Episode 17 — Negotiation Tips From Ellen Smith

09/06/16 • 42 min

Manage This - The Project Management Podcast

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● ELLEN SMITH NICK WALKER: Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. This is our every other week chance to meet and talk about the things that matter most to you as a professional project manager. What does it take to get started in the field? To get certified? And how do you survive? I’m your host, Nick Walker. And with me are our resident experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates. They’ve experienced the challenges, they’ve tasted the victories of project management, and they want to share their experience with you. And, guys, we are fortunate once again to have a special guest in the studio today. Ellen Smith is an attorney with Holt Ney in Atlanta. She deals with commercial real estate, wireless telecommunications, and land use; and her clients range from single individual member limited liability companies to nonprofit hospitals to Fortune 500 companies. Varied in her talents, for sure. Ellen, thanks so much for being with us on Manage This. ELLEN SMITH: Thanks for having me. NICK WALKER: We are so looking forward to talking with you about our topic today, and that is negotiation. But before we get there, Andy and Bill, let’s talk a little bit about the need for negotiation when it comes to project management. Andy? ANDY CROWE: And Nick, I want to back up. You said we’ve “tasted the victories of project management”? NICK WALKER: That’s my impression. ANDY CROWE: Bill, is that your experience of your work in project management? BILL YATES: What I conjure up is more of a bitterness, you know, like the most bitter coffee. ANDY CROWE: Thinking the bitter dregs? BILL YATES: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That coffee that’s been sitting there all day. NICK WALKER: So it’s more the agony of defeat than the thrill of victory. BILL YATES: Maybe. ANDY CROWE: You know, it’s one of those – you remember the old saying that you have to have a strong stomach to see how the sausage is made? NICK WALKER: Yes, yes. ANDY CROWE: And when you go back and sometimes see how a project gets done, and see what it takes to get there, you’d better have a strong stomach and a strong sense of yourself. But no, I’m excited about this topic because it’s this whole idea of negotiation. And the project manager is in such a difficult position. And this is what nobody really stops to think about. So you’ve got the organization. You’ve got this whole group of stakeholders. You’ve got senior management. And you’ve got sponsors, users, customers, all of these people. And the way I think about it is sort of picture them in an inverted pyramid. So that’s on the top side of the pyramid, this triangle pointing down, with the tip pointing down. And then below you, you’ve got the team. And that can include a lot of different people. It can include virtual relationships. It can include dedicated straight-line reporting relationships. And the PM is stuck in the middle between those two points. So there’s a... BILL YATES: Two very sharp points. ANDY CROWE: They can get very sharp. BILL YATES: Yes, very pointy. ANDY CROWE: And so there’s this idea that the project manager is constantly negotiating everything, all day every day. That’s really a lot of the job, at the heart of the job. You could call the person a “project negotiator” as opposed to a project manager. I mean, there are people who just tick off boxes and say yes, complete, check, check. And we think about those as maybe a coordinator. BILL YATES: Right. ANDY CROWE: But in this case a project manager has to go back in the kitchen and make the sausage. And it is tricky, and sometimes it’s very ugly, and it’s a lot of work. BILL YATES: Yeah. There are third parties that they’re having to rely on to provide valuable deliverables for this project. So they’ve got contracts, perhaps, with third parties.

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Episode 16 — Project Recovery and Turnaround Part 2

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER NICK WALKER: Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. Every two weeks we get together to talk about what matters to you as a professional project manager. We cover what it takes to get certified, what it takes to do the job of project management. I’m your host, Nick Walker. And beside me are our in-house experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates. They are project managers for project managers. They instruct other project managers and those working to become one. So, guys, last time we talked about projects that are in trouble. And we want to catch the trouble before they go up in flames. We talked about a lot of ways to do that. So let’s recap just a little bit and then go forward and talk about how we get to the end and really make this project a success. ANDY CROWE: You know what, Nick, this is something we need to be talking about in the project management community. So the approach that most companies take is they say, well, we’re going to look at ways to never get in this situation. But the truth is over two thirds of projects come in over time and over budget, and they don’t meet the critical success factors. They don’t hit that target, that elusive butterfly of success. They never capture it in their net. And so what do you do if you’re in that situation? And to be honest, I’ve taught and mentored PMs before who live in that situation, so it’s not an unusual thing. It’s just difficult to talk about. NICK WALKER: Two thirds of projects. That’s an amazing statistic. ANDY CROWE: Yeah, the actual numbers are worse than that. But we’re going to be happy and say two thirds. BILL YATES: And it’s a reality. So why not get tooled up in learning how to do this part of my job as a project manager? And we, you know, the first session we talked about the first step is identifying that, identifying when I’m in a project that is in serious trouble, so how to detect it. We talked about smelling the smoke and looking at the canary. ANDY CROWE: Yeah, Bill liked the more intuitive approach, and I advocated for the data-driven approach. But those two meet, absolutely. Those two intersect. BILL YATES: Absolutely. NICK WALKER: And then we have to come up with just the correct approach. And there are a couple of different ways to go there, too. BILL YATES: Yeah. Some companies, they go with the tiger team, the parachute in the expert that’s me to come fix everything. And then what we really focused on more was the do-it-yourself, the you are leading a project. You’ve determined that it is in serious trouble. So what are you going to do about it? NICK WALKER: And I loved how you emphasized so much the need to try to keep calm because intuitively this is the time that you’re going to be the least calm, perhaps. BILL YATES: Yeah. You’ve gone to that “in case of emergency” box. You’ve busted it open, and you’re trying to calm yourself down so that you can actually lead the team with competency and professionalism. ANDY CROWE: Right. We talked about last time nobody’s at their best leading out of fear. NICK WALKER: And then there was that aha moment for me where we talked about trying to move forward, but in order to do that you’ve got to move backward before you do. BILL YATES: Right. Yeah, you have to do root cause analysis. You have to fully understand what is the problem. Maybe, to Andy’s point before, we’ve got some reports that have shown some troubling trends. We have the data in front of us. Now we’ve got to roll our sleeves up, get into it, and figure out what is causing us to miss our milestones. Why are our budgets suddenly blowing up? Why are all the errors and defects suddenly cropping up where they weren’t before? ANDY CROWE: So Bill, let me ask you a question in starting us off in the next step here. You’re dealing with a lot of different dynamics. Some of those may, we talked about the last time,

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Episode 18 — Thor, The Norse God of Project Management

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● JOEL “THOR” NEEB NICK WALKER: Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. Every two weeks we get together to discuss the things that matter to you as a professional project manager. We talk about project management certification and doing the job of a project manager, and we hear from some of the leaders in the industry. I’m your host Nick Walker, and with me are our in-house experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates. And by the way, on the day we’re recording this, Andy, you’re getting ready to deliver the keynote address at PMI Honolulu. ANDY CROWE: I am heading out to Honolulu to be at that chapter. I’ve been there before, and I’m really excited. I’m talking about the Talent Triangle, which is getting a lot of buzz within PMI: the technical, the leadership, and the strategy triangle and how that applies to our own career. NICK WALKER: And, by the way, our guest today is delivering the opening keynote in a few days at the Project Management Institute’s Global Congress for North America in San Diego. And this is a guy who probably has enough fascinating stories that we could probably sit here for hours and never exhaust them all. It’s amazing how you find these guys. I’m really looking forward to this today. Our guest is Joel Neeb. His friends call him Thor. Are we friends enough to call you Thor? JOEL NEEB: I definitely think so, yeah, absolutely. NICK WALKER: Okay. Okay. Well, Thor, welcome to Manage This. We are fortunate to have you here with us. JOEL NEEB: Thanks, Nick. It’s a real pleasure to be here. NICK WALKER: Now, before we begin, let me give just a quick rundown of your background for our listeners. Thor was an F-15 pilot. He escorted the U.S. President through the sky. He flew missions to ensure the safety of our country after the attacks of 9/11. He was a technical leader of 300 of the most senior combat pilots in the Air Force. He’s a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas. He’s now the president of Afterburner, leading a team of more than 70 elite military professionals, and with them has trained almost two million business professionals and fostered elite teams for Fortune 100 companies, companies in the tech industry, finance, medical devices, and several NFL teams. We could keep going. But we want to stop there and give you time to talk to us. Thor, first of all, why Thor? I’ve got to know that. JOEL NEEB: So, you know what, for every call sign there’s two versions of the story. The version one is safe for public consumption, and we could tell that right now, which is Thor and the Thor’s Hammer. I was an instructor, and so I was known as “The Hammer” as the instructor. And then there also is a two-beverage minimum version of the story which is a little less flattering for me and probably pretty embarrassing and sounds a lot less cool than the first version of the story. But it’s a lot of fun. NICK WALKER: Does it have anything to do with your chiseled Greek god looks? JOEL NEEB: It definitely does not, at that point. There’s an embarrassing story associated with it, like every good call sign should have. NICK WALKER: Okay, okay. Well, we’ll just have to go into that one after the mics are off. JOEL NEEB: There you go. NICK WALKER: Okay. Well, first of all, tell us the concept of Afterburner. How do fighter pilots speak into the world of project management? JOEL NEEB: Well, you know, in my world, Nick, I was flying Mach 2. I had 350 instruments in front of me. I was going in and out of the clouds. I had four, sometimes seven wingmen flying with me at any given point in time. And I have to manage this complex universe and figure out, as I’m going inside and in and out of the clouds, how to keep these wingmen from running into each other,