be, is not the real return on our investment.

The return comes when we use what we learned.

Enjoy the season

There is a reason professional communities have gathered for conferences, association meetings, and educational events for generations. We learn differently when we step outside our normal routines and spend time with people who care about the same work we do.

You hear the question you would not have thought to ask. You discover that another organization is wrestling with the same issue. You meet someone whose experience challenges your assumptions. You have the hallway conversation that stays with you longer than the presentation. Sometimes you simply need the reminder that other project professionals are figuring it out as they go, too.

That is why I am looking forward to this PDD season.

If you are attending a PMI chapter event, joining a Professional Development Day, or heading to Global Summit in Detroit, give yourself permission to do more than attend. Bring a question you genuinely want answered. Meet people whose experiences are different from your own. Then, before you return to the demands of your projects, decide what you are going to do differently.

Because the best measure of professional development is not how many sessions we attended, how many pages of notes we took, or even how many PDUs we earned.

It is what happens next.

April Callis Birchmeier, PMP, MCMP, CCMP™, ACC is a Global Guru in Organizational Culture, and internationally known organizational change management expert. She's also the bestselling author of READY, Set, Change! Simplify and Accelerate Organizational Change. As a Qualified Education Provider, she prepares and trains project professionals to pass the CCMP™ Certified Change Management Professional certification. Next cohort begins September 21st.

You can reach her at April@Springboard-Consult.com

Discover PMI's Certification Pathways

Have you had a chance lately to revisit the full suite of certifications offered by the Project Management Institute? PMI currently offers 12 globally recognized credentials designed to support professionals across every stage of their careers: CAPM®, PMP®, PMI-ACP®, PMI-RMP®, PMI-SP®, PMI-PBA®, PgMP®, PfMP®, PMI-PMOCP™, PMI-CP™, PMI-CP™-I, and PMI-CP™-M. Whether you're just getting started or managing complex programs and portfolios, there's a certification designed to match your experience and aspirations.

A PMI certification represents more than a professional milestone. It demonstrates your commitment to continuous learning, validates your expertise, and enhances your credibility. As your PMI Great Lakes Chapter Director of Certifications, I encourage you to explore these opportunities and consider which path aligns best with your goals. Reach out to me at director.certifications@pmiglc.org.

Let's take that next step together.

Upcoming Chapter Events

PMI Global Summit 2026

The PMI® Global Summit comes to Detroit October 21–24, 2026. Four days of keynotes, innovation talks, and sessions covering AI, PMOs, enterprise agility, sustainability, and more, plus 20+ PDUs, networking, and the PMI Awards celebration.

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