Episode 28 — How the Shipping Container Relates to Project Management

02/21/17 • 32 min

Manage This - The Project Management Podcast

Tune in to understand why Bill Gates chose The Box as one of his top picks in 2013. ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● MARC LEVINSON NICK WALKER: Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. This is our roundtable discussion about what matters most to you, whether you’re a professional project manager or working toward being certified. We want to be a spark to light your imaginative fire and give you some perspective and encouragement. And we do that by drawing on the experience of others who are knee deep, and sometimes deeper, in the world of project management. I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are the experts at this table, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates. And Andy, we’re going to hear from a very special guest today. ANDY CROWE: We’ve got a great guest this morning. Marc Levinson’s joining us. He’s the author of several books, and a really well-known person in the nonfiction world. NICK WALKER: Dr. Marc Levinson is an economist. He’s an expert in international trade and globalization, international finance and finance regulation. He’s written for, among others, Time magazine, Newsweek, Harvard Business Review, the Daily Journal of Commerce in New York, and The Economist in London. And he’s advised Congress on transportation and industry issues. He’s a consultant and an author of six books. Marc, welcome to Manage This. MARC LEVINSON: Well, thank you very much. I’m delighted to be with you. NICK WALKER: Now, Marc, we’re here in Georgia. And you have a little bit of a Georgia connection, as well. MARC LEVINSON: I lived in Atlanta for a number of years in the 1970s and early ’80s. I am a proud alumnus of Georgia State University’s Graduate School. And so, yes, I do have fond memories of Georgia. ANDY CROWE: Marc, I’ve got to ask – this is Andy. What part of town did you live in? MARC LEVINSON: I lived for a while in Druid Hills and then in Grant Park. ANDY CROWE: Excellent, excellent. And my wife also joins you as having done her graduate work at Georgia State. So got a connection there. NICK WALKER: All right. MARC LEVINSON: Very good. NICK WALKER: One of your most fascinating books is titled “The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger.” Now, Marc, I have to admit that for years when I lived in Seattle I would drive by the port and see the loading and the unloading of the container ships. But not once did I ever think, how does this method of transporting goods affect me? I think maybe we take for granted something that’s really changed the life of every person who’s bought something manufactured outside this country. MARC LEVINSON: The shipping container seems like a very mundane product. It doesn’t seem like anything that particularly needed to be invented or developed. But in fact, up until the 1950s, it didn’t exist. And there was a prolonged period of developing containerization, developing standards so that a container could be sent around the world, and then of businesses changing their practices so that they could take advantage of the container. So the container had very substantial effects on international trade. It made globalization possible. And my book is really the story of how this happened. ANDY CROWE: Marc, this is interesting for me. This is Andy. And as I look at this and think about it, I’ve worked in the supply chain world, supply chain logistics. I’ve done projects, I’ve managed projects for companies that provide this service for large shipping companies. And it is something we take for granted. So project managers have to interface with this kind of world a lot, with cartons and containers, cases – cases in, cartons out, all of it going on shipping containers. Tell us what the world was like before that. MARC LEVINSON: Sure. Before the shipping container was developed, most goods were shipped internationally in a form that was referred to as “break...

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Episode 27 — Are You Too Soft

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● NEAL WHITTEN NICK WALKER: Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. It’s our opportunity to talk about what matters most to you, whether you’re a professional project manager or working toward one of your certifications. Our purpose is to light up your imagination, encourage you, and give you some perspective. We talk about trends in the field, and we draw on the experience of others who are doing the stuff of project management. I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are the two guys who make this podcast happen, our resident experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates. And Andy, we’re also going to hear from one of our favorite guests today. ANDY CROWE: Yeah, the guy that I refer to as my “sensei,” absolutely. Neal Whitten’s in-studio with us, and we’re always excited to have him. NICK WALKER: Neal Whitten is an author, a mentor, a trainer, a sought-after speaker, and a project management professional. Neal Whitten, welcome once again to Manage This. NEAL WHITTEN: I am honored to be here, guys. Thank you very much. NICK WALKER: Now, Neal, you speak a lot on project management topics. You get feedback from your seminars which, I understand, is always positive. We’re going to talk today about one of the subjects that always gets a reaction from your audiences because it’s real. It hits home with a lot of project managers. That’s because you force us to answer the question, am I too much of a softie? All right, Neal. You’re a nice guy. This room is full of nice people. But there must be a difference between “nice” and “too soft.” What is that? NEAL WHITTEN: Well, let me just say that I have found that most people in our profession are too soft, and probably most people in general are too soft. But when I’m in front of a group, and it’s relevant, I’ll often ask this very simple question. Do you believe that you tend to be too soft at work? And what I mean by “too soft” is demonstrating behavior that results in being consistently less effective than what is otherwise possible and needed in performing responsibilities. Anyway, when I ask this at conferences, webinars, and so forth, most people say yes, they are too soft. And from experience I’ve found most project managers, most business analysts indeed to be too soft. They’re not willing to make the tough and unpopular project- or business analyst-related decisions, even though their instincts warn them that they’re not taking the most effective action. NICK WALKER: Okay. So how can we know if we are approaching that “too soft” category? NEAL WHITTEN: I can give you some examples. And you can decide for yourself if you fall into these examples. One that comes to mind is, if you behave as if you have the responsibility, but without the authority, then in my view you’re too soft. I do face time with thousands of people each year. I frequently hear project managers and business analysts say that they have the responsibility, but not the authority. This just is not true. You almost always have the authority. The problem is that you don’t take it. BILL YATES: So, Neal, I can agree with this. I mean, I’ve heard this complaint from project managers when doing face-to-face classes with them. That’s one of the most common complaints is just what you’re pointing out here, that I don’t really have the authority that I need in order to get my job done. So you’re saying they do have it, they just need to reach in and grab it? NEAL WHITTEN: Yeah, that’s the neat thing about it. It’s already there. Here’s an example. And I say this to everyone listening. When was the last time you were called on the carpet, challenged, for exceeding your authority? Was it within the last week, or the last month, or even the last year? Was it ever? My experience is that less than 15 percent of people in a large group,

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Episode 29 — Best Practices with Keith Williams

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● KEITH WILLIAMS NICK WALKER: Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. This is our informal discourse about what matters most to you as a professional project manager, or if you’re working toward that position. We want to keep you motivated, keep you improving, and encourage you with some real-life stories from others who are doing the stuff of project management. I’m your host Nick Walker, and with me are the experts at all this, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates. And one of the subjects we like to keep coming back to, it seems, in this podcast, Andy, is what we call “best practices.” And our guest today can definitely speak to that. ANDY CROWE: Yeah, I’m looking forward to that. We have Keith Williams in the studio with us today. And, you know, the whole idea with best practices, we get to learn from other people. We get to figure out what they’ve learned by trial and error and through some pain so that maybe we don’t have to go through that ourselves each time. NICK WALKER: Well, let’s talk a little bit about Keith before we introduce him. He’s a project control supervisor at Georgia Power Company. He’s been serving in various areas of project management there since 2005, and as the operational performance supervisor for Southern Company. Before that he held several project management/project controls positions at Parsons Company, Georgia Transmission, Enron Energy Services, Chemical & Industrial Engineering, the City of Louisville, and Earth Science Technologies. Keith, it is a privilege to have you here on Manage This. Welcome. KEITH WILLIAMS: Thank you, and I look forward to it. It’s a great opportunity. NICK WALKER: Let’s start of by – just tell us a little bit about your current role in project controls at Georgia Power. KEITH WILLIAMS: The project controls group at Georgia Power, first of all, I’m segmented in the transmission organization. Those are your large power lines and substations. The biggest thing we always like to describe, we’re the extension cord between the plant and the customer, so we’re the big orange cord. BILL YATES: That’s a good picture. Got it. KEITH WILLIAMS: And so my group is mainly responsible for scheduling and budget controls. It’s segmented into several different fields within project controls, which also includes cost engineering. And also we’re responsible for the tools that manage all of that. In that role, as far as my leadership within my group, our goal is I always like to say we’re the mortar between the bricks. We’re the ones that are trying to make the connection between the organization and give them information so that, first of all, our project managers can make good decisions, offer real information; and then also to see how we can improve processes as far as that constant improvement that you see in Six Sigma. NICK WALKER: You’re a project management nerd. KEITH WILLIAMS: Yes, I would agree. NICK WALKER: That’s what Bill and Andy are calling you. And we love project management nerds. KEITH WILLIAMS: Oh, most definitely. I get told that a lot. But then I look at the other guy and say, “Hey, you all are engineers. It’s not like you all are cool.” ANDY CROWE: Keith, you mentioned Six Sigma. Now, do you guys actually practice Six Sigma in your group, or is that something that you look at from your own standpoint? KEITH WILLIAMS: It’s something more I look at from my own standpoint, really got exposed to it as the operational performance supervisor. And especially with looking at DMAIC and looking at those aspects there. BILL YATES: Sure. Now, Nick, you called me out, so I need to go ahead and explain. NICK WALKER: Sure. BILL YATES: So here’s how I came to that conclusion. There are many data points here. But as Keith and I were talking, he is a card-carrying member of the AACE,