Manage This - The Project Management Podcast

Agile is not for everyone. Project managers face 2 big questions: do you want to make the transition to agile, and can you make the transition? Steve and the team discuss the indicators as to whether or not a not a project manager is a good fit for agile.

The Mercedes-Benz Stadium and Home Depot Backyard. Hear how project managers Bill Darden, President and CEO, and Matt Dale, VP of Darden and Company kept these world class sports and entertainment facilities on track. Hear about their efforts to manage expectations, communicate clearly, and drive decisions.

Wayne Turmel is the cofounder of the Remote Leadership Institute and the author of many books, including a coauthored book with Kevin Eikenberry, “The Long-Distance Leader:  Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership.” The dynamics of managing virtual remote teams. Learn strategies for maintaining productivity in long-distance project teams.

When trouble hits, many managers cut and run. In this podcast, we interview Steve Corcoran who talks about the importance of building trust to address adversity.

If the Business Analyst and Project Manager are both superheroes, can they coexist? Kupe says “Yes”! Jonathan “Kupe” Kupersmith joins the team to answer questions from a BA’s perspective relating to decision making and the value a BA can deliver.

NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Every other week we get together to talk about the things that matter to you as a professional project manager.  And it doesn’t really matter whether you’re a PM veteran or someone simply exploring what the field is all about.  We’re here to offer some ideas, some perspective, and draw on the experiences of others who have been down that road and have realized success. I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are two who are still on that road, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates. ANDY CROWE:  Thanks, Nick.  We’ve had so much interest in the topic of artificial intelligence within project management, and we’ve got somebody here who knows a lot about AI who’s going to be processing that with us. NICK WALKER:  Our guest here in the studio is Chris Benson.  He’s an artificial intelligence machine learning strategist, a solution architect, and a keynote speaker who specializes in deep learning.  That’s the computation technology that is driving the artificial intelligence revolution. Chris is the co-host of the Practical AI podcast, produced by Changelog Media, designed to make artificial intelligence practical, productive, and accessible to everyone.  He’s the founder and organizer of the Atlanta Deep Learning Meetup, one of the largest AI communities in the world, with nearly 2,000 members.  Chris, it’s great to have you here on our podcast. CHRIS BENSON:  Thank you very much.  Happy to be here. NICK WALKER:  Could we start off by just defining for our listeners what artificial intelligence is? CHRIS BENSON:  So artificial intelligence means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.  In my view it’s really a marketing word more than it is anything else because over the years the definition of artificial intelligence has changed and evolved.  So what you might have thought of in the 1980s is vastly different from what it is in 2018.  So before I define it, I want to point out I was in a group of artificial intelligence experts that Adobe was hosting about six weeks ago.  And in doing that, they asked us all that same question; and all 10 of us gave 10 different answers. ANDY CROWE:  Well, and the joke is, if you ask two economists for a definition, you get three answers. CHRIS BENSON:  Absolutely. ANDY CROWE:  Same idea, huh. CHRIS BENSON:  Yup.  So it was very much that.  So I wanted to note that.  Take what I say with a grain of salt. ANDY CROWE:  What do you think it is, yeah. CHRIS BENSON:  So what I think it is, is a narrow definition.  I would consider that in 2018 artificial intelligence is synonymous with deep learning, which is the application of deep neural networks. ANDY CROWE:  Interesting.  Well, learning is certainly a part of AI that I think that’s almost a universal component that goes across most definitions.  Most definitions talk about the ability to imitate intelligence and things like that, imitate human intellect.  But that ability to learn and grow as a neural network is an interesting part of it.  So how do machines learn? CHRIS BENSON:  So there’s different techniques.  And those all broadly fall under the definition of machine learning.  The thing that separates deep learning, which is how I’m defining AI, from the rest is that it can take an enormous number of inputs – we call them “features” in data science – and process them in a highly nonlinear manner and give inferences, which are essentially probabilistic predictions on what the answer might be. For instance, to make it real:  If you have machine vision, and you are putting a cat in front of the camera, and it will come back and identify that it thinks it’s a cat.  It might come back 97 percent.  But the difference is these technologies aren’t going to come back with 100 percent.  They’re probabilistic technologies.  But they can make these identifications using a model that is many orders of magnitude ...

NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  It’s our chance to meet with you and discuss what really matters in the world of project management, whether you’re new to the field or have been doing it for decades.  We want to encourage you and challenge you, to cheer you on and help you avoid some of the pitfalls that can come along the way.  We talk to the experts, people who have gone before us, so we can benefit from their experiences and their successes. I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are the guys who make it all happen here, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates. ANDY CROWE:  Nick, it’s great to be here today, and I’m really excited about this ‘cast. NICK WALKER:  Okay.  Spoiler alert, it’s very possible that we’re going to laugh some today.  Our guest is Sean Glaze, an author, speaker, and teambuilding facilitator who is all about inspiring groups to have fun laughing together so they can have more success working together.  He’s the author of three books:  “The Unexpected Leader,” “Rapid Teamwork,” and “The 10 Commandments of Winning Teammates.” Sean has been a successful basketball coach, an educator for more than 20 years, and in that time has gained some valuable insights into how to develop winning teams.  He’s the founder of Great Results Teambuilding, which he uses to share those lessons all over the country, through entertaining speaking engagements and teambuilding events.  Sean, thanks for joining us here on Manage This. SEAN GLAZE:  Appreciate it, Nick.  Looking forward to being here and sharing some great information with your audience. NICK WALKER:  Sean, I’m always fascinated how skills developed in one area can transfer over into others.  For example, when did you realize that the lessons you’ve learned from years of coaching basketball could translate well to business leaders? SEAN GLAZE:  That is a tremendous question.  And honestly, it was probably about eight years into my coaching career when I realized I wasn’t as good a coach as I thought.  I had spent most of that first decade as a coach, like many project leaders, like many team leaders regardless of industry, focused on strategy.  And for basketball, that’s X’s and O’s, and that’s skill development and strategy.  And you realize after you go through a couple of seasons where you know you’ve not gotten as much out of your talent as you should have that there’s something missing.  And what I had neglected for nearly a decade was culture. And everybody has probably heard culture eats strategy for breakfast, but as a young coach I had never heard that.  But I certainly lived it.  And so the eye-opening mirror moment for me was recognizing, at the end of a really tough losing season, I’m going to have to change if I want my team to change.  And leading teams as a project manager, as a coach, you realize that strategy is what you want to do.  Culture determines how well your people are going to do it.  And so the relationships and connections that I then began to focus on made us far more successful in the future.  And I realized that what I had done with my team could hopefully help other leaders with their teams, regardless of athletics or business or others. ANDY CROWE:  You know, as I listen to this, Sean, I’m thinking, strategy you could change over a long weekend.  But culture is a slow turning ship a lot of times to turn that around.  And especially if you’ve got a toxic culture or a problematic culture, to reframe that in a positive way takes a lot of time and tremendous energy. SEAN GLAZE:  Absolutely.  And that’s something I think first as a leader you need to know what it is you want.  Because if I don’t have clarity about what I want my culture to be and what actually constitutes culture, I can’t deliver that or influence that on my team.  So a lot of my growth as a leader was me educating myself.  And hopefully those are some things that I’ll be able to share toda...

How can you avoid sexual harassment claims? Attorney Sarah Lamar joins the team to offer valuable advice on this topic, the #MeToo movement, and how it impacts Project Managers. Listen in as Sarah walks us through scenarios and offers helpful insights.

This week, the podcast team sits down with Kim Brainard, founder of Agile Brain and known “People Whisperer”, to discuss Scrum framework and humanizing the way we work. Whether that be as a team or with other stakeholders—or as she calls them, people—humanizing the workplace can make a big difference in the success of a project.

MIKE GOSS:  I believe that everything in life in one way or another is a project.  So if that’s true, how do I increase my chances of it being successful, and who can I help with it? NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Every two weeks we get together to talk about the ins and outs of project management and what matters to you as a professional in the field.  We’ll talk with some of the leaders in project management to find out what motivates them, what drives them to succeed, and to get some encouragement and inspiration from them. I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are the two main motivators around here, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And Bill, today we have with us via Skype someone who has made it a life goal to inspire people. BILL YATES:  Yeah.  And Mike, I’m excited about having you on this ‘cast because you’ve been entertaining our operations team for weeks and weeks and weeks.  I can always tell when they’re on the phone with you, so I’m looking forward to this. NICK WALKER:  Well, let’s meet Mike.  He has held sales and leadership positions with four multinational companies, several small and mid-size businesses, and three of his own businesses.  He’s an accomplished sales trainer, a project management trainer, contract project manager, speaker, and author.  And one of Mike’s lifetime goals is to reach 10 million people with a message of hope and inspiration.  Today he’ll get a little closer to that goal right here in our studio.  Mike, via Skype from Portland, Oregon, it’s great to have you with us here on Manage This. MIKE GOSS:  Well, I’m honored to be here.  I'm glad I was invited because this – Velociteach, Andy Crowe, Bill Yates – this is the big-time.  I got invited to the big-time.  Hallelujah. NICK WALKER:  Well, you know, that goal of reaching 10 million people might seem unusual to a lot of people.  Why did you set that particular goal? MIKE GOSS:  A few years ago I had open heart surgery.  I had chest pains and didn’t tell my wife.  And when she finally found out, things happened, and suddenly I’m having a five-way heart bypass.  When I woke up, I checked around, and I said, “I’m still alive.”  I wiggled my toes.  They're still working.  I tried my fingers.  They're still working.  I couldn’t talk because they had these huge things down my throat.  But I thought, you know, I must be here for a reason.  God must still not be done with me. So I set a goal to see how many people I could enrich.  And if you’re going to make a goal, you might as well make a big one.  I didn’t set out to enrich 10 people.  I set out to enrich 10 million in one way or another.  And when I speak or when I create a course or when I’m teaching boot camps, it’s all about making the other person better off.  I want to be able to say I did something; I made my mark by helping others. NICK WALKER:  Well, let’s go way back.  Way back, I guess, even when the first little seeds of your career began to be planted.  You had the nickname of “Otis” in junior high school and in high school.  Tell us why. MIKE GOSS:  I lived in Pendleton, which had a total of four elevators – Pendleton, Oregon.  But I was always fascinated by the box moving up and down with people or materials in it, the counterweight behind it, all the mechanical and electronic things that had to happen to make it work.  I was fascinated with it, and I always talked about it.  My friends got very tired of listening to it.  I made scale model elevators and entered them in science fair projects.  It just went on and on.  And eventually I got to work for my dream company, Otis Elevator. NICK WALKER:  As a matter of fact, I understand one of your usernames is ElevatorFan.  Would that be true of you? MIKE GOSS:  Well, yes.  When I was setting up my account in Skype it said, “What handle do you want?”  And I, well, thinking Otis, somebody took Otis.  So I said ElevatorFan.