The podcast for project managers by project managers. In this episode we’re talking with Dr. Don Hunt, an expert in cybercrime and cyber security, to get advice on how to implement effective cyber security measures.

Table of Contents

01:02 … Meet Don 02:35 … Cyber Security, Cyberattacks and Cybercrime 04:31 … At-Risk Systems for Project Managers 06:51 … File Sharing 10:14 … Dropbox 11:59 … A Weak Link – Coke Story 14:25 … Virtual Private Network 16:50 … 2 Factor Authentications 20:00 … Password Policies 22:36 … Password Manager 24:29 … Creating a Cyber Security Culture of Awareness 27:53 … Phishing in Cybercrime 31:17 … Ransomware 35:25 … Cybercrime Recovery 36:49 … Future of Cybercrime 40:21 … Personal Cyber Security Actions 42:29 … Get More Info 44:11 … Closing

DON HUNT:  Every time

you touch that Internet, every time you click that button, you’re vulnerable.

NICK WALKER:  Welcome

to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is our time to meet and get to the heart

of what’s important to you as a professional project manager.  We talk to the people who don’t just observe

what is happening, but actually make things happen; people who have been right

there in the thick of projects great and small and are willing to share what

they’ve learned with us.

I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me is the one who makes

this podcast happen, Bill Yates.  And

Bill, today we’re going to talk with someone involved in something that has

either already affected many of us, or perhaps eventually will.

BILL YATES:  Cyber security

is in the news for all the wrong reasons.

NICK WALKER:  Yes.

BILL YATES:  Just

about every day.  And I’m thrilled to

have Don here to help give us some advice.

Meet Don

NICK WALKER:  Well,

let’s meet our guest.  Dr. Don Hunt is a

postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of

Criminal Justice and Criminology at Georgia

State University.  A former global

head of fraud and cybercrime analytics for one of the largest digital payments

processors in the world, Dr. Hunt directs his primary research toward

understanding, preventing, and offering policy solutions for computer-based

crime.  He focuses on phishing, social

engineering, and ransomware attacks.

Dr. Hunt is an integral part of the newly formed Evidence-Based Cyber Security initiative at

Georgia State.  As a doctoral student, he

was awarded the Bureau of Justice Statistics

Graduate Fellowship in 2015, which came with a $95,000 grant for his

research in crime and digital payments. 

In addition to his work in the U.S., he regularly performs research with

colleagues in the U.K., the Netherlands, Israel, and Italy.  Don, thank you so much for joining us here on

Manage This.

DON HUNT:  Thanks.  It’s good to be here.

NICK WALKER:  Okay.  We probably all know of businesses or

individuals who have been the victims of cyber attackers.  They try to gain access to or destroy sensitive

information, extort money, or interrupt normal business processes.  And just when it seems we’ve got a handle on

it, the hackers become more innovative. 

That’s got to be frustrating, particularly for folks like you.

DON HUNT:  It’s

completely frustrating.  It’s the entire

focus of what I do.

NICK WALKER:  Just

trying to stay ahead of them.

DON HUNT:  Just trying

to stay ahead of them, or just stay with them.

Cyber Security, Cyberattacks and Cybercrime

NICK WALKER:  So when

we talk about cyberattacks, what kinds of attacks are we talking about?

DON HUNT:  Oh,

gosh.  There are so many ways.  And here becomes one of the problems with

trying to prevent cyber is that we really don’t even have a handle on the

definition of it.

NICK WALKER:  Wow.

DON HUNT:  So if you

look at the FBI – and they have a specific website that you can go to – over

the years, probably the last 15 years, they’ve changed that definition of

cybercrime at least three or four times. 

So the idea of what is cybercrime; what’s not cy...

The Podcast for Project Managers by Project Managers. How to deal with the emotional brain, to recognize it, acknowledge it, and then shift to the rational brain in crisis decision-making.

Table of Contents

01:02 … Meet Ruth 01:43 … Competing Risks Scenario 04:31 … Consider the Options 06:59 … Scenario Solution 09:06 … Emotional and Rational Brain 10:09 … Responding to Disasters 13:37 … Balancing Emotional vs. Rational Brain 15:01 … 4 Questions to Ask in Crisis Decision-Making 16:06 … Suffering with Resistance 17:49 … What are the Facts? 19:02 … What Does it Mean? 20:33 … What Do We Want to Happen? 22:15 … How Do We Make the Least Bad Option Happen? 24:11 … Coordinating with Other people 27:59 … Crisis project – Fukushima Disaster 31:45 … Get in Touch with Ruth

RUTH HOUSE:  That

ability to deal with the emotional brain, to recognize it, acknowledge it, and

then shift to the rational brain to make decisions is absolutely critical.

NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Every couple of weeks we get together to talk about what might be on your mind as a professional project manager.  We’re always on the lookout for better ways to advise and challenge you, and so we’re always on the lookout for guests who can convey that with real stories from their own experience.

I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me is the guy with more experience than one man should be allowed to have, Bill Yates. And Bill, today we’re talking about making decisions in crisis situations and also learning how we can improve our skills at decision-making in those emergencies.

BILL YATES:  Project managers all face crisis moments, unfortunately, it happens too frequently, so I’m excited about having Ruth here today to help us think through better ways to handle those moments.

Meet Ruth

NICK WALKER:  Yeah, we’ve got a guest who’s been with us before. So Dr Ruth Middleton House is on the core faculty of Organizational Development and Leadership at Fielding Graduate  University and is president of Middleton-House and Company.  Ruth specializes in troubleshooting high-risk, high-conflict, high-visibility projects.  She’s also written several books, including “The Human Side of Project Management,” and is a frequent contributor to the Georgia Engineer.  In 2019 Ruth was named one of the Top 100 Influential Women in Georgia by Engineering Georgia magazine.  Dr. Middleton House, it is great to have you back with us here on Manage This.

RUTH HOUSE:  I’m just

delighted to be here.  Thank you,

Nick.  Bill, good to see you again.

BILL YATES:  Good to

see you.

Competing Risks Scenario

NICK WALKER:  Now, the

process of making decisions in the midst of conflict and urgency, as we

mentioned, is quite common among project managers, but also by human resource

professionals, healthcare workers, first responders, and many others.  For all these professions, it seems that it’s

especially difficult when we’re facing competing risks, and there’s no clear

right answer.

RUTH HOUSE:  That’s right.  I’d actually like to get started with a kind of cross between a video game and a game show and then ask you, Bill and Nick, to tell me what you would do under these circumstances.

NICK WALKER:  Uh-oh.  Okay.

BILL YATES:  Are you

ready for this?

NICK WALKER:  So we’re

the contestants on the game show.

RUTH HOUSE:  You’re

the contestants, and the game show is “Are You Smarter Than a 100,000 Year Old?”

BILL YATES: 

Okay.  That’s a lot of experience

that one’s going to have.  Hmm.

RUTH HOUSE:  That’s right.  Here we are.  So you’re looking out on an African plain, you’re trying to make sense of a collage of colors and shapes that you see in front of you.  Winding towards you is a river full of hungry-looking crocodiles.

RUTH HOUSE:  To your

left is a herd of elephants; on your near right, lionesses that look hungry and

restless.

BILL YATES:  Okay.

The podcast for project managers by project managers. "Driller Mike", a tunnel boring machine drilling a 5 mile tunnel underneath Atlanta.

Table of Contents

01:19 … The Project Story 02:38 … Meet Ade 06:28 … Project Objective 09:44 … CMAR 12:28 … Meet Bob 15:42 … Driller Mike 18:27 … Decision-Making Criteria 20:46 … The Unexpected Risks 23:12 … Encountering Opposition 24:21 … Lessons Learned 25:13 … Current Project Status 27:50 … CMAR Lessons Learned 31:23 … Collaboration Tip 31:46 … Project Success 34:58 … Closing

BOB HUIE: So the city kind of told everybody at the beginning we don’t have a lot of time to do this, so we can’t be fighting with each other and not getting along and doing things like that. We needed to find a way to work together for a common goal, and that was a substantial lesson that everybody had to learn.  And then once we learned it and put it into effect, it had a tremendous positive impact on the success of the project to date.

NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is our chance to meet and discuss the things that really matter to you as a professional project manager.  We take seriously the adage that wisdom is found in a multitude of advisors, and so we seek out experts in a variety of vocations who can give us insight based on their real-life experiences.

I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me is the one who guides these conversations, Bill Yates, and Bill, we talk about all sizes and scopes of projects on this podcast, and today we’re talking about another really big one.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, this one’s deep, a very deep project, we’ll talk more about that, but I can’t wait.

The Project Story

NICK WALKER:  Well, let’s talk about this deep project just a little bit.  The City of Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management provides water to 1.2 million users each day.  So the department is in the middle of establishing a 400-foot-deep reservoir that will hold 2.4 billion gallons of water, the reservoir will be in the former Bellwood Quarry northwest of downtown Atlanta.  The Quarry is to be filled through a five-mile-long tunnel that will connect it to the Chattahoochee River, the city’s primary water source.  To bore the tunnel, a tunnel boring machine, or TBM, was constructed and installed for the two-year-long tunnel project, a TBM. (Driller Mike)

BILL YATES:  TBM. 

NICK WALKER:  And

there’s another acronym that we want to talk about.

BILL YATES:  Yeah.

NICK WALKER:  And you’ll probably hear this come up a lot.  That’s CMAR.

BILL YATES:  Right.

NICK WALKER:  C-M-A-R.

BILL YATES:  So CMAR, that’s a – really it’s a procurement term, it’s a contract type, and it stands for Construction Manager at-Risk.  Once the agreement was reached between the City of Atlanta and that major provider – Bob will talk about that.  So you may hear the owner, City of Atlanta, refer to the project manager of the team as the CMAR.  So you met your CMAR that way.

Meet Ade

NICK WALKER:  Good.  Well, we’ve got a couple of guests in the studio here.  So let me first introduce Ade Abon, Senior Watershed Director for the City of Atlanta, Department of Watershed Management, he is the director for the Capital Projects Management Division. Ade has 34 years of experience, 19 of which have been for the City of Atlanta in the planning, design, construction management, and also program management for wastewater collection and water distribution systems, Ade, welcome to Manage This.

ADE ABON:  Thank you

very much.

NICK WALKER:  I’d like

to start off by just maybe finding out a little bit more about you.  What was your career path to the position that

you’re now in?

ADE ABON:  Yeah, so I’ve got a very long career path, and I will try and do my best to lay it all out.  Yeah, I – born, raised in Nigeria.  I worked for a couple of years on a road construction project.

NICK WALKER:  In

Nigeria.

Table of Contents

01:36 … Meet Jen

03:37 … Liquid Planner History

04:36 … “Pain is the Mother of Invention”

06:50 … Supporting the Project Manager Customer

07:45 … Customer Base

09:05 … Best case/Worst Case - Estimating Tool

15:04 … Critical Path

16:13 … Top Innovations

17:09 … Solutions to PM Challenges

19:19 … Agile/Scrum and Waterfall Approaches

20:47 … Estimates vs Actuals

24:29 … Communication among Users

26:11 … Software Versions

27:07 … Looking Forward

29:44 … Connect with LiquidPlanner

30:18 … Closing

JEN MORRISEY:  The workplace, rather, is rapidly evolving, as is the PM role, and I think project managers today face so many challenges as well as opportunities. But with working with so many of our customers, many of which are PMs, of course, I think the core challenge is that they’re asked to do more with less resources.  So now more than ever they need to use their resources in the most optimal way.

NICK WALKER:  Welcome

to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Every other week we get together to discuss

the things that matter to you as a professional project manager.  We want to bring out the best in you, and we

do that by picking the brains of some of the best in the business, sharing in

their successes, and sometimes learning from their failures.

I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me is the one who

guides us in this journey, Bill Yates. 

And Bill, today we’re going to get into the nuts and bolts of some

project management tools to hopefully make us more productive and make our

lives a little easier.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, I’m

excited about this conversation.  Nick,

the reality is every project manager has a favorite scheduling tool.  Project management scheduling is a big deal.  It’s very important because it’s so out

there.  When you create a schedule,

everybody sees it, and they kind of judge you by it.

NICK WALKER:  Yeah.

BILL YATES:  So we’ve reached out to a number of companies just to have conversations about their software.  LiquidPlanner is the first to respond, so we’re going to talk with them today.

Meet Jen

NICK WALKER:  Yeah, so we’re going to talk with Jen Morrisey, the Vice President of Products at LiquidPlanner. This is a cloud-based project management platform.  She’s passionate about designing and building innovative products that help teams do the work that matters most. She’s been a key member of the LiquidPlanner team since joining in 2009.  From her prior background in project management consulting, Jen brings a clear understanding of the project management space and understands customer needs firsthand.

Jen, thank you so much for joining us here on Manage This. For starters, for the benefit of our listeners unfamiliar with LiquidPlanner, can you give us a brief description of what it is?

JEN MORRISEY:  Absolutely, LiquidPlanner is a project management solution. It’s the only solution on the market that is priority based, And that is built to really pull in factors of reality to build accurate schedules for our customers.

NICK WALKER:  And how

did you get involved in this?

JEN MORRISEY:  So I first got started in human resources, and I never thought that I would go into tech. I started out of school at Starbucks Corporate and realized that project management was a calling for me. I went into project management consulting and project controls consulting, and so I spent a lot of time on client sites and saw that project management solutions out there just weren’t adding the value that I thought that they should.  My clients really struggled to keep their plans up to date and to adapt to change that was inevitable in the marketplace.

And so ultimately I heard about Charles Seybold and Jason Carlson developing this new different way to manage projects. And I reached out to get coffee, and one coffee date turned into nine-plus years at LiquidPlanner.

BILL YATES:  So Starbucks Coffee, LiquidPlanner,

Project Management - Leadership Lessons Learned from a Fire Chief

Table of Contents

01:09 … Meet Mark 03:32 … Whittier Fire Incident 07:48 … Incident Command Types 10:11 … Managing Incidents 11:40 … Incident/Project Scope 12:53 … Peer Communication 14:11 … Keeping Motivated 15:30 … Leadership Transition 18:10 … Building trust 20:01 … Delegation 22:48 … Public Communication 27:15 … Resources 28:36 … Lessons Learned 30:39 … Career Highlights 32:29 … Closing

MARK VON TILLOW:  But

for me, as the leader or as the project manager, you’ve got to know your

people, and you’ve got to know all 56 of them in my case.

NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. So this is our bimonthly meeting to talk about what really matters to you as a professional project manager, it’s our goal to give you some words of advice and encouragement by hearing the experiences of other professionals and leaders in the field.

I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me is the one who holds down the fort here, Bill Yates.  So Bill, today’s podcast is a direct result of a request from a listener. By Request!

BILL YATES:  Yeah, how

about that?  We heard from Amy.  I think she’s in Washington State.

NICK WALKER:  Yeah,

she reached out to us and asked specifically that we have a guest on our

program, someone involved in public safety, particularly when it comes to

managing wildfires.

BILL YATES:  Right, right.  And we were delighted.  Wendy did some research, and she contacted Mark, it came together with Mark, so we’re delighted to have Mark on as our guest and talk through this in detail.

Meet Mark

NICK WALKER:  Well, let’s meet him; all right?  U.S. Forest Service Retired Division Chief Mark von Tillow started his career in fighting wildfires in 1986 on the Tahoe National Forest, he’s been a team member working engines, hotshots, and helicopters, and also he was the incident commander for California Team 3 for many years. Mark has extensive fire experience as well as some all-hazard responses such as in Hurricane Rita in Texas, the space shuttle Discovery recovery mission, as well. He was the Commander in 2017’s Whittier Fire in Santa Barbara County, California, and also in the Thomas Fire later that year.  He also commanded the fighting of the Soberanes Fires along the Big Sur coast, one of the costliest wildfire operations in U.S. history. Mark has a passion for this work and wants to pay it forward, and Mark, we welcome you to Manage This.

MARK VON TILLOW:  Good

morning.  Thanks for having me.

NICK WALKER:  Now, I’ve got to ask you, first off, we have just come off one of the most destructive wildfire seasons in California’s history.  Fresh in our minds, of course, is the fire that destroyed the town of Paradise in Northern California, the Camp Fire.  This is obviously a career that takes a special breed of human, what led you to this career choice?

MARK VON TILLOW:  So this may seem like a different way to start this conversation, but really it had to do with my father passing away when I was 12. He had a heart attack in front of me, and this was pre-911 days, when you just pick up the phone and dial 911 now.  But I had to run around the block to get to my grandfather’s house to tell him what had happened. He came back, and it just seemed like a long delay for emergency personnel to get there.  That was really my first exposure to that, and I thought, you know, I’d like to be that person someday trying to help somebody, so that’s really where it started.

Fast-forward along through high school, graduate, go to work for a company called Hewlett-Packard, but I was also volunteering at a fire station, and that really seemed to resonate with me more.  So I worked nights at Hewlett-Packard, and I worked days doing the fire station and then found out about this Wildland Firefighting thing and decided to apply, and almost forgot that I applied when they called and said,...

The Podcast for Project Managers by Project Managers.

Table of Contents

01:06 … Meet Kendall

03:27 … PM4Change

04:31 … Finding the Gap

08:05 … PMDOS Event Procedure

11:39 … Organization Support

12:19 … Benefits to the PM

14:48 … Networking

17:33 … Meet Selena

18:16 … Local Launch PMDOS

21:34 … Student Mentoring

24:05 … PMI Atlanta Chapter PMDOS

24:54 … Lessons Learned

28:25 … Success Story

30:32 … PM Point of View Podcast

31:53 … Closing

KENDALL LOTT:  We have skills.  The skills are needed.  The talents are useful, but talents don’t count, you can’t let them be fallow.  You have to use them.

NICK WALKER:  Welcome

to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Every two weeks we meet to discuss what

really matters to you as a professional project manager.  It’s a time we set aside to offer some

expertise and advice from some of our fellow professionals in the field.  We let them tell their stories in the hopes

that you’ll be encouraged and challenged in your own sphere of influence.

I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me is our chief influencer, Bill Yates,  and Bill, I’m looking forward to hearing what our guests have to say about a subject that’s become increasingly on my radar, and that is volunteering.  Which, as you and I have talked about, addresses a common problem.

BILL YATES:  Right.  The common problem, not-for-profits often have a compelling vision but those leaders need help planning and executing.  So I’m really interested to see what our guests have to say about that.

Meet Kendall

NICK WALKER:  So we have two guests to help us in the studio today who are going to talk about an organization that provides opportunities for project management professionals to participate in community volunteering. Our first guest is J. Kendall Lott.  Kendall is the CEO/President of M Powered Strategies, Inc. A change management consulting firm in Washington, DC. Supporting organizations in public service.  He’s the executive director of the Project Management Day of Service, the Chairman of the Board of the PM for Change nonprofit organization. And the host and producer of the PM Point of View podcast.  Kendall, thanks so much for joining us here on Manage This today.

KENDALL LOTT:  Glad to

be here.

NICK WALKER: So tell us a little bit about yourself to get us started here. And why volunteering is such a passion for you.

KENDALL LOTT:  Huh.  That is a super good question, I think what brought me here that’s related to that is I am a returned Peace Corps volunteer, back in the ‘80s. So I got started in public service through the graces of the federal government. I greatly appreciate the taxpayers that make that program possible, I think it’s good for the country, and it’s good for me.  It was a chance to get kind of involved, and I really enjoyed it.

One of my other pieces later was when I wanted to become a project manager and realized there was a whole institute around it, with chapters, I needed to kind of get out and get to meet people. But I did it for a very personal reason, I think that’s where we get a lot of volunteers, you’ve got to have your own hook for something right, and I realized I needed to meet people. So I showed up at the Washington, DC Chapter, PMIWDC, my home chapter, and they had, frankly, they had a disaster at their registration desk.  So me being Kendall, I showed up and said, what, this is like the biggest chapter, and this is all these project managers, and they can’t run a registration desk?  And I raised my voice.

So we know what happened then, they’re like, congratulations, you just volunteered to solve that, and I got to participate and learn to keep my mouth shut.  No, I learned to help out, and I really enjoyed engaging with other professionals.  So that was a bit of a twist on the volunteer environment right, and I volunteered for the chapter for about 15 years and ended up on the board and eventually became the vice chair,

The Podcast for Project

Managers by Project Managers

Table of Contents

01:14 … Velociteach Beginnings

04:22 … Lessons Learned Stories

07:47 … “Bad news Does Not Get Better With Time”

11:59 … AI

14:49 … Getting Past the Storming Phase

18:22 … When and How to Conduct Meetings

22:50 … Monitoring Projects

27:13 … How to Properly Close Tasks

29:12 … The Future of Project Management

33:17 … Closing

BILL YATES:  But I saw

the opportunity to, again, join a really – a growing enterprise that would

really put a thumbprint on project management, be able to really influence an

industry.  And that was exciting to me.

ANDY CROWE:  A

shameless plug.  I think that’s the best

thing for me about this career is that we’ve been able to help people.

NICK WALKER:  Welcome

to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is the time we’ve set aside to discuss

with you the subject of project management and touch on some of the issues that

are important to you as a professional project manager.

I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are the two guys who make this podcast happen, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And so guys, now, in a previous podcast we talked with the two of you about some of the specific questions our listeners have.  It was a great discussion, and today we want to continue in that same vein, trying to get to the heart of what our listeners are chiefly concerned about.

But before we dive into some of these questions, can I just ask each of you a little bit about your background, I’m curious, Andy, how did Velociteach come about?  I know you’re the founder of this organization.  How did this get started?

Velociteach

Beginnings

ANDY CROWE:  Well, it started – our birthday is September 30th, 2002.  But how it got started was kind of fun, I was a director of projects for a publicly traded company here in Atlanta. And I was traveling nonstop, and so it was one of those things that I decided, okay, I’m going to need to – I had a young family at the time.  Children were small.  And I said, “I need a break.”

And so I left that job, and that was an insane career move because I made too much money to quit, and I left and started Velociteach shortly after that. So a lot of it was just processing with my wife, look, I love to write, I love project management, and I enjoy the classroom, and it really brought those things together that it was a good marriage of those skills. And you know we’ve talked before about Jim Collins’s Hedgehog Concept, which is – Bill, remind me.  It’s what you can make money at, what you’re passionate about...

BILL YATES:  What you

can be best in the world at.

ANDY CROWE:  What you can be world class.  And so it kind of fit that, I felt like, you know what, I do have a passion about project management, it’s a profession that’s going places now.  So there were some economic opportunities, and I felt like there were things that we wanted to build a world-class organization, so that was the goal.

NICK WALKER:  Bill

Yates, how did you get into this organization? 

How did you become a part?

BILL YATES:  Yeah, well, you can hear it from Andy.  I mean, he’s got passion, and he’s got direction and a vision which was really compelling to me.  So, we started talking, I think in 2004, and I left my job to join Velociteach in 2005, my experience had been with utilities, tax software, tax and compliance software for utilities – gas, electric, and telcos – and had been doing that really for 18 years with different organizations. Went from a small company to one of 90,000 at EDS, then we bought our company or bought our product from EDS, so we went to a company of eight.

  So I think we were around 20 back in 2004 when I started talking with Andy.  But I saw the opportunity to, again, join a really – a growing enterprise that would really put a thumbprint on project management, be able to really influence an industry.  And that was exciting to me.

Project planning meetings for PM's

Table of Contents

01:24 … Meet Rich

03:58 … Bad Meeting Victims

07:21 … Research

08:44 … Large and in Charge

11:28 … Sponsor Involvement

15:59 … Pre-Meeting Steps

18:56 … Kick-Off Meeting Time Line

20:35 … Risk Register

25:32 … Meeting Goblins

32:46 … Virtual Meetings

35:15 … Naysayers

37:40 … Final Remarks

RICH MALTZMAN:  I think you need to just step back and say, “I’m a project manager.  I’m going to project manage this meeting.”  Seriously, a lot of the same skills that you are applying to your project, you just need to step back and realize that this is a project itself.

NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Every two weeks we meet to discuss the things that matter to you as a professional project manager.  We’re here for you, to encourage you, to give you some ideas you can use, and to help you get to your best and maintain it.

I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me is the one who is instrumental in helping us be at our best, Bill Yates.  And Bill, before we get to our guest, we should remind our listeners where our other partner in crime is right now, Andy Crowe.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, Andy Crowe is not in the room.  He is in the water.  He is on a boat, he is..

NICK WALKER:  Not in the water.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, that’s true.  Good point, yeah.  Hopefully he’s on top of the water in his sailing vessel.  So we don’t know exactly where he is, but he’s not here.  If people want to remember, we actually had an episode dedicated to that where we talked with Andy and Karen, Episode 74, for all the details.

NICK WALKER:  And of course we’ll be checking back in with Andy from time to time and probably even talk with him on one of our future podcasts.

Meet Rich

But right now we’ve got a great guest with us today, Rich Maltzman, PMP, recently retired from a 40-year career in the telecom industry, the last 30 years focusing on project management.  He’s currently a senior lecturer at Boston University, developing and teaching classes in project management, and qualitative and quantitative decision-making.  Rich is the cofounder of EarthPM, LLC, a company devoted to integrating sustainability thinking into the project management world.  He has authored or coauthored several books, including “Green Project Management,” which won PMI’s Cleland Award for Literature; “Project Workflow Management:  A Business Process Approach”; and “Bridging the PM Competency Gap.”  His latest book is titled “How to Facilitate Productive Project Planning Meetings.”  And that’s much of what we want to focus on today.  Rich, thank you for being with us here on Manage This.

RICH MALTZMAN:   It’s great to be here.

NICK WALKER:  Before we get into the subject of what makes successful planning meetings, let’s find out a little bit more about you.  Now, you spent 40 years in the telecom industry.  How did that prepare you for your work today?

RICH MALTZMAN:  Well, being in industry gets you familiar with all of the kinds of situations.  And I should back up and explain that only 30 years of that was in project management.

NICK WALKER:  Only.

BILL YATES:  Oh, okay.

RICH MALTZMAN:  So a good portion of it was in engineering, and some was in project management, but all of that experience involves meeting with a vast amount of people and a wide variety of different people.  So I’d say that that experience prepared me for, amongst other things, being able to talk, I hope somewhat intelligently, about how meetings can be improved.

NICK WALKER:  And you’re a lecturer at Boston University.  How did that come about?

RICH MALTZMAN:  Well, if you look at my background, even way, way back in the beginning of my career, which ashamedly goes back to the ‘70s, I was doing training back at that time.  And I found I really liked that part of the job.  So even back in the ‘80s I was doing some teaching at local community colleges.  And I found that that was exceedingly rewardi...

The podcast for Project Managers by Project Managers - Stakeholder Engagement

Table of Contents

00:53 … Meet Laura

04:21 … Learning and Development

05:18 … Working Internationally

11:44 … Representing H.Q. Remotely

15:56 … Culture Differences

17:11 … Inheriting a Position

22:30 … Stakeholder Engagement

24:56 … Reading a Room

28:21 … Empathy and Humility

30:47 … Building Trust

33:27 … Mistakes to Avoid

36:38 … Closing

LAURA BUTCHER:  I think, because now my work is largely about serving clients and building relationships with clients who are my customers in my work now, I think stakeholder engagement is so essential.

NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is our time to meet and talk about what really matters to you in the field of project management.  Our desire is to give you some perspective, some ideas, some real-life examples of what success looks like and how to get there.

I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are the two guys who guide our discussion, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And today we get to talk with someone who truly has a global perspective as a project manager.

Meet Laura

Laura Butcher is an organization and leadership development consultant.  She began in human resources at GE Appliances and GE Aircraft Engines; then at NationsBank, where she led teams following the NationsBank/Bank America merger.  After that, she made the move to London as Delta Air Lines Director of Human Resources in Europe.  Laura is the co-founder and principal of Blue Key Partners, a consulting practice focused in the areas of learning and leadership development, including executive assessment and coaching,  Laura, thanks so much for being here with us on Manage This.

LAURA BUTCHER:  Thank you for inviting me.

NICK WALKER:  We want to talk with you about working with global customers and engaging with stakeholders around the world.  But first of all, can we just take some time to get to know you a little bit better?  Tell us a little bit about yourself and what your first experiences were like with GE as you traveled internationally.

LAURA BUTCHER:  So my background in corporate America was with GE, Bank of America, and Delta Air Lines for about 15 years.

ANDY CROWE:  Small companies.

BILL YATES:  Yeah.

LAURA BUTCHER:  And then began my consulting practice about 12 years ago, largely in the areas of organization development, leadership development.  But my early experiences were in the human resources function, where I became very passionate about learning and development.  I had experiences supporting many global joint venture partners with GE Appliances and GE Aircraft Engines.  I did some work with GE Crotonville, which is the corporate leadership training institute in Crotonville, New York, where I was part of an adjunct faculty to take some of the GE Work-Out and Change Acceleration Program training to our colleagues in Asia and Europe.  So I was bitten with the bug of working internationally in my early days with GE.

NICK WALKER:  What kind of prompted you?  What was it that bit you about working internationally?

LAURA BUTCHER:  I think I always enjoyed the experience of seeing new places, experiencing new things, eating new cuisines, seeing sights and the history of places.  But I think beyond that I began to really appreciate working with people who see the world differently from myself.  So I think that’s what I found particularly engaging about it.  So oftentimes the work that we’re doing in human resources or in training and development is complex anyway because we’re dealing with human behavior.  But when you add the dimension of culture differences on top of that, it can be quite interesting work, and fulfilling.

NICK WALKER:  What countries did you deal with when you were with GE?

LAURA BUTCHER:  Well, we had joint venture partners in Asia.  So we were establishing a joint venture site with a Korean fi...

The Podcast for Project Managers by Project Managers.

Table of Contents

00:59 … Meet Heather

02:46 … Orbital Space Debris

04:10 … LEO and GEO

04:41 … Policy Standards

06:14 … Regulating/Interagency Debris Coordination Committee

08:24 … Assessing and Mitigation

10:24 … Coordinating with Multiple Teams

11:38 … OSD Observatory on Ascension Island

15:53 … Effective Communication

18:26 … Is There an End to this Project?

24:09 … Career Advice

25:57 … Measuring Success

27:31 … Learn More

29:03 … The Bill and Nick Wrap Up

HEATHER COWARDIN:  But we need to figure out a way to kind of control its growth and make sure that all space users can utilize the space environment.  And that’s the best we can do right now.

NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Every couple of weeks we meet right here and have a conversation about what matters to you in the field of project management.  We talk with real people, doing real jobs, and find out what makes them successful and what keeps them motivated.

I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are the chief motivators, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And Bill, for those who have ever said that the sky is the limit with what we do around here, well, they may need to rethink that perspective a little.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, they’re in for a treat today.  Heather is going to talk to us about the orbital space debris issue that I didn’t even know existed.  This is going to be exciting stuff.

Meet Heather

NICK WALKER:  We all know how much we rely on satellites in orbit around the Earth.  These provide us with services such as navigation, meteorology, climate research, telecommunication, and human space exploration.  Unfortunately, with increasing space activities, a new and sort of unexpected hazard has started to emerge:  space debris.

Dr. Heather M. Cowardin serves as the section manager and project manager for the Orbital Debris Research Section under the Science and Exploration Department of the JETS Contract with NASA Johnson Space Center.  She also leads the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office Research and Development Task Group.

Dr. Cowardin, it’s an honor to have you with us here on Manage This.  Can we start out just getting to know you a little bit better?  How did you get to where you are today?

HEATHER COWARDIN:  Well, I guess let’s go all the way back a couple of decades and talk about my childhood dream.  I wanted to be Batman, a garbage collector, or an astronaut.  And here we are, a couple decades later, and I feel like I’ve hit at least two of those three points.  I’m a superhero trying to protect space assets in space from garbage.  So not doing too bad.

NICK WALKER:  Excellent.

HEATHER COWARDIN:  So I guess where I kind of got to from there is I went to space camp in seventh grade after I won a fellowship from the Society of Women Engineers.  I was going to school at University of Houston, got an internship that turned into a full-time job, that turned into basically being a lead, into a deputy manager, into a full-on manager, to here we are now.  So been at NASA a good 15 years.

NICK WALKER:  So you’re concentrating on space debris.  I think this is something that maybe escapes the radar of a lot of people.

HEATHER COWARDIN:  Aha.  See what you did there.

Orbital Space Debris

NICK WALKER:  Yeah.  What is orbital space debris?

HEATHER COWARDIN:  Right.  So it’s any manmade object that no longer serves a useful purpose.  So what does that mean?  Spent upper stages.  Mission-related debris.  Carriers for multiple payloads.  Even something as small as paint flakes, those can be very damaging.

NICK WALKER:  How much of it is there?

HEATHER COWARDIN:  There’s about 19,000 objects in space right now that are greater than 10 centimeters.  That threshold is basically the limit of where our sensors can track debris.  But in general there’s probably a good 23,