Leadership Beyond Tools: The Human Element in Project Management with John Connolly

Episode Transcript
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Intro/Outro (00:12):
Welcome to the PM Mastery Podcast.
This podcast is all abouthelping you master your project
management skills by sharingtips, tricks, tools and training
to get you to the next level,while sharing the stories of
other project managers on theirjourney in project management.
And now here's your host, waltSparling.

Walt Sparling (00:35):
All right.
So welcome everybody to thecurrent edition of PM Mastery.
And I know I've been off theair for a while, but I'm back.
And tonight I have with me JohnConnolly, who has been on the
podcast before.
But in going back through notesand even John was surprised

(00:57):
this was in 22.
So we're coming on almost threeyears.
We're coming on almost threeyears.
And then, john, you were onagain when we did the live, or
actually we did a live onLinkedIn on project managers
communication for projectmanagers, and then I actually
took that recording and repostedit last year on the podcast in

(01:19):
2024.
We worked on or actually yourbook, project Executing
Excellence, which I wrote achapter in on communications,
and then we were both part ofthe PURE project management
program last year as well, whichis PURE stands for Projects
Under Realistic Expectations.
So it's been like I think youwere saying earlier when we were

(01:42):
talking every year you dosomething.
Yeah, absolutely Once a year,whether I need it or not.

John Connolly (01:44):
I think you were saying earlier when we were
talking every year you dosomething.
Yeah, absolutely Once a year,whether I need it or not, I'm
going to do something and it'sbeen great, it's been.
It's a lot of things.
When you line it all up likethat, from it's very, it I feel
accomplished.
All of a sudden, there you go.

So we touch base again.
I know we chat occasionallythrough LinkedIn, and then you
were interested in talking aboutsome ideas you were tossing
around and it has to do withleadership.
Yes, so, and I think more ofthe human leadership versus just
being a doer.
So walk me down that and let'schat about it.

Yeah, I've been really diving in over the course
of the last I don't know, yearand a half.
It's this idea in the back ofmy brain and that is, I think,
broadly speaking, that there'sthis metamorphosis of project
management as a field right now,and part of that is tool driven
right, and we'll talk about AI.

(02:46):
I'm sure We'll talk about thetool sets, we'll talk about that
, but I see it more as there'slike a demographic turnover
thing.
And back in 22, or right aroundthe time we were talking in 21,
22, project ManagementInstitute put out a
state-of-the-profession report,as they do every year, and they

(03:06):
were I think it was 15 millionnew project management jobs
globally right by 2030, that wasthe thing by 2030, 15 million.
And I read the report, whichnot everyone does Usually.
It was like, hey, here's aheadline, Everyone celebrate,
everyone clap, and half of thosejobs, roughly half of those
jobs, roughly half of those jobs, were coming in developing

(03:30):
nations, right, india, africa,china, a lot of nations that are
developing.
But the other half were cominghere in the united states and
western europe from retirementsand started.
That's an interesting thing.
And I started like line up and2030 is a really interesting
date because 2030 is the lastyear that the baby boom

(03:52):
generation is in the workforce,and you've got a problem.
In my opinion, right, this islike red flags come up for me.
I'm like, yeah, this is goodnews from one lens.
This is terrible news fromanother lens, because all those
people are going to walk out ofthe profession and they're going
to retire and it's well-earned,but they're going to take all
of their project expertise withthem.

(04:13):
And I'm thinking along theselines, right, and it's been in
the back of my mind, and as Ilook around, I see this
groundswell of new people cominginto project management and
that's great and they're eagerto learn and they have a lot to
teach us as project managers, aswell as to learn from us, built

(04:46):
day by day.
I'm sure you've seen it onLinkedIn, I've seen it around
PMI chapters for people gettingin.
But once you get in, once youget your PMP, once you get that
first job, where's the supportfor the career in progress,
professional that's?
There's less.
And I'm thinking along thelines of, okay, what's the
future actually going to looklike?
Because now you have a lot ofpeople who are at the lower end

(05:10):
of the experience bell curve andthe people at the upper end of
the other end of the experiencebell curve are starting to come
out of the workforce, the peoplein the middle.
Just when you count them up,there aren't as many as there
used to be.
So where does that leave us?
One, when it comes to passingon knowledge and project

(05:32):
expertise to the next generation.
But two, who's going to fillall these senior roles, and do
they have the skill setsnecessary to fill these senior
roles, sets necessary to fillthese senior roles?
And where's the supportstructure, the onboarding, the

(05:53):
support and mentorship andcoaching and guidance for people
who have done it, but they justhaven't done it at that level?
I think that there's going tobe pressure there, it's going to
be a crunch there, and I've gotmy finger right on that problem
.
I'm, like almost ready to startcoming up with solutions, but
not quite.
I have this intuitive look atwhat the landscape is right now.
It's a pivotal moment.

(06:15):
Everyone says that, likeproject management is a pivotal
moment, but they're looking atthat from a technology
standpoint, but I'm not.
I think it's a pivotal momentfrom a humanity standpoint.

Okay, it's a lot there and it's interesting.
The 2030 is my planned year forretirement.
Now I don't plan on gettingcompletely out.
I hope at that point I'll stillbe doing like coaching, maybe
some mentoring, training,whatever, and it'll still be in
project management.
But that is my time to get outof the rat race.

Yeah and go.
Yeah, good for you, that's good.
And anything you want to giveback to the profession is very
valuable and very welcome,because those of us who are
still working in the field, weneed that help, we need that
support.
But most people they're goingto go to Cabo right, this is

(07:17):
over.
They've earned their time toretire, to have that life.
Let's host management life,cause it's there's more than
project management out there.
There really is, there's familyand there's rest and there's
travel and there's, hopefully,all these good things in life
that you've earned.
And and I don't think thenumbers will balance is my point

(07:41):
I think that it's not an.
I know you have a ton tocontribute and I know that
you've been pushing ideasforward right Thought leadership
, things for project managementfor a good long while, and I've
seen that in your writing, I'veseen that in your podcasting,
but I wouldn't characterize thatas the norm.

(08:02):
And your willingness to comeand give back after 2030, that's
very good, it's helpful, but Idon't think we can bank on that
happening in a broad scale.
And the question is okay,twofold.
The first is learning one rightand that's my.

(08:22):
I'm like lessons learned andknowledge management and former
librarian over here doing all myproject management applications
of knowledge management stuff.
The first is are we transferringthe knowledge in you, in all
the other people retiring now?
How is that knowledge beingtransferred to people who are

(08:44):
coming up the pipeline behindyou?
That's one, and I think thatthe job of doing that was.
The deadline to start was maybethree, four years ago, five
years ago, maybe even longer, Idon't know, because it takes a
long time to do a good job, athorough job of teaching someone

(09:05):
the ropes.
And I think this is somethingyou've talked about as well in
the past I don't know if it wason another episode of the
podcast or conversation we hadbut like the value of
apprenticeship as an approach,as a concept, to have someone
more senior kind of not justdelegate to someone who's lower

(09:28):
on the chain, but to actuallyguide them through, to have
these graded steps that you gothrough, where you say, okay,
you're doing this level project,we're going to give you a
bigger project with trainingwheels.
We'll give you a bigger projectwithout training wheels.
We're going to give you abigger project with training
wheels.
We'll give you a bigger projectwithout training wheels.
We're going to give you a highlevel project to step them up

(09:49):
with guidance, with help.

Yes, and that's it starts out.
When someone comes in, youstart with shadowing just for
getting them up to speed withhow things are done at your
company or your account and thenfrom there you say, okay,
follow during the shadowing,follow these people.
then from there you say, okay,follow during the shadowing,
follow these people, get,develop your style.
But then, once you feelcomfortable with how things are

(10:11):
done, let's give you a project.
Just like you said, my firstproject when I started at this
company it was a fifty thousanddollar.
It had a lighting project andthe last big project that I was
totally responsible for was a 12million million ground up and
they were about a year and ahalf apart.
But I did a lot of little smallprojects and then, when I

(10:31):
became in a leadership role, Iapproached the team the same way
Okay, you're a PM, now You're aP2.
So you're going to do this kindof project with this level of
complexity and as you show thatyou've learned and you are able
to take on more responsibility,we'll get you a bigger project.

(10:52):
Yeah, and then at some pointyou end up with a lot of
projects and I've seen people gofrom p1s to p3 senior pms and
yeah they don't come fromnowhere.

No, it's not magic, they're not mushrooms.
They don't just spring out ofthe ground, it's.
It comes from the bench right,and cultivating the bench is
really what we're talking about.
If you don't have anyone onyour bench, you're doomed
because nobody lives forever,right.
Nobody's going to stay on thejob forever.
There's a functional limit.
We're all finite, and this isanother thing we were talking
before we got started here, andI'm sure we'll get going to stay
on the job forever.
There's a functional limit.

(11:24):
We're all finite.
And this is another thing wewere talking before we got
started here and I'm sure we'llget into it as well is that
you're only one person right,that a project manager is a
project manager and that youcan't expect to duplicate that
overnight.
And a lot of what we're talkingabout here is experiential

(11:45):
knowledge.
Books are good.
I love books.
You and I have collaborated toput one together.
I think more of that is veryhelpful.
But experiential knowledge isvery difficult to just write
down in hand to someone.
You have to get in there, rollup your sleeves and experience
it.

You need to be able to learn intuition.
So when you've been throughsomething before and you can see
it coming, because you're like,oh, I've been down this road,
yeah, pattern recognition.
Yeah, I know what I'm going todo here, but until you go
through that, it's oh my Godyou're never going to believe
what happened today.

Oh yeah, I've had that happen a hundred times ego
or like the knack of gettingsomeone to sign a paper
somewhere that needs to besigned, and these things that
are very tricksy and that arenot in pembok right, and that
we've never been pembok, becausethey're experiential, but
they're still really valuable.
And to have a senior leaderavailable to to help the younger

(13:04):
person, the less senior person,whoever who's coming forward on
the pipeline, someone off thebench to learn, without having
them blow up a project in theinterest of learning, is really
valuable.
But I think there's not as muchstructured, there's not as much

(13:29):
structured, intentionaldevelopment of people on the
bench as there could be or maybeeven should be in many
different facets of the field.
And I know that's a hopelesslybroad thing to say.
I'm sure you could come backwith critique, john.
You're talking about absoluteshere, with lots of different
people, lots of differentconstruction projects or
marketing projects or events orwhatever that all fit under this
umbrella.
But in my experience andlooking around the environment

(13:52):
that from where I sit, I don'tknow that we're doing a really
good job of cultivating thepeople in the middle.

Yeah, I've been in different organizations and
different scenarios, differentaccounts and dealt with
different leaders, both as helpmentor which, in a lot of cases,
my leaders were not mentors,they were not coaches, they were

(14:31):
managers.
Here's your tasks, get it done,yes.
And then some were like, okay,I see you struggling with this,
let's sit down and chat.
Why are you struggling?
How can I help?
That's my style.
I want to see something goingon like all right, let's, okay,
I get it, it's a crisis rightnow, but let's chat through this
.
How can I help you?

(14:51):
What can you learn from this?
And then grow that way?
yes, you just keep shoving work.
They're not learning anything.
They're not developing.

All they're doing're doing is learning how
to deal with fires are peoplelearning in the middle right and
what they're prepared to learnat that level.
And this is the real thing forme.

(15:30):
Here's the rub.
I was promoted throughout mycareer based on my performance
in executing tasks.
I was at the task level.
I worked in projects, I workedon projects.
I was doing a lot of task levelwork.
I did it very well when I wastapped into leadership roles.

(15:54):
I'm not going to pretend I wasready.
It was a matter of likefunctional utility in the
organization I worked for for.
But I was tapped because of mytask level aptitude.
But the task level aptitudesdidn't help me do a good job in
a leadership role.

(16:14):
There's a Venn diagram ofskills that help you in
leadership and skills that helpyou at the task level right and
it's a very thin overlap in myopinion, and that's one of the
harder jumps that you have tomake in your career.
If you go into leadership inyour career, going from doer to

(16:36):
leader very difficult.
It is because you have a wholemindset shift.

And to your point , you were promoted because of
your skills and the tasks.
So I've seen this and I'vetalked with other people about
this.
It's not just PMs, it's theentire world.
So, salespeople, you've gotsomeone who's doing record sales
year after year.
He's always getting thetrophies, always getting the big

(17:01):
bonuses.
He's at the top of the rankingcharts and they go.
We're going to make you incharge of the sales organization
and he fails.
He or she fails and it's likewhy they're out of their element
and they're not.
If you're that good, typicallyyou're very competitive and
you're going to do whatever ittakes to win.

(17:23):
When you become a manager, whoare you competing with now?

Yeah, you have to be generous.
There's a generosity factor.

Give back all that stuff you learned.
You should now be teaching thepeople that you're managing, or
passing on that knowledge, sothat they can be as successful
as you were.
A lot of people just don't doit, and it's the same with
project management, because thenyou start, they get promoted
and they become micromanagers.
Yes, Well I would do it thisway, and I would do this way and

(17:51):
, trust me, I've been in thatboat myself.

Yeah, and it's understandable.
I'm not going to say it'sexcusable right, it's not
excusable but it's totallyunderstandable that the vice of
a salesperson might becompetition.
The vice of a project managermight be micromanagement,

(18:15):
because there's the temptationto roll up your sleeves and get
in up to your elbows is alwaysthere.
And you were successful at it,You're good at it, you know how
the work should go and you wantto do what you're good at.
Sometimes even some of thatstuff might make your heart sing

(18:37):
.
Right, it's this, it's I lovedoing x, y or z.
You maybe didn't all of thework.
You like some element of it,otherwise you wouldn't have
stuck with it as long as you did.
And now that's always going tobe a little like demon on your
shoulder right, a littleshoulder devil, to say why don't
you just take some extra tasksfor yourself or tell them

(18:58):
exactly how they should be doingX, y and Z?
I'm not saying that directiveleadership is wrong.
Sometimes it's absolutelycrucial to help people
understand.
Do it this way.
But people who are projectmanagers I've worked with some
project managers they just can'tlet go and that's a problem
because you're not teaching thenext layer down.

(19:19):
Right, you're not actuallybuilding a bench.
What you're doing is you'reeliminating your bench, because
the people who are ready andwilling to learn will dial out
right.
They're going to walk awaybecause, frankly, if you're
going to make every call, callevery shot, do everything, what
are they there for?
They'll maybe keep taking apaycheck, but they're not going

(19:42):
to be engaged to the level thata bench player needs to be.

Yeah, and as you're talking, I'm just I'm
thinking through, like my growth.
We talked a little bit earlier.
When I started out, I was a PMand then over.
After about three years I gotpromoted to a lead position
within the team and theneventually, a couple years later
, I took over a region.
And in that growth the onething that was hard was two

(20:13):
things.
The resources were limited, soI still ended up.
I was supposed to be at myfinal position, just the leader,
but resources were so low.
I was still managing projectsand prior to that, managing
projects was half of my job.
So when you make that switchinto leadership, it is tough.

(20:35):
Because you made a good pointthere about micromanaging,
because what is it Not the PMsmicromanage, but they manage all
the different aspects of theproject to make sure that it
stays on the rails.
So when you go into leadership,you see something that you go.
I would have handled it thisway You've got to ask questions
and get them to see why it'sgood to go not a certain way,

(20:55):
not just say you need to do thisbecause that's not how they're
going to learn.
You've got to pull it out ofthem and also you might just
figure out that this maybe isn'twhat you really should be doing
.

Yes, yeah, that's the other thing that's really
important too.
You need guardrails is thepoint where you need guardrails
on everything, and projectmanagers should be in the
business of helping define andsetting up and managing within
the guardrails.
It's just hard to do right aspeople, because we're all human.
I'm thinking as well as you'retalking about that, where we are

(21:29):
with the development of people,there's going to be this crunch
in the middle.
I'm convinced there's going tobe a crunch in the middle.
There's different ways thatorganizations can respond to the
crunch.
As they lose senior projectmanagers and they try to find
replacements for those projectmanagers and they try to find
replacements for those projectmanagers.
Are they going to lower theirstandards and bring people in

(21:51):
who have less experience?
They may be required to do thator are they going to expect
people who are alreadymoderately elevated at the
senior level to do middle andsenior work you were talking to
me earlier about?
You've been in a position whereyou had to do all of the

(22:11):
leadership stuff and task stuffas well on top of it and they're
double dipping and at thatpoint then mass burnout becomes
your issue.
You have when the definition ofthe work changes, when the
definition of the work changes,when the flavor of the work
changes, so that way, 100% ofcapacity is your baseline, then

(22:37):
you have a problem becausethere's nowhere to go from there
and you start eating up thepeople and it wipes them away.
I'm really interested in thework, the academic work, that Dr
Max Baller is doing in thisarea specific to project
management, and he helped writeExecuting Excellence.
He took a chapter as well andhe's doing a lot of work just
studying burnout as a functionin project management and in

(23:01):
organizational structures andexpectations that we have of
ourselves within this profession, and I'd recommend anyone go
follow him on LinkedIn andfollow his newsletter.
He puts an article out every sooften and they're very
insightful Beyond that, theother argument that I hear
sometimes is it's going to befine to have all the senior

(23:21):
leadership lost because we haveAI now, and I try my best not to
like really knock people downover that, but I think it's a
little bit unreasonable to thinkthat AI is going to somehow

(23:43):
supplement the wisdom lost inour profession, because that's
really where it's at right thestuff that can be fed into a
machine and it can parse it andmix it up and give it back to
you.
That stuff's cool, but it's alllike the written stuff, the
stuff you could go read.
I can train a bot on PMBOK.

(24:04):
I can't train a bot on how tohandle Bob, who's my senior,
like he's in my board ofdirectors and he's persnickety
and he doesn't exactly like ourproject.
He wants to see some changesmade but he doesn't have
legitimate engagement with ourproject.
There's not a lot of alignmentand there's politics and then,
like the CEO's son is involved,like all of this stuff could

(24:28):
happen in real life.

So a couple of things there, like when you talk
about companies, think if theycan get rid of the senior levels
because they can use AI tobackfill and use the younger,
less experienced, as the main,the main working group.
That's like the opposite, in myopinion, of how it should be

(24:53):
when you're doing AI.
Yes, ai is pulling fromdifferent resources to create
data, but it takes a seniorlevel person or an experienced
person let's just say that toevaluate that and say does that
make sense?
Is that applicable to whatwe're doing, where a junior or
beginning person might say, well, that sounds awesome.
That's what I'm going to do andwhat AI should be used for is

(25:15):
tasks and is a tool, but thehuman side, the interactions,
needs to be handled by someonethat knows how to do that.
That's experienced and juniorpeople are still learning that.
They will get it, but theydon't learn it day one or year
one.
It takes time.

Yes, and there's these poles.
In my opinion, I see it as likea spectrum for AI use and the
one end is utility when you useAI to summarize, to condense, to
ideate, to help you do yourwork.

(25:55):
The other end of the horizon,the other pole, is reliance when
you trust what the bot istelling you, when you lose that
critical thinking skill, whenyou don't check the source
sometimes or you're using it foreverything.
I know people I'm not going toname names they use ChatGPT for

(26:20):
all of their content online.
It's like very obvious and it'sbeen put in this electronic
blender and it's spat back out,has all the hallmarks, it's got
those em dashes, it's got theemoji, it's got all this stuff
and this helps us be faster atthe task level.
It really does.
But the problem is, if your jobis to go really fast and your

(26:45):
job is to go really fast andyour job is not put up and
managed by guardrails, what'sgoing to happen is you're going
to drive your bus off a cliff.
You can drive a bus off a cliffreally fast.
You can.
It's just not a good idea to doso, and what the speed of

(27:08):
action going faster and fasteris going to do to us as a
profession is it's going to takeaway the guardrails, the
patience, the wisdom, thestrategic acumen that must be
there right.
And so you have this ideaanyway, this concept for me and
I'm working on developing now asI'm going into graduate school

(27:29):
again and I'm doing all my stuffand projects and whatever is
that.
Project managers can't dowithout a big picture view
anymore.
I don't know if they ever could, but I think more than ever now
, everyone's's using AI,everyone's going faster,
everyone's.
You better be careful with yourdirection if you're going to go

(27:50):
really fast.
I'm more easily.
The reason why speed limits arelower around schools is because
it's more, it's easier to stopor navigate otherwise when
someone vulnerable is in the way.
Navigate otherwise when someonevulnerable is in the way.
And the reason why there arespeed limits at all on high
level expressways or interstatesor whatever you call them, is

(28:12):
because everyone's going in onedirection in one time.
So you could have high speedlimits then, but there always
has to be speed limits.
There always has to be afunctional saying this far and
no further.
And I think we're losing thatand that's a problem.
You need to start backfillingthat skill set more than

(28:36):
anything else with the humanelement.
That's where we're at is.
This is now going to be a matterof like where do you invest for
the future?
And a lot of people say I'mgoing to invest in AI, and I
understand the way they'rethinking.
They're thinkingtechnologically right.
They're thinking like a stockmarket kind of investment where,
if I invest in it now, it'sgoing to have exponentially

(28:58):
bigger returns over time inefficiency or utility or all
these different things thatmaybe we can get out of it,
maybe we can't, speed beingprimary, but my argument is
that's the wrong play, that'slow ROI in the long run, that
the higher ROI in the long runis in soft skills, or what are

(29:22):
typically called soft skills,human skills, human-oriented
things like strategiccommunication.
Can you communicate with theC-suite leaders?
Can you help understand,distill for your project and
from your project back to theleadership, what is
strategically reasonable andwise to do?

(29:43):
Can you run meetings well?
Can you give effective feedback?
Can you receive it well?
These are all things that arenot going to go away, no matter
how advanced the machines get,because people are going to be
people Until it's just machinestalking to machines.

You've got to have the ability to communicate.
To communicate, you talkedabout talking with, let's say,
c-level leaders.
So if you are writing reportsand you're using ai to summarize
and create this awesome, crispreport and you send it up and

(30:20):
you keep doing that, and you'redoing that for six months and
then they go, you know what weneed to get this.
This pm is generating somegreat stuff.
Let's get them in here.
Let's do a one-on-one.
Let's hear it right from them.
What are you gonna do?
Yeah, you didn't create thosereports yourself.
You used ai.
You've not used to presenting.
How confident are you going tobe when you get in there?

yes, how persuasive are you going to be
when you get in there?
Yes, how persuasive are yougoing to be?
Yeah, how good is yournegotiating ability?
Do you know the contours, thelimits of your legal authority,
right?
What's on paper?
Right?
That technical authority oryour functional authority, which
is always different than it ison paper?

(31:04):
You know this right.
You've worked in projectmanagement a whole long time.
What you are able to get awaywith is not the same as what
you're supposed to be able to doon paper.
Sometimes it's more, often it'sless, and you got to know.
Can you read the room?
Do you know the socialnetworking?
Do you know the politicalawareness?

(31:25):
Like the lay of the land, andcan you move within it?
Can you get people to wherethey need to go?
This has always been the heartof project management.
The heart of project managementis this Can you get a large
number of people to pull therope in the same direction, at
the same time, for the samepurpose?
Because I'm not going to puttoo fine a point on it, but PMI

(31:47):
was founded in 1969.
The PMP wasn't founded until1984.
Like, the pyramids were builtwithout process groups.

Yes.

Like Notre Dame Cathedral was built without
inputs, tools, techniques,outputs they didn't have earned
value.
Management formulas Like thesethings are good.
They didn't have earned value.
Management formulas thesethings are good, they're
wonderful tools to us, but theessence of it has always been
can you get a plan that peoplewill rally around and all do the
same thing?
And that's even if you havemachines doing the bottom level.

(32:19):
It's still got to be peoplemaking the decision about what
gets built and there's going tohave to be people for whom the
thing is built.
And unless robots are going tolive in our apartment complexes
or robots are going to sing,robots to sleep at night, there
will always be a human component.
That's never going away.

(32:39):
And if you want long-term ROI,you've got to invest there, in
my opinion, way more than justwriting prompts.

A lot of AI stuff there.

Yes, I've got thoughts.
I always have opinions right,I'm a very opinionated kind of
guy.
But I think this stuff'simportant too, and I'm very
countercultural right now aboutAI Not going to say I don't use
it.
I do, but I'm very skeptical ofits longer-term utility because

(33:13):
I see people relying on it andit's.
If it works for you, that'sgreat, but if you work for it or
it's so inextricably bound upin what you need to do if you
can't do without it, you reallyaren't.
You don't have mastery overwhat you're doing as a worker.

Right Now I've been diving big into AI.
In the last year I actually didan AI presentation to a
mastermind group that I'm in acouple weeks ago and it was
teaching them how they could useAI to help them in their jobs.
Or I'm working on some books.
So I use AI for brainstormingand research.

(33:52):
But what I see the more I getinto it, the more I see
different views, and I don'tremember which university, but
it was a big one where theyactually did a paper on the
concern for cognitive declinewith people.
The more we get into AI, theless people are reliant on their

(34:12):
own development because theyuse AI to get their answers and
if that continues to propagate,people are going to get I hate
to say it dumber and dumberbecause they're not going to
have their own thoughts.
What does AI say?
How does AI say I should do it?

Yes, and I don't want to be too curmudgeonly over
here right, I'm doing thepodcast equivalent right now of
sitting on your front porch steprattling my cane at kids as
they walk by and telling them toget off your lawn, but I'm
going to do it for a minute,okay.
One is the reliance factorright, and that's always going

(34:53):
to be there.
If you rely on any tool to doyour thinking for you, then
you're going to think less, andthis is why I'm doing a two-part
workshop in September and it'sabout building strategic
alignment for project managers.
Right, and a module of that isgoing to be critical thinking,
because that's going to be at apremium Skill set.
You want to talk about aninvestment that's going to be

(35:14):
critical thinking, becausethat's going to be at a premium
skill set.
You want to talk about aninvestment that's going to pay
dividends over time.
If you invest in peoplelearning and applying critical
thinking skills, skepticism towhat they see, informationally,
finding good sources, thatstuff's going to be gold in five
years.
It's probably going to be goldin two years, maybe, heck, maybe

(35:35):
it's gold now, I don't know,but it's definitely going to be
a way better investment of yourtime, money, energy.
On the other side.
I think that ai is a littleinsidious in some ways, and I
think that's because there's anarticle that just came out on

(35:57):
PMI about this I came into myinbox this morning about the
sycophant nature of AI bots.
They always have pleasantthings to tell you.
They always are full of praisefor you.
Right, there's suck up and thatit feels good to interact with

(36:18):
the bot.
Right, it's an easy entry for,not just for ego, but like for
affirmation, which is what we'reall looking for.
Right, to have the words appearon the screen that affirm you.
And the problem with that is,if you're using AI as your
advisor, they're not trustworthybut they sound nice and our

(36:40):
human weakness is what's goingto get preyed upon.
Our human nature is not oftenas skeptical as it should be,
and it's very easy for us tofall into a trap.
And if you're relying on thebot, you're going to get in
trouble.
As skeptical as it should be,and it's very easy for us to
fall into a trap, and if you'rerelying on the bot, you're going
to get in trouble, you're goingto get hurt, because the bot is

(37:01):
sometimes itself unreliable.
The bot will present things astrue that are simply not.
I asked the bot once fordefinition.
This is a fun one, right, right?
What's the definition ofproject phases?
I love that question becauseit's very like technically.

(37:22):
It's a it's minutiae, right,and it did not give me phases.
It gave me a list of ittos andI corrected it.
I said that's not what phasesare.
Please tell me what phases are.
And it couldn't do it.
I had to try three, four, fivetimes.
It didn't get it done.
I've asked.

(37:42):
I asked ChatGPT who I am.
It is convinced.
It has my LinkedIn link.
It has my resume.
It has I gave it everything itneeded.
It's convinced that I'm anadjunct faculty professor at the
University of Kansas, becausethere's someone with the same
name out there and it is.
I've given it the prompts.

(38:03):
I've prompted it every way.
Can you check it again?
Can you change this, can youchange that?
And it will say you are rightand maybe this gets better in
GPT-5, who knows?
But it says you're right, andmaybe this gets better in GPT-5.
Who knows?
But it says you're right, I waswrong.
And then when I ask thequestion again, it gives me the
wrong answer again.
It's not a trustworthycompanion.

(38:24):
It's like fire, right?
George Washington had thissaying about political power.
He said it's like fire it's auseful tool, but a fearsome
master.
Ai is fire, and it's a usefultool, but it's a fearsome master
.

It's interesting listening to what you're talking
about with the prompting andthe knowing.
And I remember and it wasn'tthat long ago, where I was at a
meeting and some people were.
We were going through a test.
Someone did a presentation,we're going through a test and
they asked their AI on theirphone about themselves.
They asked him how would yourank me in these categories?

(39:03):
And these things went on and on.
And I'm like, oh my God, and Idid it to mine and it said I'm
sorry, I don't know enough aboutyou to make any kind of
conclusion here.
And I'm like, well, that sucks.
And I went home that night andI started researching how do I
get AI to know me?
So I did the same thing, I didthe LinkedIn, I did the website,

(39:25):
I did Facebook and then Ilearned later that you can.
That's good, because it scrubsa lot of data really fast and it
puts together a summary.
But I learned how to and I justshared this with someone that we
both know last night on how,when I get my responses or when

(39:46):
I'm writing, like if I'm usingit to help me write a post.
It knows my style, it knows mycommunications, the way I talk,
if I'm serious and I do thisbecause people tell me I like
the fact that you'reknowledgeable and you're serious
, but you always have a littlebit of humor.
So I told that's what I toldChatGPT.
But I've done searches and Ithink the ones that I've seen,

(40:12):
this mostly is basically goingto be Gemini because it's
through Google search and it'llcome up with this data and I'll
go what that don't sound rightand I'll pick on the link and it
.
There's five sites that talkabout this, but it's zoned in on
one and it used the data fromthat one and that one was wrong.

(40:32):
Or it merges data fromdifferent things and it confuses
stuff because it summarizes it,so it takes this part, puts it
together and that final is wrongbecause it took two different
things and made them one yeahhere's a challenge for you and
anyone listening.

Okay, let I'm going to give you this challenge
.
Dream up an idea Product idea,business idea, program idea,
just a workshop idea.
Say, okay, I'm going to come upwith this idea.
Give the bot, give AI.
Whatever AI you use, I use GPT.
Let's stick with that.
Go to chat GPT, put in athorough description of what it

(41:14):
is you're trying to do, talkabout your audience that you're
looking for, talk about howyou're going to deliver all this
stuff.
Put in a project right, andthen, at the end, ask it this
one question Do you think thatthis is a good idea?
See, if you can get the bot totell you have a bad idea,

(41:39):
because I have not been able toget it to say so yet.
That's bad news.
I'm sorry to report that's badnews If the thing won't, and
that should give you pause.
It is designed to make you feelgood so you can continue using
it, and it's designed to makeyou feel good because it's

(42:02):
people using it and that whichgets the most response is the
thing that makes us feel good.
This is why facebook is a thing.
This is why linkedin is a thing.
This is why the internet is athing is that it's the brain
chemistry, it's the dopamine, itis the dopamine rush right,
it's governance by the amygdala.
And now I've got a bot thatsounds nice to me and it will

(42:25):
speak to me with my own voice,in my own way, at my own time,
at my own beck and call.
It is not honest, and the reasonit's not honest is not even
malicious.
It's not honest because it'snot a person.
There's no one on the other endof the line, there's nobody

(42:46):
there.
It's like picking up the phoneright back when we had corded
telephones right, and gettingthat dial tone which I haven't
heard a dial tone in forever.
But getting a dial tone exceptthis one makes you feel good and
this one tries to.
We use it as if it can help usmake decisions.

(43:08):
It can't, it shouldn't, itmustn't help you make decisions.
It can give you informationthat you can check.
It can give you ideas anddifferentiations.
You cannot use this thing as ifit's a trusted advisor.
You should not trust this thing.
It's good, it's useful.
You got to make it work for you, not the other way around.
Anyway, that's the end of myshaking my cane on your front,

(43:32):
porch Walt.

Okay, and I've taken mine to the next level and
I, my friends, love it.
I have named mine, given Ava,and she has an, a UK accent.

Okay, so my favorite.

So I've.
Actually, when I did mypresentation recently, recently,
I just popped it up and I saidava, I'm at this meeting and I
had given her a list of names ofpeople and what they did it
wasn't detail, it was just theydo this, they're in banking,
they do this, they're instructural engineering, good.
And I said, hey, can youintroduce yourself and then give

(44:11):
a little?
How did I say it?
Introduce yourself and thengive a little.
How did I say it?
I don't know Something aboutsay something to the guests.
And if someone didn't come tothe meeting that is normally in
the meeting I just deleted theirline.
Yeah, so she only.
So she comes up and goes hi,I'm Ava, I'm Walt's personal AI
assistant.
It's so glad to see you guyshere tonight, dave.
And went name by name, she wentdown the list and then she said

(44:33):
, hey, walt's going to do thisgreat presentation on AI tonight
and I hope I know you're goingto love it.
Have a good time.
Now, this isn't scripted.
Yeah, just introduce yourself.
Welcome these names.
And I said I had practiced withher because I wanted to see how
it would sound, and I said I'mgoing to be doing a presentation
and I would like you tointroduce yourself to see how it

(44:54):
would sound.
And I said I'm going to bedoing a presentation, yeah, and
I would like you to introduceyourself, and that's what it did
, and they were all just going.
oh, my God yeah.

It's so useful.
It's so useful.
I don't want to turn this intooh, john's a Luddite, he doesn't
believe in the March ofProgress or whatever.
It's super useful.
I'm just standing athwart theidea that, like that, anyone
should rely on it.
You know it.
Yeah, it's fast, it helps yougo fast and it can be impressive

(45:23):
and it's helping you and thatseeds certain things for you.
But it's it should be areflection on you, not on the
bot, because the bot didn't comeup with that strategy on its
own.
And that's a good applicationof a tool, of a tool, and I
think, because the tool iswrapped in a human-flavored

(45:45):
wrapper, that people arestarting to treat it like it's
more than a tool.
And that's where this rush toAI has all this wonderful ROI
right.
It's a race and we got to getmore and more.
And there's I can't.
I can't spit without hitting anAI startup ad on YouTube or on.

LinkedIn, and now that I'm doing it, I can't stay
away from every other thing.
Exactly exactly.

And so there's this rush to.
It's the gold rush.
Right, this is the gold rush.
For me, it's very beneficial toincorporate this tool, but what
it does for me is itunderscores what people are
starting to lose and miss, andthis is where I'm going to pull
it all the way back to aretirement.

(46:32):
With this retirement shift goingon, the people who are leaving
at the top of project management.
They're not leaving with oodlesof knowledge about or value
management, for example right,yes, they are.
They've used those tools for avery long time, but the tools
knowledge that is going to belost doesn't hold a candle to

(46:53):
the critical thinking andbusiness acumen and strategic
communication stuff that's goingto be missed.
And that's where, if you'relooking listen to me, whoever's
listening to this podcast as amoment if you're a project
manager, you're looking to takenext steps.
Get into senior projectmanagement roles.
Go set up a PMO, work at PMOlevel all of these things right.

(47:16):
Go invest in these skills,because those are the skills
that are going to be missingsoon.
Ai skills are not going to bemissing.
Look around, how many millionsof people are not just using AI
but touting AI trainings and allof these things right and it's
don't follow that crowd.
Look at the future and what'sgoing to be missing.

(47:40):
Don't say, oh, it's going tohave all these AI tools.
What's going to be missing whenthe robots are here, it's the
human element, and if you can'tconvince a person, you can't
succeed in a job interview.
Anyway, if you want to grow forthe future, invest now in the
human skills, because that's thedividing line that people are

(48:02):
going to fall one way or theother, forward or backward on.

Good thoughts a lot of experienced PMs that do
coaching, training folks in thepure program.
A lot of that was on softskills.
Yes, and it's because that isso key the technical skills you
can learn.
And the thing is, technicalskills vary by industry.

(48:29):
If you're in an IT is an IT PM,you're going to need a
different set than if you're,maybe, a construction or a
healthcare PM.
And just one more thing on AI.
Ai is back when Lotus or Excelor PowerPoint came out.
Wow, they were game changers,but they were tools and you use

(48:49):
them to do your job.
Ai is a powerful tool that'sgrown in leaps and bounds, but
it is a tool.
It's not going to replace you.
I think one of my favoritesayings and I actually included
this in my deck was AI won'treplace you, but people that
know AI will, because the onesthat know how to use it as a

(49:14):
tool will be able to accomplishmore than you.
If you totally just say I'm notinterested in learning AI,
that's my point.

Yeah, I have a prediction.
Okay, and this is a more ontenuous prediction.
Right, I've been playing likefuture predictor here for a
little while with this, but I'mgoing to throw another one in
the fire.
We'll see if, in five years,it's true.
I suspect that over the courseof the next two years,

(49:43):
organizations are going to startjettisoning talented
individuals to try to replacethem with AI.
But I think within two years,those companies are going to
have restructured to bring backlarge numbers of people,
talented people.
They might have slightlydifferent skill sets, but I
think AI is not as much apanacea as people make it out to

(50:09):
be.
To say, oh, software developmentis just going to all be done by
AI now, because I can make itdo a Tetris game or whatever by
giving it a prompt.
I suspect that's not going tobe holding true.
For complexity, right, forcomplicated things that need to
be addressed, for regression,testing and all these different

(50:33):
things.
I think that after a certainamount of time, that's going to
start getting pulled back and Ithink it'll be quiet.
I don't think anyone's going topublicly admit defeat on this
front, but I do think that, likea Microsoft, thousands and
thousands of people they'relaying off right now.
It's a bloodbath of a jobmarket right now because of all
this stuff.

(50:56):
Job market right now, because ofall this stuff, I think in
three years, ai is not going tohave replaced those people.
That in three years two years,three years, that those people,
the levels of people that needto be assigned in those
organizations roughly the same,I think, over time, and they'll
have flushed all these peoplefor nothing over time and
they'll have flushed all thesepeople for nothing.
That's what I think.

(51:16):
I think that what's going onright now is a massive rush to
um, an unproven solution, andwhere were we with a year ago?
It was like chat.
Gpt was a new thing one yearago and it's come so far, so
fast and so much money ischanging hands.
I think there's a rush here andI think that the pivot backward

(51:39):
, the course correction, theadjustment for lack of a better
term the U-turn when they werewrong, it's going to be very
quiet, but I do think thatthey're going to have to pull it
back eventually, because Idon't think this is a tool you
can rely on.
I think that's a tool for speed, but it's not a steering wheel,

(51:59):
right, it's a gas pedal.

It's not a steering wheel.
I will have you back in fiveyears.
Okay, let's do it.

We'll do a follow-up.
Let's do it Three more years.
We'll get together again.

So something you said I think in a writing, and
you mentioned it earlier when wewere having a chat before the
episode is you use theexpression of going from
hindsight to foresight.

Yes.

And I paused on that for a minute.
And then the first thing thatcame to my mind was lessons
learned and what we do.
You, if you create, which I'mbig on.
That's one of my things that Ido.
I just shared a huge one withour team, but it's see, what
went wrong, why did it go wrong?

(52:46):
How was it dealt with?
And then how do you keep thatfrom happening in the future?
And then how do you keep thatfrom happening in the future?
And once you do enough of thoseand you record and you go back
because I every once in a whilewill go down and I think right
now I'm on 79 line items I willperiodically go down through
those, especially on tile filter.

(53:07):
I have it set up with differentcategories.
I'll filter on a topic and I'llread through them.
We're getting ready to startanother new building in a month
and then I know, within sixmonths we're going to start
another new building and thoselessons learned are already
helping lay the groundwork forthe next building.

(53:30):
So, instead of finding thesethings halfway through or three
quarters of the way through,we're starting out from day one,
and that, to me, is theadvantage of lessons learned, so
you don't make the same mistaketwice.
And the two things I thinkabout lessons learned is you do
not do them at the end of aproject yes, please and you

(53:53):
always share them.
It is not a record to be storedwith your project files that
someone can go back and go?
Hey, walt did this project.
It was a pretty big one.
I'm going to go look at hislessons learned.
They should already know that.
It should already be out theresomewhere where they can refer
to it, and if you wait till theend of the project, there's no
way you're actually going todocument the lessons learned.

What was useful in month two of a 24-month
project might not even berelevant anymore by month 24.
That's just life, that'sproject life.
Right, we have to make sure afew things, okay and this is I'm
going to get off on anothertangent here, because this is
the area I want to be studyingin my PhD program and that is

(54:39):
how you turn lessons learnedinto lessons acted upon, because
that's the end result thatyou're looking for, right?
We need to have, and I'm sointerested in this.
I talk to a lot of projectmanagers about it right, a lot
of them say I don't do it, andsome of them say I do it because
I'm supposed to do it, butnobody ever goes back at those,

(55:01):
no one looks at them and I'mlike they're not lessons learned
, they're lessons written down,and that's the thing.
So we have to make sure of acouple things.
One is that lessons are indeedcaptured, and and that's the
thing.
So we have to make sure of acouple things.
One is that lessons are indeedcaptured, and some of that needs
to be written down.
Of course, some of it's moreexperiential and it's hard to
figure out exactly how to storethose things, but that's neither

(55:22):
here nor there in the immediatediscussion.
The other side is we have tomake sure that the project
manager themselves are not thethrough line for all of this.
Where's that line ofconsistency for that, if I'm the
only one doing it and I'mcarrying these lessons out of

(55:42):
the project and the back end ofthe project and so on and so
forth, there's that risk, right,when I'm gone, who's going to
do that anymore?
Or is that stuff just going tofall by the wayside and you need
to start thinkingsystematically about your
organization and the approach tolearning and the approach to

(56:04):
mistakes and the approach toimprovement and processes and
the cycle of learning, becausethis is not a process.
It's not because this is not aprocess.
It's not.
It's not a process thing.
It feels process and it'sbecause I think it's framed up
that way in the frameworks,right, in the workbooks and in
the standards and all thesethings framed up like procedural

(56:27):
Do it and do it this way.
But it's not.
And have you ever, walt, haveyou ever worked on a project,
let's say, when you were at alower level?
Right, you weren't a senior,you were working in a project.
You ever worked in a project,from project to project or you
worked in a role where the samemistakes kept getting made over

(56:49):
and over.
Yeah, everyone has.
That's not a discipline problem, it's not a process problem,
it's not even a willingnessproblem.
Often it's a knowledge problem.
It's a learning problem.
We're not learning from ourmistakes.
We're not.
We don't have a structure, asystem, a way of doing things

(57:16):
that lets us course correct.
It's fine to make a mistake.
It's not fine to make the samemistake more than once, and
that's where the rubber meetsthe road for this.
So now you've got a problem.
If you're going to take thisthing seriously, you've got a
huge problem, and that is I needto have a team that's open to
learning these lessons.
I need to have seniorleadership that is open to
hearing from the lower levelsand then incorporating that into

(57:38):
the way that they approachtheir strategies.
And we need to have structureand systems that allow for
cross-functional communication,communication and cross silo
communication and relevantrepository.
This is a big, beefy, complexthing that largely project

(58:01):
management is silent about, andthat's a shame because, one,
there's not as much guidance forPMOs to do something like this
as there should be, but, two, italmost does us a disservice to
reduce this to a process, put itin a document, put it in a
repository, so on and so forth.
Now we're at a point where thisis a strategic differentiator

(58:27):
for me as a project manager.
Right, if I can capitalize onwhat's learned project to
project, my team's going to getbetter from project to project
and that has a measurabledifference.
Right, that's gonna have anoutcome that is desirable for
the organization.
So now I've got all these ideasswirling in my head and I say

(58:48):
these are problems, right, thatprojects are struggling.
And I've seen it, you've seenit.
We're struggling with thelearning problem.
Because we don't think of itthat way.
When you start thinking about alearning problem, start
thinking of a knowledgeretention problem.
I look at my own background andI say, hey, project managers,

(59:08):
just FYI, there's this wholemature field that's been around
for hundreds of years calledlibrarianship, that deals with a
lot of this stuff thatinterfaces and plugs in with a
lot of these kinds of problems.
Are there lessons learned there?
Right?
Can we learn from outside ofour field instead of
bootstrapping the whole dangthing ourselves?

(59:30):
Can we look outside of projectmanagement?
We look at knowledge management, organizational development.
Can we look at librarianship andinformation management,
metadata, data management theseare all things that are there,
and I think I've seen thecartoon around where there's the
project manager who's likegetting covered in data, right,
and the manager senior leadersat the top are saying we need

(59:52):
more data, and the machine'sjust spewing more data out.
It's covering up the projectmanager.
It's not about that anymore.
It's can you turn data intoinformation and learn from the
information and then do based onwhat you've learned?
That's the final component andthat's where you need these
leadership skills we've beentalking about for this last hour
is can you motivate your teamto do what's needed to be done?

(01:00:17):
Can you engender a spirit ofinnovation to get better at the
team level?
Can you get people to put theireyes on improvement and better
ways of doing the work that youdon't know?
And senior leadership sure asheck doesn't know.
There's a lot of componentshere that really can drive

(01:00:40):
success in an unprecedented wayin many contexts, and it makes
me excited, right.

Walt Sparling (01:00:48):
It makes me feel like there's a ton of efficiency
that's being left on the tableright now so one of the things
you were talking about sharingwith your team and energizing
the team, educating the team oneof the things that I like about
where I'm at right now thecurrent pmo it's somewhat

(01:01:11):
limited.
They do it.
What they do is a lessonslearned recap every few months.
They do.
They pick two projects and theyhave the pm and PM if they're
working with them, or the PM andthe PC will go through a
lessons learned on that, andit's only a small group of types
of projects.
We deal with all kinds, butthey always focus on these
retail projects.

John Connolly (01:01:32):
Yeah.

And they share lessons learned and a lot of
times I've sat through a few ofthem.
I haven't been able to makeevery one, but I see the same
themes.
Like you said, why are thesethings happening over and over
again?
Yeah, all right are.
Were you on previous of theseand did you not take that back?

(01:01:53):
Yeah, because how did it happenon your project when, six
months ago, someone shared that?

lesson learned?
Yeah and can?
Here's the deal for me, right,the name of the game is always
can you set up the rules of thegame right, that every team
member at every level isinterested and pursues the

(01:02:26):
ability to surface new ideas, tosurface potential problems, to
surface all these areas forpotential improvement?
Because right now, I think whatyou're doing with that
discussion is very good and it'salso rare for a lot of projects
Just my experience.

(01:02:46):
No, I agree that's so powerfulbecause you don't have to have
just one conversation anymore.
You don't have to have aconversation every two, three
months, and that those arehelpful.
You might still want to keepdoing that, but you now have a

(01:03:10):
level of investment in processimprovement and strategic
improvement that can permeateyour team.
This is again like this is oneof those chicken and egg things,
right, and I know we'll talkabout chickens later.
But this is one of thosechicken and egg things, right,
and I know we'll talk aboutchickens later.
But this is one of thosechicken and egg things where,
like you, have an engaged teamand it creates success and then
success also creates engagedteam.

(01:03:30):
It's a virtuous cycle.
You want that as a leader.
You want that.
We need that to be successfulproject managers and the engine
for that is lessons learned.
And I am reading the PMI'sstandard for project management

(01:03:51):
offices PMO body of knowledgeand lessons learned is mentioned
.
There are some sections aboutlessons learned but I did the
full text PDF search of it.
I think Lessons Learned comesup, like it's mentioned, maybe
25 times total for this wholelike 300 page book project

(01:04:23):
management.
It's not really given a deeplook in project management.
You're starting to see a littlebit of it and I want to really
dig in, dig my claws into that,as I continue to study and learn
and train and teach and writewherever I can, because I think
this is really important.
I think this is going to be anengine for success, success.
Think about this where doeslessons learned fit in the five

(01:04:45):
process groups?
Closer right.
Close the project.
That's where the process goes.
How many processes are in theclosing process group?
Don't know one.
Close the project.
It is buried in the smallest,like least defined, least built

(01:05:11):
out process group.
For pmi.

It's still listed as a process but it's, and
that's where I think why I thinkit's been done that way and why
it's, in my opinion, is wrong,because it's in every phase.
It's in every part of theprocess, from creating the
business plan to executing, toclosing.

(01:05:36):
There's something learned inevery one of those areas.

Projects create something new and something
unique.
If it's not you new is notunique, then it's not really a
project, Right?
The thing is that?
So let me ask you this.
Then here's an academicquestion.
I do this when I'm trainingpeople all the time.
Right, Talking about projectmanagement, Let me ask you this
At the end of the project, right, you haven't delivered yet.

(01:06:00):
Who is the subject matterexpert on your deliverable?
There's a group of people thatare the subject matter.
They're the subject matterexperts on your deliverable.

Who is that For the closing deliverable?

Yeah, before you give it all, turn the keys over
to whoever the customer is.
The answer is the project team,whoever that's made, whoever
the composition is.
Why?
Because they built the dangthing and they're even.
I was doing softwareimplementation projects for a
long time and the team at theend of the project.

(01:06:38):
We had what's called hypercare,where the team, the project
team, was on retainer to thecustomer for eight weeks, right
when they said don't callcustomer service, call your
project team.
Why?
Because that particular build,that particular database, that
particular user set.
We were the experts on it.

(01:06:58):
New knowledge is created in theexecution of a project.
And if we don't see it that way, if we just think we're
delivering a physical somethingor a non-physical deliverable, a
software something, if we thinkwe're delivering things, that's
only part of the whole.
We're also delivering knowledge.
Everything comes with a usermanual.

(01:07:19):
We're also delivering knowledge.
Everything comes with a usermanual.
I talked to a group of folks whowere building.
They were building an expansionto Dulles Airport, which is
they've just cracked open a newproject they're going to get
started on, but they were doinglike an expansion of something
on the Dulles Airport.
Their post-delivery work wasalmost as much as the actual

(01:07:40):
delivery work, because they hadto hand over all the schematics,
all the specifications, theyhad to get checks and everything
that all needed to betransferred.
The risk, all the risks thatstill existed, they all needed
to be transferred over toanother team.
You've built this thing, butyou've also created a whole body

(01:08:02):
of knowledge around the thingand that needs to be managed.
And how do you offload that?
It's one thing to say, man,we'll have a training that works
in a tiny little project that'sin some corner of a software
company.
But this is a big question.
This is a value deliveryquestion.
This is a customer benefitsquestion.

(01:08:23):
It's an organizationaldevelopment question and I just
it drives me a little bonkerssometimes that project
management is almost completelysilent about it when it's
projects are bound up in this.
You can't, you cannot come tome.
I will not accept it If youcome to me and you say the
reason why it's not there isbecause it's not our job.

(01:08:45):
Sorry, my friend, it's your job, but it's a neglected area.
And we don't most projectmanagers either think at best
they say that's the PMO's job,it's not my job.

At best they say that.
Most of them say knowledgemanagement.
What are?

you even talking about.

That's just not even in our discipline.
You have to manage your ownknowledge at a minimum, yes, but
the human side, you share thatwith others.
It's important, it buildscamaraderie, it builds
confidence, sharing not only theproject, like the physical
aspects of it, the technicalaspects of it, but the learned

(01:09:38):
portion of it.
Like you said, what is aproject?
It's a thing.
You built a thing.
Most people don't buildbuildings to build a building.
They build a building to createa shelter or to create an
experience or to create a tool.
I do a lot of interiorrenovation work.
And what does the client want?

(01:10:00):
They want a space thatenergizes employees when they
come to work and that experiencethe wall colors, the carpet
type, the room sizes, the shapes, everything is around.
What kind of experience arethese employees going to feel
when they come into this space?

Yes, yeah, and that's it's.
It's unappreciated, but thosethings are real, they have
benefits, they have real valueto all of us, right, To the
people that are going to workthere, the people who are paying
you to do that, right, thepeople who are doing the work.
Like this is a, there's a, anintersection of lines, right,

(01:10:40):
and there's all this work that'sbeing done, all this time
that's being spent.
I'm always just so cognizant ofyou don't want any of that to
go to waste.
You don't want to.
And cycling over and over again, without learning from, without
improvement upon it, you'rejust laying down stones.
You got to be able to stackthem on top of each other at

(01:11:03):
some point if you want to havean edifice and these are these
it's just bears thought.
What's the practical tool thatwe're going to deploy?
What's the framework that we'regoing to have?
I don't know.
I'll get back to you when I'mdeeper into my PhD program and
I've had some time to really putsome thought into it.
But right now, where we arelooking at everything we've

(01:11:26):
talked about, put a bow on itright.
We have changing of the guardin personnel, we have a large
amount of knowledge being lost.
It's just the way it is.
There's going to be somethinglost because we can't replace
you, and then there's going tobe this crunch.
There's going to be all thesenew tools, there's going to be

(01:11:48):
all these digital things, we'regoing to have all these AI bots
and whatever else is going to becoming around the corner, but
the human element is alwaysgoing to be there and how we
learn is part of the humanelement.
And having an understanding ofprojects as not just production

(01:12:09):
of a thing, but as a dynamo forlearning inside and outside of
your organization is a gamechanger, changer, and that can
be a key differentiator, I think, for any organization that's
project-based and I think that'sthe future of project

(01:12:33):
management.
My argument is this is thefuture of project management,
and if people haven't realizedit yet, organizations are going
to realize it eventually.
And if you're in for deliveringvalue or making money, or
making the world a better place,or any of it.
I think this is the key.
I really do If this one littlecomponent of a single process in

(01:12:56):
the smallest process group inthe PMBOK, I think, holds the
key to tomorrow's projectmanagement.

I liked it.
Any other closing?

thoughts.
Oh, I think it's planned.
I don't have any.
I don't have any.
I've done so much talking and Ithank you for your patience and
having me on tonight and, um, Ithink that the the main thing
that I would urge people to dois put together a plan for

(01:13:36):
yourself for career in progress,project management.
A lot of people there's so manypeople who are going to help
you get that PMP.
I help people get the PMP allthe time.
I've taught over 300 studentsnow in the last couple of years
to get their PMP and that'sgreat and it's wonderful, but

(01:13:56):
you need to have a plan foryourself after that.
The plan can't be land in a newrole and wing it.
So my request to people putdown a plan, write it out.
Yeah, you can change it later,but write a plan and figure out
where you want to grow your softskills, where you want to

(01:14:20):
develop and invest in theelements that are going to be
missing from this technologicalfuture that we're constructing,
because the things that make ushuman will always be there, they
will always be in demand, theywill always be dealt with one

(01:14:41):
way or another.
We're all going to have to gettogether and your ability to
move in the social waters, inthe human waters, in the gray
area, the nebulous ambiguitythat's the heart of project
management.
Right there you can create thatclarity out of ambiguity which
arises from human beings doinghuman things, and that's a huge

(01:15:07):
area to think about when you'replanning your development.
Don't leave that to chance.
Get ahead of that.
Find people like Walt or otherpeople who are out there who can
help guide you, who have goodideas and thoughts, who have
walked the walk.
Please, I'm begging you,prepare for the future.
This is all part of the futureof project management.

(01:15:28):
Pmi brands it PowerSkills.
I think it's both a blend ofPowerSkills and Business Acumen,
those two elements on thetalent triangle that they have.
But this is really importantright now and it's not just your
future, but it's the future ofthe profession at large.
And we have to be ready becausein five more years we're going

(01:15:50):
to have to lead and that's alittle scary.
And we've got to be prepared asbest we can.
And that's the nature ofproject managers.
Right, we plan and we areprepared, we can, and that's the
nature of project managers.
Right, we plan and we areprepared.

Yes, and that's it's coming up on.
It's surprising how quick thisyear has gone by, but it is.
It's not going to be too longand we're going to be at the end
of the year.
We need to start thinking aboutwhat we're doing next year.
Planning is a big part of it.
I do at the end of every year.
I do some posts on goalplanning and self-evaluation and

(01:16:24):
, like last year, I did one on360 feedback Learn where you
need to grow, where you need toimprove your skill sets, because
if you don't, you are justwinging it and seeing how it
goes.
I was going today and gonna I'mgonna manage my project and see

(01:16:45):
what happens.

Yeah, yeah, we're right at the end of the year up
here in the DC area because thefederal fiscal year coming to
an end soon and so that'sanother good time.
But the the answer really isn't.
You don't have to wait untilit's like New Year's New Year's
Eve to come up with these things.
Yeah, and it's so important.
It's so important.
Do you have a plan for yourprofessional development?
And the plan for professionaldevelopment cannot be.

(01:17:09):
I'm going to wait till mymanager tells me to take three
courses in the LMS.
Sorry, that is not a plan.
That is not a plan.
That is not even professionaldevelopment, that is.
I've worked in a place wherethey said oh, your performance
evaluation this year says takefive courses off the LMS.
And the LMS has like hundredsof courses on everything from

(01:17:31):
skydiving to underwater basketweaving, and you can just do
five of whatever.
And then you've checked the boxand you can move on with
exactly what you were doingbefore.
And then you've checked the boxand you can move on with
exactly what you were doingbefore.
It's not the case.
This is change.
How do you want to change andgrow yourself?
How do you want to be different?
How does that align with whatthings are going to be different
in the future.

(01:17:51):
Get ahead of it.
Invest now.
You'll thank yourself later.
Future you will look back onyou today and say thank you past
me, that's been very helpful.

Good stuff, Good stuff, John appreciate it's
always good talking with you andI look forward to.
I'm sure we're going to talkbefore five years is up, but I
do look forward to thatfive-year discussion.

Thank you, yeah, it's always fun to talk to you,
walt.
I really always appreciate it.

All right, I appreciate everyone listening
and joining us this evening.
I want to wish everyone a greatrest of your night and we'll
see you on the next episode ofPM Mastery.

Intro/Outro (01:18:31):
Thanks for listening to the PM Mastery
podcast at wwwpm-masterycom.
Be sure to subscribe in yourpodcast player until next time.
Keep working on your craft.

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