Agile is a Fundamentally Different Way of Thinking
and Never Stop Learning
Interview with Heidi Musser
Board Member | Board Advisor | CxO
Executive Consultant |TEDx Speaker
Board Chair, Agile Alliance
Interviewed by Yasmina Khelifi
International Correspondent, PM World Journal
Paris, France
Introduction to the interviewee
Heidi Musser is an accomplished Board member, Board advisor and C-level executive who advises and leads businesses on digital transformation and enterprise agility. She has successfully created and scaled resilient and sustainable organizational structures, business, and governance models that can withstand rapidly and dynamically changing market conditions and play an integral role in achieving competitive advantage in this next economic revolution.
Heidi serves on the Board of Directors of Cprime, Inc. – a leading global Agile, product, and technology consulting firm. She is Chair of the Board of Directors for Agile Alliance, having served on its Board since 2018. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of Michigan Council of Women in Technology.
Heidi has domain expertise in strategy, enterprise sustainability, business agility, information technology, innovation, design thinking, governance, risk management, regulatory compliance, and DEI&B. A life-long learner with insatiable curiosity, she’s achieved extraordinary results and transformational outcomes in five different business models in complex, regulated environments. A respected thought leader in the Agile community, her passion is helping people adopt agile values and principles so that we can bring our whole selves to work and thrive in the world of digital disruption.
Heidi has been at the forefront of championing and mentoring women in leadership and technology throughout her career and speaks frequently on DEI&B, LGBTQ in Tech, and women in STEM. Most recently, she keynoted Agile in Chile 2023. In 2014, she was nominated to STEMconnector’s® list of 100 Diverse Corporate Leaders in STEM. linkedin.com/in/hjmusser https://www.heidimusser.com
Interview
Q1: First of all, thank you for accepting an interview request from PMWJ. By reading your website I’ve seen Agile is probably the most used word. What’s your definition of agile?
Heidi Musser (Musser): Agile is a fundamentally different way of working, thinking, and being. To be agile is to be resilient, adaptable, and willing to embrace change. To be agile also means adopting an agile mindset that begins with meeting people where they are. This mindset intrinsically includes the dimensions of understanding, comprehension, and imagination because:
- Agile is relentlessly focused
- Agile is listening to understand
- Agile is courageous
It’s my belief that we are ALL capable of becoming agile – relentlessly focusing, listening to understand, acting with courage – and embracing this fundamentally different way of thinking and being. We are NOT powerless – we never really are. We ALWAYS have a choice.
With this new agile mindset, we have the POWER to effectively adapt to change if we are willing to adopt 3 simple practices:
- Willing to ask for help, for this is the key to humility
- Willing to make mistakes, for this is the key to curiosity and learning
- Willing to recognize others, for this is the key to compassion
My TED Talk, Everything Must Change. Including YOU., describes these dimensions in much greater detail.
Q2: Agile practices in projects are sometimes misinterpreted: can you explain to us when and how to use Agile practices in projects?
More…
To read entire interview, click here
How to cite this work: Khelifi, Y. (2023). Agile is a Fundamentally Different Way of Thinking and Never Stop Learning, Interview with Heidi Musser, PM World Journal, Vol. XII, Issue VII, July. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/pmwj131-Jul2023-Khelifi-Interview-with-Heidi-Musser.pdf
About the Interviewer
Yasmina Khelifi
Paris, France
Yasmina Khelifi, PMP, PMI- ACP, PMI-PBA is an experienced project manager in the telecom industry. Along with her 20-year career at Orange S.A. (the large French multinational telecommunications corporation), she sharpened her global leadership skills, delivering projects with major manufacturers and SIM makers. Yasmina strives for building collaborative bridges between people to make international projects successful. She relies on three pillars: project management skills, the languages she speaks, and a passion for sharing knowledge.
She is a PMP certification holder since 2013, a PMI- ACP and PMI-PBA certification holder since 2020. She is an active volunteer member at PMI France and PMI UAE, and a member of PMI Germany Chapter. French-native, she can speak German, English, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and she is learning Arabic. Yasmina loves sharing her knowledge and experiences at work, in her volunteers’ activities at PMI, and in projectmanagement.com as a regular blogger. She is also the host and co-founder of the podcast Global Leaders Talk with Yasmina Khelifi to help people in becoming better international leaders.
Yasmina can be contacted at https://yasminakhelifi.com/ or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasminakhelifi-pmp-telecom/
Visit her correspondent profile at https://pmworldlibrary.net/yasmina-khelifi/
To view other works by Yasmina, visit her author showcase in the PM World Library at https://pmworldlibrary.net/authors/yasmina-khelifi/
