So today what we're gonna do is we're gonna go over, uh,
these are the slides that, uh, I used at quite a lot
of conferences and webinars
and things last year, um, to tell a story.
And we're gonna pick part of that story
and do a deep dive into it, right?
So the story is all about ducks and eggs.
And, um, uh, uh, I,
I don't know, jump onto chat.
Tell me, please tell me if you do not.
In fact, let's do it the other way around, if you know
what I mean when I say ducks and eggs, right?
Give me a quick quack in the chat.
Oh, we've got some thumbs going up. Excellent. Good stuff.
We've got a few hearts coming up.
We've got a nice little quack in there. Fantastic.
So, for those, for the uninitiated, for those who, uh,
who haven't had a chance to, to play with my ducks yet,
the idea of the, the ducks is that, you know, a friend
of mine was, was presenting his project to CEO of one
of the world's biggest oil and gas companies.
And, uh, you know, he was doing the usual thing, right?
He is geeking out. He's talking about his Gantt chart
and his, and value reports,
and, uh, all of these wonderful things that,
that we love to talk about.
And the CEO stops him
and he says, Roberto, I don't care if you've got a boy duck
or a girl duck, right?
I don't care about your project methodologies.
I don't care about all this stuff.
All I want is eggs, right? I just want the value.
So tell me about the value.
Don't bore me with all the eggs and, and, and that stuff.
So, so from this, right?
We, we can, we can kind of conclude
that all the executives want are eggs.
And so as, uh, as a profession, the PMO profession, right?
Our job is to maximize
how much egg we give to the business.
And eggs are getting more and
more valuable, right? Stuart?
They really are. We were, we were,
we were laughing about that in the green room.
I'm not sure we're gonna bring some
of those jokes into, into this forum. Well,
I'm gonna bring one in right now, um, to, to, to, uh,
share with everyone here
how this whole duck story you came up
with has kind of ruined me.
I was out Christmas shopping a few months ago,
and I saw a little, uh, I don't know, it might might've,
might've been like a little coaster or something,
and it said, dear autocorrect, it's never duck.
Excellent. And for the, uh, non,
non-native English speakers out there, if you go
and write that one down and think about it later
on, you'll, you'll get it.
And it really is never duck.
Um, so, so one of the things when I'm,
when I'm presenting this is
that I'll say something crazy like, yeah, our job is
to double the strategic impact from the portfolio, right?
That's, that's what we're here to do as a, as a profession.
And people kinda look at me weird at that point,
you know, it's like, double.
Really, that's not possible.
And so the next slide that comes up is this one, right?
Where, where I put Mike's beautiful face up there.
He, he regrew his beard, by the way, specifically for today,
so that we'd all recognize it,
otherwise we'd, we'd never recognize you, right?
Mike?
Somebody actually said that to me once.
Like, I see some guy on the LinkedIn profile
with facial hair, but that doesn't look like you.
It's like, really
Excellent. Well, so
the funny thing about this slide is
that when I reached out to Mike
and said, Hey, Mike, give me a couple of, couple
of case studies that I can use as, as a validation point.
Uh, I think I was presenting at the, uh, at the
PMI Global Summit or something,
and he sent me a bunch of case studies, uh, and,
and these case studies had four x increase in, in, in flow,
five x increase in flow.
I'm like, Mike, I can't use that. Right?
Nobody, nobody's gonna believe that.
So can you send me a few tamer ones?
So these, these are Mike's failures
that we're looking at right now.
These, these aren't even the good ones.
And so, you know, I've talked about this stuff so often
that I thought we'd just had to get Mike on a webinar so
that we could, um, so
that we could hear from the master, right?
Um, where, and,
and so what we thought we'd do is I'll kinda share some
of the, the way that I talk about this stuff.
And, and I, you know, most of, most of what I know such as,
you know, in insofar as I know anything, most of what I know
I've learned from Mike, because he's really, you know, top
of the game when it comes to, uh, all things around theory,
constraints, critical chain, um, uh, in, in, in terms
of project execution.
Mike's, Mike's the man,
And you know, Stuart, real quick on this, yeah.
Um, it took me a long time to, uh, get to that point.
Um, and I spent probably the first 20 plus years
of my career having the same reaction that you said,
you guess, uh, quite often thinking that's not possible.
Um, you know, we, we PMs can't possibly be
that underperforming, that there's so much room to improve
that it could be double or better.
It just, that, that just doesn't make any sense.
We'd have to be so incompetent for that to even be possible.
It just can't be possible.
Um, and so, uh, it, when I, when I finally had to face up
to the fact that, uh, quite a bit
of improvement at the portfolio level is quite possible,
it really, um, forced me to rewire my entire brain.
Um, it, it took me like a,
it was like a six month painful process to open my, my mind
to the possibility that that much improvement was actually,
um, realistic.
Well, so here we go. Let's start, let's start with a bit
of a story there, Mike, before we jump into this one.
Um, how did you get into all this?
Because a lot of this stuff really is not intuitive,
even if you've, even if you've read the goal, right?
It still isn't intuitive.
Uh, it was all just a, a series of serendipitous events
where I just kind of fell into one career after another
and began learning and assembling knowledge from, uh,
you know, my time at NASA trying to get, um,
space systems in orbit, uh, becoming a software engineer
and, um, kind of living the
agile revolution in the early days.
Um, and just always kind of having this curiosity about,
you know, what, uh, I've lived through so many failures
and, um, and many of those are attributable to me.
So also quite humbling, right?
Um, but hey, I can learn from
these failures, and you know what?
There must be a better way. So that's sort
of the organizing theme of my,
my whole career trajectory is there must be a better way.
My issue is I'm, I'm rarely intelligent enough
to actually figure out what that better way is.
So I just, I just read
voraciously and, and learn from others.
So I was very lucky that I had quite a few amazing mentors
that were patient enough with me to take me through
and help me rewire my brain.
Awesome, awesome.
Well, that, and, and to be honest, that's, um, uh,
that underlines one of the things we were talking about in
the Green Room before we opened up, which is that, um,
you know, all all, all the people who, you know,
jump on web webinars, stand on stage at conferences, um,
you know, we've all learned from other people.
Um, and, um, so again, I, I'm, I'm gonna, um, suggest
and encourage you all to jump in with questions
and make this session as interactive as you can,
because Mike is offering himself up today as a resource so
that we can all learn and,
and get, get better at this stuff and get smarter.
So, so the message here fundamentally is the, um, yes,
it absolutely is possible to double
or better the, the flow of projects.
So, so let's start off, Mike, maybe with,
with a case study or something.
Just, just tell us about a customer, you know, what do,
what does it typically look like when you walk
through the door for the first time, and then,
and then what does it look like when you leave?
So, honestly, uh, some
of the biggest successes I've had we're the simplest
and probably did not require, well, did not require much
of my, um, help or support,
and was something that was readily available to the client,
even had they never met me.
They just didn't know it. And so the,
it's almost embarrassingly simple, but I'll share it.
We, we humans have a, a very, um, common tendency
to overload our systems.
Um, you know, if you're familiar
with the holiday in the US Thanksgiving where we, you know,
celebrate with a big feast, uh,
there's a term we have called Thanksgiving eyes.
You just want, uh, you want some of everything.
It's just all looks so good, but it's probably more than you
can actually handle, at least handle
in a healthy way, right?
Yeah. Um, and that's the same
with executives and organizations.
I want more done. I want more eggs.
So if I want more value delivered, I guess the way
to do it is to launch more initiatives, right?
Because all these initiatives, these projects sound great.
I want them all done. And yes, I'm well aware
of resource constraints.
All executives understand those concepts,
but I don't think they understand the difference
between keeping everyone busy as possible
and getting as many results as possible.
Because not only are those two different things,
they're actually in conflict with each other.
You can't have both. If you choose, uh, everyone being
as busy as possible, you will create a traffic jam.
Um, and so the typical scenario is my PMs, uh,
you know, have lost their zeal.
They no longer, you know, they no longer know how
to keep a, a fast cadence.
Um, we're getting big and bureaucratic and lazy around here.
I want you to whip everyone into shape.
And I say, well, without even knowing anything else about
your organization, I can tell you with 99% confidence
that you have overloaded your highway system.
And now you're wondering why everyone's late.
So deload your highway system, and, um,
and again, we all know this right, from sitting in traffic,
but, but it's, it's harder
to see in our organizations, right?
How, how congested our project portfolios
are are not so easy to see.
Like traffic might be if you're like in a helicopter
flying above the highway, right?
Or certainly sitting in it,
but the PMs who are sitting in it, they feel it,
and they, they know that like, okay, well,
I can only get 20% of Joe
and he's not available till next Thursday,
and then Joe's sick next Thursday,
and we try to muddle through without Joe.
And, uh, and then we wonder why we're so much slower.
So basically, unless you have people standing around, kind
of like in a relay race ready to take the baton,
you will not get, you will not get the
fastest possible execution.
So that's very counterintuitive.
Like, wait, you want me to have people standing around?
Um, yes, but not, not for no purpose.
They're, they're standing there ready
to take the baton, right?
Um, and they're warmed up and they're trained up,
and they've drilled on the baton handoffs, and,
and they're, they're ready to, they're ready to go
after maximum speed here, right?
And if they're over finishing their high jump
or some other event, and we have to wait for them, well,
we're gonna have a much slower time.
So it's very, it's very, um, simple in concept,
but counterintuitive, right?
Because it challenges core assumptions.
Like, if I want more done, I better launch more initiatives.
That's, that's one. And also, uh,
the sooner we start, the sooner we finish.
So that assumption, um, is a real tricky one
because like the traffic analogy,
if I know there's bad traffic out there
and I want to be home by 6:00 PM well, I better leave
by four 30 or whatever.
But the difference there is I don't control that system.
I'm a victim of it. Um,
organizations do control their portfolios,
and they're not victims of it,
or they don't have to be anyway.
So literally, I just say, cut your projects in half,
and they of course ask why half?
I say, I don't know. Um, it's a big number.
Uh, you might need to cut by 80%, but 20 probably won't do.
So, uh, put half on hold, redeploy the resources,
the other half, and you will, uh,
get twice as many done this year.
And it's really that simple.
I'm almost embarrassed that I, that I have
to send an invoice just for that,
Should never be embarrassed
to send an invoice invoice, Mike.
Um, but okay, so, so there's a couple of questions.
Let's make you edit today.
So the, so the first one is, um, so,
so we're talking about increasing ROI or flow,
or whatever you, you, you want to call it, right?
How do you, how do you actually baseline that?
'cause at the end of the day, we to declare victory,
we've gotta be able to measure.
So how do you create the baseline?
So usually, uh, especially large organizations,
they almost always will have some sort of system
where they have, you know, charge codes for projects
and time sheets and all that kind of stuff, um,
for better and worse, right?
So usually, uh, I could say like, well, okay,
how many charge, how many project charge codes did you, um,
decommission last year?
And they can go into their system and run a report
and tell me within five minutes usually.
Um, and if they can't, if they don't even have any,
any system like that, or any discipline or,
or whatever, usually that's because they're a startup
or a scale up, and they can count them on, you know,
two hands, right?
It's okay, you got 10 done last
year, how'd you like to get 20?
Um, and go, oh, but everyone's so maxed out around here.
Everyone's already so stressed. There's already,
already so much overtime.
I was like, right, how about we reduce all that too?
Um, and,
and then again, they, they often will look at me with, um,
disbelief, but, uh,
but there's a reason they, they
called me in the first place, right?
There's a problem with the status quo
and strong motivation to improve it.
So I just remind them of that
and then just say, well, uh, if, you know,
it might not work, but you won't know until you try it.
And if you try it and it fails,
you're gonna learn some very interesting things about
that failure, and you're free to fire me if it fails.
Um, I'm the consultant, I'm supposed
to get fired at some point, right?
But every, every time I've gone
and done that, um, it either worked really quickly
and built momentum for, for more, or it didn't work,
and that gave them amazing insights into what could work.
Like we were sure this would work, it didn't, why not?
And then that's, uh, I've never seen a case
where a client needed, uh, more than one try
to get it right, or, sorry, more than two tries, right?
More than one failure, right? Yeah. Yeah.
The second tries, uh, you know, they never need,
it's always the first try,
and never worse than the, than the second try, I guess.
So, so in the event, you know, in, in the chat,
people are talking about, you know, the, the, the fact
that some execs don't realize that there are constraints
and that those constraints are causing problems.
So how do you, how do you make that visible?
And I, I've got a little story about that,
but I'd love to hear your, your take first, how do you,
how do you get their attention
and how do you make it visible
that this is causing a problem?
Well, usually, again, if they've called me,
they already know there's a problem, or there's, uh,
at least some pretty big missed opportunities, um,
frustration, all of that.
And often they will have already tried something like, well,
we tried sending all the PMs to training
or getting them all PP certified,
or, um, we'll have an agile transformation
and get everyone trained up in agile stuff
and try, try following the scrum guide or something.
And they may well have gotten some improvements from, um,
all of those, but it's almost always very incremental,
and sometimes they don't get any improvement at all.
And it could even get worse, because, again, until you,
until you set things up for flow, none of
that stuff matters, right?
Or it only matters at the fringes.
Um, and oh, by the way, I have quite a few now.
I'm, I'm, I'm a proud agileists.
You can see the word agile in the subtitle of my book there.
Um, and I lived, like I said, I lived the agile
movement in the nineties and the early aughts.
Um, but again, uh, the best methods will,
can easily be squandered if you're just stuck in traffic.
Absolutely. Right? Absolutely right.
So, so, um, what, what, what I, what I'd like
to do now is just sort of jump forward a little bit and,
and start to tell the story
and, um, uh, come back to the, the,
the traffic jam analogy for a second.
Because, um, the, there are sort of, there are several ways
that you can get your execs attention on this one.
One is just to show them, right?
So, so, um, there's a, a, a chap in in Wales
who was really struggling,
and exec, his execs were just coming
and saying, look, here's a project.
Just get it done. Just get it done.
Find a way, just get it done.
And, uh, he happened to be on, uh,
Laura Barnard was launching her book.
He was on one of the launch calls, and I got him to join
and got him to tell the story.
And Laura gave him some great advice,
which was basically just, just, you know, next time
that happens, just show them your
resource allocation and the projects
to which everybody's allocated,
and ask him which project you would like
to take the resources from in order to do this new thing.
Great. Love it. How'd that go
Beautifully.
The executing question just kind of went, oh, I see.
No, we can't stop any of that other activity. Okay.
So you'll just have to wait. Yes. Okay. Right.
It can be that simple. It really can, um, uh,
storytelling is a good way.
Uh, you know, and if Yeah,
Go ahead. And on that scenario,
if they say, well,
we're not gonna stop anything, we'll just,
we'll just stop starting new things
and we'll wait for the current traffic jam to,
to slowly clear before we get things really flowing again.
I say, okay, well that's, that's
how you double your ROI in a year or two.
I thought you said you wanted to do it right now. Right?
So you, you gotta make some bold decisions now if you
want big improvement.
Um, and by the way, it reminds me
of a story. Go ahead. Sorry, Stuart.
Yeah, go. No, well, no, I was, I was just gonna say,
I mean, it reminds me, actually, Mike, when you say that
of our first ever conversation, so Mike was working
with a client and they, you know, he kind of thought
that prioritization might be important
for this particular client.
And he rang me up. I remember I was, I was, I was, uh,
walking the streets of London at the time, um,
not in any kind of dodgy revenue earning way,
but just kind of, I was walking back from a meeting
or something and, uh,
and this, this arrogant SOB came on the call
and he's like, look, the customer wants prioritization,
but I, I'm not sure I need it.
I know it's important, but I'm not sure I need it.
I'm like, what do you mean? He said, well,
I can make projects go so fast
that they can just do everything right.
And, uh, to which I responded, great,
so you're just gonna do the wrong projects faster.
Nice, nice work. But,
but from that came this, this kind of realization that, hey,
there's a guy here who's claiming to do something
that everyone else thinks is just mad, right?
And what can we, what can we learn from that?
And I, I think over the, over the intervening years,
we've learned a bit from each other, hopefully, um,
right on most, mostly Mike teaching me,
I have to, I have to confess.
But the, but the, the, the point is that, um, you know,
to do, to do all of this, right?
So, so asking someone to cut half the portfolio gets a heck
of a lot easier if we actually understand the relative value
of those projects, right?
And, and, um, so, so this is the, the, the analogy that I,
that I kind of use, many of you will have seen this before.
So, um, so, uh, uh, so I am fully expecting lots
of perfect answers in the chat, please, as we go
through this, right?
So, so here's a road
and, uh, you know, so, so why do we, why do we build roads?
What's the point of building roads?
Ah, sha you're not allowed to answer.
'cause you've heard this too many times.
So why do we, why do we build roads? Jump into the chat.
Someone give me, someone, gimme a quick answer
to get from one point to another to get
what, from one point to another.
Randy, that's a good answer.
What, what is it that we're getting
from one point to another?
So much store traffic costs?
You know, I've never had that answer before. I like that.
Uh, whatever you want to get to an end point. Okay. Yeah.
I, I, oh, that, I, I quite like that answer actually, Randy.
That's, that's good people. Good, good. Like that people,
I like Gregor's answer too.
Uh, where was Gregor to get to the goal? Absolutely.
Um, so, so the, I, so the goal, you know, we build roads
to get people and goods from A to B, right?
Not to get cars from A to B to get people and goods.
So the people are the value,
the cars are like projects, right?
That's just, it's just the vehicle
that takes the value from one place to another, right?
And delivers the value to its, to its end point.
And then the road is like the constraints
that we have, right?
There's only so much road. So, so 0% utilization
of the road, we've got an empty road.
How much, how many people are getting to their,
their journey and, uh, getting
to their destination right now?
This is, this is gonna be very chat intensive folks for,
so just keep, keep your fingers out there.
So how many people are getting to their destination?
Everyone, everyone who set out, right? I
Know IL was correcting his previous comment.
That's all. Oh, oh,
Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Okay.
Actually, that's,
that is quite a funny, funny answer.
Everyone who sets out gets there, right?
Nobody's setting out. So
how many people are getting to their destination?
I think people are refusing to respond because,
because they're embarrassed
that you'd even ask the question.
I know. Well, there, obviously,
there are no people getting to their destination.
So, so what do we do? We add some cards.
Ones who do not have ev
We've got a punchy, punchy group in
today. I love it, Gregor.
I will have, you know, that I, I've owned nothing
but EVs for over a decade,
and I always get where I'm trying to go.
Absolutely. Whether it's two wheels, four or four by four
Off road, whatever.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Um, so, so we put some, uh,
so we put some cars on the road, right?
So we're running at 30% utilization cars are whizzing along
loads of people getting to the destination.
Everybody's happy. So what do we do?
Well, we put more cars on the road, obviously,
'cause we want more people to get to the destination.
So we add more cars and more cars, and eventually, right?
We get to a hundred percent utilization, which
of course looks like this.
So the key question is how many people are getting to
their destination now?
And the answer is not many.
Yeah, it's not, probably not none,
but it's, it's a small number.
You'll get some people through those motorcyclists will
sneak, sneak their way through somehow, right?
And, uh, you know,
and you'll get the odd cast sneaking through, but,
but not many people. So, so, and
Also, Stewart, I also add that, uh, in,
in most organizations, certainly the ones I grew up in
and found success in, is
because I figured out basically how to cheat.
I figured out how to like, put a strobe light, uh,
and on my roof and a siren so
that people thought I was an ambulance that had to get
through, and I would just, you know, force people
to the side and plow through.
So, so when I lived in the States, um, I I, that, that,
my secret was Cadbury's chocolate from the uk,
I would bring Cadbury's chocolate back every time I came
back, and I would hand it out to all the developers.
And, uh, and bribes
Worked too. Yep. Bribes
absolutely worked.
So anytime one of my customers needed something,
it got done top of the pile every single time.
Uh, I'm, I'm not proud of it, but there you go.
That's, that's how the world works. So,
Yeah, no, by the way, that was another humbling moment
for me, realizing that I thought I was this fantastic pm
um, shining star.
I got promoted faster than all my peers,
and I realized that all my
successes were basically cheating.
And it ca came at the expense
of the other projects and the other people
You go, which is why we need PMOs, by the way,
that one of the reasons that we need PMOs.
A good PMO. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. A good PMO.
Um, fantastic.
So let's, let's turn this,
let's convert this into something a bit
more businesslike, right?
So, so the vertical axis here
is the amount of business value.
Horizontal is your, your resource utilization rate.
So low utilization, you're not delivering more much value.
So you, so you add more projects, right?
And the execs say, that's good, let's add even more.
So you add some more projects.
And somewhere around here,
something really interesting happens, right?
Or two things really interesting happen.
The first thing is that the, is that the execs wake up
and they say, well, actually we should be going
for a hundred percent utilization, right?
You can't do better than a hundred percent
utilization. Um, and by the
Way, if they're paid on billable hours,
that actually is appropriate.
That's a very good point. That's a very good point.
If they're paid on actually value delivery
and getting things done, then that's terrible.
Uh, there you go. Nice, nice, nice little fact.
Thank you for that in the chat.
Um, so, so the first thing that happens is execs wake up
and they say, Hey, we should go for a hundred
percent utilization.
Second thing is that you, you start
to get resource contention, right?
So, so that, that, that guy is running in the relay
that Mike was talking about a few minutes ago.
He's still doing the, still doing the high jumper,
whatever it was that you said, and he's not
ready to take over the baton.
So you, you end up running a slower race, right?
So you start getting resource contention,
but you know, execs just keep saying more and more, more.
Um, and so you, you load the team up
and you're getting less value, not more now, right?
Because, 'cause there's resource contention.
So, so I've been doing this little schlep,
and most organizations are that, that we encountered,
by the way, way out here.
They're beyond a hundred percent load.
Um, uh, there was, uh, one PMOI spoke with recently,
um, she was mandated by the leadership team
to deliver 120 projects.
And I asked her, how many did you actually complete?
Would you like to have a guess? Mike? Have a guess
Throughout the course of a year.
Yeah. 40,
Not too, no, right, right.
Order magnitude 2020, right?
So, so the other 120, all the effort
that went into those other 120 was completely wasted
because they, so
We averaged what a, a shock said.
And I said, right, we were close. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So, so now this curve, you,
you draw this slightly differently
'cause you, you draw it based on project flow rather than
value flow, but it's the same, same curve.
So this curve has a name, right Mike,
It's a flow density curve.
Cool. And it's from physics.
It's, it's, it's part of the natural laws of
how things flow and how they don't.
In fact, oh, by the way, uh, one, one of the things
that all my clients are always shocked
by is when they look at a curve like this
and they see that today they're at, uh, you know, 15,
you know, 15% of 50 I guess on business value delivered,
or $15 million or 15 whatevers, right on.
You knew exactly where I was going with it, Stewart.
I didn't, that's only as good as
as when they were just starting to use their resources.
Um, like, think about, think about that.
It's, it's no better than if it's no better than if 80%
of their, uh, capacity was just sitting idle.
So, so just, let's make that really human
for a second, right?
So if you're over here and you're,
you're on the project delivery teams,
what does life feel like?
Right? It, it's not nice.
I mean, you know, Mike's been in that position and,
and, yeah, sucks.
Thank you. I like that one word, succinct, very clear.
Um, you know, Mike, Mike had hair
before he was in that position, right?
Uh, so, so, so this is not a, this is not a good place
for your people, nevermind for the business, right?
Over here. What does life feel like for the people?
Well, oddly enough, boring. You got it, Mike. Yeah.
I mean, uh, your initial reaction is, oh,
that'd be brilliant, but no, you, you'd be bored.
You'd be bored. People don't wanna be sitting here, right?
They, they, they want to be up here.
They want to be in the productive zone.
So, so, you know, the, the, the, the answer is clearly
don't, don't load your people all the way over there.
Right? I'm gonna have to figure out how
to delete all of that now.
'cause Zoom has moved everything. Oh, there it is.
Hey, actually, uh, fantastic.
So, so the, the moral of this story is that, um, I, I guess,
um, to make that happen, to put yourself on top of the hill,
you need to stop some work
and that you could just throw darts at it.
Mike, we, there was that guy down in Brazil.
Do you remember that one? Where I do, um, the,
the CIO was trying to get, uh, by,
by our transparent choice prioritization software,
Mike was supporting them.
And, uh, he went to the COO
and the COO, you know, I'll,
I'll delete the expletives from the, he said to,
he basically went, you want priorities?
I'll give you priorities. And just took a pen and just went,
Yep, I'll be back on Monday with priorities. Go,
Go. Absolutely.
And, and within two weeks, the VP
of sales was banging on, on, uh, on our door.
Actually, it was on Roberto's door, uh,
saying, I can't get anything done.
I can't hit my goals.
Uh, and, you know, they've cut all these projects and all
My initiatives got undercut.
Yeah. And I, and I can't deliver anything, right?
So, so, so they, yeah, they cut some stuff.
So projects are gonna go faster,
but they're not necessarily moving,
they're not necessarily the projects that are moving
to towards their goals.
And, you know, Stuart, this ties back
to the story from when you and I first met where
I just said, look, you know,
why waste all this time on prioritization when you could
just be busy getting stuff done at
double the rate or better?
Um, and that was born out of, I knew, I knew
what I was saying was, um, only, only half baked, right?
But, but, but it, but it was out of frustration.
And it was the same frustration that that c um,
CEO actually, um, felt.
It was like, I'm, I'm tired of spending all this time,
energy, and capacity arguing over which projects get
prioritized over which other projects
and all the politicking and, and,
and silliness that just, um, gets us nowhere.
And I, I'm, I'm, I'm just gonna put a stop to it.
And of course, that creates its own negative effects
that you like the ones you just described.
So obviously, um, you know, if that's the best we can do,
okay, fine, at least we, at least we have priorities.
And that's better than not having priorities.
But obviously we could do much better than that.
And that's why you
and I have partnered, uh,
more strongly ever since that conversation.
You can get good priorities quickly that honors everyone's,
um, uh, you know, legitimate, uh, perspective, right?
Absolutely. And, and you know, the, the, so the,
the PMI data says that 20% of projects are so badly aligned
with the goals of the business,
they should be stopped, right?
So if we could just eliminate those 20% of projects, right?
Not only does that mean we're putting ourselves up here
somewhere, but also the curve has gone up
because we got rid of the, we got rid of the,
the rubbish, right?
We took the trash out, which means the
stuff we left with is better.
It's more valuable. Valuable. Yep.
So more valuable. So just doing that has the potential
to massively increase the amount
of business value that you deliver.
So now, and on here, we,
it talked about a HP, so transparent choice.
One of the things we do is obviously prioritization
software, uh, as part of the, the journey.
Um, and, and Mike, you've used that once or twice, does it?
What's your experience?
Uh, again, it's, um, I,
I had learned a HP actually in graduate school back in the
nineties and used it, um, to buy my first house
because my wife
and I just couldn't agree on anything, right?
So I knew it worked, I knew it worked, you know,
with two people that are trying
to respect each other's perspectives and,
and find some solution that was, uh, a good one for both.
It didn't really occur to me at the time
that the real value was in the conversations
that it enabled us to have.
And you taught me that Stewart, right?
Like, yes, there's a lot of math and formulas and,
and fancy things going on with a HP,
but the reason that all that math exists is
because it's trying to honor everyone's valid perspectives
and bring harmony to appropriately divergent points of view.
Like, it would be really strange if we all had the exact
same point of view, um, if I, in fact, why,
why would you hire me if I had the same exact point of view
of every other executive in the room?
Right? Right. Um, so that's what we, marketing will have.
We we've got chat PT for that.
Exactly. Um, yeah, marketing can and will
and should have a different perspective than finance.
And yet, uh, we need to find some way
that honors those perspectives
that helps the organization bump that curve up
to the green like you just showed.
So it's that, uh, harmonious,
like bringing harmony from disharmony, um,
honoring divergent perspectives without steamrolling over
someone and just basically turning it into a battle
where someone wins and someone loses.
Um, you know, that's the way to go.
Yeah. AB absolutely.
Well, and, and so, so I, I've got a confession
to make at this point, which is that this, this chart
is oversimplified, right?
And, and the reason, the reason I say that is, you know,
the, the, the idea is cool.
The reason I say that is
that we don't have one resource type.
We actually have multiple resource types.
We've got different skill sets.
You, if you're running an IT portfolio, it would be your,
your developers, your testers, your architects, et cetera,
your DPAs and so on.
And each of your projects draws from those pools
of people in different amounts.
So figuring out how to put yourself on top of the hill,
you know, what, what resource rate
you're looking for, right?
And, and by the way, you know, overall, uh,
so this curve is actually plotted, Mike,
I dunno if I've ever told you this.
Uh, so this is not a random curve.
I actually sat down with the queuing theory equations
and plotted out what this curve would look like, um, uh,
using those equations.
Um, so, so, you know, if you, if you look at the queuing,
right, the, the,
the wait time really takes off once you get past about 80%
utilization in within a system.
So, so our trick is to try
and balance the find a portfolio of projects that
maximizes value whilst not overloading any of those people,
any of those teams, uh, particularly.
And so we, so we build a bit of a, a bit of ai,
special ai, not chat.
GBT type ai, um, is a completely different algorithm.
And it, it simulates thousands of portfolios looking
for the one that puts you on top of the hill
that delivers the maximum value from the resource capacity
that you tell it you have available.
Um, which is a real game changer. Changer and a lot of fun.
But the fun doesn't, yeah, yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
Let me, let me make sure that the game changing power of
that is, is really, um, communicated here.
Because one of the biggest obstacles I have faced ev uh,
as long as I've been doing this,
and I've been doing this for, I guess, uh, 13 years now, um,
when I go into a client organization, they're like,
even if they say yes, we get the concept, yes, we want
to maximize for value delivery and not for utilization.
Yes, we're, we have the political will
to put some projects on pause
and redeploy resources so that we, we clear the highway,
right, and get it flowing again right away.
Um, but it seems like none of my tools can help me do that.
I'm kind of guessing in the dark,
and I, I might recommend a tool and I'm like, okay,
but now we have to learn a tool.
We have to populate the tool with a bunch of data.
We have to load all our resources into it.
We have to have good plans for each of our projects.
So we have a, you know, a good portfolio level view
of like a resource histogram across all my projects.
And, uh, and they just said, that's,
that's too steep of a hill to climb.
Um, so, you know, I don't know what to do.
And so what you've come up with, uh,
what transparent choices come up with Stewart
is a maj major game changer
because it just asks for a few things, um,
mostly based on intuition.
And if you have data on it
that you can pull from a report right away,
fine, so much the better.
But you, but, but it's not like pulling out your entire
project portfolio management ecosystem of tools
and replacing with something designed to do this.
It's using your best intuition
and the best information you already have at hand
and just getting started right away.
So, um, I think it's the most important, uh, development,
um, promoting, you know, a higher cadence
of value delivery in 30 years.
Wow. Awesome. Thank you for that.
That's, look, I'm, I'm blushy
I'll take an ounce some credit since I've kept encouraging
you to do something like that, but I had no idea of
what you were really doing with the sort
of simul AI simulations that can, um,
Well, I'll tell you what we're gonna, we're,
we're gonna get onto the next bit now, um, uh, which,
which I, which I'd, I'd like you to talk us
through actually, Mike, 'cause you,
you probably do it way better than I do.
Um, so, so once you picked your projects,
you then you wanna stagger them.
So why, so what's, what's the, what,
what do you normally see people do, right?
Staggering isn't really what,
what most organizations do today.
So what does today look like?
You want me to say or are you asking? Yeah.
No, you go. You, no, you, you go for it. You go for it.
'cause, because if you, if you, well,
Again, it's, it's based on the assumption.
The sooner we start, the sooner we finish,
we better start everything right away.
Hey, we just got all of our
funding approved for the new fiscal year.
All projects have money, all projects, uh, can, can
therefore kick off tomorrow.
And so we, we in, we basically
by design create an instant traffic jam.
Yeah. Everything's run in parallel.
And resource contention is rampant frustration and overtime
and stress is rampant and not much is moving.
Absolutely. And, and what, what's happening is, you know,
'cause at the end of the day, right, we PMOs, we,
our project managers and the PMO, we wanna be,
we wanna be able to turn around to the,
these powerful project sponsors and say, yes, we've started.
Right? We wanna make you happy.
So, so people will often, you know,
they'll start project one
and then move on to project two, project three.
At this point, we can turn to all three sponsors
and say, we started, right?
They come to the kickoff meeting, well,
There's, there's some progress. Yeah.
They come to the kickoff meeting, which may
or may not be the last time you ever see them, by the way.
But, but you know, they, they come to the kickoff meeting
and, and you, you've started, right?
So they feel good, they feel like something's happening.
So then you jump back to project
1, 2, 3, back to project one.
You hand it onto the next team, same thing.
And eventually you de de deliver your first
value all the way out here.
And oh, by the way, from the point of view
of every single project sponsor of these three, um,
imaginary projects, the white squares are delay.
Say that again. Say that again. That's important
From the point of view of each individual project sponsor.
The white squares represent delay,
and oh, by the way, we, we,
we humans get really good at hiding those white squares.
So like, if each of those squares say is a day
or a week, the reality is I might switch
between all three projects five times a day.
And so the white becomes little slivers of white
that sort of blend in.
And now the dark blue is just a little bit
lighter than dark blue.
Yeah. And so you can't really see the
delay, but of course it's there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well,
and the other thing that's happening here, of course, is
that people are, people are, uh, uh,
are task switching, right?
So, so the, the, um, uh, you know,
so if you, if you imagine you're a resource, uh,
delivery resource, and, and you've got six projects,
every time you switch, you've gotta switch gears.
That takes a chunk of time.
'cause you know, these are complicated tasks,
but it's worse than that because while you're doing that,
you've got six project managers coming
to you saying, what's the update?
Where are you on this task? What are you doing with this?
And every time they do that, you gotta, you gotta talk
to 'em for quarter of an hour to explain to them what's,
what's the delay and why is
this gonna take it a little longer?
And all the rest of it. So, so, um,
so the American Psychology Association did some research
that shows that, um, you lose up to 40%, four zero
of your useful capacity when you're task switching in
complex tasks like project management.
And so, so not only are your people stressed out,
not only do we have frustrated executive sponsors
'cause of the delay, but we're also
being hideously inefficient.
So what's the, what's the alternative, Mike?
Have each resource finished the task at hand
before they start the task on the next project, hand it off
and then jump not before.
There you go. Stay on, stay on task.
So, so the idea here is that you, you stagger the project so
that, um, so that, and,
and in this particular case, the,
the long pole in the tent is this light blue team, right?
So they're doing, doing more work than the dark blue
or the light other mid blue, right?
So we're staggering the projects.
So these guys are super, are just constantly busy, right?
They, they, they finish that, they flow down here,
they finish that flow down here.
And because now the whole, all the teams are are,
rather than task switching,
they're staying focused on the task until they're done.
You get that 30% back, 30, 40% back, which means
you get free projects in here. So, so Mike, and,
And I would add, we have not yet shown the benefit
of focused execution for a single human brain right up top,
the two, the two dark blue squares that some resource,
you know, if, if that's two weeks
or something for project one,
we're still assuming two weeks down below just
to show apples to apples.
So we're saying even if there were no benefit
from being more focused, look
how much more you could get done.
And now imagine that we do know there's real benefit.
So it won't be just that free fourth project on the bottom.
You'll probably get a free fifth and the sixth one also.
And that's now we've doubled our project throughput,
our cost basis is the same.
And that is a tripling in ROI if you do the math.
Love it. And, and what's more, right?
How, this is where we got our first value, uh, sorry,
over here is where we got our first value.
It's hidden by my little zoom window, uh, is
where we got the first value before.
Now we're getting first value here.
So let's say, let's say this is a project that delivers,
I dunno, a million dollars of value just
to make the numbers simple.
A million dollars of value every month.
We've just delivered an extra $2 million of value just just
by sequencing projects.
And oh, by the way, if I'm the sponsor for project three,
and you're telling me you're not gonna get started until,
you know, whatever the eighth, the eighth square is,
you know, eight weeks or eight months later, I might,
that might sound terrible
because I'm operating under the assumption the sooner we
start, the sooner I'll get my value.
The reality is, if you wait to start even the
lower priority projects, which doesn't feel so good to me,
if I'm told I'm lower priority
or my, my pet initiative is, is third priority
of these three right?
Dead last for this small portfolio.
But look, uh, by waiting eight weeks or months
or whatever to start, I'm still gonna get my thing done four
weeks sooner than I would have otherwise.
And again, this is not showing the, um,
the the task switching penalty.
So it's actually gonna be even better.
It'll probably be not just four weeks sooner,
but maybe eight weeks or something.
Absolutely. And, um,
and again, this is, this is something
that we've built some really cool AI to do to figure out
what order should you deliver the projects in, in order to,
um, to maximize this flow.
And, uh, Mike, you
and I met up last year, uh, along with Laura Barnard, uh,
on the, the shores
of Lake Geneva, I think it was, wasn't it?
Yes. That was fun. That was nice.
And we, we had a, we had a, a spirited conversation about,
um, you know what, well actually, what, what
what really happened was Mike, Mike turned
to give me some really good advice.
And the advice was, Stuart, the first thing you need
to ask every customer is
what is your most constrained resource?
Right? Most customers kind of know what it is,
they've got a feel for what it is, and then,
and then optimize everything around that.
That's what your software needs to be doing.
And I, I described to 'em what the software does,
and I literally, it just, it just brute force solves
the problem, right?
It just runs through tens
or hundreds of thousands of scenarios,
of different sequences of projects incrementally looking
for better, better, better solutions until it,
until it can't find a better one, right?
It's pretty simple. Um, and,
and Mike thought about that for a minute
and he kind of went, oh, I get it.
You don't even care, which is the most constrained resource,
you're just looking for the best solution.
Yeah. Which really
Cool way, bruteforce, you'll bruteforce expose it if they,
if their intuition doesn't
already tell them what it should be.
You you got it. You got it.
Um, so, so this was, th this is,
this is really cool in the past, right?
This is Mike, this is probably where,
where you earn some of your money, right?
Is helping people figure out how to do this. Oh yeah.
And, and you know what I,
what I hope transparent choice is doing is helping mortals,
mere mortals do that as well.
Uh, yeah, I think that, I think it has the power
to really revolutionize, like to bring these concepts to,
to the masses, if you will, right?
So you, you get over the tool hurdle
and all, all the obstacles I mentioned earlier.
So, so here's, here's the biggest question that I have
around this, um, is how,
how do you have this conversation with executives?
How do you get them to the point where they
understand buy-in, believe that this is
doable, because you are gonna ask some of them
to delay the start of their projects.
So how do you know from, from an organizational change point
of view, how do you have that conversation?
Yeah. So because the change, you know, if you,
any big improvement, um, will require a pretty big change.
Now that doesn't mean it's, it has to be, um, complex
or a complicated change.
The concepts could be quite simple like we've described in
this webinar today.
Um, but,
but the, the fact that it really will, um, you know,
tip over some people's apple carts, right?
And, and break some eggs and all of that, right?
Um, um, that's real.
And so I I, I've learned over and over
and over again that I really need to honor that more, more
and more that, that what I'm proposing, um,
will be disruptive to people.
Okay? Yes, there's a benefit at the end of the road,
but, um, but the motivation really has to be there.
It has to be genuine, and I can't force you
to be motivated, right?
Um, and so a joke I like to tell is, uh, you know, how many,
how many psychiatrists
does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Um, and the answer is just one,
but the light bulb has to want to change, right?
And so when I left one client, I, I was really nervous
that I was leaving one client too soon.
Um, my contract had had, you know, had ended the, the,
the money was spent, um, they were ready to go on
and do other things, but I was nervous that they,
the initial progress they had gotten
and the benefits that they were already seeing might,
um, might evaporate.
And so I was in this sort of funny spot of like, yes,
I'm proud of delivered real value here.
Yes, I've gotten you through the toughest part.
Yes, you've gotten the concepts
and you're, you're seeing the benefit.
And so that's reinforcing your motivation to do more.
But I still, like, part of me felt like, uh, you know,
keep me around another two or three months
and then we'll make sure it's all locked in.
And of course, part of me was wondering if I was just trying
to get more money, you know, for more, more revenue
or whatever I was, I was really trying
to, to be in service to them.
And, um, and finally this one, it was a,
it was in another country and, uh, not everyone spoke great.
Engli, great English,
and one woman who was super bright, um,
but her English wasn't stellar.
She stood up and she goes, Mike, don't worry,
we will succeed because we want,
that was the most eloquent thing I
think I've ever heard anyone say.
I love it. I love it. That's brilliant.
Well, and, and to that point, um, so one of the things that,
that we've done is we've put together a little, uh,
workshop, I dunno if that's the right word,
but we, we, um, we run little sessions, sort
of an hour, an hour and a half, something like that, um,
to help build the case for change.
So it's not a case to buy our software, it's a case
for change for the, for to, to reorganize the way
that you do things so that you can start
to get this doubling effect whether you
use our software or not, right?
That's not the issue.
The issue is getting support from the leadership team,
from the business, so they understand, you know,
what are the things, what are the problems today?
What are the root causes of those problems?
How can we fix them? How can we address them?
So the question's about, you know,
those executives not understanding
that there is a resource constraints, right?
Let's, let's put that in the pot, figure out, you know,
what, why, how, how do we communicate that
and come up with a plan to help you, um, uh, uh,
get the leadership team on board, uh, to support the PMO
to start making some of these changes or,
or whatever you call the organization, right?
Some people call it PMO,
some people call it something else, right?
But the, the name's not important,
but what's important is that you, you get
to start using some of these techniques to radically
and I mean, radically improve the performance
of project delivery within your organization.
And, um, and that at the end of the day is
what delivers the eggs, right?
That's what delivers the change that you need to,
to deliver the value to the business.
So if you would like Lenora, I dunno if you're still
with us, but if you could, uh, uh, drop the link,
there is a link to book your very own case for change.
Uh, if Lenora has left us,
we will put it in an email to you.
She put it there. There she is. There we go.
Um, hey, and I was Sorry, go ahead. Sorry. Finish Stuart.
Yeah, I was gonna say, so, so just go, go click on
that book, A Case for Change.
Um, it's not re it's not a sales call, it's, it's about, um,
just helping you create the vision
for your executive team so that they understand what's in it
for them and hopefully get as excited as, as we all are, uh,
Mike and I could talk about
this stuff for hours, by the way.
Sure. And I'll add that, um,
while this doubling your ROI seems like, you know,
in a capitalistic society that that'd be plenty
of incentive, um, to just go for higher
and higher, um, you know, amounts of value and more profit
and more, more mission
and more, whatever the reality is,
most human beings are motivated not by, um, the pot of gold,
let's say, but by the alligator.
It's more like, if I don't fix
this quick, I'm gonna be fired.
Um, and so if you find yourselves having to, um,
in a tough spot in your organization, right,
and you're looking to stop the bleeding,
but it requires the kind of changes we've talked about,
I can tell you that I, I often, um, go into organizations
speaking truth to power and, um, and again, they can fire me
or send me outta the room, and that's better than if they
fire you or send you out of the room.
Excellent. Mike, can you still hear me?
I can. I just, okay. You just froze,
That's all. Yeah, no,
no, no. Zoom has completely crashed.
I've lost all control over Zoom, so that's fine.
But if you can hear me we'll, we'll keep going.
Um, fantastic.
So I have, I just, you know, we're getting,
we're getting close to the top of the hour.
So I, I've got three more things I'd like to cover
before we, before we sign off.
Um, number one is just another, another, um, uh,
request or suggestion to, to the attendees.
Um, if, you know, we've been talking a little bit about the
software, um, if you would like to see the software, um,
just book a meeting, book a book, a demo, uh,
and again, it'll, it'll be me or Dan
or one of the team that that will take you through that.
We're, we're kind of nice guys.
We, we don't really believe in the hard sell, so We'll,
we'll tell you some stories.
We'll show you some software and see if we can help you.
And if we can't, that's, that's super.
So, so, um, so Lenora again, if we'll drop a,
a link hopefully into the, into the zoom,
unless hers is frozen as well.
She just did. Excellent.
Um, so, so go ahead and,
and, um, you know, get yourself a case
for change session or a, or a demo.
And if you do it now, you won't forget that's, that's,
you know, what are, what are the tips
is don't procrastinate.
Um, right. Two, two other things I want to tick off.
Mike, I'd like you to tell us how people can get hold of you
because, um, you, uh, he doesn't like me saying this,
but Mike is, is probably the preeminent theory constraints,
critical chain in project management expert on the planet,
certainly that I know, and I know quite a lot of people.
Um, so if you wanna fix these problems
and fix 'em fast, go talk to Mike.
Yeah, I forget my exact LinkedIn.
LinkedIn, URL, but um, the part
where you have your actual id,
it's MB Hannon, I just put it in the chat.
There you go. Excellent. So just go, go reach out to Mike.
Thank you for that. And then the final thing is I thought it
would be great to just to hear one last story.
Um, what do you, what do you consider your, you know, in,
in, in the context of, you know, massively increasing flow
and all that kind of good stuff, what do you,
what do you consider as your biggest success?
With what, what, tell, tell us that story briefly.
So it was actually, um, a university
and they were wondering if the same concepts could be
applied to helping reduce the dropout rate
and really improved the completion rate, right?
We're talking about project completions.
Getting a student through an undergraduate
degree is kind of like a project.
And of course, I'd never really
thought about it that way before.
Um, so I was kind of fascinated that they thought of it
and then, and they thought of me
and inviting me in to try and help.
And so I, I knew nothing about academic advising
and what causes people to drop
out and all this kind of stuff.
And long story short, they, they went
after the hardest to serve population.
It was, um, you know, first time like they called them, um,
first scholars, right?
Because the first people to go to college,
like first gen scholars, first people to go
to college in their family,
in their family history, that was
Me. Mm-hmm.
Um, and also people that, uh, didn't have much money
and didn't know how to navigate the financial aid
and all that kind of stuff here in the us.
Uh, and so that community was like 300 of 'em.
Um, their, their completion rate took a while to measure,
but uh, they ended up
clo not only closing the gap in the completion rate,
but actually doing better than everyone else.
Wow. So they created the reverse gap
First. Wow. That is awesome. Your
Best chance of graduating is if you were one
of the underserved first gen students.
Well, and, and do you know what, sometimes
the solutions are so simple.
You, you would, you would tell me one time about a,
a hospital where they, they'd sort of cut, they were trying
to cut costs or something
and they'd, they'd cut all the janitors
for cleaning the, the,
The orderlies. Yeah,
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And everything crashed. And everything crashed.
And so, and, and so it was ironic you had these,
these million dollar doctors who were not billable
because they, they refused to, they're sitting
There waiting, waiting for the or to be cleaned.
'cause the $20 an hour orderly was,
you know, they didn't have enough of them.
Silly. So, so it, it, it is, you know,
very often it's the simple things.
And, um, you know, I, if, if this is you,
if this has resonated, do reach out to Mike, um,
and, and ask for help.
Because the experience, Mike's a super nice guy,
as you can tell, great sense of
humor, but he is also very humble.
So he, he would never say it this way,
but when, when you've done this stuff a bunch of times,
you learn to see things differently.
So, uh, you know, a couple
of years ago I was describing some challenges in our sales
pipeline and, and Mike, you know, in, in, in 30 seconds
and said, no, no, you just need to change that and that.
Right. So, so there are
Patterns, that's for sure.
Yeah, exactly. You know, his,
I think it was Churchill said,
history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
I don't think I'd heard that one. That's great. Yeah.
Yeah. Hey Stuart, thanks so much for having me on. It
Was pleasure. It's been great. Thank
you everybody for joining us and, uh,
and hopefully we'll see you again soon on another webinar.