Manage This - The Project Management Podcast

The podcast by project managers for project managers. How to flourish in your leadership role as your best self, inspire excellence in your team, and lead a highly fulfilled life.  “Arriving” is everything required to get into a position, but to stay successful, it is necessary to embrace the skills needed to “thrive” in that position. Listen in for useful advice on how to Arrive and Thrive and succeed in your leadership role. Table of Contents 01:47 … Arrive and Thrive - The Book04:15 … Who Should Read this Book?04:38 … Co-authors and Collaborations05:54 … Skills to Thrive08:36 … The Harsh Inner Critic11:29 … The Self-Centering Practice15:19 … Thriving and Combating Systemic Barriers19:53 … Lead with Our Best Self22:37 … Cultivating Courage25:16 … Instill Courage in Others27:18 … Becoming More Self-Aware29:34 … Reflective Sense-Making31:44 … Susan’s Lessons Learned33:56 … Get in Touch with Susan34:57 … Closing SUSAN MACKENTY BRADY:  ... we can’t control and change other people.  It’s annoying, but it’s true.  People don’t like to be controlled.  But we can make choices about how we show up.  So what we want to do is we want to narrow the gap between the time we are triggered and the time we react, enough to take pause between stimulus and response.  That’s it.  WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This.  This is the podcast by project managers for project managers. I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio is Bill Yates.  BILL YATES:  Yes.  Our guest is Susan Mackenty Brady.  She is the Deloitte Ellen Gabriel Chair for Women and Leadership at Simmons University, and the first Chief Executive Officer of the Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership.  As a relationship expert, leadership well-being coach, author and speaker, our guest Susan educates leaders and executives globally on fostering self-awareness for optimal leadership. WENDY GROUNDS:  The reason we’re talking to Susan today is she has sent us a book called “Arrive and Thrive:  7 Impactful Practices for Women Navigating Leadership,” which she has co-authored with Janet Foutty and Lynn Perry Wooten.  You know, women who arrive at the top should be able to thrive at the top.  There’s a lot of talk about how to get there.  But then once you get there, are you just surviving, or are you thriving in those positions as women in leadership?  And so we hope that this is going to be a really helpful book and a helpful conversation to women who are project managers and trying to figure out how to flourish in leadership roles today. BILL YATES: Yeah, I can attest.  There’s great value in this book, regardless of male or female. WENDY GROUNDS: Susan, welcome to Manage This.  Thank you so much for being our guest. SUSAN MACKENTY BRADY:  Thank you for having me. Arrive and Thrive - The Book WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah, we’re excited to talk about this book. To start off, won’t you tell us why you wrote this book? SUSAN MACKENTY BRADY:  You know, there’s two answers to that question.  You want both?  There’s first a real answer about how it came to be, which was because I am not an academic.  I have been in business and specifically in leadership development.  I’ve been a student and teacher of leadership since I can recall.  I’ve a Master’s in Behavioral Science and Leadership Education.  And I have to say, when I came to Simmons University and was awarded the endowed chair, it’s the Deloitte Ellen Gabriel Chair for Women in Leadership, my first question is what does one do to be worthy of an endowed chair in an academic environment?  Because I actually didn’t know that non-PhDs were awarded chairs.  Apparently it’s more common than we know. But my answer was whatever you want it to be. So it was actually around a talking circle with two senior partners from Deloitte and the current President of the University, who awarded me the chair.  And we’re all C-level.  We’ve run organizations.  We’ve run business units, or we’ve arrived in leadership in many ways.  And the conversation was actually about the morning that we all had and how still hard it is to sort of have your own feelings, navigate conflict, keep it all together, manage the home front in the morning, come to work, da da da da da da.  I said, “There’s no forum for senior women to have this conversation, and it’s lonelier at the top.”  You know? And one thing led to another, and I thought, maybe we need to do the next-generation book.  So I’ve written extensively about advancing women and what organizations can do to help equity across all identities, advance in leadership.  My former book, “Mastering Your Inner Critic and 7 Hurdles to Advancement” was about sort of the invisible hurdles women struggle with to advance.  This one came to be with my co-authors Janet Foutty, and Lynn Perry Wooten. And the three of us pretty quickly unearthed these seven practices about thriving.  And so, I have to tell you guys, there’s been so much survival lately.  We survived the pandemic, unless of course we had loss.  Everybody’s fatigued.  It was so joyful to think about what is thriving and how can we help women in particular step in and thrive more, as opposed to just surviving? BILL YATES:  That’s good. SUSAN MACKENTY BRADY:  Long answer. Who Should Read this Book? BILL YATES:  No, that’s good.  So who should read this book? SUSAN MACKENTY BRADY:  This was a debate I had with my co-authors.  Look, the book’s title says “7 Practices for Women Navigating Leadership.”  There is nothing in this book that a man would read and not think, “Well, I could probably use that, too.”  So look... BILL YATES:  Yeah, very practical. SUSAN MACKENTY BRADY:  It’s written for women.  And I hope allies of all genders read it. BILL YATES:  Excellent, absolutely. Co-authors and Collaborations  WENDY GROUNDS:  Susan, tell us a bit about your collaboration on the book.  Who were your co-authors, and how did you team up to write this book? SUSAN MACKENTY BRADY:  Janet doesn’t like I say this, but collectively we’ve got 85 years of leadership experience, the three of us.  Janet Foutty is – so you know that Deloitte’s a partnership.  Janet Foutty is the executive chair.  She runs  the U.S. operation for Deloitte.  It’s a huge job.  And she has really made it in a very male-dominated industry and has a very unique point of view about business and about the kind of business that Deloitte is and how her leadership was impacted by that. Lynn Perry Wooten is a scholar and an academic.  She was at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan before she went to Cornell to lead there.  She is one of few African American women who preside at the top job at a University.  And she is well published.  So it was such an honor to partner with Janet and Lynn.  I learned a lot from the two of them, writing this book.  I played somewhat lead author.  They were collaborators, and they took lead on some of the practices because frankly it was more their expertise than mine.  It was a total collaboration in the end.  And a village of people helped us to create this. Skills to Thrive WENDY GROUNDS:  There’s a distinction between arriving, which is everything required to get into that position.  And then you need to stay successful once you’ve got your position.  You need to embrace what you call the “skills to thrive” in that situation.  So can you take this personal now and highlight one or two of your skills that have helped you thrive in your position? SUSAN MACKENTY BRADY:  Well, it didn’t come easy, but I suppose I’ve done a better job of listening.  My grandmother used to say, “God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason, Susan.”  For an extroverted expressive, I have to tell you, leadership can be tricky because we can miss nuance, right, and interpersonal nuance.  I would say I’ve had a focused intention on developing my own emotional intelligence and narrowing the gap between my intention and my impact, which I’m happy to dive into because leadership is a relationship.  It’s a social construct.  And so there’s all this room for subjectivity. What I find is a lot of smart, well-intended leaders get involved in whatever they’re doing because of technical interest in whatever their functional area is.  And they get annoyed with and/or struggle with the subjectivity of relationships, which is obviously mastering some of those skills as leadership.  So that’s the student and teacher in me.  I’ve been working on that stuff for a while.  That’s number one.  So that’s interpersonal between me and others. The other, I’d say the second thing that has helped me a great deal is my relationship with myself, which is how do I manage my thoughts and feelings such that I can come from a place of warm regard and respect, even if I disagree with you.  Not just for you, but also for me; right?  So I think we get triggered out of feeling good enough about ourselves, and we get triggered into feeling like other people are disappointing us.  All day, every day.  Like it is what it is to be human.  You should have seen me with my daughter this morning.  So learning the speed of the return to healthy warm regard or compassionate center, or your best, most grounded, centered, aligned self.  Doing that consciously and quickly will help you navigate all relationships in your life, not just work. So I’ve taken those two things on:  intrapersonal, understanding my thoughts and feelings and how they impact my actions; and interpersonal.  I’m a learner.  There’s no perfection at this, guys, because people are unique and different.  And so what works with an approach with one person you work with probably might not work with another person.  And so this is tricky business.  But I think that those two things have both aided me and been my – they’re my vocation, my interest. The Harsh Inner Critic BILL YATES:  Yeah, it’s like, and to your point,

Matt Cooke, a lead project manager with Texas-based T&T Salvage LLC, describes the bold plan to remove the Golden Ray wreck from the Georgia coastline. Hear about the many obstacles and challenges the team had to overcome in this extraordinary wreck removal project.

The podcast by project managers for project managers. Hear about the three attributes of restraint: speed, thrift, and simplicity – and how these traits can add to project innovation. Dan Ward describes using a restrained approach of short schedules, tight budgets, small teams, and deep commitments to simplicity to deliver best-in-class technology that is operationally relevant. He highlights how unnecessary complexity adds complications which can reduce innovation. Table of Contents 01:40 … Dan’s Book LIFT02:46 … High-Speed, Low Cost Programs in the U.S. Air Force04:28 … MITRE Innovation Toolkit06:12 … When it’s Not All About The Bass08:25 … Project Success on a Shoestring Budget13:33 … Speed, Thrift, and Simplicity16:03 … Unnecessary Complexity Reduces Innovation22:00 … Innovation Requires Diversity25:06 … Stay on Track with Innovation28:03 … Status Reporting32:19 … Eating the Failure Cake36:09 … Get in Touch with Dan37:09 … Closing Dan Ward: ...it turns out we get better results, more innovative results, more impactful results, when we move in the direction of speed, thrift, and simplicity, rather than moving in the direction of spending more time, more money, making things more complicated.  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 we’re so glad you joined us today. We have a special guest.  His name is Dan Ward.  And he’s an innovation catalyst at the MITRE Corporation.  Dan previously served for more than 20 years as an acquisition officer in the U.S. Air Force, where he specialized in leading high-speed, low-cost technology development programs.  Dan retired at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.  While he was on active duty he helped establish the Air Force Research Laboratory’s rapid innovation process. BILL YATES:  Dan Ward is also the author of three books.  We’ll talk about “LIFT” specifically in the podcast that he released in 2019; “The Simplicity Cycle,” 2015; and “F.I.R.E.” in 2014. WENDY GROUNDS:  In our conversation with Dan we have a particular theme of innovation and managing complexity. BILL YATES:  Yeah.  So Dan has researched, of course his career was dedicated to this as well, and he’s written books on this idea of innovation and applying innovation to various environments.  Certainly for project managers we can look at this, and we’re going to share some advice and learn some lessons from this man as we talk about innovation and how to apply it to our projects. WENDY GROUNDS:  Hi, Dan.  Welcome to Manage This. DAN WARD:  Wendy, thanks so much for having me.  I’m looking forward to this chat. Dan’s Book LIFT WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah, no, we are happy to have you.  And first thing we want to talk to you about is your books.  You’ve written a few books.  And your latest one is called “LIFT.”  Can you tell us a little bit about that? DAN WARD:  Yeah, absolutely.  So “LIFT” was such a fun book to write.  And it takes a close look at what I think is a really interesting part of history, the late 1800s, and then specifically the people who were trying to build airplanes in the decades immediately prior to the Wrights.  So all of these people failed.  None of their airplanes actually flew.  That wasn’t until 1903 when the Wrights had their first successful airplane. But these experiences, these experiments, and the way they handled their failures have a lot of really interesting applications for challenges people are working on today.  So in terms of like solving hard problems, managing intellectual property, collaboration, diversity, equity, and inclusion.  You know, we think we invented that.  No.  They were dealing with those types of issues in the late 1800s.  So really, anyone who’s trying to solve an unsolved problem or just even just a really hard problem, we can learn a lot from these aviation pioneers in the late 1800s.  And it was so much fun to tell their stories. High-Speed, Low Cost Programs in the U.S. Air Force BILL YATES:  Our understanding is you had a long career with the U.S. Air Force.  And through that there are a lot of lessons learned.  So we’d like for you to talk to us about some of your experience in the U.S. Air Force and leading high-speed, low-cost technology development programs. DAN WARD:  Yeah, absolutely.  So I spent about 20 years in uniform as an active duty officer, an engineer, and a program manager.  And, you know, pretty early on I noticed an interesting pattern, that most of my frustrations and failures were when I was part of a cast of thousands, and we were spending decades and billions to develop some new shiny piece of wonder tech.  And then all my biggest successes and my proudest moments in my career were when I had a small team and a tight budget and a short schedule.  So I kind of leaned into that.  I studied it.  I experimented with my own career.  And I wrote some books then about how to use this restrained approach of small schedules, tight budgets, small teams, deep commitments to simplicity; how we use this to help us deliver best-in-class, first-in-class technology that really is operationally relevant. So, for example, the last program I led while I was in uniform was actually the smallest program in my department.  We had the smallest team, the smallest budget.  The team was actually already shrinking before I took over.  The budget had already been cut.  And when they asked if I’d like to lead that team I was like, oh, heck, yeah.  This is a great chance to put my money where my mouth is.  And at the end of the day we delivered ahead of schedule.  Our first test flight – it was an airborne radar system.  We did our first test flight a month ahead of schedule.  We collected twice as much data as originally planned or promised.  And we came in $7 million under budget.  It was a great program to kind of cap off my time in uniform. MITRE Innovation Toolkit WENDY GROUNDS:  Dan, we want to move on to what you’ve done next.  You’re currently working for the MITRE Corporation.  Can you explain to us what your role is there, and also something called the MITRE Innovation Toolkit that you’ve been part of. DAN WARD:  So MITRE is a really cool place to work.  I love it here.  We are a not-for-profit company, and we are chartered to work in the public interest.  So we bring deep technical expertise to some of the government’s biggest problems and challenges, and that’s on everything from public health, things like the equitable distribution of vaccines, to cybersecurity, to improving the user experience for the IRS.  So my unofficial job title is innovation catalyst.  And I think my formal job title is system engineer of some kind.  There’s a bunch of other words in there.  But innovation catalyst is what I put on my business card. So I’m part of this team at MITRE called the Innovation Toolkit team.  And our mission on this team is pretty simple.  It’s to help people understand what innovation is and then how to do it.  So we’ve developed a set of tools.  We help people figure out which tool to use.  We’ve got about two dozen on our website.  And then when to use the tool, and why to use the tool.  We help them go through the process of applying these tools to their projects, their programs, their departments, their processes, their technology. And one cool thing about being a not-for-profit working in the public interest, our tools are all free to use.  So anybody can go to itk.mitre.org.  MITRE is spelled M-I-T-R-E, and ITK stands for Innovation Toolkit.  So that’s itk.mitre.org.  And you can download the full set, you know, all 26 of them.  There’s 26 tools there.  And for each one there’s a description of what is it, when would you use it, why would you use it, how would you use it, and then templates and downloads and enablers to help you put that into practice. When it’s Not All About The Bass BILL YATES:  That’s fantastic.  We’ve had some really interesting conversations on past podcasts about innovation.  I think about our conversation with John Carter.  John and Dr. Bose, they have the patent on the first noise-cancelling headphones.  And I remember, what was so fascinating was John described to us, he said, we started out on this project thinking that the bass was going to be the key.  We thought if we could make headphones that have really rich bass, that’d be the best, you know, the customers would love it.  But then some of the early feedback they received it was not about the bass. WENDY GROUNDS:  See what you did there. BILL YATES:  Yeah, yeah.  Stepped into that nicely; right?  It was not about the bass.  It was about the noise cancelling, a feature that they had included that to amplify the bass, and not realizing that was going to be one of the keys.  So this idea of innovation is so interesting. DAN WARD:  So that reminds me of something actually from the book “LIFT.”  A German engineer named Otto Lilienthal, he was literally an engineer, like he developed engines.  And the engines that he had designed were lighter weight and more powerful than anything else on the market, so much so that he retired at like 40.  He retired fairly young and just dedicated the rest of his life to building airplanes.  Now, we would think that to build a successful airplane you need a lightweight powerful engine.  Oh my gosh, that’s his expertise.  What he discovered pretty quickly, though, is that it’s not about the bass. But it turns out that the engine wasn’t the next problem to be solved.  He spent most of his time building gliders, flying structures that do not have engines, because what he realized in just an amazing moment of humility, of just professional humility, was that, hey, he has good engines, but the engines aren’t the next part of the problem to be solved.  Until you manage stability,

The podcast by project managers for project managers.  Is your body language negatively impacting your project teams? Body language expert Jeff Baird shares some handy tips to incorporate into our non-verbal communication. Hear how we can tap into vast amounts of information from body language messages, and how to harness body language to come across as confident and persuasive. Table of Contents 02:42 … Meet Jeff02:57 … Combining the IT Data World and Body Language06:38 … Our Ability to Influence People09:01 … What is our Brain Doing when We Meet Someone?12:02 … How Can We be Deliberate with Our Body Language?14:55 … Power Body Language17:34 … Nonverbal “Hacks” We Can Use21:59 … The “Head Tilt” and the “Smile”23:43 … Body Language and Virtual Meetings28:27 … Improving Phone Presence30:26 … The 3 “Shuns” of Workplace Breakdowns35:42 … Creating a Safe Environment37:50 … Detecting Lies43:33 … Contact Jeff43:50 … Closing JEFF BAIRD:  There’s not good or bad body language.  There’s just how it’s going to be perceived in the eyes of the other person.  And as a side note, there’s two sides to this coin, too.  There’s what we’re doing with our body language and how people are perceiving us and how willing they are to listen to us.  And then there’s all the nonverbal signals that they’re sending back to us, too, that can give us clues as to how they feel.  And so there’s not good or bad body language.  I just want to help people to be congruent so that when they say something their body language is going to match that because oftentimes what happens is if those are not congruent, we’ll tend to believe what we see in body language over what they’re telling us with their words. WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and joining me is Bill Yates.  We’re so glad you’re joining us.  If you like what you hear, please visit us at Velociteach.com where you can leave a comment on our Manage This Podcast page.  We know you’re also looking for opportunities to acquire PDUs, your Professional Development Units, towards recertifications.  And you can still claim PDUs for all our podcast episodes.  If you take a listen at the end of the show, we’ll give you advice on how to do that. Our guest today is Jeff Baird.  He has been in data analytics for almost 20 years, but over the years he has found that facts and numbers aren’t always enough to be able to persuade and influence, and how we present ourselves and our message really matters.  He studied the science of body language to learn what makes people tick.  Jeff is a keynote speaker, a certified body language trainer – I found out that that was a thing – and a certified Big 5 Personalities trainer.  Jeff has also done a course with us. BILL YATES:  Yes.  Jeff partnered with us to build out a one-hour course in InSite, which is our mobile learning platform.  And the course is called “Attracting Top Talent:  First Contact.”  This is so pertinent today.  It’s difficult to find good people for our teams.  And there’s more emphasis on hiring and recruiting than ever.  Jeff just has terrific advice in this one-hour course about how to attract top talent.  What are the steps that we can take to be more successful as we’re recruiting and interviewing people?  And to be honest with you, too, you can flip it.  I think, from a standpoint of someone who’s looking for a job, this is a great thing to look into, as well.  This course will give you advice.  What is the employer looking for, and what should my expectations be?  So we’re delighted to be talking with him about this area of communication.  And I just think it’s exciting to have him join us, give us tips, and raise our awareness for this area of communication. Meet Jeff WENDY GROUNDS:  Hi, Jeff.  Welcome to Manage This. JEFF BAIRD:  Good morning. WENDY GROUNDS:  We’re so glad that you’re here with us today.  It’s been a long time coming.  We should have done a podcast with you a long time ago. BILL YATES:  I know, this is great to finally have him in the room with us.  Verbally, anyway. Combining the IT Data World and Body Language WENDY GROUNDS:  Verbally in the room with us, yeah.  Just to connect the dots, so your career began in the IT data world?  And then you ended up in body language training.  That’s a big jump.  How did you do that? JEFF BAIRD:  Yeah, so I’ve been in IT for – I’m going to feel old now, but it’s been at least 20 years now.  And most of that time has been in data.  So much of my focus has been in data warehousing business intelligence.  It’s all around trying to provide good information to decision-makers so they can make good decisions on what direction to go with the company or the project.  And what I somewhat reluctantly realized as a data person I’d like to think that it is just that simple, that I could just provide some numbers to somebody, and then they’ll make the right decision. But what I was somewhat reluctantly discovering is that we don’t make decisions based off facts and data as much as I’d like to think.  Like we evaluate and make decisions more off our emotions and our gut feel than sometimes the facts.  And this is something that sales and marketing people have known for years.  But it’s a new realization for people that are in IT. But the data industry’s starting to clue in on this.  I went to some data analytics conferences not too long back, and they were starting to do sessions on how to invoke emotions with your data visualizations and how to do data storytelling.  And there was one presentation in particular that had a slide that said, if a decision-maker is given some data, given some facts, but their gut feel said something different, then 90% of the time they’re going to go with their gut feel.  BILL YATES:  Wow.  Okay. JEFF BAIRD:  That’s a huge number.  And what’s funny is I’ll show that slide to other data professionals, and it’s common for them to say, no, that can’t be right.  BILL YATES:  Yeah. JEFF BAIRD:  Not realizing that I just gave them data, but their gut said something different.  So none of us are immune from it.  And it’s not that we don’t make fact-based decisions.  We want to make informed decisions.  But we can’t dismiss this other part that goes into human decision-making.  We have to understand what’s going into the gut feel if we want to be able to influence and persuade, to lead and guide people, whether it’s a company or a team or a project.  We have to be able to understand that part. And so I started studying that.  I started studying neuroscience and psychology in parallel to my data career in an effort to kind of fix myself, to try to be more effective at my own game.  And one of the areas that affects our psychology and neuroscience and really moves the needle pretty significantly, is body language because so much of our assessment of a person and things associated with them is based on what we see in their nonverbals.  But we make these snap decisions about what we think about a person, how much we trust them, how competent they appear.  And then that affects our willingness to listen to them. And so I started studying that and had an opportunity to apply to be in this pilot program to become a body language trainer.  I didn’t know that was a thing at the time.  But I threw my hat in the ring, not really expecting to get accepted to it because they were taking applicants from around the world, and they were only going to take 10 people.  But I got the word back that I got accepted to it and went to about four to five months of training to become a certified body language trainer. And so I’ve been doing that kind of in parallel to my data career.  I’m still in data.  I’m currently a Director of Data and Analytics Engineering.  But complementing it hopefully with this other piece so that I can be more effective in my own career and as I’m leading teams and as we’re trying to help influence the direction that companies go. BILL YATES:  So you’re really engaging the right and left sides of your brain with what you do day to day. JEFF BAIRD:  Yeah. BILL YATES:  That’s intriguing. JEFF BAIRD:  At least trying.  I’m still a work in progress, but trying to find that balance in my life.  Balance is important; right? Our Ability to Influence People WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah.  I like that it complements with your career.  So you’re still in this IT data world.  You’re still working in that environment.  But you’re complementing it, so you’re able to speak from both sides.  So this leads us to understanding people.  It’s an important life skill.  A lot of us are not as good at it as we think we should be or as we could  be.  We’re just not taught how to influence people, how to get people to listen to ideas.  What traits affect our ability to do that?  How can we best approach people? JEFF BAIRD:  I like to think of what my goal is with the interaction.  There’s not good or bad body language.  There’s just how it’s going to be perceived in the eyes of the other person.  And as a side note, there’s two sides to this coin, too.  There’s what we’re doing with our body language and how people are perceiving us and how willing they are to listen to us.  And then there’s all the nonverbal signals that they’re sending back to us, too, that can give us clues as to how they feel.  And so there’s not good or bad body language.  I just want to help people to be congruent so that when they say something their body language is going to match that because oftentimes what happens is if those are not congruent, we’ll tend to believe what we see in body language over what they’re telling us with their words. So if I come home from work and my wife’s having a bad day, she may verbally tell me everything’s fine.  But if I’m seeing that it’s not, if the nonverbals are sitting there telling a different story,

“A Value Management Office is a cross-functional, cross-hierarchy and cross-silo team of teams.” These are the words of author and industry-leading agile and lean expert, Sanjiv Augustine. Our guest, Sanjiv, presents powerful ideas and strategies for transforming the Project Management Office into an Agile Value Management Office. In this episode, Sanjiv describes successes and challenges he is seeing with recent enterprise agile transformations.

How can you become a leader that people want to follow? Author Scott J. Miller, author of Management Mess to Leadership Success, has a spirited conversation with us about how to change the way you manage yourself, lead others, and achieve a high level of engagement with your project team. It’s never too late to fix our mess and develop leadership success.

The podcast by project managers for project managers. Mastering written communication and focusing on the hidden science behind how our reading and writing influences our thoughts and actions. Hear some best practices when it comes to writing winning bids, pitfalls we should avoid, as well as common workplace communication errors. Table of Contents 02:02 … Rob’s Background Story03:17 … Misfired Messages07:23 … Knowing When to Call a Time-out10:53 … Recognizing the Warning Signs12:56 … Effective Writing in Project Management15:45 … Fluency Heuristic17:01 … Overloading the Decision-Maker22:46 … An Attention-Grabbing Introduction26:57 … “Garden-Pathing”27:49 … Email Salutations29:18 … Compelling Subject Lines30:54 … Words of Advice34:01 … Contact Rob35:01 … Closing ROB ASHTON:  ...write as if you are writing for a human because you are.  You know, not for the position.  You don’t look at someone’s job title.  Think of them as a human being.  They are as human as you are, and they’re subject to the same mental shortcuts and the same irritations and the same cognitive biases. WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  We are so glad you’re joining us.  If you like what you hear, please visit us at Velociteach.com, where you can leave a comment on our Manage This Podcast page.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and joining me is Bill Yates.  Today we’re very excited about our guest.  We’ve never really talked about written communication.  Rob Ashton has a very interesting background.  He’s actually been in science and research.  And because of that he got into the process of reading and writing because of writing scientific reports and research papers.  But he has a very unique perspective on why so much of our written communication just doesn’t work. BILL YATES:  That’s true.  Now we’re in a remote workforce more so than ever.  So many of us are working virtually.  So what do you do?  You pop open Slack.  You pop open Skype.  And you pop open Teams.  And you just instant message with your team back and forth, back and forth.  Which many times that’s totally appropriate.  I think as Rob will get into, we have a number of different tools at our disposal.  You’ve got to pick the right tool for the right message, or you’re going to get into trouble. WENDY GROUNDS:  Right, right.  I’m excited to talk to Rob.  A little bit about him before we get there is he’s the founder of a global learning company called Emphasis, which specializes in written communication.  Some of his high-profile clients have been Big 4 accounting firms, big tech, big pharma.  He’s also done some work with the U.K. Prime Minister’s office at 10 Downing Street, and even the royal household at Buckingham Palace.  So we’re in good company. BILL YATES:  Yes.  WENDY GROUNDS:  Hi, Rob.  Welcome to Manage This.  Thank you so much for joining us today. ROB ASHTON:  Hey, it’s great to be here.  Thanks for inviting me. Rob’s Background Story WENDY GROUNDS:  Rob, before we get into our conversation on written communication, can you tell us how you got into this field and what your background is? ROB ASHTON:  I started off as a research scientist before a love of words led me into publishing.  So originally trained as an editor.  And I did that for a while, and I found that I guess I just got a little tired of applying the same techniques again and again to the words I was trying to knock into shape.  And I decided that instead of doing that, I would go and teach people to do it.  So I set up a training company to do that, and that was called Emphasis.  And that was 23 years ago. And then six years ago I decided that I would go back to my roots, and I would start to look at the science of this because there’s very little out there on the science of written communication, or at least in the business world.  There’s a ton of stuff out there in the academic world, but virtually none of it makes its way into the business world.  And I wanted to see why.  First of all I wanted to see if I was right.  It seemed to work in practice, but I didn’t know why, and maybe there’s better ways to do it.  In fact, I thought that would take a few months.  I gave myself six months, and I thought I’d write a book on it.  And of course that was incredibly naive.  And here I am six years later, finally working on the book.  So it’s been a six-year odyssey to look into the science of written communication. Misfired Messages WENDY GROUNDS:  We are very excited about this topic.  We’ve had many podcasts on communication, leadership, those types of things.  But never before have we spoken on communication and the written word.  And I think it’s definitely a very relevant topic to discuss. BILL YATES:  I think everybody’s going to have to read the transcript closely. WENDY GROUNDS:  Yes.  We will have it all written down there for you folk.  You know, we’ve all had that scenario when you’re having an innocent chat with someone on messaging.  You get that text that comes in.  And you take it the wrong way.  Or it’s what you call misfired messages are going back and forth all of a sudden, and you don’t really get clarity as to what’s going on, and we end up getting in hot water.  Rob, what happens there?  Why do we so often misinterpret these messages that we’re receiving? ROB ASHTON:  Great question.  It’s something that happens an awful lot.  It’s funny, what you’re talking about there is written communication.  And yet we don’t think of it as written communication.  We’re thinking of it as talking.  You know, we’re chatting.  And in fact you even see it on customer help desks.  It’s called “live chat.”  It’s chat, talking; and yet it’s not talking, it’s writing.  And I think right at the heart of that problem is something that most people don’t realize, and that’s that we didn’t evolve to read and write. Now, when I say that, I’ve actually taken a lot of flak on social media for this recently by saying that.  People say, what are you talking about?  It doesn’t matter.  We didn’t evolve to drive motor cars, you know.  Why does that even matter?  Or they’ll say, yes, we did.  We’ve been reading and writing for a long time.  And we’ve evolved to do it.  Some people even think we’ve evolved to do it since we started using the web to communicate.  But the fact is that as a species, we’ve been reading and writing for about 5,000 years, which sounds like a very long time; right?  But it’s not.  It’s only a heartbeat in evolutionary terms.  When you are reading and writing, you are using circuitry that you have developed since you were born.  This is why takes us so long to learn to read and write.  We can understand our parents’ voices, or at least we can react to our parents’ voices, and we can make our presence felt to our parents by crying when we’re babies.  You know, we use our voices to communicate.  We use our hearing to communicate straight out of the womb.  But when it comes to reading and writing, this is something we have to learn to do, it takes years, and we are rewiring the brain.  And what we’re doing is we’re joining up parts of the brain that we evolved for other purposes, such as for hearing, for example. If you’ve ever thought about reading, reading is a miracle, really, because you see dots and squiggles on a screen or on a page, and you hear voices in your head.  You know, that’s just miraculous, I think.  So it’s very easy to take that for granted and to think that it’s just something we can just do, and we do it naturally, and we do it easily.  But it’s really, it’s like the ultimate brain hack, reading and writing.  We are operating, though we may not realize it, on the edge of our cognitive abilities when we’re doing that. So to your question, it doesn’t leave much room for things like emotional control.  I think this emotional control thing is one of the keys for why we so often end up in hot water when we’re communicating in that way, when we’re messaging.  It’s why we so often misinterpret things, although there are other things we can dig into there.  But, you know, if you are irritated already, then we often check these things in situations that we would never have been reading in before.  Normally, reading was something we did, you know, you go back a long time, you go back even a couple of decades, you would be reading a book; you would be reading a magazine.  You wouldn’t be doing it while you sat in a traffic jam getting really wound up about traffic. But when we are already irritated, and a message lands, we look.  That just confirms that we’re right to be irritated, and we start to think that it’s that message that has irritated us, that has made us angry.  So there are all sorts of reasons.  But I think the key to it all is that we didn’t evolve to read and write. Knowing When to Call a Time-out BILL YATES:  One of the things that really cracked me up was reading through one of the blog posts that you had about a very innocent question that you asked a teammate that was on a project.  You simply asked for a project status.  Talk us through that interaction. ROB ASHTON:  But you know, I still remember it like it was yesterday because it had such a profound effect on me.  I sat there in my office.  We were just looking at the screen full of Gantt charts and Trello boards.  And we’d had a standup, one of our regular weekly project meetings on the Monday.  And I think it was Wednesday by this point.  It was the middle of the week.  And that the standup everybody had said, “Yeah, everything’s going fine.”  They’d been really positive about what they were working on.  But as I was looking at those things, I just thought just something doesn’t feel right. So I just turned to Slack.  And I said to my colleague, “Can you just give me an update?”  You know, just how’s it going?  How is that project going?  And, now,

The podcast by project managers for project managers. The number of projects initiated in all sectors has skyrocketed, yet why do project failure rates still remain alarmingly high? Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, author of the Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook: How to Launch, Lead, and Sponsor Successful Projects, emphasizes the value of senior leaders investing in the pursuit of better project management. Table of Contents 02:11 … The World Champion in Project Management03:53 … The Project Economy05:46 … Organizational Ambidexterity10:15 … Low Success Rate of Projects13:31 … Choosing Predictive or Adaptive Agile Methods16:05 … Introducing The Project Canvas18:44 … Three Dimensions of the Project Canvas20:07 … 1.Foundation21:05 … 2.People22:02 … 3.Creation23:20 … Senior Executives and Project Success26:15 … Challenge your Sponsors27:57 … Self-Assessment29:15 … Engagement Triple Constraint33:30 … Advice for Younger Project Managers35:32 … Contact Antonio37:33 … Closing ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ:  Senior leaders are not there yet.  They’ve never invested in the importance of project management, building competencies.  Part of what we started here is that they did not appreciate it as a core topic.  They preferred to talk about strategy, innovation, and other things, and rather than project management implementation. WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and joining me is Bill Yates.  Just a quick thanks to our listeners who reach out to us and leave comments on our website or on social media.  We always love hearing from you.  We know you’re also looking for opportunities to acquire PDUs, your Professional Development Units, towards recertifications.  And you can still claim PDUs for all our podcast episodes.  Listen up at the end of the show for information on how you can claim those PDUs. Our guest today is Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez.  He is an author, practitioner, and consultant who teaches strategy and project implementation to senior leaders.  His research has been recognized by Thinkers50, with its prestigious Ideas into Practice award, and he is featured in the 2020 Global Gurus Top 30 List of Management Professionals.  Antonio has served as chairman of the Global Project Management Institute, and in that role he launched the Brightline initiative.  He is also the founder of Projects & Co, cofounder of the Strategy Implementation Institute, and a member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches group. BILL YATES:  Antonio has written several books, as well.  The one that we’re going to focus on today is the new “Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook.”  You may hear Antonio or us refer to this as the HBR, the Harvard Business Review, in our comments.  And Antonio is joining us from Brussels. WENDY GROUNDS:  Antonio, welcome to Manage This.  We’ve looked forward to our conversation with you today, and so we’re so grateful to you for being with us. ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ:  Thanks to you, Wendy.  I’m really happy to be here with you and look forward to this conversation. The World Champion in Project Management WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah.  Before we get started, I do have a quick question for you.  If you look back, when was the moment when you knew project management was your thing?  How did you get into project management?  And you’ve just done so much in the field of project management.  I think I saw in LinkedIn you’re the world champion in project management, and I love that.  So how did you become that? ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ:  Well, it’s a pretty sad story, Wendy.  I recognized that I wanted to work and specialize in project management when I was fired.  I was fired in the sense that I had this big idea in a big consulting firm where I wanted to become partner, and I said, “Let’s develop project management advisory service because everybody’s struggling with projects.”  This is like 20 years.  And they said, “Well, yeah, we like the idea, but it’s not something we can make money out of, project management; right?  It’s very tactical.  It’s kind of boring.  So that kind of – and you’re fired, Antonio, because that’s a bad idea.”  And it was like a game changer for me, was painful for a few weeks.  And then I say, how come senior leaders don’t understand the value of project management?  Why do we have these bad names, that name of boring, old and complicated, bureaucratic.  So that was the start of a love story. WENDY GROUNDS:  Wow, very cool.  BILL YATES:  Yeah.  Great idea.  Just you’re out of the company now, go figure it out yourself. WENDY GROUNDS:  Well, I’m glad it turned out that way because we can gain so much knowledge from you.  And I think you’ve gone on to do better things. ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ:   Thank you, Wendy.  I feel like that, too.  So if you ever get fired, take it as something good. BILL YATES:  That’s right. ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ:  That’s mine. The Project Economy BILL YATES:  That’s right, I have my eyes wide open, thinking, okay, what opportunity is coming?  Antonio, one of the questions we wanted to ask you about, it’s related to the project economy.  You speak about the project economy.  We’ve had projects in the economy since the Industrial Revolution.  What’s changed? ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ:  Well, Bill, good question to start.  I always like to talk at the big picture first, and then deep dive.  I think it helps people to follow on the conversation.  So there are two dimensions of the project economy.  One is the macro level, is what happens around the world, what happens in countries with governments, public spending.  And what I say is that with the pandemic the world will see more projects in the next decade with all these public investments to regenerate economies and infrastructures and healthcare, than we’ve ever seen.  So the amount of project that we’re going to see from a macro level, we’ve never seen before.  This is millions of projects, millions of project managers, billions of investment, or trillions of investment.  So that’s one side. And I compare figures.  I look at the Marshall Plan, I look at the numbers from the financial crisis in 2008, and this is like 10 times more.  So that’s exciting.  I think that’s great for the profession.  But the bigger challenge or change or disruption is what happens within companies.  This is like what I call the more micro level, where the type of work is moving from operations to project based.  And that’s what is a very radical change because in the past, Bill, companies would have projects that are nice to have.  They would have a few people, a few people just working as project managers, 5% maybe.  What changes now is that most of the employees will work project-based.  So that’s a radical shift, radical disruption I’m talking about. Organizational Ambidexterity BILL YATES:  There’s a phrase that you used in the book I thought was quite clever, wish I’d come up with it myself.  It was “organizational ambidexterity.”  And in that you talk about this balance that companies are looking for between running the organization and changing the organization.  Talk a bit further about that. ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ:  Sure, Bill.  This is a concept which I deep-dived in the past in curiosity about this organizational ambidexterity.  And there’s been quite a lot of academic research, more in the field of strategy implementation.  And then there has been good papers around these exploitation versus exploration.  So a company needs to have these big main areas which is exploiting your current business, your current assets, your operations.  And then on top of that, think about the future, your future, the exploration field, what I call change in projects. And over the last 50 years what happens is that the primary area of focus of processes, people, competencies, leadership, senior management attention and time has been on that operation, on exploitation.  We’ve become so efficient that we don’t need so many people there anymore; right?  It’s done by machines.  And what happened is that the exploitation part that changed the project has exploded this, where most of the things happening in the life cycle of our projects have gone from maybe five years to one year.  If you look at some statistics, for example, Booz Allen Hamilton was talking about how many of the revenues of companies come from new products.  And in the past, in 1980s, was about 20%.  So 20% of the revenues would come from new products, new projects.  Over the past 40 years that’s about 50% of the revenues comes from new projects or new products. So that means that everything is accelerating; right?  And the exploitation versus exploration, the business as usual versus the change has shifted.  And I’m going to be long here, but it’s important.  The key is not eliminating your exploitation; right.  You cannot remove your operations.  And that’s a big challenge because it’s finding the right balance of how much do we do in the operational part, we need to keep that.  But how much do we shift in terms of changing, agility, different culture, different type of organizational structures.  And that’s where I think many companies struggle. BILL YATES:  That’s good.  And Antonio, it’s interesting to me at a grassroots, at a tactical level.  Those people, the resources that are working on those projects, for some that are doing the ongoing operations, okay, here’s an existing, let’s call this a – this product is our cash cow.  This brings in great revenue for a company, and it’s evolved through the years.  But it’s kind of boring from my standpoint as a contributor.  Now here’s this fun new project that the company’s doing.  I really want to be on that team.

The podcast by project managers for project managers. How does the established project management approach fall short when managing complexity in projects? Kieran Duck wrote the book The Complex Project Toolkit that describes the use of design thinking to deliver your most challenging projects. Table of Contents 02:35 … The Complex Project Toolkit Book03:52 … Standard Project Management vs. Managing Complex Projects06:38 … Complicated Versus Complex07:19 … A Design-Driven Toolkit08:58 … Is Agile Not For Complex Projects?11:43 … Mindsets, Practices, and Skills13:27 … “Why” Before “What” in a Complex Project17:06 … Inspiring the Shift to a Complexity Mindset20:42 … Individuals Hold Themselves Accountable23:08 … Conversations25:13 … Sense-Making27:18 … Adaption29:50 … Words of Advice31:48 … Get in Touch with Kieran33:24 … Closing KIERAN DUCK: You know, in complexity, I go back to it’s all connected.  No one person knows the answer.  So pick a good one.  Create the context that works well for this team.  And if they’re having a horrible experience, change it. I really believe that these projects can injure people, won’t take your finger off, but it can really blow people up.  And so create the right context for doing well. WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is our bimonthly program where we like to talk about what matters to professional project managers.  And it’s our goal to give you some words of advice and to give you encouragement, where you can hear from other professionals and leaders in the field.  We’re glad you’re joining us.  If you like what you hear, please visit us at Velociteach.com and leave us a comment on our website. I am Wendy Grounds, and joining me in the studio is Bill Yates.  Our guest today is Kieran Duck.  Kieran is talking to us from Sydney.  He is an advisor and coach to senior leaders running complex projects and transforming organizations.  He has redesigned and rescued multibillion-dollar projects and led business transformations.  He’s also a global presenter on using design thinking to drive step changes in project and business performance.  He’s also recently authored a book called “The Complex Project Toolkit.” BILL YATES:  Yes.  The subtitle was “Using Design Thinking to Transform the Delivery of Your Hardest Projects.”  This is really intriguing to me.  You know, right from the cover he had me hooked.  And Kieran says, okay, look, I’ve seen this over and over and over in my career.  Maybe you guys can relate.  We have a way of managing standard projects, and it works well if your project is standard. But what if it’s complex?  What if there’s a level to this that just doesn’t fit that toolset?  And he gives the example of, you know, taking a hammer and trying to drive a screw into a board.  It’s ugly and doesn’t look very nice when you’re done with it.  So he makes the case for, okay, if you have a complex project, you need a different toolkit.  And then he describes the toolkit.  This is an intriguing conversation.  I think some people may even find it a little bit controversial. WENDY GROUNDS:  Yes. BILL YATES:  Because they don’t want to give up their standard tools. WENDY GROUNDS:  Yes, yes.  And Kieran welcomes that.  If you do find anything you disagree with, you’re welcome to reach out to him.  He’d love to hear your opinions, as well.  Kieran, welcome to Manage This.  Thank you so much for being our guest. KIERAN DUCK:  Thanks for inviting me.  Great to be here. The Complex Project Toolkit Book WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah, we’re excited to talk to you.  I have enjoyed your book.  It’s an excellent book for project managers.  Can you just give us a little bit of background, and what sparked the book?  How did you come about writing this? KIERAN DUCK:  Yeah, that’s an interesting question.  I mean, over the years I’ve done a lot of work on project management, project rescues, business transformation.  And what I was doing wasn’t really described in project management books and models.  Much more of a focus on people, connecting people, understanding their motivations, taking time to rethink approaches.  So this isn’t really what you read about when you just hear about scoping and planning. Then a few years ago I worked with a design firm.  And what that did, it opened up a different way of thinking.  And it put a name to what I was doing.  You know, the more I explored design thinking, the more it explained this different way of approaching projects.  So I hadn’t seen this brought to life anywhere.  And I remember sitting on a plane flying back from a conference one time going, I’ve really got to write this down.  I saw that this is something that some people do quite naturally, but it’s also something that could be taught.  So it was really that desire to write down what I’ve seen as really effective practice when it comes to complexity. Standard Project Management vs. Managing Complex Projects BILL YATES:  One of the things that I appreciate that you do right at the beginning of the book is you say this is not replacing project management as you may be practicing it today. KIERAN DUCK:  Right. BILL YATES:  There are times when standard project management practices are perfectly appropriate.  For many, they would say throughout my lifetime or my career I can use standard project management methods and be successful.  However, there are certain projects that are just too complex.  That complexity meter gets dialed up.  And to your point, this book addresses those situations.  Talk to us a bit about that.  If you look at like standard project management approaches, how does that fall short when managing a complex project? KIERAN DUCK:  I think it’s useful to make clear what that distinction is.  You know, I talk about complicated being technically difficult.  You need to find all the parts; but, you know, it’s bounded.  Whereas complex projects are what I’d call socially difficult.  There’s a great example in Australia of when we built a big hydroelectric scheme in the 1950s.  We brought in people from overseas.  It was working in a whole new alpine wilderness area.  It took 25 years to build, but it finished on time, on budget.  And the problem there was coordinating all these resources.  But it was bringing in expertise from overseas. Now, interestingly, that finished in the 1970s.  By the 1990s, there were a whole bunch of environmental activists complaining about the fact that the dam had restricted flows downstream.  And so a campaign was started to restore the flows, at least some of the flows.  And it took until 2017 to do that.  You know, the point of that, it took 25 years to build this massive scheme of hundreds of kilometers of pipe, and it took 25 years to turn the flow back on.  So the first bit was complicated, but the second bit was complex.  And complex is about when you’ve got all these opinions involved and you, you know, there are five characteristics that I highlight. One of them is this idea that things are subjective.  Depends on your opinion.  The same information gives a different result.  The situation is connected so no one person can see the answer.  There’s not one person you go to to explain the whole situation; where often in complicated there’s an expert.  There’s somebody who can guide you through it.  I also talk about them being unknowable.  You don’t know what the problem’s going to be until you get into it.  And that’s what you see with that dam example is that things changed.  Politicians changed.  Everything kept changing on the way through.  So there’s no way to write a plan at the beginning and step all the way through it.  It was unique.  Nobody had done that before.  And it was constrained in that it was very high visibility, and lots of opinions involved.  And it really affects your degrees of freedom on a project when everybody’s playing in this game and adding their $.10 worth. Complicated Versus Complex BILL YATES:  That’s an excellent example.  The way you write about that in the book is perfect.  I think it lays out those characteristics and puts meat to it and helps you understand.  KIERAN DUCK:  Yeah, yeah.  I mean, the other one I used in the book to really bring it back to a fairly simple version is complicated versus complex.  If you think about how many fire stations you might need in a city, that’s a route optimization.  It’s a complicated problem.  Working all that out is complicated.  But the complexity comes when you’re trying to close one of those fire stations and trying to get an agreement, and everybody gets involved.  So when we see complicated problems, standard project works.  But when you get to complexity, and you’ve got all these opinions, you need an enhanced toolkit for that. A Design-Driven Toolkit WENDY GROUNDS:  Kieran, I want to talk about “The Complex Project Toolkit,” the book that you just published.  And you introduce the toolkit as a design-driven toolkit.  What do you mean by “design-driven”? KIERAN DUCK:  So for me, design thinking is a particular way of seeing the world.  The heart of it, it’s bringing people into consideration.  I make the argument that the standard project management comes from a scientific background.  It’s about modeling the future.  It’s about controlling and proving.  It has all these elements of science to it that came out of scientific management.  Within that, you’ve got to realize that the root of science is actually removing the individual.  Beginning in “Scientific Revolution” talked about removing the flawed experience of humans for science to be able to have something that’s provable, repeatable, and you understand the world by pulling it apart. Design thinking comes from a different place.  It comes from its belief that people are at the center,

At age 20, Christelle Kwizera founded Water Access Rwanda in response to the dangerous conditions that Rwandans would face when collecting water from rivers and dams, including crocodile attacks and disease-ridden water. Listen in to an inspiring project story as Christelle shares her vision to eradicate water scarcity while creating jobs for young people. This team had a goal to look for solutions that intersect the impact on planet and profit.