James Louttit, a leading expert in Project Management and author of "Leading Impactful Teams," brings over twenty years of experience to our latest podcast episode. His extensive background in leading diverse project teams to success across various industries has established him as a pivotal figure in the field. In this episode, James shares actionable insights and proven strategies from his book, offering listeners practical tools to enhance project effectiveness and innovation. Known for his ability to simplify complex concepts, James's guidance is invaluable for anyone looking to improve their project management skills and drive significant results in their organisations.
James on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3ymd2Sq
CLP courses:
- 25th - 27th June 2024, Shannon, Ireland - https://bit.ly/4ahawKs
- 8th - 10th July 2024, Dublin, Ireland - https://bit.ly/4ahawKs
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In this episode, host Ben Maynard delves into James's successful strategies and insights from his book, exploring how these can be applied to improve project outcomes and team dynamics. The conversation spans from practical tips for enhancing stakeholder engagement to effective ways to blend fun with productivity, ensuring a well-rounded approach to project and product management.
Key Highlights:
🔍 09:19 - Defining Value: Objective vs Subjective
🔍 10:01 - Calculating Business Value: The Math Behind Time Saved
🔍 13:14 - Mastering Communication
🔍 20:00 - Project vs Product Management
🔍 29:07 - Managing Project Dependencies for Success
🔍 42:08 - Maximising Productivity: The 'Done List'
Listeners will gain invaluable insights into overcoming common pitfalls in project management and strategic approaches to maximising team efficiency. Discover the transformative power of clear, actionable planning and how to align team efforts with broader business objectives effectively.
Join us as James shares his extensive knowledge and practical tips, equipping listeners with unparalleled success in a competitive m
Host Bio
Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.
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Ben Maynard
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Product Agility Podcast
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00:00:00 --> 00:00:09 Fundamentally, there's another one single piece of advice for one of the the one of the few books that I've referred to in in my book is is Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.
00:00:10 --> 00:00:13 And he makes this point about listening to people.
00:00:13 --> 00:00:16 If you want to convince someone of something, listen to them.
00:00:16 --> 00:00:18 Put yourself in their shoes.
00:00:18 --> 00:00:27 So if you've got someone who's who's like that, who maybe has agreed, maybe reluctantly, to the calculation, there's something that they haven't.
00:00:27 --> 00:00:39 You haven't understood about them, or they haven't understood about your position and the main skill for anybody, whatever your role, if you find someone like that, is just to stop talking and listen and ask them some questions.
00:00:39 --> 00:00:40 Because you might learn something.
00:00:40 --> 00:00:48 You might find out why you've made a mistake in the calculation, or why there's actually more value in their thing than you, you understood.
00:00:48 --> 00:00:53 Welcome to the Product Agility podcast, The Missing Link Between Agile and Product.
00:00:53 --> 00:01:00 The purpose of this podcast is to share practical tips, strategies and stories from world class thought leaders and practitioners.
00:01:01 --> 00:01:02 Why, I hear you ask.
00:01:02 --> 00:01:10 Well, I want to increase your knowledge and your motivation to experiment so that together we can create ever more successful products.
00:01:11 --> 00:01:13 My name is Ben Maynard and I'm your host.
00:01:13 --> 00:01:24 What has driven me for the last decade to bridge the gap between agility and product is a deep rooted belief that people and products evolving together can achieve mutual excellence.
00:01:24 --> 00:01:27 Hello and welcome to the Product Agility Podcast.
00:01:27 --> 00:01:31 We are joined this week by James Lootedt.
00:01:32 --> 00:01:32 Thank you Ben.
00:01:35 --> 00:01:38 It's so nice to have you on the podcast.
00:01:38 --> 00:01:51 You are an author, writer of the book Leading Impactful Teams, which caught my eye because it's very similar to the title of a book that some of my old lecturers wrote called Building Top Performing Teams.
00:01:51 --> 00:01:55 So anything which has a lovely title like that instantly drew me in.
00:01:55 --> 00:02:04 And then I read the tagline below and it surprised me somewhat because it included the word project management, so achieving low stress success in project management.
00:02:04 --> 00:02:07 I thought it's a project management book, you know, I haven't read one of those for.
00:02:08 --> 00:02:15 A long time and I was lucky enough to get a copy and I really enjoyed it actually.
00:02:15 --> 00:02:16 There's some brilliant stuff in there.
00:02:16 --> 00:02:20 So we're going to spend today talking about the book leading impactful teams.
00:02:20 --> 00:02:22 For those of you on YouTube, you can see the front cover.
00:02:23 --> 00:02:32 For those of you who are not to check out the show notes because there'll be a link to the to the book in there, will begin, James, with a introduction to yourself, if you would.
00:02:32 --> 00:02:33 Yeah, of course.
00:02:33 --> 00:02:35 Well, thanks ever so much for having me on the podcast.
00:02:35 --> 00:02:38 I've been watching what you've been doing for the last, I don't know, probably for four years now.
00:02:38 --> 00:02:39 So really.
00:02:40 --> 00:02:42 So I I checked back and it was 2020.
00:02:42 --> 00:02:46 I think I saw you first really, really happy to be here.
00:02:46 --> 00:02:52 And and I think that idea of hang on project management is that how does that tie in with products and agile and all that kind of stuff.
00:02:52 --> 00:02:54 And I think that's been a big part of my journey.
00:02:54 --> 00:02:55 I was a consultant.
00:02:55 --> 00:03:00 I started off as a developer and then a tester and business analysts have done all the roles.
00:03:00 --> 00:03:02 And I think you build out some skills up that way.
00:03:02 --> 00:03:10 I wasn't a great developer, but I knew I had to pass exams in Java, and I know the course of my career just started managing bigger and bigger projects.
00:03:10 --> 00:03:14 And then in 2016 and actually forms the sort of start of the book.
00:03:15 --> 00:03:23 I won't give a spoiler for anybody who wants to go, but the headline was that I was managing projects with effort rather than impact.
00:03:24 --> 00:03:39 And I was really doing what what a friend of mine calls apparatchik project management, which is basically a think back to kind of bureaucratic, you know, Soviets people just following the the process of project management as opposed to properly understanding what they're doing and why they're doing it.
00:03:40 --> 00:03:51 And after that experience, which was which was, you know, a bit life changing, I went away and I renegotiated my role and I became the head of project management competency for a big bank here in Ireland.
00:03:51 --> 00:03:54 I live in Dublin now despite the despite the accent.
00:03:54 --> 00:03:58 And my role was really to help lots of other people to manage their project.
00:03:58 --> 00:04:01 And we were going on a bit of an agile journey at the time.
00:04:01 --> 00:04:11 And I've worked in Scrum in the past, but it was really interesting because I got to, I got to really get in and do the hardest bits of all their projects, go and coach people and understand where they were coming from.
00:04:11 --> 00:04:16 And a lot of these people were more experienced than I am or was working on those hard problems.
00:04:16 --> 00:04:33 And I was doing training courses and developing things and researching things like all the different flavours of Agile, but also things like design thinking and behavioural psychology and all these different angles on the world, all of which are needed by people who are delivering whatever they're delivering in whichever way they're delivering them.
00:04:34 --> 00:04:37 And then I was fortunate enough to be recruited.
00:04:37 --> 00:04:43 I got a call from a headhunter saying would you like to apply to come and be Chief information officer of Ireland's biggest recruitment company, a company called Cpl.
00:04:45 --> 00:04:46 So I said yeah, sounds great.
00:04:46 --> 00:04:53 And then I went and bought three books on how to be a a Chief information Officer and read them before the interview and obviously did a good job and and got the job.
00:04:53 --> 00:05:00 And then it was great because I was able to take all this stuff that I've been learning and teaching and then really apply it in a real world scenario with the team.
00:05:00 --> 00:05:04 And we went on an what I would look back and call an agile transformation.
00:05:04 --> 00:05:09 Although we didn't call it that at the time, we did it by stealth a little bit, which I think it's quite a good way to do it sometimes.
00:05:10 --> 00:05:12 And that was that was a really interesting journey.
00:05:12 --> 00:05:19 And then interestingly enough one of the things we might talk about some stages is the role of a CIO in an agile organization.
00:05:19 --> 00:05:21 It's something that comes up quite quite often.
00:05:22 --> 00:05:28 And what I found is my management style is very much coach and delegate, coach, coach, coach and delegate and.
00:05:28 --> 00:05:32 And I'm always looking for someone else to be doing whatever it is that I'm doing in a year's time.
00:05:32 --> 00:05:42 And it turns out if you do that or certainly for me, I went from being a really, really busy Chief Information Officer to actually going down to a four day week And that was when I started thinking about hang on a second, I love this stuff.
00:05:42 --> 00:05:43 I love the cartoons.
00:05:43 --> 00:05:51 I love training people and explaining these concepts to people And that's when I started thinking about the book and and so I finished up with Cpl.
00:05:51 --> 00:05:55 in the middle of 2022, wrote the book then and then started the business at the beginning of 2023.
00:05:55 --> 00:06:08 And now I help mostly big organizations with their project management approaches and understanding how they strike that balance between project and product and agile and waterfall and and make it fit for their organization, which I absolutely love.
00:06:08 --> 00:06:09 Yeah, quite a story.
00:06:11 --> 00:06:21 Yeah, I mean I think that that sort of realisation moment, I don't know, a few of your listeners might have had this kind of thing where you just get yourself into a pickle and you have to change things.
00:06:21 --> 00:06:23 So my wife actually has a veto now on any job.
00:06:23 --> 00:06:30 If I was to get into a state like that again, she just tapped on her shoulder and said James, no, you're not doing this anymore.
00:06:30 --> 00:06:30 Done.
00:06:31 --> 00:06:34 And fortunately I'm self aware enough now to to manage things pretty well.
00:06:35 --> 00:06:36 Good, good.
00:06:37 --> 00:06:37 Listen to what you said.
00:06:37 --> 00:06:40 It's actually at the very beginning that really piqued my interest.
00:06:40 --> 00:06:44 I have a question around, you said you were going for effort rather than impact.
00:06:44 --> 00:06:45 Yeah, yeah.
00:06:45 --> 00:07:02 So if you're going to go for impact in what you do in a project management role or maybe even and reading your book, I think a lot of the advice is applicable more broadly, but people are going to go for impact rather than just effort.
00:07:02 --> 00:07:06 What can they get from your book to help them achieve that?
00:07:07 --> 00:07:19 I think it's funny because I went and did my PMP and my Scaled Agile framework and and the SAMC and various other certifications and qualifications in in in Agile and and project management and.
00:07:20 --> 00:07:21 They're all very complicated.
00:07:21 --> 00:07:24 There's a lot of stuff in them, right?
00:07:24 --> 00:07:27 There's a lot of things you have to do and a lot of things you have to know.
00:07:27 --> 00:07:35 It boils down to for a lot of organizations, which which a lot of places don't do that well and that's why they need people like us maybe to come in and help them.
00:07:35 --> 00:07:39 It's just prioritization, So actually deciding what you work on.
00:07:40 --> 00:07:46 And when I was lying in the hospital bed back in 2016, my brother is a hippie.
00:07:46 --> 00:07:46 He's kind of cool.
00:07:46 --> 00:07:49 He's got the beard and long hair, and he makes harps for a living.
00:07:50 --> 00:07:54 And he sent me a video of him playing, you know, Bar Lou from The Jungle Book.
00:07:55 --> 00:07:58 So he sent me a video of him playing the song The Bare Necessities.
00:07:59 --> 00:08:08 And there's a line in there that says when you pick a paw paw or a prickly pear and you pick a raw paw, well, next time beware, don't pick a prickly pear with a paw.
00:08:08 --> 00:08:15 When you pick a pair, try to use a claw, but you don't need to use a claw when you pick a pair with a big paw paw.
00:08:17 --> 00:08:20 But what he's talking about there is like a pawpaw is actually a papaya.
00:08:20 --> 00:08:22 It's a, it's a big, juicy, yummy fruit.
00:08:22 --> 00:08:25 It's got, you know, loads of value in it, and it's quite easy to get you to pick up a tweet.
00:08:26 --> 00:08:32 And then these prickly pear prickly pears, which are much smaller, much harder to get hold of, and they hurt you when you get them, and there's only a tiny little bit of value in there.
00:08:33 --> 00:08:48 And what I've done is taken that kind of concept into the whole of the training and a lot of the consultancy work that I do, focusing on and right back to the heart of Scrum, A prioritised list of things that you're going to work on based on value and effort.
00:08:48 --> 00:08:53 High value, low effort things, that's what you're looking for.
00:08:53 --> 00:08:59 And if you boil everything down and just do that one thing, actually that's where you get the impact from.
00:08:59 --> 00:09:04 And there's a lot of people out there working on very, very low value, very, very high effort things.
00:09:05 --> 00:09:07 And that's where you need to have a difficult conversation.
00:09:07 --> 00:09:09 You need to go and learn something else.
00:09:09 --> 00:09:12 You need to look at particularly what you're doing and go in a different direction.
00:09:13 --> 00:09:18 So ready to boil it all down, work on high value, low effort things.
00:09:20 --> 00:09:25 So the thing that always comes up when you start talking about value.
00:09:25 --> 00:09:25 Yeah.
00:09:26 --> 00:09:27 And I say effort.
00:09:28 --> 00:09:32 There's other things that come up when you talk about effort but talk about value.
00:09:33 --> 00:09:38 Do you have any guidance as to how objective calculation on value you can get to?
00:09:39 --> 00:09:42 Or are you suggesting A subjective value calculation?
00:09:43 --> 00:09:48 Everything's going to be subjective whatever you do, but I do recommend you try and make it objective.
00:09:48 --> 00:10:00 So I actually teach people to put a in in Ireland, Euro in in the UK pound value against the things that they're working on and you can work it through as a calculation.
00:10:00 --> 00:10:04 And the great thing about doing that, right, so let's say you're talking about, I don't know, time saved, right.
00:10:04 --> 00:10:08 If we're going to put this system in, it's going to save 100 people an hour a day.
00:10:09 --> 00:10:09 Great.
00:10:09 --> 00:10:14 So now you can work that through and say 100 people, their average salary is X, they're going to save an hour a day.
00:10:14 --> 00:10:20 Multiply that by, I don't know, 220 days a year and and three years as a time horizon and you get to a number, right?
00:10:21 --> 00:10:31 And that number, you can info Roxa So people can disagree with any of the assumptions that you've put on the page to come to that number, but you can't really argue with the maths.
00:10:31 --> 00:10:39 And so it allows you to actually say, OK, well the business value of putting in this, I don't know, report or whatever we're talking about is 20 lbs.
00:10:40 --> 00:10:52 And the effort if you go away, and I would highly recommend using planning poker or estimating poker, whatever you want to call it, for your estimating because it allows you to have really good discussions about about what you're estimating.
00:10:52 --> 00:10:57 And if your estimate is 60 lbs and the value is only 20 lbs, guess what?
00:10:57 --> 00:11:02 You get to say no, you get to turn around, which is something quite rare in a lot of organisations.
00:11:02 --> 00:11:04 Say no, sorry it's just not worth doing.
00:11:05 --> 00:11:10 Or show me why it's more valuable than that, or show me how it's easier than that, right.
00:11:10 --> 00:11:13 And then you allow yourself to have a good conversation.
00:11:13 --> 00:11:21 And I think I'll give an example in the book about risk based people go, oh what about GDPR or IT security, these kind of risk based value things.
00:11:22 --> 00:11:25 And I think you can still hold yourself to put a calculation in place.
00:11:26 --> 00:11:36 And the great thing about doing that is even if you put a calculation in place and someone disagrees with it, you're just changing some of the numbers or maybe some of the assumptions, you still get to a number.
00:11:36 --> 00:11:42 And that discussion to get to a number allows you then to slot it in to your prioritized list in the right place.
00:11:43 --> 00:11:58 It reminds me of a conversation I have with a lady called Liz Imma on the podcast a few months ago when she spoke of economics and how economics was flawed historically because it believed humans were perfectly rational beings.
00:11:58 --> 00:12:00 Yeah, I spoke of economics So.
00:12:01 --> 00:12:05 And I'm massive massively interested in all nudge theory and all the tournament stuff.
00:12:05 --> 00:12:13 Yeah, I was actually Interesting figures that when we appreciate that humans aren't logical, rational human beings, and it's like that book, the author's name escapes with the happiness hypothesis.
00:12:14 --> 00:12:17 It's similar system on system too, but the elephant and the rider.
00:12:17 --> 00:12:30 And that when we're trying to convince people we are talking to the rider who's this lovely logical human being that's making decisions based upon the, you know, the correct balance, you know, ignoring things like hyperbolic discounting, you know, actually just saying actually that is more valuable in the future.
00:12:30 --> 00:12:32 So we'll go to that and that.
00:12:32 --> 00:12:40 That's great, but the problem is that they're really, the rider is incapable of keeping control of the elephant for too long before the emotional side takes over.
00:12:41 --> 00:12:56 Do you have any guidance of when you've got that value figure and you've been talking to everyone's riders and they get it logically, but then people's elephants start to take over and it gets a bit more heated because they don't want to accept for numbers.
00:12:56 --> 00:13:03 They do just want to push for the the other thing, which is maybe less value, but they're more emotionally inclined towards it.
00:13:04 --> 00:13:14 Yeah, I mean, fundamentally there's another one single piece of advice for one of the the one of the few books that I've referred to in in my book is is Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.
00:13:14 --> 00:13:17 And he makes this point about listening to people.
00:13:17 --> 00:13:21 If you want to convince someone of something, listen to them.
00:13:21 --> 00:13:22 Put yourself in their shoes.
00:13:23 --> 00:13:29 So if you've got someone who's who's like that, who maybe has agreed, maybe reluctantly, to the calculation.
00:13:30 --> 00:13:44 There's something that they haven't You haven't understood about them, or they haven't understood about your position and the main skill for anybody, whatever your role, if you find someone like that is just to stop talking and listen and ask them some questions.
00:13:44 --> 00:13:45 Because you might learn something.
00:13:45 --> 00:13:53 You might find out why you've made a mistake in the calculation or why there's actually more value in their thing than you understood.
00:13:53 --> 00:14:02 Or once you've listened to them, they'll be open to maybe hearing what you've got to say about it, and maybe you can explain how something that they've missed.
00:14:02 --> 00:14:09 So fundamentally, if you're looking to, as you say, direct the elephant, I think this is it's switch the ship and down Heath, Yeah, yeah.
00:14:10 --> 00:14:14 If you're looking to direct the elephant, then then the first place is listening.
00:14:14 --> 00:14:18 So when I turned up to Cpl., we had this sort of challenge with the IT team.
00:14:19 --> 00:14:26 I went around the whole company and I literally went into everyone's offices, all these open plan offices around the the different locations, about 15 different locations.
00:14:26 --> 00:14:28 And I said, hi, I'm James, nice to meet on the new CIO.
00:14:29 --> 00:14:31 Here's some pink post IT notes and some green post IT notes.
00:14:32 --> 00:14:37 I want you to write one thing that you like on the green post it notes about the IT function and one thing that you would change.
00:14:38 --> 00:14:40 And I gathered all that data together.
00:14:40 --> 00:14:41 It didn't take me too long.
00:14:41 --> 00:14:43 I sat there one night and typed it all into a word cloud.
00:14:43 --> 00:14:47 And then I had some real clarity about the thing about, you know, these are the things that they like.
00:14:47 --> 00:14:48 They really like the people.
00:14:48 --> 00:14:52 They really like how clever they were, how hard they worked, and they really didn't like the fact that nothing was happening, right?
00:14:52 --> 00:14:56 There was no, there was no, you know, things weren't getting finished, right?
00:14:56 --> 00:14:59 So that kind of problem that a lot of people find themselves in.
00:14:59 --> 00:15:10 But it was great because I've been so demonstrable about listening to people when we came back in and said, well, what we're going to do is we're going to actually prioritise things and we're going to stop starting things and start finishing things.
00:15:11 --> 00:15:17 And we did that and and we just pretty standard the kind of stuff you'll be talking about on your podcast all the time.
00:15:17 --> 00:15:18 And also optimising the work in progress.
00:15:18 --> 00:15:22 And we've got too much going on and then just just finish things, get them done.
00:15:22 --> 00:15:26 But because I'd listen to people, the buy in was much, much easier.
00:15:26 --> 00:15:35 So if we do a little recap and just to test my understanding of the last 10 minutes, maybe longer, there's a lot of information we kicked off.
00:15:36 --> 00:15:37 Oh, we've kicked off.
00:15:37 --> 00:15:38 We didn't kick off of this.
00:15:38 --> 00:15:42 But I did ask the question, how do we focus on having impact rather than us putting in the effort?
00:15:42 --> 00:15:50 And you said it's about prioritisation, you told us about prioritising based upon balance between value and effort.
00:15:50 --> 00:15:53 I was going to say a ratio between them.
00:15:53 --> 00:15:55 We're looking at the value and the effort.
00:15:55 --> 00:16:01 So we're going to be focusing on the things that are high value, lower foot first and then we're going to be kind of winding back.
00:16:01 --> 00:16:04 So we make sure we're not picking the prickly pear, we're picking the poor poor instead.
00:16:04 --> 00:16:05 That's it.
00:16:05 --> 00:16:05 Yeah, look at that.
00:16:05 --> 00:16:06 See, I was listening.
00:16:09 --> 00:16:23 So then we spoke about the the elephant and the rider and the Volvo's objective or semi or pseudo seemingly objective calculations may be enough to compel some people's logical minds to have been making a decision and acting for many.
00:16:23 --> 00:16:36 It may not because they're going to be looking for a more emotional argument to it, perhaps and looking for some reason other than the logical because is so much of our unconscious thought will try and veer us away from logical things.
00:16:36 --> 00:16:38 And I mentioned this idea of hyperbolic discounting.
00:16:38 --> 00:16:43 You know, we always defer the thing that is more valuable later for something that's less valuable now.
00:16:43 --> 00:16:46 And you get the great advice, which was just to listen to listen to people.
00:16:46 --> 00:16:48 And I suppose then you build that emotional connection.
00:16:48 --> 00:16:55 And I do think actually if you, if you use the, the objective piece to allow you to have to listen properly.
00:16:56 --> 00:16:58 So you're kind of tying the two things together, right?
00:16:58 --> 00:17:01 You're changing the number based on what you hear from people.
00:17:01 --> 00:17:03 So you're bringing in that emotional connection.
00:17:03 --> 00:17:19 You're bringing in the listening and the human side of it and allowing them to tell that story in an objective way that you can then go and take to the board or you know, to the prioritization committee or wherever you have to go with that number because companies like making decisions on numbers and that allows you to sort of manage both sides.
00:17:27 --> 00:17:36 I think there has been a perception in some avenues of the agile community over the years, and perhaps even maybe less in the product world.
00:17:36 --> 00:17:44 But definitely agile community, The products kill projects and that projects don't have a space anymore, that everything should be a product.
00:17:44 --> 00:17:49 And that's just the way of things and you've mentioned about striking A balancing act between a number of things.
00:17:49 --> 00:17:54 I think one of the things you said about getting a balancing act between was project and product.
00:17:54 --> 00:17:58 So what is the balancing act then, James?
00:17:58 --> 00:18:04 I mean, if you think about, oh, actually just some cynics book about the infinite game, I think I've listened to it before, but I think I'm, I'm just starting again.
00:18:04 --> 00:18:09 And and the interesting thing there is, I suppose the product view of the world is that the thing never stops, right.
00:18:09 --> 00:18:12 You just keep going and you're just adding value and and that's great.
00:18:12 --> 00:18:18 But a lot of organizations, they want to budget in cycles and they want to know how much it's going to cost in this period of time.
00:18:18 --> 00:18:22 And I don't think you actually necessarily need to change your behavior massively.
00:18:23 --> 00:18:28 Depending on which one of those approaches you take, right, they can both work quite well.
00:18:28 --> 00:18:30 In fact they both, you know, we've seen it over and over again.
00:18:30 --> 00:18:33 They, you know, they can both fail, but they can also both be successful.
00:18:34 --> 00:18:43 And so for me, the idea that if you move into a product world and therefore you don't have to manage risk, for example, or get sign offs, it's kind of a little bit utopian.
00:18:43 --> 00:18:55 You're trying to think about this this kind of perfect world where these things are no longer required, but equally in a project world the fact that you can't iterate and improve and change direction part way through is is kind of madness.
00:18:56 --> 00:18:58 So I think for me this is the of a toolbox.
00:18:58 --> 00:19:01 We're all intelligent people, particularly people working in both of these areas.
00:19:02 --> 00:19:07 They tend to be intelligent, hard working, you know, pretty pretty savvy people.
00:19:08 --> 00:19:15 And the idea that you just follow a methodology, whatever the methodology is, whether it's product or project, I think is is selling people short.
00:19:16 --> 00:19:24 So for me, I think you've got to understand both approaches and understand the value in both and then just bring it together yourself and apply it to to the.
00:19:25 --> 00:19:31 Thing that's in front of you, whether it's a product or a project, How would you describe a project?
00:19:31 --> 00:19:41 I mean it's not being a toolbox, but I mean I've had to process a project management test and it said OK in 100 words or less describe a project, how would you describe a project?
00:19:41 --> 00:19:46 And perhaps also, when would you say that projects are suitable and when are they not?
00:19:47 --> 00:20:00 OK, so I suppose if you go back to the PMP definition of a project, I think it's something along the lines of bringing together a set of resources to achieve a defined outcome in a certain period of time.
00:20:00 --> 00:20:01 And it's something like that, right?
00:20:02 --> 00:20:04 It's the defined period of time.
00:20:04 --> 00:20:08 I think that changes from a product to a a project.
00:20:09 --> 00:20:11 And the other one, I love this book.
00:20:11 --> 00:20:12 I love the phrase from a book.
00:20:12 --> 00:20:14 It's Susie Palmer too, and Peter Taylor.
00:20:14 --> 00:20:16 And the book is called Project Management.
00:20:16 --> 00:20:16 It's all bollocks.
00:20:17 --> 00:20:25 And the thing that they say is it's about bringing structure and transparency to a set of activities and that's what project management is all about.
00:20:25 --> 00:20:29 And I think those apply just as well to product management.
00:20:29 --> 00:20:37 You can bring structure and transparency to what's going on in product development and and so I I don't, I think people do get hit up.
00:20:37 --> 00:20:41 A lot of people sit in one camp or the other and I'd like us all to be a bit more.
00:20:43 --> 00:20:44 Spread eagled, Of course.
00:20:44 --> 00:20:44 Both.
00:20:44 --> 00:20:45 I don't know.
00:20:45 --> 00:20:45 That's that's that.
00:20:45 --> 00:20:46 Maybe that, maybe that.
00:20:46 --> 00:20:48 Maybe that's one for the cutting room floor there, Matt.
00:20:48 --> 00:20:48 James.
00:20:48 --> 00:20:50 Should I? Nothing wrong about it.
00:20:50 --> 00:20:53 Nothing wrong with being eagled now.
00:20:53 --> 00:20:56 Yeah, it reminded me of a lady I used to work with.
00:20:57 --> 00:20:58 A wonderful lady.
00:20:58 --> 00:21:00 So a rather wonderful lady called Yulia.
00:21:00 --> 00:21:06 And I remember we were looking to use large scale Scramblers of Viniculus for our new operating model.
00:21:06 --> 00:21:12 And she said to all of our project managers, you're you're still needed and your skills are still needed.
00:21:12 --> 00:21:16 You're just going to have to learn how to apply them in different in a different way.
00:21:16 --> 00:21:21 And what we found was that we that we did actually get rid of the project construct internally.
00:21:22 --> 00:21:24 We didn't need projects for stuff.
00:21:24 --> 00:21:31 We used it as a funding vehicle, but we didn't need any of the stuff that Deutsche Bank gave us in relation to to projects per SE.
00:21:32 --> 00:21:33 But we still had to do all the same reporting.
00:21:34 --> 00:21:37 They were to go through all of the, all of the stuff that they asked us to do.
00:21:37 --> 00:21:50 We just internally had no concept of a project beginning and ending, but it was first, it was a way to get funding for particular pieces of work and what we found was that, and this is the same when I did the similar things in other organisations, was that.
00:21:51 --> 00:22:02 We still needed project managers with their skills, and more and more often for not, what we really needed was their relationships and and their behaviours to help bring it all together.
00:22:02 --> 00:22:10 Because even though we have decided to take one particular path, we're just one small cog or series of cogs in a much, much larger machine.
00:22:10 --> 00:22:15 And that larger machine still needs coordination and synchronisation to happen with us.
00:22:16 --> 00:22:33 And what we found was that those people who were the project managers were infinitely useful and actually had a pretty rewarding journeys afterwards as soon as they found ways to change their mindset and approach things in a slightly more humble way than they had done historically.
00:22:33 --> 00:22:39 Because I think there is a danger, and I don't know if you've seen this, that project managers much like there's many people, business analysts.
00:22:39 --> 00:22:42 I mean you were a bit analysts suffer from this ego problem sometimes.
00:22:44 --> 00:22:45 I think you're right.
00:22:45 --> 00:22:48 I think the in the book actually I described 2 project managers.
00:22:48 --> 00:22:51 So one of them is is called John and one of them is called Jill.
00:22:51 --> 00:22:56 And John is this sort of stressed out traditional project manager, command and control type project manager.
00:22:56 --> 00:23:04 I'm experienced so I'll tell you what to do and a lot of people particularly senior levels have got to where they are by doing that kind of thing.
00:23:04 --> 00:23:08 But it does kill kill a lot of the sort of energy within the team.
00:23:08 --> 00:23:17 And Jill is is very much taken from the agile world as a project manager, that's a servant leader, you know, and all of those things that you talk about when you talk about servant leadership, they do apply.
00:23:17 --> 00:23:18 I think in project management as well.
00:23:18 --> 00:23:20 You can still empower your team.
00:23:20 --> 00:23:25 You can still remove the roadblocks, You can still in coach and encourage and do all those wonderful things.
00:23:25 --> 00:23:31 Just because you're working in a waterfall environment doesn't mean that you can't, you know, you can't do all that.
00:23:31 --> 00:23:33 So I think that it's funny.
00:23:34 --> 00:23:42 There's all these benefits from both ways of doing things that we can all take and I think that's the skill on all of us is to is to learn it all.
00:23:42 --> 00:23:47 Yeah it won't you go strike me James, as we're speaking is that I think that you're.
00:23:48 --> 00:23:49 Paradigm.
00:23:49 --> 00:24:05 The way that you see project management is markedly different I think to how others, at least the people that I've inter acted with over the years view project management and I I I maybe that now makes sense.
00:24:05 --> 00:24:13 When I look through your book again, when I leaf through it and I remember some of the things you're mentioning, they weren't the types of things I would have thought a traditional project manager would have mentioned.
00:24:13 --> 00:24:17 And I think it's because you've got a different paradigm, what it means to be a project manager.
00:24:17 --> 00:24:28 And I think that the, the John, the project, John, the project manager you mentioned there, you know, those types of project managers are absolutely rosy and they are dandy when everything's going as they want it to go.
00:24:29 --> 00:24:29 Yeah.
00:24:30 --> 00:24:33 The moment something is outside the comfort zone, but it really begins to creak.
00:24:35 --> 00:24:35 Yeah.
00:24:35 --> 00:24:37 And I and I think I suppose I'm lucky, right.
00:24:37 --> 00:24:39 I started off in traditional projects.
00:24:40 --> 00:24:45 I then learn all about Agile and then I started and The thing is, I then got to teach this stuff.
00:24:45 --> 00:24:46 So it's great thing.
00:24:46 --> 00:24:47 It's great to learn something brilliant.
00:24:48 --> 00:24:49 It's much better to do it.
00:24:50 --> 00:24:52 And then you start to really become a practitioner.
00:24:52 --> 00:24:58 But I don't think you really understand something until you teach someone else, because then you have to properly think it through.
00:24:58 --> 00:25:00 You have to prepare for questions.
00:25:00 --> 00:25:03 So you can't just read it off a page and pretend to understand it.
00:25:03 --> 00:25:04 You have to understand it in your bones.
00:25:05 --> 00:25:35 Now I've spent probably the guts of seven or eight years teaching this kind of stuff and now writing it in a book I feel like I do understand it all and and and everyone's had a chance to sort of challenge what I'm saying and say hang on a second James what do you mean by this And that's wrong and and knock the rough edges off where I maybe misunderstood something I hadn't kind of fully understood something And and I think that that then gives a slightly different well quite a different perspective when I did the other project management training that that I've done.
00:25:36 --> 00:25:39 It's very much this is what's in the book and this is what's going to be in the exam.
00:25:39 --> 00:25:46 So you just, even if you don't understand or agree with it, just write it down because then you'll get your location, then you'll get your pay rise, right?
00:25:46 --> 00:25:49 Because what that's what we're, that's what we're trying to do.
00:25:49 --> 00:25:50 And actually that frustrates me.
00:25:50 --> 00:25:54 I think that's wrong and there's a place for it insofar as it shows.
00:25:54 --> 00:26:00 Those kind of exams show that you're dedicated and you're intelligent, you're hard working and you're going to push it and take this stuff seriously.
00:26:00 --> 00:26:02 But then just leave it in a box and don't apply any of it.
00:26:02 --> 00:26:03 And it's a shame.
00:26:03 --> 00:26:07 Whereas I think that much more practical approaches is a better way for organizations to think about it.
00:26:08 --> 00:26:13 No, I'm totally with you on the You don't understand it till you teach it.
00:26:13 --> 00:26:18 There's a load of great little quotes that come from something called training from the back of the room.
00:26:19 --> 00:26:20 Yeah, let's see if some people do.
00:26:20 --> 00:26:21 I haven't done it myself, but I've.
00:26:21 --> 00:26:22 I've heard good things.
00:26:22 --> 00:26:23 Let me know.
00:26:23 --> 00:26:26 Come on my course, I'll do you a podcast guest, guest.
00:26:26 --> 00:26:27 I feel like discount.
00:26:27 --> 00:26:28 It's a brilliant course.
00:26:28 --> 00:26:35 It's a lot of fun and there's loads of great little board liners in there about being not being the sage on the stage but being the guide on the side when you're training.
00:26:35 --> 00:26:40 Yeah, but one of the one of the big principles is that the person who's doing the most talking is doing the most learning.
00:26:40 --> 00:26:47 And I think that when our training and my training was like this for a long time is it is you talking to people and taking them through some things.
00:26:47 --> 00:26:51 And even then the act of creating the training or writing a book, you're doing a lot of self talk when you're doing that.
00:26:51 --> 00:26:56 And I think you learn so much then by having to re articulate it and it's then filled the questions.
00:26:57 --> 00:27:15 And if I think about particular questions, the training that I do, one of the big ones that always comes up when we're talking about organizational culture and design and how we can design operating models and organisations to actually achieve specific, like very specific goals like adaptability and being able to find the most valuable piece of work.
00:27:16 --> 00:27:21 The one thing that always comes up is about dependencies.
00:27:22 --> 00:27:23 Yeah.
00:27:23 --> 00:27:35 So what What advice can you offer in relation to, and I'm going to just throw it out there as extraordinarily broadly and just say, like dependencies, dependencies.
00:27:35 --> 00:27:35 Yeah.
00:27:35 --> 00:27:44 So I mean if in traditional project management dependencies are things that other people are doing that you need, right, you've probably come across Jocko Willink, the extreme example.
00:27:44 --> 00:27:51 He's this big kind of American like Navy SEAL guy and his book is called Extreme Ownership and he's he's coming from a sort of military background.
00:27:51 --> 00:27:58 And the idea is if you're in a firefight somewhere and you're not wearing body armour, doesn't matter whose fault it is, right, It's your problem.
00:27:59 --> 00:28:02 And and certainly the the conversations he has is like take ownership for everything.
00:28:02 --> 00:28:14 And I think when it comes to dependencies, I think that's one of the skills of a product or a project manager is to understand what those things are and make sure that those things are successful however you go about doing it.
00:28:14 --> 00:28:18 So I I've got examples that I talk about on my training course around around a project.
00:28:18 --> 00:28:23 I was running a big project and there was a smaller project to the side that we had a dependency on.
00:28:23 --> 00:28:28 And I just went for a coffee with the the guy who was running that project and I just got a little bit of a nervous feeling about it.
00:28:28 --> 00:28:30 I was like oh, I'm not sure that's going to go that well.
00:28:31 --> 00:28:36 So I scheduled to have another coffee with him a month later and turns out I was, I was right.
00:28:36 --> 00:28:39 It started to be slower and and it started to become a more of a problem.
00:28:39 --> 00:28:42 So I used the traditional project management tools to to do this.
00:28:42 --> 00:28:51 I I started it off as a risk on the risk log, not in the steering meeting, just on the log and and thinking about it again and people would be able to see it, but I wouldn't have called it out.
00:28:51 --> 00:28:56 And then as I got a bit more worried about it, I raised it up and actually put it onto my statue apart, start talking about it with people.
00:28:57 --> 00:29:06 And then later on in the project, as it started to look like it was going to become a significant issue, I actually started lining up stakeholders and said, you know what the right way to do this is we're going to take over that project.
00:29:06 --> 00:29:07 My project was bigger.
00:29:07 --> 00:29:13 We took over that other project, changed the scope of it so that we could deliver the thing that we needed from it.
00:29:14 --> 00:29:18 And we had enough budget to do that and that that then got delivered.
00:29:18 --> 00:29:36 So, So because we'd called ours a dependency but actively managed it and made the consequences very clear of it being missed, then the governance structure was able to kick in and say, hang on a second, Even though it's a dependency on a smaller project, we're going to put the resources in to make sure that that's successful because this bigger project is needs it.
00:29:37 --> 00:29:40 So I think there's an element of transparency around dependencies that a lot of people miss.
00:29:40 --> 00:29:51 And unless you're taking full ownership for the outcomes of your project or your product, but the success of what you're trying to achieve, it's very easy to blame someone else and just leave it there and just say we've got a dependency.
00:29:51 --> 00:29:53 And I think that's, I think that's poor.
00:29:53 --> 00:29:55 I think you're leaving something on the table if you do that.
00:29:56 --> 00:30:02 Yeah, I love the concept there of viewing it as something that's critically important and then help you helping make sure that it happens.
00:30:03 --> 00:30:20 Yeah, I think the, the challenge I would guess for some people that are listening is that it takes a certain level of not seniority, but you have to be in a particular position in order to kind of enact those changes, don't you, to be able to like, I mean we're kind of getting into leadership a little bit here.
00:30:20 --> 00:30:28 So for me leadership is something that you have at all levels and I think as a junior person you still can have that influence if you go about it in the right way.
00:30:28 --> 00:30:43 Not always and and in a lot of organisations it's hard, but you can still do your absolute best and and and the most successful people do take that extreme ownership piece and and they will make sure that The thing is successful.
00:30:43 --> 00:30:47 So one of the things I like to think about is this idea of a Nexus of control.
00:30:47 --> 00:30:50 Successful people have a Nexus of control right here in your heart.
00:30:50 --> 00:30:56 I will do things to the world and less successful people tend to have the Nexus of control out there.
00:30:57 --> 00:31:03 The world does things to me and I think that's quite a useful mindset to get yourself into like whatever role you're doing right.
00:31:03 --> 00:31:11 I'm going to do things that have an impact on the world and you know and then the world will do it's thing and and then I'll do the next thing.
00:31:11 --> 00:31:12 So I've got control.
00:31:13 --> 00:31:20 If you just expect the world to do things at you or to you, I think you're losing something there and I think we can all be a bit better in that regard.
00:31:20 --> 00:31:39 But if you were a junior who was in a situation where they could see that something wasn't working out because of a dependency, and they decided to take on that slightly different mindset, is there any kind of practical advice from your book that they could draw upon to help influence or change that world about them?
00:31:40 --> 00:31:56 So you're kind of in a place where what as to what I would describe as a difficult conversation place, you're now having to go and address something that maybe someone else is ignoring or is is not necessarily engaging with in the way that you think it should be.
00:31:57 --> 00:32:00 So again, the skill here is exactly back to what I was saying earlier.
00:32:00 --> 00:32:03 Listen, so you can raise something as a junior person.
00:32:03 --> 00:32:05 You can go and say to someone, look, I think there's a problem here.
00:32:05 --> 00:32:08 I think I'm worried about this not happening.
00:32:08 --> 00:32:11 Can you tell me why I shouldn't be worried?
00:32:12 --> 00:32:12 Right.
00:32:12 --> 00:32:15 Or can you tell me, like, how this is going to play out?
00:32:15 --> 00:32:20 Well, it's a perfectly sensible and reasonable question even for a junior person to ask.
00:32:20 --> 00:32:26 Instead of just sitting there and saying this is all completely wrong and it's going to go bad and I it'll be your fault, just say, hang on a second.
00:32:27 --> 00:32:29 I've noticed this thing that I'm worried about.
00:32:30 --> 00:32:32 Can you tell me why I shouldn't be worried about this?
00:32:33 --> 00:32:41 And that might get the more senior person thinking, Hang on a second, they might have a point here and then you can build a bit of a coalition about it and maybe that person can then go and do something about.
00:32:43 --> 00:32:51 If you go with an open mind that maybe there is something that you've missed and maybe it isn't as big a problem, that's quite a nice way to phrase the question.
00:32:51 --> 00:33:10 I do remember looking around in many large organisations that have decided to go down the Agile path, but it's that type of thinking and I dare say there's a level of maturity and confidence required to even reach that conclusion where you're looking at a dependency and you can see it and you appreciate the interconnectedness.
00:33:11 --> 00:33:22 There are many people that in my experience who have been able to see that and and act upon it in that way and they've normally been really good project managers, program managers or delivery managers.
00:33:22 --> 00:33:28 And I think this has always been part of a challenge when people look to adopt or incorrectly adopt or adopt anything.
00:33:28 --> 00:33:42 Agile is that actually these types of conversations need to happen, and the people who have these insights and can decide them to do something about it are often disempowered, or they're not listened to, or they're just not part of the equation anymore.
00:33:42 --> 00:33:49 And I think it's easy for a team, if we look at a traditional agile team to raise an impediment and say I'm stuck because we're waiting on that.
00:33:49 --> 00:33:55 And then like this is where the role of Scrum Master I suppose has always been a little bit misunderstood or gnarly.
00:33:55 --> 00:34:04 Like, are you supposed to deal with that coordination issue and and try and find a way to resolve that dependency which is an impediment?
00:34:04 --> 00:34:07 Or are you to escalate it or are you to facilitate a conversation?
00:34:08 --> 00:34:19 You know, I think that's maybe where some of the training around Agile and as well as a Scrum master and such is, has been too theoretical and not bound enough in people's contexts to really be useful.
00:34:20 --> 00:34:20 Yeah.
00:34:20 --> 00:34:21 And I think there's definitely a risk.
00:34:21 --> 00:34:34 I think if you put edges on, particularly something like Scrum, you think you've got this lovely little team, two pizzas, and everyone's kind of working really well together and and then you've got a product owner who's the face to the world and then Scrum Master's going to get stuff out of the way and help them be successful.
00:34:35 --> 00:34:44 But traditionally the project manager would have been out there navigating the stakeholders and sorting things out and the Scrum masters sometimes rolled back from that.
00:34:44 --> 00:34:50 And sometimes Scrum masters are just not not that experienced to do that and don't have the relationships.
00:34:51 --> 00:35:04 And I think if you if you're sitting there as a if your role is as a Scrum Master and you're not looking at the outcomes, the overall outcomes of the team and making sure that those outcomes are successful, then I think you're missing a trick.
00:35:04 --> 00:35:13 Either you need a project manager to come and help you do that, or you've got an opportunity to step up and widen your remit a bit and say do you know what, this is important to this project or or to this product.
00:35:13 --> 00:35:14 We need this thing.
00:35:14 --> 00:35:18 So I'm going to go and have that coffee with that person or pick up the phone to that other person.
00:35:18 --> 00:35:27 Driving forward, I I think there's sometimes people feel like they're a bit hemmed in the methodology and actually the best people just ignore that, just go and have the conversation anyway.
00:35:27 --> 00:35:29 And I don't think so.
00:35:29 --> 00:35:32 It's a surprise when the focus has been on adopting things like Scrum and Safe.
00:35:32 --> 00:35:39 Particularly Safe, where everything has a place, everything has a label, everything has very clear boundaries and you shall you shall stick within them.
00:35:40 --> 00:35:43 And a lot of these things are splitting A Scrum Master or even a Product Owner.
00:35:43 --> 00:35:44 Yeah, is a career choice.
00:35:44 --> 00:35:52 And if I figure that situation that I provided as that context a few seconds ago around the team seriously dependency races of a Scrum Master.
00:35:52 --> 00:36:01 This interesting thing about large scale Scrum, which is actually really similar to what you did, which is if you see a dependency and you need that work to be done, then what we would say is that's part of your product.
00:36:02 --> 00:36:12 Then finding a way to bring that into your product and then relatively prioritise that work against all of your other work and maybe bring it together so that you're shifting that external dependency as an internal team dependency.
00:36:12 --> 00:36:16 Because you've augmented the team relevant skills, actually you can achieve some awesome stuff.
00:36:16 --> 00:36:18 The dependency is still there.
00:36:18 --> 00:36:20 We're not actually getting rid of it.
00:36:20 --> 00:36:27 We're just moving the level to which it's dealt with from management to much more kind of granulating the team.
00:36:28 --> 00:36:33 Yeah, more conversational based kind of teamwork rather than it being something which someone else is managing.
00:36:33 --> 00:36:39 So I think, like both approaches have their place and I think it's just a case of the the gaps I suppose and how people have been educated.
00:36:40 --> 00:36:47 Your book is brimming with lots of really practical advice, so much that you can open it up on most pages.
00:36:47 --> 00:36:53 And there is something practical right where you where people can take away and do, which I think is just fantastic.
00:36:53 --> 00:37:01 And they're the kind of books I love because they're easy to digest if someone was going to pick up your book.
00:37:02 --> 00:37:16 And say to you right, what are your, your 5533 biggest takeaways that you hope that people can take away from this practical tools or otherwise what would you say those three things are?
00:37:17 --> 00:37:17 Yeah.
00:37:17 --> 00:37:24 So I think if the fundamental first thing, top thing prioritisation by value and effort, but we've talked a lot about that.
00:37:24 --> 00:37:31 So that would be the first thing And if you can put that in place and and if you do that at the top of the organization, project against project or product against product, that's very valuable.
00:37:31 --> 00:37:35 But equally down inside at the more at a more detailed level.
00:37:35 --> 00:37:49 The second thing then so I I have this concept you've probably heard of the concept of the hippo the highest paid person's opinion huge problem in a lot of places and I think people are aware of it and like I actually I was in Mozambique recently and I went and bought myself a lovely carved.
00:37:49 --> 00:37:53 I have it easy be to hand for those of you watching on the thing right.
00:37:53 --> 00:37:54 So let me come out there.
00:37:54 --> 00:37:57 I have this and I I kind of wave it around and and talk to people about it.
00:37:57 --> 00:38:09 So the concept here is like giving people a chance to speak and get their thoughts across whatever that's about and and not having whether they're the high, highest paid but certainly the loudest or most confident person in the room making making the running.
00:38:10 --> 00:38:12 So I'd always have a parking lot.
00:38:12 --> 00:38:17 There's a little cheeky tip I'd actually almost for a lot of meetings I would have a parking lot ready to go for if we go off topic.
00:38:17 --> 00:38:23 But then taking the hippo and having conversation and just saying right, OK, this is an area where we need everybody's input.
00:38:23 --> 00:38:31 So I'm not just going to try and stop the hippo from talking or control myself if I'm the highest paid person because that's one of the hardest things.
00:38:31 --> 00:38:35 Shutting up yourself if you know, if you want to give your your team a chance to speak, right.
00:38:36 --> 00:38:43 I'm actually going to facilitate it and I'm going to use a technique and and the thing I've I've kind of called out in the book is is is 3 design thinking techniques that I learned.
00:38:43 --> 00:38:44 But I've pulled them together.
00:38:45 --> 00:38:48 As the save technique so it's silent writing.
00:38:48 --> 00:38:54 So the first thing is you ask the question so you might be looking at what are the risks to this project or to the work we've got in front of us.
00:38:54 --> 00:38:55 So what are the risks?
00:38:55 --> 00:39:02 And then you give everyone some post it notes and a pen and and it's silent writing and they have to write down their ideas and you don't you invigilate it.
00:39:02 --> 00:39:10 So, you know the Austin Powers, I think it's Austin Powers might be two when he's like here's a bag of SH and you don't let anybody talk.
00:39:10 --> 00:39:19 And so you facilitate that and and within 5 minutes, everybody's written down their top risks and you've got them and once they want to post them that they're safe, they're not going anywhere.
00:39:20 --> 00:39:28 And now you can do an affinity cluster and then you can as the project manager or the you can then sort of call those out specific risks and then you can get people to vote for them.
00:39:28 --> 00:39:35 So you give people like 3 votes, or five votes depending on how many people are in the room, and you can then just say which ones you think are the most important.
00:39:36 --> 00:39:45 And all of a sudden you've got this amazing thing which is an actual prioritised list of this is #1 and this is #2 and this is #3, this is #4, right?
00:39:45 --> 00:39:48 And now you know where to spend your time and now you can do something.
00:39:48 --> 00:39:55 And then because I was writing the book and I needed an acronym and I already had SAV, like, it was pretty obvious that the third thing to do is execute.
00:39:56 --> 00:39:58 So now you've got a prioritised list that you can just go and execute.
00:39:59 --> 00:40:14 So the save technique, and I use it over and over again and actually I've had a couple of people recently come back having read the book who've then gone into gone into interviews for for new jobs and talked about using the save technique and got the job right because it's so powerful.
00:40:14 --> 00:40:26 It's such a brilliant way to to even if you don't know the things yourself you can get them out of your team and now you've got you've listened and you've turned it into a real thing.
00:40:27 --> 00:40:28 Really practical.
00:40:28 --> 00:40:29 Only takes half an hour.
00:40:29 --> 00:40:33 An hour and a really great use of everybody's time and you can do it for risks.
00:40:33 --> 00:40:34 You can do it for tasks.
00:40:34 --> 00:40:39 You can do it for stakeholders and how you're going to engage with them lots and lots of different ways that you can use it.
00:40:40 --> 00:40:40 Really powerful.
00:40:42 --> 00:40:42 Awesome.
00:40:43 --> 00:40:43 You wanted three.
00:40:43 --> 00:40:45 OK so another one Yeah.
00:40:46 --> 00:40:50 So another one that I just coming back to maybe personal productivity thing.
00:40:50 --> 00:40:54 One of the things that I had with the team is they came to me and said James we're really busy.
00:40:54 --> 00:40:54 We're too busy.
00:40:54 --> 00:40:56 There's so many things coming at us.
00:40:56 --> 00:41:00 And I said, OK, hang on a second, I want you to do a distraction audit, right?
00:41:00 --> 00:41:08 So I want you to just take a bit of paper by and just have it by your by your desk and whenever you get distracted by something, write it down.
00:41:10 --> 00:41:16 And they, it turns out so that they did that for a couple of days and then we went through their bits of paper and it turns out they were distracting each other.
00:41:16 --> 00:41:17 Of course they were.
00:41:18 --> 00:41:24 So someone was pinging someone and saying, oh, I've got a quick question and and someone would think that, like that was an urgent thing.
00:41:24 --> 00:41:30 And so they'd reply, they'd put down what they were doing and replied to it and you can just change very small things.
00:41:30 --> 00:41:32 So I just said, right guys, here's what we're going to do.
00:41:32 --> 00:41:42 Instead of doing that Every time you think of something that you need from someone else, you just write it down and then you set up a one to one and talk about six things all at once rather than just when you do it.
00:41:42 --> 00:41:51 So things like that, very practical little tips and techniques that I think a lot of us kind of know about but don't really apply.
00:41:51 --> 00:41:54 I think can be really, really powerful Now.
00:41:54 --> 00:41:55 I love the distraction audit.
00:41:56 --> 00:41:58 My approach is I keep a done list.
00:41:59 --> 00:41:59 There you go.
00:42:00 --> 00:42:08 Just because I they have a very short attention span and writing to do lists sometimes to do this work, other times to do to do lists do not work for me at all.
00:42:08 --> 00:42:11 So I just keep a done list and I just go for all the things that pop in my head and I do them.
00:42:11 --> 00:42:15 I just go write a done list and at the end of the day I can look at them and be like, oh, I've done a lot.
00:42:15 --> 00:42:17 Yeah, because I look at my To Do List.
00:42:17 --> 00:42:21 I'm like, turns out I think I didn't do anything, but I look at the done list so much, so much stuff I've done.
00:42:21 --> 00:42:27 But if you just do a cheeky little can ban, you've got all three exactly things are going to do things I'm doing, things I've done.
00:42:27 --> 00:42:32 But it's at that point then when my brain is just like sounds like too much effort, I'm terrible man.
00:42:32 --> 00:42:32 I am.
00:42:32 --> 00:42:38 I have AI annoy everyone I work with with my lack of external management of tasks.
00:42:39 --> 00:42:47 It's all an and I. And I think when you reach a certain level and particularly if you're working as you and I both are kind of for yourself, that's actually a really efficient way of working.
00:42:48 --> 00:42:52 Because the thing that turns out is really important, it will bubble up to the top.
00:42:53 --> 00:42:54 It's quite difficult to manage someone else's.
00:42:54 --> 00:42:57 It is annoys people.
00:42:57 --> 00:42:58 Yeah.
00:42:59 --> 00:43:00 And when.
00:43:00 --> 00:43:00 Yeah.
00:43:00 --> 00:43:02 And when you've said that, can you do this?
00:43:02 --> 00:43:03 And they say, yeah, yeah, cool.
00:43:03 --> 00:43:07 And then in your head you forget you've asked them to do it and then it becomes the most important thing in your head.
00:43:07 --> 00:43:08 So you do it.
00:43:08 --> 00:43:09 And they're like, oh, bugger, hold on.
00:43:09 --> 00:43:11 I did have something to do it, didn't I? As if that's why that.
00:43:11 --> 00:43:11 Yeah.
00:43:11 --> 00:43:14 It was on an improvement journey, apparently.
00:43:14 --> 00:43:14 I hope.
00:43:14 --> 00:43:16 As long as it's still the fun of you.
00:43:16 --> 00:43:16 Yeah.
00:43:17 --> 00:43:18 I don't think it's just me.
00:43:18 --> 00:43:22 James, thank you so much for giving up this time in your day to come along and have this conversation with me.
00:43:22 --> 00:43:25 I thoroughly enjoyed it and it's a lot of fun.
00:43:25 --> 00:43:27 People want to find out more about you.
00:43:27 --> 00:43:27 The.
00:43:30 --> 00:43:34 LinkedIn is the best place for people to find you should they want to catch up with you directly.
00:43:34 --> 00:43:36 Yeah fairly active on LinkedIn.
00:43:36 --> 00:43:38 I try and post every couple of weeks.
00:43:38 --> 00:43:45 I think people can go a bit bit too much on on LinkedIn sometimes but I think a couple of weeks but yeah ping ping me get involved.
00:43:45 --> 00:43:49 I've got an online community that I can bring you in the back end obviously the book is there available.
00:43:49 --> 00:43:59 We actually just this morning I just dropped off the copies of the book for we we just this is news signed a national distribution deal with that with distributor in Ireland we're we're going to get out of workshops pretty soon.
00:44:00 --> 00:44:00 Brilliant.
00:44:01 --> 00:44:03 Not US, UK yet, but that will come.
00:44:03 --> 00:44:06 And then so LinkedIn and then and then obviously the training course.
00:44:06 --> 00:44:11 If people are interested in finding out more about this stuff, I am happy to come over to the UK and do it.
00:44:11 --> 00:44:14 But yeah, there's the website impactfulimpactfulpm.com.
00:44:14 --> 00:44:15 Brilliant.
00:44:15 --> 00:44:17 But we'll make sure that the relevant links are in the show notes.
00:44:18 --> 00:44:23 And I urge people to go and have a check out of some of James's stuff.
00:44:24 --> 00:44:37 Because I think whether it's talking about the prioritisation or me being really the big thing for me is everything that we've been sharing today, it's really about having that impact rather than putting in the effort, not doing the busy work, but actually doing something meaningful.
00:44:37 --> 00:44:45 And I think if there's anything that I'm taking away from it, it's that say whether I'm going to start prioritising or doing a distraction audit, we're using the save technique, who knows?
00:44:46 --> 00:44:47 But I'm going to be doing something differently.
00:44:47 --> 00:44:48 So thank you very much for that, James.
00:44:48 --> 00:44:54 I'm a different person as a consequence of our conversation, and I'm sure our list is going to take away some good stuff too.
00:44:54 --> 00:44:58 So we'll be back again next week for another episode of the approach to the podcast.
00:44:58 --> 00:45:02 Make sure that you get onto LinkedIn and tell everyone how much you enjoyed this episode.
00:45:03 --> 00:45:10 And beware, be sure to follow us to make sure you are notified of all future episodes because we have some fantastic guests coming up, as always.
00:45:11 --> 00:45:12 OK, James, thank you once again.
00:45:13 --> 00:45:14 Everybody, thank you for listening.
00:45:14 --> 00:45:15 And we're back again next week.
00:45:15 --> 00:45:16 Thanks so much.
