Latest / Project Podcast / Setting up a PMO from scratch in a media agency

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Setting up a PMO from scratch in a media agency · Project Podcast

• 0:08
  Welcome to the IPM podcast. OPM is to Childhood body for the
• 0:11
  project profession. My name is Emma DeVito and I'm
• 0:14
  the editor of project apm's quarterly journal and your host.
• 0:19
  In this podcast. I'm speaking with Dan Jennings
• 0:21
  who recently established a project management office at the
• 0:24
  UK wing of global media agency wavemaker.
• 0:27
  His team has worked on everything from every angle In
• 0:30
  campaigns tied to the Wimbledon. Tennis tournament to delivering
• 0:33
  product placement within Married.
• 0:35
  At First Sight on Channel 4. And as those creative projects,
• 0:38
  have become more complex, whether through multi-platform
• 0:41
  content Partnerships with the arrival of new channels, such as
• 0:44
  smart speakers and WhatsApp project management skills have
• 0:47
  become even more in demand. I speaking to Dan about what
• 0:51
  it's like to establish, a pmo from scratch.
• 0:53
  And introduce professional project, management processes
• 0:56
  and expertise intersect are unfamiliar with it.
• 1:00
  What have been his main challenges?
• 1:01
  And what advice would he give to others faced with a similar
• 1:04
  situation? Let's find out.
• 1:12
  First of all, welcome Dan, welcome to the OPM podcast.
• 1:15
  No, I thank you so much for inviting me.
• 1:17
  It's lovely to be here. I think a good place to start.
• 1:19
  Would be to tell us a bit about Wave Maker.
• 1:22
  We're a global media agency. I think there's 12 International
• 1:24
  hubs around the world. There's over 7,000.
• 1:27
  What we call wave makers. So, everybody in it is, we're
• 1:29
  all aware, you know, we're all the Wave Maker, we're right
• 1:32
  across the globe. So you know, La Miami New York
• 1:34
  or places that I hope to visit us some point.
• 1:36
  But at the minute, I'm in London, I'm on the south Bank in
• 1:40
  London. Beautiful offices, overlooking.
• 1:42
  Some Paul's overlooking the Thames, you know, stunning and
• 1:46
  ultimately what we do. I mean I guess it's our job to
• 1:48
  work with Brands. So work with clients such as
• 1:51
  coal, gay is one of ours to knowns.
• 1:54
  Like you'll know, Evian water, for instance, a Eurostar,
• 1:56
  William Hill and it's our job to kind of work with those Brands
• 2:00
  to help them, to ultimately, understand how they should
• 2:03
  connect with their customers when they should connect with
• 2:05
  their customers. And we're so, you know, how do
• 2:07
  you show up with your advertising?
• 2:09
  And it's our job should be specialist in that place to kind
• 2:11
  of put them in the right. Ace at the right time and then
• 2:15
  obviously get them in front of the right people.
• 2:16
  So it's our job to make their advertising work ultimately.
• 2:19
  When I first started, I had a small project management team in
• 2:22
  my area, the business. And we started talking about
• 2:24
  project management a lot, and I realized the kind of six to
• 2:28
  eight people who reported in to me with the only ones listening
• 2:31
  because people think they're not doing unless you've got a title
• 2:34
  of project manager. People think you're not, they're
• 2:35
  not doing project management and so much of everything we do
• 2:38
  across the entire agency. Yes, there's a lot of business
• 2:40
  as usual stuff, but there's a lot of Rex you know, a lot of
• 2:43
  project management right across the work that we do right across
• 2:46
  the business. And even those skills that you
• 2:47
  talked about in project management, yeah, they're
• 2:49
  critical to every single role whether that's problem-solving
• 2:52
  or stakeholder management relationships communication, all
• 2:55
  those things. So, yeah, project Management's
• 2:58
  and yeah, absolutely. The skill set is kind of sit
• 3:00
  within every single element of our business.
• 3:04
  How long ago did you start? What were you hired to do?
• 3:07
  And how has your role changed over that time?
• 3:11
  So I started in February 20 19 add a bit of a squiggly career
• 3:15
  which we might touch on at some point.
• 3:16
  Having come from kind of radio and broadcasting and my
• 3:20
  background was not traditional project management.
• 3:23
  Did you go through project management?
• 3:25
  Training, kind of past. I was a producer, the BBC, at
• 3:28
  one point like when I left school and I got trained to be a
• 3:32
  journalist His host who when you think about it is so much of
• 3:36
  that is project management. Right?
• 3:38
  Because it's you know the interview or the slot that
• 3:41
  you've got his start and end is temporary.
• 3:43
  You do this different things every single day, you.
• 3:45
  So those skills I kind of was just learning without knowing
• 3:48
  that their project management skills really Neo never giving
• 3:50
  in that title and I did like a breakfast show.
• 3:53
  For instance for gosh probably about 10 years and every day you
• 3:57
  are planning a new show. You content.
• 3:59
  What's the thing going to be tomorrow?
• 4:01
  We're going to talk about you know now ultimately when you
• 4:03
  think about it now, You know that with my project management
• 4:05
  on it was all but I was managing a projects that breakfast show
• 4:08
  was a project you know we had a goal was to get to the more
• 4:11
  listeners and what kind of stuff you had an objective.
• 4:14
  You had a plan to get there. You had stakeholders your
• 4:17
  communication skills all project management.
• 4:18
  Slowly eventually kind of led me to this thing where I fill out a
• 4:22
  radio a bit. And I was kind of like I'm going
• 4:24
  to do next and this idea that these are kind of transferable
• 4:27
  skills, and I start my moves behind the scenes in radio and
• 4:30
  started managing branded content and it was a mixture of kind of
• 4:33
  the things that Love about creative a seeing creating work
• 4:37
  when working with clients and Brands and things, but also
• 4:40
  project management. And I started then kind of
• 4:42
  really trying to getting more into the kind of understanding
• 4:46
  of the language and the terminology and looking at, you
• 4:49
  know, resources, like the APM stuff.
• 4:52
  And then when I arrived at wave, maker is a brand new role, it
• 4:55
  was so is what we call content Partnerships.
• 4:57
  So not kind of traditional project management as such, but
• 5:00
  if you imagine William Hill response, During I'm a
• 5:04
  celebrity, South Africa, a few weeks back or sponsoring the sky
• 5:09
  Max Channel. You know, you're watching TV or
• 5:10
  see the sponsorship credits, it could be something like that or
• 5:13
  it could be. You're listening to Absolute
• 5:14
  radio place. I used to work at and you're
• 5:16
  hearing content was created with Morrison's or there's a big
• 5:20
  competition on are you know, they're giving away stuff in a
• 5:23
  fun game or even the other week over the baftas one of our
• 5:26
  clients piano Cruz has sponsored the baftas.
• 5:29
  So it's those types of projects that were all laid out of the
• 5:31
  content team. So I was I was heading up
• 5:34
  Judgment in the Wave Maker content with work with our kind
• 5:37
  of Partners ITV and channel, four, and things like that on
• 5:40
  all kinds of things, you know, even like Nationwide.
• 5:43
  So sponsoring the lionesses on ITV.
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  So really cool Brands, doing really cool, exciting stuff.
• 5:49
  You know, and it is smaller things.
• 5:50
  I mumsnet an amazing kind of hugely influential platform.
• 5:55
  It's hugely important so that audience, but we've been doing
• 5:57
  some amazing work with them with Lego with that, with the
• 6:00
  Legoland Discovery Centers. So I was running those At the
• 6:04
  team who are running those projects, my brief was to come
• 6:06
  in and kind of, you know, it's like I say starting from scratch
• 6:08
  saying up all the new processes ways of working.
• 6:11
  Looking at how we did things currently how we could
• 6:13
  constantly improve and that kind of end-to-end thing.
• 6:16
  But I had a really small team of project managers I think
• 6:18
  probably it was like six to eight but lots of experience
• 6:21
  which was which is always helpful.
• 6:23
  But the other thing I had was so we have the whole team was
• 6:26
  pretty about 40 people. So I had kind of this dotted
• 6:28
  line approach where you know, they had to kind of reporting to
• 6:31
  me for the ways of you all the ways of working the new Is we're
• 6:34
  going to be right across the team and the whole team could
• 6:37
  run projects. It's just that my team were
• 6:38
  properly specialist. So yes we have to kind of design
• 6:41
  everything, build everything, you know, and then, constantly
• 6:45
  iterate, you know, what's a better way of doing things
• 6:47
  working with the partners to working with ICD channel for
• 6:50
  people like that. So yeah, it's a really a really
• 6:52
  cool, really exciting. Some really great kind of
• 6:54
  project work. And I think as we went along
• 6:57
  that route, you realize that you need that kind of shared
• 7:01
  language when you talk about projects and I think where some
• 7:03
  of The things I've kind of learned with the APM and the
• 7:06
  apprenticeship which we'll talk about.
• 7:07
  I'm sure became just so so important, but yeah.
• 7:09
  The initial thing was was content.
• 7:11
  And then my role is, since then, as kind of expanded out to where
• 7:15
  I'm now, kind of central within the agency.
• 7:17
  So creating our first pmo pmo of me and my team and we still
• 7:21
  deliver all the content stuff. But also things like, you know,
• 7:24
  operational initiatives projects that are kind of more like
• 7:28
  business operational. I would say.
• 7:30
  So for instance, we're kind of projects.
• 7:32
  And then I'm looking at is, you know, how we can Do things in a
• 7:34
  more efficient way, how we can free up people's time.
• 7:37
  It's called make space and we also like a project where we're
• 7:40
  building out a learning development program, you know,
• 7:42
  these are these are not content projects.
• 7:43
  This is not my background, but project management is enabler
• 7:46
  and the skills in that are enabling us to do this, right,
• 7:49
  Central to the agency which is, which is huge.
• 7:51
  Big difference, what up in the benefits that you've you and the
• 7:54
  team have brought to the business and was it tough
• 7:58
  convincing those in the organization to believe that you
• 8:02
  could need to do those things? Project management was actually
• 8:05
  worth it, the benefits, I think I think that shared language and
• 8:11
  comes coming through from a pmo so that everybody is talking
• 8:14
  about projects in the same way and also you know, every p.m.
• 8:19
  Lysa Works slightly differently and we all bring our own
• 8:22
  personalities to a projects and our own ways of working.
• 8:25
  But there are some things that should be standardized in
• 8:27
  businesses. I think.
• 8:29
  So we brought some of that standardization so that if you
• 8:32
  were, I don't know the mark. Head of marketing at Nationwide
• 8:35
  and you were working with one of my team on a project, but then
• 8:38
  the next time around is a different member of my team.
• 8:41
  You weren't getting a completely different experience, you know,
• 8:44
  there were similarities, we weren't kind of just doing
• 8:46
  things in a completely different way was enjoined out so things
• 8:49
  like that which sounds so simple when you talk about it.
• 8:52
  But was a real kind of game changer of kind of adding that
• 8:55
  discipline into in two ways of working, I think the benefits to
• 8:58
  the agency in terms of getting stuff done and that's wonderful.
• 9:03
  Yeah. I remember when we started with
• 9:06
  the pmo journey, I kind of I was really, I was really Keen to
• 9:10
  talk to all the kind of senior stakeholders.
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  So X Co are agency leadership board and I had all these kind
• 9:16
  of one's the ones on sister. It must have been drunk over
• 9:18
  that all these ones ones on teams talking about it and I was
• 9:21
  interviewing them. And somebody says to me this
• 9:22
  lovely quote, which my colleagues awake makeup or you
• 9:24
  won't take me for but said if we are going to look and this must
• 9:27
  be true of so many organizations were those.
• 9:29
  They said if we were to look at all the initiatives that we've
• 9:32
  ever done, we'd launched an initiative.
• 9:34
  Of to do it. And it's still my favorite quote
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  now because we're one of those businesses, I think so many
• 9:39
  business like this, where you launch things and then they're
• 9:42
  led by light senior leaders and then you don't deliver the
• 9:46
  change. Maybe you're expecting.
• 9:48
  Or they kind of fizzle out. They don't have that momentum
• 9:50
  and then the net the year after another thing kind of gets
• 9:53
  launched and eventually people go, hold on, what is that thing
• 9:56
  before this is this the same? Yeah yeah.
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  Well as project management whether it's pmo or just those
• 10:01
  skills means that we got stuff done.
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  We hope it was for Accounts and suddenly things were changing
• 10:05
  things. You know you're adding the
• 10:07
  benefits are that you're actually doing what you say,
• 10:09
  you're going to be doing rather than kind of coming up with a
• 10:11
  new plan every year and then not executing it.
• 10:14
  So yeah, that would be the biggest thing and what are the
• 10:16
  challenges you faced was that hard to sail, to explain to
• 10:20
  others what proper project management is and what the pmo
• 10:23
  would do project management account have a bad rap, right?
• 10:27
  Because I think depending on your experience of the project
• 10:30
  manager, and that, you know, that Journey you've been through
• 10:33
  Open on great projects and we've all been on lousy projects that
• 10:37
  don't them move forward and go anywhere.
• 10:39
  And I think sometimes project management can have a PR the pr
• 10:42
  the perception rather is that its bureaucratic we're adding
• 10:46
  hurdles in the way people can't, it's a barrier to getting things
• 10:50
  done and I think we definitely had a bit of that where there
• 10:54
  wasn't that belief in the fact that people thought project
• 10:57
  management was Project managers and I think they're kind of real
• 11:00
  changing point, was that kind of understanding that we're
• 11:03
  talking? About how we deliver work you
• 11:05
  know and I think you know, even even sometimes not calling it
• 11:08
  project management, calling it delivery or strategic
• 11:11
  implementation or something different because I think people
• 11:14
  immediately, the perception was that project management
• 11:17
  sometimes is admin or it's, you know, or disability wrong.
• 11:23
  Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, exactly. It's like the red tape is, as
• 11:26
  you know, is its, we won't get to the answer, won't get into
• 11:29
  that thing because the project managers will ask us to do this
• 11:32
  and it's that, well, yeah, sometimes approaching It is our
• 11:34
  sincere thing because it will, but most the time I'll add value
• 11:37
  and it will get you to where you need to do and or in my, you
• 11:40
  know, it might mean the project isn't worth doing, you know, all
• 11:42
  those kind of important things that we know.
• 11:44
  But yes, there's definitely a bit of perception thing.
• 11:46
  I think there was also, I mean, one of the biggest game changers
• 11:49
  for me was, so this was before we started on the pmo.
• 11:52
  Really? It was we created a project
• 11:55
  management apprenticeship like a we called it project Leadership
• 11:59
  Academy and rather than it being entry level into The agency was
• 12:04
  a bit of that, but it was also for people right across the
• 12:07
  agency to sign up and join and learn project management skills.
• 12:12
  Okay? What like in their own time, all
• 12:14
  they were given to people on the job.
• 12:17
  So there was a bit of that time that they got, they got in
• 12:19
  there, got study leaves, I'm and all that kind of stuff, but it
• 12:22
  was the project management level 4.
• 12:23
  So the APM they got to do their project management
• 12:26
  qualification. We had 20 people initially on
• 12:29
  the first cohort including myself so that was a shock to
• 12:31
  the system going back to you know, reading books.
• 12:33
  Study guides and revision and writing essays and all that, but
• 12:37
  it was an amazing experience because it was it wasn't just my
• 12:40
  team. Although some lighting did it,
• 12:41
  it was right across the agency and every single, specialism,
• 12:44
  every single discipline, how do you work alongside the other
• 12:48
  people in the organization. So when you've got projects to
• 12:52
  work on are you involved very early on in those projects right
• 12:56
  from the start or do people come to you?
• 12:58
  How I want to know the relationship?
• 13:00
  You have with the people who come to you with the project?
• 13:01
  So I guess not necessarily the Internal projects maybe that is
• 13:06
  true but for client kind of lead projects as well.
• 13:09
  How do you work? So the people side of things, I
• 13:12
  guess I'm interested in. Yes, there's a mixture of that.
• 13:15
  I think some of our teams will work very, they'll check in with
• 13:18
  us on there on the relevant plans.
• 13:20
  So, as an example, we've just built a really cool AI
• 13:24
  conversational recruitment tool for the Royal Navy.
• 13:27
  So when this was a three-year project from the first kind of
• 13:30
  conversations, where by Royal Navy wanted to I knew they
• 13:34
  needed to change their recruitment model.
• 13:36
  So this was a conversation going back.
• 13:37
  Yeah going back three years. And I think when you think about
• 13:40
  project management, usually what happens is, the business case is
• 13:43
  dealt with. You know, you the requirements
• 13:45
  Gathering. You get to the kind of thing
• 13:47
  where the project manager management without hand, over
• 13:51
  the project manager will then deliver the projects whether
• 13:54
  it's the build, or the first iteration of the tall or
• 13:57
  whatever. But actually project management
• 13:58
  was right there from the start. So we were involved in the what
• 14:01
  we call Discovery which is like you know, the Fact-finding piece
• 14:05
  of work of, you know what's possible, you know, how should
• 14:08
  this work? What do we want to propose to
• 14:10
  the client? Which is really unusual thing?
• 14:12
  Because usually it just gets handed over when it's going.
• 14:14
  It's kind of ready to go or sore sold for want of a better
• 14:17
  expression and we, yeah, we were there checking in all the time
• 14:20
  but then some there are some other projects which get agreed
• 14:22
  and then they get handed over to the p.m. team.
• 14:24
  So the pmo to deliver do you have a particular project
• 14:28
  management approach and methodology that you like to
• 14:31
  use? I talked about toolkit and I
• 14:34
  think some, some projects in the partnership space, particularly
• 14:37
  lend themselves to a kind of waterfall approach.
• 14:40
  We talk about agile quite a bit, but I think there's different
• 14:43
  meanings on that. Yeah, we take the best bits and
• 14:46
  we use the bits that are in our toolkit for the right projects,
• 14:48
  and the right, kind of the right way.
• 14:50
  I think sometimes if we got really technical on some of the
• 14:52
  project management stuff and did things by the body of knowledge
• 14:56
  book, perhaps, we'd probably put our clients off, you know, I
• 14:58
  think, I think part of it for me is about how, you know, we are
• 15:00
  mad teams with the toolkit. And then you pick the right
• 15:03
  things in the right way, like I say some things are standardized
• 15:06
  but it's about picking the right tool for the right job, for the
• 15:09
  right project, for the right stakeholders, all those things
• 15:11
  as well. What advice would you give to
• 15:13
  others who are perhaps setting up a pmo or its early days?
• 15:18
  What advice would tips would you give to them about getting the
• 15:21
  team to work together? So when I first proposed the
• 15:25
  whole pmo thing, I wrote, you know, I'd like I said, my
• 15:28
  background is already 0, right? I'd never I hadn't come from a
• 15:31
  training like Official train, if you like more business school or
• 15:34
  any of that stuff. So when I was thinking about,
• 15:37
  how could this kind of the only use of the importance of the
• 15:39
  agency was adding value through the apprenticeship, I wrote the
• 15:42
  biggest longest business plan you've ever seen in your entire
• 15:45
  life. How many pages?
• 15:47
  Oh, my God, for you at 17, you know, just total Overkill.
• 15:50
  I didn't know what I was doing in terms of writing a business
• 15:52
  plan. Nobody taught me that, you know,
• 15:53
  I'd watch a couple YouTube videos and surprise surprise,
• 15:56
  you know? This massive document.
• 15:58
  No, nobody even opened. I don't think they can get red.
• 16:00
  And so, I think my advice is Start showing value, just crack
• 16:03
  on and that's kind of what I did.
• 16:05
  It wasn't my role title actually the point of which starting pmo
• 16:09
  my road to Iceland changed, I haven't got a promotion, I
• 16:12
  hadn't, you know, I just started doing and started with the team
• 16:16
  working with them to to kind of go.
• 16:18
  Let's show some value. Start leaving out of the
• 16:20
  projects that were our safe space.
• 16:22
  If you like that content, but we started allocating 10% of our
• 16:25
  time. So the business operational
• 16:27
  projects and just started doing. So I think that's probably the
• 16:30
  biggest thing was kind of just crack on.
• 16:32
  On and start showing value. I think that when I look back at
• 16:35
  that, I cringe their business plan.
• 16:36
  Now, when I look back at it there were so many things I
• 16:39
  wanted to do, you know me because you know, I'd read all
• 16:41
  these pmo books and I'd I was got through the apprenticeship
• 16:44
  and I was kind of, you know, I knew that it can add value in so
• 16:47
  many areas, but I kind of shut them all in this one plan and
• 16:49
  it's just me, you know, there's this the resources me and it's
• 16:52
  like actually, you know, figure out where you want to start and
• 16:55
  start adding value quickly as well, you know, you, it can take
• 17:00
  forever, some projects take forever.
• 17:02
  You've got, you've got to kind of show value quickly to the
• 17:04
  organization. I think also getting on board.
• 17:07
  You're doing the interviews understanding where there's
• 17:09
  consensus on where project management or a pmo, can add
• 17:12
  value the types of projects and then within that down.
• 17:16
  So you can kind of prioritize, you've got the voices of the
• 17:19
  senior leaders in the organization, but you've
• 17:21
  hopefully come to some kind of consensus where they are joined
• 17:24
  up, in terms of the value that it can offer.
• 17:27
  And then for me, the biggest thing as well is like, is that
• 17:31
  whole thing around Learning and trial and error and just
• 17:35
  constantly looking forward constantly iterating.
• 17:37
  I'm one of those people who I can't sit.
• 17:39
  Still, you know, I'm constantly looking at the next thing, which
• 17:42
  I think is probably true of project management.
• 17:44
  Generally right, we all kind of went, you know, we ought to get
• 17:47
  to the next Milestone. So it says, yeah.
• 17:49
  So I think that's about kind of. How can you just constantly
• 17:51
  improve the processes? The ways of working the
• 17:54
  relationships and just, you know, just dial out by 1%.
• 17:59
  Interesting to talk about the learnings, and taking learnings
• 18:03
  free, from everything you work on a moving on.
• 18:06
  How do you go about doing that? Yes, we do it.
• 18:09
  On every single project will have spent on the length of the
• 18:13
  project. So we might see it throughout
• 18:14
  the project, so all be every quarter, sometimes we'll do it
• 18:18
  every status meeting. If you know, how are we doing,
• 18:20
  is there anything we can improve?
• 18:22
  And then we take that feedback and bring it back into that
• 18:25
  project. But then we also have a
• 18:28
  centralized but database I suppose where we can pull all
• 18:32
  that learning. So the so we can see where there
• 18:34
  are similarities, I'll give you an example.
• 18:36
  So, one of the things that's the Zup sometimes on projects is
• 18:39
  that stakeholders? Don't like too many emails I
• 18:41
  think we're all probably. We're all probably experienced
• 18:43
  that silly post covid. I think there's just this just
• 18:45
  in we're just overloaded with communication whether it's you
• 18:48
  know teams Chatters on your messenger saying or emails are
• 18:52
  inbox, never being empty, that kind of stuff.
• 18:54
  And we had just couple of bits of feedback was that, I'm just
• 18:57
  getting. So I just got too much too much,
• 18:58
  email too much emails coming through.
• 18:59
  I can't deal with it. It's not just our stuff, but,
• 19:02
  you know, it is just volume of things in their day and simple
• 19:05
  things. I was like, well, okay, why
• 19:06
  don't we? Obvious, when you say that it's
• 19:08
  but let's just start the day with a call and let's do that
• 19:12
  instead, which is okay, I guess a bit kind of agile, methodology
• 19:16
  of the stand-up. We didn't call it that we didn't
• 19:18
  use the exact same framework. This leads me to ask you about
• 19:22
  the culture that you have tried to create where you are.
• 19:26
  So in order to get people to speak quite honestly about the
• 19:30
  mistakes, they've made, to be honest, all the difficulties,
• 19:33
  they face honestly, so that something can be done and they
• 19:36
  can get the support they need. How do you achieve it?
• 19:40
  So when I was kind of trying to learn more about project
• 19:43
  management and the leadership side of things, I came across
• 19:46
  Holland Ellis and he is a couple of books, I read.
• 19:49
  But one of them talks about the importance of project
• 19:52
  leadership, to the point that I think I've sold colonists.
• 19:56
  I think I probably stole everything that book and just
• 19:58
  presented to my team and they talked about their technical
• 20:01
  skills, right? And they thought about, he talks
• 20:03
  about the project management skills than, like those your
• 20:06
  fundamentals. Absolutely.
• 20:07
  You need to understand how you deliver into Improv.
• 20:10
  As you need to understand how to initiate has a plan and to
• 20:13
  execute all those things that you learn on the APM learning
• 20:18
  portal, you learn throughout your listen to your podcast,
• 20:20
  those kind of technical skills. But then the other two things
• 20:23
  are around leadership and culture and without those it
• 20:27
  made this really good quote which again I've stolen which
• 20:28
  was the fact that when you when you've been on a great project
• 20:31
  nobody remembers the Gantt chart.
• 20:33
  Yeah, you remember the person and his people who run projects
• 20:36
  in even in a world that we're turning into with AI and chat to
• 20:39
  be too. And all that stuff, right?
• 20:41
  We still will always need great project managers and people on
• 20:44
  projects I wholeheartedly believe that.
• 20:46
  So we talked about how you have to be create environments that
• 20:48
  people want to do great work, can you give us some specifics
• 20:51
  and tips for people who might be listening right now to keep?
• 20:54
  Yes, I want that kind of culture where people falling over
• 20:57
  themselves to work with us. Have you come across anything
• 21:00
  that really works. I think one of the biggest
• 21:03
  frustrations people have when they're on projects in my
• 21:06
  experience is that you don't feel your voices heard.
• 21:10
  You know, we're, we have a lot of projects where you will have
• 21:12
  some really strong characters. You know, media agencies are
• 21:15
  full of really strong characters who are in Christ.
• 21:18
  There's so clever, throw me that ridiculous brain boxes in our
• 21:22
  organization who are also they will, they are so experienced.
• 21:27
  They sometimes it can take over a meeting.
• 21:29
  They can take over projects and you'll have You people joined,
• 21:33
  who would then sit back and not kind of lean into the project
• 21:36
  because you can't get a word in edgeways.
• 21:37
  So I think one of the biggest things we've talked about on is
• 21:40
  making sure as a p.m. that you're you're engaging with
• 21:43
  everybody, you're making sure that everybody feels included in
• 21:45
  a project so that they feel they're adding value because
• 21:48
  obviously, that's what, you know, nobody comes into work to
• 21:50
  do a terrible job each day. Yeah, you want to do with?
• 21:52
  Yeah you want to done some great work and I think it's the PM's
• 21:55
  job to facilitate that make sure that the people within their
• 21:58
  projects in you know you're all familiar responsible for them.
• 22:01
  It's not necessarily that you know, You're not line managing
• 22:03
  them, but for the purposes that our project is, they're plugged
• 22:06
  into you and you're responsible for them.
• 22:07
  So it's the parents job to make sure that they're supporting
• 22:10
  them. That they're guiding them
• 22:11
  through the projects that they're answering questions that
• 22:14
  they're, you know, they're open, they're honest, they're
• 22:16
  recognizing where things have fallen off track and the
• 22:18
  supporting to get it back on track again.
• 22:21
  Let you say maybe. Yeah, maybe that sounds obvious,
• 22:23
  but until you kind of really look at applying that, I think
• 22:26
  sometimes in my experience, working with people working with
• 22:28
  project management, you would it would just be like, well, that's
• 22:31
  the Milestone, you've left the deadline, you got Set regardless
• 22:33
  of that, there's no empathy and I think bringing that in the
• 22:36
  empathy to project management and the project through Runners.
• 22:39
  As look at some massive game changing, have there been any
• 22:43
  surprises along the kind of pmo Journey?
• 22:46
  And will you indulge us with them or did you plan everything
• 22:51
  down to the nth degree in your 70 page business plan?
• 22:57
  And I did it was, I didn't follow, I think the it was about
• 23:00
  the surprise. I think some of it was about Out
• 23:02
  like how nice and rewarding the little winds are.
• 23:05
  So even I mean this sounds Daft but even like at the beginning
• 23:09
  of the year we present we have a company meeting and there was a
• 23:14
  presentation of some of the kind of structural changes or
• 23:17
  whatever and you know standard business stuff but project
• 23:21
  management was on the slide of all these departments.
• 23:24
  All this specialisms was on there right next to all the
• 23:26
  other Specialists and so I could talk about like all these yeah
• 23:29
  brilliantly brainy people in all these really important things
• 23:32
  and that Never happened. Ever in a project management,
• 23:35
  was not talked about in that way, and I think that says it
• 23:37
  was a little wind surprise me to the point.
• 23:39
  I got a bit emotional, see on screen that kind of recognition
• 23:43
  of the work he doing and your team does, how do you think
• 23:48
  that's part of a broader trend of organizations recognizing
• 23:51
  project management as a function?
• 23:53
  Something valuable in increasingly needs to be done
• 23:56
  properly. Yeah, 100% not just I mean the
• 23:59
  technical skills. Absolutely as well.
• 24:02
  Also, So there's softer skills that we talked about like the
• 24:05
  leadership the empathy on project on projects particular.
• 24:07
  I think we've always known like in leadership space, bit more,
• 24:10
  like senior leaders need to be more empathetic, whatever.
• 24:12
  It's like, but actually now I think people are seeing that
• 24:14
  that's true on every piece of work and projects and whatever.
• 24:17
  I remember reading there is in your brilliant project magazine.
• 24:21
  There was this wonderful article with Channel 4 and that really
• 24:24
  inspired me because it was kind of like, you know, here's a
• 24:26
  creative partner that we work with day in day out.
• 24:28
  Brilliant at what they do. So creative but They were
• 24:33
  talking about how they had put pmo into the sensor, their
• 24:35
  operation, and they were changing their language to not
• 24:38
  talk about projects to about delivery, those kind of things.
• 24:41
  And suddenly what you've got is a is project management being
• 24:44
  part of the Strategic vision of that company, you know?
• 24:47
  So yeah. Absolutely I think more and more
• 24:49
  is becoming important. I think you see kind of articles
• 24:52
  about, you know, what could organizations have you know,
• 24:54
  Chief projects officers in the future.
• 24:56
  And that kind of thing that's never been discussed in mice,
• 24:59
  from what I've seen in my time doing this What do you get from
• 25:03
  project management? So you've come from a very
• 25:05
  creative background and people wouldn't necessarily think of
• 25:10
  project management as being creative.
• 25:12
  That that's the kind of I think that's probably a false concept.
• 25:17
  But what do you personally enjoy about project management is that
• 25:22
  collaboration thing? Which sounds cheesy.
• 25:24
  I know but you know, you if you've got the right mix of
• 25:26
  people on the project so it's like a really diverse mix of
• 25:29
  talent your hearing you voices better, Oh, Buzz.
• 25:33
  Kind of, you know, and and and then the other thing is I seeing
• 25:36
  your stuff out in the world. Yep.
• 25:39
  That's hugely rewarding because you actually see the point of
• 25:42
  projects is you see the things going out into the world, right?
• 25:45
  This isn't PA. You where's just always ticking
• 25:47
  along and never gets done, though.
• 25:48
  It's finished, you know, the great thing about it, the really
• 25:51
  rewarding thing for me is that that work thing goes out into
• 25:53
  the world. Have you got any advice for
• 25:57
  those at the other end of the scale.
• 25:58
  So any advice on how to deal with senior?
• 26:02
  Sex or c-suite around project management and, and their
• 26:07
  understanding of it. I think it's just showing don't
• 26:11
  doing this, the work and showing the value and I think
• 26:15
  understanding that you need to deliver things quickly and you
• 26:19
  don't always have time to show value.
• 26:21
  So it's looking at where the quick wins that you can show
• 26:24
  value to see sweet in that sense.
• 26:27
  Don't get too bogged down in the tools and the tag their
• 26:31
  important absolutely important and crucial, you know, that, you
• 26:34
  know, those things inside our absolute.
• 26:36
  That's kind of, you know, there's that should be a given
• 26:38
  but look at how you can Of customized and be flexible and
• 26:42
  tailor those to fit with your business because the every
• 26:44
  single business is different. Everybody you need, you need to
• 26:48
  kind of arm yourself with everything in the toolkit to be
• 26:51
  able to speak the language of see sweep, you know, something.
• 26:53
  Some people love like, reading a plowing through all the detail.
• 26:56
  They love all the, you know, the graphs and the status and they
• 26:59
  big long reports and all that kind of stuff.
• 27:02
  But in other people is all about storytelling.
• 27:04
  It's just about, you know, how do you get?
• 27:06
  You know, they're not going to read through your day, so
• 27:08
  they're not going to look through all your graphs and
• 27:09
  Whether it's just tailoring that approach to the stakeholders and
• 27:12
  I think that's kind of particularly true of the people
• 27:14
  at that. You never got his time to read
• 27:16
  some Supply through my 70 page business plan.
• 27:19
  It was anything else you want to talk through cold a lot and lots
• 27:22
  of valuable advice and you know, it's exciting times I think.
• 27:27
  Yeah. I think it is exciting.
• 27:28
  I think it's it's a journey, right?
• 27:31
  So it's like is that exciting thing is like it's never done
• 27:33
  and I think that's an age difference of projects right?
• 27:36
  Usually going to project it finishes your off but the pmo is
• 27:39
  We how do we, how do we evolve? How do we improve, how do we
• 27:44
  change our ways of working? And I think whatever's to come,
• 27:46
  in terms of, you know, artificial intelligence.
• 27:49
  And we'd be having a very different conversation in five
• 27:52
  years time if we were doing this because there's so much stuff
• 27:55
  coming at us day in day out, that we need to embrace and that
• 27:58
  could be terrifying for your arm guy.
• 28:00
  What my 47? Yeah, that could be really
• 28:03
  scary. So God my goodness me, there's
• 28:05
  all this stuff that I've got to learn and there's no, our
• 28:07
  computers are going to do some of these bits and bobs.
• 28:09
  Well, that's really exciting. And so I think, you know, for a
• 28:12
  pmo perspective is that, you know, and certainly for us at
• 28:15
  wave makers, kind of like, this is only the beginning really.
• 28:17
  It's like where this can go, is just really exciting, okay?
• 28:21
  Thanks Dan. Brilliant to talk to you.
• 28:23
  Thank you for sharing your time with us, and your wisdom and
• 28:27
  wishing you. The best of luck with all the
• 28:29
  projects you you work on. Thank you for having me.
• 28:37
  Thanks again to Dan for joining us and to you for listening to
• 28:39
  the APM podcast. Don't forget to look out for
• 28:42
  more episodes or to rate and review us wherever you get your
• 28:45
  podcast. We'd welcome you to get in touch
• 28:47
  with your comments feedback and suggestions by e-mailing us at a
• 28:51
  p.m. podcast at sink publishing .co.uk this podcast has been
• 28:56
  brought to you by APM to chartered body.
• 28:58
  For the project profession, for more information on a p.m. visit
• 29:02
  AP m dot org.uk.