Meet the Member: Jean-Mathieu Schoun, Senior Business Unit Manager, PCubed

In our latest Meet the Member feature, we spoke with Jean-Mathieu Schoun, Senior Business Unit Manager at PCubed.

PCubed is a global management consulting firm focused on delivering business transformation, program and portfolio management. With MI-GSO, the leading European project management consultancy, they combine their strengths to form a group of over 1,200 expert Consultants, operating in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, - with a wide industry expertise addressing Aerospace, Automotive, Rail, Defense, Energy, Financial Services, Telecom, Technology & Media, and Public Sector. Every day, PCubed supports clients by steering major Projects and Programs, managing Project Portfolios and addressing business transformation and change management initiatives.

Keep reading to learn more about Jean-Mathieu’s role at PCubed, his aspirations as well as his precious career development advice.

FACC: PCubed is a project management consultancy. You assess, shape, improve, build and run projects for the organizations with which you work. As senior Business Unit Manager, how do you best assess the needs of your clients?

JM: The best way to assess any client’s needs (in any business) is to put yourself in his/her shoes. In order to do so, you need to meet, spend time together, talk, ask open questions, reformulate, contextualize in order to make sure you have a clear 360 vision of the situation. Sometimes, due to multiple factors, clients struggle to define their own needs. Our added value in this case, is to be able to relate their problems/gaps to situations we have faced in the past within other environment, with other clients and capitalize on our knowhow to:

• First: Define the problem(s)
• Second: Fix it

FACC: Can you elaborate upon some of the current projects your team is working on?

JM: My team is currently focusing on 3 main priorities:

• Projects Delivery: Client satisfaction is our priority. Delivering projects on Time, Cost and Quality is not an option for us. We help clients at different level of their organizations. Today, we are supporting the deployment of their Project Management Offices, we are defining their Portfolio Strategies or helping them transform their organization before, during or following a big change or an M&A for example.
• Growth: We are striving on a daily basis to bring more value to our clients. Whether it is through increasing the level of partnership maturity with our current clients or the development of new relationships, we are proactively ensuring a sustainable growth, providing our partners with continued stability and reliability.
• People: In order to guarantee the 2 priorities above, it is our duty to hire the best people, manage our project teams thoroughly and develop individuals regularly. It is, to me, the most appropriate combination to ensure a healthy work environment, client focus and success.

FACC: Your business is based in Ann Arbor Michigan. What does the New York market represent for your business and its future development?

JM: We are organized through a Hubs operating model. We are currently located in 4 locations in the US: Ann Arbor (HQ), San Francisco, Houston and New York. The group’s DNA is to have a cross-functional approach towards each local market, hence, despite its historical strong presence in the Financial sector, the NY Hub is now diversifying towards multiple other sectors such as media, pharmaceutical, energy, ground transportation and aerospace industries.

FACC: For our Young Executive members, do you have any career advice about how you advanced to a managerial role?

JM: Several quick suggestions for all Young Executive members, applicable to any sector.

• Choose your environment: Make sure you join an environment/company with a high growth potential. It is your best bet to develop with the company.
• Work extensively & deliver Excellence: Especially at the beginning of your career you need to over-achieve in order to set a standard for yourself and build trust.
• Listen & Get feedback: It is your duty as a young professional to want to improve and increase your self-awareness. For that, nothing better than asking for feedback and constantly improve.
• Positively adapt to anything: You are young, it’s not the right time to be picky, narrow-minded or greedy. Jump on any internal opportunities that will give you more knowledge, more exposure, and/or a wider scope of responsibility. The rest will follow.
• No place for entitlement: We are in 2019, people have never been as smart, as connected, as educated, as ambitious as today. Your entitlement is your guaranteed professional failure. You need to constantly bring value, go above and beyond, be creative, be dynamic and contribute to the development of your environment.
• Help others and develop Empathy: Be different, be kind, be helpful, bond. On the long run, it will always be beneficial and satisfying. Forget the “Give and Take” approach but apply the “Give, Give, Give, Ask” approach. You will see, as long as you do it genuinely, it works.
• Identify mentors: Mentors are people that inspire you. You might know them personally or not, they can be your colleague, your manager, your neighbor, your friends’ friend, a writer, a politician. What is important is for you to identify what you like from them and how you could apply it to yourself. Progressively, you will build a rich personality that will define who you are as a person, an employee… and a manager.

FACC: How did you hear about the FACC and what do you most value about the network?

JM: I have contacted the FACC through its website before arriving to NY and asked for an initial appointment with Florence Cheiron, Member Relations Associate. I mostly value professional networking, themed events/conferences and keeping in touch with the French community.

Interested in connecting with Jean-Mathieu? Log into the FACC Member Directory to send her a message.