Latest / Project Podcast / Project management and change activism with Magic Breakfast founder Carmel McConnell

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Project management and change activism with Magic Breakfast founder Carmel McConnell · Project Podcast

• 0:08
  Welcome to the IPM podcast. APM is the childhood body for
• 0:11
  the project profession. My name is Emma DeVito and I'm
• 0:15
  the editor of project apm's quarterly journal and your host.
• 0:19
  And this podcast, I'm speaking with caramel McConnell MBE
• 0:22
  apm's. Opening keynote speaker, edits
• 0:24
  change changes conference, this tomb.
• 0:27
  She founded UK charity Magic. First more on that later is a
• 0:31
  tech, entrepreneur co-mentor and best-selling author of the book
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  change activists to make big things happen, fast, published
• 0:39
  by Pearson, just to give you a little bit of background on
• 0:42
  caramel, she works with corporate Leaders with values to
• 0:45
  support people and Planet. She has worked at senior levels
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  and BT, UBS and 20th Century Fox, ran a successful Tech
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  leadership development firm, based in London, starting with a
• 0:56
  role as an IT project manager and BT.
• 0:59
  While working as Senior Tech manager and UBS caramel found
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  out about the problem of children.
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  Arriving at school too, hungry to learn.
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  She began delivering breakfast to a small group of schools, and
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  seeing the big difference. It made to children who
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  concentrated better and behaved better.
• 1:15
  Caramel remortgage, her home to take a sabbatical leaving her
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  City role to set up a new National charity.
• 1:21
  Magic breakfast, this is now raised over 15 million pounds
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  for school food, deliveries and provides a nutritious breakfast
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  to and school-age children every day after 20 years as founder.
• 1:34
  And CEO caramel step back from Magic breakfast in 2020, to
• 1:38
  refocus on supporting great Business Leaders.
• 1:41
  She was awarded an MBE for her services to school food and the
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  New Year's honours list 2016. Welcome caramel.
• 1:56
  Why don't you tell us how you got into project management and
• 1:58
  how it has served you throughout your career?
• 2:02
  I left school when I was 15 and I went into a career in
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  insurance and my first job was to train as a marine cargo
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  claims adjuster. And they said, the most
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  important thing is that you finish this project and I said,
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  what's a project? And so from age 15 I was kind of
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  kind of told you. No?
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  Okay, well, you have to plan the stages and you have to make sure
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  that was very good. And my biggest experience with
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  project management though was a BT because it became something
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  that I got a bit obsessed about because there were so many
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  things floating around. So many big strategic
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  initiatives, and I was a very Junior, it person and was trying
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  to figure out how does this big organization work.
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  And I thought, what I'm going to catch on to is someone who makes
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  things happen that I I can see. So I ended up in a technology
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  team with this fantastic boss, Peter Bamford and I had been a
• 3:01
  sort of social activist on the quiet.
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  I've been involved in anti-nuclear, work, anti-racism,
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  work, and then got involved with this lovely Guy, Peter Bamford.
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  And he said, look, you're a community organizer.
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  There's this project that's coming along it's called boat or
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  something. Anyway, it turned out to be the
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  beginning of the internet and I was really lucky to be on one of
• 3:19
  the very first teams and BT working on on broadband.
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  And he said, well, you're bright and Community organizing.
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  He said this probably means that we'll have less faxes.
• 3:30
  And that would be good, wouldn't it?
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  That was, that was the original High vision for the program for
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  the internet. And, but there was a lovely,
• 3:38
  lovely chap. Tim berners-lee, who I believe
• 3:40
  had a good career, who was advising it?
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  And it was a, it was originally a military system to try and
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  create, you know, end-to-end data, that was.
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  So I got very, very interested in data and very interested in
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  project management. And I was like, okay, tell me
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  exactly. When we will know that we have
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  done this. It's like, well, when you and I
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  can communicate using our computers without the need for a
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  telephone, that was one of our, and we worked on also.
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  I mean, it was such fun because I ended up loving loving, loving
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  it because it was in the same way as activism, it was
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  absolutely about the learning and how quickly we could absorb
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  the learning into the next stage of development, and could we all
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  learn As much as we could that we could share with each other.
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  So, I did a master's in Broadband, protocols into endesa
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  Logistics. My name is this in the 1990s
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  year, 1995 I6, but I was at BT for a note, with the earliest
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  internet stuff that I was doing was 1993, that was really early.
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  And so which so we figured we're figuring out essentially into
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  and protocols. So that was kind of how to open
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  kind of you know, BT copper analog, you know, fttp go to the
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  cabinet going. To the, you know, it was all
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  about very very limited amount of data on copper.
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  So this idea that you're going to put enormous amount of data
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  meant. You know what, we're gonna have
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  to completely change our infrastructure.
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  We're going to need a new data Logistics approach.
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  We're going to need to change the whole way.
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  We do business, we're going to need a mobile operator because
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  that's going to get really big. If we can do, can we can we do
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  mobile? Is that going to work?
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  Hmm. What it was?
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  We call it 02 or something. Yeah.
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  Okay, let's do that. And I got an A and it was really
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  exciting and I He's very lucky and BT were a very good employer
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  in that they took me from being a secretary making tea for for
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  directors to being would you like to join in?
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  Okay how would a community organizer that was trying to do
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  a protest need to do this and you know so it was it was very
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  exciting and I learned a huge amount about project management
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  particularly about the need to not go off piste.
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  What do you mean by that? Well just because without new
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  things all the time and we'd have to sort of hold ourselves
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  to we said we were just going to do this we're just kind of
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  figure out whether this bit of data goes from here to here
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  reliably and we're Not going to add on to it mobile and we're
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  not going to do it in India and we're not going to do it when oh
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  no, no, no, no, because all of us kept saying, ah, that's
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  great. And what if we did this and I
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  was like, no, no, no. We have to be really, really,
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  really completely fixed on getting this bit to work,
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  because if that bit works and we can go on to the next bit and
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  that was, I think very, very from the activism, which is
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  like, you know, you have to secure the winds, you have to
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  get an article in the Press, you have to get a bit of, you know,
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  a sponsor who will talk and You know, all the and also the
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  active is a taught me to not be scared, you know?
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  So when I was on my Master's, I I really felt that the success
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  of the programs that I was working on and versus success of
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  other people's or failure of other people's was really due
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  to, I thought, at the time, the personality and the sort of
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  capacity that people had to build close quality
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  relationships and build trust, and I did one of my Master's
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  project. X was what are the, what's the
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  commercial value of values? You know, can you put a value in
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  the marketplace of someone building trust?
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  And and anyway, this is before CSR and there's a so I had no
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  idea and lovely guy called in violence was the chair.
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  And I just sent him a fax because we still had faxes
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  saying, what do you think the commercial value is to be T of
• 7:26
  us having values? Because all these values on the
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  wall or customer-centric could log Brave and all this kind
• 7:36
  Don't have, that is how we work but might be and white, you
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  know? And it came back and it was
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  really interesting about well if organizations can do things with
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  trust, then they're going to have all sorts of benefits, like
• 7:51
  keeping the best people, and customer loyalty.
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  And a way of moving on in the world because you've got good
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  people with you and you're respected because you are
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  trusted and I made Central part of everything that I did on the
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  project management side that we will do what we say.
• 8:08
  We're going to do, we're going to do what we say we're going to
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  do. So we're not going to add 10
• 8:12
  things. For the project, we're going to
• 8:14
  deliver the project time cost quality.
• 8:16
  We're going to do it as we've promised to, and we're going to
• 8:19
  keep our promises to ourselves. To succeed in a world of
• 8:25
  increasing uncertainty and complexity.
• 8:27
  We must change the way we work. We're excited to open the doors
• 8:31
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• 8:33
  eights of June 20 23 at the Vox Birmingham, join us as we
• 8:37
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• 8:40
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• 8:47
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• 9:01
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  / events to book your place today.
• 9:11
  Project management has been my savior.
• 9:15
  I swear to God because the ability to say write what does
• 9:18
  success look like, you know, the beginning the middle and the end
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  and I'd also I was invented, this thing called pre mortems in
• 9:25
  DT as eyes too late when we're bloody kicked out, isn't it as
• 9:29
  total losers? Why don't we sit here and kick
• 9:32
  ourselves about to see what we, what we're planning to get
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  wrong, really? And it was the best thing
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  because it allowed all the egos to come down a level and say,
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  well, Don't think we're going to get the second stage of funding
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  for it, because was that them? Well, the guy's about to get
• 9:47
  sacked and he's our only Champion own right, okay?
• 9:49
  Hmm. That'll probably do it, that
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  will probably kill us here and in any anything that I'm doing
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  now. I try and do a pre-mortem.
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  Anything at all, you know, and given that I'm fighting, a great
• 10:00
  habit of personal laziness procrastination, inability to
• 10:05
  focus honest-to-god honest, to God, I'm telling you, I'm
• 10:07
  telling you, I can only do things when I'm absolutely
• 10:10
  moved. Do them, okay?
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  See you have to be really motivated and bought into it and
• 10:16
  you want to do it because he genuinely interested in it.
• 10:18
  Yeah, exactly. And for most people, I think
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  it's the same and we're motivated and bought into having
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  a roof over our heads, kids having some, you know, some food
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  on the table. So we're pretty motivated to
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  stay at the place where will we will be paid to have the life
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  that we want and that's a big enough motivation.
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  But beyond that, if you think you've got that, I think it's
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  really important to start with the heart.
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  No and I have been kind of the way that I've worked on projects
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  and the sixth biggest success. I've had on Project has been
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  where it's been that you've got people excited about it.
• 10:53
  Well they feel like wow that would be really good really good
• 10:55
  but the project management side. I think from BT and the activism
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  the combination of activism and project management I think is
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  this change activists idea which is, you know, we do have to
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  bring for the next iteration of capitalism for the next
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  iteration. None of our Lives.
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  We have the opportunity to do things that excite us and move
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  us and if you don't know what that is, then try stuff.
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  You know and if you're somewhere that leaves you absolutely numb
• 11:23
  with boredom then just check out why you've chosen that and
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  think. Okay.
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  Is that what I really, really want?
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  If you want to be numb with boredom, you know for many years
• 11:35
  and just get paid, but be numb with boredom for through the
• 11:38
  working day, then fair enough, that's everyone has their
• 11:40
  choice, right? But I'm I think that
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  particularly project managers are the great doers of
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  capitalism and the great doers of organizations and the and the
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  people who bring change, you've got the ability to get people
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  excited about a bigger outcome and especially doing something
• 11:56
  more than just profit. You know.
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  That's, that's the big motivator, I think.
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  Because, yes, we can hit the prophet.
• 12:02
  Yes, we can do the technical stuff, but can you do it in a
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  way that gets people to really unleash their potential, that
• 12:08
  gives people a chance to find out who they are.
• 12:10
  That gives them a sense. The purpose of the organization
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  that you can have really good meaty conversations about what's
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  good and bad in the world together as a way of making the
• 12:20
  project succeed. A talking about project success,
• 12:23
  what are the characteristics that you've noticed of project?
• 12:28
  That becomes the success? What do you need to do?
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  Well, I guess, I mean, you know, kind of initiation planning
• 12:35
  execution and closure, right? The four stages of project
• 12:39
  management each day. Age, I think you have to ask the
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  big why, you know, kind of why we're doing it.
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  And, and do that in terms of, not only a sense of yes, it will
• 12:54
  improve things, it will give us Returns on Equity will improve
• 12:58
  our reliability, all the technical stuff.
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  But also is it, is it something that we care about at at
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  initiation site? Particularly, because while
• 13:07
  you're sitting there and what about the earlier?
• 13:09
  You've got to be able to say to people Okay, we're going to do
• 13:12
  this project. It's going to be quite a big
• 13:13
  deal to do this project and this is why if there's a big enough,
• 13:16
  what it was, it was it nature. I said, who said that, if
• 13:20
  there's a big enough, why you can get through any amount of
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  how? So, if there's not a big enough,
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  why? I remember being on a big
• 13:25
  project management, it feasibility, study a BT, which
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  right? It's a really big.
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  While is part of our program management approach.
• 13:34
  We've got sign off on it, we've got budget turned out to be
• 13:37
  moving 12 chairs and a table from one room to the other.
• 13:41
  Could we just do that? Can we just do that?
• 13:43
  No, no. It's part of the system.
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  You've got to make sure that they're signed off, the plugs
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  going to be there, the chairs and there.
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  It's going to be signed off, and it was like, the big enough why
• 13:50
  get through in about how? Mmm, but, you know what about
• 13:54
  giving everybody, the ability to communicate with the to each
• 13:59
  other without needing a phone connecting computers.
• 14:02
  Be able to send each other information on a computer
• 14:05
  instantly rather than through a letter or a fax.
• 14:08
  Is that worth jumping up, don't you?
• 14:10
  Yes, it is. It's quite, that's quite I think
• 14:12
  this whole thing about at the initial stage, know that, that
• 14:15
  Inception stage, you know, you have to check out all the
• 14:19
  technical stuff, but you also have to ask the big, why?
• 14:22
  And it's not a bad idea, to sort of kind of do a pre-mortem.
• 14:27
  Are we excited about this is? Is there a clear purpose?
• 14:30
  Does what's the Strategic Direction on that?
• 14:32
  Does it fit with everything else that's going on?
• 14:34
  And what kind of what were the plan look like?
• 14:35
  So every stage in at the initial initiation stage, while you're
• 14:40
  doing the planning. What?
• 14:41
  Okay? We're going to do it.
• 14:42
  Let's do the plan. Is it is what's the big?
• 14:44
  Why are we excited about it? Why we're excited about it?
• 14:48
  What's the Strategic Direction? What's the purpose?
• 14:50
  How do we buy into the purpose? How do people feel about the
• 14:53
  purpose? And then, let's get to the plan
• 14:56
  and the same on the execution and the same on the closure.
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  If you've got a kind of flywheel going, where you're sort of
• 15:02
  really investigating, you know, the biggest possible definition
• 15:07
  of success as well. You know, it's like you keep you
• 15:09
  dare yourself like days. Self to have the conversations
• 15:14
  with the sponsor like, okay, you've been given a lovely
• 15:18
  project feasibility brief, could you go away and find out whether
• 15:21
  we should be in, you know, should we be based in Dubai or
• 15:26
  shall we build that over there or shall we do this electrical
• 15:29
  whatever? Okay.
• 15:31
  You know, have you got does that?
• 15:34
  Is that something that excites you and moves you?
• 15:37
  Because I mean, Steve Jobs said, you've got to have that passion
• 15:40
  to keep you motivated. Dated through the dull times,
• 15:43
  you know, if it's dulled to begin with is going to get
• 15:45
  considerably duller by next Thursday, you know?
• 15:49
  So, you know, and again, unless you, if you choosing to go down
• 15:53
  the dull career route, that's fine.
• 15:55
  Everyone's got a choice of dull or exciting career Roots, but
• 15:59
  going back to that, that sort of the project management side is
• 16:05
  the project success is so much more likely to be achieved if
• 16:09
  you've built in Shannon and purpose as well as planning.
• 16:15
  I see that you Mentor CEOs today.
• 16:19
  DT furnace out that levels are kind of c-suite level that they
• 16:22
  understand what project management is.
• 16:26
  Well I definitely think there's a shift in the last few years.
• 16:29
  I mean, before I was running the charity and I was working, I was
• 16:33
  kind of working in Investment Banking doing big big scale,
• 16:38
  technology change. I set up a set up a consultancy
• 16:42
  called holistic management, which was Trying to sort of say,
• 16:45
  you have to make sure that you've got the sense of people
• 16:50
  and the planet and everything you do.
• 16:51
  It has to be we have to set up this slightly more 3D, slightly
• 16:56
  more holistic definition because look, look at how many projects
• 17:00
  are failing just because of one's crashing through the, you
• 17:03
  know, kind of data. But it's no one cares or it's no
• 17:07
  one's talking to each other or half the team of left or half
• 17:10
  the team of burned out. And I just like, I want to do
• 17:13
  this based on the combination. Nation of activism and the great
• 17:17
  training. I got a BT and so I set up this
• 17:19
  company and was having a great old time doing, you know,
• 17:24
  large-scale change in the city and the big thing was no, I had
• 17:28
  as a project manager there, I had no access to the most senior
• 17:32
  people in the bank. I was a definitely a
• 17:34
  middle-level, the big change. I think now is and I'll tell you
• 17:40
  about the change from Investment Banking and Technology to
• 17:42
  running a kids charity feeding hungry kids.
• 17:45
  Is that the big change is now? I think that CEOs, recognize
• 17:49
  that if you want to get something done, you've got to
• 17:52
  have a strategic project management office.
• 17:54
  You've got to share the information, the boardroom has
• 17:56
  got to have a better connection to its project managers in order
• 17:59
  for the things that they that the organization wants to happen
• 18:03
  actually happen. You know, if you've got another
• 18:05
  letter, if you've got another layer of managers, all you're
• 18:08
  doing is slowing things down. So used to have the board you
• 18:11
  know and then used to have the you know the deputy The board
• 18:15
  managing director is some stuff, and then you'd have the project
• 18:17
  managers and the in the time that it used to take to commute
• 18:20
  from the board meeting to the next people to the next meeting.
• 18:23
  You've lost bloody time and now it's, you know, in a fast
• 18:27
  transparent Global Market. You know, the only USP is trust
• 18:31
  and the board has to talk to the project management office.
• 18:33
  Has the board has to talk to the project managers to get things
• 18:36
  done and it has to be in real time, you know?
• 18:38
  And if it's being held up by something like, okay, atrocious
• 18:42
  market conditions, or Something was going on fine, talk about it
• 18:47
  and sort it out and make it happen.
• 18:48
  I think there is a, I think there is a big shift now, but
• 18:51
  project management is seen as a strategic resource that seen as
• 18:54
  something that is, you know, Mission critical to success in
• 18:57
  businesses, in a way that it wasn't 20 years ago that and
• 19:00
  that's exciting because it needs to happen.
• 19:04
  Tell me about magic breakfast because we don't have a lot of
• 19:06
  time left and I really want to speak sex.
• 19:09
  I know how important that was to you.
• 19:11
  Yeah, well what when I was working in the city, I was PBS
• 19:15
  and because I've been thinking the chance to write a little few
• 19:23
  little thought pieces about the combination of activism and
• 19:27
  technology and what it was going to mean, you know, particularly
• 19:30
  at the kind of post, Y2K post.com bubble, sort of stage
• 19:34
  and I thought I'm going to do a little bit more writing and I
• 19:40
  got the chance from Pearson to put a book together called
• 19:43
  change activists. And when I I was doing the
• 19:45
  research for that. And very happy in my, in my job,
• 19:49
  in the city, doing these big change programs, I went out to
• 19:53
  speak to a group of nurses and a group of head teachers.
• 19:57
  And my question was, are we in the city helping you to create a
• 20:00
  fairer as well as a richer society?
• 20:02
  And I was involved in all sort of, you know, philanthropy thing
• 20:05
  that you to go out and paint shirts and you go off and do
• 20:08
  charity days, everything. But I thought the main thing was
• 20:11
  to kind of try and keep building in people and Planet into every
• 20:14
  part of the project, you know, that was my CSR.
• 20:17
  Lily, but I'll go off and have a chat and so these head teachers
• 20:21
  and ask that question about are we building a fairer as well as
• 20:24
  a richer Society? Just said, well, we all have to
• 20:27
  bring in food every single day of the week in order to be able
• 20:29
  to teach because so many kids are coming in hungry.
• 20:33
  They do. They're just, they're just the
• 20:35
  most important lessons are taught in the morning and
• 20:36
  they're not able to concentrate. So we bring in bananas digestive
• 20:40
  biscuits and would you know, kids are putting their hands up
• 20:42
  at 9:00 so mr. Got tummy ache because they're
• 20:44
  not had anything since lunch the day before.
• 20:47
  And I was like, hmm tell me this.
• 20:50
  Why aren't the parents feeding their kids?
• 20:52
  Why what? You know like breakfast is not
• 20:54
  expensive. Why aren't the parents giving
• 20:55
  their kids some food before they go to school?
• 20:58
  And they just looked at me and they looked at each other and
• 21:00
  said, if to understand Kamala parents are hungry as well, most
• 21:04
  of them are working. They're working long hours that
• 21:06
  got multiple jobs, their bills have gone up.
• 21:08
  They have very, very little money.
• 21:10
  They can't not pay their rent. They can't not put the
• 21:12
  electricity money in, so they just reduce the food and they
• 21:15
  lose meals and selves, and the kids.
• 21:17
  Relying on school for their food.
• 21:20
  And I had this horrible moment. Honestly, I'm aware, I was kind
• 21:23
  of I'd grown up in Northern Ireland, and dagenham.
• 21:26
  And my mum used to get kids in after-school and feed them
• 21:28
  sometimes. And I just thought I had no idea
• 21:31
  that, you know, to bus rides down the road from my office.
• 21:34
  There were kids going to school hungry.
• 21:36
  So I started dropping, I said I don't know anything.
• 21:38
  I'm a technology person. I know no knowledge up but I can
• 21:41
  do my shopping over there and I'll drop some food over to your
• 21:44
  five schools on Saturday morning.
• 21:45
  So I just went Saturday mornings book.
• 21:47
  Bagels. The cereals dropped him into the
• 21:48
  schools within a week. I had 25 schools, asking me all
• 21:52
  your the lady dropping breakfast around being geeky.
• 21:55
  I said, look, I'm a technology project manager.
• 21:57
  Can we do some measuring of the benefits and they said, okay.
• 22:01
  And they said, well let's measure the amount of fights in
• 22:03
  the first plague. Run playground.
• 22:06
  Okay first fights. Okay and I said, attendance and
• 22:09
  punctuality, can we do that within two weeks?
• 22:12
  They had said they said kids but are out looking for food in the
• 22:15
  morning are here at school. They're here on I'm we can give
• 22:18
  them a toasted Bagel glass of milk and they are settled and
• 22:23
  ready to learn. And I just thought God Almighty
• 22:25
  the cost of a breakfast which is nothing.
• 22:28
  These kids getting a morning of study, sorry, fast, fast
• 22:31
  forward, went home, had a chat with with, with my partner,
• 22:35
  Catherine, and we ended up remortgaging, and I thought I'm
• 22:38
  going to give myself a year off change work in the city, and I'm
• 22:41
  just going to bully the local authorities and the the skull
• 22:44
  people and make them understand that these kids.
• 22:47
  Get no breakfast at home. They've got to have a breakfast
• 22:49
  at school and then I'll go back to work and it didn't quite pan
• 22:52
  out like that within, you know, we grew and you know this
• 22:57
  morning as kids coming back from their Easter holidays, magic
• 22:59
  breakfast, the great team there is reaching 200, 220 thousand
• 23:04
  kids every morning in 1,000 schools, Family action, which is
• 23:07
  another organization that we work with is also delivering to
• 23:11
  thousands of children, and but there is a big gap.
• 23:14
  I mean, so many kids now, are living in food, poverty.
• 23:17
  With the cost of living crisis. If we can just make sure every
• 23:22
  child has a breakfast and a lunch and something to eat
• 23:25
  during the school holidays, then we, as a society, I think we'll
• 23:28
  have done something, that's basic and decent but yeah, so it
• 23:32
  was a big shift and I didn't expect that either unexpected
• 23:36
  accidental career which has been somewhat saved by project
• 23:40
  management because at least I could say right?
• 23:43
  No child too hungry to learn, that's what we're going to do.
• 23:46
  We're going to make sure we're going to deliver.
• 23:47
  So lovely deals with And you know, during the lockdown and
• 23:50
  missing delivered two million breakfast, when the kids are at
• 23:53
  home, got Quaker, Oats magic breakfast story on there, we've
• 23:56
  had so many wonderful supporters.
• 23:59
  Heinz little kind of, you know, magic breakfast, story on the
• 24:02
  side of the no added sugar beans.
• 24:04
  I just, you know, you just want in the same way as I hope on
• 24:07
  every project, one of the big outcomes is how do unleash the
• 24:11
  potential of everyone in our team.
• 24:13
  How do we give everyone a great? It's giving that child, the
• 24:15
  chance to learn now is that was magic breakfast and I stepped
• 24:19
  away. 20 years. I had a plan, 2018.
• 24:21
  I submitted my two-year resignation with a plan to
• 24:25
  leave. And I left in April 2020, which
• 24:28
  was not again the best timing, but the team there are
• 24:32
  fantastic. And if anyone wants to learn
• 24:34
  more www, magic breakfast.com. But I like his set, you have
• 24:40
  optimism and not skepticism about business, being part of
• 24:45
  that positive, societal change. And that that's A really nice
• 24:50
  perspective to still have after Decades of working in the city,
• 24:56
  you're absolutely right about that.
• 24:57
  And I think the big project the big project is how we put, how
• 25:02
  we make the transition from this kind of capitalism to the kind
• 25:06
  of capitalism that is genuinely going to solve the climate
• 25:09
  climate crisis and the social and racial issues that are in
• 25:13
  front of us and we can do it. You know, we've I really feel
• 25:17
  that we've come through. Just look at how we got rid of.
• 25:19
  Big tobacco. I know it bounced back in a
• 25:21
  million ways. I mean, right now, if we were
• 25:23
  able to, for example, help the food industry to stop marketing
• 25:27
  junk. Food, in the same way, we could
• 25:28
  save the NHS 5 billion over the next five years.
• 25:32
  Transition, transition and project management is the great
• 25:36
  fantastic unlock for those kinds of big changes, which is why I'm
• 25:41
  probably quite glad that I learned the skills.
• 25:44
  I will be proud to be a project manager to the day, I die.
• 25:49
  One thing I'd like to ask is about being a leader of a
• 25:53
  project team or a leader. In general, what things should
• 25:57
  you do to tap into that? Feeling of passion?
• 26:02
  It's so so overused but but motivation how do you how do you
• 26:05
  get a team to feel motivated and work together?
• 26:10
  I tried to write change activists to help people who
• 26:14
  have the desire to be leaders in their own lives or at work or in
• 26:22
  any other setting and change activist is someone who takes
• 26:25
  action in line with their values even if it goes outside their
• 26:29
  comfort zone. So for a leader, it is about
• 26:31
  taking the action but is kind of agreed on and to be the one
• 26:35
  who's brave enough to say this is, this is a good thing to do,
• 26:39
  this is why we're going. To do it, have that sense of
• 26:42
  values and sense of purpose and to go outside your comfort zone
• 26:46
  as a leader to to make sure people are involved to make sure
• 26:50
  that the people who have paid the least and have maybe got the
• 26:52
  best perspective or involved to make sure that you've put the
• 26:57
  taboos in. You know, if you're a great
• 26:58
  leader, you can take people with you because you show that
• 27:02
  personal courage that you're taking action that you believe
• 27:07
  in it and that you are willing to put yourself on the line.
• 27:11
  Follow you, when they, they see that you are a stand-up person,
• 27:16
  you know that Rosa Parks statement of you stand up for
• 27:19
  something or you'll fall for anything, you know, but you just
• 27:23
  that people come with you and of course.
• 27:25
  So if you align yourself with something that's a dud idea or
• 27:30
  something that hasn't got values or something isn't going to
• 27:33
  bring people with you, fine, you know, you kind of might be paid
• 27:36
  in some other way but you're not going to have an easy time
• 27:39
  bringing with you. If you're there and you're
• 27:41
  bringing people with you and you're doing it with with an
• 27:44
  open honest loving heart and saying, to people.
• 27:47
  This matters to me and it's going to make things better.
• 27:50
  And I'm going to take action, I'm going to put myself in the
• 27:52
  line. That's what leaders great
• 27:54
  leaders do, and they bring people with them.
• 27:57
  I could talk to you for another hour, at least everything and
• 28:00
  then it's been really nice to kind of meet you and I'll see
• 28:04
  you at the conference and thank you for your time.
• 28:08
  Absolute pleasure, lovely, talking to you.
• 28:16
  Thanks again to Carmel for joining us and to you for
• 28:19
  listening to the APM podcast. Don't forget to look out for
• 28:22
  more episodes or to rate and review as wherever you.
• 28:24
  Get your podcasts and to read a p.m. project journals.
• 28:28
  Big interview with caramel and the summer 2023 issue to welcome
• 28:32
  you to get in touch with your comments feedback and
• 28:35
  suggestions by e-mailing us at a p.m. podcast at think publishing
• 28:40
  .co.uk. This podcast has been brought to
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  you by APM the childhood body for the project professional.
• 28:46
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  Dot org.uk.