Episode 7: Neal Whitten – Project Management In Your Organization

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● NEAL WHITTEN NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  It’s a great opportunity to talk about what matters most to you, whether you’re a professional project manager, or maybe you’re working toward one of your certifications.  We want to help spark your imagination, light a fire under you, and encourage you along the way.  And we do that by talking about issues and trends in the field and hearing from those in the trenches who are doing the job of project management. I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are two guys who have been in the trenches.  They know what it takes to succeed.  They are here to help you succeed.  Athey are our resident experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And guys, here we are again.  And we’re going to be joined by another expert in just a moment.  But I’ve got to confess to you I’m a little antsy to be outside right now.  We’ve turned the corner into spring.  There’s just something about the freshness of everything in this season, something in the air that... BILL YATES:  Nick, it’s called pollen. NICK WALKER:  I wondered what that was.  Yeah.  Yeah, the tree pollen, it gets me.  But the brightness, the newness of the season kind of makes up for the sneezing almost.  So spring is here.  It’s nice to have that.  But I’m really looking forward to hearing from our guest today.  Neal Whitten is a project management professional.  He’s a speaker.  He’s a trainer, a consultant, and a mentor to those who are up-and-coming in the field of project management.  His newest book is called “The Gift of Wisdom:  Lessons for a Lifetime.”  Neal, welcome to Manage This. NEAL WHITTEN:  Well, thank you.  I’m honored to be here. NICK WALKER:  It’s always good to kind of hear a little bit about folks’ backgrounds before we kind of delve into everything.  Tell us a little bit about kind of where you’ve been. NEAL WHITTEN:  Okay.  So we’re going to start by putting the audience to sleep.  I have a degree in electrical engineering.  Hired on at IBM as a software engineer and took early retirement there, and have been on my own for over 20 years, doing my own thing, but all related to project management. NICK WALKER:  A lot of our listeners may already be familiar with you, your work on Velociteach.com.  You’ve created a lot of content for us.  You’re kind of another resident expert, really. NEAL WHITTEN:  Well, this is absolutely true.  You know what, we all are legends in our own mind, let’s just put it that way. BILL YATES:  Well, I’ve got to jump in on that. NICK WALKER:  Yeah, Bill. BILL YATES:  This is Bill.  It’s interesting, the studio that we’re in, Neal has been in this studio to produce about close to a dozen eLearning courses for us now.  And one of the things I love about the perspective of Neal, I mean, you hear it.  He was with IBM for 25 years.  He’s an electrical engineer.  Yet so many of the topics that are passion points for him have to do with soft skill, their leadership, their how to be strategic and think big picture.  And so we’re privileged and honored to be partnering with Neal. NICK WALKER:  And you trained, Neal, in a lot of environments, a lot of different various organizations.  What common thread do you find in all of these organizations? NEAL WHITTEN:  I’ve trained in every environment that I can imagine, frankly.  Let me give you an example of something that happened not long ago which is indicative of what a lot of us trainers face.  So I get a phone call from a potential client.  Client had been referenced to the training that I do and said, “Neal, I’m interested in you coming out and giving us some training, and it’s typically in leadership types of things.  But I have a problem, and I need your help on it, and this is the problem.  We’ve had a lot of trainers come out, trainers just like you.  And when they’re through training, they get good evaluations.  People like it.