Manage This - The Project Management Podcast

The podcast by project managers for project managers. Projects are instrumental in defining an organization's vision for a more sustainable future. Dr. Joel Carboni talks about Sustainable Project Management, and the goal to achieve a stated objective while considering the project outcome’s entire lifecycle to ensure a net positive environmental, social, and economic impact.  Table of Contents 02:23 … Green Project Management03:41 … Multifaceted Sustainability04:42 … The UN Sustainable Development Goals08:35 … Green vs. Sustainable Projects09:51 … The Lifecycle Impact of Projects12:09 … Barriers to Sustainability Adoption13:25 … Questions to Ask on a Project Kickoff15:40 … Ren Love: Projects of the Past17:49 … Changing Role of the Project Manager18:54 … Raising Awareness20:54 … How to Influence Stakeholders22:47 … How to Evaluate Impact24:30 … PRiSM Project Delivery Methodology26:02 … The P527:42 … P5 in Action30:24 … Project Managers can Affect Change31:37 … Contact Joel32:18 … Closing JOEL CARBONI: We’re not being taught to think outside the box of initiate to close.  It’s what is the impact of our work, and what happens beyond handover?  What happens at the end of the asset’s lifecycle?  So when we look at green projects, it’s are you taking a total asset lifecycle focus?  And that’s what we have to do. WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds.  With me in the studio are Bill Yates and our sound guy, Danny Brewer.  We’re so excited that you’re joining us, and we have a really interesting conversation today.  We’re talking about Green Project Management. Our guest is Dr. Joel Carboni.  He holds a Ph.D. in sustainable development and environment, and he has over 25 years of experience in various areas of project management including government, finance, consulting, manufacturing, and education.  In addition to serving as president emeritus of the International Project Management Association (IPMA) in the United States, Dr. Carboni is also the founder of GPM, Green Project Management.  And he’s the GPM representative to the United Nations Global Compact, where he was a founding signatory of the Business for Peace initiative and the Anti-Corruption Call to Action.  And he’s a contributor to the development of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. BILL YATES:  SDG is a Sustainable Development Goal.  We’ll hear from Dr. Carboni that he actually worked with the United Nations to define those 17.  Just some quick examples of some of those.  One of those is climate action; another is clean water; another is no poverty.  A final example, quality education.  So those are some of the sustainable development goals that we’ll refer to. Also Dr. Carboni is the creator of the PRiSM project delivery methodology.  We’ll make reference to that and the P5 standard for sustainability in project management.  He’s written training programs on green and sustainable project management that are offered to more than 145 countries.  He’s the lead author of the book Sustainable Project Management, and he is a well-traveled man.  We are fortunate to catch up with him and get to talk to him today. WENDY GROUNDS:  Hi, Joel.  Welcome to Manage This. JOEL CARBONI:  Thank you.  It’s good to be here. Green Project Management WENDY GROUNDS:  We are looking forward to getting into this topic.  I’ve been watching your website and been looking at Green Project Management for a while.  And I’ve always said, “Hey, I want to have Joel on the podcast.”  So I appreciate you being here.  Now, you’ve done a lot of work in sustainability.  You established Green Project Management.  Can you tell us a little bit more about your organization? JOEL CARBONI:  Yeah, sure.  So GPM, Green Project Management, we’re a social enterprise.  And that sits in between a nonprofit and a for-profit company.  So what makes us unique is that a large portion of our income or revenue is redirected into social and environmental good.  So we don’t just make a profit, we try to funnel that back into the projects and for social good.  I started GPM as an idea back in 2009 and did so on a small side table in my bedroom, the idea that projects could be the delivery mechanism for sustainable development.  And since that time, we’ve grown year by year.  And we offer tools and methods, certification for people, our most popular being the GPM-b™, and also our organizational sustainability assessment model and other tools.  So we’re quite happy with the growth we’ve seen and what we’ve become. Multifaceted Sustainability WENDY GROUNDS:  Many people when they hear about sustainability, they just think about environmental issues.  Tell us a little bit more about what are all the issues of sustainability and how you teach that. JOEL CARBONI:  That’s a good question.  So sustainability is multifaceted.  We work with a lot of organizations, and I think it’s a little bit irresponsible for organizations who just focus on net zero.  We hear that a lot.  Net zero by 2050 or, you know, that aspect of sustainability is really all they focus on.  We can’t ignore human rights, which is a core concept of sustainability, as well as a fair and just economy.  We have to focus on all these at once.  So keeping all these balls up in the air, it’s a wide spectrum.  And so we have to figure out how do we actually address this.  That’s why we go always back to projects because projects address the economy.  They address change, and they employ a wide range of people and have an effect on the environment.  So we have the ability to address all these different factors by still doing good with our projects. The UN Sustainable Development Goals BILL YATES:  We are going to reference an episode that we had in the past.  It was Episode 120.  That was the first time that I got exposed to this idea of the 17 United Nations SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals.  We had Karen Thompson and Nigel Williams as our guests, discussing responsible project management.  Let’s bring these back up for those who are not as familiar with those 17 SDGs.  Remind us what they are and why they’re important to a project manager when it comes to creating value. JOEL CARBONI:  Sure.  That’s a good topic.  You know, the SDGs, I can say that I love them, and also I hate them.  And fun fact, I actually helped write them.  So, you know, I do have extensive experience, and my Ph.D. thesis was actually on the MDGs, which preceded them before that.  So I’ve been working with SDGs now for a long, long time. The problem with SDGs, if I could start there, is that they’re not written for us to take action as people.  They’re written for governments and for nations to say, hey, how do you fit into this puzzle, and how can you set targets and goals to address this in your context; right?  For example, the first one is end poverty in all forms.  Great.  You know, but poverty is really an economic decision.  We could do this if we wanted to, but they don’t address the root cause about why poverty exists in the first place.  Why does poverty exist?  So in the targets and goals, they say we have several targets to meet in terms of ending poverty.  It should just be, let’s just end poverty.  Can we all agree and just work towards that?  It doesn’t tell you why it exists or what social constructs are put in place to maintain poverty and to keep the different cast where they are.  It’s kind of a mess. So the SDGs are good in a sense that they bring and they highlight problems that we have to be addressing as a whole planet.  But it doesn’t address root cause.  And that’s really what we have to figure out as project managers.  What can we impact with our work?  Right?  If you break it down into small chunks, okay, we employ people.  Are we ensuring that they’re paid a livable wage?  These types of things are really important. I’ll give you an example.  I was giving a lecture several years ago in the south of France.  So the SDGs first came out.  So this is back in like 2016 or so.  And I was giving a talk to probably about 300 students.  I thought they were students in the room.  This was a university.  I had this big football, or soccer ball we call it in the U.S., in my hand, and it had the SDGs on it.  So I tossed it up at the crowd, said hey, the first one that comes to you, tell me, what does that mean to you and your work? And this guy caught it.  He looked at it, and he was trying to make sense of it.  He goes, “It just doesn’t relate to me.”  And it was about inequality.  And I said, “Okay, tell me, what exactly do you do?”  He goes, “Well, I’m a project manager, but I work in agile. We develop software for the airline industry.”  “Okay. Well, tell me, do you build it all here in France?”  And he goes, “Well, most of it.”  I said, “Okay, what do you not build here?”  “Well, some of it we outsource to different places.”  And I said, “Okay, where?”  He said, “Some goes to Pakistan.”  I said, “Okay, pause right there.  Tell me, do you select the vendors yourself?  Are you in that selection committee?  Are you part of that?”  “Well, yeah.”  “Okay, is any of your criteria ensuring that the people on the other end, your vendors, are paid a livable wage or work in healthy environments?”  “No.”  “Okay, what are your criteria for selecting a vendor?”  “Cheapest price.” And there you go; right?  We’re part of the problem, but we could be part of the solution if we put KPIs and measures into our selection criteria for vendors that actually address that issue.  So once I made that connection, he went, “Oh, now I see.”  And he started looking at all of them going, there’s inroads to all these through our work.  I’m like, there is.  But you have to take the time to actually break it down and go, what does this really mean to me?  At face value,

The podcast by project managers for project managers. Amy King is a champion for the homeless! Hear how she boldly addresses the need for safe, rapidly deployable, living shelters, to deliver the dignity of private space for the homeless. This is a complex project which integrates social services to provide a healing community environment in each village, and also seeks to debunk adverse public perception towards homelessness. Table of Contents 02:28 … Meet Amy04:00 … The Homeless Problem05:11 … Homelessness Data06:41 … Designing the Shelters09:27 … Looking at a Pallet Home10:47 … The Prototyping Phase13:29 … Pitching the Project14:59 … The First Client16:35 … Talk to People with Lived Experience17:32 … Impact Stories19:38 … Returning Home21:15 … COVID as a Catalyst22:43 … The Impact of a Pallet Village25:30 … Forming a Team27:33 … Kevin and Kyle28:53 … Overcoming Obstacles33:01 … Requests from Cities33:30 … Overseas Market34:55 … The Goal to End Homelessness37:39 … “What I Wish I Had Known”40:55 … Where to Next for Pallet?42:32 … Access to Housing for the Homeless43:43 … Intrinsic Motivation for the Project45:36 … Find Out More46:06 … Closing AMY KING: So housing, there’s this really popular American narrative which is homelessness is a housing problem.  I 100% disagree with that.  ... A house, four walls and a roof, do not solve a person’s homelessness crisis.  Giving them keys to an apartment does not solve their homelessness.  You have to address the root cause issue.  That person will end up homeless again.  WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  My name is Wendy Grounds.  With me in the studio are Bill Yates and our sound guy Danny Brewer.  We are so excited you’re joining us today.  We have an incredible project story. Our guest is Amy King, and she is the founder and CEO of Pallet.  This is a public benefit corporation working to end unsheltered homelessness and give fair chance employment opportunities to people of all backgrounds.  Pallet has deployed more than a hundred villages across 85 U.S. cities.  Amy also co-founded Weld Seattle, which is a nonprofit that equips systems-impacted individuals with housing, employment, and other resources conducive to reintegration back into society.  And her passion is just incredible.  I think you’re really going to enjoy her story. BILL YATES:  Yeah, when you take a husband and a wife – and Amy has a background in psychology.  She is a psychologist by education.  Her husband is a master builder engineer.  When you take those two and combine them and take the passion they have, you end up with something amazing like Pallet. Just getting back to it, Pallet offers short-term shelter, community rooms, and private stall bathrooms.  A large interim housing community can be set up in a matter of days with minimal tools using this Pallet system.  Each Pallet structure is versatile.  Units can be used for a variety of purposes from sheltering evacuees to building command-and-support centers or for temporary housing for recovery workers.  Their motto is “No one should go unsheltered when shelter can be built in a day.”  WENDY GROUNDS:  And they’ve done so much more than just build shelters.  When you hear Amy talk, what started as a small project, it grew, and it became more and more, and they got involved in the community.  They got involved in the lives of the people who were living in these shelters.  BILL YATES:  And as we’ll hear from Amy, many of those that have experienced homelessness are now vibrant workers and contributors to Pallet. WENDY GROUNDS:  Hi, Amy.  Welcome to Manage This. AMY KING:  Thank you so much for having me.  I’m excited to be here. Meet Amy WENDY GROUNDS:  We are really looking forward to getting into this topic and to hearing about the incredible work that you’re doing.  But won’t you first tell us a little bit about your background, your career, and how it led to fighting homelessness? AMY KING:  Yeah, absolutely.  So I actually studied psychology in school.  And I started out as a psychologist working  primarily with children, and then moved into the healthcare space and managed some surgical practices here at our local Level 1 trauma center called Harborview.  And then I did private practice for a while, so more on the business side of healthcare.  I learned a lot about business and kind of fell in love with business. At the same time, my husband, he’s a general contractor and has been for 20 years.  And so he started a construction company that we ended up very much by accident hiring people that were exiting the justice system to work in that organization, working with them, teaching and training them on the construction trades.  And my husband asked me to come work with him and help him sort of build out the business components of that entity, which I agreed to do, temporarily because I like being married to him.  I said, “I’ll do it for a while, and then I’m going back to healthcare.”  And then I just really fell in love with the people that were working with us, and I never left. So they really spurred us on to think about homelessness, addiction recovery, and justice system involvement, and kind of how that impacts people’s lives.  And Pallet, and we also have a nonprofit called Weld Seattle, those two entities were born out of that original entity.  So that’s kind of the wavering path I’ve been on since I got out of college. Yeah. The Homeless Problem BILL YATES:  You developed Pallet because you saw a problem.  Can you describe the homeless problem that you observed in your community? AMY KING:  Absolutely.  Yeah, when we started Pallet, you know, homelessness was really on the rise.  And it’s been a problem for a long time.  But public homelessness was really on the rise, and especially in cities like Seattle, where we’re from, where camping bans went away, and people were more publicly out in the open, and you could see them.  And the issue was more kind of in your face. And as we saw it and interacted with those folks, and we’re also employing people who had experience with living on the streets, we were learning a lot about trauma and how that kind of institutes these sorts of issues.  We learned a lot about broken societal systems and how they impact our ability to help people and respond to people.  And as we learned more, we just realized we couldn’t look away, and we couldn’t not do anything. Since then, of course, homelessness has really been on the rise, but being able to center voices of lived experience and spend our time around folks who have actually lived this way and learning from them has really shaped our response efforts, both from a product perspective and a model perspective.  And it’s been quite a learning curve for us. Homelessness Data WENDY GROUNDS: Do you have any data on homelessness? AMY KING: Yeah, I have so much data on homelessness! You may have seen the most recent PIT Count that came from the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the US Interagency Council on Homelessness. As of 2022, which is the most recent data, there were five hundred and eighty thousand people experiencing homelessness across the US. About forty percent of those live unsheltered. So they are outside or living in an uninhabitable situation, on the street, under a tarp, in a building that isn’t meant for human habitation. Interestingly enough, it’s important to know who the population is and characterize the population. We know that the data we have is not overly reliable and valid. But of the data we have, it shows that about seventy two percent of people experiencing homelessness are individuals, so individual adults that are living alone or have been estranged from their families. About twenty-eight percent are families. And about twenty-two percent of the folks that are experiencing homelessness are chronically homeless, meaning that they’re cycling through systems and they just stay outside and they’re struggling to get them engaged with services and move on. We also know that the vast majority of people experiencing homelessness in America are people of color. There’s a large percentage of people that are LGBTQ, transgender youth, that’s a really high population. And then, males more than females, so a lot more men than women are experiencing homelessness especially unsheltered homelessness. So those are some of the high data points to know. Predominantly transient adults is who we serve though Pallet and who really fits our model well. Designing the Shelters WENDY GROUNDS:  Tell us a little bit about the homes that you’ve developed, because I read on your website that you developed these homes out of Hurricane Katrina when you saw a need for people needing rapid shelters.  And now this has become also shelters for homelessness.  So just tell us about the actual homes that you’ve developed. AMY KING:  Yeah, so my husband, again, he was the original inventor.  He’s a general contractor so understands very much what it takes to build housing from a construction perspective.  After Hurricane Katrina he said, “It’s crazy to me that in the wealthiest country in the world that we crammed a bunch of people into the Superdome, and all of the health and safety issues that came out of that experience that were all over the news.” And really what it boiled down to was this idea of agency and independence of personal space, but with services.  And so it felt like we should be able to provide individualized housing post-disaster that allows people to feel safe and secure and not like they’re being exposed to health issues, which is of course even more relevant now because of COVID. But at the time, he felt like we should be able to do this better.  So he created the concept of a panelized shelter system, understanding that panelized construction is easier to deploy,

The podcast by project managers for project managers. How can agile project managers create conditions for self-organizing teams to thrive? In the agile world of a self-organizing team, the trend is to empower the team so the individuals doing the work can make decisions. So, what role do project managers play?  Hear about the three responsibilities of the new agile leader and some important skills to level up in order to lead an agile project. Table of Contents 03:03 … Humanizing Work03:50 … Empowering Decision-Makers05:21 … Changing the Role of Managers08:20 … Challenges for Project Managers09:32 … Complex Systems11:33 … Defining the PM Role13:58 … Coordinate and Collaborate16:35 … Who Does It Well?18:29 … What’s in a Title?20:33 … The Three Jobs of Agile Management23:49 … Project Manager Skills27:25 … Visualization Skills33:10 … Is Agile Right for Me?36:39 … Contact Peter and Richard38:19 … Closing PETER GREEN: ... one of the things that has been an underlying theme to these amplifier skills we’ve talked about – coaching, facilitation – is a real trust that the people doing the work can figure out how to solve it if I do the three jobs well.  If I create clarity, if I increase capability, and if I improve the system for them, they will be able to knock this project out.  They don’t need me to manage it... WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  My name is Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio are Bill Yates and our sound guy, Danny Brewer.  We’re so excited that you’re joining us, and we want to say thank you to our listeners who reach out to us and leave comments on our website or on social media.  We love hearing from you, and we always appreciate your positive ratings.  You will also earn PDUs for listening to this podcast.  Just listen up at the end, and we’ll give you instructions on how to claim your PDUs from PMI. Our two guests today are from Colorado and from Arizona, so we’re kind of jumping around the place.  But we’re very excited to have Richard Lawrence and Peter Green from Humanizing Work join us.  Richard’s superpower is bringing together seemingly unrelated fields and ideas to create new possibilities.  Richard draws on a diverse background in software development, engineering, anthropology, design, and political science. He’s a Scrum Alliance certified enterprise coach and a certified scrum trainer.  His book “Behavior-Driven Development with Cucumber” was published in 2019. Our other guest is Richard’s co-worker, Peter Green.  At Adobe Systems, Peter led an agile transformation and he co-developed the certified agile leadership program from the Scrum Alliance.  He’s also a certified scrum trainer, a graduate of the ORSC coaching system, a certified leadership agility and leadership circle coach, and the co-founder of Humanizing Work.  What I found interesting was, with all his other creative activities, Peter is also an in-demand trumpet player and recording engineer. BILL YATES:  Which will appeal to Andy Crowe, our founder, because he loves to play the trumpet.  Wendy, we are delighted to have Richard and Peter join us.  We’ve had conversations planning for this today with them, and they bring so much knowledge and experience to the table.  Here’s the thing.  Project managers traditionally are taught to direct and control team members.  So what role does management play in the agile world of a self-organizing team?  If my team’s self-organizing, what am I supposed to do; right?  How can they create conditions for self-organizing teams to thrive?  What is the function of managers in this new world, and what does an agile organization need from its management team?  Those are some of the questions that we want to tease out with them today. WENDY GROUNDS:  Hi, guys.  Thank you so much for joining us. RICHARD LAWRENCE:  It’s great to be here. Humanizing Work WENDY GROUNDS:  We first want to find out a little bit about you.  So can you tell us about Humanizing Work and the company you say strives to help individuals thrive at work?  So tell us a bit about your core philosophy. RICHARD LAWRENCE:  We believe at Humanizing Work that work can be a good and indeed important part of human thriving.  So we see our work at our company as having two sides.  First, helping organizations structure work so that it fits what’s true about humans.  For example, that we have a need to grow, that we benefit from connections with others, that we particularly thrive when we’re creating things, and that we want our work to have an impact on other people.  And second, helping humans develop the skills they need to do meaningful, complex work in collaboration with others. Empowering Decision-Makers WENDY GROUNDS:  Thank you Richard.  Traditionally, managers direct, and they oversee the work that their teams are doing.  They’re the problem solvers and the decision makers and things like that.  That’s what’s become expected of them.  But the trend is to bring the decision maker closer to the team so the individuals doing the work can make decisions.  How does that impact the role of the manager? PETER GREEN:  Well, I think to answer that question I’d start with why is that trend so really everywhere, omnipresent, right, in the business world.  And what we found is that, kind of relating to what we talked about the purpose of the company, is that the more empowered people are in their work, the more we push decision making to the individual and team level, the better outcomes we get, number one.  But part of that is that people are just more motivated.  They’re more engaged when they feel like, “Hey, I have some input into this decision,” or “I can wholly own this decision.”  We know from research on what leads to high engagement that the more autonomy people feel, the more they’re engaged in the work, and the better outcomes we get because of that. And so I would start with that, that there’s a demonstrable reason for this, not just while it’s important to have people be more motivated and engaged, that helps with retention. That is just an ethical way to run a business; but that it also leads to better business results when we do that.  We get better, faster decisions, and the engagement leads to good outcomes.  So I would start there, like, why empower people?  Changing the Role of Managers Then, if we agree that that’s a good idea, that we should do this more, then that really does start to shift the role of management from what you described as kind of doing the work, or telling people how to do the work, to something else. And we struggled with this question ourselves as we managed in agile organizations that were really trying to empower the teams to do the work themselves, and as we helped lots and lots of managers try to face the same question.  And originally we did not have great answers for them.  I remember a very early training I was doing with a team, this would probably be in about 2008, and I was training this team in how to do agile things.  They were trying to adopt scrum on this product team. And I remember this.  One of the managers on that team who was just really smart, really well-intentioned, still really admire this manager who came up to me on a break, I think somewhere towards the end of the second day.  And he said, “I can see how this is going to be really powerful for the team.  I can see how this is going to lead to really good outcomes.  My title is senior engineering manager.  I don’t have any idea what my job is now.” And at the time I didn’t really have a great answer for Chris, this manager, when he said, “So what do I do?”  And I felt like the answers that I had read about or that I had tried out sort of fell into three categories.  One category of answer was very fuzzy.  “Like, well, Chris, now you’re a servant leader.”  Well, what does that mean?  I kind of like the philosophy, but what does it mean to be a servant leader?  It’s not very tactical, or I can’t put my fingers on it; right?  Like what do I actually do to be a servant leader? There were some answers that just felt demonstrably wrong to us.  Like, oh, if we empower our teams, then we don’t really need managers anymore.  And we had just seen the opposite be true in really successful organizations that had really effective management.  And so while it is true that there are some organizations that are really interesting case studies of what happens if you don’t have managers – in fact, Richard and I met because he had helped an organization transform to where they had completely removed the management layers.  That’s what attracted me.  Hey, let me talk to this Richard guy and see what he has going on over there.  But that didn’t seem to be broadly applicable in every situation.  So we thought, well, that’s probably not the only answer, and probably not the answer for most companies. And then the third kind of answer that we heard was just incomplete.  Like we often heard advice like, well, managers just remove impediments to the team.  We said, well, that’s probably true, but that also feels like a pretty narrow job. So we started looking for how do we answer that question?  I always think if Chris were to ask me that question today, what would I tell him?  And the very cool thing is that we have kind of evolved in cooperation and collaboration with a ton of different organizations out there, a model for that.  And what we’ve boiled it down to is that managers really have three jobs in an organization if they want to empower their people. Challenges for Project Managers BILL YATES:  This is right where we want to head. But I want to step back for a second and kind of take a 35,

The podcast by project managers for project managers. If we can identify the reasons why people say no, we can be more effective in getting them to follow our requests. Patrick Veroneau introduces an acronym called GREAT to understand the resistance we may be facing from our team. An offshoot of effective leadership is being able to inspire other people to say yes to our requests. Table of Contents 00:32 … Rise Against Hunger01:57 … Meet Patrick03:39 … Six Principles of Influence05:49 … Signs of Resistance07:02 … Goodwill09:21 … SCARF13:07 … Reactance14:56 … Self-Awareness16:41 … Expertise18:46 … Build Credibility20:55 … Kevin and Kyle22:02 … Apathy24:51 … Trust and CABLES26:16 … Congruence27:22 … Appreciation27:35 … Belongingness27:48 … Listening28:22 … Empathy28:37 … Specifics30:45 … Contact Patrick32:15 … Closing Rise Against Hunger WENDY GROUNDS:  We visited Rise Against Hunger as a company, Velociteach, and we did some meal packing there.  We packed over 1,080 meals that were sent to – I think these ones were going to Zimbabwe. BILL YATES:  Nice. WENDY GROUNDS:  But it was going to people who are not in the position to just be able to get food as easily as it is for us.  Rise Against Hunger is an amazing organization.  They target remote communities with hunger pockets, and they send their packages of food there. BILL YATES:  We had such a great time as a team preparing these, you know, helping put these meals together, packaging them.  And we ended up with all these boxes of packaged meals ready to go.  It was so fun for the team to be together.  It was a team-building event with a purpose.  Those are our favorites. WENDY GROUNDS:  I highly recommend it as a team-building event.  I think that was really fun.  Everybody really pulled together.  We packaged a bit too quickly, almost.  We were so excited about doing this that we got finished too quickly, and then we had to wash dishes; didn’t we. BILL YATES:  Yeah.  But there’s nothing better in terms of bonding than seeing your coworkers wearing hair nets.  It was just... WENDY GROUNDS:  Oh yeah.  Oh yeah. ____________________________________________________________ WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio is Bill Yates and Danny Brewer. We’re talking to Patrick Veroneau today.  And he’s the founder of the Emery Leadership and Sales Group, and they focus on helping employees and organizations bridge the gap between engagement and excellence.  He had his first management position with a division of Van Heusen Corporation, and he spent over 15 years in the biopharma industry in sales training and leadership development.  He continues to develop and refine leadership and sales models that blend evidence-based research and theory with what happens in the real world.  And what happens in the real world is often we’re trying to lead or to manage people on our projects, and we get resistance.  And so we’re going to be talking about that resistance today. Meet Patrick Hi, Patrick.  Welcome to Manage This.  We’re so glad you’re here today. PATRICK VERONEAU:  Oh, thank you so much for the opportunity to be on the podcast.  Always great to talk about resistance. WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah.  First of all, tell us about your company, Emery Leadership Group, and what inspired you to start it. PATRICK VERONEAU:  So Emery Leadership Group is primarily an organization that helps other organizations to develop better leaders and really to become more productive.  If you don’t have good leaders, right, if you don’t have people that can inspire other people to say yes to requests, then it’s very difficult to, I think, be as effective as you could be.  And there’s a lot of research in terms of what are the things that inspire individuals to want to say yes to our requests.  And that’s all that leadership is.  It’s an offshoot of influence to be able to lead people effectively. And that really is my background was in biotech for over 15 years.  I was a sales rep.  I was involved in training.  I managed.  And the benefit of that, in being in that industry in particular, was that all of the things that we did were focused around what’s the research that suggests that this is the approach that a provider should take with their patients, whether it was cardiovascular or oncology. And I had the opportunity to take that same approach in regards to leadership development, saying that there’s research that backs up why we make certain decisions.  If we leverage that, it doesn’t work all the time, just like treatments don’t always work, but there is a pattern that you can follow in terms of, if you behave in certain ways, the outcomes can be much more predictable.  I took the same approach again to leadership and also sales training, which is what I started at. Six Principles of Influence BILL YATES:  Patrick, we were talking just before we started recording, there was someone early in your career that influenced that.  And when we talk about “yes” versus “no,” it’d be interesting, I think, for people to know that background.  Talk a bit about the person that influenced you. PATRICK VERONEAU:  So while I was in the pharmaceutical industry, again, I had access to a lot of trainings and was always sort of looking for how do I continue to sort of develop my skills?  And to me, I thought, well, we sell science.  Why not understand the science behind influence to be able to be more effective at doing our jobs?  And there was a gentleman out of Arizona State University, a world expert in influence named Robert Cialdini, who’s written a number of books in that space.  And I was able to go through his workshops.  Most of his stuff is best known for the six principles of influence that he identified through all of his research, which are around things like liking and scarcity and authority and consensus, where those are our activators for us.  They’re almost like pulling levers for individuals to get them to say yes to our requests. And what always stood out to me was we talked about it in a way of ethical influence; right?  These same tools can be used either way.  And you see it quite often when people do the wrong things.  Bernie Madoff is somebody that’s probably an example that most know about that, if you were to go back and look at the tools of influence, he used many of those influence principles, but just for the wrong reason. So for me, the challenge that I found was these are great principles, right, the six principles of why people say yes.  But what I was finding and experiencing and I know for myself is that oftentimes I start from the place of wanting to say no; that I needed to get past that hurdle first.  And if I understood the reason why somebody was probably saying no, or what might prompt them to say no to a request, then at least for me what I found and what I was developing in those people that I was working with was that identifying the reasons why people say no allowed me then to decide which of the six principles probably would be more effective to use ethically to get them to follow my request. Signs of Resistance BILL YATES:  One of the things I want to talk with you about is formal authority and informal authority because project managers often have to lead people, even when they don’t have official authority over them.  Those team members don’t report to the project manager.  This can lead to resistance; you know?  I mean, that’s my nature.  If I have two bosses, so to speak, an official boss, and I’ve got somebody that I’m supposed to report to on a project, you know which way I’m going to lean, you know, which way is best for me.  That’s the manager I’m going to listen to.  So how can we recognize the signs of resistance from our team members, if it’s related to this idea of informal authority? PATRICK VERONEAU:  Sure.  So there’s an acronym that I use called GREAT.  And the reason I created that is because, to me, the question that I would ask myself, and still do in the work that I do, is how great is my resistance?  So I’m almost – having to answer that question then tells me where I’m going to go from there because that’s what we deal with is resistance.  So the GREAT model is an acronym for five resisters, the first one being goodwill, the next one being reactance, the next one being expertise or experience, the next one being apathy, and the last one being trust. Goodwill WENDY GROUNDS:  I think this is an excellent model for us to just go a little deeper and to discover what you mean by each one of these.  So let’s look at goodwill first.  Can you give us examples in ways that we can demonstrate that our request is in the best interest of the person that we’re putting that request to? PATRICK VERONEAU:  Yeah.  So goodwill really is about a feeling as though what you’re asking me to do doesn’t just benefit you; right?  If I’m managing a group, and I’m asking them to complete a project for me, if it’s myself that’s going to benefit from them doing all the work and really not showing any type of appreciation for them and what they’re having to do or how this is going to impact them, as well, then that immediately starts to build resistance. So if you think about the industry that I came from where, if I’m asking a provider to use a certain treatment, they’re often thinking first, is this really what’s best for my patient, or is this what’s best for your quota?  That’s goodwill, and we need to be able to demonstrate that; right?  And if I just came in with the “This is what you should use,” oftentimes the providers are going to be thinking, wait a minute, I know that benefits you.  You’re going to benefit from this.  But is it really what’s in the best interest of what my patient needs, or what we’re trying to do here as an oncology unit?

The podcast by project managers for project managers. Selecting contractors and negotiating the terms of a major project is one of the most difficult aspects of project management. In this episode Ed Merrow sheds light on fairness in contracting relationships, for the relationships to be self-enforcing, and how not to unwittingly set your contractors up to fail.  Table of Contents 02:53 … Meet Ed05:28 … Contract Strategies for Major Projects06:59 … Hiring Contractors is Never Easy07:55 … Key Principle #209:12 … #1 There is No Free Lunch10:20 … TINSTAAFL11:28 … #3 Complex Projects Need Simple Contracting Strategies13:03 … Collaboration15:07 … #4 Owners and Contractors are Different17:44 … #5 Large Risk Transfers are More Illusion than Reality19:25 … Importance of Scoping21:29 … #6 Contractors have Shareholders23:14 … Ren25:29 … #7 Contracting Games are Rough Sport27:05 … #8 Assigning a Risk to Someone Who Cannot Control that Risk is Foolish29:07 … #9 All Contracts are Incentivized33:20 … #10 Economize on The Need for Trust36:40 … The Value of Prequalifying Contractors40:13 … Getting the A-Team or the B-Team42:48 … Get in Touch with Ed44:02 … Closing ED MERROW: ...both owners and contractors play games.  Contractors usually win those games.  My advice is try to keep games out of your contracts.  Try not to put in a bunch of complex provisions whereby you think that the contractor will “have skin in the game.”  I want owners to remember that skin in the game is almost always owner skin.  WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This.  This podcast is by project managers for project managers.  My name is Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio are Bill Yates and Danny Brewer.  We love having you join us twice a month to be motivated and inspired by project stories, leadership lessons, as well as advice from industry experts from all around the world.  We want to bring you some support as you navigate your projects. If you like what you hear, please consider rating our show with five stars and leaving a brief review on our website or whichever podcast listening app you use.  This helps us immensely in bringing the podcast to the attention of others.  You can also claim free Professional Development Units from PMI by listening to this episode.  Listen up at the end of the show, and we’ll tell you how to do that. Today our guest is Ed Merrow.  Ed is the founder, president, and CEO of Independent Project Analysis, the global industry leader in quantitative analysis and benchmarking of project management systems.  Ed received his degrees from Dartmouth College and Princeton University; and he began his career as an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.  He followed that with 14 years as a research scientist at the RAND Corporation, where he directed the Energy Research Program.  We’re talking to Ed particularly today about his most recent major research effort which is centered on the quantitative analysis of how contracting strategies and delivery systems shape project results.  His new book is on this subject, and it’s titled “Contract Strategies for Major Projects.” BILL YATES:  In our conversation with Ed on procurement and contract strategies, Ed is going to share with us the key principles of contracting that all those involved with planning and executing major projects should know.  Here are three things to listen out for on this episode.  One, contractors may make convenient scapegoats, but they are rarely to blame for bad projects.  Number two, we depend heavily on trust, yet trust is not a contracting strategy.  And number three, contractors are almost always more skilled at playing those contracting games than those owners are. WENDY GROUNDS:  Hey, Ed.  Welcome to Manage This.  Thank you so much for joining us today. ED MERROW:  Well, thank you, Wendy.  I’m glad to be here. Meet Ed WENDY GROUNDS:  We are looking forward to getting into this topic.  It’s not something that we’ve talked about before, and I believe you’re quite the expert and the right person that we should be talking to today.  But before we go there, could you tell us a bit about your story, how you got into project management? ED MERROW:  It goes way back.  After I left UCLA, where I was a professor, to go to the RAND Corporation, that’s really when I started my journey in projects.  At RAND, I started the process of trying to understand why new technology projects overran so much, so often.  That research ultimately led me to start Independent Project Analysis back in 1987; and we’ve been going strong ever since, really trying to understand at a first principles level the relationship between what owners, in particular owners, do on the front end of projects and what we get out in terms of project quality at the end.  The contracting work that I’ve done is really very much part and parcel of that whole picture. BILL YATES:  This is going to be a powerful conversation for us to have for our project managers.  This is an area that just scares the pants off project managers, excuse the expression.  But when we get into procurement, and we get into contract types, many project managers just freeze and go, “Okay, this is scary for me.  The more I can understand, the better, the more prepared I think I’ll be.”  So this is a very valuable conversation we’ll have. ED MERROW:  It’s a very complex subject, that goes across economics, understanding markets, understanding competition, a lot of psychological factors associated with contracting.  You know, I always describe project managers as a pretty hard-headed bunch in almost everything except contracting.  When it comes to contracting, we often come to believe things that just plain aren’t true, in part because what we thought we learned about contracting in a particular project really was the wrong lesson.  I wanted to step back and say, look, can we actually put some data around this issue so that we’re better guided as to what works and what doesn’t? Contract Strategies for Major Projects WENDY GROUNDS:  Before we go into this a little further, I just want to talk about your book.  You wrote “Contract Strategies for Major Projects.”  Now, you have done a lot of research focusing on how contracting strategies and delivery systems shape project results, and you’ve shared those findings in this book.  Can you describe the goals and the particular audience for your book? ED MERROW:  Well, my audience is primarily project managers and, to some extent, business sponsors of projects.  Sometimes my audience will be procurement.  Sometimes the audience is the legal side of projects, both on the owner and the contractor side.  One of my hopes in writing the book is not only to shed some empirical light on the subject, but also to try to bring some sense of we need in our contracting relationships to be fair, and we need for the relationships to be self-enforcing, which is to say that the best contract in the world is the one that you sign, put in your lower left-hand drawer, and never see again.  That’s the perfect contract.  But when things don’t go perfectly, I want that contract to help us sort things out, rather than make things more difficult. Hiring Contractors is Never Easy BILL YATES:  One of the things Ed that we wanted to bring to you, just thinking of some of the great quotes you had in your book, hiring contractors is never easy.  And quite frankly, this is an area of great concern for project managers; you know?  It’s like, okay, we have a project that we need to have done.  We’ve got to go outside of our organization and hire some contractors to complete the work.  Or it could be the owner that’s going about that contracting and seeking those people out. This quote really made me laugh in your book.  You said, “The worst contractor ever was the one on the last project, and the best contractor ever will be the one on the next project.”  I like that.  I can relate to that.  You know, I’m an optimist anyway.  So I might look at it and go, “Man that was a terrible experience we had in this last project.  That’ll never happen again.  This is going to be totally different in this next project.” Key Principle #2 ED MERROW:  You see, I always tell owners, and sometimes it upsets them, I say, “Look, contractors do good projects well and bad projects poorly. You’ve got to understand that almost has to be the way it is.”  And I say that because, if a contractor can’t do a well-put-together, well-front-end-loaded, really strong business case project well, he can’t do any project well.  And the market very quickly eliminates those players.  Point of fact, contractors will do good projects well.  And when as owners you set them up to fail, they usually will.  Plain and simple.  And the fact that they’re easy to blame doesn’t really change anything. WENDY GROUNDS:  That was number two of your key principles of contracting.  I just took a look, and I thought, “I’ve heard that before.”  What we want to run through today, we’ve taken these from your book because we thought they were the most applicable to project managers.  So you have the 10 key principles of contracting.  And you warn your reader in Chapter One, you say, “If one pursues a contracting strategy that flouts one or more of these principles, it’s very likely trouble is ahead.”   #1 There is No Free Lunch So we’d like to run through these.  I’m going to start with number one, which you say, “There is no free lunch.”  Can you tell us what that means? ED MERROW:  Sure.  Contracting always involves some version of what’s called the principal-agent problem, which is to say that a contractor will never perfectly do what an owner wants.  It’s simply inevitable, if only because communication is less than perfect.

The podcast by project managers for project managers. Will your project’s documentation pass the test of time once the project is done and the people are gone? Documentation is at the intersection of information management, organizational design, and personal productivity. Accurate documentation makes teams more efficient and effective. Table of Contents 01:23 … Essential Project Documents03:43 … Defining Information Management04:34 … Adrienne’s Story05:59 … Performing an Information Audit09:19 … Signs Your System is Out of Control11:33 … Dynamic Documentation12:44 … Improve Your Documentation15:19 … Budget for Closing Documentation16:57 … Finding the Right Balance19:12 … Kevin and Kyle20:27 … Strategies for Meeting Notes23:49 … Have a System25:54 … Getting Everyone Onboard27:25 … Documentation No-Nos30:06 … Personal Productivity31:06 … “The 24-Hour Rule”31:41 … Contact Adrienne32:43 … Closing ADRIENNE BELLEHUMEUR: I actually say documentation is at the intersection of information management, organizational design, and personal productivity.  So documentation kind of underpins these three major disciplines, but the personal productivity is often forgotten. WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  My name is Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio is Bill Yates and Danny Brewer.  We’re talking today to Adrienne Bellehumeur, and she is the founder of Bellehumeur Company and co-partner of Risk Oversight.  She’s based in Calgary, Alberta.  She’s also an expert on productivity, documentation, governance, risk, and compliance; and has delivered 15 years’ experience as an auditor, accountant, analyst, problem solver, and independent consultant. Adrienne developed a documentation approach called “dynamic documentation,” and she’s a published author of the book “The 24 Hour Rule,” and she’s going to tell us more about that book, as well. Adrienne likes to talk about processes, tools, and methods, and some of the best strategies to use to maintain effective, efficient, and timely documentation.  So as you may have gathered, we’re talking about documentation and information management.  So Bill, my question to you is what are some essential project documents that project managers should be maintaining? Essential Project Documents BILL YATES:  Oh boy, the list goes on and on.  They’re all essential, every one of them.  Let me start with the legal stuff first.  I think project managers who’ve ever done work with, either with outside contractors or their customers, an external customer, they would agree anything related to contracts, addendums, agreements, even the email threads where those may have been negotiated or key decisions were made, those should be considered mandatory.  You’ve got to have those backed up.  They can’t just be living on your hard drive.  They need to be backed up.  Also things like the project charter, anything with signatures that gives authority to the project. And then kind of going down the list, there’s scope things like requirements, scope statement, the product roadmap, the backlog, change requests, logs that keep up with things, task lists, or issue logs.  These are dynamic.  These need to live.  So you have to document them almost with a date stamp on them.  That’s true with a risk log or risk register, as well.  Major communications, major rollouts, maybe you hit a milestone or something significant, you want to keep those documents.  Think about, okay, could someone who doesn’t know anything about this project take a look at it six months, two years later and go, “Oh, okay.  Yeah, I get it.  I see why you guys made that decision.  I see who was involved in it and then what action took place after.” And then one of the biggest challenges, and I think we’ll hear this from Adrienne as well, when you’re getting ready to wrap up your project, that is one of the most difficult times to make sure that you’re doing good documentation.  It’s like more important than ever.  It’s almost like think about when you move into a house.  You have this checklist, the punch list, the final step before you go sign those contracts to own the house.  Well, for our projects, too, we’re trying to wrap things up, but we’re losing key resources.  The team is starting to get dispersed to more projects, and we have to gather that information out of their head and make sure that it’s been documented somewhere for future, for lessons learned, both for this project and into the future. WENDY GROUNDS:  Thanks, Bill.  That’s a lot to keep in mind.  Let’s see what Adrienne has to say, and let’s get some advice from her on how to correctly manage our information and our documents. Hi, Adrienne.  Welcome to Manage This.  Thank you for talking with us today. ADRIENNE BELLEHUMEUR:  Thank you.  Thank you so much for having me. Defining Information Management WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah, the first thing is, I think just to kind of put an explanation out there, could you define what information management is really all about? ADRIENNE BELLEHUMEUR:  So information management is basically the management of existing information.  If I have this piece of paper here on my desk, and I do something with it and put it in the right spot, I’d call that information management.  It’s actually a wide range of things that can be anything from organizing the files on your computer all the way up to an enterprise content management for a multinational company.  So it actually has a wide range.  Information management is a close cousin of documentation, which is my area of expertise, but a very wide discipline that often incorporates a lot of technology and tools and metadata and taxonomy and stuff like that in practice. Adrienne’s Story WENDY GROUNDS:  So where does your interest in information management and documentation originate?  How did you start out? ADRIENNE BELLEHUMEUR:  Oh, that’s a great question.  I mean, it spans many years.  I actually had a bit of a nerdy fascination with notes, taking notes in class.  And I remember having lots of cool notebooks, and looking around the classroom, wondering what are people doing with their notes.  This interest actually spanned throughout my career.  I’m a chartered accountant by background.  And I do remember how important documentation and managing information is in the workplace, and how actually poorly we train people when we enter the workforce.  So I’ve had a big interest in helping people to be better trained because I actually didn’t think the training was that good. And then as a business owner and consultant, I watched so much money being wasted in companies by consultants leaving without anything written down.  People can’t find documentation that they spent millions of dollars on a project, tons of money on resources that we have meetings and no record of what was said, and we can’t remember.  So this kind of threefold reason, it’s actually spanned many years.  I’ve seen so many patterns of a need for students, professionals, the knowledge workforce to have a better understanding of this practice. Performing an Information Audit BILL YATES:  This is so good.  I feel like we’re going to the doctor today.  And you are our specialist.  But let me just start out with this idea of an information audit. For our project managers that are out there, let’s say you performed an information audit on one of their projects.  What questions would you be asking the project manager and the team in that audit? ADRIENNE BELLEHUMEUR:  Often information audits are really tied to a problem you’re going to solve.  So if people can’t find something, or they’re struggling to get people to document, or Larry built your system from scratch and is retiring in two months, or Sally is the only person who knows how to run critical process.  Like I’m often brought in for very specific problems. But if I were running a more generic audit, which I do, I really focus on how users interact with their information.  I ask questions like what information or knowledge do you care about if someone won the lottery?  We don’t say “hit by a bus” anymore.  We say “win the lottery.”  What is actually getting used or not?  Can people follow, I call it the re-performance standard?  Can people use the standalone documents to actually do their job?  Or, and this is applicable to project managers because they often have to hand it off to others, it has to meet that re-performance standard.  Can it meet the clarity standard?  Do people understand what you mean without having to interpret it? The operative word I’m getting at here is “standalone.”  In today’s workforce, we need to build documentation systems that people can use the content and materials.  And this is broad, too.  It covers stuff like video and systems, SharePoint, everything.  When I say “documentation,” I’m not necessarily meaning a piece of static paper, but they have to be able to find things, understand, do their work, basically in the absence of the people who built them.  And this is just a new reality of the workforce. We have a new knowledge-based economy geared to how a project’s documentation and systems will sustain once the people are gone. BILL YATES:  I love that you use that keyword of “standalone.”  To me, I think that’s important to point out because I know I have certainly been a guilty party and thinking, okay, I was in the room when we made this key decision with the customer.  This defined the scope that we ended up delivering.  And I can just make some basic notes because I’ll remember just enough to jog my memory.  Well, that’s not really standalone.  Let’s say I get assigned to a different project.  To your point, it needs to be something that someone can pick up and read without me explaining it or without me being on the other end of a call.  And it needs to be standalone.

The podcast by project managers for project managers.  Ren Love is the newest member of our Velociteach team and the Manager of Curriculum Development. Hear about her unique management experiences as she talks about leadership, interviewing, the PMP exam, and coping with testing anxiety. Table of Contents  02:19 … Meet Ren02:53 … Ren’s Project Management Journey06:20 … Memorable Success at Projects10:16 … Mammals and COVID11:34 … Preparing for Leadership14:08 … Routes to Project Management16:31 … Leadership Styles for PMs18:16 … Interviewing Tips19:58 … Be Confident in what You Know22:41 … Encouragement to New PMs24:37 … Ren’s Advice Wish List26:03 … Kevin and Kyle27:11 … When the Job is Different to the PMP Training30:35 … Common Questions about the PMP Exam31:54 … Overcoming Exam Anxiety34:47 … Contact Ren35:56 … Closing REN LOVE: ...be confident in what you know, and confident in how you’ll grow.  You don’t have to know everything about everything.  A well-rounded project manager is a lifelong learner.  ...Be confident that your past life experiences have made you who you are and will make you good at project management in the situation you’re in. And then also be prepared to say, there are things that I’m going to grow, and in this company.  What kind of opportunities can your company offer me to help me grow?  WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio is Bill Yates and Danny Brewer.  We’re so excited that you’re joining us, and we want to say thank you to our listeners who reach out to us and leave comments on our website or on social media.  We love hearing from you, and we always appreciate your positive ratings.  You will also earn PDUs for listening to this podcast.  Just listen up at the end, and we’ll give you instructions on how to claim your PDUs from PMI. Today we’re talking to one of our co-workers.  Her name is Ren Love, and Ren has a very interesting educational background which is almost as diverse as her professional one.  She has done many, many things in her exciting career before joining us at Velociteach.  She has a B.S. in Environmental Science, she has an M.S. in Biology and an M.S. in Instructional Design and Learning Technologies.  And she has worked in zoos, science centers, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, as well as one of the Big Four accounting firms.  So she’s really had fingers in the pie all over the place, and she has also earned her PMP.  She’s a Certified SAFe Agilist as well, as a Certified Scrum Master.  So she’s got some well-rounded advice. BILL YATES:  Yes, she does.  I can’t wait to have this conversation with Ren.  She joined us full-time in fall of 2022 as the Manager of Curriculum Development, and it’s just been a delight working with her, both as an instructor and now full-time on the team.  And we just wanted our listeners to be able to hear from Ren and hear about her experience. WENDY GROUNDS:  And questions about the PMP exam, as well. BILL YATES:  Yes, yes. WENDY GROUNDS:  She addresses some of that.  So we’re looking forward to this conversation.  Hey, Ren, thank you so much for joining us today. Meet Ren REN LOVE:  I’m so happy to be here.  Thank you for having me. WENDY GROUNDS:  We want to jump right in and ask you what your current position is. REN LOVE:  So here at Velociteach I am the Manager of Curriculum Development.  So I started off as an instructor for Velociteach for about seven months before being hired full-time.  And I’m in charge of updating and maintaining all of the course materials that we have here at Velociteach. BILL YATES:  That’s all.  There’s not much to that. REN LOVE:  Yeah, it’s a lot more than what it sounds. BILL YATES:  Yeah, never a boring moment, that’s for sure. Ren’s Project Management Journey WENDY GROUNDS:  Tell us a little bit about your career background, just some of your story and how you got into project management. REN LOVE:  So my road to project management was very unusual.  My early career, what I like to call my past life, that was in the sciences.  So I’ve got an undergraduate degree in environmental science.  My first master’s degree is in biology.  And I spent about 10 or so years working in the field of zoo, aquariums, science centers.  One of my first jobs ever I was working at Disney’s Animal Kingdom doing science education.  Then I worked at a local science center in South Carolina before moving into the role of education programs coordinator at the Greenville Zoo, where I was for a long time. So I think for a lot of people, we rethought our career choices when the pandemic hit.  And during the pandemic, a lot of zoos across the country were closing, and a lot of education departments were downsizing.  I got very lucky.  The zoo I was working for was owned by the city, and the city had made a pledge to not lay off anybody during the pandemic, which is just amazing.  But it did cause me to think to myself, what’s my future going to look like?  What’s my future career going to look like?  Not a ton of growth opportunities in that industry, just because it’s also very saturated with a lot of people.  You tend to retire out of those jobs.  People don’t just leave them. So I sat down, and I was chatting with my mother, Margo Love, who was a project manager for years and years and years and years, and talked a little bit about that as a potential career path.  And so she introduced me to project management.  We talked about the PMP exam, and I remember telling her, “Well, I’ve never done project management.”  And she convinced me that I had been doing project management this entire time.  I just wasn’t called a project manager.  And she said, “This is totally a possibility for you.  Look into it.” And so I did.  I started studying for it.  I passed the PMP exam in December of 2020.  And then I was hired by one of the Big Four firms by February of 2021.  So it was just a quick turnaround time from certification to becoming an official project manager.  That’s where it all kind of began.  I still sort of miss zoo life, but it’s been really exciting to try something brand new, very challenging, and also a little bit more lucrative.  That’s worth mentioning, too.  Leaving the zoo field to go to big business, for sure. BILL YATES:  There are so many correlations between life at the zoo and life as a project manager. REN LOVE:  Yes. WENDY GROUNDS:  Yes.  Life in the circus and life as a project manager. REN LOVE:  Yes.  So similar.  Though I will say I get bitten much less in this line of work.  The number has drastically declined. BILL YATES:  That’s one of my funniest stories of you, Ren, is I think you were showing some kind of creature to some elementary school kids, and you got bitten on the finger, and you were bleeding.  What was it that bit you?  I can’t remember what it was. REN LOVE:  Oh, it was a rooster named Fabio. BILL YATES:  A rooster. REN LOVE:  Yeah.  And I was just trying to play it off and be like, “Oh, this isn’t happening.”  And kids don’t let you do that.  They do not. BILL YATES:  “Miss Ren, your finger is bleeding.” REN LOVE:  Yeah. WENDY GROUNDS:  I’ve told you before that my brother works in a zoo, and he was bit by a hippo on the knee. REN LOVE:  Wow. WENDY GROUNDS:  Did a lot of damage. BILL YATES:  That’s going to leave a mark. WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah, yeah. REN LOVE:  That is significant.  I’ve met hippos before.  Usually they like to have their tongues rubbed.  And so that puts you in a very dangerous situation.  It takes a lot of trust. Memorable Success at Projects WENDY GROUNDS:  So looking at projects that you’ve done in the past, do you have some that are really memorable?  And what has led to their success? REN LOVE:  One of the most memorable ones, again, was very COVID-inspired, COVID-19 global pandemic.  But for the Greenville Zoo specifically, and lots of zoos across the country, one of their biggest sources of revenue is their summer zoo camp.  And so when I talk about a zoo camp project, it sounds very low stakes as opposed to something for NASA or something like that.  But when you consider the fact that these zoo camps bring in 50%, sometimes up to 75% of a department’s revenue for an entire year in just this 10-week cycle, it becomes really high stakes.  So having a successful zoo camp season can be a really big deal for kind of the survival of a zoo in general. And so during COVID you’re facing these regulations that were imposed by municipalities and things like that where no visitors are allowed on zoo grounds, just zoo staff.  And so we spent months waiting to hear what was going to happen because, if you remember at the beginning of the pandemic, there was a lot of waiting.  There was a lot of, how long is this going to last?  Turns out a long time. BILL YATES:  Couple weeks, just a couple weeks. REN LOVE:  Yeah, just a couple weeks, and then a couple weeks, and a couple months.  And we finally heard back in the very beginning of May that zoo camp, if it was going to exist at all, had to be completely virtual.  And that was very challenging for us because all of our zoo camps, they started June 1st, and they’re all in person.  They all get to see animals and touch animals and get engaged.  And so we decided that we needed to maintain that revenue.  We would have to turn our zoo camps entirely virtual.  And that was a ton of moving, interlocking parts that had to happen. So I was one of the people who was in charge of contacting everybody who had registered for the in-person and keeping track of if they wanted a refund, if they wanted a spot in the virtual, or if they were feeling really kind and just wanted to donate that money to us and not want a refund.  We had a lot of those, which was just really lovely.

Sometimes a project can feel like a circus when you're having to manage time, cost, and scope as well as stakeholders, team members, and the organization as a whole.

When it comes to problem solving or innovation, the goal is to generate ideas, make those ideas better, and then implement them. But what if we are skipping some important stages of the creative problem-solving process? Dr. Teresa Lawrence, an expert on the integration of Creative Problem Solving into project management, joins us to illustrate the importance of understanding our cognitive diversity, knowing our preference to the stages of the creative problem-solving process, and recognizing how our preferences influence project team interactions.

The podcast by project manager for project managers. A great leader strikes a balance between warmth and strength. If it’s time for you to conduct an honest assessment of your leadership style to connect better with your teams and understand your stakeholders more effectively, take a listen to hear how to connect, then lead. Table of Contents 02:47 … Meet Matt04:44 … Social Power and Personal Power06:38 … Knowing your Likeability09:17 … Strength and Warmth12:12 … Strength and Warmth Matrix15:04 … Changing Your Impact17:51 … Make a Stronger Team Connection.20:02 … How Not to Compromise Warmth21:54 … Snap Judgements and First Impressions24:23 … Kevin and Kyle25:20 … Connect with Your Audience27:25 … Preparation is Vital29:44 … Be Your Authentic Self33:03 … Connecting Remotely36:26 … Keeping Energy Levels Stable37:33 … Communicating to Highly Skilled Professionals39:18 … Using Analogies40:05 … Speaking Truth to Positions of Power42:13 … Contact Matt43:57 … Closing MATT KOHUT: Some people tend to go with their strength first, and they backfill on the warmth.  Some people lead with warmth first, and they backfill on the strength.  And it’s sort of like being left-handed or right-handed.  Everybody’s just got a dominant hand.  And as long as you can pick up objects with both of them and not drop them, it’s okay. WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  My name is Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio is Bill Yates and Danny Brewer.  We love having you join us twice a month to be motivated and inspired by project stories, leadership lessons, and advice from industry experts from all around the world.  Our aim is to bring you some support as you navigate your projects.  You can also claim free PDUs, Professional Development Units from PMI by listening to our show.  At the end of the show we will give you advice on how to do that. Today we’re talking to Matt Kohut.  Matt is a co-founder of KNP Communications, and he has 20 years of professional experience writing and preparing speakers for both general and expert audience.  In addition, he has served as a communications consultant to organizations including NASA, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Harvard University. Matt is currently a fellow at the Center for Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College, and he’s previously worked at Harvard University as research specialist to the dean of Kennedy School.  Now, this is an interesting conversation, and we are very excited to bring it to you because it follows on so well to our conversation we had with Vanessa Druskat on emotional intelligence. BILL YATES:  Yes, this is an area that I think because of my own experience, I feel like this is an area that a project manager, certainly me, should and can grow in throughout their career.  It’s amazing talking with Matt.  He knows so much about social science.  That’s the background experience he has.  But the advice that he gives is so practical.  Not only did he write speeches, he coached those who were delivering the speeches as to how to make a good first impression, how to connect with their audience, how to not overpower them with too much information.  These are things that project managers struggle with.  These are things that we have to be aware of.  So the advice that Matt gives in our conversation is really going to help us be better at our jobs, connect better with our teams, understand our customers better, and amp up our performance. WENDY GROUNDS:  Hi, Matt.  Welcome to Manage This.  Thank you for being our guest today. MATT KOHUT:  Thanks for having me. Meet Matt WENDY GROUNDS:  We are excited to talk to you about communication and leadership and all of those good things; but I am really intrigued by your other career, the side of you that is a professional bassist.  Can you tell us a little bit about that and your passion for music? MATT KOHUT:  Sure.  I started playing music as a kid, like a lot of kids do, just picking up instruments.  And it was in high school I really hit on bass playing as something that was my instrument.  I had started down a path as a freelance writer and a teacher.  And around my 30th birthday I realized, you know what, if I don’t take the leap now, I’m not going to do this.  So I spent about seven years working more or less as a full-time professional musician.  And that doesn’t mean I didn’t have little day jobs here and there; but my primary focus was performing, recording, touring.  And it really has informed the work I do now as a communications professional because music is a language, and bands are teams.  So no matter what setting you find yourself in, there’s a lot of overlap. BILL YATES:  That’s good.  I know many times I’ll hear people make the reference of a conductor to a project manager.  It’s a nice analogy, bring out the best from each instrument and knowing the right mix and that kind of thing.  That’s fantastic.  You know, I’ve come across others in project management who have something like this that really informs them. WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah, I’ve listened to your podcast.  To our audience out there, Matt has a podcast called Sounds Out of Time.  And he talks to musicians, talks about music, and it’s really interesting.  You have this great NPR voice. BILL YATES:  Yup. WENDY GROUNDS:  Here’s the jazz section from Matt; you know?  It’s really good. MATT KOHUT:  I didn’t know that until somebody told me that.  I had no idea. Social Power and Personal Power WENDY GROUNDS:  All right.  Let’s jump into talking leadership and talking communication.  One of the first things we wanted to talk about was there’s a difference between having social power and personal power.  Those are two very different leadership terms.  Can you define them for us? MATT KOHUT:  Well, social power, as the word “social” suggests, has to do with being with other people.  And to a certain extent I think that it all comes down to the idea that, if you have power in a situation, ultimately you’re getting people to do something they might not otherwise do.  And there are a lot of different ways to do this. I’m actually a fan of an old boss of mine, a guy named Joseph Nye, who is an international relations theorist, a foreign policy expert.  And he was the person who coined the terms “soft power” and “hard power.”  And I actually find these really almost in some way the more interesting way to frame power.  Hard power is coercing people, that is, you have to do this; and soft power is attracting people.  And he always made the point that it’s much cheaper to attract people than to coerce them.  They’re going to want to do what you want them to do, and they’ll do it even willingly. And there are a variety of different ways you can do that if you’re a country thinking about trying to attract others to your agenda.  But then I think it’s a really interesting metaphor for project managers and for anyone working in teams and professional settings, as well. BILL YATES:  Certainly.  And there’s so much fallout when you do have to use hard power.  It just doesn’t last, and especially if you want to keep your team together.  And, “Okay, we had to push hard to finish something up.  I’ll see you guys next week and we’ll start the next project.”  Some of them are looking at you like, “No, you won’t.  I’m out of here.” MATT KOHUT:  That’s right. Knowing your Likeability BILL YATES:  There’s a big price.  There’s a quote from an article that we wanted to reference with you.  “Before people decide what they think of your message, they decide what they think of you.”  It’s such a key to being an effective communicator, understanding how other people judge your character.  So how important is likability, not only in terms of good leadership, but also when managing other project stakeholders? MATT KOHUT:  Well, there are a couple of things to that.  I think that, first off, that point about the fact that people are judging your message through their feelings about you is really important, and that can have to do with likability.  It can also have to do with their sense of your legitimacy or of your credibility, as well.  So likability for sure matters.  It’s one of the things that matters.  There are other things that matter, as well. So let’s just take the idea, though, first, of the importance of your message being filtered through how people feel about you.  Right now we’re having a conversation.  You’re figuring out how you feel about me at the same time you’re figuring out how you feel about my message.  And you can’t really sort the two out.  It’s not like our brains say, “Well, I dislike the person, but I like the message.”  Generally speaking, it’s just not that conscious on our part.  More often emotion leads, and logic follows.  And we feel some way, and then we make up a rationale for why we feel that way.  It’s called “motivated reasoning” in the political world where people choose their candidate based on a gut sense, and then they come up with all these reasons why they think that person is the perfect person to be governor or dog catcher or whatever. And that’s largely true about the way we interpret messages from people, too.  We filter them through our feelings about the person.  And sure, sometimes once we know someone, we can have some nuance about it and say, “Well, I really like him even though we disagree about X.”  But by and large there’s a gray area there.  So when you get to likeability, it’s a lot harder to disagree with someone you like.  Think about this in your own life.  You have good close friends, and then they say something.  “Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe he just said that.”  But it’s your friend and you like them.  You don’t want to hurt their feelings. So likeability makes you more influential with people,