welcome to this webinar I'm really
delighted to have my cannon back again
for those of you who've watched several
of our webinars you'll know Mike's a
regular attendance and presenter he's
one of those guys who not only has just
incredible depths of knowledge and
wisdom but is also very happy to share
that knowledge and wisdom and this time
we're going to do something a little bit
different right Mike we're gonna have a
bit of a Christmas theme going on a bit
of a Dickensian Victorian theme I think
to this to this presentation I hope that
doesn't augur too badly for the
environment that most p.m. i was working
but but today we're going to really look
at some of the wisdom that mike's
distilled over the years but do with a
little bit of fun and bit of humor so
Mike over to you
to thank Stuart yeah so in the true
holiday spirit I thought through title
the three ways your PMO can give the
gift of unlimited upside i find too
often in the PMO space we read TMO
leaders find ourselves though squeezed
between the demands of those above us
and our peers my teens below trying to
execute dutifully and it often feels
like this notion of unlimited upside
like we'll just just get me through the
day I'll be satisfied with that I'm
going to talk about on the left side but
because it's the holiday season why not
give some gifts why not imagine a world
that could be with the same wonder as a
child on Christmas morning so with that
we start with some perspectives so this
will probably I imagine be familiar to
many female leaders out there again we
thought if you've ever seen if ever read
Dickens Christmas Carol or seeing the
various Scrooge movies and things over
the years so you'll know this character
mr. Scrooge who's this very not very
generous very mais really selfish full
toughest person but my point is he
hasn't perspective and while we may
chuckle this perspective of there is no
such thing as rich enough only poor
enough I'll tie it back to the gifts
that pmo leaders deserve this holiday
season ok if that's something
perspective i'm sure many of us are
familiar with take another one bob
cratchit also from the same time to ken
vian tradition he was the overworked and
underpaid manager who was unfortunately
mr. Scrooge's personal assistant and he
would beg and plead for any time off and
even Christmas he would ask for just a
half day off in some of the versions
sure many of those says family of that
perspective and then I'm sure yeah his
PMO leaders you might have some
influence new organizations but
certainly you have a number of
stakeholders who have consider we had
the Tiny Tim or the onion salento
stakeholder perspective perhaps some
long-forgotten user of IT system or
somebody who's affected by the decisions
that get made but can't really influence
much and so the feed from one of the
variations of a Christmas carol had Bob
Cratchit who's Tiny Tim's dad walking
his children by the window of a toy
store and the children were looking in
in awe of these wonderful toys assembled
wishing they could have at least one of
them but knowing that they probably
wouldn't even get any
and that which one would you like if you
could get one and Tiny Tim sister said
oh I'll take the dolly and so have a new
tiny Tammany's a little I'd like all of
them everyone was quite surprised that
he would be so greedy to say it like all
of them is that so well why do you say
that to him and he said well you said I
can't have none of them so i might as
well like them all I'd like that
excellent sir that's pretty good i mean
i saw big run die can join us for a
second there ok so the term is just
slightly more serious
uh
there was there's a character in in this
in the book and the movies have been
made on it
that is this ghost of Jacob Marley's the
first ghost to appear if you may if
you've ever seen movies read the book
and this mr. Marley has been a partner
of Scrooge's before he had passed away
and so there were two two legendary
misers very selfish who had gotten along
just fine because of all that but this
goes to come back to basically wisen up
mr. Scrooge and say you might want to
choose a different path excreta saying
well how could you say I need a
different path you were a legend of
business you're an amazing man and I
looked up to you you were your billion
and how could anyone who's so successful
business tell me that he has regrets and
that I made two and so what the ghost of
Jacob Marley says is mankind was my
business I'll let you read the rest
there he said you know there's a
comprehensive ocean in my business and
making money was only a piece of that
and so that obviously is a turning point
for mr. Scrooge to begin to begin
thinking on how he might redefine
success it in my mind take that same
perspective of there is no such thing as
rich enough only poor enough but apply
that to mankind at large not just
himself yeah in this city guess is one
of the tickets and this is one of the
reasons I love working with you Mike
because you bring this sort of really
rounded view to what what delivering
projects is all about you know the
portfolio exists to make things better
but it's not there just to keep people
busy that the portfolio is there to an
act change and that change should be
making things better and that can be on
a big scale of the scale of humanity or
it can be on a on a small scale you know
just making something more efficient or
making somebody's life easier or
whatever it may be and and to me this is
really at the heart of what what and
it's why I'm passionate about this stuff
is that this is at the heart of what
makes projects worth doing is it's about
what is the benefit what's the advantage
to mankind what is the upside to use
your your tone from doing the things
that we do
so let's take perfect perfect sort of
segue to my next and next series of
comments let's take this away from the
front of this story and take some things
that might actually be a lot more
concrete and tangible from a day-to-day
point of view if we take we go some
additional perspectives that would be
much more much more commonplace on a
day-to-day basis we do have people who
pay for our projects and while most
people call them stakeholders or or
something like that let's just call them
investors those after all that's what
they are and if we start thinking of
them as investors we start thinking of
people like mr. Scrooge saying there's
no such thing as rich enough only point
off unless imagine some reasonable
things that these investors might say
right and so again this could be project
space but they give it in broader
investor terms and the best you might
say I'm hoping for solid return sometime
soon but earlier is better right so
that's a variation on there's no such
thing as rich enough only burn off
obviously not as my Zulu sounding much
more reasonable sounding for a rational
investor and if you compare that to what
a PM might say
but pmid and i love the feeling of
completing projects really fast employ
look great impact i can see when that
happened right so the two of them
actually are saying essentially the same
thing on speed you know oftentimes p.m.
steel pins and the team feel the
pressure of and not early enough not
really enough go faster go faster like a
miser lee screwed cracking whip on them
or something but the reality is they
like going fast they're like being part
of a system that knows how to move fast
then they like feeling like they can
satisfy investors desire for unlimited
upside
so let's take another investor
perspective this would be obviously left
to do with projects may be more familiar
to those of us who invest for on
retirements well I'm retiring in 10
years let's say and I'm not even hoping
for giant returns but boy when I the day
I retired that money better be there
and so what what a PM might say is
similar to this is I love the feeling on
delivery of delivering on all of my
commitments but when everyone's really
relying on me to come in with in plan
for that feels great when I can do it so
there's again this common notion of
reliability that connects these two
perspectives quite directly in quite in
a quite synchronized fashion
so a big one that will definitely be
familiar to the PM world investor to say
I think they're not invest in things
that have wildly uncertain time frames
and which may require me to throw a good
money after bad boy we hear that all the
time in project space and of course this
is where the two perspectives between
investors and pms often fail to align
instead you had p.m. saying well why
does it seems hard to get projects
funded around here and of course there
is this issue well because the investors
aren't confident right so there is this
notion of we have to bridge these two
perspectives in an effective project
selection approach and that will be the
third of three gifts i'll get to justice
even
ok so what can female
actually do speed reliability and
selection so one to improve speed and
there's all sorts of things that you can
do but I would say with the very biggest
one that's been shown study after study
of hundreds of organizations is one not
super familiar to the traditional p.m.
community this notion of staggering and
not just saying well we don't really
have all the resources to kick off all
my projects tomorrow so let's just defer
a few a few months that's that's that's
a start right that's a that's consistent
with the notion of staggering here for
sure but what most people do is they try
to do it according to overall capacity
it looked across their resource pools
and say well you know I might have a few
guys coming free in a month so that
surely means I have the capacity to kick
off a project in about a month and I say
well you might not if you focus instead
on your most constrained resource type
and almost everyone intuitively knows
pretty well what that type is in their
own organizations and say let's just set
a drumbeat of reliable execution fast
and reliable execution according to my
most constrained resource type sometimes
you can do that quite effective leaves
no tools at all well I'm a big believer
in good project management tools and
using tool sets well in this case some
people do it just rule of thumb and
guess their way through it and achieve a
doubling or tripling in the food put of
completed projects but he's pretty great
yeah I mean that doesn't i won so that's
that's a huge point I mean it sounds
like a bit of a throwaway where when
mike says you know doubling or tripling
and throughput but it's it's it's not
just kind of something that he's made up
on the spur of the moment these are
actual numbers so this first gift is a
real real winner and mike is a great
resource as i said at the beginning it's
very generous with this time if you want
to know how to get some of that i would
drop mike an email or visit his website
and you'll you'll get some insight into
how to deliver that
that's it it's a real one it's huge go
go go help yourself well thanks to it
and you go to that end I do have a
client recently achieved a tripling
throughput just doing this and one of
the techniques and I'd be happy to
introduce anyone who reaches out to me
to this to this individual he'd be more
than happy to speak with then the one
that has questions about balls
okay so that's gif number one number two
on reliability again also the things you
can do to improve reliability but if I
were to give you just one gift I would
say this somewhat counterintuitive
notion of eliminating certain
commitments so the notion here is any
commitment that's lower level than what
the customer really cares about is not
worth setting commitment on so if you
say well I really really need this this
bridge built by a certain date maybe
because we expect all sorts of holiday
traffic to go over it and it would be
enormously valuable to be delivered
earlier versus later so these let's go
do it that's an important commitment and
one that obviously we'd like to keep
pretty critical to reliability but if I
say well we're not sure exactly when the
concrete will be delivered but we want
to hold some contractors delivered by a
certain date
and that's where we get into some of the
negative effects so maybe more simple
example in the concrete Stuart if you
just ask me when I could deliver some
task by and I know I can do it and save
five days on average but i'm thinking if
my reputations on the line I'm not going
to promise you five days but I know
there's a chance there's very some known
that could hit out of my control and it
might take me ten days um if I care
about my commitments I'm going to
promise ten days and so will every
single other person in the entire
project and so we will effectively
double the length of our project and
still some of those longer commitments
may not make it which could delay things
further and so the notion is if if we
know that there's all this variability
that at the lower level let's manage it
the way a good insurance company would
and aggregate the risk and get
aggressive with our time frames which of
course we all want and then protect that
protect the project from all that
variability by having a single project
level cushion where buffer could be a
schedule buffer or some extra management
reserve dollars but usually much greater
quantities than traditional practice
calls for and the key again is
eliminating any of that lower level
stuff so they decide to knock my
five-day task out and say two days I
just have a great run of it and murphy's
law stays at bay then i can just deliver
in any estimate anyone gives me save
five days I don't pace myself to the
five days and I don't get mad if I can't
quite make the five days because I'm
hustling everyone knows I'm hurrying we
all share the same sense of urgency and
it wrote it aligns all of our interests
and puts us all in the same boat
and this again keeping the theme of
having a very sort of human discussion
here if you think about how we all
behave or this health how I behave maybe
I'm different to everybody else but if I
give myself three days to do a task that
task is going to take three days whether
whether I could have done it in a day
and a half or not because I've given
myself three days and I think there's
something very normal very human in that
process and so by eliminating those sort
of task level goals you're taking away
those sort of artificial permissions if
you like to procrastinate on to put off
getting started or to a gold plate your
deliverable or whatever it is that
slowing you down you're eliminating that
temptation and so this is again about
empowering people to deliver quickly and
then and trusting them as it says there
and it's also about taking away the kind
of the human psyche psychological
temptations to do things the wrong way
or to take longer than they need to to
deliver tasks and again as a as a
someone who manages teams and and who
also contributes to teams just giving
the freedom to crank through something
quickly to focus on it in a nun
interrupted fashioned crank through it
in and of itself is a huge a huge gift
that I enjoy and I value when I'm when
I'm delivering stuff so again this is
this is great it's very humid but it
also has a very sort of business
valuable result at the same time as
having a human valuable result
again that last notion of trust that
does sound sort of fuzzy perhaps to
actually Bank a hard p.m. technique on
something as fuzzy as trust
but boy when you trust the people who
report under you to just execute well
and they see that that trust is there
and they know that they could be
slacking off and harming things and
that's a risk you've taken by trusting
them boy the slackers become very few
and far between this notion of people
saying well you know I negotiated for
five days on that task when I could not
get out by lunchtime I'm boy the boss is
stupid and I'm sure pulled one over on
him all that stuff just goes away
greater the sort of unified teen
behavior of this is not a game of you
versus me this is a game of us all
rowing in the same direction as fast as
you can okay great so gift number three
on selection those of you who are
familiar transparent choice and what
they provide the marketplace these days
you know where I'm going here but
certainly using consistent logic and
analytical sound criteria waiting's
making sure investment candidates stack
up in a measurable way against each
other using all available subjective
inputs from the powers that be
that we're not saying we want a machine
to make our decisions for us but we are
saying when we had human beings in the
room whose job it is to make sound
decisions that it not all just be
focused on cutting you know political
deals focusing on the wheeling and
dealing aspect of selection so that
everyone feels like they got a piece but
instead focusing on things that actually
drive value in the organization and
change the conversation from how can i
scratch your back so you might scratch
mine too how might we improve this
organization around here how might we
improve the value we deliver to our
customers though certainly transparent
choice offers a great solution to that
by the way there's no peer if you
remember the investor comment from a
previous slide you know I really don't
want to invest in things that have
wildly uncertain time frames so that may
require me to invest more money than
originally planned once you improve
speed and reliability the data that
seems the project selection process
actually comes more trust about more
bankable okay so if I'm an investor I
see my investments showing returns
earlier and hitting the due dates when
it did it matter
I'm not only excited because my returns
are getting higher but my future
decisions on what projects to select I
start to trust them a lot more the
estimates you give me on when this thing
will be completed and how much it'll
cost and what the aural I will be we all
kind of snicker and laugh and joke today
can we know there are just wild guesses
let me know deep down even if the human
being making them is a trusted
individual anyone that digs beeps behind
it they kind of have to admit like well
if we're not really executing fast and
reliably it's really hard to say so
these three things tend to create this
virtuous cycle right so let's get more
bankable get a higher volume of these
things each one of them is higher value
so you get these ever higher Irys then
all of a sudden that notion of mr.
Scrooge saying no such thing is rich
enough only poor enough applies to all
of mankind this starts sounding like a
pretty good thing to be a part of
so in the gift of giving a little extra
on the holidays I've actually thrown in
a fourth thing that you can do is a
bonus and that simply is to inspire
others by making humankind your business
and again it's fuzzy that might sound or
lofty or unbusinesslike I contend that
every project portfolio I've ever seen
is advancing human kind in some way the
key is helping people see it so if it's
not clear even to you keep clarifying at
your own head keep asking the right
questions check in with your folks if
it's not clear to them keep clarifying
it I think you'll you'll stimulate put a
bit of inspiration even if you your
project portfolio deals with things you
might consider quite mundane and not all
that inspirational people want to be
part of something more than just getting
a paycheck but they want to feel like
they're making it backed up to make that
connection and it's interesting on that
point mike is the you talked about the
prioritization process earlier and and
that's one of the ways in which you can
make those connections by having a good
process for defining you know where are
we going as an organization what are we
trying to achieve how is it that we're
going to have an impact on society as a
business and and then linking your
projects that you're doing to those
goals means that the the the project
implementation teams actually understand
overall in the aggregate what is it that
you know what's the mountain that we're
going to move what's the difference
we're going to make to people's lives
and if you don't go through those that's
you know if you don't have the vision
you haven't picked the projects that
support the vision and if you can't
reliably and scalar blida liver on the
vision then you're not going to have the
impact so you know connect the
prioritization process connects the
vision to the to the portfolio and then
and then executing the portfolio is what
makes it all real I like this way about
thinking of a portfolio it's all about
value and it's about wanting to deliver
the most that you possibly can
and I think most people are just wired
that way that's how we so it's great
this is this resonates really well
and it said it better so oh that's so
then this next point here gm's you know
we spend so much time asking rpms to
report on status of schedule compliance
and budget compliance and scope
compliance that it's easy to stay inside
that triple constraint and just be
focused on executing according to the
box you you feel you put in as a PM but
help your PM see the connection between
the actual investment side of this right
again some of us are just wanting
unlimited upside like mr. Scrooge other
is saying look you know it might be as
simple as I just want this thing to come
in on time and it's it it's important to
be the value I'm trying to achieve to
get this thing in on time here's why but
rather than just say meet your schedule
meet your budget media scope couple
it'll have some conversations with your
pm's about why this particular project
is is particularly schedule sensitive
why its value proposition and ROI or
particularly scope sensitive perhaps I
help them really see that they are the
engine of achieving the ROI they're not
just living inside this triple
constraint with everyone kind of
climbing on top of them demanding more
and more
and then why not why stop there let's
take it even one better why not have
p.m. start leaving those conversations
right how can they get better and better
getting investors what they need is I
mean if they don't even understand and
the investor perspective where they see
investors all is just my daily mr.
Scrooge's making unfair demands to work
on Christmas and things like that so
I've never seen a p.m. in a status
meeting the asked what more could you do
with your team to deliver more of what
the investor community needs here
right sometimes the answer could be you
know what going over budget could buy a
little bit Chris double the ROI oh my
god you recommend me going over over
budget and that's heresy in PN circles
but perhaps not if we're actually asking
the right value oriented questions and
connecting with an investor's actually
need
so in the end rather than have the PMO
be this sort of burdensome layer of
overhead that you know everyone groans
when the PMO leader walked by because
there's some checklist they didn't
comply with or some standards that they
may have violated and they're afraid of
getting caught rather than be that kind
of pmo um make sure you work yourself
with your identity hey we are the
stewards of the system that drive speed
and reliability and sound investment
decisions you couldn't achieve any of
this without us that's why we're here
with that I will leave you few places
you can go learn more most of these are
free let you see them here briefly I do
offer this a half a day planning
workshop not that kind of help certain
project teams or PMO's apply some of
these concepts and practice
and then of course I can't give this one
away but I'm kept it is low-cost as i
can for targeted fields in the IT
community but all of mine on IT
customers tell me they get a lot out of
it as well and with that I'll just leave
you my contact info and ended back to
you sir Mike thank you for that as usual
fun interesting energetic
thought-provoking and just what we all
need to help those mince pies go down so
really appreciate it absolutely loved a
bit of Dick Van Dyke in the middle there
made me smile so then the next webinar
from mike will be Mary Poppins and how
to make the 5000 really fly so on that
note thank you all for joining us and
you know do come back check out our
other webinars there's lots more content
out there to help you make your p.m. oh
great happy holidays