Project management is more than just schedules and deadlines—it’s a powerful force for driving change across industries. In this episode, we welcome Professor Adam Boddison, Chief Executive of the Association for Project Management (APM) who talks about APM’s Golden Thread research, conducted by PwC. He offers valuable perspectives on the skills that are essential for success, as well as strategies for breaking down common stereotypes about project managers.
Chapters
00:00 … Intro
02:08 … Meet Adam
03:39 … The Association for Project Management
04:34 … How APM Addresses PM Challenges
06:12 … An Image Problem
07:59 … Critical Skills
10:56 … Project Delivery vs Domain Expertise
12:18 … Stereotypes in Project Management
14:59 … Strategies to Addressing Stereotypes
16:19 … Communicating Value to a Sponsor
18:11 … Aligning with The Sponsor
21:08 … Ren Love’s Projects of the Past
24:18 … The Golden Thread Study
28:37 … Leading Change in Unconventional Sectors
30:58 … Project Success and Societal Benefit
35:21 … Pick Your Battles
36:07 … Find Out More
36:45 … Closing
Intro
ADAM BODDISON: …think about what was the determining factor that, you know, made that a real success or a problem? Was it people, or a person? Or was it a process that particularly drove that outcome? Most of the time when asked this question, they say, “Yeah, it was that person, or it was that group of people that really determined the outcome.” And if that’s true, then project delivery is as much about, if not more about, people than it is about processes. And that for me is a huge misconception that exists.
WENDY GROUNDS: Hello, and welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. And anyone out there trying to keep their projects and their sanity on track, we’re thrilled to have you with us. I’m Wendy Grounds, and of course with me is Bill Yates.
If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love to hear from you on our website, Velociteach.com, social media, or your favorite podcast app. Your feedback helps us keep inspiring and supporting project managers just like you. And if you’ve got questions about our podcasts or project management certifications, we’re here to help. Don’t forget, you can earn free professional development units from PMI just by listening to this episode. Stick around until the end, and we’ll tell you how to claim them.
Our guest today is Professor Adam Boddison. He is an extraordinary guest who’s a trailblazer in the field of project management. He is the chief executive of the Association for Project Management, the APM, and I’m sure some of you have heard of that. Prof. Boddison has been revolutionizing the project profession. He has been a leader in adapting project management to meet the challenges of our complex world. He’s committed to showing how project management applies across sectors from education to nonprofits. His work goes beyond the traditional view of project management. Adam works to highlight its economic value and push for its recognition as a profession equal to other established fields.
Let’s dive in today’s episode and see what tools, tips, and stories we can add to your project management toolbox. Hi, Adam. Welcome to Manage This.
Meet Adam
ADAM BODDISON: Hello, and thank you for the invitation. It’s a pleasure to be here.
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah, it is so great to talk to you. You have a background in many varied things, but one of them is project management. And we’d love to know how you got into project management. Where did it start for you?
ADAM BODDISON: Yeah, so I’ve been chief executive of the Association for Project Management for three and a half years, and that’s the only chartered association for the project profession in the world, something we’re extremely proud of. And I guess prior to that my background has been as an educationalist. I’ve been involved in member associations and professional bodies for about a decade, including six years as chief exec of the National Association for Special Educational Needs. But the reason I kind of got involved in project management was because I was looking to do something pretty broad and pan-sector, having spent a career very focused on schools and education and probably becoming pigeon-holed, if I’m honest, as a bit of a specialist in that area. So, I wanted to broaden out.
But what a move, what a brilliant profession this is. And do you know what? I thought that I hadn’t done project management before, and I didn’t really know a lot about it. But the more I get into it, the more I realize that this is a profession that everybody knows and nobody knows at the same time; right? Everybody’s done a little bit of it. Even as a secondary school math’s teacher, I used to teach critical path analysis by hand. And then I realized, I had no idea that was an optimization technique that was used by project managers. I just thought it was, you know, a math’s topic that was going to be assessed for A-level students; you know?
BILL YATES: How about that.
ADAM BODDISON: So, we’ve all done something somewhere on it, I think.
The Association for Project Management
BILL YATES: That’s so interesting. Project management is just a part of our lives. Give us a little bit more information about the Association for Project Management, or APM. How long has APM been about? Where is it headquartered? And you said it’s a charter organization? Tell us more about that.
ADAM BODDISON: That’s right. Yeah, so we’re primarily based in the UK, although we do operate internationally. Obviously, we’re particularly strong in some of the Commonwealth countries, as you would expect, being a kind of UK-based organization with a royal charter. But not exclusively, you know. There are other areas, the Middle East being a good example, and some parts of, you know, Southeast Asia and so on, where actually we’re growing pretty quickly, as well. But essentially, we’ve been around for just over 50 years. We’ve got around about 45,000 individual members. We work with around about 500 corporates. And we have around a quarter of a million qualification takers every year, you know, who are taking an APM qualification or becoming chartered.
How APM Addresses PM Challenges
WENDY GROUNDS: If you’re thinking about some of the key challenges that project managers are facing, how is the APM working to address those challenges?
ADAM BODDISON: Yeah, it’s really interesting. I think probably one of the challenges the profession has is that it’s a relatively immature profession compared to other well-established professions. So, if you think of, I don’t know, finance or HR or marketing, law, you know, these are well-established professions with hundreds of years behind them.
And people know what they are. They’ve heard of them. They know what it takes to get there and to be one. Even if you’re not one, you know what it is. You know, when we talk about the project profession, not even just project management, but broader, the project profession, what is a chartered project manager, a chartered project professional? What does that mean? Have people heard of it; you know? Are the children in school saying, “When I grow up, I want to be a project professional”? I don’t think they’ve ever heard of it.
So, there is this image problem that we have, which I think is partly about maturity. But I think it’s also partly something that we kind of bring on ourselves as well. So, as an example – and you can try this out, your listeners can try this out; right? When you’re at a party, and you meet a project professional, you ask them what they do, they will never say, or very rarely will they say, “I’m a project manager, and I work in the health sector,” or something like that. They are much more likely to say, “Oh, I work in the health sector, and I do project management.” And what I mean there is they associate with their sector before they associate with their profession. And we don’t see that in other professions.
If I meet the lawyer, they will tell me they’re a lawyer before they tell me what firm they work for, you know, which sector they work. So, I think that’s really interesting. So that’s part of it.
An Image Problem
The other bit is, of course, about the image problem is this trial by media that happens. When do we hear about project management; right? It’s never good news; right?
BILL YATES: Right.
ADAM BODDISON: It’s always projects that have gone wrong, they’re late, they’re over budget, you know, all of this kind of stuff. And especially if they’re publicly funded projects; right? And I understand that. But we’ve got to be better at shouting about the really brilliant things that the project profession does. And we’re not so great at that. You know, the architects are good at that. When they build something brilliantly, the great new designs, they celebrate how good it is.
You know, when we’ve finished a project, we’re just like, you know, we’ll move on to the next one now, and we move into, you know, benefits realization, and we don’t really kind of celebrate in the same way. So, we’ve got to get better at that. But there is an image problem. That is for me the number one problem that we face as a profession.
BILL YATES: That’s so interesting. I haven’t thought about that, it’s like the project manager is seen as this public scapegoat if things go wrong. That is an image problem. I haven’t really thought about that. I think I’ve been fortunate to be on projects that were either below the radar of, you know, big public interest, or they’ve been successful. So, you know, there hasn’t been – you don’t have to have this sacrificial person that you offer up to the public and say, “Okay, be mad at this guy. Bill blew this up. He messed up; you know.”
ADAM BODDISON: But look, you know, we have this program, “The Apprentice.” You know “The Apprentice?”
BILL YATES: Yeah.
ADAM BODDISON: Right. So, every week on “The Apprentice,” what happens is they say, “You can be the project manager this week.” Now, you wouldn’t do that for any other role; would you. You wouldn’t say, “You can be the accountant this week. Oh, you can – you can run the HR department.” But for some reason we think this is okay. You can be the project manager this week. And guess what. At the end of the episode, they fire him or her for doing a bad job. What qualifications did this person have to be a project professional? But again, that’s the exposure that the general public has to our profession. We’ve got to get better at that.
Critical Skills
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah, that’s such good points. And when you’re saying them, I’m like, “Yeah, that’s so true. I’ve never thought of it before; but that’s really, really good.” What skills do you believe are critical for project managers today?
ADAM BODDISON: I think we tend to focus on competencies rather than skills. And we kind of break the competencies down into four broad areas at APM. And there’s a lot of them. But the four broad areas are setting up for success. So, in there we’d have things like writing business cases, financial management, sustainability, those kinds of things, governance. There’s kind of preparing for change. So that would be things like, you know, how do you do effective procurement? What does good assurance look like, benefits management and so on? You’ve then got people and behaviors, and that would be things like conflict resolution, leadership, team management.
And then lastly, planning and kind of managing deployment. And this is where maybe some of the more technical side of the profession comes in, so things like quality management, schedule management, budget cost control, risk management, all of those things which we might traditionally associate with project management. But what’s really interesting, there’s a breadth and complexity to these competencies which I think is unrivaled actually by probably any other profession. And there’s a kind of cross-functionality about this, as well, because this is one of the few roles that I think, if you put them in an organization, often the project manager really has that breadth to work across the role in a way that probably only someone like a CEO does.
So I’ve got a theory, no evidence to back this at all up, and a hunch really, but I’ve got a theory that probably those people who’ve got project management somewhere in their background, it’s a pretty good basis to go on a kind of C-suite role, particular CEO role because of that breadth of exposure to the organization, that functional breadth, and also there the kind of breadth of complexities and technical skills that you have to have, as well.
BILL YATES: I agree with that. It’s so true. And it’s something that I know when I was first kind of making the transition from being a project manager into training on project management, it really struck me that, just to echo your point, many times C-suite, either people that aspire to be in the C‑suite or people that have arrived there do have a background in managing projects, whether they were called a project manager or just they were tapped to lead one from time to time. It gives you so much exposure. You have to learn so many of these skill sets.
You talked about these four different groups. But thinking about people and behaviors, that third group that you mentioned, there has to be a level of competency for that project manager to be able to get people fired up about the vision of their project, what they’re trying to get done, and then all onboard and pushing the same way, aligned, so that they can achieve that goal. And many times, that’s very similar to, you know, running a department or running a team or running an organization. So yeah, it really does, it parlays well into future opportunities, even C-suite opportunities with an organization.
Project Delivery vs Domain Expertise
ADAM BODDISON: Yeah. Interestingly, if you’re brought in as a leader of an organization, sometimes you’ll come into an organization, and you won’t be a domain expert. So, you won’t, you know, you won’t have a background in that particular context. But you have to use your leadership skills, right, and then become a domain expert in effect; right? You have to learn that. I think it’s quite similar to what happens in project management. You know, you might be running a project that’s in a completely different domain than the previous projects that you’ve run. You know, I talked about the maturity of the profession before. This is one of the areas where I think, again, we could do better.
So, if I take a particular sector, let’s say, I don’t know, nuclear, right, nuclear energy, building nuclear power stations or something like that; right? If you talk to the nuclear sector, and they’re appointing project professionals, almost always they will say something like, “We need somebody who’s got experience of nuclear.” And I say, “Really? When you’re appointing your accountants, do you say they’ve got to have experience of nuclear? When you’re appointing your marketers, do they have to have experience of nuclear?” You’ve got the nuclear experts there. They are important. That’s not what you’re looking for in a project professional. You’re not looking for domain experts. You’re looking for project delivery expertise, and they’re two different things.
And once we kind of get past that barrier, and we accept that actually it’s okay to move between sectors, then that’s when we’ll get some really good cross-pollination of expertise moving. And that’s one of the things I think is holding the profession back from really maturing more quickly.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
Stereotypes in Project Management
WENDY GROUNDS: So, we also want to talk about stereotypes in project management. I know this is something that you’ve also spoken a lot about, and so we really want to pick your brain on just some of the common stereotypes that you’ve seen in project managers.
ADAM BODDISON: I’m going to say there are two obvious ones that come to mind. So, the first one is that there is an assumption when someone talks about a project manager that all they’re doing is kind of, I don’t know, they just sit there all-day doing Gantt charts, and it’s kind of some kind of admin type thing. They think it’s a kind of administrative or a technical profession. And don’t get me wrong, there are some very technical parts of it, and there are some administrative parts of it, as there are in every profession, I would say. But the bit they often overlook or don’t realize is the strategic aspect of project delivery, you know.
But so, when we talk about something like benefits realization, we’re talking about making a decision now that’s going to deliver benefits in 15, 20, 30 years’ time to stakeholders that don’t even exist yet. That’s really strategic, and it’s a real boardroom-type discussion. But people don’t think of project managers as doing that. They think they’re kind of – the decision’s made in the boardroom, and they’re just somehow involved in just the delivery bit of it. And so, I think that’s one of the big misconceptions.
The other one, which maybe was obvious when I was talking about the competences earlier on, is that people think that all project managers care about is process. And actually, it’s so much about people, it’s unbelievable. And the real test for this is – I always say this to people in the profession, as well. Think of a project – and you could do this if you’re in a business, in any business, as well. Think of any project that’s gone either really, really well, or one that’s been a complete disaster. I’m hoping everybody would have at least one of those, maybe both.
And now think about what was the determining factor that, you know, made that a real success or a problem? Was it people, or a person? Or was it a process that particularly drove that outcome? Most of the time when asked this question, they say, “Yeah, it was that person, or it was that group of people that really determined the outcome.” And if that’s true, then project delivery is as much about, if not more about, people than it is about processes. And that for me is a huge misconception that exists.
BILL YATES: Yeah. That’s so good, yeah. People over process, you can beat on that drum every day of a project. I think it’s especially important for project managers, their leading teams, to be reminded of that. I mean, they may even have to put a sticky note on their screen, on their monitor to be reminded. Especially they have that bend towards the technical, like you said, analyzing the Gantt charts or doing resource allocation. That may be like a comfort place for them. But people over process just – it rings true. Anytime you’re researching successful projects, that just comes through.
Strategies to Addressing Stereotypes
So, talk to us about – you can take that example or take the need to be strategic. There’s a couple of stereotypes to overcome. What are some strategies that you’ve found to be effective in addressing stereotypes?
ADAM BODDISON: Sometimes it’s just about the terminology that we use. Weirdly, if you use the actual words “project management,” people immediately have an image in their mind of what they think that is. And it’s not usually a good one; right? So, I’ve had this before. I’ve tried this. When I talk to people who are outside of the project profession, maybe they’re on a C-suite in a particular organization. Maybe they haven’t got a formal project function in their organization. If I talked about project management, they kind of think, oh, it’s not really a C-suite issue; is it? It’s not really a leadership thing, you know; it’s a kind of technical thing.
If I have exactly the same conversation, but instead of using the word “project management” I say “strategy execution,” well, I’m very interested in that.
BILL YATES: Uh-huh.
ADAM BODDISON: Absolutely. And it could be exactly the same conversation, apart from the framing. So, there is something around the terminology that we use. And ironically, I’ve found sometimes you need to start by talking about the value and the benefits of a formalized project delivery function before you actually say what it is. Because then people are interested, and they go, “Yeah, this is something that my organization’s going to need.” And then you can have a proper conversation. So, I think that the kind of terminology is part of it.
Communicating Value to a Sponsor
BILL YATES: That’s a strong point. Adam, just a follow-up question on that. How can project managers effectively communicate their value to the sponsor or management stakeholders when they’re having to overcome those assumptions about their role as a project manager?
ADAM BODDISON: Yeah. Really good question. So, I think sometimes, not that I like to answer a question with a question, but I think project professionals could ask this question, which is, if you think about what leaders and businesses are actually doing, and what they’re delivering, and what the balance is between business as usual versus delivery of change, how has that changed over time? So, I would posit that 50 years ago, most leaders were doing a lot of business as usual, and probably a small amount of organizational change. And I’d say that’s now probably completely reversed, and that most leaders are doing a lot of change all the time, you know, not least digital transformation, which seems to be what every organization’s kind of looking at at the moment.
If that’s true, then it brings a few things to the fore. So, one is project delivery and project management, the project profession, it’s all about delivering change effectively. So why wouldn’t you invest in that area if that’s what your business is about? But it also makes you ask important questions about the C-suite and the nature of the C‑suite. You know, most C-suites I look at, for example, they still have a Chief Operating Officer. Chief Operating Officer, the COO role was designed for businesses that were delivering a lot of business as usual. And it was all about optimization and, you know, efficiency and all of this.
You know, if we’re in a business that’s really about change and transformation, do we still need a COO in the same way? Or actually, do we need a Chief Projects Officer or Chief Transformation Officer or whatever we want to call it? So, you know, does it have important questions for the whole makeup of the C-suite? That in itself, just that conversation I think will start to get you credibility and a seat at the table when it comes to some of these discussions.
Aligning with The Sponsor
BILL YATES: I think as a follow-up to that, Adam, I think of conversations we’ve had on this podcast before. I remember with Laura Barnard we talked about the idea of the project leader meeting with that sponsor early in the project, one on one, where there’s, you know, there’s nobody else in the room to perhaps influence how the conversation goes, and just asking, you know, what are your goals with this project? What is your pain point? You know, I can read the charter. I can read the statement of work, et cetera.
But you tell me in your words, what is it that you hope to change or to accomplish with this project? And to make sure that, you know, as the project leader, my perception of success and value is completely aligned with the most important person, the sponsor who has put their name on this project.
So, you know, from a kind of a grassroots standpoint, I think that’s a great move for the project manager. Just to clarify upfront, what is the value that you really want to see from this project? What is it that you want me to change? And then, once I have clarity on that, I can get a sense for what do you think are the obstacles that I’m going to, as a team leader, I’m going to have to face? Because then it’s natural, I think, for that project sponsor to say, here’s how I’m going to help you on that.
ADAM BODDISON: I’d agree with that. I think what’s really interesting, you just prompted another thought in my mind, which is the role of the project sponsor. This role is in some ways the best and the worst of projects because, if I was to get a thousand project sponsors in a room, and I was to say, “Put your hand up if you’ve had any formal training or development in how to be a really effective project sponsor,” I will bet that it’s a handful, less than two hands; right?
So I think there is something there about, given how critical that role is in the way you’ve just described, having that buy-in from the C-suite in the first place to say, if we’re going to have project sponsors, I’m going to spend these potentially hundreds, thousands, millions of dollars or whatever on things, we’ve got to make sure that we’re investing in training, not just for the delivery side, but also on the sponsorship side, as well. I find that always fascinating that that’s the most under-invested area when it comes to development.
BILL YATES: You know, it’s a great idea, too, for organizations, as you were just making me think of that, Adam. For those that are listening that are project managers that have been frustrated by that, okay, my sponsor is unrealistic. Or I’ve worked with five different sponsors in my organization. These three were fantastic; these two, not as much. So, how can I raise that level from an organization standpoint and help people understand how can we train up our sponsors? How can we make the sponsors, and the PMs work more effectively together?
ADAM BODDISON: Yeah, not all sponsors want to be sponsors; right? It’s a bit like, you know, “The Apprentice” thing I was saying earlier on, this week you can be the project. That’s what happens sometimes. The CEO says, right, you can be the project sponsor. Oh, right, thanks. And it becomes a side-of-the-desk type conversation. So that’s, I think, the most dangerous situation because they are critical, actually. They play an absolutely critical role.
Ren Love’s Projects from the Past
REN LOVE: Ren Love here with a glimpse into projects of the past, where we take a look at historical projects through a modern lens.
The project featured today changed the physical, political, and cultural landscapes of North America: The Transcontinental Railroad.
Made possible by the Pacific Railways Acts of 1862 & 1864, work on the Transcontinental Railroad officially began in 1863. The intent was for two railroad companies to undertake the project – with the Central Pacific Railroad starting work in the west and heading east, and the Union Pacific Railroad starting work in the east and heading west – hoping to meet in the middle. While the Central Pacific Railroad was able to start work in 1863 – the Union Pacific Railroad was delayed by the American Civil War, and broke ground two years later in 1865.
Building the railroad was an enormous undertaking fraught with many challenges. The crew coming from the west was tasked with tunneling and blasting through the solid granite of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. From the east, workers laid railway across the Great Plains and over the Rocky Mountains. Overall, around 21,000 laborers including Chinese immigrants, Irish immigrants & Civil War Veterans laid 1,800 miles of track
The project was marred by financial scandals. The head of the Union Pacific Railroad nearly bankrupted the organization by siphoning the funds for personal use & executives of the Credit Mobilier construction company wildly inflated construction costs and profited from fraudulent contracts. The financial fraud was far reaching – even implicating a number of US Congressmen.
The total cost to build the Transcontinental Railroad was massive, estimated at around $60 million at the time (around 1.2 billion in today’s dollars). This figure includes not only the expenses of labor, materials, and engineering but also the bribes and financial manipulations that plagued construction.
On May 10, 1869, both railroads reached Promontory Summit, and a ceremonial Golden Spike was driven into the final tie, symbolizing the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. This event marked a major milestone in American history, celebrating the linkage of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
So, was this project a success? Technically, yes. The railroad was successfully completed and drastically cut travel time across the continent from several months to about a week. This effectively opened the west, facilitating the mass movement of goods and people across the country. Though the construction of the railroad spurred industrial development in the United States, the project also had significant social and environmental consequences – increasing racial tensions and permanently altering the landscape. All that being said, parts of the Transcontinental Railroad are still in use today, many decades later.
Thanks for joining me for a look into Projects of the Past – I’m Ren Love. See ya next time.
The Golden Thread Study
WENDY GROUNDS: Talking about stereotypes in project management, there’s also a lot of project management in unconventional fields. Now we saw that APM has done research and collaborations with organizations like PwC, and you’ve looked at the economic and strategic value of applying project management principles in unconventional fields. What were some of the insights that you gained from that research?
ADAM BODDISON: Yeah, so the study you’re referring to is called The Golden Thread, which we commissioned PwC to do for us. We actually, it’s the second time we’ve asked them to do it. So, we asked them to do it back in 2019, so just pre-pandemic; and then we kind of recommissioned the same piece of work in 2024 just to see how things had changed. And bearing in mind there’s been a pretty, you know, global seismic economic shock during that period, you know, you might expect that there’ll be some big decline in things like investing in projects. In fact we’ve seen the opposite, which was interesting.
To put this in context, some of the figures in here, so the gross value added per year by the project profession, and this is just in the UK alone; right, it’s not even globally, is 186.8 billion pounds a year. So, to put that in some kind of context, if I was to just look at the entirety of, say, the City of London, so the financial City of London, that’s about 101 GVA. So, you know, it gives you some sense of the scale, and it represents 9.2% of the total UK gross value added. And then the workforce that kind of supports that represents about 8.5% of the workforce.
And so, you might say, “Well, hang on a minute, I don’t know any project managers. Like, where are these people?” And the problem is they’re not always called project managers. I think you referred to this earlier on. They have all kinds of weird and wonderful job titles. And there are some people who are called project managers who also don’t do project management.
BILL YATES: Yup.
ADAM BODDISON: And so that’s where the language becomes, I think, interesting. In the UK, we see more than 2.3 million full-time equivalents actually doing project roles. And both of those figures are an increase on 2019. So, in the case of the full-time equivalents, the kind of number of people, that’s up by 8%; and the gross value-added figure is up by 19%. So, these are pretty big increases.
But probably the really interesting thing about this study is, despite the fact that we’ve got this big increase in the number of people doing projects and the gross value added, it’s still not enough. And we’ve seen that globally by 2030 we are still going to need another 25 million project professionals globally, 25 million, you know, to deliver on things like the UN Sustainable Development Goals, some of the big national infrastructure ambitions that countries have. A lot of this, of course, or some of this is down to some of the things that are happening in the Middle East, things like NEOM and, you know, KSA and so on. So, there are some really big gigaprojects and megaprojects that are kind of putting huge strain on what is an already constrained system.
BILL YATES: Adam, quick question on that. The study is called The Golden Thread; is that correct?
ADAM BODDISON: Yes, that’s right, yeah.
BILL YATES: And is there a way that our listeners could access that? Could they go to the website?
ADAM BODDISON: Yeah, so if they were to just do a Google search for Golden Thread APM PWC, it’ll for sure be the first one that comes up.
BILL YATES: Perfect.
ADAM BODDISON: And the other bit that your listeners might be interested in is we also did a breakdown of where are these project professionals? Which sectors are they in?
BILL YATES: Yeah.
ADAM BODDISON: And it’s interesting, I think the stereotype, we were talking about stereotypes, you might expect, well, you know, project professionals, they’re probably all in construction, infrastructure, you know, telecoms and so on. Actually, the number one sector is professional and business services, law, you know, management consultants, and so on. Then financial services, hospitality and leisure. Hospitality and leisure, the number of project professionals in hospitality and leisure is bigger than the number of project professionals in IT.
BILL YATES: Huh. Wow. That is surprising.
ADAM BODDISON: Now, I think that’s staggering; right? You know, you think about digital transformation, or like you think about there must be tons of project professionals in there. But there are more in that space, even things like pharmaceuticals; right? There’s quite a lot in that space, developments of new drugs and so on, and vaccines; and maybe that’s been supercharged by events of the last few years.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
ADAM BODDISON: But that’s a really interesting read, just looking at the breakdown by sector and how that’s changed over the last five years. Some of those have gone up; some of those have gone down.
Leading Change in Unconventional Sectors
BILL YATES: A follow-up question I want to ask, I’m really curious. There are different industries that simply don’t employ formal project management practices. You know, some industries, like you mentioned construction and IT, project management and the role of the PM has been pretty much at the forefront there for many years. But there are other industries that just don’t, they either don’t recognize the project management role, or the role itself is not as defined as well in those industries. So, what advice do you offer for a project manager who’s trying to lead change in those types of industries where project management is just not as mature?
ADAM BODDISON: It’s a really good question. I think there’s two kinds of aspects to the answer to this. So, I think part of it is about what you can do internally, and part of it is how you leverage the kind of wider set of peers, if you like, the wider profession behind you. I think in organizations where this isn’t happening, it’s often not a deliberate attempt to, bypass what is a recognized profession. It’s because they don’t know. So, it’s the age-old problem of how do you educate someone who’s in a senior position without making them feel stupid; right?
BILL YATES: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ADAM BODDISON: And one of the ways to do that is to go on the journey together; you know? So, I think if you set this up as a, I know an organization that’s done what we’re trying to do really well. It’d be interesting to find out what their lessons learned are, you know, what mistakes did they make along the way? What did they say really well? Shall we go and look at that together? And guess what? This is going to be an organization that really is invested in formal project management functions and so on.
So, you know, I think things like that are really helpful. But also, even just things like sharing really effective practice that’s at the thought leadership papers we do see at round tables, for example, with a mix of those organizations that have invested and haven’t, just not particularly because we want to push this agenda, but just to share practice and so on.
And this stuff then happens organically. So, if you’re that person internally, and you’re engaged with your peers through a professional body, it doesn’t have to be APM, other professional bodies are available, you know, they’re naturally tapping into those kind of opportunities for thought leadership, for decision makers in your organization. It can be a really non-threatening way to kind of get that across. I think what I’d definitely avoid is telling the leader that they don’t know best. That is always going to land badly, even if it’s true.
BILL YATES: That’s a great way to step off the end of the pier, yeah. Bad idea.
Project Success and Societal Benefit
ADAM BODDISON: You know, we haven’t really talked about project success and what we mean by project success. But one of the kind of straplines that we have in the organization, which I really love, is because when projects succeed, society benefits. So, we actually have an intrinsic link between project success and societal benefit. And we believe that if you deliver a project well, then it should benefit society. And when you start thinking about it through that lens, and we talked about benefits realization earlier on, it’s quite hard to find one that doesn’t.
Now, sometimes I’ve been in rooms where people say, “Ah, come on, Adam. What about if a country decided to invade another country? You know, you wouldn’t want that project to succeed, and that doesn’t, you know, benefit society.” And I said, “Well, even if they managed to do that, I don’t think that would be a success under what I think of as project success.” Project success, in my book, in an APM’s book, is something that makes the world a better place by definition. Now, how do you do that? Well, some projects will just do that by nature of what the project is. You know, if I’m working on a project that’s going to find a cure for, some deadly disease, clearly that’s going to help; right? So, something’s doing it by definition.
In other cases, it’s about how you do it. So, things like sustainability, you know, if we’re going to be doing a construction project, for example, thinking about the circular economy and how we do that in a way which is going to help us to benefit the environment better, that is a societal benefit. The fact that there is an economic contribution is a societal benefit. So, you get some of these intrinsic things. Things like having on your project team, diversity of thought is going to result in better project outcomes as well.
And in fact, we’ve got a great piece of research, another piece of research that your listeners might be interested in, which it’s just called “dynamic conditions for project success.” But we actually kind of looked at projects that have been really successful, and we said, “What were the things that really made it successful for those projects?” And the obvious things were in there. There was good planning; there was good, you know, assurance; there was good leadership. All the things you’d expect.
But guess what else was in there? Project teams that were more diverse were more successful. You know, projects that had sustainability built into them from the outset, they were more successful. So, you know, this whole point around ESG is that they’re not just nice things to do, they actually result in more successful projects. So, for me, these things of project success and societal benefit, they are intrinsically linked together.
BILL YATES: You know, as project leaders, we’re working with teams. We’re working with people. You know, it’s kind of back to that mantra of people over process. People are smart. They know they can look at a project and go, yeah, this is something I’m excited about because it’s going to improve this part of our business, or it’s going to make this product better for our customers. And they also can see when, all right, this is like a money grab. You know, I can see that this project is going to set us up maybe for more sales with this product or whatever; but, wow, look at the bad impact that’s going to have on the environment. Or look how it’s going to take advantage of one group over another.
So, you know, people are smart. They can sniff that out. So, for us to have clarity on what is our project success, what is the impact it’s going to have on society, then it sets us up for genuine conversations with our team, and everybody’s on the same page and gets excited about it. So yeah, this all rings true.
ADAM BODDISON: And of course that might change. Like what you think is success in the beginning might change.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
ADAM BODDISON: There are some people, right, and you know, I’ve seen this even in some of our own materials where it’s all about time, cost, quality. And I get that. That’s important. I’m not saying that’s not important. But it’s not the only thing that determines project success. And what I’ve seen before is this kind of what are project outcomes, and what are the benefits. And obviously your listeners will know that they’re different things.
But sometimes I see people judging project success on the outcomes rather than the benefits. So, they’ll say, “Look, it was delivered on time, within budget, and it met the required specification. That’s a successful project.” You know, they have a great analogy for this in the Netherlands. I don’t know if your listeners will have heard this. It’s a medical analogy where they talk about a project which has delivered all of its objectives, but delivered no benefit. And they say, “The operation was successful; the patient is dead.” You know, it’s slightly tongue-in-cheek.
BILL YATES: Sure.
ADAM BODDISON: As the Dutch are. But you know, I love the expression; yeah? And we see that; right? We see these projects. IT projects are the worst ones for this because sometimes by the time you’ve delivered the IT project, the business case for it is no longer valid.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
ADAM BODDISON: So yes, you’ve done everything it said in the original business case, but you’ve delivered zero benefit.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
Pick Your Battles
WENDY GROUNDS: If you could give some advice to aspiring project managers, especially project managers who want to challenge the status quo and bring those benefits, what advice would you give to them?
ADAM BODDISON: I have one bit of advice which was given to me years ago. And it stuck with me, and it was helpful both in my more junior and early roles, and it’s still helpful now in kind of executive leadership and board roles. And this is the advice. It’s about picking your battles. They’ve got to be small enough to win, but big enough to make a difference.
BILL YATES: Huh.
ADAM BODDISON: And if they don’t sit in that sweet spot, leave it well alone.
BILL YATES: That’s fantastic. Can we put that on a T-shirt?
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah, that’s really good.
ADAM BODDISON: Well, it’s not mine, so I don’t mind, yeah.
BILL YATES: Super. That’s really good, Adam.
Find Out More
WENDY GROUNDS: If our audience wants to find out more about APM or reach out to you, where should they go?
ADAM BODDISON: So, if they want to reach out to me, LinkedIn is probably the easiest place to do that. I’m easy to find. I’m just @AdamBoddison. And equally, Association for Project Management is also on LinkedIn. And we have the website, of course, apm.org.uk, where you can find out all about membership, qualifications, and chartership.
BILL YATES: Outstanding. Thank you so much for your time, Adam.
ADAM BODDISON: It’s been a pleasure.
BILL YATES: It’s a fresh perspective, and it’s been just a pleasure for us to talk through some of the challenges that project managers face and hear your advice. Thank you so much for this.
ADAM BODDISON: No problem at all. Thank you very much.
Closing
WENDY GROUNDS: That’s it for us here on Manage This. Thank you for joining us today. You can visit us at Velociteach.com, where you can also subscribe to this podcast and see a complete transcript of the show. Now, for our chance to give back, you just earned your free PDUs by listening to this podcast. To claim them, go to Velociteach.com. Choose Manage This Podcast from the top of the page. Click the button that says Claim PDUs and click through the steps. Until next time, stay curious, stay inspired, and keep tuning in to Manage This.
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