PM Is the Most Effective Way to Manage VUCA
Interview with Chang Shucha
Founder of Project Management Review
Interviewed by Yu Yanjuan
Journalist, Project Management Review: PMR (China)
Introduction to the interviewee
If you are interested in project management in China, there’s one name you can’t miss: Chang Shucha (English name: Jessica).
Chang Shucha is the founder of Project Management Review (PMR) magazine, a 4-year-old influential magazine with forward-looking and global perspectives. Besides publishing magazines, Chang Shucha is also in charge of other business units of PMR all-media platform such as PM book publication, PM training courses, PM conferences, etc. By means of various media forms, she builds a bridge between theory and practice, between China and the rest of the world.
She has played a prominent role in the rise of project management publication in China. Professor Wang Shouqing praised her as the person who understands publication most in the field of project management and the person who understands project management most in the field of publication.
Chang Shucha is also Deputy Secretary-General of the Project Management Research Committee (PMRC) of Chinese Society of Optimization, Overall Planning and Economical Mathematics, Executive Member of Beijing Project Management Association, and Research Fellow of Praxis Research Center (China).
Having worked in the field of publishing and media for over 3 decades, she keeps on learning all the time. In her colleagues’ eyes, she is a result-oriented enabling leader, who is flexible and good at empowering team members while sticking to the strategic goals. She is not only a media professional who helps spread project management but also a PM practitioner standing at the frontier of PM development.
On the 4th anniversary of PMR, we did an interview with Chang Shucha, in which she looked both back and ahead to share with us her unique insights and observations.
Interview
Part 1
About Media: From Product Strategy to Platform Strategy
Q1. What’s your original intention of creating PMR? What are the driving factors behind establishing PMR all-media platform?
Chang Shucha (Shucha): The original intention of establishing PMR is to create an innovative integrative publishing platform of project management, which is characterized by co-creation, sharing and win-win, to extend the value chain of publishing media, to provide professional PM knowledge services with the platform as the core, and to explore a new mode of integrative publishing in the mobile Internet era. Over the past four years, PMR has developed around this initial intention, which has never changed.
It had been my dream since over ten years ago to spread project management theory and practice, share the wisdom and achievements of project management, improve individual and organizational project management capabilities, and promote the development of project management across the globe by establishing an innovative integrative publishing platform focusing on project management based on the advantages of publishing media resources and project management resources. At the same time, I wanted to publish by jumping out of publishing so as to explore a new end-to-end knowledge service model based on the advantages of content resources, with the product platform as the core, and through the interaction and integration of traditional and new media. I agreed with what Wang Bin, chairman of CITIC Publishing Group, said in an interview with Publisher magazine: “If we open up the extension of publishing, we will see a new world.”
To be specific, the establishment of PMR all-media platform is mainly based on the following three considerations:
Firstly, to meet the needs of the new era and markets. In recent years, projects have become the greatest driving force for organizational, even social and economic development. Project management has also stood at the center of the management stage and as the most viable management concept and method to adapt to the new economic era, it has attracted unprecedented attention and has been widely adopted in many industries with remarkable efficiency such as in UHV power transmission and transformation projects. However, there was a lack of a high-level media platform for exchanging the latest achievements, methods, lessons and opportunities of project management in China. Therefore, the establishment of PMR integrative publishing innovative platform can meet the urgent need of the times, and it also has great social value and potential market value.
Secondly, to integrate resources, extend the value chain of publishing media, promote digital transformation in publishing, propel integrative publishing innovation, and achieve integrated operation benefits. The development of Internet and mobile Internet technology has greatly accelerated the speed of change of the content industry including publishing. With increasingly diversified media forms and communication modes and with the coexistence of paper, computer, mobile phone, iPad, e-books and periodicals, the integration of traditional and digital publishing is an inevitable trend. In order to realize integrated operation benefits, media publishing enterprises should shift from product strategy to platform strategy, from relying merely on the advantages of content resources to actively embracing the Internet and integrating new technologies, thus gradually developing into an integrated product manufacturer and a multi-dimensional knowledge service provider. Peter Drucker once said, “We are not able to control change but we can go ahead of it.”
Thirdly, to make more people and organizations understand project management, recognize the value of project management, apply project management, thus promoting individual and organizational project management level. Since I first came into contact with project management in 1999, I have fallen in love with it. Through active learning and conscious application at work, I have gradually realized the value of project management for work and life, and its value in achieving organizational strategy landing and in enhancing organizational competitiveness. I hoped that I had known project management in my college years, or even earlier so that I could have broadened my thinking earlier, enhanced my abilities more consciously, looked at problems at a higher level, improved my life and work efficiency and created more value for enterprises. So it is the basic starting point of PMR to introduce PM knowledge and methods (which I regretted not having come across earlier) to all kinds of organizations and professionals.
Q2. PMR celebrated its fourth anniversary on July 26, 2019. Looking back on the past four years, how do you feel and what milestones impressed you most?
More…
To read entire interview, click here
Editor’s note: This interview was first published in PMR, Project Management Review magazine, China. It is republished here with the permission of PMR. The PM World Journal maintains a cooperative relationship with PMR, periodically republishing works from each other’s publications. To see the original interview with Chinese introduction, visit PMR at http://www.pmreview.com.cn/english/
How to cite this interview: Yanjuan, Y. (2019). PM Is the Most Effective Way to Manage VUCA. Interview with Chang Shucha; Project Management Review; republished in the PM World Journal, Vol. VIII, Issue IX, October. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/pmwj86-Oct2019-Yanjuan-Interview-with-Chang-Shucha2.pdf
About the Interviewer
Yu Yanjuan
Beijing, China
Yu Yanjuan (English name: Spring), Bachelor’s Degree, graduated from the English Department of Beijing International Studies University (BISU) in China. She is now an English-language journalist and editor working for Project Management Review Magazine and website. She has interviewed over forty top experts in the field of project management. In the past, she has worked as a journalist and editor for other media platforms in China. She has also worked part-time as an English teacher in various training centers in Beijing. For work contact, she can be
reached via email yuyanjuan2005@163.com or Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanjuanyu-76b280151/.
