So what I want to do, first of all, is just give you a little bit of background.
So back in March, we had the PMO
Unconference in San Diego.
Mickey's hometown, actually. That's where Mickey's based.
So Mickey and the PMI team in San Diego kind of hosted us there,
and the group of people on here, we were the facilitators
for the strategy and transformation
track. Right? So over two days, we did four pretty
intense sessions on-
Yeah
... strategy and transformation and how PMOs can play a
really full role in that.
And there was one topic that came up a couple of times, completely independently,
and whenever it came up, the whole room lit up, right?
The room just exploded, which was budget cuts.
Right?
So many people around the world, this is not a US phenomenon, this is a global
phenomenon right now. Around the world, people are,
organizations are reviewing the budgets, cutting budgets,
reorganizing, and that's kind of scary.
So we figured we'd spend an hour and sort of pick it apart and see how we
can take it from being something that's scary into something that's actually an
opportunity. So that's our goal, an opportunity for our
community here.
So to run the conversation, I'm just going to
sit here and tell people to be quiet when they've said enough.
That's my job. But on here we have a number of other absolute
superstars. So just
30-second intro. We'll go Mickey, Al, Rebecca, and then we'll
come to the queen. Laura, do you think I should go find that visual?
The goddess.
No.
The goddess. That was it.
You should not. You're going to now, aren't you?
No, I wouldn't do that to you.
We've been having fun with AI, let's just say that.
Yeah, exactly. So Mickey, off you go.
Oh.
Thank you. Thank you, Stuart.
Oh, you're welcome.
Thanks to...
Well, can you guys hear me?
Yeah.
Yep.
Okay, great.
No, Stuart, it's been a pleasure and such an honor to meet you all in San
Diego, and it feels like
a long time ago, but it wasn't that long ago we all sat in person
and went through such interactive conversation.
So I'm so happy that we're sharing this with the rest of the world here it seems
like.
But my role is an organizational change executive,
just a fancy word for saying that I lead change in my organization.
My organization is one of the largest healthcare public health
organizations in the country, and looking at change
from a people lens in this digital AI
world, that's kind of the world I'm living in, and
turning
what can be intimidating into something
that's an opportunity, I think that's one of the
key themes. So I'm excited to talk to you all.
I've been working in the PMO transformation space for
20 years now, and so it's exciting to meet with
this team and have this such interactive conversation today.
So thank you for having us.
Excellent. Good, Mickey. Actually, Al, I'm going to come to you last.
I've just realized we were going to use you as the pivot, weren't we?
So why don't we have the goddess next? The goddess Laura.
You mean Rebecca, right?
Well, it works either way, right?
Question, Stuart. Which Laura? There's two Lauras.
That's right. One's Hawaiian and one's Luara. Yeah.
We've got Luara and Laura.
Yeah, that's right. We fixed it. We fixed my name before we started.
All right. Well, I'll just go ahead and go here.
Hi, everyone. It's so good to see your lovely
names here. I'm imagining your faces.
I'm honored to be here with this panel. Stuart, thank you for including me.
We did get to hang out and have a great time, and you'll see some of that in our
conversation. For those that don't know me, I have spent
30 years now in PMOs, change management, business
transformation, building my first PMO in
1999, and having absolutely no idea what I was doing,
learned a ton of things the hard way, and then
inside organizations, building and leading PMOs and transformation teams,
much like Mickey has in the past, and all of us actually have had a role in doing
this stuff inside the organization first.
And now I run, let's see, starting in
2013, I built PMO Strategies to help all
of you
have it easier than I did, and
share a lot of the don't do this, do this instead, it'll make your life a lot
easier,
through my book, "The Impact Engine," and shout out to our students
that are Impact Engine System students and Mastermind students.
I see some of you here. And then last year we started another company
called Global Transformation Group that is working around the globe to help
organizations accelerate strategy delivery.
So we cover everything from training and the skills and talent
development for all of you individuals to helping you drive big
transformation in organizations.
Brilliant. Rebecca.
Good morning, everybody. So great to see you and also the team from San
Diego. Thanks, Stuart, for corralling us.
My background is about three decades of also leading
transformational change, and what I mean by that is big change inside
organizations where they've hit the wall on
their mission or how they're delivering, and so these are really
reinventions. So often I'm hired by senior leaders,
and it starts with working with them, and I notice a
key leadership capability that really
distinguishes great leaders from sort of, I would say, not so great leaders
is the ability, as Mickey had saidTo understand the perceived
problems as opportunities, and that those opportunities
are for growth and for learning, and then ultimately result in
next-level impact. So I feel like that's very much in line with what we're going to
be talking about today, and I'm excited to hear from you all about what some
of your challenges are that we can help you with.
Brilliant. So before we go to Al, just a quick question for the audience
is,
is anyone here, just drop a quick yeah or something into the chat.
Is anybody here actually wrestling with or has recently wrestled with
reorganizations, budget cuts,
things like that? So just stick a quick yeah in the comments.
Yeah. There we go. So it's absolutely
rife.
Literally every conversation I have at the moment, it's one of
the factors that people want to talk about.
So this feels like a really well-timed conversation.
And there's a well-known phrase that it goes something like, "If life gives you
lemons, make lemonade."
And so the sourest of us all, I think, is Al Zaitoon.
Al, why don't you
introduce yourself and add a little bit of sugar to that statement?
Listen, I'm not going to even spend a minute introducing myself.
I think
one thing that's really interesting
is Stuart, and as he prepped us for
this,
he says, "Gosh, Al, you're sunshine.
What are you thinking?" Everybody's concerned about the title of the session,
and he literally took me to a place where he
cannot be realistic in that view. So to be honest, since you and I had that
discussion, things have changed in my head, yeah?
And to tee that off, the reality is, every
executive I talked with in San Diego and beyond, there are some execs in
San Diego, there are execs we interact with for the last maybe, I would say
especially this has been very
strong signal for the last maybe 12 to 15, 16 months, in my
opinion. And especially around PMOs,
every one of them has been asking a question directly or indirectly saying, "Do
we really need a PMO?"
And I was really gutted, in a way, but also not surprised, because you
heard me also say before, we're in 2026, and I can't believe we're still talking
about PMOs.
Personal opinion. Although my entire life has been, so maybe that's an intro
to who am I. It's really a project management by,
it runs in my blood and PMI and all of those entities that
shape that have always been in the backdrop.
But what's very interesting, the dialogue was not,
can we make our PMO better? Can we make it
stronger? Can we scale it? I have not heard that from any single
exec in those discussions, which even made me worry even more.
Because when I was talking with you and the team here, I was thinking, "No, let's
focus on the fact that really the PMO..." Well, the PMO, the good
news is,
is because of the heavy signal from AI that
finally changed my mind since you and I talked last.
Because the reason these guys have been, in my opinion, talking so poorly
about the
PMO is the fact that it continues to be
literally the classic PMO that I grew up around, which
is an engine for shooting stuff out.
Yeah? And let's see if it lands.
What is that?
Whereas really, just a last comment on my background-
Yeah
... my background has been in strategy execution.
So if the PMO is really not hitting that on the head,
and especially in this day and age, I don't know why I invested my career
in culture, strategy, the execution thereof, and
also making sure that organizations truly and on ongoing
basis transform to do what's more meaningful
for their stakeholders and shareholders, et cetera.
So anyhow, we'll get into the details, but that's in a way
the change, so that helps even when you talk and address any questions with me.
My head has changed quite a bit-
It's really interesting
... since we connected last. So what I'm saying is we do have a crisis, but
it's very much like a risk. It has an upside, which has an opportunity.
So I'm hoping to hear a lot of that from my colleagues as well. Yeah.
Absolutely. Okay, quick tactical thing. Yes, the call is being recorded.
It will be shared with you in a couple of days.
Look for an email from Preeti at transparentchoice.com.
It's a bit of a weird name for many of you.
That's P-R-E-E-T-I at transparentchoice.com.
It is not spam. She's not trying to sell you a timeshare
in Florida, Laura.
She's
one of our team. She's been with us for years, and she's absolutely lovely.
So just look for that email. So I want to come to the comment from Jo
Stanford, right?
So Jo runs an organization called the HPCA here in the
UK.
Think of them as a mini PMI or a mini APM
specifically for the healthcare community here in the UK.
Right? So the NHS, the National Health Service, of which we are incredibly
proud, employs directly and indirectly something
like 9% of the UK workforce.
Right? It's colossal. And they are going through
a generational change, possibly a bi-generation.
It's 40 years since they've done anything
this big. So they literally just a few months ago
announced that they were going to shut down NHS England. Right?
So this is mind-blowing. So we're talking
with Jo to people who
know that their whole organization is being shut down,
and what do we do about it? Okay. So that's the
downside.
That's the backdrop to this. My camera's gone crazy today. All right.
I love the picture, though.
Yeah.
This is a good, no?
Excellent. All right. Come back.
There we go.
You have to just keep pressing the-- There's a preset on here, which is called
guitars for some strange reason.
Oh, right. Oh.
So I'm going to have to just keep pressing the guitars button and hope that things
go well. So
one of the things that Al said there is that the reason that people jump
to the PMO is partly what Jo said, which is that it's not a
frontline serviceIt's a supporting service.
Yeah.
But
I want to come to what, Al, where you were talking about this actually being
about strategy and strategy execution.
And if there's one time that you need to be able to execute well and efficiently
and effectively, it's when there's a big period of change.
So Rebecca, you spend all your time helping leadership teams,
executive teams, primarily in government,
get their head around how to manage change, how to
formulate strategy. So from that boardroom's perspective,
what's the problem here? Why is it that the PMO's in
trouble, and what is it that the execs actually want?
Well, first of all, we, I think, have said over and over that the
execs aren't really that aware of PMO, and I think that's a
really, really big problem. If they don't understand the value
being given, then they can't advantage
themselves and so on.
The problem with execution in change
is that we don't have a clear pathway forward, and that is the leadership's job.
I think that that's in fact what I've brought in a lot of times to do, is to
help to reshape and refashion what that strategy's going to
be. But I think that the PMO, or at least the people that
are operating in that function, let's not worry about
whether you have that office or not, there's a critical function there for
leaders, which is to help them to understand what is going
on in terms of execution. How does that connect?
And so I think we're going to be talking a lot more about that value.
No matter what it's called or whatever, it's the value of
being able to show
where the lack of strategy or the lack of governance or
whatever is impinging the ability to implement whatever
strategy is being created.
Brilliant. I love it. So Laura, I'm going to come to you now because
you spend
some of your time helping PMOs figure out how to fill that gap,
right?
Yeah.
So the opportunity here is to use this time,
this
period of change,
to transition the PMO from being an order taker
to a change maker, to an impact driver, as you might call it.
So why don't you talk us through just, and many people here will have heard
you talking before, but just give us a flavor of what that might look like.
Well,
so this is the exact conversation that PMOs want to be involved
in, right? When budget cuts are happening,
instead of being where many of them are, is in reactive mode or
being scared, this is where you lean in and say, "Let me help you
make the decisions you need to make.
Let me help you see
all the different scenarios with all of the
projects and programs you have going on right now, and help you
think through, if we do this, this is what you can expect,"
right? And really participate, for those of you that are familiar with The Impact
Engine, we talk about the strategy life cycle, and supporting setting
that strategy up for success instead of just being there to be the dumping
ground of the projects once they've already been all figured out,
right? Because the reason a lot of these organizations are really struggling from a
budget perspective is that they didn't set those projects up for success before
they started. So they're having to make cuts because they made bad bets, because
they didn't have the right information, because the PMO wasn't involved in the
process, right? And the executives are
guessing, unless they have the PMO
with the information, not just data, not shoving a bunch of reports at them
with 85 columns and 52 colors and nobody knows what's going
on, but really saying, "Here's the information you need to make
the right bets, make the right decisions, and as things change,
let me help you understand what your options are," right?
Help them
make business decisions, not project decisions, right?
And that's where
what we're seeing is a lot of these budget cuts are a result of
not having that whole operating model in place that's
driving those better decision-making before projects start, ensuring that
the projects are set up for success as they go into planning and delivery.
And then actually, I don't know, let's measure.
I was just in a conversation with someone saying most organizations
they work with don't even measure, did we actually achieve the business goals we
were intending to achieve in a way that made them worth doing
in the first place, which is why PMI's leaning into this whole MORE thing that,
Mikki, I know you want to talk about,
and that I've been on an advisory group trying to help them make sense of
it and roll it out to project people.
We need to be asking better questions up front, and as the budget is
changing and as organizations are having to shift and pivot,
this is an opportunity for the PMO to shine and say, "I've
got you. Let me help make this decision-making process
easier for you." And one thing that I want to say before
I pass the baton to whoever's next,
I want to ask you all this question to be thinking about.
If your PMO disappeared tomorrow, would leadership
lose reporting or lose strategic decision-making
capability? And understanding that difference is what matters.
Because if your leadership team is asking you
questions, leaning in right now and saying, "Hey, we've got to make changes.
Help," then you're positioned well.
If they are saying, "Oh, don't worry about it, PMO people.
We've got to go figure out this stuff over here, and we'll let you know,"
then you may be on that chopping block as well.
And I'm not saying that to scare you.
I'm saying that because you have to shift the perception of the value you
bring to the table and actually be valuable if you want to be seen as
valuable.
So, I want to tell a little story, and then Mickey, I want to come to
you, and perhaps you can do some of your more stuff and help
us start to think about how to use those tools to navigate the change.
So, here's a little story.
I'm not going to name and shame people,
but the situation was it was a
utility company, big utility company, power generation.
And they were under extreme pressure from their
shareholders. Performance was in the toilet,
profitability was nonexistent, share price had collapsed.
So the CEO said, "We've got to do something about this." And at that point,
the guy who, I'm going to call him a PMO, he was actually
a little more senior than that, but he stepped in to fill the
role of the PMO, and he sat down with the executives and said,
"I've got a plan.
Here's my plan. We're going to agree what the goals of the organization
are, right? What we need to achieve in order to turn this around.
And then we're going to
set up a system where we ask
our colleagues, our employees, our team members
what things we ought to do to help us achieve that plan.
And we're going to filter them," right? There were rules.
The rules were, you don't bring us your complaints.
Bring us an opportunity where you've got an idea how to fix
it, and that was it. That was basically the rules.
And so they processed something like
12,000 suggestions of ideas that they could do to improve.
They implemented about a third of them,
and that resulted in the space of about a year, year and a half,
in a $300 million a year
operating cost saving, and about a half billion dollar
capital saving, right? They freed up working capital of about a half a billion
dollars.
And literally through that process,
the performance of the organization turned around,
and a couple of years later, in terms of their
performance on Wall Street, they were outperforming all their peers.
Now, this is an excellent example of bad news,
everybody hates us, we got no money.
PMO turns up and says, "I got a plan.
I'm going to help you with insight.
You set the goals, and then I'm going to help you figure out what we
should actually implement, because I understand the capacity and all that kind of
good stuff, and I'm good at putting systems in place.
So I'm going to put a system in place that collects the ideas and turns that into a
transformation that's going to
help and support you. You're in control, Mr. Executives.
I'm giving you the information, the insight.
I'm giving you the systems to make it happen. I'm going to run the process for you.
So all you've got to do is sit there, consume the insight, and make decisions."
And the result was an absolute turnaround.
So that, when Laura's talking, and Rebecca and Al are
talking about that strategic
aspect of the role, that's what we're talking about.
Right? And just phenomenal. So effectively, the PMO, they
didn't have a PMO, but the guy was filling that role.
The PMO was the one who stepped in and said, "I'm going to make this happen." And
do you know what? No one ever questioned whether his office should exist or not,
not after that.
So Mickey, with that as a background, how do we
use some of these tools to start to have this conversation and start to
take the people with us and have the conversation with the
organization to turn things around?
Yeah, I don't think there's any magic wand or anything, and I think
we all know that. But some of the things that are coming to mind just from the
conversation and where this is going, I like your comment about
turning lemons into lemonade. I think a lot of us have watermelons, to be
honest, larger than lemons, right?
And so one of the things that comes to mind is,
and this is not my current organization, but I'm just thinking out loud.
Similar to Laura and all of you here, I've gone through multiple industries.
My current industry is healthcare, but in the past, having worked with
government, federal, state, and local, and also working in more of a
purely IT type of organization, I think one of the common
themes is that moving upstream from what a
traditional PMO does, because people tend to think
of PMO as kind of like the peeper police, right? At least the old school PMOs.
But one of the things that I've seen and I'm experiencing in the
last decade, or last five years, is that
PMOs need to move up in this chain,
and be bigger than projects and
portfolios. And part of that is
working with the C-suite, like what Rebecca does every single
day. And in working with the C-suite,
understanding what direction they're going in terms of their
vision and strategy, but now translating that for the
staff and middle management.
How many times have we all been in rah-rah sessions
where folks are talking strategy and vision, and the rest of the
organization just kind of looks at them with glazed eyeballs, right?
One organization as an example of strategy into
something more of a change that people can embrace,
was where in terms of digital transformations,
having a merger between three organizations and looking for
cost savings, and there was no construct of a PMO, but
we introduced this concept of a PMO or transformation
office.
Out of the merger, there was a vision of consolidation.
People are thinking of layoffs, especially in the project
space. But turning that into an opportunity
whereTo Laura's point, we can help become
drivers of-- I'm not talking about drivers of layoffs, I'm talking about
drivers of value and cost savings, right?
So putting this kind of portfolio mindset,
working with the C-suite,
presenting to them a plan for cost savings,
and we looked at a portfolio of 1,100 projects
and programs, and putting through a stage gate.
And my point in saying all that is our executives didn't know what to do,
whereas folks like us were able to organize that into a
cohesive plan. And the good news out of that
story is we became an enablement office.
Not a PMO, an enablement office, right?
And we were there working with all of the C-suites, the middle management.
We put together a portfolio, if you want to call it in terms of a PMO
construct, and then out of the portfolio, organized
into these work streams. And the end result of
this six-month process was we were able to have
$200 million in savings, right? So the PMO is
no longer seen as a cost
center. PMO is seen as a value driver.
And I think I encourage you all to think about this, right?
This is not a PMO function. This is more of a strategic
enablement function. And I think there's many examples
that you can probably think of where you
or, even if you don't have a PMO, think about becoming
an enabler as opposed to a cost center.
Fast forward at the end of a 12-month
period for that particular endeavor that I mentioned, we
had a $200 million rationalization
for over 1,100 programs and projects.
The merger became much more-- All mergers are
hard, but the merger with this cost savings, the cost savings was
reinvested back into the three entities, and
this is a value, right, as opposed to being seen as a cost
center. But hopefully that long story doesn't scare anyone off,
because that's a real example of strategy into
execution. PMO making-- I guess, what's an
analogy with watermelon, Stuart?
Watermelon and making the watermelon into
something that you can eat at a picnic, right?
So
Love it.
So what's interesting there to me is that there's a lot of commonality
between those two stories,
right?
Yep.
The nature of the change was different,
but the way that the PMO stepped up and structured the process.
And what I found really interesting there was that there wasn't a lot in
either of those stories about actual project management.
Oh, it's
above project management.
Yeah.
And this is where
I think it utilizes all the skills that maybe you already
know, but framing it differently.
And, Rebecca, you work with the executives all the time, so it resonates with
me. And then Al and Laura, your examples are, I
think,
examples that maybe we have in our head, but people just don't
execute or bring to the forefront.
Mm-hmm.
But I think in healthcare, my current industry,
the people side of change becomes value, right?
So value is the profit driver, and healthcare is not
necessarily how much money you can profit from shareholders, right?
It's value to patients,
doctors, nurses. So it kind of depends on your industry.
But
when I first started my current organization, there was this concept of
escalations pyramid that went up into governance.
We fought hard to flip that and make it an enablement model,
right? So that's kind of similar to my original story, enablement versus
cost center, so.
Yeah. Interesting. So Stuart, actually,
I'm trying hard to
also-- So I think we have everyone on
the group here attending, agreeing with us, right?
And I see it in the comments, et cetera, and I love who is attending as well.
I see some friends like Kevin. I see some folks from Maryland, Jim
and others. It's a very interesting mix there.
And I think the analogy of veggies and all of that, and lemons and all that is
really good. If I think of what is one thing I would say I learned
and hit me hard, that would be an advice that I could share,
I would say language. And you heard me say that in San Diego, I think a couple of
times. Language matters. Matter of fact, if I
have one ask of whoever is attending here, when you leave
today,
develop a list, literally a list between words you've been
using and words that really you have to start using from this point
onward. Don't waste a second.
I do not know any executive that enjoys having a dialogue with
me.
Maybe two quick story. Backdrop, small PMO in Indianapolis, Indiana, paper
industry. Nobody knows what a project is or cares about project management, to the
time in the Middle East 10 years ago, running a $30
billion construction in the energy industry, yeah?
And if you look at that second one, I thought I got it by now, and I got all the
resources, the reports, everything that I needed.
I've got the arsenal, I've got the support.
The CEO knew PMI, he hired me for that reason.
But the reality is, we still failed in the utilization of
language that matters. Not a single person really cared about what a
PM thinks about when it comes to risk, probability, impact, all of that.
That's all noise, right? Not a single person
in the executive team is going to be so thrilled to hear your words about scope
creep. They want to hear about opportunity missed, for example.
When you talk updates, what's the implications, for
example, on trade-offs, right? When you talk about-- So think about those
lines, one thing. That would be one immediate
recommendation I would have. The second thing is with the AI component in the mix,
because-Just about everything you are comfortable doing and using is going to be
automated. Right? So really hit hard in terms of the cost-cutting and the budget
piece as well. However, because of everything we've been talking about right now,
there is a great opportunity, and I've seen it in practice quite a bit.
There are three letters that the executives really care about.
They care about clarity. We had a webinar, you and I, on clarity, strategic clarity
before, and Kevin was with us, Stuart.
They care about capacity, which is your area.
If you can help me truly understand the capacity of the organization
in relationship to those investments and decisions I want to make.
And speaking of that, the last one is decision-making.
And there's everything right now in the midst of the most complex environment we've
had over the years. This is where there is nothing
except the future's going to even get more complex, but we've never been as complex
as we are now.
So I think if I look at capability and teams I've worked with and executives,
what they're looking for is your ability to do what's needed for system
thinking. There is number one, two, and three in my books right now.
If I can find a way for PMOs to have management system
thinking, drive exactly how to look at the enterprise, how to, when
people are talking about enterprise agility, when people are talking about
strategic fluidity, et cetera, all of that requires PMOs to be
the host, literally the host of the end-to-end
understanding of the integral parts of the business, every trade-off,
every connecting the thread. And in my opinion, we've got to find a way to
tackle that, because otherwise,
the cost-cutting theme and the budgets and the doom and gloom.
I saw in the chat three orgs in three years, right?
I mean, that's now going to be uncommon.
I mean, I'm not surprised there's not even more of that, given
my recent work in technology, for example.
I can tell you, I could not get through to connecting the dots
between the message that executives truly
say, "I want to be more program management-like," and the actions and behavior.
So we got to figure between language, between approaching it
system-like, a way to connect through that. Yeah.
Hey, Al, I do want to piggyback on what you just said.
I think reorg is such an incredibly important
indicator of where senior leaders are.
If we're seeing a lot of reorgs, what we know is senior leaders are
struggling. They don't have clear strategy.
It's just a move stuff around the board.
And I mean, this is something I tell my leaders all the time.
If you keep shuffling around the board, that's not handling it.
We got to look at the board. So leaders, I mean, reorgs, I
think are a total time suck, waste suck, morality problem.
Excuse me,
morality. What's the word? I kind of have a head
cold, so anyway, whatever. A morale problem.
That's the word I was looking for.
Morale.
So yeah, morale.
Definitely not morality.
Right. And, well, it can be morality as well, right?
I mean, what are we trying to hide?
It can be, yeah.
But I also want to
emphasize what you were saying about language.
Our language is absolutely critical.
If we're not speaking into how senior leaders speak to each
other, our message is not going to land.
But even more than language is what we're bringing.
What is the actual message that we're bringing?
Sure.
When we were doing a very large change project, I had an
organization that was stuck way down in the organization, and they
were having a really hard time with why they were so
overburdened, why things weren't getting done.
And I realized that it was because they were trying to
manage
a debit, an area of huge
cost that was invisible to the organization.
Yeah.
It just wasn't seen. And so they had to be able to first
quantify it in a realistic manner, and then deliver
the message. Well, when they were able to quantify it in the billions of
dollars and deliver that message cleanly,
it made all the difference. I mean, things changed like that.
So it was that they were sort of complaining about the wrong
thing. They weren't getting into that mindset that you were talking about,
Al, and Mickey as well.
I'm glad. Yeah, because I used language a bit more encompassing,
but I'm glad you clarified that because absolutely you're spot on.
The behaviors, the metrics aspect, measuring the wrong things, or we're all not
going to create the same impact. Great point, yeah.
And that capacity piece too, I think, and just one second, Laura, is also
often missed.
I think our value is showing where capacity is being
underutilized over here, or it's being ignored
over here. It's invisible. So a capacity sort
of normalization or view for
senior leaders, as long as it's at a very high level, is also a
hugely impactful thing. So really great comments, Al. Thanks so much.
Hey, Stuart, I'd like to address this discussion happening in the chat, if you
don't mind, about this naming.
Yeah. No, I was going to come to you in the hope that you would do exactly that,
Laura. I knew you couldn't resist that one.
I got you. Yeah. I was like, "Oh, I got to talk about this."
Yeah.
So,
excellent discussion happening in the chat here about renaming and rebranding the
PMO. Here's the challenge that you all need to be aware of so
that you don't fall into this trap.
For years, we have watched a lot of different
iterations of renaming the PMO,
and what happens in many organizations is that they
change the name but not the behavior.
And when you change the name so that you can get attention, so you can
get support, but the behavior stays the same, you will
continue to create the same vicious cycle that's
happening in many organizations now.
And that is why things like the agile transformation
movement, the from project to product, and all of those other discussions
have, over time, gotten
someair time and then some support and then kind of crash and
burn. The reason for that is that it's just a rebranding as opposed
to fixing the root cause. Right? And that's a lot, I saw some
of our mastermind students responding on stuff here, and you're spot on.
We can't just change the name. We have to change how
you think first, the mindset, how you think, and
then how you talk and behave, which is exactly what
my colleagues here are talking about and trying to impress upon you.
Al's spot on. You've got to change your language, but that means you've got to
think differently. You have to stop thinking in outputs and start thinking in
outcomes, and really position yourself to
be the person that is driving, what we call being the
strategy navigator, driving the conversations from
every point in the strategy life cycle to say, "Here's where you are now.
Here's the information that you need to make the right decisions now.
Here's how we set these projects up for better success," getting to, I love it,
with the clarity and the capacity and having the decision-making.
Every CEO we talk to when we go in and work on
consulting engagements says the same thing.
"Laura, I
am being asked to make decisions all day long, but nobody's giving me the
information I need to do so."
And you go talk to the PMO and they're like, "Well, what do you mean?
We got 82 reports and all this data and all this stuff." And
executives are overwhelmed, and they don't have what they need.
And when they try to talk to the PMO people, they get a bunch
of outputs, thinking outputs, discussion.
And so they
don't include you in the conversations because when they do, you project at
them. Right? You do project speak at them, and they're like, "I don't know what's
happening here." Instead, what do you know about
what your organization actually does from a business
perspective? What do you know about the strategy?
And for all of you overwhelmed with the word strategy, it's just the plan to
achieve the business goals. So what are the business goals?
And then how might you and your team think about how do we not
just do the project, create the outputs?
How do we ensure that every step along the way, everyone
understands not just what we're doing, but why we're doing it and what success
looks like? And just that mindset shift and asking those
questions sets you up for, like Al's talking about here,
having different conversations with your business leaders.
And for those of you that are the yeah but monster crawled up onto your shoulder
and said, "Yeah, but they won't talk to me.
They won't answer my questions." Well, do you want to be an order taker or an
impact driver? That's really the question you need to answer.
And if you want to be an impact driver, that means that you don't take no for an
answer, that you say, "If you want your projects to achieve the business
goals, we need to understand what those are."
Yeah.
Right? And not just me, but everybody in the process.
And not just what the goals are, but that there's a link between those
goals-
Yeah
... and the work that actually gets done. Right?
Exactly. And the measurable outcomes.
Oh, by the way, you do need to actually measure
what you did, not just from a on time, on scope, on budget, but
did we achieve the business goals we intended in a way that made it
worth doing in the first place, and then feed that information back to the
beginning of the strategy development process so that you can create this
flow, this momentum, and then everything.
It's an upward spiral if you do this, and we see it happen all the time, so it's
achievable for all of you, whether you're in a 50 or a
350-person PMO or a one-person PMO.
You can absolutely do this, but it starts with your mindset and then all
of this great advice you're getting from my peers here on how to
think differently, how to talk differently, how to position differently, and none
of that happens with a rebranding.
It happens with mindset and behavior changes first, and then the
rebranding is just a natural consequence.
You don't have to change the name and then not change the behavior.
Oh, there's Stuart.
And that's why Laura is the queen of PMO.
Oh my God.
And I saw-
This is the Laura duck
... Stuart gave me one. I have a new duck every time I see Stuart.
Ah.
And they're all
funny.
Yeah.
Thank you.
We've got the ducks. We got the ducks.
We got the big one. Good.
Look, I'm going to crack the ducks out for a second because one of the things-
Yeah
... right, I'm going to change gears.
So that was-
Yeah
... fantastic, Laura. I'm really glad you jumped in because I was about to pull you
into that conversation because-
Thank you
... I knew that was-
Couldn't help myself
... I knew that was yours.
All right. So I want to talk for a second about ducks, right?
So most of you know me well enough, I hope, at this point,
to know what I mean by ducks, right? So the ducks represent your projects.
Okay? And nobody really cares about your duck.
Your executives don't care if you have a boy duck or a girl duck.
They just want eggs. They want the value from the
projects. And I apologize to any vegetarians,
I'm going to get a little bit meaty on this
metaphor, so I don't mean any offense. I apologize in advance.
But imagine you're running a duck farm, right?
And you're collecting all those eggs, and you're selling the eggs, but then
suddenly there's a shortage of duck food.
What do you do? Do you just keep all your ducks? Right?
You've got 1,000 ducks. Do you keep all those ducks, and all those ducks just have
to make do with 25% less food?
Well, let me tell you what happens if you do that.
The first thing that happens is they stop laying eggs.
That doesn't make things better. That makes things worse.
You have fewer eggs to sell.
So what you need to do is you need to retire some of your ducks,
right, so that you can feed the ones and keep healthy the ones
that you keep. So one of the key things that you can
do in this cycle is really engage with that
prioritization process. Help the organization understand what
activities, what projects, what services, what
capabilities add the most value to the organization,
and how you can enhance those,
perhaps by turning off other things that don't
add quite as much
value. So,
I don't know if I-Do any of you want to pick
that up and explore that, give an example?
Rebecca, I know you've done a bunch of those.
Al, you've lived through that a bunch of times.
Yeah. No, maybe I'll count on Rebecca for example here,
but I just want to recognize there's still a tension in the chat, which is a really
interesting tension, right? I see a tension about perception.
I saw your point, Kevin,
when commenting on Laura, and I also saw the comments about
service catalog, for example, whether the PMO should have that, et cetera.
And then the heavy tension around the brand.
I don't think any one of us here is saying brands don't matter, but I
think being stuck is not where we would like to see our PMOs,
that's for sure.
Well-
But also there was a lot mentioned about strategy, and I love how Laura simplified
strategy, which I agree with her. There's a piece about culture that's embedded in
everything all of us have said as well, so I cannot not mention that, right?
Because at the end of the day, PMOs
that will excel will have to do something about the culture within which the PMO
operates. Some of it is exactly driven from where Laura talked about the mindset
shift.
One thing that's really critical, though, that I believe has to happen is
where we spend our times. If at this critical point in history where we
have so much with automation possible, where we combine virtual and real
worlds and everything else, if the PMOs are truly still spending their
time in default mode, we have a problem.
The default mode is what got us to this discussion. Yeah?
Right.
So we really need to make a turn. If maybe right now you're still spending 70% or
80% of your time in default mode, okay.
By the end of a year from now, please turn that around where it's more
about choices mode, for example. Make your new tagline, if you're into brand,
"I am the choice enabler for my executives going from this point on," or
something like that. I don't care which one you call it.
Mm-hmm.
Because running the business and changing the business, that mix is
changing so much and has been for the last five to 10 years, and if we don't do
something urgently about it, we're in trouble.
Rebecca, I would love to hear your examples to maybe connect the dots for
what Stuart started as well.
I'm not sure I was-
Oh, go on
... quite attending to that, so what was the example you were looking for?
Okay. Well, just give me one second, Rebecca.
So I just want to finish one thing off and then come to you, Rebecca,
because Jo Stanford just asked a question, and I'd like to start-- I know she was
pointing it at Laura.
Yeah
But I'd like to start with you and then go to Laura, if that's okay.
Yeah.
So, I was very lucky many years ago to
engage a chap called Wally Olins. Wally is
the guy who literally wrote the textbook on branding.
And one of the things that Wally says is that branding is not what you're called
or how you look. Branding is what you do.
Right? Think about that for a second. It's what you do, it's how you act.
That's how people perceive you. Right?
So
the name, yeah, great. By all means, change it, but it's all about what you do, the
value you deliver. That's what drives it.
So, Rebecca, I can't believe what
time it is, right? We're running out of time already.
So Rebecca, I'd love to come to you, and the question from Jo is how do we get the
CEOs engaged? So you spend your time in that room.
How do you get them engaged? Then Laura, I'm going to ask you the same question
coming from the other direction.
Well, I want to really emphasize what we're all talking about, which
is changing your mindset and getting it higher
up. If you start bringing value from that
place to whatever executives you're dealing with, you may not
get invited into the C-suite right at the very beginning.
But if you start to actually be that value add,
if you start thinking in terms of the bigger picture and how you can
reveal capacity problems or opportunities, you start to
create that brand that Stuart's talking about.
And it doesn't matter what you're called.
People all of a sudden are like, "Wow, that person is really helpful.
They're really insightful. They've really helped me make decisions." And pretty
soon you find you're invited in. That is the very best
thing, and I think I wrote in the chat earlier, leaders
who know about somebody who's performing in that way,
who's providing true value as opposed
to,
like we were talking about, tiresome reports, outputs,
but really can speak to value,
they're going to recognize that. That's what they're looking for.
The second point I want to make, I want to follow up from something Laura said.
We've got to measure
our effectiveness. Too often we're measuring
more about outputs, right? What did it cost? Did it come in on time?
All those things. That's all dandy, but what do leaders really want?
They want to know, is this moving the needle on our strategy?
And I would say that is not an easy thing to measure.
It does take real intention, and it needs to
involve a lot of different perspectives in the organization.
I have found that designing measurement strategies to really
measure value of projects is a way to get more
visibility on what we're doing in the PMO.
Because see what we're doing? We're talking about exactly what senior
leaders are concerned about, and we're looking at how to measure it, and we're
involving a number of different parts of the organization in doing that.
And just a plug, Transparent Choice has been an incredible tool
for me to help me make this a very
broad and inclusive and transparent process, and
my leaders love it. So...
Brilliant. Thank you. Love that.
Can I just second that? That we have lots of clients and students who think-
Yeah, everybody can second that
. Well, no, because Stuart-
Hey, third that.
We have a thing. We're here because we're friends with Stuart, not because he runs
a company called Transparent Choice, right?
Because he is also a thought leader in this space who
really, like-I mean, the engagement that he's getting in his workshops and
everything, just blowing everybody away.
And also, Transparent Choice is something that many of
our clients and students use and love because it does exactly what we're
talking about here. It gets you started with having the right
conversations with executives. And what we have found to be true is
that those executives will say, "These are the
conversations we should've been having all along, but weren't."
Exactly.
And I just want you guys to take that in for a second.
These are the conversations the executives believe they should've been having all
along, but they weren't. And that is a really
important place for all of you to live.
And so being able to expose that, to answer Joe's
question about, well, how do you help the executives see
this, right? There's two ways I'm going to answer this, and then I want to pass the
baton to Mickey. So one, you have to show them what
they're not doing, but not in a way that says, "You stink.
You're not doing these things." In a way that says, "What would
happen if you had this information
so that you could make faster decisions?
How would your world look differently if..." Right? You show them what's possible.
One of the ways that, to be very practical and tactical for a lot of you, one of
the things that we do every week with our newsletter is, our free newsletter,
is point you to an executive perspective article that I've written for one of these
C-suite magazines, telling them exactly why the PMO
should be there, the role an enterprise PMO has, how to shift from
outputs to outcomes. All of these things we're talking about
here, there's all kinds of articles that we share that we're writing for C-suite
magazines to help them think differently, to answer your question, Joe.
But to give you the language to use, going back to what Al said, because I'm going
to keep doing it, so that you can use that language in your
conversations with the executives. That's what's super important here.
And also, the timing just happens to be perfect for this, Stuart.
We're going to be releasing a free resource, totally free,
called "The Strategic Decision Playbook: How PMO and Transformation
Leaders Help Organizations Make Better Bets, Faster Decisions, and Stronger
Strategic Moves." Specifically, here's the language to use.
Here is how to use it. Here's how to think differently.
Here's how to get them to think differently.
Because the questions you all are asking are universally being asked
across organizations all over the place.
So, we're creating something, so make sure you're on our newsletter so that you
get it free right away. There's nothing to
share but your email to get that. But we just really want to help you all position
yourselves more effectively, because whether you call it a PMO, TMO, a
VMO, an XMO, I don't care what you call it, I care about the impact it's
driving, and that's what we're here to help you do.
So Mickey, passing the baton to you.
Mickey, I'll pass over to you, my friend.
And if you could keep talking for a few minutes, because I'm going to be typing to
our colleagues here. I've got a proposition for you guys while Mickey's talking.
So just watch the chat. Go ahead.
I was just trying to comment earlier.
I forgot what I wanted to comment on but-
You were going to give some examples.
You're going to give some examples of where this is showing up.
No. I actually wasn't going to give examples, but I was going to make some
comments about the conversations during that Rebecca brought up.
I think
my kind of
feedback here is
executives, and not just executives, that goes for all
levels of the organization. In fact, executives, I
think is just the tip of the iceberg, right?
You got to win the hearts and minds of the organization, not just the leaders,
right? So I think having that kind of mindset of looking at
all levels in an organization, that's where you can really
increase the value of your PMO, and even in
organizations that don't have a formal PMO, it's kind of the same mindset
that I've seen, is that I'm playing the role, and
then you all can play the role of chief translator, right?
Yeah.
Translating what executives to frontline.
I had four committee meetings last week, and guess
what? In talking to the population, the staff, one of the
committees represented staff and employees, right?
They don't have the C-suite title in front of their job titles, but they are so
important. They don't know what's going on.
They hear our executives speaking, and they're, like I mentioned earlier, their
eyeballs are glazed. They're not speaking the same language.
So I think, I haven't heard that yet here.
I think we're alluding to it, because we're using the term strategy a lot.
In my mind, it's multidimensional, right?
Yeah.
You got to look all around you, and then your role
and your team's role, if you do have a formal PMO, if you can be that
chief translator, and more than chief translator, now you're articulating
value from all sides, right? The value to, I'll use my healthcare
example. The value to a nurse in their day-to-day
work is different than the value to a chief executive that
oversees that organization, right?
So this is where you can push the boundaries of maybe
yourself, your team, into translating value
both sides, right? So now you're playing an important role, not just from
a strategy perspective, top-down, but now it's
bottoms-up, middle out, sideways, right?
A lot of times it's sideways conversations that need to be
had. I'm talking about cross-functional, right?
Because you can see our roles as a horizontal,
and that's a unique role to have in any organization.
We're looking across the forest, not just at the individual tree, right?
Sorry about these analogies, Stuart. You got me going.
So we're not looking at the individual tree or the weeds.
We're looking at the entire forest, and we're looking at the health of that forest.
So I think that, to Rebecca's point, that's something that we can really provide.
Now, that translates into tactics, and the tactics are
all-embracing.
One of the examples, Laura, one recent example, you've heard me talk
about this before.
In the AI space, and this could be maybe our next webinar.
In the AI space, what about people?Something about humans.
Mm-hmm.
Humans should be part of your AI conversation.
So having yourself, your teams involved in that, that's
one way of articulating value.
The PMOs or PMO-like structures that I'm at,
we now have a seat at the table when it comes to AI transformation.
That wasn't envisioned a year and a half ago, but now it is.
And so there's another way, example of translating the
value of your team and yourself to be part of
the AI conversation. One of the things that we are having
in terms of this organizational AI governance and policy,
we are now helping with that enablement and rollout, and
we're helping at different levels.
Not only tactics, but the policy and governance overall.
Why do they come to the PMO? Because we can look across the forest, not just
down. So what a perfect engine to
help with AI, right? So there's another way of
translating something that might be intimidating into something
that's a top of every organization now is AI
transformation. And if you don't have a seat at a table, like
I didn't a year and a half ago,
think of ways that you can get a seat at that table for
AI, right? And it might be just as simple as going to have
a lunch, which is actually what happened. So think about that.
Well, one of those lemons, like you were just talking about, Micky, about, oh,
AI can just do what the PMO does, so we don't really need the PMO anymore.
That's a great lemon, a great opportunity for us to insert
ourselves into that conversation.
Exactly. Yeah.
Because it's true. AI can free up the PMO and all kinds
of other work parts of the organization.
Yeah.
It can retire some tedious, time-intensive kinds of
monitoring and data collection, but frees it
up, not replaces.
Right.
Frees it up to do the strategic work, advising,
support, enterprise thinking, capacity
revealing, all of those value adds.
So yes, Micky, I agree completely.
We've got to get at the table around how AI can be used.
Otherwise, they're going to think, "Oh, the AI can just handle it," which is
not true at all.
Yeah.
The human intelligence is critical.
You're spot on. We're not looking at AI replacing us in the PMO.
We're actually looking at AI helping the organization, right?
So, this is not AI replacing project managers or
PMO. This is actually PMO helping
enable AI in a good way. And so we
added a trigger called psychological safety.
And so the AI governance executives never thought about
psychological safety. I said, "Well, if you don't have psychological safety, how
are you going to win the hearts and minds of the people when it comes to
AI?" And they were like, "Oh, okay." So there's another thing for
a future webinar, Stuart.
Yeah, 100%. Fantastic. So,
brilliant, thank you. I know Micky needs to run, and I can see people are starting
to drift off. So I want to thank everybody really quickly, but I also want to
just throw out a last thought. So the two case studies that Micky and
I talked through were about basically where you had a very
specific handbrake turn kind of situation, right?
Where
you're bleeding money, or there was some kind of bleeding from the neck problem
that needed to be fixed. And in that environment, in both of those
situations, the way to address it, or one way to address it very
quickly, was to go through a process of defining what the goals
are that we want to achieve, have an ideation campaign,
prioritize the stuff, execute the stuff that'll
drive the change, right? And so
I just made a proposal to my fellow panelists here
that we put together a little offer, which is software plus services,
where you can basically just get that as a package and implement it, and in a
couple of months, deliver a huge impact to your organization at a
time when they're screaming for someone to come in and help them with figure
out how to do this cost-cutting thing without chopping your arms off,
right? So if you're interested in that, and
this is going to be driven by you guys.
If you're interested in that offer,
jump into the chat and tell me that you are interested in that offer, and two
things will happen from there. The first thing is I'll get together with the
team here
and we'll figure out what the offer actually is. That'll be the first thing.
And then the second thing is that we will get on a call with you
and figure out how to help and support you. Right?
Love that.
So the very worst you get is an hour's support from one of us.
Yeah.
And the best is that you get something that you can take to your
CEO and absolutely transform the PMO on the spot,
and the perception of the PMO, and the reality of what the PMO is
on the spot.
I love that point, and hopefully you get a lot of comments in the chat because I
think you kind of surprised us with that, but it's great.
Yeah.
I think we can easily develop a thread to help, in multiple ways.
I'm also hopeful that discussion was really great for the ones
that they are more encouraged, and I think I would love to hear them also send a
note to, is it Preeti, right, when she sends notes out, et
cetera.
If your executives are making a decision tomorrow of $10 or $20
million, will the PMO be invited in the room?
I would love to hear
that that is actually happening because what I try to hit hard is
really, I use CCD, but now to make it easy to remember the three
Cs, right? So I talked about the whole idea of
the clarity, the capacity, I said decisions initially, but maybe let's
call it choices, right? So if the PMO is really able
to speak along the lines of that language, I think our colleagues here
hit the nail in terms of the backdrop for a lot of that.
It's great to be here, Stuart. Good job.
Awesome. Well, thank you very much.
And
so first of all, thank you to everybody who's attended.
We really appreciate you taking time out. We do two webinars a month.
We do a demo webinar, and we do one of these thought leadership sessions.
Please look for the emails and sign up, come along.
Great turnout today. Thank you all very much.
Thank you for your engagement, but mostly thank you to the panel.
I really appreciate it. We'll see you on the next webinar.