Manage This - The Project Management Podcast

Integrity, core values, culture and leadership... this episode is packed with great tips from Joshua Szarek. Tune in to hear about the 3-pillars for successful organizations and the benefits of having a Positive Mental Attitude.

World-renowned author, trainer, keynote speaker and consultant, Liliana Buchtik, joins the cast of Manage This to share her vast amount of knowledge regarding risk management and the WBS and discusses the value of Project Management worldwide.

Assistant Director, Ryan Pezdirc, shares his experience with managing background actors in movies like Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 and Batman vs. Superman. Hear his insight into the importance of leading people and the benefits of being proactive.

Velociteach Alumni, Brad Jacobs, joins the cast of Manage This to discuss managing the massive effort of transforming 1300 acres at the foothills of the North Georgia mountains into the premier sports vacation destination known as LakePoint!

Adam Hofman joins the cast to discuss artificial intelligence and his role at CallRail -- a company that specializes in phone call tracking and analytics that helps businesses understand which marketing campaigns are delivering valuable phone conversions.

Stephen Lively and Paul Rogowski join the cast to discuss managing the biggest project that the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) has ever funded. The Northwest Corridor consists of 30 miles of roadway in the 9th largest urban area.

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● HEIDI FOGELL NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is our conversation about what matters most to you, whether you are a seasoned professional or just trying to get started with your project management certifications.  It’s our goal to help you improve, challenge you, motivate you, and, if possible, encourage you with stories from others in the profession. I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are the experts at all this, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And Andy, today we get a chance to draw on the experience of someone who has really an incredible diverse background. ANDY CROWE:  You know, that’s the beauty of project management, Nick.  You pull from so many different disciplines.  It applies in so many different ways.  And it’s kind of fascinating when you get people from different disciplines together to look at how they can manage projects more effectively. NICK WALKER:  Well, let’s introduce our guest.  Heidi Fogell is a Project Manager and Natural Resources Practice Leader for Amec Foster Wheeler in Kennesaw, Georgia.  She’s a biologist and has been an adviser on ecological issues and habitat assessments and has negotiated with regulatory agencies.  She performs wetland delineations, biological assessments, as well as hazardous waste investigations and remediation projects.  Heidi, welcome to Manage This. HEIDI FOGELL:  Good morning.  Thank you for having me. NICK WALKER:  Now you have a fascinating background.  You’ve dealt with fish population studies, surface water issues, sediment and soil projects, and other environmental tasks.  Since our audience can’t see you, I should probably tell them, no, she is not wearing a lab coat.  But how does a scientist get into project management? HEIDI FOGELL:  Well, at the risk of sounding trite, it was about a boy.  I actually, when I was in grad school for marine biology at Florida Tech – the route that most people go is to work for a state or federal agency.  And I actually had the opportunity to work for an environmental consulting firm.  And that opportunity allowed me to stay where my boyfriend at the time was.  And so I took that opportunity and actually, through that, got lots of experience working in remediation projects in addition to the biological projects, and eventually moved up through the ranks and became a project manager. NICK WALKER: You know, I always tell young people, life takes you places that you never expected, so sometimes it’s just good to go with the flow. HEIDI FOGELL:  Yes. NICK WALKER:  But that’s really taken you into a lot of places that maybe you hadn’t planned on, but allows you to bring kind of a unique set of skills to it. HEIDI FOGELL:  Right, right.  You know, nobody expected a marine biologist to wind up in Kennesaw, Georgia.  It’s not as far away from the ocean as you can get, but not as close as you probably should be. BILL YATES:  You could be in Oklahoma or Nebraska. HEIDI FOGELL:  I could be.  I could be, but I’m not. BILL YATES:  Heidi, give us a sense for what are some of the typical projects that you’re working on. HEIDI FOGELL:  Typically right now I manage environmental remediation projects under the Superfund process, which is a federal regulation that cleans up old hazardous waste sites, usually where there is a known responsible party involved.  So that’s the bulk of my work right now.  But I also manage several smaller projects that support municipal and industrial clients for getting wetland impacts permitted or addressing impacts to protected species, basically addressing their environmental issues so that they can develop their projects responsibly, yet comply with regulations. BILL YATES:  Got you.  There’s something unique that you bring to the table that I want to get into because when I was reading over your bio, just getting a sense for the type of work that you do, I’m getting this image of you with two hats.  One hat is one that I can totally relate to.  It’s the project manager, and the PM has to get things done.  The project manager commits the team to milestones and deadlines and due dates and deliveries and all these things, budgets.  And then there’s another hat that you wear which is this environmental consultant that kind of goes back to your roots of, whoa, slow down, you know, don’t hurry up, but slow down.  We need to assess and test and survey and run all the right – get all the right approvals and go through the right agencies.  So how do you wear those two hats?  How do you juggle that? HEIDI FOGELL:  I dance a lot. BILL YATES:  Okay. HEIDI FOGELL:  But it’s actually part of – that’s the biggest part of being in the environmental consulting business.  It’s a very competitive business.  The companies that are in it range from small to large, but it’s a small community.  And, you know, we compete against the same people over and over again in different arenas.  So it’s important to stay on the top of your game.  So you have to be able to jump from one thing to the next.  And that was the hardest thing for me to learn when I came into environmental consulting because I was very much a start a project, work it through to the end, finish it, move on to the next thing. BILL YATES:  Right. HEIDI FOGELL:  Yeah.  I can’t do that anymore.  I have to touch 10 to 20 different things every day.  And that’s difficult to feel like you’re making progress.  But by taking small chunks, you actually make probably more progress than you would just sitting and focusing on something for a long time. ANDY CROWE:  So, Heidi, I’m interested in this part, something you just said.  My wife is very much the same way that you are kind of wired, that she wants to start a project, just really grind on that particular project, and then put it in a binder, finish it, put it away, go to the next.  I am somebody, I enjoy the variety of skipping around. BILL YATES:  Oh, yes, you do. ANDY CROWE:  Well, no, I do.  And I have a lot of irons in the fire.  But I’m able, I guess I’m able to stop something and pick it back up the next day pretty well.  So that’s something I do well.  So how do you manage that, having to do that, but not being wired that way?  Do you have systems in place?  Is your world full of Post-it notes?  What does Heidi’s life look like? HEIDI FOGELL:  I have a list.  I have a list, but that list has to be flexible, too.  I make my list at the end of the day before, what I think that I need to accomplish the next day.  And I do check my email pretty regularly to add and subtract from that list, and then adjust it in the morning.  And then at the end of the day I look back, and I say, oh well, I got two things done on the list, but I also accomplished eight other things.  So I think, to me, being organized is the best way to manage that; and then also making myself be flexible and realize that it doesn’t have to get done right away. ANDY CROWE:  Out of all the technology and all the apps that have come out, I still have not beaten a paper list in terms of its effectiveness and just getting things done. BILL YATES:  Right. HEIDI FOGELL:  I can’t.  I need a paper list and a paper calendar.  I need to be able to see the month in front of me still.  Yeah. BILL YATES:  There’s a pleasure that I get in taking that little item on a paper list and scratching it off and saying it’s done. HEIDI FOGELL:  It’s absolutely thrilling to do that. ANDY CROWE:  So let me find something out about you two because I’m to the point now where, if I do something that is not on my list, I write it down on the list for the sheer joy of getting to strike it off. BILL YATES:  Oh yes.  That’s me. HEIDI FOGELL:  Yeah.  I just raised my hand to that one, too. ANDY CROWE:  I think they make medications that’ll treat the three of us.  But you know what?  We get things done, so good. BILL YATES:  Let’s buy it in bulk. HEIDI FOGELL:  That’s right. NICK WALKER:  My problem is that I lose my list, and I have to make a brand new one, and it’s usually different from the original. ANDY CROWE:  Heidi, tell me, as you approach a project, and this is something I’m always interested in, how do you sort of organize and approach it?  When you get assigned a new project, where do you begin?  How do you start?  How do you even begin to think about the overall deliverables and how you’re going to do it? HEIDI FOGELL:  Oh.  Well, it really depends on the size of the project.  The larger projects we work really as big cohesive teams on.  So there’s a group of people planning these things.  And generally what happens, if it’s something that’s completely new, we get a Request For Proposal from a client.  And usually we’re competing against people. So we actually – a bunch of people get in a room and sit down and plan it out.  And we go through the scope of work.  We itemize the lists that they’re asking for.  We plan out the amount of time we think those things will cost, the personnel that get loaded into that.  And then from that we build up the budgets.  So it’s basically, it’s looking at what the deliverables are going to be and then building up the tasks underneath those deliverables.  And it’s a similar effort for a smaller project, but obviously the number of people involved is much smaller. BILL YATES:  That’s good.  I can think back to RFPs where our team did a great job of estimating, and we won the business, and we actually made money off of it. HEIDI FOGELL:  Wow.  Impressive. BILL YATES:  And then others that were not so good. HEIDI FOGELL:  Right, right. BILL YATES:  You know, there were some rocks that we didn’t turn over and look under.  And those are tough.  Are there some things that you can think back in that RFP process where you guys have found, okay,

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● KEITH WILLIAMS NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is our informal discourse about what matters most to you as a professional project manager, or if you’re working toward that position.  We want to keep you motivated, keep you improving, and encourage you with some real-life stories from others who are doing the stuff of project management. I’m your host Nick Walker, and with me are the experts at all this, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And one of the subjects we like to keep coming back to, it seems, in this podcast, Andy, is what we call “best practices.”  And our guest today can definitely speak to that. ANDY CROWE:  Yeah, I’m looking forward to that.  We have Keith Williams in the studio with us today.  And, you know, the whole idea with best practices, we get to learn from other people.  We get to figure out what they’ve learned by trial and error and through some pain so that maybe we don’t have to go through that ourselves each time. NICK WALKER:  Well, let’s talk a little bit about Keith before we introduce him.  He’s a project control supervisor at Georgia Power Company.  He’s been serving in various areas of project management there since 2005, and as the operational performance supervisor for Southern Company.  Before that he held several project management/project controls positions at Parsons Company, Georgia Transmission, Enron Energy Services, Chemical & Industrial Engineering, the City of Louisville, and Earth Science Technologies.  Keith, it is a privilege to have you here on Manage This.  Welcome. KEITH WILLIAMS:  Thank you, and I look forward to it.  It’s a great opportunity. NICK WALKER:  Let’s start of by – just tell us a little bit about your current role in project controls at Georgia Power. KEITH WILLIAMS:  The project controls group at Georgia Power, first of all, I’m segmented in the transmission organization.  Those are your large power lines and substations.  The biggest thing we always like to describe, we’re the extension cord between the plant and the customer, so we’re the big orange cord. BILL YATES:  That’s a good picture.  Got it. KEITH WILLIAMS:  And so my group is mainly responsible for scheduling and budget controls.  It’s segmented into several different fields within project controls, which also includes cost engineering.  And also we’re responsible for the tools that manage all of that.  In that role, as far as my leadership within my group, our goal is I always like to say we’re the mortar between the bricks.  We’re the ones that are trying to make the connection between the organization and give them information so that, first of all, our project managers can make good decisions, offer real information; and then also to see how we can improve processes as far as that constant improvement that you see in Six Sigma. NICK WALKER:  You’re a project management nerd. KEITH WILLIAMS:  Yes, I would agree. NICK WALKER:  That’s what Bill and Andy are calling you.  And we love project management nerds. KEITH WILLIAMS:  Oh, most definitely.  I get told that a lot.  But then I look at the other guy and say, “Hey, you all are engineers.  It’s not like you all are cool.” ANDY CROWE:  Keith, you mentioned Six Sigma.  Now, do you guys actually practice Six Sigma in your group, or is that something that you look at from your own standpoint? KEITH WILLIAMS:  It’s something more I look at from my own standpoint, really got exposed to it as the operational performance supervisor.  And especially with looking at DMAIC and looking at those aspects there. BILL YATES:  Sure.  Now, Nick, you called me out, so I need to go ahead and explain. NICK WALKER:  Sure. BILL YATES:  So here’s how I came to that conclusion.  There are many data points here.  But as Keith and I were talking, he is a card-carrying member of the AACE, which is the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering.  And now, for those who have studied earned value management, you know what this is. ANDY CROWE:  Earned value management is your entry card to get into this group. BILL YATES:  Yeah, it’s like your password to get into that speakeasy. BILL YATES:  So when he talks about scheduling and budgeting, yeah, this is exactly – this is part of our wheel... ANDY CROWE:  This is the deep end of the pool, isn’t it. BILL YATES:  Yup, yup. NICK WALKER:  But when I look back at your résumé, you started out in biology.  That seems like a long way from where we are now.  Or is it, really? KEITH WILLIAMS:  From a project management standpoint it’s really not.  Project management is sort of a model you can apply to any industry.  Now, when I got into biology, I did not know I would fall into environmental.  But there I was a projects person.  And we did a lot of, back during the early ‘90s, underground storage tank removals due to federal regulations.  And then just doing those jobs at retail sites as far as the law was you had to change all those out.  And then if there were any long-term issues there, as far as what type of remediation work we would need to do.  But that was sort of my informal introduction to it. NICK WALKER:  So tell us a little bit about how that has transformed into what you’re doing now, and where are you headed with all this? KEITH WILLIAMS:  I would say the biggest thing you learn as far as when you start doing project management or get introduced to it is you want a systematic way of approaching your work.  You want a methodology that is going to help you be more proactive and not just reactive to the things that you need to do.  And so what I found is that, even though it was informal, I didn’t know what it was called at the time, but that was really the approach that I could apply this and consistently use this over and over again. And when I say “proactive” is how do I understand the risks that we have because there’s always environmental things.  And when I say “environmental,” not just from the field, but there are some external impacts that you’re going to have to try to anticipate and then mediate.  And so to me that’s just an awesome part of it.  And when I say you can apply it to anything, look at my résumé.  I’ve been in environmental.  I’ve been in chem, petrochem.  I’ve been in energy, utility, water, wastewater, but still using that same concept to do those jobs. BILL YATES:  One of the things that I think Keith has a unique voice in is within your industry, because I was a part of this industry for 18 years myself, in the utility industry, one thing that’s unique with utilities is they share data across the industry.  Because of the regulatory bodies, they’re encouraged to do so.  But you’ve been a part of committees and are serving on some subcommittees now where you have the opportunity to look at, not just the project’s performance within your own organization, but looking across many different utilities, as well.  Tell us a little bit about some of those committees, and then let’s get into some of the takeaways that you have from those. KEITH WILLIAMS:  Okay.  With the committees that I’ve served on, one that I’m doing right now is AEIC. BILL YATES:  And, yeah, what does that stand for? KEITH WILLIAMS:  I’ll butcher this real quick. BILL YATES:  I think – I jotted it down just in case.  It’s the Association of Edison Illuminating Companies. KEITH WILLIAMS:  Yes.  And they have different working committees.  And one of them is a subcommittee on project management.  We try to get like for like.  So in our area that I’m a part of, most of these utilities are part of it.  They’re in the transmission or distribution organization.  Other committees involved with, Southern Company used to do a Southern Company transmission benchmarking effort where we would share technical data as far as cost to maintain, whether it would be substation lines in other areas. But I’m going to back up a little bit to tell you a unique story when we first started doing that.  My role as operations supervisor was I ran that consortium.  But when we were doing feedback and trying to retool that organization, a lot of people started saying we love the data, it’s great.  But I tell you, the best part of the conference is the conversations out in the hallway when we start talking best practices. ANDY CROWE:  Sure. BILL YATES:  Right. KEITH WILLIAMS:  And so we started making that a focus.  And really what we’re saying, even though it’s a formal setting, a lot of those conversations are very informal because they’re trying to figure out what do their organizations value and how can they move the needle.  A lot of times moving the needle is cost and schedule.  When I say “cost and schedule,” how can we maximize the work we’re getting done for the minimal cost?  And so the example I always give, if you have a capital budget for your organization, let’s say $500 million, at the beginning of the year you say I’m going to do 300 projects for $500 million.  At the end of the year, you might have only done 175 projects, but you spent the $500 million. BILL YATES:  Right. KEITH WILLIAMS:  And so I always ask that question:  Were you successful?  And that’s usually the high point where we start in saying, okay, let’s talk about a little bit more what it means.  For organizations today are under tremendous cost constraints.  We’re seeing that, not just in our industry, but across the board.  So they want to maximize and get more done with less.  And so when we start looking at stuff at our companies and in our industries, we’re now paying attention.  You saw on my résumé I used to work with Enron.  The Enron days are over with, where you just throw money at a problem.  We just don’t have that luxury.

Tune in to understand why Bill Gates chose The Box as one of his top picks in 2013.  ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● MARC LEVINSON NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is our roundtable discussion about what matters most to you, whether you’re a professional project manager or working toward being certified.  We want to be a spark to light your imaginative fire and give you some perspective and encouragement.  And we do that by drawing on the experience of others who are knee deep, and sometimes deeper, in the world of project management. I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are the experts at this table, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And Andy, we’re going to hear from a very special guest today. ANDY CROWE:  We’ve got a great guest this morning.  Marc Levinson’s joining us.  He’s the author of several books, and a really well-known person in the nonfiction world. NICK WALKER:  Dr. Marc Levinson is an economist.  He’s an expert in international trade and globalization, international finance and finance regulation.  He’s written for, among others, Time magazine, Newsweek, Harvard Business Review, the Daily Journal of Commerce in New York, and The Economist in London.  And he’s advised Congress on transportation and industry issues.  He’s a consultant and an author of six books.  Marc, welcome to Manage This. MARC LEVINSON:  Well, thank you very much.  I’m delighted to be with you. NICK WALKER:  Now, Marc, we’re here in Georgia.  And you have a little bit of a Georgia connection, as well. MARC LEVINSON:  I lived in Atlanta for a number of years in the 1970s and early ’80s.  I am a proud alumnus of Georgia State University’s Graduate School.  And so, yes, I do have fond memories of Georgia. ANDY CROWE:  Marc, I’ve got to ask – this is Andy.  What part of town did you live in? MARC LEVINSON:  I lived for a while in Druid Hills and then in Grant Park. ANDY CROWE:  Excellent, excellent.  And my wife also joins you as having done her graduate work at Georgia State.  So got a connection there. NICK WALKER:  All right. MARC LEVINSON:  Very good. NICK WALKER:  One of your most fascinating books is titled “The Box:  How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger.”  Now, Marc, I have to admit that for years when I lived in Seattle I would drive by the port and see the loading and the unloading of the container ships.  But not once did I ever think, how does this method of transporting goods affect me?  I think maybe we take for granted something that’s really changed the life of every person who’s bought something manufactured outside this country. MARC LEVINSON:  The shipping container seems like a very mundane product.  It doesn’t seem like anything that particularly needed to be invented or developed.  But in fact, up until the 1950s, it didn’t exist.  And there was a prolonged period of developing containerization, developing standards so that a container could be sent around the world, and then of businesses changing their practices so that they could take advantage of the container.  So the container had very substantial effects on international trade.  It made globalization possible.  And my book is really the story of how this happened. ANDY CROWE:  Marc, this is interesting for me.  This is Andy.  And as I look at this and think about it, I’ve worked in the supply chain world, supply chain logistics.  I’ve done projects, I’ve managed projects for companies that provide this service for large shipping companies.  And it is something we take for granted.  So project managers have to interface with this kind of world a lot, with cartons and containers, cases – cases in, cartons out, all of it going on shipping containers.  Tell us what the world was like before that. MARC LEVINSON:  Sure.  Before the shipping container was developed, most goods were shipped internationally in a form that was referred to as “break bulk.”  And break bulk is exactly what it sounds like, small pieces of things.  If you would go to a dock, would have gone to a dock in the 1950s, you would have seen bags of products, and you would have seen barrels of products, and you would have seen wooden crates, and you would have seen drums, and all kinds of different things. And each of these items separately would have come in on a truck or a train.  It would have been put into a warehouse alongside the dock; would have been taken out of the warehouse, brought onto the dock; would have been put with two or three other items onto a pallet.  The pallet would have been lifted into the hold of a ship.  Each of the items would have been taken off the pallet and stored in the hold of the ship.  And then at the other end of the voyage this process would have been repeated. A typical ship in those days, and those were pretty small ships by modern standards, but a typical ship sailing the Atlantic in those days might have carried 200,000 separate items.  And each of those items had to be handled repeatedly.  So shipping was a very labor-intensive process.  It could take a week or two to unload and reload a ship.  A ship spent as much time in port being loaded and unloaded as they did at sea, and a lot of cargo was delayed.  So because of this, it was actually impossible to have what we think of as a modern supply chain.  You shipped your cargo, and it got to the destination when it got there.  You couldn’t plan on it.  And you couldn’t organize your production around it.  And that’s what the container changed. ANDY CROWE:  You know, Marc, when you look at this, and when you think about some of the innovations in supply chain management, Japanese management, which really was coming into fruition around the same time, it’d be interesting to know how they influenced each other.  I don’t know if we have a lot of insight into that.  But Japanese management came up with this idea of just-in-time, or JIT.  And just-in-time management, of course, means the inventory arrives at the last responsible moment. So you keep very low inventories.  They get there right at the last minute.  And then it puts a focus on quality because there’s not a lot of parts to waste.  There’s not a lot of inventory.  If you mess up this particular part, you’re going to have to wait for another one.  And it builds, it really focuses on building these close relationships with suppliers.  So the interesting thing about this, I feel like just-in-time management really couldn’t have evolved properly without this innovation.  Do you agree with that? MARC LEVINSON:  Yes.  Now, just-in-time management began in Japan.  And it could begin without the container because it involved local shipping, from one nearby plant to another nearby plant.  But if you go back to the 1980s, you recall that the Japanese manufacturers, auto manufacturers, extended just-in-time shipping across the Pacific; okay?  They were producing parts, engines, transmissions and other components in Japan.  And they were delivering them to assembly plants here in the United States on a predictable schedule.  That could not have happened without the shipping container. So the container made what we think of as the modern global supply chains possible.  It made it possible to ship in very large volume at low cost.  And it made it possible to have a reasonable assurance that what you were shipping would get where it was supposed to be at a particular time.  That really was not possible before the container. BILL YATES:  Marc, this is Bill.  There are so many concepts that are just intriguing to me as you tell this story in “The Box.”  And certainly probably the key character is Malcom McLean.  And when I look at – when I’m reading this story about this character and this entrepreneur, one word just keeps popping up to me, and that word is “disruptive.”  This, you know, as you describe from the beginning, the box is simple; right?  It’s a 40-foot container.  It’s a box. But taking that technology, that simple technology into this industry was so disruptive, you know, I think of the impacts that you talk about in the book to the longshoremen, the governments, the industry and what their expectations were, and even fast-forwarding to the ICC.  And I look at this idea of being disruptive, and it’s something that we as project managers have to deal with, with every project that we do.  The project creates something new.  It’s maybe a new technology or new service.  And it’s disruptive. So I’m just curious what, you know, when you reflect back on the story and the research that you did regarding “The Box,” what advice do you have from either actions that McLean and his team took that we can parlay over to project management as to, you know, how do we handle the disruptive nature of this technology and what we do with it? MARC LEVINSON:  Well, the first thing I would say is that people have attributed a lot of foresight to Malcom McLean retrospectively. BILL YATES:  Right. MARC LEVINSON:  And this is mostly misplaced; okay?  Malcom McLean did not set out to create a globalized economy. BILL YATES:  Right. MARC LEVINSON:  Malcom McLean ran a trucking company.  And he set out to increase his profits.  His concern was that he was running trucks up and down the East Coast, and the highways were getting increasingly congested.  This was in the days before interstate highways.  And so his original idea was to buy a ship and send trucks up and down the coast on the ship, rather than over the road, in order to avoid highway congestion; okay?  That doesn’t sound very dramatic.  And then, as this concept developed, he took one action after another, each of them intended to make money in the transportation business.  And so the modern intermodal freight transportation industry developed out of this. But Malcom McLean wasn’t sitting there with a master plan of how he was going to reshape the world economy.

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● NEAL WHITTEN NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  It’s our opportunity to talk about what matters most to you, whether you’re a professional project manager or working toward one of your certifications.  Our purpose is to light up your imagination, encourage you, and give you some perspective.  We talk about trends in the field, and we draw on the experience of others who are doing the stuff of project management. I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are the two guys who make this podcast happen, our resident experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And Andy, we’re also going to hear from one of our favorite guests today. ANDY CROWE:  Yeah, the guy that I refer to as my “sensei,” absolutely.  Neal Whitten’s in-studio with us, and we’re always excited to have him. NICK WALKER:  Neal Whitten is an author, a mentor, a trainer, a sought-after speaker, and a project management professional.  Neal Whitten, welcome once again to Manage This. NEAL WHITTEN:  I am honored to be here, guys.  Thank you very much. NICK WALKER:  Now, Neal, you speak a lot on project management topics.  You get feedback from your seminars which, I understand, is always positive.  We’re going to talk today about one of the subjects that always gets a reaction from your audiences because it’s real.  It hits home with a lot of project managers.  That’s because you force us to answer the question, am I too much of a softie?  All right, Neal.  You’re a nice guy.  This room is full of nice people.  But there must be a difference between “nice” and “too soft.”  What is that? NEAL WHITTEN:  Well, let me just say that I have found that most people in our profession are too soft, and probably most people in general are too soft.  But when I’m in front of a group, and it’s relevant, I’ll often ask this very simple question.  Do you believe that you tend to be too soft at work?  And what I mean by “too soft” is demonstrating behavior that results in being consistently less effective than what is otherwise possible and needed in performing responsibilities. Anyway, when I ask this at conferences, webinars, and so forth, most people say yes, they are too soft.  And from experience I’ve found most project managers, most business analysts indeed to be too soft.  They’re not willing to make the tough and unpopular project- or business analyst-related decisions, even though their instincts warn them that they’re not taking the most effective action. NICK WALKER:  Okay.  So how can we know if we are approaching that “too soft” category? NEAL WHITTEN:  I can give you some examples.  And you can decide for yourself if you fall into these examples.  One that comes to mind is, if you behave as if you have the responsibility, but without the authority, then in my view you’re too soft.  I do face time with thousands of people each year.  I frequently  hear project managers and business analysts say that they have the responsibility, but not the authority.  This just is not true.  You almost always have the authority.  The problem is that you don’t take it. BILL YATES:  So, Neal, I can agree with this.  I mean, I’ve heard this complaint from project managers when doing face-to-face classes with them.  That’s one of the most common complaints is just what you’re pointing out here, that I don’t really have the authority that I need in order to get my job done.  So you’re saying they do have it, they just need to reach in and grab it? NEAL WHITTEN:  Yeah, that’s the neat thing about it.  It’s already there.  Here’s an example.  And I say this to everyone listening.  When was the last time you were called on the carpet, challenged, for exceeding your authority?  Was it within the last week, or the last month, or even the last year?  Was it ever?  My experience is that less than 15 percent of people in a large group, and by that I mean a statistically valid size group, have ever experienced being confronted exceeding their authority.  And this is sad to me.  But what is sadder is that statistically most people listening will never experience being called out on exceeding their authority across their entire career.  We’re talking about your entire career.  My assertion is that you almost always have the authority, you just don’t seize it.  You’re too soft. BILL YATES:  So I’m hearing Neal Whitten call us all out, that we need to misbehave. NICK WALKER:  It sounds like it, yeah. BILL YATES:  We need to overstep our bounds.  We need to go beyond what we perhaps think our authority is. ANDY CROWE:  Right.  You know something I’ve found with this, Neal, is you get into trouble for the authority you don’t assume, not for over-assuming your authority.  You get in trouble, you get smacked around for not taking enough ownership, not taking enough authority.  And one of the things that we did in the alpha study of project managers, we surveyed 860 PMs and asked them, “Do you believe you have adequate authority for the projects for which you’re held responsible?”  And what was really interesting is the high performers said yes.  They agreed with that statement to a degree of 90 percent agreement. The lower performers, and really when I say the “lower performers,” I mean the 98 percent of everybody, so not just the low performers, but 98 percent of all of us came in below 50 percent agreement with that statement.  So there’s this huge dramatic gap right there of saying whether or not they even believed they had adequate authority.  And it’s largely – then when you turn around and ask senior management, senior management said, “Of course, they all have authority.” BILL YATES:  They’re in charge of the project; right? NEAL WHITTEN:  Those results parrot my experiences totally.  I really believe that, when you go to work every day, you know, put your meekness at the doorstep before you walk in.  Become who you choose to be, and don’t be fearful of doing that.  I was in management for a number of years in a large company.  And I will tell you that I would rather my employees did something that exceeded their authority.  I’d rather they beg for forgiveness than ask permission. ANDY CROWE:  Yes. BILL YATES:  Yup. NICK WALKER:  Interesting.  All right.  So take the authority.  Even if you don’t think you’ve got it, you do. ANDY CROWE:  And let me say, Neal, just as one caution, that that “take the authority rather than ask for permission” does not extend to raising teenagers. We’ll caution that. NEAL WHITTEN:  Oh, I love it. ANDY CROWE:  I’m working through that right now, as a matter of fact. BILL YATES:  I love it. NEAL WHITTEN:  All right.  Let me give you a sidebar that you might find interesting.  So I worked for a major corporation for 23 years.  And in that period of time I exceeded my authority and called down on the carpet about a half a dozen times.  And, now, I never came close to being fired that I’m aware of.  At least nobody ever told me that.  And when I exceeded my authority, it wasn’t for personal reasons.  It was for the business.  It was for the project sponsor.  It was for the customer.  It was for the team.  It was for what I would call the right reasons.  But here’s a sideline that I never would have thought about when I was doing that.  In each case, I either got promoted, or a large award, or both.  Now, it didn’t happen on the same day that I got my hand slapped. BILL YATES:  Right. NEAL WHITTEN:  But it happened on the same project because of the style of taking charge and making things happen.  So being too soft is actually not a good thing, it is a bad thing.  And you will lose respect.  People won’t want to work for you from a leadership point of view.  Let me give you another example, by the way, of being too soft.  If you fail to perform your assignment as if you own the business, to me that is indicative of being too soft.  When you look around you for the people who you respect the most, they’re likely folks who come to work each day with the mindset that they perform their duties as if they own the business.  And that business is defined by their domain of responsibility. If you’ve ever owned your own company, and we’ve got people around the table that have, you’ll know exactly what I mean because you can’t put food in your belly or pay your bills unless you’re successful.  It’s this passion that helps people achieve their best.  These are people who make things happen.  They believe, and their actions demonstrate, that the buck stops here, and that they are fully accountable for the project or their assigned domain.  Your boss and your senior management want you to take charge over your domain of responsibility with a passion that comes about when you behave as if you own the business.  And if you hesitate or routinely pull back, then again you’re demonstrating too-soft behavior. ANDY CROWE:  Neal, I love this.  This is such a good point.  It has some tie-ins with your previous point, as well.  But to me every employee ought to have an entrepreneurial mindset.  And you go into an organization – and an entrepreneur, the mindset, that used to be a bad word when I would tell people back in the ‘80s I was an “entrepreneur.”  That means stay away from this person.  Now it’s got kind of a cool edginess to it.  But back then people didn’t want to be around an entrepreneur.  And I remember my mom asking me, “When are you going to get a real job?” NICK WALKER:  Right, yeah. ANDY CROWE:  “But, Mom, I’ve got a real job.”  So in this case, though, every employee needs to take ownership of their job.  They own their own position.  And that means making it successful; applying the resources, every resource you have control over; probably asking forgiveness rather than permission, within limits, obviously.  You don’t want somebody endangering the business.