Workshop Community 8: Team Skills and Diversity Strategies

The new EuroSPI workshop will exchange experience, share good practice, and discuss key issues, such as: Which factors influence the success of improvement, change and innovation projects? How to manage them successfully? Which processes and tools are available? Which skills and competences do we need to successfully manage innovation, change and improvement projects?

Key Speakers - Moderation - Discussion - Exercise

Workshop 2017: Team Skills and Diversity Strategies Empowering Innovation and Improvement

Workshop Program Chairs & Moderators    

Gabriele Sauberer Termnet, Austria	Mirna Munoz CIMAT- Unidad Zacatecas, Mexico

Projects and teams become more and more diverse and international or global. They require appropriate strategies and skills for improvement, change and innovation, to be successful and sustainable.

The success of projects and teams depends on the support from the organisation, the people and the environment. Managing innovation, change and improvement successfully is not just a technical job. A variety of organisational and “Human Factors” need to be taken into account – and managed well. Global communication, a common understanding of concepts and terms, an increasingly aging and diverse workforce are new challenges and success factors of SPI projects and teams.

Workshop Program 2017

Key Contributors

Key contributions will come from European initiatives and networks, such as TermNet and FEDM, which developed best practices, as well as international certification and qualification within the framework of the European Certification and Qualification Association (ECQA). However, the workshop is open to include experts from all over the world, who are willing to share their best practices with the community.

TermNet, the international Network for Terminology, is the leading terminology community and collaborates with ECQA since many years. Jointly, they developed the ECQA Certified Terminology Manager, basic and advanced level, for various target groups and industries, such as automotive, engineering, health, international organisations, etc.  

FEDM, the Forum European Diversity Management, is a driving force behind two other relevant certification and qualification initiatives, the ECQA Certified Diversity Manager and the ECQA Certified Applied Sustainability and CSR Professional, both relevant for the EuroSPI workshop.

Also at previous EuroSPI conferences the influence of corporate culture and communication on the success of improvement and innovation has been discussed and shared. The new Workshop will focus on managing terminology and global communication, as well as on “human factors”, such as diversity of teams and projects.

The concept of terminology management means to define a cross-company and cross-culture understanding of important knowledge, concepts and. Corporate language and terminology needs to be correct and consistent, so ensure quality, and to support safety and security. Even if the corporate language is “Global English” only, terminology needs to be managed well and used as a bridge for professional communication and cooperation at global level.

Managing the diversity of teams and projects means to leverage their potential for innovation and improvement. Similar to the diversity of systems and design, a diverse team and workforce contributes to quality, safety and reliability. Different genders, ages, backgrounds, etc. turned out to be vital for innovation, improvement and positive change, if this human diversity in teams and projects is appreciated and managed well.


We invite experts to share their experiences with the EuroSPI community:

•    Good team skills and diversity practices / experiences
•    Bad team skills and diversity practices / experiences
•    Key organizational factors influencing the success of improvement and innovation
•    Key social factors influencing the success of improvement and innovation
•    Key cultural factors influencing the success of improvement and innovation
•    Organizational environments which empower improvement and innovation (reference examples)
•    Organizational models, methods or methodologies to reinforce or integrate high effective teams

 
Interactive Workshop Approach

Focus of interest and main questions discussed during the workshop will be:

What are good practices to repeat?

• What are bad practices to be avoided?
• How do successful organisational strategies work?
• What are key success factors?
• How do we implement diversity principles?
• How do we introduce terminology management?
• Do we need to extend our existing assessment models to cover this aspect?
• Do we need a domain specific approach (Automotive versus IT service versus medical etc.)
• How can we reinforce the teams toward high effective teams?
• How can we integrate high effective teams?

Each presentation will be discussed towards these main topics of interest. A panel discussion at the end shall come up with a summary of the solutions presented and with new research topics to focus on to solve this integrated approach (work for next year to meet at next EuroAsiaSPI and share again).

Important Dates

31.07.2017     Early Registration Deadline (All presenters must register also)