NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Every couple of weeks we meet to discuss what matters to you in the wide and diverse field of project management.  It’s our chance to reflect on our purpose; to take stock in how we’re doing; and, when needed, challenge ourselves to step it up.  We talk with project managers about real-life situations.  We pick their brains to discover their ideas and motivations and find out what has worked for them.

I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are the two main brains of the outfit, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And today, Andy, we’re talking with the guy who literally wrote the book on measuring strategic gold.

ANDY CROWE:  Nick, I have been looking forward to this all week, just to get into the topic of strategy, to look at it; and to also look at it from a project management standpoint.

NICK WALKER:  Well, let’s get right to it.  Joining us via Skype is David Barrett, a professional speaker, a regular blogger, a podcast host, an education advisor, and author of five books.  His career includes the creation and directing of a conference business; a training company; a software development firm; a speakers bureau; and, most recently, a TED-style event series for project professionals across North America.  He specializes in helping people and organizations manage the uncertainty by creating healthy projects and strategies.  David Barrett, thanks so much for joining us today here on Manage This.

DAVID BARRETT:  I’m thrilled to be here, gentlemen.  Great to join you.

NICK WALKER:  You’ve recently coauthored a new book, coming out just in a few days, titled “Seven Elements of Strategy Execution.”  David, what prompted this book?  How did it come about?

DAVID BARRETT:  Well, 25, almost 30 years later into this business, and things have changed a lot.  It’s no longer build it on time, on scope, on budget for all of us project managers.  The day is now here where we’re being asked to step it up, to be more involved in the organization, to add value, and to be more than just the tickbox project manager that many of us grew up to know.  So this whole piece of strategy is, in my mind, a natural evolution on many different fronts.  I think it’s now to everyone’s benefit, to everyone’s favor to start understanding why we’re doing the work we’re doing.

And this portfolio of work that we’re managing and working on is huge.  It’s mission critical.  It’s driving the business.  And so the day has come that we’re being asked, and we should be asking, why are we doing this?  How does it fit into the strategic plan?  So this is the connection of the work of all of us, of this wonderful community of project managers worldwide, to the “why.”  In my opinion, just to that one word.  Why are we doing this?  How does this fit into the bigger picture?  And that’s a strategic plan.

ANDY CROWE:  I’ve heard it said before, David, that a man with a “why” can defeat a man with a “what” any day.

DAVID BARRETT:  Absolutely.  The “what” is important.  The “what” is important to know, to see that vision down at the end of the road.  But just to drive us down to some object is not going to work.  It never has.  It never will.  But to give us purpose to build, which gives us passion for what we are doing, it’s so important today.  You know, we’re no longer staying with these organizations for many days, for our lives.  We have options.  So on both fronts it’s important that we’re connected.

BILL YATES:  That’s true.  David, I’ve seen this with PMI, as well.  They’ve really, as they look at the performance that leads to exceptional project managers, those who are able to recognize the why, to see that context and understand how strategy influences their day-to-day decisions, they bring more value to their organization.  I think even of the Talent Triangle when PMI rolled that out.  Strategy is really, you know, it’s named a little bit differently.  But strategy is one of those key tenets that they point to now as a key to success.  So it is, like you say, it’s like an evolution.  We’ve been asked as project managers to think more strategically.  So how does that play out in day-to-day life?  How do you see that in the life of the PM?

DAVID BARRETT:  Well, absolutely.  And I tell audiences, one of my keynotes I focus on the project manager’s career.  What doors are in front of me?  Where are my options?  And I like to point, as you all have pointed out as well, the fact that the PMI is, well, they’re pointing out – they’re being told by their major stakeholders, “Give us more.  Give us people that understand this strategic space.  Give us more than,” as I said earlier, “that tickbox project manager.”  But I think, as well, I read it as PMI is now almost giving us permission to look beyond the role of the project manager.  So there’s two fronts here going on.  One is align the work.  Be passionate about the work you’re doing and align it to that strategic direction of the organization.

But the other one I love to hit on every once in a while is, you know, you can leave this space and probably have a – I think project managers make great leaders.  But project managers that understand strategy also have a really wonderful role, potential role to play in our organizations in that management of our strategic plans.  These are not going well.  The stats are not good on successful strategy.  And we need to manage them better.  And I think people are waking up and saying, you know, maybe these are projects.  Maybe this is a large portfolio of work that we have to manage like we’re managing the rest of our project work.

ANDY CROWE:  And you know what, David, one of the reasons I believe that’s true, that contributes to projects’ difficulty achieving strategy, is if the project managers are kept in the dark, if they’re not aware of the strategic goals of the organization, why they’re doing these projects, then they can’t make the fine-tuned adjustments to make sure that they’re actually hitting the true strategic goals.  They’re just marching onward, going on, and trusting that somebody else is going to do that.  But when the project manager at least has an understanding of that context, it helps.

DAVID BARRETT:  Absolutely.  So we drive from our community up towards, if you want to say out towards that strategic plan through the efforts of the PMI, the Talent Triangle requirement of now the PDUs in the strategic area.  But we also drive from the top down.  The book that we’ve published or that is about to be released, “The Seven Elements of Strategy Execution,” two of those chapters absolutely key in on the role of the project manager, one being synergy and one being the clarity.  So if we’re not clear about where we’re going, and if we don’t bring everyone into the plan, into the vision, and make them a part of this march, then our strategic plan, our strategy is – it’s going to be tough.  It’s going to be tough to be successful.  The alignment and the synergy within our organization, to get our project team involved, to get everyone involved into the why – we go back to that key word, the why – is critical on strategy execution success.

ANDY CROWE:  You said a key word that’s one of the words that we use a lot at Velociteach which is the word “alignment.”  Say more about that.  What are you looking at when you talk about the word “alignment”?

DAVID BARRETT:  You know, when I think about alignment, I think about the whole organization.  I think about how one vision, whether it be the acquisition of another organization, a growth of 50 percent, moving to a new marketplace, a new product line, I think that everything needs to be aligned if we’re going to be successful.  And alignment goes right from all and every employee of this organization to senior management, to our vendors, our suppliers, and everybody else.  It’s critical that we are all rowing in the same direction with a commitment, with the passion, with the knowledge, with knowing what we all have to do.  So this alignment piece goes straight throughout everything we do, everybody and everything we do, and it’s critical to success in our organizations today.

NICK WALKER:  Let’s talk a little bit about some of the elements that you list.  You’ve got clarity, commitment, the team, accountability, synergy, the plan, leadership.  Is this a specific order that you need to be thinking of these in?  Or is this just sort of a whole that we need to be talking about and thinking?

DAVID BARRETT:  This is a whole that we need to be talking about.  There is no methodology here.  This is not a new project execution, strategy execution methodology.  If you want to look at the PMBOK or the BABOK or any of these other knowledge areas, this could be considered another one, as well.  These are the seven areas, the elements that we believe that leaders, that organizations, that owners and operators need to consider if they want to execute successfully.  And we can pick any one of them.  They’re all absolutely critical.

Just the term “leadership” and you of kind of go, well, yeah, really, and defining your leadership, and making sure your leaders are aligned, and everyone is onboard.  I’ve been involved in a project recently where there was a major acquisition.  And the Board of Directors of this organization sat down and said, “We’re going to do this.  This is the plan.  We’re going to acquire that company.”  And there were, call it 15 senior leaders in this organization.  That Board of Directors knew full well that they would lose seven to eight of those people within one year.

I was interviewing one of the board members, and he said, “You know what, it was almost 365 days to the day later when the seventh person walked out the door and said, ‘I quit.’”  It was part of the deal.  We knew that this leadership team was not the right group.  Just as an example of one of those seven elements,