In the ever-evolving world of project management, Manage This is the leading podcast for project managers eager for practical insights, expert advice, and fresh industry trends. Launched by Andy Crowe, PMP, PgMP, PMI-ACP, Six Sigma Black Belt, in 2016, the show is hosted by Bill Yates, PMP, PgMP, PMI-ACP, and producer Wendy Grounds. Join industry leaders and seasoned project managers from around the world as they share the lessons, strategies, and tools that drive success. Each episode brings diverse perspectives, real-world experiences, and actionable strategies to lead your projects with confidence. From a small team or a large-scale project, this podcast offers essential listening for anyone looking to improve their PM capabilities and claim free PDUs.
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Episode 208 – Taming Scope Creep: How to Keep Your Project on Track
Episode 208
Tuesday, September 3, 2024 • Duration 45:15
The podcast for project managers by project managers. Is Scope Creep derailing your project? A lack of control can lead to projects spiraling out of scope. Join us as Shannon Keenan shares strategies to keep your team focused, avoid delays, and deliver successful outcomes. Learn how to manage scope effectively and prevent projects from spiraling out of control.
Episode 207 – From Claims to Closures: A Guide to Project Negotiation
Episode 207
Monday, August 19, 2024 • Duration 38:29
The podcast by project managers for project managers. How do successful project managers turn tough project negotiations into win-win outcomes? Discover a practical seven-step approach to managing claims, negotiating with customers, and closing negotiations effectively, offering a competitive edge for project managers handling complex projects.
Episode 198 – Rising Talent: A Project Managers’ Resilience in Beirut’s Rebuild
Monday, April 1, 2024 • Duration 40:37
The podcast by project managers for project managers. Following the 2020 devastating explosion in Beirut, project manager Kevin Gemayel's journey is nothing short of inspiring as he tackled challenges head-on. Hear firsthand accounts of his experiences during the blast, his strategies for managing tasks, stakeholders, budgets, and time, and the invaluable lessons learned. We discover Kevin's extraordinary project and the power of resilience in the face of adversity.
Table of Contents
04:27 … Meet Kevin05:30 … Kevin’s Story of the Tragedy07:25 … Gathering a Team08:18 … The Family Façade Business09:44 … Deciding How to Prioritize13:34 … An Emergency Response15:33 … Resources and Supplies16:47 … An Economic Crisis20:08 … Personal Impact21:36 … Keeping a Team Motivated22:38 … Ren Love’s Projects from the Past25:00 … Planning Time Management and Strategy28:21 … Creative Problem-Solving29:31 … Kevin’s Lessons Learned31:08 … Personal Growth Through Tragedy34:57 … Looking Back36:37 … Advice to Younger PMs38:46 … Contact Kevin39:59 … Closing
KEVIN GEMAYEL: … in leadership, they say you should become a leader and personally lead yourself before leading anyone else. And I would advise every project manager to learn and to focus on how they should lead themselves before going out there and leading projects and people and teams because, when they do things right themselves, … they will be able to influence the people they are working with. … So don’t just focus on books and numbers and theoretical things. Focus on yourself, as well.
WENDY GROUNDS: You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. My name is Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio is Bill Yates.
We want to feature some younger talent in the project management community. We’re calling it our Rising Talent series. So for the next two episodes we’re going to be sharing the stories of two young project managers who are not only inspirational, but they’re also making waves with their incredible contributions to the field. Now, we have spoken to some young project managers in the past.
BILL YATES: Yeah, Episode 165 we had a great conversation with Kat Shane. You may recall she had a startup company that she began at the University of Georgia, and it was working on a solution to help people, governments, and businesses figure out what products or packaging are locally recyclable. So, can I recycle this? And how to get them where they needed to go.
WENDY GROUNDS: We also spoke to Christelle Kwizera. That was Episode 146. At the age of 20, Christelle founded Water Access Rwanda, which was in response to the dangerous conditions Rwandans would face when collecting water from rivers and dams. She was quite an incredible young lady.
BILL YATES: What a story. So inspirational and so young.
WENDY GROUNDS: Yes, yes. She was also a PMI Future 50 2021 honoree. And the folk that we’re talking to in these two episodes are also Future 50 2023 honorees from PMI. We are really enjoying featuring younger talent in the project management community. The first one is our guest, Kevin.
BILL YATES: Yeah, this is a heavy story, this conversation we’ll have with Kevin. It’s heavy. It’s about the blast in Beirut. And many people lost their lives, and many people who survived it will be dealing with it for a lifetime. So, we wanted to recognize that. But there are so many powerful lessons for us to learn from that, and to hear from Kevin.
And we’ve tackled these kinds of topics before. We spoke with Matthew Harper about the attack on the USS Cole and the lessons learned from that. Peter Baines joined us from Australia. He led international identification teams after tsunamis or terrorist attacks. So, he’s talked with us about that. And of course, Chuck Casto, that story was so engaging, looking at the Fukushima disaster and the 11 months that he spent onsite after the accident, and all the lessons learned he had from that after that earthquake and tsunami. So, this is a topic we’ve been down before in terms of, okay, how do you lead through a tragedy? And Kevin’s perspective is going to really be insightful.
WENDY GROUNDS: Right. Today we embark on a story of resilience, determination, and the unwavering spirit to rebuild. Just to give you a little more background, in 2020, Beirut’s port was engulfed in a catastrophic explosion, leaving behind a wake of devastation. There were over 200 lives lost, 6,000 injured, and 300,000 people were homeless, with countless structures in ruins. The aftermath of this tragedy was what set the stage for this immense rebuilding process.
This was what Kevin Gemayel got involved with. Kevin is a second-generation leader at a prominent building façade firm, and he found himself at the forefront of restoring Beirut’s shattered historical and cultural landmarks following the blast. His tenure in the family business, marked by innovative project management and quality control methods since 2014, laid the groundwork for impactful change. Today Kevin and his dedicated team navigate the profound personal and professional challenges posed by this tragedy, and he’s driven by a deep commitment to revitalize the city’s cherished landmarks. So, join us today as we delve into Kevin’s journey and hear about his incredible project.
Meet Kevin
Hi, Kevin. Welcome to Manage This. Thank you so much for joining us today.
KEVIN GEMAYEL: Thank you. Thank you.
WENDY GROUNDS: I must congratulate you on being a PMI Future 50 honoree. That is really quite an accomplishment.
BILL YATES: That’s phenomenal.
WENDY GROUNDS: And we have been so excited to find your story and to learn more about you. So, we’re looking forward to talking about your projects today. The first thing is I just want to know what motivated your career in project management. How did all of this get started for you?
KEVIN GEMAYEL: During my university years, we got some courses on project managers, as all engineers do. And I found out that it’s quite an interesting subject. I actually chose mechanical engineering to keep my options open. And when I found out what’s the scope of work of project manager usually, it was very interesting for me because I didn’t really like to go into technical details. I preferred understanding them, but not working on them on a daily basis. So managing them was the best combination for me.
Kevin’s Story of the Tragedy
WENDY GROUNDS: Today we’re talking about a pivotal project that has shaped your career that was really a big impact in 2020. What was your experience, your personal experience of that time when the tragic blast happened in Beirut? Were you living there at the time?
KEVIN GEMAYEL: I was in a city a bit far from Beirut. But because of the scale of the explosion, we could hear the sound of it, and the house was shaken even at a very distant location. We knew that something wrong happened, but we didn’t know the size of the damage. Everyone in Beirut thought that the explosion happened right next to them because the sound was so loud. It was around 6:00 p.m., and there was no more light here at 6:00 p.m. It’s already nighttime. So, we started making our phone calls, and we knew what happened. We understood the size of the damage.
So, I decided to go down to Beirut to witness it in my own eyes. And that was honestly a disaster. It’s like in the movies when a meteorite strikes, and all the roads are blocked. It was exactly the same thing here. And we found a way of walking there into the city. Everyone was going there to see and to help because it was an unprecedented situation, honestly. So when we got there this night, I had a house right next to the port. First, I went to my house to see what happened to it. It was a disaster.
And then the second day, in the morning, we also went down to help other people on the streets with our own hands. That was the work of all the Lebanese, not just me. Like I was on the ground with millions of people who were there pro bono, if you want, just to help because they didn’t care about work anymore, about anything. For them, their city was struck. And this day I realized that it was useless for me to stay on the grounds personally because I could have done so much more impact.
Gathering a Team
And that’s how I decided to gather a small team and to manage them in a way to start working on the imminent threat because we work in glass. That’s our main specialty. And there was so much glass that was going to fall on people, on people walking around the streets. So that was the first threat after the explosion, other than the people who needed the first aid.
So, I gathered a team because no one dared to carry glass with their hands. It’s very dangerous. We gathered a specialized team to do that. And we started getting phone calls and categorizing the most important and the most critical places. And that’s how the work started. At the day of the explosion, we were a team of around 90 people, and this number kept on growing. I don’t like to give precise numbers, but we were in the hundreds a few days later working together for us to rebuild our city.
The Family Façade Business
BILL YATES: That’s amazing. So help me understand, Kevin, was your background as a mechanical engineer, your background happened to be you knew a lot about glass and glass construction. So when the explosion occurred, glass was blown out for miles, and it was glass all over the street. And then, as you said, there’s glass just hanging, too; right? It’s perilous for the efforts to recover people and start the cleanup. So that happened to be some of the engineering knowledge that you had going into this?
KEVIN GEMAYEL: Not just that. Actually, we have a family business, which is façade contracting. Our daily work was windows and glass....
Episode 108 –Building a Strengths-Based Project Team
Monday, July 6, 2020 • Duration 31:52
What is the project manager’s role in talent development? Instead of focusing on the negatives, shouldn’t we focus on what people do best? After all, projects are more successful when we play to the strengths of the team. Our guest, Connie Plowman, co-authored a book Developing Strengths-Based Project Teams with Martha Buelt. Connie defines the difference between a talent and a strength as she introduces the concept of a strengths-based project team.
Episode 107 – Business Recovery as a Project
Monday, June 15, 2020 • Duration
VELOCITEACH – Manage This – Episode 107
As businesses and project managers start to strategize about
the post-crisis world, Mike Goss explains what makes business recovery a
project. How can we respond to this crisis from a business standpoint, and how
that can be a project?
Table of Contents
01:58 … Meet Mike 03:08 … Everything in Life is a Project 03:49 … Responding to Crisis as a Project 05:00 … Redefine your Business: The Why and the Who 09:24 … Business Recovery as a Project 11:26 … Personal Experience with Business Recovery 13:33 … What Parts of a Business will Benefit? 16:05 … Building a WBS 18:45 … Facing Risks in Business Recovery 20:50 … Staying on Course 22:15 … A Project Plan for all Scenarios 23:49 … Overcoming Communication Challenges in Business Recovery 25:37 … A Plan for Businesses of all Sizes 26:06 … Strategizing in a Post Crisis World 27:23 … Advice for Resilience during Business Recovery 32:37 … Mike’s Course on Business Recovery 34:12 … Closing
MIKE GOSS: If we had a scale of one to 10, yesterday you
were at an eight. Then COVID-19 show
up. Now you’re at a one. Your objective is not to get back to
eight. Your object is to get back to 10,
where you’ve never been before. On your
way, you’re going to build in the tools and the processes that make sure you
never hit one again, no matter what happens.
That’s a project.
WENDY GROUNDS: Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. This is our opportunity to meet with you and talk about issues that project managers are facing today. I am Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio is Bill Yates. So today we’re talking in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, businesses are starting to think about the post-crisis situation. For some organizations it’s really been near-term survival is what’s on the agenda.
BILL YATES: Right. I agree, Wendy. There are so many companies that are just
fighting to stay in business right now.
I’m a part of a CEO roundtable, and just seeing the impact that this is
having on people locally and globally is huge, I think. I just saw some statistics today. Now, just to let listeners know, this is May the
4th. And so far 30 million people in the
United States have filed for unemployment, just since the COVID-19 got really
serious in March, up until today. We’re
here in the Atlanta, Georgia area. So
just for our state of Georgia, one in four workers have filed for unemployment.
WENDY GROUNDS:
Unbelievable.
BILL YATES: So it’s
huge. And obviously our federal
government is taking great steps to help fight through the economic impact of
this as we all figure out what does the new normal look like. So just thinking about what is business
going to look like when we can get going again.
So I think it’s helpful for us to have this conversation, and we’re
fortunate to have Mike Goss here to talk through some of this with us.
Meet Mike
WENDY GROUNDS: He was
telling us that his career has taken more twists and turns than most.
BILL YATES: Yeah. So he started out as a stereo equipment salesman.
WENDY GROUNDS: And a
computer store owner.
BILL YATES: An
elevator salesman.
WENDY GROUNDS: And
then he became a software developer.
BILL YATES: Senior VP
at a bank.
WENDY GROUNDS: And
the author of “Breaking
Through Walls,” a business novel about overcoming life’s obstacles.
BILL YATES: And then
a college instructor.
WENDY GROUNDS: And
then a radio personality.
BILL YATES: And of
course he fit a military career in there, as well. He’s a veteran in the U.S. Air Force, serving
in Thailand during the Vietnam War.
WENDY GROUNDS: He has
been on a podcast before with us, and he tells us more about that in his
previous episode. Since 2014, Mike has
also taught PMP exam prep boot camps in Oregon, Washington, and South Carolina.
BILL YATES: Quite a
diverse, I’d say, yeah, he is definitely shaking the tree. He’s done quite a diverse...
WENDY GROUNDS: He’s
been a very busy man.
BILL YATES: Yup. I look forward to talking with Mike about the
situation that we’re in now, and what we can take from project management and
apply to this crisis.
WENDY GROUNDS: Mike,
welcome to Manage This. Thank you for
being our guest today.
MIKE GOSS: It’s my
pleasure. I’ve been looking forward
to this.
Everything in Life is
a Project
WENDY GROUNDS: We want to start by just kind of setting the stage for what you’ve been talking about. So why do you say everything in life is a project?
MIKE GOSS: Wendy, everything in life that’s worth doing has an objective. Too many times we don’t get around to stating that objective, but in fact, everything we do that’s worthwhile is a project. We can choose to apply project management principles, or we can choose to wing it. And so it occurred to me that it makes more sense and saves a lot of time if we make some kind of a plan. It doesn’t have to be complex, but it has to exist.
Responding to Crisis
as a Project
BILL YATES: Mike,
when you look at that approach, and you think about where we are today with the
COVID-19 crisis, how do you put those two together? Because COVID-19 and this crisis that we’re
in can be overwhelming. So everything in
life is a project. Now you’re looking at
it and saying, okay, but how we respond to this crisis from a business
standpoint, that can be a project, as well.
What kind of led you to that decision?
MIKE GOSS: Bill, it occurs to me that, if you are trying to dig your business out, and your business is probably closed because of COVID-19, how are you going to dig yourself out? I see a great opportunity to take where we used to be, make it better, so that where we’re going is better than what used to be. And so if we’re careful as we put it together, the next time a surprise like COVID-19 shows up, and it will someday, we’ll be better prepared for that. When we apply the principles of project management, we can make that happen. If we wing it, then it will suffer the same way or worse, just like we are now.
Redefine your
Business: The Why and the Who
BILL YATES: So one of
your statements was this is a time to redefine your business, maybe take a
fresh look at it. What’s your advice on
reevaluating business? How far do we go
with this?
MIKE GOSS: There’s two places that we start, and you can dig as deep as you want in both of the places. The first one is to think back why did I get into this business in the first place? Something drew me to it, I had a software business, I once had a computer store. Why did I get into those? And if I can answer that, then I start seeing visions of what could be because I was pumped when I created the business in the first place. Now my business took a nosedive, I’ll say it wasn’t my fault, but I also have to say maybe I wasn’t as prepared as I could have been. So it’s now the time to make a new vision for my business to make it something even better than it was before, and that’s where I’ll start, that’s the first part.
But the second part has to do with my customers, every person who breathes is not my customer. I’m going to have to figure out better than I ever have before who is my target customer, and what do they care about? And once I know that, my objective is I want them to buy stuff from me. That’s my revenue. I’ll generate profits from those sales. But if I don’t know what my customers are looking for, and I open the door and do exactly what I did before, I’ve already set myself up for big trouble.
BILL YATES: So Mike, a lot of this reminds me of thinking to projects, thinking about a project charter. And I think you can make the equivalent statement of like a company charter, a mission statement, so with that charter we should be explaining the why. Why are we doing this project? What difference is it going to make? Is it a particular product? Is it a service? Or is it a result? Why? And then who’s going to benefit from it? Who’s going to pay for it? Certainly the sponsor. But then who’s the end customer? The why and the who are so closely connected, it’s as if you’re describing a project charter, perhaps at a business level. So maybe we need to be taking a fresh look at our business and answering that question of why and the who.
MIKE GOSS: We do, Bill, because, if we don’t, when something else happens, we’re not going to be prepared. We’re going to say, oh, I’m so shocked that that happened, yet we had the chance to prepare for it, and we chose not to take it. So what you were saying is the why and the what. Why does this business exist? What is it going to build in products or services? And who is it going to sell those services to? And how well does it meet the needs of those people who are going to come back to our business? If we haven’t looked at them recently, it’s time, and so this is such a huge opportunity to do that.
BILL YATES: So how do you step back and take that fresh look? So I think for some who are listening, they’re thinking, man, I’m working more hours than I’ve ever worked. This is like when I first launched my business, or launched a project. I’m working more hours than I thought I could possibly work, trying to keep things afloat, and now Mike’s challenging me to be very strategic, to look at the why, look at what it is we’re producing, and who we’re producing it for. So what’s your word of inspiration to those folks?
MIKE GOSS: Start out
with your glass being half full and rising, Bill. Start there.
BILL YATES: Okay.
MIKE GOSS: So right now it’s too easy to say, oh, poor me, doom and gloom, the world is conspiring against me. There’s no time for that. It’s now time to do the same thing you did when you first started your business: create a grand vision of what could be. Then invite all the kids on your team to go along on a quest to achieve that grand vision,...
Episode 106 – The Ocean Cleanup Project
Wednesday, June 3, 2020 • Duration
Manage This by
Velociteach
The podcast by project managers for project managers. The Ocean Cleanup organization is tackling the largest clean-up project in history. Henk van Dalen shares his passion for the project as he describes the origin of The Ocean Cleanup organization and outlines this bold project to clean the vast amounts of waste from our oceans.
Table of Contents
01:55 … Understanding the Problem 03:19 … How The Ocean Cleanup Began 05:31 … Henk’s Involvement in the Project 06:48 … Ocean Garbage Patches 08:26 … Facing Setbacks 11:21 … The Highs and Lows of Lessons Learned 14:48 … Lessons from Wilson 16:39 … Not Taking it Personally 20:57 … Plastic Size and Barrier Specifics 25:44 … Quantity of Systems Needed 28:00 … Safety for Other Vessels 30:49 … What Happens to the Collected Plastic? 32:07 … Tackling the Problem at the Source 33:50 … Cleaning up the Rivers 37:00 … Leadership Lessons 40:24 … Biggest Surprise on the Project 42:38 … Learn More about The Ocean Cleanup 44:28 … Closing
HENK VAN DALEN: ...the
Garbage Patch out there is so big and persistent, that’s not going to away by
itself. It’s almost looking at your
house, and you say, “I have a dirty house; but if I close the doors, then, you
know, it’s going to be fine.” You still
need to clean it up, as well.
So for us doing that part is essential, and we believe that
the power and the impact that the Ocean Cleanup can make is really in
technology. Develop technology. Be able to move quickly to address the
problem that’s there already. But also,
you know, it’s us also getting the awareness out there that people start
thinking by themselves what it is. So if
the Ocean Cleanup looked at, but what are we good at and where can we make an
impact, it’s creating that awareness, backing it up by science and showing how
big this problem is and cleaning up the mess that is already out there.
WENDY GROUNDS: Welcome
to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. We’re glad you’ve joined us for a
conversation about what matters to you in the field of project management. I’m Wendy Grounds, and here in the studio
with me is Bill Yates.
BILL YATES: Wendy, we’ve
got an interesting theme that you’ve hit on.
I love this. We’ve talked about saving
the rhinos. We’ve talked about tracking
orbital space debris. We’ve looked
at community
gardens and food banks; sustainability. And man, have we got a great conversation
today.
WENDY GROUNDS: I am very excited about this one. I have been following this project for a few years now and have been trying to find someone who will talk to us. And we were very fortunate to find Henk van Dalen. Henk is the Director Ocean Project of The Ocean Cleanup. This is a project that is looking to clean up the ocean.
BILL YATES: That’s
it, five trillion pieces of plastic that we want to remove from the ocean. That’s a big project.
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah,
we’re very excited to hear Henk’s story.
Understanding the
Problem
BILL YATES: Henk,
thank you so much for joining us today on Manage This, from your remote
location.
HENK VAN DALEN: Thank
you. Thank you for having me, guys.
BILL YATES: One of the
first things I want to do is just help our listeners understand the
problem. Can you define the problem for
us?
HENK VAN DALEN: So within The Ocean Cleanup, we’re focusing to clean up the oceans, and that first of all means we need to close up the inflow of the oceans, taking the plastic out of the rivers, preventing it going in. But there’s also the element of a lot of plastic being out there in the ocean itself, and that’s been accumulating there over decades. And our focus primarily is now on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. So that is the area of the ocean located between Hawaii and California, and there is a plastic soup, you could say, floating around which is twice the size of Texas.
So that is an immense amount of plastic, and it’s not going away by itself, it’s persistent, it’s been there for years, and it will stay for decades longer if we don’t do anything about it. And so we’re talking about, well, 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, which in accumulated weight we believe is around 80,000 tons. And of course, if no one cleans this up, this is going to be smashed into smaller pieces by the natural elements. It will end up in our food chain. It could end up on our plate. And it really is just harming the whole environment together. So within The Ocean Cleanup our mission is to get all that plastic out of the ocean.
How The Ocean Cleanup
Began
WENDY GROUNDS: Can
you describe how The Ocean Cleanup began, how this project actually started?
HENK VAN DALEN: The Ocean Cleanup is – call it the child of our founder, Boyan Slat. He was about 16 years old when he was diving in Greece, a great hobby of him. And during that diving he saw more plastic than fish, and it really started to bother him, and he thought, you know, what can I do as an individual to address this? So he did go to university, but quickly he thought, I want to give all my attention to address this problem, and I want to put full focus on that for my future.
So he basically did that, and in 2012 he went online with a TEDx talk, the first one about promoting his feasibility study about how he could clean up the ocean. And the idea was kind of born that plastic washes up on all these (un)inhabited islands, where no one is, but yet there’s plenty of garbage on the islands, and can we not build something that can act as a natural barrier, basically similar to an island, can capture that plastic. So with that idea he went public, whether doing TEDx – he gained quite some attention from that. Then in 2013 he received enough funding to start off the research and development, understand more about the problem, as well, but in parallel start thinking about the actual technology, how to address this.
So, yeah, it’s now 2020, of course, so for a good seven years his team has grown, the whole project has grown by itself. It started very much at really researching a problem, like what type of plastic is out there, how does it get there, how does it behave, how big is it, and all this research we’ve done, we’ve also publicized via our website. But with the gaining the understanding of the problem, we could then start working on the technology to address that.
And that’s what we’ve been doing, call it more or less for the last four to five years, really, you know, doing a lot of R&D, a lot of testing. And then for making sure that we come up with a solution to do this. Because in the end Boyan said for himself by 2040 he wants to get all of this plastic out of the ocean. So that’s our mission.
Henk’s Involvement in
the Project
BILL YATES: That’s a
phenomenal goal. That’s such a huge
task. Henk, how did you get involved in
this? How did you come to join the
project?
HENK VAN DALEN: Well, myself, I have a background in meteorology and oceanography, which is great, but it mainly learned for me where to surf good waves because I’m a very fond wave surfer. So I actually traveled the world quite a bit, doing that surfing, and I remember, I don’t know where it was, I think it was in Costa Rica, I read a slogan somewhere that it said “Don’t destroy what you came to enjoy.” And so I've always been kind of living that motto, you know. Of course, being a surfer, dealing with the natural elements, you have a lot of respect for Mother Earth. But also you notice how other people do not necessarily have that.
So I came back, I did start working in a marine construction environment, mainly focusing on building offshore windmill parks. But I always thought I wanted to do more directly for the ocean. And it was then that the Ocean Cleanup, which I was following for a while, actually professionalized quite a bit. And they were then looking for a project manager. So that was the unique opportunity for me to combine my passion, being surfing and then caring about the ocean, with the skill set I built up during those years in the industry, and therefore make a difference for the better, for the future.
Ocean Garbage Patches
BILL YATES: That’s phenomenal, so I didn’t realize there was that connection as a surfer and having that passion, it’s wonderful the way that worked out. Henk, can you explain further, there’s a big nasty name for the first garbage patch that you guys are going after. Explain how many there are in the ocean, how many big accumulations of plastic there are, and then why did you guys pick the one that’s between Hawaii and California?
HENK VAN DALEN: So if you look at the world’s oceans, there’s basically five big gyres, and that’s where kind of ocean current circulates around, but you end up in a kind of calmer area in the center where a lot of debris then accumulates. So those five gyres are basically in the North Pacific, and that one is the one we call the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. There’s the South Pacific, the North Atlantic, the South Atlantic, and there’s the Indian Ocean. So as I mentioned, the plastic accumulates there because after a while it kind of is released by the ocean currents, and then it starts to stack up over there.
So of all these five gyres, we have investigated the most the North Pacific one because it is known that that one is the biggest, the most persistent, and therefore also the most worrying in that respect. And also for, call it a young startup. We’ve grown quite a bit, of course. We’re not necessarily a startup at the moment, but for us to really get a focus and tackle the problem hands-on we said for ourselves let’s grab the biggest one first, and that is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Let’s make sure we develop technology to address that, and that should be scalable that we could also deploy this on the other gyres in the world,...
Episode 105 – Managing Up for Project Success
Monday, May 18, 2020 • Duration
VELOCITEACH Manage This
The podcast by project managers for project managers. Dana Brownlee shares tools for managing up that challenging boss or stakeholder, while creating alignment and clear communication.
Table of Contents
00:58 … Meet Dana
02:18 … The Inspiration for The Unwritten Rules of Managing Up
03:54 … Managing Up Research Study
07:02 … It Begins with Self Awareness
08:20 … A Definition of Managing Up
10:05 … Managing Up Mistakes
11:30 … Six Difficult Boss Personality Types
14:32 … A Closer Look at the Clueless Chameleon
19:03 … A Closer Look at the Meddlesome Micromanager
22:40 … A Closer Look at the Tornado
25:22 … The Compliment, Document, and Pivot
27:37 … More Taming of the Tornado
29:32 … Self-Analysis for the Project Manager
31:28 … Get in Touch with Dana
32:24 … Closing
WENDY GROUNDS: Hello,
and welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project
managers. I’m Wendy Grounds and with me
in the studio is Bill Yates. Bill, I
have a question for you today. How often
have you experienced a difficult stakeholder or a difficult boss? What’s your experience?
BILL YATES: Oh,
man. This is such a loaded
question. You’re going to get me in
trouble. Andy...
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah,
we don’t have to talk any current.
BILL YATES: Okay, good, yeah. I was going to say, Andy Crowe’s not in the room right now, but he will definitely listen to this. So, got an outstanding manager now. But yeah, I mean, this is just a part of life; right? We have managers who – sometimes our boss, our manager is super supportive and great. Other times there are challenges, and so fortunately we have Dana to talk with us about some of those challenges.
Meet Dana
WENDY GROUNDS: So our guest today is Dana Brownlee, she is a PMP, and she founded Professionalism Matters, which is an Atlanta-based corporate training company. Her business expertise has been featured in Forbes.com, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, to name a few. And Dana likes to give project managers tools they can use. Dana, welcome to Manage This.
DANA BROWNLEE: Thanks
so much for having me.
WENDY GROUNDS: Dana,
won’t you first tell us just a bit about yourself and how you entered the
project management field?
DANA BROWNLEE:
Certainly. Well, I started my
company back in 2003. I’m dating myself
a little bit, can’t believe it’s been that long. But I started in project management I guess
in the early ‘90s. And in fact I
remember it was so long ago, I remember applying for my PMP in handwritten
paper.
BILL YATES: Oh, okay.
WENDY GROUNDS: Wow.
DANA BROWNLEE: Like printing it off and writing it out and actually mailing it in, putting a stamp in, so I’m officially old. But I worked in corporate for a number of years, and then I started my own training company, and I went out, and I teach training classes and give speaking events. But I do think that I’ve always been wired kind of as a project manager, I dot my I’s; I cross my T’s. In fact, my husband laughed. He said, you know, “This is definitely for you. You’ve got a knack for telling other people what to do.” So some of it is kind of in my blood. But I love it.
The Inspiration for The Unwritten Rules of
Managing Up
WENDY GROUNDS: Dana
has written an excellent book that Bill and I have both enjoyed reading. It’s called “The Unwritten Rules of Managing
Up: Project Management Techniques from
the Trenches.” And in this book we read
about different types of bosses and techniques that you can implement when
working with these different types of managers.
Dana, what inspired you to write the book?
DANA BROWNLEE: Actually, my audiences inspired me to write the book. I never intended to speak on this topic, to write on this topic, but let me tell you what started happening. I give talks, and I provide training on a wide range of topics. So I might be out speaking about communication skills, about how to run more effective meetings, how to deal with a difficult person in the meeting.
And what was happening was invariably, irrespective of the topic, when I would get to that Q&A section at the end, where I would open it up to the audience to ask questions, one of the first questions I would always get is, yeah, I love that tip, but what if the problem person is your boss? Or what if it’s the executive that’s pushing back or causing you problems? So I started seeing a lot of energy around this, a lot of interest and curiosity.
So back in 2010 I wrote a whitepaper that I sent to PMI, the Project Management Institute, called “The Project Manager’s Guide to Dealing with a Difficult Sponsor.” And then from there I just started developing more collateral and speaking more on the topic. But really the genesis was the audiences, they really were struggling with this. It was a hot topic, and so that’s how I got into this arena.
Managing Up Research
Study
BILL YATES: Could you
tell us more about that research that that led to?
DANA BROWNLEE: Yes. So I was giving a talk in Chicago, at a PMI event in Chicago, I think it was 2016. And actually a publisher reached out to me, once they saw the speaker lineup, and they said, “Yeah, we’re kind of curious about this topic. We want to come sit in on your talk.” And it was standing room only, and I promise you, it wasn’t because of me, it was because of the topic, because people were really interested in that. And so from there they asked me to write a book. They said, “Hey, we think there’s a book here. We think there’s a lot of urgency around this topic, a lot of interest around this topic.”
So they asked me to write the book, and of course I said yes, I was really interested in writing the book. But I said, you know, I don’t want this book to just be informed by my personal experience. I want to hear from other people, and so I said, “I’m going to send out a survey.” Now, as soon as I said that I got nervous because I’m like, who’s going to respond to the survey? I didn’t have – I’m not Beyoncé, I mean, I didn’t have like a bazillion followers, and of course everybody hates surveys, I hate surveys. Nobody responds to surveys, but I could not believe it, I sent out this survey, and within about three weeks I had 1,173 responses, unique responses.
BILL YATES: Wow, that’s
outstanding. And you got really good response, I mean, reading through the
book, some of the quotes that you pulled out of those surveys are just
hilarious, and they’re so brutally honest with you.
DANA BROWNLEE: They
make you laugh and cry at the same time.
BILL YATES: Yeah,
yeah.
DANA BROWNLEE: I
mean, some of them really almost brought me to tears. Some of them were hilarious, with the little
names they gave for their crazy bosses or crazy stakeholders. So, yeah, it was great, I felt like it was
kind of cathartic for a lot of people.
And so maybe that’s why they didn’t mind it quite as much. But they got really granular, they told me
their horror stories. I remember one
person told me she went out on disability, she was so stressed out in her
situation, and she wasn’t unique, but I was really, really grateful to get
great feedback.
BILL YATES: And then
if you summarize – and I know you’ve got some great graphics that you share in
your presentations and in the book.
Summarize some of those findings.
DANA BROWNLEE: When we use the term “boss,” we’re using that pretty liberally, we don’t necessarily mean it has to be the person you’re reporting to. As project managers, a lot of our struggle is we have too many bosses.
BILL YATES: Right.
DANA BROWNLEE: That we’ve got all these stakeholders – maybe it’s a senior executive, maybe it’s a client, so maybe it’s even a difficult vendor that’s important – that you’re trying to maintain a strong relationship with. But at any rate, going back to your question, one of the stats that I use sometimes at the beginning of my speaking events is I ask them this. I say, okay. I surveyed 1,172 respondents. How many of those do you feel said they’ve never had a difficult boss experience? And then I wait, and out of that number, almost 1,200, only two, only two people said that they have never had that experience.
So it’s common, you know, we need to not think of it as a negative thing, or feel embarrassed about it. I promise you, if you live long enough, you will have a difficult boss experience. It’s just part of working.
It Begins with Self Awareness
WENDY GROUNDS: I was
telling Bill yesterday that many years ago I worked in a hospital. And we had a professor in charge of radiology
where I worked who, when he had a bad day, he would wear something yellow. And we knew when he was walking into the
department, if he had a yellow tie or a yellow shirt, keep away from him. It’s not going to be pretty.
DANA BROWNLEE: Well,
that’s great self-awareness because awareness is the first step, so I actually
like that.
WENDY GROUNDS:
Absolutely. But they don’t do that,
bosses don’t go around with a color code and say, you know, I’m wearing
turquoise today, so I’m in a good mood.
DANA BROWNLEE: Well, you know, we say that, and we’re laughing. But actually in the book I have a little bit of a checklist because the beginning of turning it around is just identifying these characteristics within ourselves because I think we all have them in one way or another. In fact, my husband was telling me, you know, “Yeah, you’re great, so you’re the perfect person because you’re the Micromanager and the Tornado, like all rolled up into one.”
But it’s not a negative thing, I think that we all have a little bit of some of these tendencies. And acknowledging that in yourself, being able to kind of pull yourself back and say, well, wait a minute, so maybe I am micromanaging a little bit. I need to pull back, so awareness really, really is the first step....
Episode 104 – Crisis Leadership – Lessons Onboard the USS Cole
Monday, May 4, 2020 • Duration
The podcast by project managers for project managers. The unpredictable nature of a crisis means that leaders have little time to prepare. Our guest Matt Harper, a retired 20 year Naval Officer, talks about crisis leadership lessons he learned onboard the USS Cole during a terrorist attack.
Table of
Contents
00:37 … Meet Matt 01:38 … Matt’s Role on the USS Cole 03:55 … Background to the USS Cole Deployment 06:32 … Geographical Location of Yemen 07:58 … October 12th, 2000 10:02 … Reacting in Times of Crisis 12:24 … Events Following the Attack 14:36 … Responding Well or Responding Poorly in a Crisis 16:34 … Management vs. Leadership 20:15 … Crisis Leadership Lesson One: Understand Yourself 21:05 … Crisis Leadership Lesson Two: Be Comfortable with Uncertainty 22:40 … Crisis Leadership Lesson Three: Collaborate 24:01 … Crisis Leadership Lesson Four: Be Ready to do Anything 26:35 … Crisis Leadership Lesson Five: Lessons Learned 27:35 … Keeping Motivated in a Crisis 29:42 … Get up on the Balcony, Take a Different Perspective 33:11 … Go Beyond Your Comfort Zone 34:41 … Resolving the Problem 37:20 … Get in Touch with Matt 38:52 … Closing
MATT HARPER: ...this is the hallmark of the good leader, of
the good project manager that says, got it, that’s the way it’s supposed to be
done, but we’re in a crisis deadline or whatever the case may be. And this is how we need to do it now.
WENDY GROUNDS: Welcome
to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. I am Wendy Grounds, and with me is Bill
Yates.
BILL YATES: Hi. Hi, Wendy.
WENDY GROUNDS: Hi,
Bill. Today we’re talking about what
will we do in a time of crisis. We have
Matt Harper with us. He is on Skype from
Denver, Colorado.
Meet Matt
BILL YATES: Yeah, Matt
has had a twenty year career with the US Navy and we’ll get more into that.
Specifically though, he had a unique experience and I’m looking forward to
discussing with him and sharing with our audience.
WENDY GROUNDS: Matt
is going to tell us about his experience on the USS Cole after a
terrorist attack in Aden, Yemen, which happened in October 2000. He was
decorated for his leadership after this attack and he’s applied that to
coaching lessons in crisis leadership, and so I think he’s got a lot of good
stuff he’s going to bring to us today.
BILL YATES: Yeah,
Matt, we so appreciate your time.
Welcome to Manage This.
MATT HARPER: Well,
thanks. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it.
BILL YATES: Any time
we can bring somebody into a conversation that has the knowledge, the training,
and the experience that you do, we know our project manager listeners are going
to appreciate it and learn from it.
Wendy and I were talking, we feel like the best way to tackle this topic
is just start from the beginning. Give
us a sense for what happened with the USS Cole and what your role was, or what
part you played in that.
Matt’s Role on the
USS Cole
MATT HARPER:
Sure. Well, thanks, thanks again
for having me. I would like to kind of
start out, having a 20-year military background, I’m sure a lot of the people listening
to the podcast will have military backgrounds.
BILL YATES: Right.
MATT HARPER: But for
most people who do not, I would like to say that anybody who spends time in the
military, what we do on a daily basis is really project management.
BILL YATES: That’s true.
MATT HARPER: It’s
something that we I think don’t do a very good job, we people in the military
or prior military personnel, we don’t do a very good job really making it clear
that that’s really what we do, probably 90 percent of our day, is really
different types of projects that all interrelate to each other. They’re all underfunded; they’re all
under-resourced.
BILL YATES: Yes.
MATT HARPER: And that’s what we do on a daily basis. So about my experience, I originally grew up in San Francisco. I always knew I kind of wanted to be in the Navy, so I went to ROTC up in New England at Boston University. So I commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Navy in 1996. I commissioned as a ship guy, so it meant I spent most of my time on ships. So again, kind of the military big organization that people may or may not be familiar about: if you say you’re “in the Navy,” that’s kind of like saying you work at GE.
BILL YATES: Right.
MATT HARPER: You could be, you could be a line worker who’s doing the same job over and over again, or you could be the CEO, and so there’s a whole range in between. So my time at the Navy I spent most of that time on ships. And then when I wasn’t on a ship, I was at a staff or at a desk job in a cubicle kind of doing paperwork, for lack of a better word.
So I joined the Navy in 1996; and then in 2000 I was on my second ship, USS Cole. So I was a young lieutenant at the time. So a “young lieutenant” being I had about five years in the Navy in October of 2000. And so at the time I was the Assistant Operations Officer. As a young lieutenant I had a more senior lieutenant who was my immediate superior, and then it was the captain, and then the XO of the ship. So I was kind of senior middle management, how’s that, for my time on that ship.
Background to the USS
Cole Deployment
So we had been on deployment, so that meant we notionally
had left Norfolk, Virginia for a six-month deployment. So we left at the end of the summer of
2000. We spent the first half of our
deployment in the Mediterranean. So back
in 2000, after the civil war or the breakup of Yugoslavia, the U.S. military
was helping NATO in resolving the separate conflicts in the former
Yugoslavia. At that time the
semiautonomous independent country of Kosovo was having their conflict, and so
NATO was providing a no-fly zone. So
just kind of background for what we were doing, what I was doing on the ship.
BILL YATES: Right.
MATT HARPER: And so the ship, the USS Cole, basically we were tracking every aircraft that flew over Kosovo and were enforcing a no-fly zone. So as a young lieutenant I was sending out messages, and I was tracking all the airplanes that flew over Kosovo in the Mediterranean.
And so we left there in October, and we did a high-speed – for us, which was 28 knots, which is about 35 miles per hour. So for a ship that is fast. We did a high-speed run to go from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, to the Arabian Gulf. And the reason I say we did a “high-speed run” is because the type of ship we were at had gas turbine engines, which is basically a jet engine that they put on a ship. And when we go really fast, we use up fuel, we use up fuel quite a bit.
So what would happen normally is ships would go through the
Suez Canal. So this is prior to
9/11. So this was relatively
routine. So we would pull into the port
of Yemen, and then we would refuel.
Nobody would leave the ship. We
would just get more fuel, and then we would shoot off back and head into the
Arabian Gulf. So again, at the time, we
were probably the 12th ship to pull into Aden, Yemen.
Now, in 2020, no ship ever would pull into Aden, Yemen because Aden, Yemen is really a war zone, and it has been a war zone for quite a while. Back in 2000 it was deemed peaceful enough for us to go into. So we pulled into Aden, Yemen on the morning of October 12th. In my job as the Assistant Operations Officer, I had actually sent out the messages requesting fuel, so when I put out one of those messages, that unclassified the port visit. So what that means is that basically you could fairly easily find out we were pulling into Aden, Yemen, and again, that was a routine thing that we did. Yes.
Geographical Position
of Yemen
BILL YATES: For those
who are geographically challenged and maybe not have a map in front of them, so
you’re just a bit south of Saudi Arabia.
MATT HARPER: Correct,
yeah.
BILL YATES: So you’re below Saudi, you’re a bit to the west of Africa, the continent.
MATT HARPER: Yes,
yes.
BILL YATES: So give
everybody, kind of draw an audio picture.
MATT HARPER: Sure. So if you start in the eastern end of the Mediterranean, so the eastern end of the Mediterranean of course is Israel, and then south of Israel eventually is Egypt. Then there’s the Suez Canal. So really on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, and that will go into the Red Sea, which is going to be on the western side of Saudi Arabia. So you are correct, you go down through the Suez Canal, you go through the Red Sea.
At the bottom of the Arabian Peninsula is Yemen, and then across from the Red Sea is the Horn of Africa, which is Kenya, Djibouti, Somalia. So that’s a significant kind of hotspot for the world and one of the choke points that the Navy likes to make sure that we understand what’s going on, that choke point going through the Red Sea and of course up to the Suez Canal. So if you keep going around the Arabian Peninsula, you go up along the coast of Yemen, you’ll go up around the UAE and Oman into the Arabian Gulf.
October 12th
2000
BILL YATES: So from a project standpoint, you’re in a remote location, way away from headquarters and base and supplies, you’re having to go to an area to get restocked. In this case you need fuel, and so that sets the stage for the events you’re going to describe.
MATT HARPER:
Yeah. That’s exactly it. We are, at that time, again in 2000, we are
in a pretty austere and remote location; correct. And that will lead us to be, after attack – I’ll
jump ahead very slightly. After attack
we will remain in Yemen for about two, two and a half weeks because it takes so
long to come and basically get us.
BILL YATES: Right.
MATT HARPER: Yeah. So it’s the morning of October 12th, and again, very routine stop, we’ve done this before. Every Navy ship does this in some capacity. So we pulled up to a refueling pier. We had been there for about an hour when a terrorist small boat th
Episode 103 – Creating a Living Building – The Kendeda Building at Georgia Tech
Monday, April 20, 2020 • Duration 45:24
“Why are we throwing away perfectly good stuff?” That’s the question our guests John DuCongé and Shan Arora are asking us this episode as we join them for a tour of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s recently completed Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design.
This building was designed and built to the Living Building Challenge 3.1 certification standards, the most advanced measure of sustainability possible in the current built environment, with some of the most stringent building performance standards in the world.
Episode 102 – Working Remotely – Not a Crisis
Wednesday, April 1, 2020 • Duration
The podcast by project managers for project managers. We’re facing new challenges that are changing the way that we work. Listen in as we address the specific challenge of working remotely.
Table of Contents
00:43 … Coronavirus Impact – Keep Calm and Manage This
02:23 … Working Remotely and Managing Yourself
03:57 … Establishing a Rhythm
07:40 … Dealing With Interruptions at Home
11:45 … Sticking to a Schedule when Working Remotely
15:53 … Interruptions and Communication Methods with your Team
16:51 … Turning on Video Cameras
19:33 … Making Time to be Proactive
21:27 … Turning it Off at the End of the Day
25:39 … Experiment with Collaboration Tools
27:58 … Can I trust my Team to be Accountable?
31:57 … Facing New Challenges with Grace
34:35 … Connect with Crystal
35:20 … Closing
CRYSTAL KDAKIA: It’s already a tough time. So really using this as a time to bond
together. Times of crisis are great to
emphasize a positive company culture.
So, and I think that goes both ways.
Both frontline employees, team managers, and team leaders need to have a
lot of grace in all those categories because everyone is adjusting to a new
normal.
WENDY GROUNDS: Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by
project managers for project managers. I’m
Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio is Bill Yates.
BILL YATES: Hi, Wendy.
WENDY GROUNDS: Every two weeks we get together to talk about
what matters to you as a professional project manager, and this week there’s a
lot that we want to talk about.
Coronavirus Impact – Keep Calm
and Manage This
BILL YATES: Yeah, these are very unusual times, not like
anything that I’ve ever experienced in my lifetime. The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has hit,
and it’s affected everyone on Planet Earth.
It’s changing the way that we work.
And we thought, what a great time for us to address the challenge that
is new to us as project leaders. We
wanted to talk about specifically how to work remotely.
WENDY GROUNDS: Yes. I’m
sure a lot of people are worried and anxious.
Someone wise I heard saying this on Sunday is we can’t allow uncertainty
to dictate how we are going to react.
You know, we can’t change what we can’t control. But there are things we can control, and that’s
what our guest is going to speak about today.
BILL YATES: Yeah, that’s great. I think it goes right along with our tagline
of “Keep Calm and Manage This.”
WENDY GROUNDS: Absolutely.
BILL YATES: We’ve got a lot of challenges to keep calm, so we’re all wondering how do we manage this. Fortunately, we have a past guest of our podcast, Crystal Kadakia, who’s going to join us today. She’s had a lot of experience working remotely, she’s also written a lot about the ups and downs of working remotely, some of the challenges and some of the benefits of it. And she is all about creating a better workspace. So we are delighted to have Crystal join us today. Crystal, thank you so much for joining us.
CRYSTAL KADAKIA: Thanks for having me. Thanks for – it’s nice to be back.
BILL YATES: Well, it’s a spur of the moment thing, but
the times call for it.
CRYSTAL KADAKIA: I think that it’s very timely, and also just
something that I’ve been really wanting to share more and more about. So I’m really glad that we’re getting a
chance to talk about it.
Working Remotely and Managing Yourself
WENDY GROUNDS: Crystal, you wrote a blog which recently we’ve published on the website: “Does Coronavirus Have a Silver Lining? A Guide for the Newly Remote Manager.” And we’ve kind of highlighted some things in this blog that we want to talk about, can we start off with managing ourselves, what it looks like when you’re working remotely and how to manage yourself?
CRYSTAL KADAKIA: Yeah, sure. So the first thing about all this is you have to take care of yourself first, if you’re managing a team remotely, and you don’t have your own work environment together, your own rhythms and rituals at home ready, you’re not going to be able to manage the team. So you’ve got to focus on yourself first. And a lot of people don’t necessarily know this about me, but I’ve been working remotely for 10 years. It first started because I was having health issues, and those really drove me to try out a different lifestyle.
At first, yeah, remote working is hard. But over time I started realizing I can’t go back. I really can’t go back. And it’s because remote working gives you the opportunity to have more control over your work environment, over your interactions with people. So it doesn’t necessarily mean no people, even though right now we’re talking about social distancing, like we’re never going to see people again, it’s not really social distancing. To me it’s more of a physical distance, and so you’ve just got to do things a little bit differently.
Establishing a Rhythm
BILL YATES: Crystal, it’s great to have the perspective of someone who’s been doing this for quite a long time. So for many, we’re facing this for the first time, everybody likes rhythm, right? They like the cadence of getting up in the morning, fixing your coffee, or maybe you stop somewhere to get coffee on the way to work. You come in, you kind of, you know, you do the rounds, you talk with people, and then you settle into your workspace, and you start doing your thing. You know, so there’s kind of a rhythm to life in the office. How difficult was it for you to establish a similar rhythm when you were working from home?
CRYSTAL KADAKIA: Yeah, it definitely took some rounds of iteration, you know, I think I’ve also changed it over time. At first I tried one of those really rigid kinds of things, you know, that you get, like, everyone has these clickbait journals now on Instagram and Facebook that’s like, you know, “30 Days to Better Habits,” and every single part of your day is super structured.
BILL YATES: Right.
CRYSTAL KADAKIA: And so you wake up, you do a reflection, you do your yoga and meditation, you eat your breakfast, you say hi to the kids, you sit down, and you’re ready to go; right? And it’s very, very rigid. And I realized that that was me trying to force my corporate work environment into a home work environment, which is a lot more inherently flexible because it’s your home; right? So you do have your family around, you do have your own things that you love about your home that make it really easy for you to stay in bed or to go make a great snack. You can go check on people that you love.
And so I realized, for me at least, my rhythms and rituals needed to be much more fluid, and I found energy management to be a much more valuable concept. So for those of you who are freshly remote, I really recommend just taking a few minutes to just see where’s your energy at? What’s your work asking you in terms of core work hours? Definitely respect those, but around those, what else do you really need to focus? What do you need to get in touch with people? What kind of environment do you need? And what kind of family agreements do you need to set up?
One of the ones for us that was really hard – because my husband also works from home, we both have our own businesses – is you would love to just check in on each other throughout the day. I mean, you know, if I’m getting bored working on something, so I would get up and go say hi to him. Well, he might be deep in something at that point; right?
BILL YATES: Right.
CRYSTAL KADAKIA: And so, you know, that’s not helpful. So we’ve really started realizing over time that, hey, maybe you need to look at the person’s face and see what they’re doing and see how intently they’re focusing on something before you give them a hug or a kiss, or check in and say hello. And I’m sorry, we’re kind of newly married, so I don’t know, that might not – but, you know, we got married last year. And so anyway, that’s a little bit TMI. But, you know, if you’re at home, everything’s TMI, you know, what are you going to do about it?
So I would just recommend spending some time thinking about your energy and creating some family agreements respecting your team’s norms, and then sharing what you’ve come up with to the rest of your team. For some of you it might still be very structured. For others you might find you might start shifting your waking hour because you don’t have a commute, you don’t have to get completely dressed up. And you know what, that extra 30 minutes of sleep, you might find out that that’s a huge benefit to your productivity overall.
Dealing with Interruptions at
Home
BILL YATES: You’ve said so many things that I want to dig into. Wendy, I know one thing, when you were setting up the room that we’re in that we do our podcast in, you wired a light so we could let the outside office know when we’re recording. You know, so, hey, try to keep things down, no wrestling in the hall right now, you know, or no ping pong, we’re trying to record something here.
And so I think what a practical thing for us to do from a home office, too, just to give that signal to other people that live with us to know, hey, I’m on a call now. So I’ll put this piece of paper up, or I’ll, you know, if I close the door, that means I’m on a phone call, or I shouldn’t be interrupted. But I’ll remember to crack the door open or change the sign to let you know when I’m available for interruptions, you know, when I’m more interruptible.
CRYSTAL KADAKIA: Yeah, this might sound really silly, but one thing that we do is we have a shared Google Calendar, and I can see his meetings, and he can see mine. Especially because we do things like this, like web conferencing with people, and again, I know more of you are doing that now, as well. And, you know, you don’t necessarily want your significant other or your kids walking around in the background, so that can often help is just having like a shared calendaring system....
