AGA Rocked Music City at PDT 2015

I had the privilege of attending the Association of Government Accountants (AGA) Professional Development Training (PDT) in Nashville last week and returned with great information and feedback to help Management Concepts meet the developing needs of the Financial Management (FM) community. I kicked PDT off by attending the Executive Session titled “Enabling a High-Quality FM Workforce for the 21st Century and Beyond.” After listening to a panel of experts we broke off into a very interactive session discussing ideas for talent development and retention. In fact, the interactivity at PDT this year really made the event come to life. Through the AGA PDT mobile app, we were able to ask questions during sessions, vote for the questions you really wanted answered, and respond to real-time polls from the speakers. AGA encouraged even more collaboration with participants through the “Meet Your Match” game where attendees were given a button with a number and could win prizes by finding matching numbers throughout the four days in Nashville. Kudos to AGA for making this such a valuable experience!

I attended a variety of sessions from human capital planning to DoD auditability and feel each experience matched the right expert panel with the content to provide the group with new and interesting data. Some key takeaways include:

• The workplace of the future will require continuous learners who are not only experts in their financial area, but also strong leaders – flexible, and can support cross-matrixed job functions.
• IT and analytics competencies will be core in the future workforce and need to be developed now so we are able to meet the demands of CFO organizations’ changing role.
• Millennials want to make a difference with their careers and it is important to communicate how a role is critical in the agency’s mission in order to retain the younger workforce. A government job can be cool!
• DoD audit readiness is focusing on sustainability rather than meeting audit deadlines. According to Karen Fenstermacher, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Financial Operations), “worse than not being able to achieve auditability is to achieve auditability and not sustain it.”

I learned many things throughout the time in Nashville…even how to get to the conference center from my room through the enormous Gaylord Opryland Hotel! I’d suggest attending next year’s event to see for yourself the great value of the exhibit hall, networking receptions, and sessions. See you next year in Anaheim!