A Look Back: Wisdom from the PMI Global Summit

This blog was updated in May 2025.

I thought it would be interesting to hop in my wayback machine—otherwise known as a notebook (yes, I am that dinosaur, the old reporter with the paper and pen archives) —and see how what I was hearing in 2022 at the PMI Global Summit in Las Vegas might have presaged what I heard a few weeks ago in Atlanta. And—surprise!—on the first page, I found that futurist Amy Webb, last year’s keynote, referred to project management as a “superpower.”

There’s that word again. If we aren’t careful, people are going to actually start expecting project managers to save the world.

The mood and message of PMI’s GS23 indicated that saving the world might be right up our alley. From keynote Cassandra Worthy’s message of embracing change as growth, to the inspiring closing keynote by Shazam founder Chris Barton, project managers were being encouraged to believe that their emotions, their skills, their humanness—even their “limitations”—were keys to building a better world.

Some of this could, of course, be hubris. We should always check our assumptions when we start thinking we have all the answers. Chris Barton advised that, since our brains are “wired for assumptions,” part of achieving a dream is to “defy your brain,” and this is just as true when your brain tells you you are right, as when it says you are wrong. But it has always seemed to me, in my now 28-year association with project management, that this discipline and the people who excel at it, have the potential to break barriers, defy conventional wisdom, and pull off great things. Right now, humanizing AI and adapting to/mitigating climate change are the moonshots of this generation of project leaders. Whew. I sure am glad they have those superpowers.

Wondering how to develop the superpowers of your project team? We have some thoughts on that.