Manage This - The Project Management Podcast

The podcast for project managers by project managers. How can practitioners incorporate sustainability and social value into their current practice? Karen Thompson and Nigel Williams are the co-creators of Responsible Project Management, an initiative that aims to accelerate achievement of sustainable development goals, encouraging responsibility in the context of projects and project management. PLEASE REFER TO OUR ‘CLAIM PDUS’ PAGE TO NOTE THE CHANGES TO THE PDU CLAIM PROCESS. Table of Contents 02:12 … The History of Responsible Project Management06:42 … Comparing Responsible Management to Corporate Social Responsibility07:45 … Changing the Role of the Project Manager10:43 … Correctly Defining Sustainability12:24 … Who Might I be Hurting through This Work?16:38 … Questions to Ask as a Responsible Project Manager19:51 … When it’s Not about Success or Failure22:19 … How to Raise Awareness amongst Stakeholders24:48 … A Manifesto for Responsible Project Management29:40 … 2021 The Year of Responsible Project Management32:02 … Learn More about Responsible Project Management33:13 … Closing WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me is Bill Yates.  And we’d like to wish you a very happy New Year.  This is 2021, and we hope it’s going to be a good one. BILL YATES:  Oh, yes.  It’s got to be. WENDY GROUNDS:  It’s got to be better.  We like to talk with experts who are doing new and exciting things in the world of project management.  And that brings us to today’s guests.  Dr. Karen Thompson is a senior academic at Bournemouth University Business School in the U.K.  She’s a project professional turned innovative educator.who has done a lot of research and education in managing projects sustainably. And we have Dr. Nigel Williams, the Reader in Project Management and research lead at the University of Portsmouth.  Karen and Nigel co-lead the Responsible Project Management Initiative, which is aimed to encourage sustainability and social responsibility in an ethical manner by project managers. BILL YATES:  Yeah, sustainability is a topic that we’ve hit on a few times.  And I know just recently we interviewed Scott Berkun, and we focused on his book, “How Design Makes the World.”  Berkun talked about four questions in that book, and the fourth question:  Who might be hurt by your work, now or in the future?  This conversation that we’re going to have today just goes right in line with that.  I think some projects produce amazing things, could be a product or a service.  But we don’t really think about the fallout. We had conversations with Henk about the ocean cleanup project; right?  Episode 106.  Orbital space debris.  We talked with Dr. Heather about that problem in Episode 75.  We all want our cell phones to work.  We want to have GPS.  But what happens when the satellite dies? Sustainability is something that we’re passionate about.  This kind of takes it to another level.  It’s challenging to me as a project manager to think about, okay, in my day-to-day work, how can I be considering these questions?  So I’m excited about this conversation. WENDY GROUNDS: Not so long ago we spoke to Kaitlyn Bunker about the Islands Energy Program.  And that was also an incredible program where they’re really thinking about what is the good that we are bringing in our projects. And with that, let’s get talking to Karen and Nigel. The History of Responsible Project Management Karen, could you tell us a little bit about the history of Responsible Project Management, how you started it? KAREN THOMPSON:  Yes, certainly.  Well, how it started was way back in 2017 I’d just finished my Ph.D.  And one of the things that I uncovered while doing that were all the claims that project management research – there were criticisms around it not being relevant enough to practice.  So in 2017 I held a sort of networking event where I brought together practitioners and researchers and educators for a sort of an event to try and start stimulating discussion around research. And making it more relevant to practice. Sustainability wasn’t specifically on the agenda at that point.  But it’s something that’s been in the forefront of my mind for a very long time, and a great frustration, that projects contribute massively to economies around the world to change.  And if we don’t manage that change responsibly, then we’re contributing to degradation of the planet, social division and so forth.  So in 2018, in the summer, we held a workshop at Bournemouth University, where we brought together researchers, educators, practitioners to start exploring what being responsible might mean in the context of project management. So several points we touched base with.  One were these 17 United Nations sustainable development goals, and another was the literature on responsible management.  The Business School at Bournemouth University were advanced signatories to PRME, which is the United Nations Principles of Responsible Management Education.  But project management has tended to develop over the years in something of a little bubble.  There’s been lots of developments in management that haven’t necessarily always found their way through into project management. Either the literature from an academic perspective or indeed from practice.  So that was partly where we started. We chose the word “responsible” really to echo those sustainable development goals and responsible management ideas. Really also with the view that project management underwent a rethinking around 2003/4.  There was a network that was funded to start looking at issues and project failure and how that could be improved.  At the same time, interestingly, sustainable development went through a rethinking exercise.  As far as I know, the two initiatives were completely separate.  And both fields, one of the things they recognized was sort of a bit of a PR problem.  So sustainable development, it was recognized that it was the narrative that was causing a lot of problems.  So we’ve been talking about sustainability for a very long time.  But as is becoming ever more apparent, very little action had been taken.  The way it was defined was around future generations. Well, the future we were talking about in the 1980s is now.  We need to refine our definition.  It’s no longer appropriate to be thinking about this just for the future.  These impacts are here now.  So we want to act on those.  And similarly, the problem is a well-managed project, the project manager and the project management is invisible.  So we firmly believe that Responsible Project Management can help accelerate achievement of the sustainable development goals.  And the other aspect that I’m sure Nigel will pick up on in a moment is that sustainable development has tended to focus on the environment.  Now, actually, if you look at the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, you’ll see an awful lot of them are about society and about people. NIGEL WILLIAMS:  Right.  I’ve been involved in the project management community for some time.  I used to run Organizational Project Management PMI for a bit, and stuff.  And I found out all the conversations that were happening there were pretty much the same, that there’s lots of discussion about project success.  There’s a lot of discussion about tools and techniques.  It felt we’re having the same conversation over and over.  So there were developments happening in the general management world that weren’t really reflected in project management.  I think the last big think was Agile maybe. The idea of responsibility in management is a long-debated issue from the early conception of modern management.  And even from the ‘50s there were lots of debates as to what is the social responsibility of business.  So a little later on we developed corporate social responsibilities where organizations had an official stance as to how they should deal with communities and so on.  Comparing Responsible Management to Corporate Social Responsibility So how responsible management differs from corporate social responsibility is that it looks at managers, individual managers, who take ownership of environmental sustainability, social responsibility, and enact them in their daily practice in an ethical manner.  So that’s where we separate responsible management from corporate social responsibility.  Now, in project management, it’s doubly so because project managers have a lot of uncertainties that they deal with that can’t necessarily be prescribed in advance by the organization. So if you work in a traditional operational environment, a lot of the organizational rules can be scripted in advance because a lot is known in advance.  If you work in something like projects, you deal quite a lot of uncertainties, and project managers have to create responses to a lot of unforeseen circumstances.  So you really want to have managers who internalize the idea of responsibility, rather than simply relying on external perspectives on responsibility. Changing the Role of the Project Manager BILL YATES:  Karen and Nigel, I can already feel the tension of the project manager who has certain goals and objectives that they have to reach.  And now we’re saying, okay, as you do that, there’s a whole ‘nother dimension that we want you to consider as you carry out your project.  What is the impact you’re having on society, on the environment, on those stakeholders or those people that are even part of the project team?  I’m delighted to have you guys talking with us about this.  Just jumping right into that, how does this concept of being a responsible project manager change the role of the project manager? KAREN THOMPSON:  I’m very aware that the role of the project manager is already very stressful.  Managing cost, time,

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The podcast by project managers for project managers. An episode about detecting imminent failure and dealing with project issues that could lead to failure. The project manager’s approach to supporting the team, addressing issues, and communicating resolutions is crucial for any project facing adversity. Table of Contents 01:56 … Meet Susan03:54 … Susan’s Project Story08:30 … When Nobody Speaks Up10:59 … Warning Signs15:55 … When is the Project Manager at Fault19:38 … Sequestering the Team22:25 … Maintaining Communication Channels26:40 … Root Cause Analysis28:30 … Documenting Lessons Learned31:06 … The Resolution of Susan’s Project34:05 … Get in Touch with Susan35:03 … Closing SUSAN IRWIN:  It’s not about ego.  It is about furthering the practice of project management, it is about making everybody great.  It is about working together as a unified team. Not just a project team, but a project manager team, to make each one of us great. WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me is Bill Yates.  So an interesting thing happened to us the other day. As we were preparing to record this podcast, two days ago, we had some equipment failure. BILL YATES:  Yes, we did. WENDY GROUNDS:  And that amounts to a project failure. BILL YATES:  Yes. WENDY GROUNDS:  Have you ever had a project fail, Bill? BILL YATES:  Yes, I certainly have.  I think most who are listening to this can relate.  I think it was quite ironic that we would have a project failure, even with our episode as we were going to record this. First time.  That’s too funny. WENDY GROUNDS:  Fortunately, Danny got us fixed up, and we’re ready to go today. BILL YATES:  You know, Wendy, it occurs to me this topic is one that is really rich.  And we offer an online course by Neal  Whitten on this topic of project failure.  It’s called “17 Top Reasons Why Projects Fail.”  Neal goes through those.  He introduces those 17, and then of course talks about how we can avoid them.  So another way we can go deeper in this topic. WENDY GROUNDS:  We’re actually talking with someone who has experience in project failure.  Our guest is Susan Irwin, and she’s an adjunct professor at the University of Alabama, Collat School of Business. BILL YATES:  Wendy, this is going to be a pertinent conversation for our listeners.  And I’m excited to have Susan with us.  She has great information about both how to detect when failure is imminent with a project, and then advice.  So she gives four areas of advice for those that are dealing with project issues that could lead to failure.  So let’s get into it with Susan. Meet Susan WENDY GROUNDS:  Susan, welcome to Manage This.  Thank you so much for being our guest. SUSAN IRWIN:  Yes, thank you.  I’m so excited to be able to share my ideas. WENDY GROUNDS:  We’re looking forward to hearing your story.  But I want to ask you about your career background.  Can you tell me how you got into project management? SUSAN IRWIN:  So I’ve been doing this for about 15 years.  And so like most project managers that have been doing it for this long, I actually stumbled into it by happenstance. I was a developer by trade.  I was really content on spending my life in the development side of the house.  A manager at the time saw something in me, and this was back when project management was first starting to come into industry.  You didn’t really see it much outside of the government sector.  He asked me if I wanted to step into this role as a project manager. I really was apprehensive about it because I didn’t really see at that time the value in project management.  I felt that project managers were more of the gatekeeper and less of the facilitator of getting work done. And so I begrudgingly did it, and I fell in love with it. So I went in, I did my PMP certification, and fell in love with it. And where I originally thought it was more of a gatekeeper or wasn’t allowing you to move projects forward. I actually found that, no, project managers do open up that gate and do facilitate and do shield the team and make sure things get accomplished.  So I went and did an MBA with an emphasis in project management, and then went on ahead and did my Ph.D. in information technology with an emphasis on project management.  So I teach classes and I often tell my students, as you can tell by all my certifications and my degrees, my love of project management now that has grown over the years.  And I love the fact that now you can get those degrees in project management that didn’t exist before. BILL YATES:  That’s true. Susan’s Project Story WENDY GROUNDS:  You had written an article on project failure. And I want to just lead into that with you telling us the story about this project.  Could you introduce what happened? SUSAN IRWIN:  Yes.  So I was actually the portfolio manager, or the program manager, on this project, and I had 13 lanes.  Our project was at a local bank here in town. We were to move our third-party processing from one vendor to another.  So we interfaced with our new third-party vendor. And then we had outside components that also interfaced in with our third-party processors.  So they obviously had to move, as well.  This particular article stemmed out of an issue where, at the time, we had received a go from all parties involved. So from the original organization, from the new third-party processor, and from the third-party vendor that was interfacing in.  And so we had received a go that we were ready to move this into production. Now, this was a two-year project, multimillion-dollar project.  So we were about two weeks away from our targeted go-live date.  About a week later, we had a meeting with our new third-party processor, and one lone individual threw his hand up and said, “I really don’t think we’re ready,” and explained the reason why.  And so really what he was expecting to see from test cases he had not seen come across. So that spurred into a bunch of discussions with different individuals.  And so we had, just to kind of give you our leadership perspective, I had a business sponsor, I had an executive business sponsor, I had a technology sponsor and executive technology sponsor. So as you can tell, frustrations are high, people are concerned. People are going, well, how am I culpable in this situation?  How did we get here?  And so I had one individual who went and gave the story to the chief technology officer, the CTO at the time, that this was a failure of project management, without any background or anything.  I was extremely upset because the narrative of this was we had no facts to base this on. And so this article was my response to that, as opposed to sending the scathing email that I wanted to do. But as I started looking at this, I started thinking, well, if I’m going through this, maybe other people are going through this, as well.  So fast-forwarding into the situation we had, at that point in time we were a week out.  We had already done a go here.  And we needed to figure out how are we going to get from where we’re at to where we need to be. And figure out how we can get some semblance of a go-live date in very short form because, every single time we move this date out, there’s a cost implication to it.  So pulled the team together, had daily meetings with everybody.  Pulled this list of all the things that the third-party processing vendor was expecting to see, and worked with this third-party processor to get those in place. Make sure we have those tested, and then get those signed off. And then, as we started digging deep into this, I had an opportunity to speak with my portfolio manager about this. And I said, you know, we typically put safety gates in to ensure that we don’t have these project failures.  So you have risk and issue management.  Well, we actually had a risk associated to this vendor as not being prepared as we originally thought. So we had that safety gate in that we were tracking.  Then we had a go/no-go decision point that we were tracking.  Then we had a meeting with the bank, the third-party processor, and the outside vendor. And so we had another safety gate where we had between the third-party processor and us. And we had another safety gate between us and the third party.  So as you can tell, we had safety gates in place.  But we blew through all of them. Because in reality the root cause of this was no one felt like they had the authority to be able to stand up and say, hey, we’re not ready.  Here’s a problem, and this is what’s happening. When Nobody Speaks Up BILL YATES:  This is so, so interesting.  And so relatable, unfortunately, I think, to most of our listeners. We’ve all been in situations where the wheels fall off of a project.  I’ve got to ask you, so when you say you blew through the safety gates, by that do you mean the indications were there that, okay, we’re not really passing the quality checkpoints that we had in place, but nobody’s wanting to raise their hand and bring attention to it?  So is that what’s going on? SUSAN IRWIN:  Well, yeah, we’re blowing through these, so we’re getting a go.  We’re getting through each of these meetings.  Nobody’s raising their hand.  And it’s not until post-go, when we’re having one of these meetings, we’re up against the go-live date, that a single individual raises his hand and says, “We’re not in a position where we can go, and here’s the reason why.” BILL YATES:  Wow.  So nobody was brave enough, if you will, to say, hey, the emperor has no clothes kind of a thing.  Looks like nobody wanted to do that. SUSAN IRWIN:  Yeah.  That’s 100 percent correct.  And again, I had been doing this for 15 years, you know, and several years before that in the technology management side, just without the title.

The podcast for project managers by project managers. The sales team and the project manager - how to improve that complex relationship.  Advice for the project teams who have to deliver what sales has sold and why sales professionals should be kept engaged in the project from start to finish. Table of Contents 01:56 … Meet James 03:06 … BrandMuscle 04:17 … The Sales Guy’s Perspective 08:56 … The Pressure on the Sales Team 11:37 … How to Deliver what Sales has Sold 15:17 … Project Handoff 17:20 … Scrutinize the Contract 18:48 … Advice for the Sales Team 21:33 … The Project Kickoff 23:57 … Sales and Identifying Risks 25:13 … The Project Handoff 26:56 … Leadership Influencers 28:07 … Career Advice 29:42 … Connect with James 30:23 … Closing JAMES MORSE:  ...as you balance that relationship with sales, you naturally develop a trusting relationship between the project team and the sales team.  And that’s so helpful because then I trust the salesperson to deliver something correctly, and they trust me to actually deliver on that and make sure that that project gets in time, is in budget, is in scope, and it delivers a happy customer. WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is our opportunity to meet with you and talk about issues that project managers are facing today.  We hope you’ll continue to tell us what you like and offer your suggestions.  You can leave a comment on Google, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or whatever podcast listening app you use.  You can also leave comments on the Velociteach.com website or on our social media pages.  I am Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio is Bill Yates. BILL YATES:  Wendy, we’re going to have a fun conversation today.  We’ve got a great topic. WENDY GROUNDS:  Yes, we have.  And we have a great guest, too.  So his name is James Morse, and he serves as the Vice President and Head of Product for BrandMuscle.  He’ll tell us a little bit more about BrandMuscle coming up. BILL YATES:  Yeah.  And James is unique in that he served the project manager role and also the sales role, project manager first in his career and then later in sales, and so really what we’re going to talk about is the hatred between project managers and sales. WENDY GROUNDS:  I’d say a particularly strong dislike. BILL YATES:  Yeah, there’s so many project managers who have discovered that their sales team has made some promises or overcommitments that now the project manager and the team have to deliver.  So we’re going to talk about that. WENDY GROUNDS:  I think so, we’re going to boil it down to communication. BILL YATES:  Yes, we are. WENDY GROUNDS:  Let’s talk with James. BILL YATES:  Yes. WENDY GROUNDS:  James, welcome to Manage This.  Thank you for being our guest today. JAMES MORSE:  Thanks for having me. Meet James WENDY GROUNDS:  Can you tell us how you started your career, and how you ended up in the role that you’re in today? JAMES MORSE:  Yeah, absolutely. So I think I’m very lucky to, right out of school, have gotten an opportunity within project management, which I think a lot of my peers didn’t necessarily do.  They started with other careers and kind of paced into that, so I really hit the ground running.  I was doing new client onboardings and implementations, which has really just been a lot of the breadth of my career when it comes to project management.  And then I’ve slowly just transitioned into different opportunities, typically in SaaS and software, which has taken me to where I am currently with BrandMuscle. So I’ve been with BrandMuscle for a little over seven years, similar background even within the organization.  I started with new client onboardings and implementations in the project lead role and just slowly grew within that to project manager, to senior project manager, leading our team of project managers within implementation, and then transitioning to more of that pre-sales role, the sales engineer, solutions consultant, however we want to think about that.  And then ultimately I actually just moved into our product team, leading up our entire product strategy space. BrandMuscle WENDY GROUNDS:  Tell us about BrandMuscle, the company that you work for. JAMES MORSE:  So we fall into the – we call it “Through-Channel Marketing Automation.”  So if you look at the analyst space, that’s the title and terminology they’ll use.  But really what it is, is technology that empowers channel partners of all types.  And when I think of channel partners, ultimately these are people who sell products and services through a channel on behalf of our clients.  So it could be a nationwide insurance agent.  It could be a Pandora jewelry retailer, a franchisee, an alcohol and beverage distributor.  Ultimately they take corporate brand assets, their messaging, the advertising, co-op funds, really demand generation activities to drive local sales and market locally to reach their customers, and so that’s where BrandMuscle steps in.  So we offer both software and services to act on behalf of corporate at that national or global level to enable local marketing. WENDY GROUNDS:  Where are your offices based? JAMES MORSE:  So we have four offices in the U.S. – Cleveland, Ohio; our headquarters is in Chicago; Kansas City; Austin, Texas.  And then we have two offices in India, in Bangalore and Noida. The Sales Guy’s Perspective BILL YATES:  James, the experience that you’ve had with BrandMuscle I think is going to help you relate to so many of our listeners, and the fact that you’ve done project management.  So you’ve also been the liaison between a project manager and the sales team, and you’ve done the sales role, as well.  Which brings me to the elephant in the room, which is many times project managers dislike, despise, want to torture the sales team.  Do you agree with me that that can be the case in many instances? JAMES MORSE:  I completely agree.  I wouldn’t even limit it to just project managers; right?  The entire organization can sometimes loathe the sales team. BILL YATES:  Yup.  Yeah, it’s a love/hate.  I mean, if you don’t have sales, you’ve got nothing.  You’ve got to sell something before any other business will happen.  So it is the catalyst.  But all kidding aside, I mean, there are times when we can look back on our careers as project managers and go, wow, that project was especially difficult because there was a miscommunication between sales and the customer and us, you know, the team that actually had to implement it.  So that’s the elephant in the room that we thought, this is the perfect opportunity for us to discuss this issue and share some advice.  There are some reasons that sales and project managers, sometimes they don’t get along. And one of those, I think back, because a lot of my background is software, many times we would go in as a team to implement a solution, and we had a very clear understanding of how this was going to work.  We’d done these types of projects before.  And then we realized the salesperson has sold vaporware to our customer.  There’s a capability that doesn’t exist, and we’ve got to figure it out, and so many times, you know, we’re finding that out in front of the customer.  The customer says, “Okay, well, Bill, I’m excited about you and your team doing XYZ.  So this is going to completely change how we do our business, and we’re excited about it.”  And I’m looking at him going, “Whoa, it doesn’t work that way.” JAMES MORSE:  Right. BILL YATES:  So that’s one of them.  Wendy, we were talking through this.  Sometimes it’s a scheduling issue, too. WENDY GROUNDS:  Yes.  Sometimes there’s a bit of unrealistic timing.  The salesperson could have said, oh, yes, we’re going to have that done.  We’ll have it done before Christmas, or before the holidays or something like that, and this isn’t going to happen.  Timing is off. BILL YATES:  As a project manager, you are meeting with the customer, and you realize, okay, there’s a disconnect here. So James, maybe bring us some fresh ideas, help us look at it from both perspectives since you’ve served in both roles.  Share the perspective of the sales guy. JAMES MORSE:  You know, I don’t think it’s very different in the grand scheme of things from us as project managers; right?  Ultimately, the salesperson wants to do right by the buyer, the client, the stakeholder, however we want to think about them.  It’s just in a different term, and so I think that a lot of times the salesperson might not be ingrained into the everyday activity.  So we talk about software; right?  They may not know every little bell and whistle the software can do, and oftentimes they may hear something and think something else, and so there’s just a disconnect there. So at the end of the day I think that their intent is pure.  I think sometimes that the execution could be off.  And you know, oftentimes I think that even as project managers, whoever we deliver to, the client or even internally, who our stakeholders are, might think the same thing about us at times.  I was given this project.  What do I do with it, whatever it may be.  It’s just where do we look at that in the overall stream.  So I think that moving to the sales role really helped put that into perspective for me, having done project management.  And honestly, that’s how it was sold to me within BrandMuscle.  Because that elephant in the room is how I felt about sales, is I had been delivering projects and being handed things that, when I think of that iron triangle, right, its scope, its cost, its timing, I thought all the sales team cared about was the cost.  They wanted to look at it from a top line revenue perspective.  And I cared about all three. And so I think moving into the sales role helped me understand where they were coming from because that still is a lot of it.

The podcast for project managers by project managers. Dr. Kaitlyn Bunker, Ph.D., P.E. is a Principal with Rocky Mountain Institute’s Islands Energy Program. Kaitlyn leads a diverse team that partners with islands in the Caribbean to support and accelerate their clean energy transitions. Their projects result in many benefits, including the use of more local, renewable energy sources and less imported fuel. Table of Contents 01:33 … Meet Kaitlyn 02:56 … The Rocky Mountain Institute 05:31 … Projects in the Caribbean Islands 08:20 … Program Partners 09:10 … Local Island Energy Resources 10:15 … Aligning Stakeholders, Local Communities and Project Priorities 13:11 … Project funding 14:28 … Compliance and Regulatory Guidelines and Knowledge Sharing 17:59 … Project Risks 20:10 … Leading a Very Diverse Team 22:27 … Leading Remotely 23:25 … The Resilience of Clean Energy 27:05 … Impact of Battery Technology 28:51 … Cultural and Communication Challenges 31:18 … Kaitlyn’s Lessons Learned and a Success Story 34:27 … Hear More about RMI 35:04 … Closing KAITLYN BUNKER:  So we really come in and do a lot of listening, meet with as many people as we can, understand different perspectives and try to bring that all together, and then pair that with our experience. WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Please make sure to visit our website, Velociteach.com, where you can subscribe to the show so you’ll never miss an episode, or you can join us on Velociteach Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn.  And if you know a friend who would like to hear our show, please tell them about Manage This. I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me today is Bill Yates.  Bill, so you know I’m always trying to find interesting projects. BILL YATES:  Yes. WENDY GROUNDS:  Projects that are all over the world, not necessarily in one spot, and so this one is all over the islands, the Caribbean islands.  Our guest is Kaitlyn Bunker, and she’s a principal with the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Island Energy Program, where she leads a team that partners with islands in the Caribbean to support their clean energy transitions. BILL YATES:  Yeah, and just to be clear, this is Ph.D. Kaitlyn Bunker, so Dr. Bunker, I just wanted to say that, Dr. Bunker.  She also leads modeling efforts related to small island microgrid opportunities.  So a microgrid, she’ll explain that further.  But it’s a new strategy for having power distributed across an island, especially in the cases of places like the islands in the Caribbean that are prone to hurricanes and other types of storms.  So a microgrid strategy is a very interesting strategy, and we’ll talk about her projects. Meet Kaitlyn WENDY GROUNDS:  Let’s meet Kaitlyn.  Kaitlyn, welcome to Manage This. KAITLYN BUNKER:  Thank you for having me. WENDY GROUNDS:  Tell us about your career path, how you got to where you are today. KAITLYN BUNKER:  Sure, so I’m now a principal with the Islands Energy Program at Rocky Mountain Institute.  But my background is that I studied electrical engineering,  I went to school at Michigan Technological University and got really excited in the field of power and energy, and also control systems.  And so bringing those two topics together led me to the concept of microgrids, which are small electricity systems that have their own sources of electricity.  So they’re able to use that to serve local electricity needs in a small confined system.  But they also typically can connect to the larger electricity grid. So they’re able to operate in kind of those two modes.  And so that was really exciting for me, especially the concept of incorporating more renewable energy into microgrids and combining those concepts together. So I got really excited about that in school and decided I wanted to dig into that further.  So I stayed right at Michigan Tech for graduate school, completed my Ph.D. in electrical engineering.  Really enjoyed that and then was ready to kind of zoom back out from a very specific research topic on control of microgrids with renewable energy, and so that brought me to Rocky Mountain Institute.  That’s where I’ve been the last six years or so, working on broader opportunities to really transform our energy systems. The Rocky Mountain Institute BILL YATES:  Kaitlyn, so tell us more about the Rocky Mountain Institute, what’s the mission of that organization? KAITLYN BUNKER:   So Rocky Mountain Institute is a global nonprofit organization, and our mission is to transform global energy use to create a clean, prosperous, and secure low-carbon future.  So we were founded back in 1982 by Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins, who are really leading thinkers and implementers when it comes to energy efficiency and renewable energy.  And Amory is still with RMI as a chairman emeritus, so coming up on 40 years here of some great work in the fields of efficiency and renewable energy. WENDY GROUNDS:  What are some of the impacts that RMI has had in communities worldwide? KAITLYN BUNKER:  So because we are a nonprofit organization, we’re often in a very unique position to work with all kinds of different partners and bring them together in ways that they might not otherwise connect.  We also have a very strong analytical foundation for doing modeling and technical analysis, and we use that to identify opportunities for all sorts of benefits that renewable energy can bring.  So things like cost savings, increased resilience, job creation, all sorts of different opportunities for benefits that are out there that might be important to different people or groups. And so we often partner to try some of these solutions out. So we consider ourselves more than a think tank.  We’re really a “think and do” tank.  Some recent specific examples include a prize program that we’ve been facilitating called the Global Cooling Prize.  It’s focused on designing efficient cooling options.  So as our world keeps getting warmer and warmer, how do we keep people cool without just adding to the warming problem with more emissions from traditional air conditioning?  So that’s been an exciting effort really recently. We’ve supported a lot of cities in identifying and pursuing clean energy options, as well as moving towards electrifying their public transportation systems.  So we often take a very whole systems view of energy, not just electricity or transportation or buildings or industry, but how do those pieces fit together?  And then in my particular program we have supported resilience, redesign, and rebuilding of electricity systems that were damaged in recent hurricanes.  So those are just a few examples of the broad type of work that we do at RMI. Projects in the Caribbean BILL YATES:  Tell us more about these projects that you’ve been working on in the Caribbean. KAITLYN BUNKER: So our Islands Energy Program is focused in the Caribbean, as you mentioned, and we do really three main types of work with the islands that we partner with.  We complete analysis to identify optimal pathways for clean energy transition, so what’s the long-term pathway that’s going to be the best fit for a particular island.  Then we help to prepare and de-risk specific clean energy and resilient projects to help get them actually in the ground and operating, get these first projects going with our island partners.  And then the third thing is we work to connect island stakeholders so that they can share their expertise with each other and build even more expertise through communities of practice.  So that’s broadly what we do with our island partners. And so some specific examples of things that we’re working on right now are looking at an integrated process for planning for the future of energy and resilience, to find optimal pathways for Belize’s electricity system. So in the Bahamas we’re working on redesigning and rebuilding the electricity system in specific islands within the Bahamas that were really devastated by Hurricane Dorian last year.  We’re working in Bermuda, supporting Bermuda in accelerating their transition to use more local renewable energy sources, while making a switch to electric transportation options at the same time.  And then one other example is in Puerto Rico, we’re working to increase opportunities for communities in Puerto Rico to build resilient and clean microgrids. BILL YATES:  I was doing some reading on some of the things that you wrote about the project with the islands,  I was surprised that they import so much fossil fuel for consumption to create energy.  What are some of those statistics?  Because that’s one of the things the microgrid and your initiative is trying to change. KAITLYN BUNKER:  So most islands in the Caribbean today get their electricity from burning diesel fuel which, just as you said, they have to import.  We are seeing islands move towards clean energy and start to make a dent in that, but still the majority of islands’ electricity today comes from that imported diesel fuel. So that makes it very expensive, Islands in the Caribbean might pay about three times what we would pay on average in the United States per kilowatt hour of electricity.  So it’s quite expensive, and it can also fluctuate month to month based on global oil prices. If you’re a resident or a business owner in an island, it’s expensive to start with, and then it can change over time.  So lots of opportunities to use more local options that also happen to be cleaner, but are often much lower cost than importing the fuel as it’s done today. Program Partners WENDY GROUNDS:  Who are you partnering with in these programs? KAITLYN BUNKER: So we do a lot of partnering, it’s really important to our strategy and being able to be successful in what we’re trying to do.  Our main partners are often the governments of the islands where we’re working,

Hear about human and robotic space exploration with Belgian nuclear physicist Philippe Schoonejans. He is the European Space Agency’s (ESA) team leader for the Sample Transfer Arm, one of the European contributions to the NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return program. This mission will use robotic systems to return samples from the surface of Mars to Earth. ESA is composed of 28 member countries, and Philippe has cooperated extensively with NASA, Japan, Canada and Russia in his projects. He shares his complex projects and the many constraints facing international cooperation. Table of Contents 03:03 … Meet Philippe 05:03 … NASA and ESA 05:50 … Philippe’s Role at ESA 08:06 … Favorite Projects 09:36 … The European Robotic Arm 11:40 … Prototype Testing 14:30 … Current Projects 16:03 … Getting to Mars 19:43 … COVID-19 Impact 22:30 … Keeping Teams Motivated 26:28 … Collaboration with Other Agencies 28:52 … Vendor and Stakeholder Communication 34:54 … International Cooperation 38:34 … Communicating Complex Projects 40:26 … Words of Advice and Lessons Learned 44:06 … Closing PHILIPPE SCHOONEJANS:  ...we cherish the international cooperation.  We think it’s needed, and we know that we cannot do everything on our own, not even in Europe with our 28 countries, we cannot do everything.  So we do want to work together with everybody else, and with that also learn from what the others are doing. WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio today is Bill Yates. BILL YATES:  Wendy, we’re going to go to space today.  Let’s do it. WENDY GROUNDS:  I know.  I am so excited about today’s guest.  We get to sit down with a project manager in human and robotic exploration at the European Space Agency.  And this is Philippe Schoonejans.  Philippe is in the Amsterdam area of the Netherlands.  And we’re very excited to have him with us today.  We’re particularly going to talk about the politically complex international environment that he works in with many stakeholders and many countries.  The European Space Agency I think he said has 28 member states. BILL YATES:  Yup. WENDY GROUNDS:  And they also work with other countries around the world, including NASA.  He’ll tell us a little bit more about that.  But some of the projects that Philippe has worked on, he’s been the project manager for the European Robotic Arm for the International Space Station, as well as working on a sample transfer arm.  He’s the project manager and team lead for that.  It’s for a Mars Sample Return Mission. BILL YATES:  Isn’t that fascinating?  And for our listeners, you’re going to hear a lot of abbreviations or acronyms, so ISS, ESA, International Space Station, European Space Agency, different things like that.  NASA.  But Mars, I mean, we have been trying to get to that red planet.  Since 1960 we’ve been attempting to put satellites orbiting around that planet.  And there’s been some success.  But the one thing that we’ve never done is bring anything back.  We’ve had pictures.  We’ve had digital data.  But we don’t have any actual rocks or samples.  And so this mission’s going on now. We do have, I think since 2003, the ESA has successfully put Rovers on Mars, and so they’re slowly moving across that little red planet and collecting data.  But one of the fascinating things is Philippe and his team, they’re working at bringing the rocks and the other things that they can collect back to Earth.  We haven’t done that yet. WENDY GROUNDS:  It’s easy to get overwhelmed just by the vast scope of this project and the incredible things they’re doing.  But we’re going to find that Philippe has some really good information and really practical advice for project managers, particularly those who are working in an international community.  So let’s get right on and talk to Philippe. BILL YATES:  Yeah. WENDY GROUNDS:  Philippe, welcome to Manage This.  Thank you so much for being with us today. PHILIPPE SCHOONEJANS:  My pleasure entirely. Meet Philippe WENDY GROUNDS:  I want to ask you about your career path, how you got to where you are today.  Could you tell us, have you always been interested in space, and how you got to where you are today. PHILIPPE SCHOONEJANS:  Well, I think I maybe was not the little kid who was always already toying around with rockets in the garden.  But I did have a board game which I liked very much.  It was called Space Race.  It was about space mining, and you had to throw a dice and get your rockets to various orbits and get it into the Moon.  And I loved it, but there was also a bit of frustration because my brother convinced me to buy this game together, and I had to empty all my savings, and then we played it, and he only played it just once, and then he got fed up with it.  And later he went into languages.  So I emptied all of my little kid savings to buy this game, and then I had to find new friends to play it with.  But maybe it’s out of that frustration that I ended up in space technology. BILL YATES:  Yeah, you had an early investment in space as a small child; you had to just commit to it. PHILIPPE SCHOONEJANS:  And that was 100 percent investment, so there was in fact a very large, relatively very large investment.  But I did my studies in nuclear physics.  Some people say that the parallel is that I worked with the large particle accelerators.  So there was already some fascination for things which have a little bit of grandiose elements in there, I loved that, absolutely. But when I’d finished, I applied for a space company, it was Fokker, it was an aircraft company.  They make airplanes, but they also had a space division.  But I also, to be honest, I applied at Shell, and I applied at Siemens, and at Philips Electronics to be a chip designer.  So that I had, indeed, I had choice in the end of three or four jobs.  But I think the space fascination won, and when I was doing that for five years, our colleagues of the European Space Agency were at the time our customer.  They asked me whether I would not want come and join them.  And I absolutely loved that, and I’ve loved it ever since.  It’s such a fascinating and inspiring international environment. NASA and ESA BILL YATES:  Let me ask a follow-up question, just to help those that are in the United States or maybe in North America that are listening.  Compare NASA with the ESA. PHILIPPE SCHOONEJANS:  Yeah, it’s quite different.  I think their biggest difference is that ESA has about 28 member states.  So we are representing the interest of all of these member states, not just one like in NASA.  So it’s very democratic, so very, very political.  And it’s political to the sense that each participating country wants to get back what they put in, so that also means that the bigger countries make bigger contributions.  They have a more important vote in most cases than the smaller countries, so that that is for sure a complication in ESA, but it’s also very inspirational. Philippe’s Role at ESA WENDY GROUNDS:  What is your role at ESA? PHILIPPE SCHOONEJANS: So today I am a project manager in the Mars Sample Return Mission, and that’s particularly interesting, I think, for the Americans because it is a joint mission between NASA and ESA.  And it requires eight space systems to work together in concert to get Mars material back to Earth, which is something which has never been done before.  And so ESA has three contributions to this mission, and I’m the project manager of one of them.  But with that I’m also very much involved in the discussions on the overall missions and the discussions between ESA and NASA. In addition to that, I’ve been doing a lot of technology stuff in ESA.  For a long time I was the chair of the forum that decides which technologies get the budget to be developed.  And so it comes from the needs of the missions that we are planning,  to where do we have a gap in technology, what is it that we still cannot do and would be very risky, and let’s focus our research money on those.  So sometimes it’s a short-term thing; but usually it’s a long-term thing, like we are not yet good enough in rocket engine of such and such type, which maybe we need for future missions.  Let’s initiate a five- to 10-year development to get that going, and then of course that was a tricky job because there were always way more proposals than we could afford.  So that was very, very interesting. Also worked on standardization of space technology.  So we have lots of space standards that are used for all our developments, and we had to decide, okay, which direction should they evolve?  Which ones are we still missing?  How do they relate to the standards that other agencies have.  And yet it’s very important because in all the international cooperation we typically want to work according to our own standards, and the others too.  Like the Russians would work to Russian standards, and the Americans to the NASA standards, the Japanese to the Japanese standards, we to the European standards.  And we have to declare that they’re all equivalent. But also sometimes you have to convince the partnering agencies that they are actually equivalent.  Otherwise they would end up asking us can you please work to the NASA standards.  And then all of our industry has to change the way they do business.  So this is an important subject which I enjoyed very much.  But I think where my heart is, is in the operational part, like really run a project. Favorite Projects BILL YATES:  Philippe, looking back on your long career with the European Space Agency, what are some of your favorite projects, or those that you’re most proud of? PHILIPPE SCHOONEJANS:  Well, I think the Moon one that I just got out of was very, very difficult because it was about defining a Moon space station that is going to fly in ‘24.

In his new book, How Design Makes the World, Scott Berkun explores how good and bad design impact our daily lives. In this episode we examine the big questions Scott asks in the book: What are you trying to improve? Who are you trying to improve it for? How do you ensure you are successful? And how do you avoid unintended harm? Table of Contents 01:09 … Meet Scott 04:23 … Scott’s New Book: How Design Makes the World 07:04 … Q1: What Are You Trying to Improve? 11:12 … Ideas Generation Rule: Yes, And 13:57 … Ideas Generation Rule: No Half-Assing 16:43 … Ideas Generation Rule: No Blocking Questions 18:42 … Ideas Generation Rule: Make the Other Guy Look Good 20:28 … Q2: Who Are You Trying to Improve It For? 25:21 … Q3: How Do You Ensure You Are Successful? 30:15 … How Do We Overcome Bias? 34:17 … Q4: How Do You Avoid Unintended Harm? 41:20 … Advice to Project Managers 43:07 … Get in Contact With Scott 44:00 … Closing SCOTT BERKUN:  So something as simple as idea generation, if you’re not in a roomful of people you trust, none of these methods or techniques are going to help you because no one’s going to feel safe enough to offer what they really think.  And often the problem is that these brainstorming meetings are done with 20 people, 15 people.  There’s no way, even in a healthy organization, the likelihood there’s that much trust among that many people, that someone’s going to feel confident raising their hand against something they know is probably really weird.  And that’s why often brainstorming and idea generation happens the best in smaller groups. BILL YATES:  Yeah, mm-hmm. SCOTT BERKUN:  Four people, five people. BILL YATES:  That’s a great point. SCOTT BERKUN:  Because even if they don’t know each other, in 10 minutes they can get a sense of each other and develop some trust.  And that’s often a problem with project management is that it’s done at this large scale, and the stakeholders and committee members, and we’re going to brainstorm.  But there’s 50 people in the room.  It’s like, no.  That’s a dog-and-pony show.  That’s not where the real brainstorm is going to happen. WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio is Bill Yates. So in today’s episode we get to sit down with a special guest, Scott Berkun. Meet Scott BILL YATES:  Scott Berkun is an author, and he has had a big influence on me.  He wrote a book called “Making Things Happen” that I got a hold of early in my project management career, and just loved it.  Just ate it up.  Since then he wrote a book that I really enjoyed also called “Confessions of a Public Speaker,” which I recommend to all our instructors when we bring them onboard. It’s so good, so funny, great advice, and the book that we’re going to focus on today he just wrote this year, in 2020, and it’s called “How Design Makes the World.” WENDY GROUNDS:  I actually had a look at one of his other books that’s called “The Year Without Pants.”  The topic, it intrigued me, the title should I say, and then I saw it was written about working remotely.  So if anybody has questions about that, I’d recommend that book. BILL YATES:  Okay, good. WENDY GROUNDS:  Scott, welcome to Manage This, thank you so much for being our guest. SCOTT BERKUN:  It is a pleasure to be here. WENDY GROUNDS:  Before we get into the nitty-gritty of your books and what Bill wants to talk about, I have a question. So you transitioned from project manager into becoming an author and a speaker.  Why and how?  How has it worked out, and why? SCOTT BERKUN:  Well, the how has worked out well, so I quit my job as a tech project manager guy in 2003, and it’s now 2020, and I’ve been doing this for 17 years.  I’ve written eight books.  And this is the only way I make a living.  So I’ve been very fortunate and lucky, it’s worked out great.  I mean, I’ve been successful enough, I’ve finally made it onto your show.  So this is like a great day. WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah. SCOTT BERKUN: So the why, the primary reason was a selfish one, I had a good career, I was very lucky, I worked at Microsoft, worked on some very important projects, had a good career there.  But I turned 31, 32, and I started to ask myself the question, is this all I’m ever going to do?  And I have always been a curious person, an ambitious person about the world and trying to figure out – there’s so many things I’m interested in.  I don’t want to spend my whole life working as a project manager if maybe there’s something else I should at least try. So my goal was to quit and to force myself to do something else.  And I buffered myself for the prospect of failure by saying, well, if I go out in the world and do something else, and I fail, I like managing projects, so the worst thing could possible happen is I’ll come back and do what I was doing.  But not to try something else seemed like a terrible strategic mistake.  So I quit, and I’d always been interested in writing, I was not a journalist or anything, I’d written a few articles here and there. It was always a thing in the back of my mind, someday I’ll write a book, and so I was like, today is that day.  I’m becoming middle-aged.  I quit. So I tried to become a writer, I worked on a book that was a total failure, and I couldn’t find a publisher for it, but I learned through that book, the seven months I spent working on that book, I like this, so if I can make this work, I want to do it.  And then I wrote a book that Bill knows of that was originally titled “The Art of Project Management.”  It’s now called “Making Things Happen.”  And so that book was all about how to be a good project manager, and that book did well enough to support me to do a second book, and then the third book, and then now I’m here.  So that’s the how and the why. Scott’s New Book: How Design Makes The World BILL YATES:  Scott, I’ve got to tell you, I was really inspired by your first book.  “Making Things Happen” hit me at a perfect time in my career.  It kind of opened my eyes up to some challenges that project managers face.  As a result, many of the things that you have in your book are concepts that we talk about in our classes here at Velociteach. So you’ve had an impact on me and on much of the content that I’ve helped write, I’ve been recommending that book for years.  I’ve also recommended your book for speaking, which is “Confessions of a Public Speaker.”  This is a hilarious book, I can’t believe how transparent you are in this book. But the book that we want to focus on today is “How Design Makes the World.”  Some of the concepts really register with me because between a designer and a project manager there are so many similarities.  Project managers, their job is to solve problems, designers are doing the same thing, and many times there are so many common links and traits between the two.  So I thought it’d be a great conversation for us to have today. SCOTT BERKUN:  Absolutely.  I totally agree.  I mean, I’ve always felt like everything is a project.  As a project manager, you meet someone at a party, although no one goes to parties anymore these days, but you meet someone on Facebook or somewhere and say you’re a project manager, most people go, oh, like it’s a boring thing. BILL YATES:  Yeah. SCOTT BERKUN:  And then I go, well, wait a second, you know, how did you build your house? How did you rearrange your office?  How did you deliver – whatever the thing you deliver at work is, how did you do that?  And so they explain, like, that’s project management, if it’s a movie you saw that you liked, somebody managed that project, if your city or your state had provided you a sufficient number of masks to keep you safe, someone managed that project.  Everything is a project, so a project manager means it’s central to everything. And so design is the same thing, that if you like the layout of your house, or you have public transportation in your city that works well and is safe and reliable, somebody designed those things. And that it comes with a plan where it overlaps the project manager.  What’s a plan?  Well, you have a set of goals, a set of constraints, a set of budget restraints, and you’re trying to match the goals you have with the constraints that you have, and that’s what project managers do, but designers do it from a different angle.  Designers are focused more on the ideas, and project managers are focused more on delivery, but to make anything happen in the world, you need both. BILL YATES:  That’s right. SCOTT BERKUN:  And the division between them has always bothered me.  Although this new book is focused more on looking through the world from the designer’s point of view, I’m still a project manager. So a lot of that sensibility is infused in the book, that you could have a great idea, but if you don’t have an organization that is managed well enough to deliver on that idea, then the idea doesn’t... BILL YATES:  It’s not going to happen. SCOTT BERKUN:  Is not going to matter much, yeah. Q1. What Are You Trying To Improve? BILL YATES:  Right, right.  I enjoy talking about this with my friends who are innovators.  You do need both, and the disciplines are very similar, but there are some unique characteristics or strengths for the really true designer versus the true project manager.  If you can find somebody who’s got a little bit of both, then you’ve really got a gem there. Now, I want to get into the book.  So the book really tackles four big questions, and the first question is what are you trying to improve for the designer, which I would argue that’s the same question for the project manager, too.  The first question needs to be what are you trying to improve?  I really got pulled right into your book because you talk about some funny examples,

Telling stories is a powerful means to teach, lead, and inspire. The best storytellers often employ their own life experiences. Sara Amiri MBA, PMP, shares her story working at Uber and Volkswagen and she explains how her passion to build unity, increase empathy, and raise awareness led to the Healthcare Heroes Project.

Hear about the role of the project manager in successful innovation from John Carter, an inventor of the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones who shares the original patent with Dr. Amar Bose. John shares the surprising discovery they made by talking to customers about critical features. Topics include the differences between a program manager and a project manager, career progression for a PM, how to assess PM talent, managing project risk, establishing boundary conditions, small “a” Agile, and the characteristics of a successful PM. Table of Contents 00:32 … Meet John 03:43 … The Bose Headphone Project 06:14 … Listening to the Customer 10:00 … Taking Risks in Innovation Projects 13:45 … Courage to Bring Bad News 15:30 … Effect of COVID-19 on Innovation and Work 19:46 … Program Management vs. Project Management 22:21 … Career Progression from PM to Program Management 26:19 … Characteristics of a Successful PM 28:11 … Why is it Difficult to Hire a Successful PM? 30:38 … Small “a” Agile 35:55 … Establishing Boundary Conditions 40:48 … John’s Success Tips 43:31 … Get in Touch with John 44:14 … Closing WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.   A word to our listeners.  If you have an interesting COVID-19 story, how your project has been impacted by the pandemic, we’d love to hear from you.  You can email me at manage_this@velociteach.com. I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me is project manager Bill Yates. BILL YATES:  Hi, Wendy. WENDY GROUNDS: We’re going to talk to someone today who is a true innovation veteran. Meet John BILL YATES:  Yeah, Wendy, I’m so excited to have John Carter join us.  He is very respected in the area of innovation and product development.  He is actually the co-inventor of the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones . We’ll certainly jump into this Bose topic with him.  That’ll be a lot of fun to discuss. WENDY GROUNDS:  John is also the founder of TCGen, and he’s also been advisor to companies like Apple and Amazon with their  product development and innovation processes.  So I think he comes with a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge that he’ll be able to impart to us. BILL YATES:  Yes.  John has been a project manager.  He’s been a product manager, he’s been a manager of managers, he’s led his own company, and so I cannot wait for the advice he’s going to share with us. WENDY GROUNDS:  John, welcome to Manage This.  We’re so grateful to you for being with us today and being our guest. JOHN CARTER:  Well, thanks for having me. WENDY GROUNDS:  Well, we want to start off by asking you about your career path, and particularly to do with the Bose headphones.  I think most people are really going to be interested in hearing about that.  So tell me a little bit about yourself. JOHN CARTER:  Well, thanks for asking.  And it’s really part of my passion.  It was true since I was a kid.  I’ve always been kind of a boy scientist and had a chemistry set and microscope,  telescope, I mean, whatever I could get my hands on.  I really, really enjoyed technology.  As I grew up, though, I found the importance of sound.  I really thought that that was something I wanted to know about.  It’s invisible.  It conveys meaning and emotion.  And as I learned more, it has incredible range as far as what it can be used for.  Obviously speech versus music is something that’s happening today.  With mobile phones and speech recognition it’s just the Wild West.  So I’ve always been interested in sound.  In college I designed a music synthesizer from scratch before its time. BILL YATES:  Of course you did. JOHN CARTER:  Yeah, right.  It kind of worked.  And when I was looking at graduate school, I looked at places that had audio programs.  And one of them was Stanford; the other was MIT.  And I knew that Dr. Bose taught at MIT, and I decided to go there.  I didn’t have a scholarship at the time.  I just packed up my car and drove across the country.  It was half filled with record albums and my stereo and a few textbooks.  And I arrived in Cambridge without support.  But I was determined to get it. And I had amazing luck because I was taking Dr. Bose’s course in acoustics, and he had just lost his teaching assistant.  And so he asked the class if anyone would like to do it, and I raised my hand.  And it was incredible.  It was a 20-minute interview.  And he said, “Okay.  Let’s give it a go here.”  And it just so turned out what I studied as an undergraduate was what’s called “signals and systems.”  But it’s kind of the big pieces of how the parts work together to get a better system.  And that was Dr. Bose’s approach and actually went into the headphones. The Bose Headphones Project BILL YATES:  John, to me the Bose noise cancelling headphones are iconic.  They were, like, revolutionary when they came out.  How in the world did you get to work on that project? JOHN CARTER:  So when I graduated, I was in the research department, and Dr. Bose was a mentor for me.  And this was amazing.  We talk about luck and fate in what happens here.  He invests a lot of time in his former students who join the company.  And so he and I had two ideas we were working on when I first started.  One idea was how to improve a loudspeaker, and the other idea was this new concept around headphones.  And so I started working on them both. What I realized, and I went to Dr. Bose two months later, and I said, “You know, we’re making a lot of progress on these headphones and not so much on this other project.”  He said, “Let’s just drop the other one.”  And I think there’s a lot of innovation that comes about being lucky and making the right choice.  I think we made the right choice.  So it really came as a natural outcome of collaboration, working on two research ideas. And I could tell you when I first popped the prototype it was all metal parts and everything on my head.  It was like you were transported into another universe.  And you can turn the switch on and off, and the change was mind-blowing.  I knew we were onto something.  And what was really interesting is that we thought as inventors we’d know exactly why customers would really clamor for this.  And we thought it was improved bass response.  This headphone would give you better bass. BILL YATES:  Yeah. JOHN CARTER:  And it does.  Well, we started offering this, trying it out, getting feedback from various customers.  Turned out military was the biggest interest.  And we went to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, as well as Army Proving Ground in Aberdeen.  And the feedback we got was not bass or the performance.  This is noise reduction. BILL YATES:  Okay. JOHN CARTER:  The benefit was noise reduction.  Now, we knew about noise reduction, but we didn’t think that consumers would really find that the most appealing.  That discovery, an innovation that I think is really important, which is you have no idea, really, even the inventor has no idea about what consumers will ultimately value your invention for.  And you would think you would know that, and you’re completely wrong. Listening to Stakeholder Recommendations BILL YATES:  That is huge.  And for project managers it is so good to hear that from you.  Just to the listeners, so John and Dr. Bose have the co-patents on these Bose noise cancelling headphones that we’re talking about.  So this was the guy that was right there from the start.  And John, as you’ve said, at first you guys thought you were building it for X, when it turns out the customer said, no, Y is much more important. And from a standpoint of someone who’s charging ahead as a project, I’m a project manager, and I’ve got goals, and I’ve been told by the sponsor this is what we have to accomplish.  And then you start to get feedback from customers, and you’re thinking, you know what, this sponsor may be slightly off.  There could be greater value in this other area.  This is a challenge to us, I think, to be bold and go to those sponsors, share the information that we’re getting from customers and the ultimate users to say, okay, maybe we need to slightly change our path. JOHN CARTER:  Yeah.  This, I think, is a real challenge for project managers.  And I think there’s a right way and a wrong way to make a sudden right turn on a project.  And I think the right way is to say these are the stakeholders.  This is what they’re telling us.  We think it’s important and a direction that we ought to consider. What a good project manager will do, in my estimation, is they describe the benefit, and they also describe the tradeoffs, and then they indicate a recommendation.  Because when there’s a sudden change, I think project managers tend to be little myopic.  And they don’t step back and say, all right, someone’s moved our cheese.  Here are the new boundaries.  So if we can renegotiate this contract and come clean on it, then we’re going to go in the right direction, and you’re not going to be surprised in a couple months from now when you forgot that we made this decision, Mr. Executive. BILL YATES:  Right. JOHN CARTER:  You agreed to it, but somehow you remembered the old schedule or whatever. BILL YATES:  Yes, the old budget. JOHN CARTER:  Exactly.  And so I think renegotiation of the project boundaries is really important as a project manager.  And also flexibility.  So there’s one other risk that I’m sure you’ve seen in your work with project managers is they’re given direction, and come hell or high waters, they go after it.  And sometimes when there’s a real indication from stakeholders that there’s a need to change, their heads are down, and they’re not going to make that change.  And that’s another quality of, I think, advanced program managers and project managers, to step back and say, wait a minute, you know, it doesn’t matter how quickly we climb that mountain if it’s the wrong mountain. BILL YATES:  Yeah.

In times of uncertainty, project managers can be the pacesetters that keep organizations on the right path and bring balance into their projects. June Mustari discusses real-life issues in project management. Hear practical tips and advice to find the right balance of discipline and flexibility for successful project delivery.     Table of Contents 01:05 … Meet June 02:36 … Telecom Career and TruNorth Consulting 05:47 … COVID-19 Impact and Bringing Balance 08:39 … Emotional Engagement 10:52 … Collaboration Tools 12:31 … Knowing the Technical Aspects of the Industry as a PM 14:20 … Past Project Story: Virtual Desktop Interface Migration 18:16 … Breakthrough Moments and Resistance on the Project 21:54 … Breaking the Rules 25:54 … Words of Advice and Encouragement 31:22 … Get in Touch with June 31:58 … Closing JUNE MUSTARI:  It’s all about trust.  And I think more than ever trust is our cornerstone in our business.  And when you can show up in a way that makes people feel secure, it’s our purpose.  WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me is Bill Yates.  This is the show where we sometimes like to delve into the project stories of project managers who are in the trenches.  In today’s episode, we get to sit down with June Mustari.  Why don’t you tell us how you met June, Bill. BILL YATES:  Yeah, it was such a chance meeting.  June and I were sitting at the same round table at a breakout session, I think Steve Townsend was speaking, at PMI Global Conference 2019 in Philadelphia.  So I don’t know, there were just a handful of us sitting at a round table, and June had really good questions for Stephen.  And some of the things that June shared, I’m like, this is my kind of person.  So we talked during the session and just stayed connected after. JUNE MUSTARI:  Yeah. WENDY GROUNDS:  Well, June, thank you so much for being here today. JUNE MUSTARI:  Oh, it’s my pleasure.  I’m very happy to be here. Meet June WENDY GROUNDS:  I want to find out a little bit about your career background.  How did you get into project management? JUNE MUSTARI:  Yeah, when people ask me this, I like to say I didn’t get into project management; it got into me.  I really started my career just taking things on that took shape as projects – you know, the beginning, middle, and with an end goal, an outcome that was very clear.  I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was managing projects.  So then when I actually started to see that there were other people in my network who were formal project managers, I was like, oh, this is a thing, and I really like this thing. And so I decided to get a little educated in it, and I said I was going to take the PMP exam 10 years before I actually took it.  So people say, “I’m going to take the PMP exam.”  And I said that for so long.  But you don’t actually take it until you schedule it.  Like, that’s when it’s real.  So I did eventually get the PMP, and I appreciated the discipline of that.  I’m a rule follower, so like that was a dream for me.  And I passed on my 37th birthday.  So it was like, I got into my car, and I was like, yes.  That’s a little side note about me being a PM and getting started with that. So it just kind of took off from there.  Once I had that credential, I felt confidence.  I don’t think it’s about the credential.  I just think it’s about the confidence.  I took formal project management roles right after that, where it was like my title was Project Manager. TruNorth Consulting and Telecom BILL YATES:  And June, you’ve been in telecom for a long time; right?  Like I’ve done a lot of work with Verizon, and you were actually employed by Verizon for a long time, and you continue to kind of go down that industry path. JUNE MUSTARI:  Yeah, my M.O. is parachuting into situations, trying to solve problems, and then getting out; right?  So I had like four different roles at Verizon.  When I started, I was a temp, and it just progressed from there.  So, yeah, I’ve spent most of my life in telecom.  I did a quick stint in the financial risk industry, and I learned a lot.  Like I felt like I got 10 years of experience from the leadership there and the projects I worked there.  So other than that, it’s all been telecom, yeah. BILL YATES:  And tell us about your current position.  You work with TruNorth now.  And if I remember right, this is your second time with this company? JUNE MUSTARI:  Yeah.  That’s actually where I started more formal project management back in 2013.  And I stayed there for a few years, really loved it.  And I left to do my own thing in the bigger project management world, larger enterprises.  So right now what I do at TruNorth Consulting, we’re veterans in telecom, so we understand all the lingo and how bills look, how records look and all of that.  And so we deliver visibility to millions of dollars in telecom spend in one pane of glass.  So we give CFOs confidence and control of the money that they’re spending in their telecom.  We also help onboard people to our enterprise platform so that they can manage their digital transformation from old copper telecom to fiber or other, VoIP, that kind of thing.  I am their Director of Operations. BILL YATES: Just give everybody a sense for what’s a typical customer engagement like for TruNorth.  So you guys are going in and approaching a business and saying, hey, let us make sure that you’re getting the best deal that you can with your telecom solution.  Let us take a look at the service and the bill and make recommendations.  Is that kind of what you guys do? JUNE MUSTARI:  Yeah.  Typically they actually approach us. BILL YATES:  Okay. JUNE MUSTARI:  Because they are so frustrated that they’re seeking to solve their problem, which is a headache around that very problematic industry.  So when we are going to take on a new client, we first evaluate their spend.  How much are you actually spending in telecom?  So we get a good view of that, and typically our clients are 10 million plus in annual spend.  And then we ask them for all of their information – accounts, copies of invoices, anything like that.  And then our engagement really starts when we start putting that stuff in our tool, our solution where you get full visibility to your inventory and spend.  So the project there is onboarding.  Then the end goal is ongoing telecom expense management after that, which is a monthly review of all of your services so you can control your costs. COVID-19 Impact and Bringing Balance WENDY GROUNDS:  June, one of the themes that we’re having with our podcasts at the moment is we’re asking our guests what their COVID-19 story is.  How has this impacted your work?  What have you been seeing? JUNE MUSTARI:  Yeah, that’s a really good question.  And I feel like this is a really good way to get different perspectives, by asking these questions.  I ask these questions to people in my network.  For us, personally, True North is remote anyway.  We’re distributed all over the country.  So we’re constantly meeting on Zoom.  We live on the phone.  So we had really no adjustment internally, other than how it affected us on a personal level, each of us responding to this crisis new normal.  So that was the adjustment we had to go through, which was little in comparison to those who had to do both – maneuver going remote in their professional life and dealing with it personally. BILL YATES:  What about your customers, June?  What have you seen with some of the adjustments that they’ve had to make? JUNE MUSTARI:  Navigating change is never easy in any organization or enterprise.  So if you’re forced into it, that’s usually where you get the best results, because you have to actually take action; right?  So for them I think, because it is mostly multilocation businesses that have either gone through mergers and acquisitions, which is already problematic in itself, there are many locations. So being able to get skeleton crews in those locations for broadcasting, for example, you still need to be on the air.  Getting skeleton crews in the studio, going virtual as much as you can, all of that brought light, I think, to our clients that they need better bandwidth, and disaster recovery plans, if they didn’t have them.  It put things into perspective, I think, for them more than anything else.  And so for us, our reaction to that was, hey, get on a meeting with us, we’re going to bring humanity and humor to this situation and make you feel like things are normal, at least for that hour. BILL YATES:  Nice. JUNE MUSTARI:  Because we were normal.  So it was actually really cool to be in that position at that time. BILL YATES:  Yeah, telecom and ISP and connections are vital to business.  And to have someone who can approach it from a baseline of great experience, broad understanding of telecom, and also that humanity, you know, that humor and, okay, I know life has been turned upside down for you guys at work.  So let us help you figure out this piece.  That’s a trusted partner. JUNE MUSTARI:  It’s all about trust.  And I think more than ever trust is our cornerstone in our business.  And when you can show up in a way that makes people feel secure, it’s our purpose.  It’s great. Emotional Engagement BILL YATES:  Nice.  So give us some practicals on that, what are some of the things that you’re doing, like on a daily or a weekly basis, with your either team members or with your customers, to help engage just their sense for where they’re at emotionally? JUNE MUSTARI:  Yeah, so it’s just as simple as asking sincerely and with real concern, how are you doing, and letting them talk about it and listen.  That’s really all that’s required is listening, and, then you know, we do a lot, we are already, because we’re remote, doing silly things all the time as a team.