CYP

October 25 2015

Company of Young Professionals Success Series – Project Management & Execution

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Date: October 20, 2015

Name: Company of Young Professionals Success Series – Project Management & Execution

Presenters: Matt Bilbey and Aaron McHardy

Many young leaders are failing to meet project schedules due to poor execution. Moreover, young leaders must develop engagement to their project vision. Company of Young Professionals invites Matt Bilbey, the Senior Vice President and Group GM of EA, and Aaron McHardy, the FIFA Line Producer of EA Sports, to discuss their approaches to project management and execution. Young leaders will learn their proven ways to manage team project process, maintain quality assurance, and contribute to large scale projects. Furthermore, both presenters will help young leaders to identify the missing links in project management.

Matt Bilbey is the current Senior Vice President and Group General Manager of EA Studios. With over 20 years of experience in EA, Matt Bilbey establishes strong business leadership skills and leads many top market videogame franchises. Matt Bilbey inspires many of his teammates to their next level of careers. His passion in EA gives him the substantial reputation that many young leaders are willing to follow. Aaron McHardy is the current FIFA Line Producer in EA Sports. He works with EA over 20 years and helps EA Sports FIFA franchises to achieve top results. Moreover, his leadership insights encourage many young leaders in the gaming industry.

Matt Bilbey describes his leadership style is “People First”. In Bibey’s journey, there were many challenges in FIFA franchise. The product quality was significantly low and the simulation play was not attractive. Overall, the FIFA business is in turmoil. As game quality decreases, EA was experiencing low global market share. When Bilbey was facing the critical decision of continuing the FIFA franchise, Bilbey decided to restructure the project proposal. Bilbey implemented the concept of “Vision”, “Passion”, and “People”.

“Result of bring passion to people, it accelerates”

The project changed the focus under the leadership of Bibey. The team tapped into the passion of global fan base. The statistic was showing there were 2 billion football fans, 30 million EA Football gamers and over 251 million football video gamers. By looking at the consumer interests, the team was able to identify the real addressable target audience.

Bilbey had the vision of becoming the biggest game in the world. Bilbey introduced high quality and innovation strategies and produced 1 billion annual business growth. The project opened up new football’s social network and simulated people around the world to be a part of the game. There were over 25 nationalities in the project team and Bilbey believed in the team to seek more opportunities.

As of now, Bilbey indicates many football clubs are using EA FIFA games for training purposes. It allows players to prepare games. It also creates opportunities and image for people around the world by taking the real life experience into game. Moreover, it brings the game live and stays predictable.

Aaron McHardy introduces the EA Sports game development framework.

Pre-production
Production
Final
Live Service

Each stage has its own time frame. The pre-production will run from October to January. The production stage will start from February to April. The final stage will be in May to September, and the live service will begin from September and beyond. McHardy explains each stage is like a series of gates. It helps EA to set milestones. Each stage will give the team the opportunity to review the leadership and evaluation. They will analyze and measure the situation and change the course to ensure the production is aligned with the vision.

The purpose of each stage is to help the team to stay connect and engage with the audience. McHardy mentions the key evolves around the project management is engagement. Engagement in EA Sports includes the console, FIFA Ultimate Team, components, mobile and social. The analysis and measurement will help them keep track of daily users and on time feedbacks. The matric EA uses is Net Promotion Score. The score will help EA to obtain feedback and it also creates direct conversation with users. It will help them focus on the right energy.

McHardy indicates the result of the process will increase product quality, increase engagement, and increase market share. In addition, it increases the demand.

McHardy believes EA is focusing three main components for future.

Player first
Digital transformation
One team

Engagement is the project metric. Bilbey believes engagement will ensure there is 365 day live service, the ability to embed the metric into the fabric of the sport. Furthermore, it helps to connect globally and provide experience for players. Bilbey believes great people work with other great people. Bilbey suggests young leaders to work with great people, take control of their own career and encourage others to do the same.

“Be passion about vision, people will see it and want to be a part of it”

Questions and Answers

Many EA games are stumbling in the first gate. Bilbey and McHardy believe identify the issue early is important. They believe they will not discontinue the project. Gates are there to motivate the team. It also make opportunities to re-direct the plan to reach the objective. The gate will also help the team to re-allocate resources to improve the quality.

Projects can influence the franchise licence. Bilbey and McHardy believe projects improve the role because it centralize the engagement. It also connects the world deeper and help everyone to identify the market in a broad view.

“Dream to reality”

May 18 2015

Young Professionals Leadership Forum 2015

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Date: May 12, 2015

Name: Young Professionals Leadership Forum 2015

Presenters: Igor Faletski, Juggy Sihota, and Tracey Renzullo

Innovation is one of the main elements for the success of young entrepreneurs; moreover, many organizations are looking for entrepreneurs who can lead innovation and engage their passion and creativity to help organizations improve. Company of Young Professionals invites the panelist, Igor Faletski, CEO of Mobify, Tracey Renzullo, the Marketing Faculty of BCIT, and Juggy Sihota, the Vice President of Customer Experience Strategy and Operations of TELUS Health. The moderator, April Yau, will discuss with the panelist of their career lessons and mistakes to help young entrepreneurs stand out from the noises in their industries.

Igor Faletski shares his startup journey starts in Vancouver. His company, Mobify, is a mobile shopping platform that helps many entrepreneurs to retail their products to their customers. Faletski believes it is important to ride on the big wave. Young entrepreneurs should identify if their careers have growth potential. They can start small, but it must be exciting and supporting future growth. Faletski believes young entrepreneurs should hire their friends who have the ability to work together because they already figure out their strengths and weaknesses.

Instead of staying in the same geographic region, Faletski believes young entrepreneurs should get into United States as quickly as possible. The export market is growing and young entrepreneurs should think internationally, not just next door. Young entrepreneurs must have a quick plan to profit. Faletski believes building a model that generates profit with the usage of technology can help young entrepreneurs to handle cash flow. Lastly, Faletski suggests young entrepreneurs to have determination for long term success.

Juggy Sihota is involved with one of the largest health division in British Columbia. TELUS creates the TELUS Health system to improve the local health care services in BC. The system will organize, secure, connect and share information with different health care services. Sihota believes there is a need to improve life of quality in BC citizen. The public sector is seeking support from private sector, and currently the system is used by over 300 thousand of Canadians, 14 thousands of physicians, 2.8 thousands of pharmacy and over 24 thousands of professionals. The system emphasizes the electronic medical record on the digital system, and the system is expanding and reaching to different industries.

There are 4 innovation components in the TELUS Health system: essential, mobile, easy, and monitor. The essential component is to schedule the basic patient information. The mobile component is to upload attachment and usage of satellite GPS. The easy component is to simplify the installation. The monitor component is to create monitor patients in their homes.

Tracey Renzullo believes the concept of life long learnings, and it is important to connect with the right people. Renzullo mentions the concept of self-innovation. Young entrepreneurs should build relationship with content. However, content will be overwhelming and young entrepreneurs need to have the ability to filter the relevant information. Renzullo believes it is important to pick the right passion. There is no way for young entrepreneurs to be expert in everything. Young entrepreneurs can learn the relevant information or skills from many online applications. Renzullo suggests young entrepreneurs to use applications that can customer the feed function to filter the right information, such as Google Alerts, Twitter lists, Swanyy, and Pulse. Renzullo also recommends young entrepreneurs to begin contribute to the community so they can get notice in the crowd.

“Stay young and be innovative”

Questions and Answers

All panelists share their biggest mistakes in their careers. Sihota mentions the fail launch of voice portal function to activate internet usage on cellphone. Faletski mentions the team is growing with the wrong members, and Renzullo mentions the restructure of Canadian sales that frustrates the customers.

Faletski believes the shift from desktop to mobile in marketing will be a trend in the next 5 years. Sihota believes many things are getting more portable and people are looking for ways to access information everywhere. Renzullo believes the industry will need to figure out the gap between systems.

Faletski indicates the biggest challenge is to keep the talent since the industries are changing every day. Sihota indicates young entrepreneurs need to discard the concept of looking for perfect solution. Instead, young entrepreneurs should try it first. Renzullo indicates there are still many organizations only invest in innovation when they need it; in fact, that will be too late. Sihota wants young entrepreneurs to help people understand about innovation and get the awareness from the community. Moreover, it is important to take small steps one by a time.

When Faletski works in a space that is exciting will help him generate his best innovation ideas. Sihota believes passion can lead young entrepreneurs their innovation ideas and Renzullo believes by staying connect with the right people, ideas will come eventually.

January 25 2015

Company of Young Professionals Success Series – High Performance Habits

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Date: January 20, 2015

Name: Company of Young Professionals Success Series – High Performance Habits

Presenters: Emma Andrews and Gina Buchanan

In order for leaders to maintain their high performance, habits through their minds and their bodies are extremely important. Leaders need to understand their nutrition to maximize their physical output. In addition, mental habits can help leaders to shape their leadership attitude and mindset through the improvement of emotional intelligence. This presentation invites Emma Andrews, the Registered Holistic Nutritionist from Vega, and Gina Buchanan, the Principal of Changeways Training and Development, to discuss the importance of leaders’ physical and mental habits. Emma Andrews will share her insight through her experience in the natural products industry, and Gina Buchanan will share her knowledge to improve leaders’ mindset and attitude. This presentation will benefit all leaders to go beyond their performance limitation.

Eat to Thrive

Emma Andrews, the certified plant based culinary professional, starts her career with a wakeup call from his father’s heart attack. Moreover, she believes there is a strong connection between the lifestyle and healthy food.

Andrews emphasizes it is important for leaders to understand the nutrient density. Andrews defines nutrient density as the fuel for optimal mental and physical performance. Leaders need to identify food that has clean, plant-based functional and easy to digest. Moreover, leaders need to consume food that contains the necessary nutrients.

Net energy gain is significant for leaders. This energy can be found after digestion and absorption. Andrews suggests leaders to look food that is raw, fermented, soaked, enzyme-rich, or minimally processed.

Enzymes are produced naturally by the body. These can be found in fresh, raw, and minimally processed foods. It can consider as aid in digestion. Andrews shares leaders who have poor digestion, malabsorption or nutrient deficiencies can lead to a lack of enzymes.

To maximize the food consumption and absorption, Andrews recommends leaders to the following:

Sit down to eat
Make eating the focus
Deep breath before start eating
Engage all senses
Chew slowly

Andrews wants leaders to avoid fluids with meals because fluids can dilute the enzyme in their bodies. Therefore, leaders should avoid the food combination of carbohydrates and proteins; In addition, leaders should increase the amount of sprouting from nuts, seeds, legumes, and grains. Lastly, leaders can find nutrients from digestive enzyme supplements.

When leaders encounter food sensitivities and toxins, they will feel headache, mood swings, low energy and rapid heartbeat. Based on the research, Andrews shares the most common sensitivity aggravating ingredient is soil.

Leaders should determine if their food can nourish or stimulate their performance. In addition, leaders can use caffeine to enhance performance because caffeine promotes endurance and sport performance by enhancing mental focus. Andrews suggests some alternative for caffeine.

Green tea
Yerba mate
Dandelion or chicory root
Hot coca
Adaptogens

Andrews recommends leaders to avoid artificial sweeteners and stay away from refined sugar.

The Heat Smart Leader

Gina Buchanan mentions there are many words people use to associate with leadership effectiveness; however, these words cannot resemble with the connection with IQ. Moreover, Buchanan believes emotional intelligence (EQ) is the key to measure leadership effectiveness.

Buchanan defines emotional intelligence as high cognitive ability to process complexity of information as well as effectively navigate the social and political landscape. EQ can trigger all other critical skills. Furthermore, it is the single biggest predictor of performance in the workplace and the strongest driver of leadership and personal excellence.

Buchanan shares the most common test to measure EQ is the Daniel Goleman’s research. This test measures EQ based on self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Another common test is Reuven Bar on. This test measures intrapersonal, interpersonal, adaptability, stress management, and general mood.

In leadership, leader’s intention is not equal to impact. Leader’s first task in management has nothing to do with leading others; instead, it should be the process of challenge of knowing and managing themselves first. Buchanan indicates it is important for leaders to label their emotions. If leaders have limited vocabulary that describes emotion, they will have limited responses about others.

“Labeling your emotions is key; if you can name it, you can tame it”

Buchanan recommends some strategies for leaders to grow their self-awareness.

Seek a trusted critic
Keep a journal
Look in the mirror
Suspend judgment
Build a feeling dictionary
Be curious
Practice reflection
Seek feedback
Be present
Listen to your body
Observe

Leaders need to be aware of how their emotions and feelings affect their behaviors. When there is a situation, it will lead to thoughts, feelings and actions. Leaders need to work around these three factors. Buchanan believes leaders need to be aware of their Anger Mountain. When leaders increase their heart rate, their quality of judgment will decrease.

Lastly, Buchanan leaves a process for leaders to develop their performance habits.

Something Happens -> Sense -> Stop -> See your best self -> Strategize -> Succeed

“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance”