Manage This - The Project Management Podcast

Andy Crowe, a project management expert and Six Sigma Black Belt, teams up with Bill Yates, an in-house project management expert. They dive into the fascinating origins of Lean at Toyota and explore the essential principles of motion reduction and defect minimization. The duo explains the synergy between Lean and Six Sigma for maximizing efficiency and repeatability in projects. Andy shares practical applications, even extending Six Sigma concepts beyond manufacturing to services. They tackle implementation challenges and the importance of measurement for success.

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER NICK WALKER: Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Every couple of weeks we meet to have a conversation about what matters to you as a professional project manager.  We may talk about certification.  We share stories of success and how we can improve.  And we draw on the experience of leaders in the field. I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are a couple of those leaders, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And Andy, we are ringing in the New Year and, at the same time, celebrating our one-year anniversary here at Manage This. ANDY CROWE:  There’s a lot to celebrate, Nick.  So Happy New Year to you. BILL YATES:  Happy Birthday, Manage This. NICK WALKER:  That’s right, that’s right.  And what better way to celebrate the New Year and our anniversary than to sort of step back, maybe take stock in ourselves, make some resolutions, set some goals, and talk about what makes a top-tier project manager.  And Bill, we are fortunate to have the guy who literally wrote the book on that. BILL YATES:  That’s right. NICK WALKER:  Our own Andy Crowe has a book titled “Alpha Project Managers:  What the Top 2% Know That Everyone Else Does Not.”  And Bill, this book has made kind of a pretty big splash in the world of project management. BILL YATES:  It really has.  I remember our delight when we saw that, in the exposure draft for the Sixth Edition PMBOK Guide, we actually have – the book is cited; the study is cited.  And it’s early on, even.  It’s in Chapter 3, when they’re describing the role of the project manager.  And it’s very exciting to see that they’re referring to the research that Andy did in the Alpha Study to describe what makes a project manager successful. ANDY CROWE:  Yeah, sometimes ideas and concepts take a little while to work and wind and wend their way into the PMBOK Guide.  And so we were really happy to see this show up, and gives it a little bit of gravitas, perhaps. BILL YATES:  Yeah.  And, you know, to add to that, I know it’s been referenced many times.  I think it was two summers ago Chip and Dan Heath actually mentioned it as a must-read.  They have – they’re prolific writers and well-respected authors, and I was really impressed by that. NICK WALKER:  So tell us a little bit, Andy, about the Alpha Study.  Give us an overview of how this came about. ANDY CROWE:  Well, the Alpha Study was a look at 860 project  managers.  And we looked at who the high performers were.  And the way we did that, Nick – so in order to go through this study you had to do a few things.  You had to participate in a couple of very lengthy surveys.  That was part one of what they had to do.  But then also the project managers had to provide access to at least five stakeholders.  These stakeholders were team members, senior manager, customer, and they were all current people.  So these stakeholders, these five or more stakeholders, five to eight stakeholders, would take part two of the survey, as well.  But they weren’t taking it for themselves.  They were taking it for the project manager. Then what we started to look at is, okay, here’s the way the PM answered questions about his or her performance.  But here’s the way the stakeholders viewed that same person’s performance.  And what we found was there are some interesting gaps.  And it’s the gaps that make this interesting.  What everybody agrees on is only mildly interesting.  But where there’s a big departure, and where they view the same thing very differently, becomes a lot more interesting. BILL YATES:  There’s a book by Malcolm Gladwell, it’s called “Outliers.”  And what I love is he states clearly the purpose of the book, and it relates so on point with the Alpha Study.  Gladwell says, “This book is about outliers, about men and women who do things that are out of the ordinary.  Over the course of the chapters ahead I’m going to introduce you to one kind of outlier after another – geniuses, business tycoons, rock stars and software programmers.  We’re going to uncover their secrets.”  Well, that’s what Andy did in the Alpha book and in the study.  But it’s for project managers. NICK WALKER:  Yeah, yeah.  Is that how the idea got started? ANDY CROWE:  Well, not exactly. BILL YATES:  I think Gladwell got the idea from Andy. NICK WALKER:  Yeah, probably so. ANDY CROWE:  I would be happy if that were the case.  The reality of it is, you know what, Nick, this started off in the very, very early days, before it ever formed into an idea of a real survey of project management practices, was to do a marketing survey and to start looking at project management preferences, what they prefer, what they’re looking for out of their careers, what they’re looking for out of their organization, what they’re looking for in training, rating, things like that.  And so round one of that was more marketing related. Then we started looking at it, saying, you know, there’s some really interesting questions about project management in general.  And so that came out as really part one of the Alpha Survey.  It was a very exhaustive, well, not exhaustive, but very lengthy, probably exhausting and lengthy survey, asking a lot of questions that we were just trying to understand.  And then taking that data back, we collated it, and now we were really on target to understand better for part two of the survey and ask some really pointed questions that were helpful. BILL YATES:  And that gets to the gaps and answers the question of why, which that’s so fascinating.  And that’s really the beauty of the study in the book is looking at why are these 18 out of 860 identified as top performers?  What is it about the way they managed those projects that set them apart?  And I need to just put in a quick word.  Some people don’t know Andy quite as well as I do.  This guy’s very metric driven.  He’s a Black Belt Six Sigma.  He is all about measuring in order to determine if something is improving in terms of performance.  If you cut him, he bleeds data. ANDY CROWE:  Nothing speaks louder than data. BILL YATES:  There you go.  So when he went about this study, it was very rigorous in terms of treating the data with integrity, making sure that we had a diverse group.  Even if you look at the profile of the 18 top performers, they’re from all different industries, all different ages, male, female.  So truly the data has a lot of integrity. NICK WALKER:  Yeah.  The thing that jumps out at me initially is just the amount of research and the time it must have taken to put all this together. ANDY CROWE:  Yup.  It really was.  It took a long time to do the survey.  And there were parts of it we had to do more than once because perhaps we didn’t ask the question correctly, or we didn’t get back what looked like a statically valid response.  And I got very acquainted with theories and statistics like the  central limit theorem and other fun stuff. BILL YATES:  Oh, yeah.  Yeah, yeah, yeah. ANDY CROWE:  Understanding standard deviation and distribution and all of this good stuff.  But it was a lot of fun.  And honestly, Nick, it was a labor of love. NICK WALKER:  So what did you find?  What did you discover? ANDY CROWE:  Right.  You know, what we discovered early on is there’s sort of eight high-level groupings that we found that made sense to organize the data around.  And so those were really attitude and belief.  That’s one of those soft skill things that – do successful PMs view the world differently?  I think the answer is yes, they do.  They do view the world differently.  But how?  How do they approach their job?  What’s their attitude?  What are their beliefs about their profession?  About themselves?  So that was one of those eight. Another one was focus and prioritization.  And this was really based on the research of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote this amazing book called “Flow.”  And I would encourage any of our podcast readers, especially the ambitious ones, those of you who like to read, read this book.  It is absolutely amazing.  It’s not a quick read, not an easy read, but it’s a wonderful book that talks about the psychology of optimal performance.  And it’s how to get into this zone of flow, how to get – now, the research that we did was really based on his theory of distractions. And Csikszentmihalyi claims that we’re really being bombarded with bits of information all the time that are competing for your attention.  If you’re driving right now while you’re listening to this, then you have distractions there, and hopefully we’re not going to be a distraction; if you are sitting down at home or at your office.  You know, you may have your phone buzzing.  You may have people competing for your attention, or things worrying you about your job.  And those types of things can compete for your attention. How do the top 2 percent focus and prioritize on the things that matter?  Because we all know, you know, you remember the Covey “Urgent & Important” quadrant that he made.  And it’s so easy to get dragged into the urgent, the things like the ringing phone, and to miss the important things that are going to really move the needle in our job and our profession.  Communication looks at how do the top 2 percent, what strategies do they use, what techniques, and how do they communicate more effectively than everybody else?  That turned out to be a really important dimension. BILL YATES:  That was fascinating.  One of the gaps in there I thought was the most significant gap in the entire study. ANDY CROWE:  You know what, it was one of the most interesting.  We’ll get to the one that I found the most significant.  But it was a huge gap there, and that is how the top 2 percent – not how the top 2 percent – how the 98 percent view their communication effectiveness and how their stakeholders view it.  And it’s shocking.  It’s just a shocking gap there between the two.

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Every two weeks we get together to discuss what matters to you as a professional project manager.  Whether it’s how to get certified or how to create successful projects, we get input from leaders in the field and draw on their experience and accomplishments. I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are the in-house experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And Andy, it is holiday time.  It seems like every time I turn on the TV or the radio, I hear somebody talking about finding the perfect gift for that person on your list. ANDY CROWE:  And all the sleigh bells in the air that you can hear.  Let me ask you a question.  Has anybody else had an issue with really well-targeted ads coming at them over the Internet? NICK WALKER:  Oh, oh. ANDY CROWE:  It’s been alarming this year how well they’ve figured out what’s going on in my head. BILL YATES:  They know Andy.  They know what Andy wants. ANDY CROWE:  They know.  That’s correct. NICK WALKER:  They know it before I know it.  All right.  So we’ve got gifts that we want to talk about for that perfect project manager on your list.  I guess we want to answer the question:  What’s in your stocking? ANDY CROWE:  You know what, Nick, one of the things we’re thinking about here, some of the project managers get to give a gift to themselves through some of this.  So it’s not so much that maybe you’re buying these for somebody else, but maybe you’re buying it for yourself.  And Bill and I were talking about this as we were preparing for the podcast.  You know, it’s funny, as we look at tools, as we look at technology, one of the things that really always resonates with me is the fact that it’s the process underneath it that really matters.  The technology just facilitates that process. When I started my career in project management, somebody handed me a copy of Microsoft Project and said, “Go and make a project plan.”  Nobody ever taught me how up to that point.  Nobody taught me how to estimate, how to schedule, how to even think about decomposing the work and putting the fences around the scope.  And suddenly I was expected to make a project plan.  So the idea is we’re going to cover some tools.  We’re excited about this episode because this is a lot of fun.  But at the same time, if you give somebody a better word processor, it doesn’t make them a better writer or a better communicator. BILL YATES:  Right. ANDY CROWE:  If you give somebody a better tool, it doesn’t make them a better PM automatically.  And these things will just facilitate getting them there once the process is in place. BILL YATES:  And we get mesmerized by these new tools.  Sometimes they’re... NICK WALKER:  Oh, yeah. ANDY CROWE:  They’re shiny. BILL YATES:  They are shiny, and they come in nice boxes. NICK WALKER:  You can geek out. BILL YATES:  Yeah, we get geeked out.  We think, this is the coolest thing ever.  This is going to change how I do my job and make my life that much better.  And, dang, I just like every feature in it.  I’m going to go deep and figure all this stuff out.  And we lose, to Andy’s point, we lose the big picture.  What are we doing?  How much time am I spending on the tool, just for the sake of me enjoying the tool?  Or is the tool really – am I serving the tool, or is the tool serving me? ANDY CROWE:  Mm-hmm. NICK WALKER:  So with that in mind, do you have any applications that are must-haves, some that you have to have, that you really can’t do without? BILL YATES:  Yeah.  We had fun reaching out to the community and asking other PMs, “What resonates with you?  If you were alone on an island, and you had a project you had to manage, what tool would you want to have on your last two hours of computer life, you know, before the battery dies?”  And so we got some nice feedback from people, from practitioners.  We thought about our own experiences, as well, and did some research, just to see what’s out there in the community.  And we have different categories that we’ll go through.  I think we’ll start with the big stuff, kind of the scheduling and planning tools that most people are going to use on a daily basis as a project manager.  Andy, what’s the one that you’ve used most in your experience? ANDY CROWE:  You know, it has to be Microsoft Project.  That’s kind of the gold standard out there.  It’s something that a lot of people are familiar with.  It runs in different platforms on the cloud.  You can have it installed on your desktop.  It’s a Windows-based application that just does heavy lifting for schedule development. BILL YATES:  Yeah.  I know for back early in my career here at Velociteach we would talk about integrating a work breakdown structure with Microsoft Project.  And at first that capability was kind of clunky, and it wasn’t there.  And through the different versions through the years they’ve made that very seamless, as well.  So that’s an aspect that we like about that, too.  With Microsoft Project you can integrate work breakdown structure.  We talk a lot about, in our classes, when we’re teaching, we talk about the ability to assign work to individuals or team members and then be able to track that back to the work breakdown structure, integrate that with Microsoft Project, and be able to really see if our estimates are accurate and if the resources are doing what they said they would do. ANDY CROWE:  So I have a trip scheduled to Redmond in the first quarter of next year.  And one of the things I’m trying to do is get with some of the people in the Project team.  I want to discuss a little philosophical issue I have with the way they do the WBS to schedule transition. BILL YATES:  Okay. ANDY CROWE:  And just talk through a little bit about, hey, are there better ways to make that turn because they make it in a rather unusual way.  We won’t get into the details of that, but maybe we’ll have something fun to report in Q1. BILL YATES:  Excellent, yeah.  You know, another, with Microsoft Project, many are probably going, “What about Primavera, you know, that’s what we use.”  So I think we should mention those are really – we probably have two 900-pound gorillas in the room.  And I had a suggestion for Andy.  Nick, I know you’re probably a big fan of the Epic Rap Battles that are on the Internet. NICK WALKER:  Epic Rap Battles of History. BILL YATES:  So I think when Andy returns from Redmond we need to have an Epic Rap Battle with Primavera and Microsoft Project. ANDY CROWE:  There you go.  We’ll do that.  You know, Primavera has a really good customer base.  A lot of people would argue that Primavera does better ERP integration. BILL YATES:  Right. ANDY CROWE:  And so, if you have a large ERP system – SAP, some of those, Oracle – that Primavera ties in really nicely.  I don’t know if that’s the case.  I haven’t dealt with it on that level.  But that’s one of the arguments people will make for it. BILL YATES:  You know, that’s something that I’ve heard those complaints over and over and over, which is, “I have to maintain things in two or three different systems.  I have to track time over here.  I have to track my project in Microsoft Project or Primavera.  And then I have to interface with the financials with ERP.”  And, yeah, so that’s a constant complaint that I hear.  Unfortunately, I don’t have an easy answer to that.  I’d love to hear if somebody has opinions on that. NICK WALKER:  There’s one on your list that I have used a lot for communication, and that’s Basecamp.  But there’s a whole lot of things that Basecamp can do, specifically for the project manager. BILL YATES:  Basecamp started right here in Atlanta.  It was incubated here in Atlanta.  So they’ve got quite a history here. NICK WALKER:  How about that. BILL YATES:  And that is, when you look at what is being used most, what’s the most common, Basecamp is right up there near the top. ANDY CROWE:  It’s a jack of all trades. BILL YATES:  It really is.  And it’s a simplified version.  You know, you’re not – if you can live without the complexity or the features and functionality of Microsoft Project or Primavera, Basecamp is one that bubbles towards the top.  We see a lot of our partners using Basecamp.  Matter of fact, this morning before recording the podcast I was on Basecamp, tracking some of the issues that were up. ANDY CROWE:  Yeah, and I might suggest that Basecamp is a collaboration tool. BILL YATES:  Exactly. ANDY CROWE:  More than just a scheduling-type tool. BILL YATES:  Right, right. ANDY CROWE:  It’s something that you can share files.  It’s something you can start discussion threads.  It’s something you can assign tasks, things like that, which is a little bit different than Microsoft Project, which is a sort of a top-down view of the schedule and all the resources on it. BILL YATES:  Yeah, that’s a great distinction.  And it brings up to me a strength and a weakness with Basecamp, just from my own experience and from others, which is the threads.  The thread capability is excellent.  It’s great if you have an issue that’s been assigned or a task that’s been assigned to someone, and they need some input from other team members.  So they can ask a question and easily collaborate and let people know to notify them of the need for their input.  However, here’s one of my complaints.  If you create a project in Microsoft or, sorry, in Basecamp, and then you have several activities or tasks that are in there, how do you prioritize or rank those? ANDY CROWE:  Right. BILL YATES:  And that’s – you can do it.  You can actually drag and drop to the top of the list, that kind of thing.  But as soon as you start to have multiple projects within Basecamp and trying to prioritize resources across those, it gets very difficult. ANDY CROWE:  Well, it gets difficult because it’s not terribly actionable.

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● DR. RUTH MIDDLETON HOUSE NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is our every-other-week visit to talk about what matters to you as a professional project manager.  We like to talk about doing the stuff of project management:  how to get certified; how to create success and sustain it.  We talk with leaders in the industry and see what they’ve been doing and draw on their experience. I’m your host, Nick Walker.  And with me are the in-house experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And Andy, there’s a theme that comes up in our conversations from time to time, and that seems to be managing the unexpected. ANDY CROWE:  It’s a fun thing.  And you know what, Nick, there are so many examples of things not going to plan.  As Eisenhower said, “The plan is nothing, but planning is everything.”  You’ve got to be waiting for who-knows-what to come your way.  So we’re excited about our guest today. NICK WALKER:  Yeah, let’s talk about our guest.  She is Dr. Ruth Middleton House.  She’s president and lead consultant of Middleton-House & Company.  She specializes in troubleshooting high-risk, high-visibility projects in multibillion-dollar partnerships and joint ventures, on down to small business ventures.  She’s an educator, an author; and, Ruth, we consider ourselves privileged to have you here.  Welcome to Manage This. RUTH HOUSE:  Thank you.  I’m just delighted to be here.  You’re right, Andy, so often so much depends on how we manage that instantaneous thing that we did not see coming.  And as an example, I’d like to go back about 700 years. ANDY CROWE:  You’ve been at this a while, but that’s a surprise. RUTH HOUSE:  When he said “experienced,” he meant what he said.  It was at about that time that a fictional character emerged named Mullah Nasruddin. NICK WALKER:  Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Mullah Nas... RUTH HOUSE:  Mullah Nasruddin.  Mullah’s a title.  Like in the rural South he would be called Reverend Smith or Pastor Jones, probably. NICK WALKER:  Can we call him “Moe”? BILL YATES:  Moe, I like that. RUTH HOUSE:  That’ll throw me off, so I’ll call him Mullah; but you can call him Moe if you want to.  And the story, this story, about Mullah illustrates some truths about culture which changes as circumstances change that are very important for us to remember today.  Now, Mullah was out working in his field when a messenger from a nearby town came and handed him a written invitation to come to the great hall and dine with the prince. Well, Mullah was so excited, he dropped his tools right where he was, headed straight for the hall.  But when he arrived there with his threadbare turban and his dirty tunic on from working in the fields, the guards said, “No way.  Not only are you not going into the hall, I don’t even want you hanging around here on the outside.  You just go back home where you belong.” Well, Mullah was insulted that he had not been treated like the very important person he knew himself to be.  But he went home.  He bathed in perfumed oil.  He wrapped his head in his finest silk turban.  And he dressed in his finest tunic and went right back to the great hall.  This time he received a warm welcome and was even ushered inside and seated right next to the prince.  Well, in those days he would have been seated around a beautiful Persian rug, right next to the prince.  That rug was just covered with huge bowls of beautifully prepared food. Mullah ate and ate and ate until he had had his fill.  Then he reached a hand into one bowl, grabbed some food, and rubbed it into his tunic.  He reached to another bowl, grabbed some food, and rubbed it into his tunic.  Reached for a third bowl, grabbed some food, and rubbed it in his tunic.  Everyone fell silent around him, and all eyes were on him. Finally the prince couldn’t stand it anymore.  And he said, “Mullah Nasruddin, you must have strange eating habits where you come from.  Why are you rubbing your food into your clothes?”  Mullah looked straight into the prince’s eye and said, in good Dilbert form, “Well, actually, when you think about it, it’s my clothes that were allowed into the hall.  It only seems right to give them their fair share of the food.” Now, and there’s some truth to that.  The measures that are placed on us may not be the ones we expect, may be something very different.  But there are three real truths about culture that this story illustrates.  First, there are rules for everything – what you know, what you do, how you feel.  That gets into what reports you get to read, who you get to talk to, who you make eye contact with, what you eat, how you eat.  There are ground rules for everything. The second truth is many of these rules are not written or spoken.  And an even scarier corollary to that is that sometimes the rules that are written and spoken are in direct conflict with the ones that are actually practiced in the organization. BILL YATES:  Right, right. RUTH HOUSE:  Now, the third truth about culture is that, if you don’t follow the ground rules, you don’t get invited to the party.  And it doesn’t matter – ignorance is no excuse.  It doesn’t matter if you didn’t know the ground rules.  If you don’t follow them, you don’t get invited to the party.  Now, notice that, in this case, Mullah learned one ground rule, and that was the dress code.  So he got into the party.  But after he broke the dining ground rules, he was probably not going to be invited back.  I don’t think I would have invited him back.  But that’s not enough for you.  When you are in a situation where all of the old rules have changed, then it’s important that you get invited again and again unless you choose to turn the invitation down yourself. ANDY CROWE:  I really liked his response when he got turned away, as he went back, and he put on everything just exactly the right way.  It kind of goes with my philosophy:  Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. RUTH HOUSE:  There you go.  And he did, yes, he did overdo that. ANDY CROWE:  And it worked. BILL YATES:  Yeah. RUTH HOUSE:  And it worked.  It got him, yeah, it got him in, yeah. BILL YATES:  And I’m thinking of a company I worked for for a number of years was EDS.  And EDS was headquartered in Plano, Texas.  And the headquarters was quite elaborate.  It was like going to the prince’s quarters, if you will. RUTH HOUSE:  Right. BILL YATES:  And there was an executive suite called the “God Pod.”  And you had to be dressed a certain way if you were going to go to the God Pod. ANDY CROWE:  Wow. RUTH HOUSE:  That’s very interesting.  And the tricky thing is, when we’re going through a merger or an acquisition or a reorg, or if there’s new leadership above us, we may not know that this other space is now the God Pod and may inadvertently show disrespect for it or not be wearing the right clothes or the right attitude when we go into it.  That was the case – let’s fast-forward 700 years.  And that was the case in an organization that I belonged to.  I was a project manager in a small but very, very financially successful organization.  And we actually bought out an organization that was in financial trouble.  But it had a huge number of people.  Probably they were three times as large as us, employee-wise. Now, we project managers were in the acquiring company.  We were the ones that came to the table with money.  So we thought, this is all right.  They haven’t been successful, but we can show them how to be successful.  They’ll adopt our ground rules.  They’ll do as we do.  Everything will be great.  Well, we were mistaken.  We did not realize that, for our ownership, this acquisition was an exit strategy.  Eighteen months later, all of our old leadership sold out and either retired or resigned.  The leadership we were left with was the leadership of the company that was in financial trouble, and they did what they knew how to do.  They got us all into... ANDY CROWE:  Into financial trouble. RUTH HOUSE:  ...financial trouble, yeah.  And it was very frustrating for those of us who had come from the acquiring company to be in this situation.  We kept doing what we knew how to do to provide good service to our clients.  But it got to be harder and harder and harder.  And finally it just seemed impossible.  So most of us either retired or resigned.  We got out somehow so we could live up to our own standards. Now, that wasn’t the outcome we wanted.  But, you know, it actually wasn’t all bad for us because we did a couple of things right.  And these are things I want to call to your attention.  Number one, we couldn’t control that situation.  But we could control the way we responded to it.  And we did a good job of that.  We accepted responsibility for our own behavior.  You wouldn’t have heard any of us saying, “Well, they made me do that,” even though it was the wrong thing to do.  You wouldn’t have heard any of us saying, “Well, I had no choice.”  We knew we had a choice.  We were breathing.  And we had choices.  And over and over again we chose to do what we believed to be the right thing. In fact, in that situation, I kind of saw myself – my image of myself was an image of a lightning rod.  So rather than strike with the anger or the frustration that I felt towards other people, I saw my job as taking the heat and then grounding it so that I was not burned, and neither were the people around me.  Now, being straight meant we told the truth.  But we did that without being accusatory.  For example, I could say, “I’m confused.  I thought we agreed yesterday that this was going to happen.  But today it looks like this other thing’s happening instead.”  Or I might say, “I don’t understand why we’re approaching the problem in this way.” BILL YATES:  Ruth, one of the things that I’m thinking of in this scenario, how did you interact with your customers?

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Every couple of weeks we get together to address the topics that matter most to you as a professional project manager.  Our conversations touch on getting certified, avoiding pitfalls in the business, and creating ongoing successes. I’m your host, Nick Walker.  And with me are the in-house experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And guys, not to be outdone by the politicians, we have an October or November surprise of our own:  Papergate.  Does this rise to the level of scandal? ANDY CROWE:  I would not go that far, Nick.  I don’t think so.  This was a clarification of a policy from the Project Management Institute that you’re referring to.  But I don’t think it goes so far as a scandal.  It’s turned a lot of people upside down, perhaps. NICK WALKER:  All right.  So let’s get into this.  What is Papergate?  Did you come up with this, Bill, this term? BILL YATES:  I can neither confirm nor deny that I came up with that term.  Yeah, what we had was there is a practice, when you go in to take an exam; you have a 15-minute tutorial that takes place before the clock starts ticking down on your actual exam time. ANDY CROWE:  A tutorial of what?  Explain that. BILL YATES:  A tutorial is really – it’s showing you how to navigate.  As you’re taking the exam, it’s administered on a computer, and you have to know how to use a mouse.  You have to know it’s A, B, C, or D.  How do I click on it? NICK WALKER:  Sure. BILL YATES:  When I click on the next button, what happens? NICK WALKER:  So the logistics of taking the test itself. BILL YATES:  Yeah, yeah.  And it is fairly intuitive.  One of the things that we have encouraged our students to do in the past is to take advantage of the 15 minutes and do a brain dump.  And by that we have formulas that are very important for the exam.  We have keywords, mnemonics, trigger words, different things. ANDY CROWE:  Acronyms. BILL YATES:  Acronyms.  The practice is to dump that information on the scratch sheet of paper that is provided at the exam center during that tutorial time. NICK WALKER:  Okay. ANDY CROWE:  And the reason we do that is so, for instance, if you have a formula down in front of you, you may have three, four, five questions on the exam that ultimately reference that formula.  You don’t have to recall it each time.  You don’t have to start second-guessing yourself.  AnYou do it at the beginning.  Your mind’s fresh.  Because by the end your mind’s going to be kind of pulpy anyway, and so you do it when your mind is fresh.  You get that information down.  And then it’s there.  And then you can refer back to it with some confidence and some ease and some quickness of recall. BILL YATES:  And speaking of confidence, I like to encourage students to do the brain dump because it puts you in a confident mood or attitude towards the exam.  You’re able to walk out of the car, come in and be frisked at the Prometric Center, and provide all the right check-in protocol.  And then you sit down, and your anxiety level is really high.  By doing the brain dump, you’re able to produce something on paper.  So you’re getting, kinesthetically, you’re getting involved in it; and you’re relieving some of the stress; and you’re building some of that data that you can refer back to during the exam. NICK WALKER:  And does the feedback from people who’ve taken the test show that this has been effective? ANDY CROWE:  Very. BILL YATES:  Yeah, it’s a good practice.  So we had a curveball. NICK WALKER:  Uh-oh. BILL YATES:  So PMI came back and said we’ve had a change in policy.  And now at all Prometric Centers, when you go to take the exam, during the 15-minute tutorial you’re not allowed to take paper and pencil that’s provided at the exam center.  You’re not allowed to do that brain dump. NICK WALKER:  Okay.  So that kind of changes a lot of the way that people have thought about doing this in the past. BILL YATES:  Right. NICK WALKER:  And maybe we have to kind of rethink this? BILL YATES:  Yeah.  And to tease this out a little bit further, you are allowed to do the brain dump, just not during that 15-minute tutorial. NICK WALKER:  Oh, okay. BILL YATES:  For example, the PMP exam is a four-hour exam.  When you finish the tutorial, the four-hour clock starts to tick down.  When that first question appears on the screen, you’re able to then make any notes you want to on the scratch paper. ANDY CROWE:  But the clock is ticking at that point. NICK WALKER:  Yes, yes. BILL YATES:  Right, right. ANDY CROWE:  Your four hours are going for the PMP. NICK WALKER:  And is there time to do the brain dump? BILL YATES:  That’s the question. ANDY CROWE:  Yeah.  And we definitely want to get into that a little bit.  I want to point out that Prometric Centers, at least some, if not all of them, are franchised.  And so the quality of your experience is going to vary from center to center.  Years ago, I went and took the PgMP, which is the Program Management Professional Exam.  And I think I was No. 99 or No. 100 to get that credential at the time.  So I went through it.  And when I was in the waiting room, the proctor came out to me and was talking to me about the exam.  And she said, “Hey, if you want to, take this scratch paper right now, and you can make your brain dump out here in the waiting room. BILL YATES:  Really.  Wow. ANDY CROWE:  And I said, “Yeah, thanks, I’ll wait.”  I don’t know why that bothered me, you know. BILL YATES:  Did you feel like you were being set up? ANDY CROWE:  I did.  I was afraid the PMI police were going to storm the room. NICK WALKER:  Where’s the video camera? ANDY CROWE:  Right. BILL YATES:  Right.  The yellow suits drop out of the ceiling. ANDY CROWE:  So I passed.  I said, “Yeah, I’ll just do it when I get in there.”  But so you have this 15-minute window at the beginning.  A lot of it, Nick, is a chance for people to calm their nerves and that type of thing.  The tutorial itself, I guess if you’ve never taken an online exam before, it might be worthwhile.  We simulate the exam experience really, really well in our online in Velociteach’s InSite platform.  So we give people, by the time they’ve gone through and taken one or two practice exams online with us, they know what it’s going to feel like. So you’re not going to get a lot out of the tutorial.  It’s just really, really basic and pointless.  So we use that time for other things.  PMI’s clarifying that they don’t want that.  So now you’re left with the magic question you just asked:  Do people still do the brain dump? BILL YATES:  Right.  And, you know, you started this podcast with the word “Papergate,” I think it was? NICK WALKER:  Papergate. BILL YATES:  That’s interesting you made that up, Nick. NICK WALKER:  Yeah, right.  That was not my – but, hey, does it fit?  I mean, that’s the thing, if it fits. BILL YATES:  Yeah, but let’s get off of that for a second.  So about October 25th is when we were notified through a LinkedIn group thread that this policy had changed.  Now, we were hearing this from several points around the same time.  We had students saying, hey, I just went to take my exam.  I passed, but I had a weird thing happen to me while I was starting the exam. ANDY CROWE:  A funny thing happened to me on the way to take my exam. BILL YATES:  Yeah, funny, funny.  Right, a funny thing happened.  Yeah, yeah.  And so we had different individuals taking the exam across the globe and giving us feedback in some cases that, “Hey, I was still able to do the brain dump during the tutorial.”  Others saying, “I was told upfront I could not do it.”  Others started the brain dump and had the proctor come and take the paper from their hands. NICK WALKER:  Interesting. ANDY CROWE:  And let’s... NICK WALKER:  So rules vary, like you said. BILL YATES:  Yes. ANDY CROWE:  Well, let’s touch on that for a moment because the role of the proctor is going to – is an interesting one.  The proctor is the person who sits – in some of the Prometric Centers it’s behind a one-way mirror so they can see – a two-way mirror, I’m not sure which.  But they can see out, and you can’t see back in.  Some of them sit behind a piece of glass.  Some of them will go walking up and down the testing center aisles, clicking their shoes or their heels. BILL YATES:  Tapping the ruler. NICK WALKER:  Oh, great, yes, thanks a lot. ANDY CROWE:  Yeah.  So here’s the thing.  Some proctors, just like any other job, some people are kind of laid back.  They are there to ensure the integrity of the testing experience.  Some of them are anything but laid back, and they care about every little thing.  And so it would give them great joy to come and rip your paper up, hand you fresh sheets of paper.  So you’re not sacrificing your scratch paper forever.  You can get new scratch paper.  And that’s true in general.  If you run out of scratch paper in the exam, you can go turn it in and get new scratch paper.  But the idea is some proctors really care about rules and maybe have control issues and things like that.  So it just depends on what you’re going to see. BILL YATES:  Yeah.  And Nick, I think, you know, you touched on the important question:  Is it worthwhile to still perform the brain dump?  And the advice that we’ve given to our students since this declaration came down is that you need to evaluate that.  There’s great value in doing it. NICK WALKER:  Sure. BILL YATES:  You know, we talked about the confidence that brings and also, to Andy’s point, you may refer to that.  Why not go ahead and produce this on the frontend of the exam, while your brain is fresh.  You may refer to those formulae or to some of the notes that you’ve made throughout a four-hour exam.  So there’s a lot of value in that.  But then there’s that tradeoff, when it gets to managing time.

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● ERIC NORMAN NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is our chance to meet with you and talk about the nuts and bolts of project management and what matters most to you as a professional project manager, whether it’s getting certified or simply doing the job of project management.  We hear from some of the leaders in the industry and draw on their experience.  I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are the in-house experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And talk about experts, Andy, we certainly have one with us in the studio today. ANDY CROWE:  This is an exciting podcast for me, Nick, and I’m not sure I’ve ever looked forward to one more than this.  So this is a real treat. NICK WALKER:  Wow.  That is saying a lot.  Eric Norman has consulted and led projects and business process improvement efforts at AT&T, at Sprint, Delta Airlines, Cox Communications, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just to name a few.  He’s a frequent presenter at national and international trade conferences and is a recognized authority on program management practice.  Eric, welcome to Manage This. ERIC NORMAN:  Thank you, Nick.  Thank you, Bill and Andy.  I’m thrilled to be here. NICK WALKER:  Eric, you sort of have a unique role in all of this.  A lot of your work has been in the area of developing standards for the industry, but also in performance of a particular role.  Given your extensive background, give us a little brief overview of your current role in project management. ERIC NORMAN:  I actually have two roles.  One is an employment-type role; the other is volunteer.  So from an employment perspective, when I’m working with clients and working with leaders, I’m focused on alignment of strategy in the organization with the delivery of the initiatives that they have.  On the volunteer side, I’ve had a lot of experience with standards, as you mentioned. But most recently I’m working on the Certification Governance Council.  The Governance Council is a subcommittee of PMI’s Board of Directors, and it oversees the strategy and governance of PMI certifications, the eight certifications.  So we look historically at what has happened with the development of certifications over the course of PMI’s history.  And we look out into the future five years, 10 years, 15, 20 years; and we talk about how to manage what we have currently as a family of certifications, and what does the marketplace demand coming forward.  And that’s a fairly active interaction between PMI’s Global Operations Center, the staff, CEO and all the vice presidents and staff at PMI, but also the Board of Directors who oversee that staff. So it’s a very active and interesting role; and I get to see the relationship between certifications, the performance of the role, and the standards that kind of guide that performance. ANDY CROWE:  Eric, just to clarify, earlier you used the word “performance.”  So you’re not looking at the performance of the certification, you’re looking at the performance of the role?  Is that correct? ERIC NORMAN:  We actually are looking – both. ANDY CROWE:  So what does that mean?  What does the performance of the certification mean from your standpoint?  What do you track? ERIC NORMAN:  PMI – you could think of the certifications for PMI as products.  PMI has three major components of their product set.  They have knowledgeware, which are standards and things of that nature. ANDY CROWE:  The PMBOK Guide... ERIC NORMAN:  PMBOK Guide. ANDY CROWE:  ...being a prime example flagship. ERIC NORMAN:  Absolutely.  And it is the flagship.  The other standards, the practice standards and the guides – so the knowledgeware and the publications that PMI is also involved in.  The second big component is membership. BILL YATES:  Right. ERIC NORMAN:  So there is a large effort to always manage the members and their experience and those things.  And the performance of how the revenue and just like another product... ANDY CROWE:  An adoption, sure. ERIC NORMAN:  ...of the ideas behind project management are working throughout the world.  The third are certifications.  The certifications that PMI issues and maintains are roughly, well, they’re a major component of PMI’s revenue stream.  So we look at the performance of each of the credentials as individuals, but also as a group. ANDY CROWE:  Okay. ERIC NORMAN:  So that’s at the macro level.  We also look at how the standards and the credentials match the actual performance of the work... BILL YATES:  Okay. ERIC NORMAN:  ...people actually do. BILL YATES:  Right. ERIC NORMAN:  So when there’s a question about how a particular role is evolving, the Certification Governance Council gets involved in that and starts to work with the staff and the board about where is the standard and where is the actual performance of the role going. ANDY CROWE:  It would almost be a relevance factor, how relevant is the credential that we’re issuing to the work actually being done, how do those two match. ERIC NORMAN:  Exactly.  And are there some that aren’t relevant, or maybe are there some that there’s a major demand in the marketplace that PMI doesn’t have an offering. BILL YATES:  Right, right.  The VA, for instance. ERIC NORMAN:  Right.  That didn’t come by accident. BILL YATES:  Yeah, right.  And Eric, the other – I’m thinking about the role that you see and that you’ve played in delineating where does project management stop and where does program management begin?  You know, that’s... NICK WALKER:  That’s a great question. BILL YATES:  That’s a difficult – so it sounds as if that’s part of the call, as well, is to help guide and define what is a project manager, what is a program manager, what is a portfolio manager. ERIC NORMAN:  That is true.  We get involved in the business case and the definition of the role that’s behind the various credentials that PMI maintains.  But to answer your question, Bill, it’s an interesting thing that more and more people are coming to realize that project management doesn’t stop where program management begins.  These two roles are parallel and partnered.  And they represent different functions within an organization, but critically important functions.  And they are really needed to be working together.  It’s a rewarding career to follow project management to its ultimate end and have a very – I’ve seen projects that make other programs seem small. BILL YATES:  Right. ERIC NORMAN:  And I’ve seen programs that make projects seem small.  So the idea is that there’s no one style that is you work on project management for so long in your career, and then you stop doing that and become a program manager someday.  That’s really not the way it works.  There are many people who come to program management straight from a finance background. BILL YATES:  Right. ERIC NORMAN:  Or from a military officer candidacy school background.  And they’ve been running programs in government for 10 years, and suddenly they’re a program manager. ANDY CROWE:  And the skill sets, you know, they’re Venn diagrams.  They overlap. ERIC NORMAN:  They overlap. ANDY CROWE:  But they’re not identical. ERIC NORMAN:  They are not identical.  And I think people are starting to realize that there’s extreme value in both.  There are program managers who just do not understand how to do projects well.  But they need with them people who can do operational things and do tactical precise things extremely well.  And by the same token, project managers really need to understand how what they’re doing fits into a larger picture.  So it’s the program manager and portfolio manager’s business connection at the leadership level that helps draw everything together and makes it work as one. ANDY CROWE:  You know, just a thought along that.  If you spend any time around me – and that’s not always a good thing.  But if you spend time around me, I’ve started seeing the world in this two-factor sense.  And the two-factor sense, there’s a couple of ways to look at it.  But the way that I talk about it is, yes, project managers need this intense ability to focus, and focus and work on their project, and prioritize and those types of things.  They also need to ability to zoom out and look at the big picture, talk about benefits realization, figure out how this fits into the context for their organization and operations.  You know, projects don’t include operations, but yet we’ve got to be aware of them, or else we’ll get in a lot of trouble. ERIC NORMAN:  That’s critical. ANDY CROWE:  And so Fiedler did all this work back in the ’60s in contingency theory.  And basically I’m butchering his theory kind of intentionally for my own purposes here.  But Fiedler said, look, what made you successful over here, your success is contingent upon your ability to switch skill sets, to activate different skill sets.  And whether that be task-oriented and relationship-oriented, whether it be something else, you need to be able to make those transitions.  And you’re exactly right.  There are times when the project manager needs to close the door, hunker down, focus, prioritize, and knock all this out.  There are times when absolutely it takes just almost a 180-degree different skill set. ERIC NORMAN:  And you rarely find – and Andy, I think that’s really a wonderful point.  You rarely find all those skill sets in a single individual. BILL YATES:  Right. ANDY CROWE:  But don’t you find that, as you get older, you get better at doing these things? ERIC NORMAN:  No. ANDY CROWE:  Okay. ERIC NORMAN:  I don’t.  I think you get better at some things. ANDY CROWE:  Right, right. ERIC NORMAN:  But not all. ANDY CROWE:  Correct. ERIC NORMAN:  And I think it would serve us well if we became comfortable with the fact that we can’t do everything, and start to refine the things that we do well,

From wolf rats to sleeping monsters, scary project stories you won't believe. All project managers face risks. Listen if you dare

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Every two weeks we meet to talk about the things that matter most to you as a professional project manager.  These include the ins and outs of just doing the job of project management; how to get certified and stay certified.  And we hear from some of the leaders in the industry. I’m your host, Nick Walker.  And with me are the in-house experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  You’ve got questions?  They’ve got answers.  Hey, guys.  It’s been a couple of weeks since we were all together.  It’s good to be back with you. BILL YATES:  Yeah. ANDY CROWE: It’s good to be reunited. NICK WALKER:  I hope you both look forward to this time as much as I do.  This is a great time to get together.  And I mentioned that we like to deal with questions.  One of the questions we’ve been hearing about is earning PDUs.  As most of us know, we need 60 PDUs, those are Professional Development Units... BILL YATES:  Correct. NICK WALKER:  ...every three years to keep the PMP credential current.  And when somebody works that hard to get that credential, they don’t want to lose it. BILL YATES:  That is true. NICK WALKER:  Simply because they don’t get enough PDUs. BILL YATES:  Right. NICK WALKER:  So we’ve mentioned it before, but it’s probably a good idea to go into more detail.  We actually offer PDUs, free PDUs to our listeners. ANDY CROWE:  Right.  This podcast is good for PDUs.  And Nick, just one thing to add a little color to that is it’s not just the PMP.  You’ve got to have them for all the PMI credentials.  So PgMP, CAPM, PMI-ACP. BILL YATES:  ACP, yup. ANDY CROWE:  All of them.  PfMP.  So this is the currency of our people. NICK WALKER:  Let’s talk a little bit about how to get some of those PDUs from this podcast.  Each Manage This Episode, I understand, is registered with PMI as a “Category A PDU.” BILL YATES:  Yeah.  That means it’s top of the line, top-shelf platinum level. NICK WALKER:  Oh, yeah.  And, you know, we’ve aligned each episode to the appropriate areas of PMI’s Talent Triangle.  Tell us a little bit about that. ANDY CROWE:  Yeah.  You’ve got to have – so there’s three legs of a Talent Triangle, hence the word “triangle.”  There’s technical skills, there’s leadership, and there’s business savvy.  And you have to have at least eight PDUs from each of those legs.  So now the days are gone when you can read a book and claim all of your PDUs from reading a book or from giving back to the profession, which used to be a lot of people would get involved in their chapter, and they would give back, and they would get their PDUs that way.  Now you have to have a certain number from training.  And so this really comes in handy here. NICK WALKER:  And the great thing is we make it simple here.  All you have to do is go to Velociteach.com and select “Manage This Podcast,” Manage This Podcast from the top of the page, and you’ll see a big button right there.  It says “Claim PDUs.”  And that spells out the steps.  You can find the PMI Activity ID by selecting the episode from the list.  You’ll see that near the top of the page, as well. BILL YATES:  Correct, right, you’ll see it right there.  And that’s the data that you need to submit that PDU claim.  And like you said, the Claim PDUs button, that spells out all the nitty-gritty details for those PMs.  And they can follow along and check off the list and see it right there on PMI.org. NICK WALKER:  So this is an easy way of getting the PDUs.  I hope lots of folks will take advantage of that.  So let’s give them some information so they can... BILL YATES:  Earn the PDU, yeah. NICK WALKER:  Yeah, let’s do it.  You know, sometimes it’s good to kind of take a step back.  You know, we’ve talked about a lot of things over the last several weeks with all these podcasts.  But a lot of people are interested in a career in project management.  But maybe it’s a good idea to talk about where to begin.  Can I get a little background from you guys, just to help us know how you got started? ANDY CROWE:  You know what, Nick, there are – I get this question so many times that somebody comes along, and they say, “My son or my granddaughter is graduating from college, and he or she wants to be a project manager.  How do they get started?”  And it’s a really interesting thing because there are a lot of paths into project management.  I’ll tell you this.  My own opinion is it’s easier, and doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it’s easier if you’re coming from a domain where you have some expertise.  And this is one of those things that not everybody agrees on this.  This is my opinion.  I think it works better for a project manager to kind of stick within some domain, like construction, like information technology. BILL YATES:  Yeah.  I mean, you think about so much of what you have to do as a project manager is either come up with estimates or figure out resources or lead your team in doing that.  So if you know something about the industry and about the types of projects – you’ve been involved in them, you’ve had your sleeves rolled up, you’ve had your hands in the dirt – you’re going to do them better.  And you’ll be able to assess and see if something is reasonable and have some expertise in that. ANDY CROWE:  So the argument on the other side of that, and it is a fiercely debated topic in our world, but the argument on the other side of that is that, if you have good business analysts, and the business analysts are doing the job that a BA is supposed to do, then the project manager can basically outsource all of that and keep the project finely tuned and moving.  Trouble is, my experience doesn’t line up with that so well.  The one project where I got really burned, I was out of my domain.  I was trusting BAs, and I did not get good data.  And if I had only had some particular expertise to know that, I would have done better. Now, that said, there’s merit on both sides of it.  But I believe it’s easier to become a project manager if you know something about what you’re doing.  It’s certainly a lot lower risk.  You don’t want to go in and become a construction project manager and not understand construction. BILL YATES:  Right. ANDY CROWE:  You’re going to get into trouble.  So that’s my thing.  You know, my path, Nick, I came up, I started out my career as a C++ developer.  So I was a coder.  And I got promoted up to team lead, which was interesting because I was not the most tech, and I probably wasn’t the most talented developer on my team.  And suddenly they said, “Hey, you’re going to be team lead.”  Wasn’t asked what, whatever.  But it was a promotion.  And a promotion’s a promotion; you know?  So I said, “Great.” BILL YATES:  So you said, “Yes, sir.” ANDY CROWE:  Yeah, okay, this is good news. BILL YATES:  That’s me. ANDY CROWE:  So I was excited about that.  Suddenly I was the leader of a team.  And I’m getting to define coding standards, and I’m getting to approve designs and architecture and all this stuff.  And I was able to do those things.  And after about two years of that, maybe 18 months, I was recruited to become a project manager in an organization.  And I had no idea what I was doing.  But here’s the problem.  It always looks easy.  And you know the Peter Principle.  The Peter Principle says you’re promoted to your level of incompetency.  You’re promoted up until the point when you can no longer do the job.  And Scott Adams came along later – was it Scott Adams who does “Dilbert”? BILL YATES:  Yeah, yeah. NICK WALKER:  Yeah. ANDY CROWE:  Scott Adams came along later.  He wrote a book called “The Dilbert Principle.”  And “The Dilbert Principle” said, look, the Peter Principle there was some good there because in the Peter Principle you had – your boss, even though he or she was incompetent, they could probably do your job better than you could. BILL YATES:  Right. ANDY CROWE:  You know, they’ve done it, and they got promoted.  Said, but with the Dilbert Principle, the Dilbert Principle says they look around, and they find the poor sap who can do the least amount of damage and make him or her the project manager.  Okay?  That’s the Dilbert Principle.  So the PM is going to be somebody who is just, you know, hopefully they’re not going to screw things up.  That can often be the case.  And I’m worried sometimes that I started my career dangerously close to that because I was recruited as a PM because of my technical knowledge, because I understood the way the coding worked and things like that, the way software architecture worked. And suddenly I was asked to do a project plan.  Nick, I had no idea what I was doing.  To me, that meant a Gantt chart.  That meant a schedule.  And so I put together a great schedule.  And my boss looked at it and just had this moment, you know, it was a face-plant moment.  And he said, “Look, this is not going to work.  This is not a project plan.”  To me it looked great.  I thought, of course it is.  If it’s not, what is it?  And he took me back, and he said, “I want to show you what one of your colleagues gives me when I ask for a project plan.”  And he opened up a binder.  And I was floored. Bill, I had never seen anything like this.  This was all the stuff that’s supposed to be in a project plan.  A schedule, yes; but a schedule management plan, and a communication management plan, and a change management plan, and on and on and on.  Risks identified.  Lists.  Stakeholders.  Contact info.  Everything this guy needed to manage a project was in that binder.  And I was totally blown away.  And when I saw this – the thing is, I may be slow, but I can be taught.  And so when I saw this, the light bulb started coming on.  I said, “I’ve got to learn to do this.”  He said, “Here.  You can have this copy.”

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● JOEL “THOR” NEEB NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Every two weeks we get together to discuss the things that matter to you as a professional project manager.  We talk about project management certification and doing the job of a project manager, and we hear from some of the leaders in the industry.  I’m your host Nick Walker, and with me are our in-house experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And by the way, on the day we’re recording this, Andy, you’re getting ready to deliver the keynote address at PMI Honolulu. ANDY CROWE:  I am heading out to Honolulu to be at that chapter.  I’ve been there before, and I’m really excited.  I’m talking about the Talent Triangle, which is getting a lot of buzz within PMI:  the technical, the leadership, and the strategy triangle and how that applies to our own career. NICK WALKER:  And, by the way, our guest today is delivering the opening keynote in a few days at the Project Management Institute’s Global Congress for North America in San Diego.  And this is a guy who probably has enough fascinating stories that we could probably sit here for hours and never exhaust them all.  It’s amazing how you find these guys.  I’m really looking forward to this today.  Our guest is Joel Neeb.  His friends call him Thor.  Are we friends enough to call you Thor? JOEL NEEB:  I definitely think so, yeah, absolutely. NICK WALKER:  Okay.  Okay.  Well, Thor, welcome to Manage This.  We are fortunate to have you here with us. JOEL NEEB:  Thanks, Nick.  It’s a real pleasure to be here. NICK WALKER:  Now, before we begin, let me give just a quick rundown of your background for our listeners.  Thor was an F-15 pilot.  He escorted the U.S. President through the sky.  He flew missions to ensure the safety of our country after the attacks of 9/11.  He was a technical leader of 300 of the most senior combat pilots in the Air Force.  He’s a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas.  He’s now the president of Afterburner, leading a team of more than 70 elite military professionals, and with them has trained almost two million business professionals and fostered elite teams for Fortune 100 companies, companies in the tech industry, finance, medical devices, and several NFL teams.  We could keep going.  But we want to stop there and give you time to talk to us.  Thor, first of all, why Thor?  I’ve got to know that. JOEL NEEB:  So, you know what, for every call sign there’s two versions of the story.  The version one is safe for public consumption, and we could tell that right now, which is Thor and the Thor’s Hammer.  I was an instructor, and so I was known as “The Hammer” as the instructor.  And then there also is a two-beverage minimum version of the story which is a little less flattering for me and probably pretty embarrassing and sounds a lot less cool than the first version of the story.  But it’s a lot of fun. NICK WALKER:  Does it have anything to do with your chiseled Greek god looks? JOEL NEEB:  It definitely does not, at that point.  There’s an embarrassing story associated with it, like every good call sign should have. NICK WALKER:  Okay, okay.  Well, we’ll just have to go into that one after the mics are off. JOEL NEEB:  There you go. NICK WALKER:  Okay.  Well, first of all, tell us the concept of Afterburner.  How do fighter pilots speak into the world of project management? JOEL NEEB:  Well, you know, in my world, Nick, I was flying Mach 2.  I had 350 instruments in front of me.  I was going in and out of the clouds.  I had four, sometimes seven wingmen flying with me at any given point in time.  And I have to manage this complex universe and figure out, as I’m going inside and in and out of the clouds, how to keep these wingmen from running into each other, how to keep them from running into the mountain up ahead, and then also how to achieve at our mission.  And so we had to be able to distill this incredibly complex universe down into just a few key components that we can manipulate at any given point in time, right, the critical things within my cockpit, because I can’t look at 350 instruments and dials.  I can’t watch all seven wingmen at one time.  What are the two or three things that we should be focusing on paying attention to, to stay safe and to stay successful? And so that’s the same type of business concepts we approach to organizations.  We help them as they navigate, how do I wade through this complex universe as the business cycle shifted from seven to three years, and I’ve got to go faster than I ever have in the past, and I have less time to enjoy the profits from my current product before I need to find the next one.  And so my project needs to take place faster than it did last year.  And this is an accelerated universe.  How do we manage all of that and figure out what key components are to manipulate? ANDY CROWE:  So, Thor, I want to wade in on this a little bit.  And by the way, I’ve soloed in a Cessna 172. JOEL NEEB:  Well done. ANDY CROWE:  Does that put me close to your level? NICK WALKER:  Oh, wow. ANDY CROWE:  Yeah; right? NICK WALKER:  We’ll get you a call sign. BILL YATES:  You guys, you’re peers, absolutely. ANDY CROWE:  I’ll skip the call sign, but thanks.  So I sat in a meeting very recently, and I’m going to strip out some of the details here.  But I sat in a meeting very recently with a very complicated dashboard in front of me.  It was not in this organization.  It was in a different organization, a very complicated dashboard, a lot of components and a lot of eye candy.  And when you’re talking about 350 dials and instruments, this is sort of resonating with me.  So people were overwhelmed with this dashboard. JOEL NEEB:  Sure. ANDY CROWE:  But they were also enamored by it. BILL YATES:  Hmm. ANDY CROWE:  They were oohing and aahing and talking about how great this was.  And in my mind I’m thinking, okay, how is this actionable at all?  So, okay.  You walk into an organization, and they have a complicated dashboard, a complicated set of metrics.  How do you trim that down?  How do you know what to focus on?  How do you decide? JOEL NEEB:  Well, if you don’t know what your ultimate end goal or your intended effect is, then you probably don’t want to trim down that dashboard right now; right?  So if I don’t have the end in mind, then maybe I need 350 instruments.  I don’t know yet.  So what we have to do first is build out that future.  Let’s all land on what does success look like in two to three years?  And I know you’re going to push back and say, well, you know, the market’s changing so fast.  How is that question even relevant?  Not really.  You’ll still have a solid North Star.  If we can determine where you’re going in two to three years, I’m telling you, over the next year or two, things will change, and your path will change to get there.  But your ultimate destination won’t. Once we know that destination, we call it the “high-definition destination” in our world, then we can retrace our steps and figure out what are the critical tactical steps to take right now.  And then it becomes a lot easier to say, well, I don’t need these 200 instruments over here, then.  If all I’m doing is this to pursue this type of destination, then I probably don’t need to look over at this side of the cockpit. ANDY CROWE:  Or I don’t need to look every week or every month, certainly. JOEL NEEB:  Yup, yeah.  There’s nothing wrong with having that scorecard that allows you to have access to it.  It’s just knowing which ones are the most relevant. ANDY CROWE:  And you know the interesting thing here is you start to connect back to what are those dials and levers that are going to move those things, that are going to govern and change. JOEL NEEB:  Exactly. ANDY CROWE:  So it’s not just an act of monitoring.  It’s an act of figuring out, okay, what do I do to move the needle? NICK WALKER:  I see the parallels between the F-15 piloting and project management.  We’re talking about focus.  We’re talking about knowing what the mission is, really. JOEL NEEB:  Knowing what the mission is, and then what are the leading indicators, what are the instruments that are leading indicators that’ll help me affect those lagging indicators for success down the road. NICK WALKER:  So let’s talk a little bit more about focus.  How can project managers get better at locking in on the most important tasks? JOEL NEEB:  So going back to the concept of beginning with the end in mind, first of all, let’s determine what that mission objective is going to be.  What is the line in the sand that defines success?  And we don’t need to do this, once we determine what the two-year North Star looks like, we can back that into a two-month mission objective.  And this is where people generally push back and say, well, timeout, you know, I don’t have a flight like you do.  I don’t take off and land, and I get to have a nice clear start and finish to my mission.  And I say, sure, I’ll give you that.  But I bet you have an idea of what success would look like on September 30th.  I bet you have some semblance in your mind of where you’d like to be.  Why not align your team on that right now so that you can work backwards into the instruments you should be looking at. ANDY CROWE:  Outstanding. BILL YATES: I’ve got a question along those lines.  I know, not only did you fly, but you also were an instructor.  So you had to step back into the experience that you had when you were overwhelmed with too much information. JOEL NEEB:  Right. BILL YATES:  And think, okay, this is how I was trained and how I learned how to focus on the big, you know, the top two, top three.  And then, thinking about our project managers,

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● ELLEN SMITH NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is our every other week chance to meet and talk about the things that matter most to you as a professional project manager.  What does it take to get started in the field?  To get certified?  And how do you survive? I’m your host, Nick Walker.  And with me are our resident experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  They’ve experienced the challenges, they’ve tasted the victories of project management, and they want to share their experience with you. And, guys, we are fortunate once again to have a special guest in the studio today.  Ellen Smith is an attorney with Holt Ney in Atlanta.  She deals with commercial real estate, wireless telecommunications, and land use; and her clients range from single individual member limited liability companies to nonprofit hospitals to Fortune 500 companies.  Varied in her talents, for sure.  Ellen, thanks so much for being with us on Manage This. ELLEN SMITH:  Thanks for having me. NICK WALKER:  We are so looking forward to talking with you about our topic today, and that is negotiation.  But before we get there, Andy and Bill, let’s talk a little bit about the need for negotiation when it comes to project management.  Andy? ANDY CROWE:  And Nick, I want to back up.  You said we’ve “tasted the victories of project management”? NICK WALKER:  That’s my impression. ANDY CROWE:  Bill, is that your experience of your work in project management? BILL YATES:  What I conjure up is more of a bitterness, you know, like the most bitter coffee. ANDY CROWE:  Thinking the bitter dregs? BILL YATES:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  That coffee that’s been sitting there all day. NICK WALKER:  So it’s more the agony of defeat than the thrill of victory. BILL YATES:  Maybe. ANDY CROWE:  You know, it’s one of those – you remember the old saying that you have to have a strong stomach to see how the sausage is made? NICK WALKER:  Yes, yes. ANDY CROWE:  And when you go back and sometimes see how a project gets done, and see what it takes to get there, you’d better have a strong stomach and a strong sense of yourself.  But no, I’m excited about this topic because it’s this whole idea of negotiation.  And the project manager is in such a difficult position.  And this is what nobody really stops to think about.  So you’ve got the organization.  You’ve got this whole group of stakeholders.  You’ve got senior management.  And you’ve got sponsors, users, customers, all of these people. And the way I think about it is sort of picture them in an inverted pyramid.  So that’s on the top side of the pyramid, this triangle pointing down, with the tip pointing down.  And then below you, you’ve got the team.  And that can include a lot of different people.  It can include virtual relationships.  It can include dedicated straight-line reporting relationships.  And the PM is stuck in the middle between those two points.  So there’s a... BILL YATES:  Two very sharp points. ANDY CROWE:  They can get very sharp. BILL YATES:  Yes, very pointy. ANDY CROWE:  And so there’s this idea that the project manager is constantly negotiating everything, all day every day.  That’s really a lot of the job, at the heart of the job.  You could call the person a “project negotiator” as opposed to a project manager.  I mean, there are people who just tick off boxes and say yes, complete, check, check.  And we think about those as maybe a coordinator. BILL YATES:  Right. ANDY CROWE:  But in this case a project manager has to go back in the kitchen and make the sausage.  And it is tricky, and sometimes it’s very ugly, and it’s a lot of work. BILL YATES:  Yeah.  There are third parties that they’re having to rely on to provide valuable deliverables for this project.  So they’ve got contracts, perhaps, with third parties.  They’re having to negotiate internally to get the resources they need to get it done.  They’re having to negotiate with the team, to get those resources on the team.  And people have their own expectations; right?  I’ve got, “This is where I want to go in my career,” or “I don’t want to do this on this project.” ANDY CROWE:  Yeah.  Not just expectations, but their own agenda. BILL YATES:  Yeah, absolutely. NICK WALKER:  So, Ellen, that’s why we’re so glad you’re here.  Because we’re going to draw on your expertise.  Give us just a little overview of some of the situations that you have encountered that require the skill of negotiation. ELLEN SMITH:  Sure.  So commercial real estate; right?  You think it’s just dirt, but it’s not.  I mean, I’m working on a project now where the project team – there’s a project manager.  They’re managing the client, which is a Fortune 500 company which has its own expectations.  They had to negotiate their own contract with that client.  But then they have to put together the project to get something built on a piece of property.  They had to negotiate to get the dirt bought.  They had to get all the equipment. And they have to go through right now the permitting process, so negotiating with government officials, which is miserable in and of itself. But they also have a team of experts; right?  They have their engineers.  They have their architects.  And they have to deal with lawyers on the outside.  They don’t just have to deal with the client’s lawyer.  They have to deal with the city’s lawyer. And they have to deal with the architect’s lawyer and the engineer’s lawyer and everyone else. BILL YATES:  Those dang lawyers. ELLEN SMITH:  And they really are stuck in the middle because at the end of the day they have to get that deliverable to their client.  But they have to keep everybody on the same page and make them happy.  And whether you call it a negotiation, whether you think about the start of your day as a negotiation, that really is what they’re doing from start to finish all day. NICK WALKER:  So obviously a project manager needs negotiating skills.  But that’s not necessarily something, perhaps, that most project managers are going to be trained in. BILL YATES:  Yeah, Nick, that’s a great point.  We, Andy and I, just – we’re constantly surprising ourselves as we look at those that we train and those that use our materials, and just how closely we can relate to them in that this is a skill that we had to learn on the job.  We didn’t really have training on negotiation in school.  You know, we may have learned some tools along the way.  But this is really an on-the-job kind of thing. So we are – we can definitely connect with our tribe in this area.  We may have a lot of technical expertise.  We may be great at coding, at testing.  Or we may be a strong engineer.  But suddenly I’ve moved into this position where I’ve got to manage and negotiate with those people on the team.  Plus, to Andy’s point, that pyramid above me that’s very sharp and pointy and right on the top of my head, I’ve got to negotiate the expectations of sponsors, of customers, of my senior management.  And I don’t have training in it. ANDY CROWE:  And Bill, I want to suggest for a minute that we almost need to think about it a little bit differently as project managers because traditionally we’re trained to think about negotiation as the art of getting the best deal for your organization or for your side.  And it’s the idea of engineering the best deal you can for your group that you’re representing.  And some people do approach it that way.  Project managers are going to get in trouble when they approach it that way. BILL YATES:  Right, that’s right.  If you burn bridges along the way, you’re going to be in big trouble. ANDY CROWE:  Right.  You don’t squeeze people down necessarily. BILL YATES:  No. ANDY CROWE:  I worked with a guy early in my career who was from Philadelphia.  And he was just a Philly guy who’s classic in every sense of the word.  And we love you listeners in Philadelphia.  But his idea was “I’m not winning if you’re not losing.”  And he really seemed to believe that.  That was his overarching goal for negotiating was to squeeze people to make sure everybody knew who won, and it was him, you know; and who lost, and that was you. BILL YATES:  Yeah.  Yeah, Ellen, one of the things that’s unique for us with negotiations is we have to live in the mess that we create. ELLEN SMITH:  For sure. BILL YATES:  So we, you know, as project managers, the things that we negotiate, whether we’re a part of scoping out a project on the front end or we’re in the middle of it, I mean, we don’t want to tick off our client.  We don’t want to tick off those that are on the team. ANDY CROWE:  Or the vendor. BILL YATES:  Yeah. ANDY CROWE:  Not just the client.  You don’t want to tick off anybody. BILL YATES:  Right.  You’ve got to... ANDY CROWE:  You want everybody to be able to live with the outcome. BILL YATES:  Right.  That’s right. NICK WALKER:  And it occurs to me this is probably not necessarily intuitive, either.  So, Ellen, returning to you, how do we... ELLEN SMITH:  Sure. NICK WALKER:  ...become master negotiators? ELLEN SMITH:  Well, and I’ll say this, too.  I think that that top end of the pyramid is probably the ones that have gone to Harvard Business School or some other business school.  They have their MBA.  And they did take classes on negotiation.  So as a project manager, some of the ones underneath, you’ve gone to school, you’ve had the technical expertise, whether you’re an engineer or what have you.  You can put together the things that client, customer, sponsor needs from a technical side.  They are using their negotiating skills against you, always.  It’s not because they can help themselves, it’s because that’s what they went to school for nine times out of 10.  Right?