The Project Chatter Podcast

In this week’s pod, we were joined by Magnus Olsen to discuss career challenges, opportunities and trends - a student's perspective.

Magnus has a background in the science of learning, having been a headmaster for a decade, managing organisations with complex stakeholder context. He has five years’ experience as a strategy advisor in public management and is now an entrepreneur engaged in multiple start-ups including own his consultancy firm.

Magnus has always been a student but for the last two years he been taking a life changing Master of Science in Project Management at Karlstad Business School in Sweden.

The main topics we discussed on the podcast were as follows:

Here are links to some of the topics we discussed: 

Tune in next time when we’re re-joined by Dave Snowden to talk about the hexi approach and what it means to Cynefin Framework.

For more information, blogs or to support our charities visit www.projectchatterpodcast.com

If you'd like to sponsor the podcast get in touch via our website. You can also leave us a voice message via our anchor page and let us know if there's something or someone specific that you would like on the podcast.

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Stay safe, be disruptive and have fun doing it!

#ProjectManagement #PMO #ProjectControls #Leadership #Culture #ProjectCertifications

In this week’s pod, we welcomed Nick Fewings to discuss achieving high-performance teamwork and greater success. Nick Fewings, Director of Ngagementworks, calls himself a Teamologist, someone who specialises in the study of the dynamics of teamwork, using this knowledge, to help teams become more effective. After a 20-year career in banking, working his way up from a cashier to a project leader, and finally a change director, Nick has spent the last two decades, developing teams across the globe, encouraging, facilitating, and helping them to make a positive difference to the effectiveness of their teamwork. During this period, he has profiled thousands of individuals across hundreds of teams. Nick is also the creator of the Team DyNAmics Model that measures overall team effectiveness across 16 areas of teamwork, important in helping to achieve high performance. When not working with teams, he is also a highly regarded, award-winning keynote conference speaker and to date, has spoken at over 500 conferences worldwide, including every branch of the APM, in the UK. The main topics we discussed on the podcast were as follows:

·        Research suggests only 10% of teams are high performing, 50% are average and 40% dysfunctional
·        Most teams do not know which category they fall into because they do not measure their teamwork
·        It is useful to view the traits of people on good days and bad days when reviewing Insights profiles
·        Purpose is more important than trust in developing high performing teams
·        Purpose is a task-based element whereas trust is more about the relationship. Many teams were driven by tasks to the detriment of relationships
·        Good leaders will tap into the preferred communication styles of red, yellow, blue, and greens within their teams when briefing team members
·        Anonymous feedback is the best way to enable more honest feedback when measuring team effectiveness over a period of time
·        Excellence is impossible to achieve within a team. Some teams will come close
·        There is a correlation between high performing teams and project success but it is not apparent in the Project Management industry
·        Having the right skill set and adaptability to inspire teams is important when recruiting future leaders as opposed to trying to force the right balance upon a team here are links to some of the topics we discussed:
·        Team, Lead, Success – Nick Fewings: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Team-Lead-Succeed-high-performance-teamwork-ebook/dp/B09SZHC6P9
·        Team Dynamics Model: https://ngagementworks.com/teamwork/
·        Clarity 4D Profile – Nick Fewings: https://ngagementworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Nick_Fewings-Clarity4D-Profile.pdf
·        Google – What Makes a Good Team: https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/guides/5721312655835136/ Tune in next time when we’re joined by Magnus Olsen to discuss career challenges, opportunities, and trends - a student's perspective.

For more information,

In this week’s pod, we welcomed back Martin Paver to discuss what’s been happening in the Project Data Analytics Hackathons Martin is the CEO and Founder of Projecting Success, a consultancy that specialises in leveraging project data to transform project delivery; from high end strategic consultancy through to apprentice training. He has led a $1bn megaproject and a multi $billion portfolio office. He is the founder of the Project Data Analytics community, comprising ~6,000 members who share a passion for leveraging the exhaust plume of project data. He regularly blogs and presents at international conferences, helping to ignite the professional imagination and inspire change. 

He is also the co-chair of the Project Data Analytics Task Force and is helping to lead the charge for disruptive change. The main topics we discussed on the podcast were as follows: 

· Many project professionals do not realise they are working with data but see it individual cost / schedule toolsets

o Attend the Project Hacks

Tune in next week when we’re re-joined by Nick Fewings to talk about achieving high-performance teamwork and greater success. For more information, blogs or to support our charities visit www.projectchatterpodcast.com If you'd like to sponsor the podcast get in touch via our website. You can also leave us a voice message via our anchor page and let us know if there's something or someone specific that you would like on the podcast. Proudly sponsored by: 

JustDo - https://www.justdo.com/

In this week’s pod, we welcomed Ines Lopes to discuss The Spiritual Project Manager. Ines fell in love with Project Management at University. So much so that after her Engineering degree she completed an MSc in Strategic Project Management. She spent 9 years working at Transport for London leading complex high-profile highways and sustainability projects such as the Ultra Low Emission Zone to improve air quality in London and the programme to help Transport for London (TfL) become zero carbon by 2030. During that time she also went through an awakening of sorts, embarking on a spiritual holistic journey to be able to heal her body. As a result, she felt in the middle of two worlds. On one side a structured work-life is guided by analysis and organisational skills. On the other side, an intuitive personal life looks into the energy behind everything to continue with her personal growth. In 2020 she left TfL to focus on her spiritual journey. But turns out you can't take the project manager out of her! She felt the pull to join a couple of initiatives as a project manager and decided to do things her way. She combined the two worlds she had been living in. Focusing on deadlines and outputs but also helping the teams involved to let go of limiting beliefs and anything else that was not serving them. And this is how Spiritual Project Management was born. The main topics we discussed on the podcast were as follows:·

In this week’s pod, we welcomed Tim Creasey to discuss Organisational Agility as a Strategic Imperative.
Tim Creasey is Prosci’s Chief Innovation Officer and a globally recognized leader in change management. His work forms the foundation of the largest body of knowledge in the world on managing the people side of change to deliver organizational results. The main topics we discussed on the podcast were as follows:
Change is hard, change is continuous

• Organisational agility definitions:

• Agility is the power of moving quickly, easily, and with nimbleness
• Capacity to identify and capture opportunities more quickly than rivals
• Take advantage of change whether planned or unexpected
• Ability to transform information into insight in regard to market movements
• Result of integrating alertness to changes
• Sustained ability while maintaining high performance
• Change saturation is a function of change capacity and change disruption
• Businesses should always consider the hidden cost of saying yes
• What is the time difference between when the project sponsor said yes and when the project commenced
• More organisations are hiring change portfolio managers rather than increasing change capability
• Never allow perfection to get in the way of progress
• Businesses were obsessed with the digital revolution but not enough with digital transformation
• Could businesses have really adapted to remote working if the Covid pandemic did not happen?
• Paradoxical Humanity Infusion in 2D - The pandemic allowed us to see our colleagues in a different light over Zoom / Teams conversations
• Forced prioritization – rank what is important to you
• De facto resilience – we made it through the pandemic! Workers have inadvertently become more resilient
• “Answers have a shelf a shelf life, questions can last a lifetime”
• When and where does the wear actually happen? There needs to be a purpose when we share space.
• What have we done since 2020 that we thought was impossible prior to this? This proves what is possible?
• 12 conditions shaping the future of work and change
• Involuntary Digital Transformation
• Instantaneous Remote Experiment
• Iterative and Adaptive by Necessity
• Shifting Success Horizons
• TTWWADI ?!!?
• Paradoxical Humanity Infusion in 2D
• People's Side Cannot Be Unseen
• Same Storms; Different Boats
• Forced Prioritisation
• De Facto Resilience
• And it goes on, and on, and on…
• From Response to Evolution

Here are links to some of the concepts we discussed:
o   The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*** - Mark Manson - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitive/dp/0062457713
Tune in next week when we’re joined by Ines Lopes to discuss The Spiritual Project Manager.
For more information, blogs or to support our charities visit www.projectchatterpodcast.com
If you'd like to sponsor the podcast get in touch via our website.
You can also leave us a voice message via our anchor page and let us know if there's something or someone specific that you would like on the podcast.
Proudly sponsored by:
PlanAcademy.com | InEight.com | JustDo.com<

In this episode, Dale and Val bring back Dr Dan Patterson to talk about what he has been brewing since their last podcast. Wicked’ problems are problems that cannot be definitely solved – they can only be bettered. Tame problems can be definitively solved e.g. fixing a leaky pipe.  For 70 years, we have been trying to adopt tools to definitively ‘solve’ projects and as such we all too often run into what we think is ‘project failure’. The problem with a project is that there is no definitive ‘this is solved’ – there are too many competing objectives (eg cost vs schedule vs cope) and also too many stakeholders with differing objectives. Instead of striving for a finite outcome, in the context of the fact projects are under a barrage of constant change and influences, perhaps we should treat planning and execution as being bettered (tamed) and not solved? I see this as the science of meta-planning ie better plan the planning process rather than jumping into planning execution itself.  Tame problems can be solved. Wicked problems can only be tamed and that is what meta-planning is all about.

Dr. Dan Patterson is a Schedule and Cost Risk Analysis thought leader. He was the CEO and founder of BASIS, a project management company specializing in schedule and risk analytics, which was acquired in 2018 by InEight, Inc. Prior to BASIS, Dan led the highly successful organization Acumen, a project analytics company, and is the inventor of Acumen Fuse, Risk and 360, a project analytics software suite that is used for project planning quality improvement, performance insight, and forensics analysis.

Dr. Patterson conducts risk workshops for billion-dollar projects and has subsequently served as an expert witness on many. During the execution of these engagements he leads qualitative and quantitative risk analysis, prepares and presents executive summaries, and leads in-person executive briefings to company executives. Dr. Patterson acts as the primary lead on various company and project internal risk optimization procedures. He specializes in risk workshops, project audits, and strategic project analysis on various capital expenditure projects.

With over 20 years of professional experience, Dr. Patterson is recognized as a global thought leader and visionary within the project management industry. Specifically, he is known for his risk and schedule analytics expertise and is frequently utilized on high-profile capital expenditure projects for workshop facilitation, expert witness testimony, advanced analytics, and board-level briefings.

Dr. Patterson has an impressive track record with extensive commercial and technical project management experience on projects that in the aggregate are valued at over $200 billion.

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#ProjectManagement #ProjectDelivery #ProjectControls

In this episode we bring you a special broadcast from EVA26. After almost 3 years absence, EVA curated by Steve Wake returns with a bang and the Project Chatter Podcast's Dale Foong was lucky enough to interview the speakers, poets, composers and the one and only Michael Rosen!

You'll hear snippets from the various presenters, a poem and the band plays us out in this special edition. Check out the lineup below:

For more information, blogs or to support our charities visit www.projectchatterpodcast.com If you'd like to sponsor the podcast get in touch via our website.

Proudly sponsored by:

#ProjectManagement #Blockchain #PMO #ProjectControls #Leadership #Culture #ProjectCertifications

In this week’s pod, we welcomed Michelle Banner and Jonathan Shepherd to talk about enabling early careers in Project Controls. Michelle has more than 20 years of experience in infrastructure, nuclear, utilities, and various other industries. She is recognized as a technical expert in her specialism of Planning and Risk along with having a substantial background in cost and estimating. She is experienced in delivering EPC, R&D and Engineering contracts for infrastructure, utilities and nuclear. She is experienced in all aspects of project delivery from bidding through to commissioning and closeout.

As a recognized expert, Michelle has written and delivered training both internally and for external clients on topics such as Earned Value Management, Schedule Management and Resource Management. She has also had a leading involvement in the development of endpoint assessment material for TASC (assessing Project Controls competence up to degree level). Johnny has developed a passion for project controls since embarking on the apprenticeship programme in 2014.

Jonathan has a particular speciality in project planning and has recently been promoted to a senior role at an early stage of his career. Throughout his career, Johnny has made a conscious effort to develop a rounded skill set within project controls as he has ambitions to take a leading role in the future.

He has recently embarked on the BSc (Hons) Project Controls Professional Degree Apprenticeship, the first of its kind in the UK. In doing so, Johnny aims to develop his critical thinking skills and to begin supporting his projects & programmes in a more strategic way the main topics we discussed on the podcast were as follows:

• There is not enough emphasis on mentorships. Many relationships are informal which can be to the detriment of introverts
• The UK has had success with STEM representatives going into schools to promote Engineering. This should be the case for Project Management / Controls are both skillsets are required on major projects
• The pandemic has made it more difficult for apprentices to check their work with a colleague
• One of the main barriers to entry is a lack of promotion of what Project Controls actually is and that it is a viable career path
• There needs to be regular feedback and 1:1s  with apprentices]
• Apprentice programmes offer a structure whilst giving people enough time to experience different scenarios on a project

Tune in next week when we’re joined by Adam Robinson. For more information, blogs or to support our charities visit www.projectchatterpodcast.com

If you'd like to sponsor the podcast get in touch via our website. You can also leave us a voice message via our anchor page and let us know if there's something or someone specific that you would like on the podcast.

Proudly sponsored by:
JustDo - https://www.justdo.com/
PlanAcademy - https://www.planacademy.com/chatter/ ($75 off any course)
InEight - https://ineight.com/
Prosci - https://empower.prosci.com/project-ch