In this episode hear fresh insights to help you lead with impact, empower your team — and get the job done. Kevin Torf, author of Getting the Job Done, shares practical advice for leaders managing fast-moving projects and cross-functional teams as we explore what it truly means to empower a team, and why it’s the secret sauce behind high-performing project leadership and long-term success.
Chapters
00:00 … Intro
02:43 … Meet Kevin
04:06 … Understanding Empowerment
05:24 … Pull vs. Push Approach
06:42 … Encouraging Productivity
09:00 … Sustaining Empowerment
10:41 … Keep Things Simple
13:33 … An Example from Walt Disney
15:16 … Team-Led Timelines
19:18 … Recognizing Disengagement
21:39 … Kevin and Kyle
22:41 … Not Playing Favorites
26:28 … Asking for Help is Not a Weakness
28:26 … Lessons Learned from Mistakes
32:22 … Protection from Burnout
35:28 … Getting the Job Done
37:31 … Find Out More
34:09 … Closing
Intro
KEVIN TORF: …the best advice I can give a leader is be a leader. Get out of it. Let your team grow. Let your team empower. Let’s … Empower the team to actually fail even, if necessary, and let them learn from that failure
WENDY GROUNDS: Hello, and welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers and anyone else out there trying to keep their projects on track. My name is Wendy Grounds, and my co-host is Bill Yates. We are so thrilled to have you join us today. If you love the show, if you’re enjoying what you hear, we would love to hear from you, whether it’s on our website Velociteach.com, social media, or your favorite podcast app. We would love to hear your feedback. It helps us keep inspiring and supporting project managers like you. And if you’ve got questions about our podcasts or project management certifications, we’re here to help.
So, we’re talking about empowerment today. Now, I have a quote about empowerment: “Empowering your team apparently is like giving them the TV remote. Sure, it’s scary at first; but eventually they’ll land on something good, probably.”
BILL YATES: Here’s another: “Leading empowered teams is great until they start having better ideas than you. Then it’s amazing and mildly humbling.”
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah, yeah, it is humbling when you realize actually, they’re smarter than me.
BILL YATES: Yup.
WENDY GROUNDS: But being a good leader is about empowerment, and today’s guest knows a thing or two about getting the job done. Kevin Torf is an IT powerhouse with over four decades of experience leading some of the world’s most complex IT infrastructure deployments, including some of the largest communication network systems. He has guided leading U.S. hospital systems as a trusted strategist, and he’s no stranger to entrepreneurship, having founded and sold several tech companies. He’s the co-founder and managing partner of T2 Group, where he introduced a hybrid agile methodology.
We are taking our conversation from his book which is called “Getting the Job Done.” And in this book, he spills his secrets to delivering topnotch results on time. If you’re leading a fast-moving tech project, or you’re managing a cross-functional team, this episode is going to be packed with insights to help you empower your team.
Kevin, welcome to Manage This. Thank you so much for joining us.
KEVIN TORF: No, thank you for inviting me. I’m excited given the opportunity and looking forward to the conversation.
Meet Kevin
WENDY GROUNDS: We are, too. And I have to tell our listeners I only discovered when we got on the call that you are a fellow South African. And so, we are so excited that we get to talk to you today.
BILL YATES: You guys are going to have inside jokes that you’ll say, and I’m like, what? What’s that?
WENDY GROUNDS: Probably not, but we may be able to break into another language here and there. So, we’re talking about empowerment. And I actually just want to first go back and ask you; how did you get into this line of work? What is your origin story?
KEVIN TORF: My father taught me when I was young, but more on the engineering technical side of things. So, I was fortunate enough to get into technology when I was a teenager, and it evolved. And one of the things I was fortunate enough to be able to do was be asked to help manage some larger scale type projects. And when I embarked on that, I really had to learn different ways of accomplishing what those objectives were. And slowly I built my own methods and processes and then went and studied a little bit more on the different methods that are available, optimized the way in which I’ve been able to execute on these initiatives, and built out a methodology that still today we practice.
Understanding Empowerment
WENDY GROUNDS: Today we want to talk a lot about empowerment. And let’s just first find out exactly how you define empowerment in the context of leading teams. Why is it so essential for project managers to really have a good grasp of empowerment?
KEVIN TORF: When I started running big projects several years ago, many years ago, it was all about dictating how things were going to be done. And I called it policing, and I was successful. You know, it works. Dictators in different countries also work. We might not like them, but they work. And I was successful. But I did learn over the years there are other ways of achieving those same objectives. And empowerment was giving the people that I worked with the ability to feel more accountable to themselves and being able to make their own decisions in the framework of what the goals and objectives were.
And it created a much better relationship, and we were more successful. I was able to get more people to collaborate. I was able to get people more motivated without forcing on them my wishes. And I referred to that as empowering, empowering people to become accountable and responsible for their own actions.
Pull vs. Push Approach
BILL YATES: You describe a pull, not a push approach, so a pull approach, as being more effective with teams, especially with projects, you know, to get buy-in and other things. Talk to us a bit about that.
KEVIN TORF: We’re so used to project managers or leaders, you know, telling people what’s expected of them, also telling them when they need certain things done by without really even understanding how much work is required to accomplish those efforts or that direction. I call that pushing a burden onto somebody where I’m telling you I want something done by next week without getting any input from you.
The pull approach is asking you how long something would take. We might get to the same answer, which is ideal because, if I need it in a week, and you tell me it’s going to take a week, now we have a marriage because now what I’ve done is I haven’t forced anything upon you. You’ve now made the commitment to me that you’re going to get something done within a week. Now you become more responsible.
So, this all ties into that empowerment about giving people the opportunity to really be part of that solution. So, yeah, I refer to that as the “pull versus the push.”
Encouraging Productivity
BILL YATES: Yeah. Some of the things that you’ve written on this topic, you talk about that leading to better productivity, which I think for some people it’s like, “Oh, no, but I’m the leader of this team. If I give up this authority, or I give up this power that I have and kind of make it more collaborative and put it in the hands of the team, I’m not really comfortable with that.” But your argument to that is there’s better productivity if you do. Talk a bit about those benefits.
KEVIN TORF: The way that I use as an example is I look at sports teams, about the fundamental difference between coaching, mentoring, versus leading. When you look at really good successful teams, they’re about getting the team to work better together, about everybody knowing their responsibility, where they play in their position, you know, regardless whether it’s football, basketball, baseball. And you’re really, you’re changing the term “leadership” in some ways more to coaching, mentoring, facilitating that understanding that everybody needs to be aware of.
And the more that you can get your team to understand those goals and objectives, where they can start becoming empowered again and collaborate better, they become a much better team.
You know, the best example is look at every successful sports team out there, and the ones that win the trophy and the championships at the end of the season are the ones that work better together. It’s not even about which are the best players. It’s the ones that were able to engage. And I do love sport. I bring it up very often.
And in my book, I use one example of an English football team called Leicester City, who probably had a payroll of, I forget back then, I think seven or eight years ago, maybe 30 million pounds compared to the big juggernauts like Man City Man United who have 300-400 million pounds. So, we’re talking a 10:1 ratio of differences. And they won the premiership league, and they didn’t win because they had the most talented players. They won because they worked well together.
Sustaining Empowerment
WENDY GROUNDS: Now, empowering your team is not just a one-time effort. You don’t say, “You’re empowered, off you go, do good work.” How can you sustain that to keep that energy going, to keep that culture throughout the lifecycle of a project? How can a project manager sustain that empowerment?
KEVIN TORF: The team’s got to feel that they can be successful. Success is an amazing antidote to anything. You know, we thrive on it. It’s what’s the best deal for a salesman. It’s the deal after the deal he’s just made. It changes your dynamic, your blood. I don’t know, all your insides change. They really do. And when the team can learn how to smell and see success, it’s motivating. And they will thrive on it because they will feel that they’re making great inroads. They’ve accomplished so much more, which will really drive them to even do things further.
So, it is a little bit more self-containing. As a coach, I do think you need to make sure the environment can sustain itself, and be a coach and a mentor and keep those distractions away that could influence that level of productivity.
So, there’s two parts to it. One is the team itself just growing and maturing. That Tuckman’s theory, you know, “We norm, we storm, we form.” And that evolves by itself. And then as a coach, you know, or in agile we refer to it as a scrum master, not a project manager, you need to be able to keep the distractions away and allow the team to evolve in that capacity.
Keep Things Simple
BILL YATES: Those are powerful. I really like those, Kevin. We talk about accentuating the positive. Sometimes throughout the life of a project the leader needs to accentuate the positive when the team’s facing a really hard stretch. It could be a three-week stretch of maybe overtime, or maybe difficult conversations with the customer. Maybe a technology has failed; or maybe a contractor, didn’t come through, you know, something didn’t work the way it was supposed to. So, it’s tough.
And back to your sports analogy, it’s like if it’s a competitive game, throughout the game you’re going to have ups and downs; right? And I think the good coach and the good project leader knows when to call that timeout or when to have that status meeting and say, “Hey guys, we’ve been here before. It wasn’t that bad.” Right? I know for me I can get my head so far into the details, that it’s hard for me to pull up and have that, you know, kind of that coaching moment of going, “Hey, guys, we’re going to be okay. Here’s where we are. This is a tough push, but we’ve been here before. We can overcome this. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
KEVIN TORF: Very much so. But there is a tip that I keep reminding myself of whenever I get into that predicament. And it’s obvious when I say it, but there is a way to do it. You know, the word “keep things simple” people practice all the time. But what does “keep things simple” mean in a project that’s going wrong or a tough situation? It means break down the effort into as small pieces as you possibly can.
Try not to think of the bigger picture. Try not to even understand why the bigger picture is failing. Now, it’s hard, put those blinders on like the horses use, try and not be distracted from all the other things going on and just focus enough on something small enough that you can be successful in doing. Because coming back to how we started the question, that success will build on more success.
BILL YATES: Yup.
KEVIN TORF: But you’ve got to be successful first. And the bigger you think of things, and the more complicated you make things, I’d call it the more likely you’re going to be wrong because we are, by nature, wrong in a lot of the things we do, especially when we’re predicting or projecting what’s going to happen. You know, we don’t have a crystal ball. We like to think we do, but we don’t.
So, the further out I want to try and guesstimate or predict what might happen, I keep telling people, the more likely I’m going to be wrong. So, bring that in. Do something quantitatively very small, you will be more successful doing that, and grow on that. And that will get you out of pretty much any jam you’re ever in, most of the time.
BILL YATES: Yeah. And it helps the team build momentum. You know, they build up those small successes, like you said, they start to stack on each other.
An Example from Walt Disney
WENDY GROUNDS: I want to talk about Walt Disney. You share in your book an example of Walt Disney, who practiced what you call a participatory leadership style. He provided a vision and allowed the team to find their own path. So how can we use that today? How can we inspire creativity, allow our team to find their path, but still be the leader of the project?
KEVIN TORF: It’s that coaching, but you’re now taking it to another level, and it’s more about bringing the vision. It’s establishing the goals and objectives. And, you know, Walt Disney, as we know today, the famous movies and the animations and everything they accomplished, they broke norms when they were evolving in the early stages. And he gets the credit for all of this. But there were great people behind him that he enabled to really be creative in their ways.
You know, a person that is probably as accomplished, which is more of our modern era, was Steve Jobs. You know, he built teams, and he empowered those teams to be able to be creative, and allowed them to be creative. And from that you got the phone that was developed today. It wasn’t one individual that came up with every one of those features and functions. I think we lose sight of that. We give too much credit to some of the leaders. The credit they deserve is not that they thought of all of these things. They enabled other people to be able to think of these other things. And that’s the credit they deserve more. And that’s what Walt Disney deserved.
Team-Led Timelines
BILL YATES: Kevin, one of the topics we want to talk about are team-led timelines, where the leader facilitates or gets input from the team, and the team really builds those deadlines themselves, which sounds very agile to me, very adaptive. To me, there’s that balance of, okay, I’m the team leader. I know we’ve looked at the overall schedule. We know when we need to deliver on these major components. So, I want to give freedom. I want to give creativity. I want to be hands-off with my team. However, I’ve still got to hit these milestones.
So, give some practical examples or advice as to how do we find that balance of letting the team really speak into and drive out commitments like a schedule versus, you know, being I don’t want to be that boss, that dictator saying, no, no, no, we have to do it by this date. So how do we get there?
KEVIN TORF: The challenge we all face is life is dictated by money. And money usually calls the shots regarding everything and anything we ultimately do. So, when an organization is going to execute on a large project, you know, some organizations think about maybe what it will entail and do some budgetary work; but many other organizations, they have a business driver and a business need. And they might be facing competition. They might be facing other factors that might influence their business.
I work a lot in healthcare, and there’s a lot of things happening. There could be a regulatory requirement. I have to have this done by the end of the year. I don’t have a choice. Not only that, I only have what I can afford, what’s in my pocket right now. You know, you’ve only got a fixed amount of money. So, you’ve got two constraints out of your three already predefined.
I have to have it done by the end of the year, otherwise I might suffer penalties. I only have, let’s just hypothetically say, a million dollars. And now I’m going to force a team to be given those constraints? Well, yes and no. Yes, there are those constraints, and they’re not going to change. But how you deal with the team doesn’t have to be forced on them like that.
Again, the push, pull, the empowerment. You break it down smaller. You start getting the team to buy into what you need. You know, you only have your three constraints. So, the only real driver that has any now flexibility is the scope. What can I do within that framework and time? Now, all you want to get from your team is if they’re working at their maximum capacity, and they only achieve Y, that’s all they could achieve. There was no more to achieve.
So, the level of confidence that you’ve got to have is, is your team working at its maximum capacity? And if it is, then within that framework and within their money, I’m going to achieve Y. And if the team can start understanding that, and then you can project that, and people start trusting that approach, you’ll get the buy-in that you need. And it’s when the team’s not performing well that then everybody’s going to sit back and question, well, you’re not meeting my timelines. You’re only giving me half of what I wanted. And the reason is you guys aren’t even at half the meetings, or you’re doing other things, or you’re doing other activities.
So, there’s elements. And it’s a complicated question because there’s multiple answers. But you’ve got to win the trust of your sponsors or your stakeholders. They’ve got to believe that you’re working in your best capacity. And then when you say, “I can only do this amount of work within that framework that you’ve established,” that there’s that mutual respect to work together. And this is when business and teams have to really be united.
Recognizing Disengagement
WENDY GROUNDS: I think that leads into another thing that you talk about, and that’s recognizing disengagement. Your team could be working not quite to their capacity, or not quite making the timelines, and it could be because people are becoming disengaged. What are some early signs that you can recognize disengagement within your team?
KEVIN TORF: I think when people start talking about themselves, and they stop talking about being a team. So, there’s actually a whole vocabulary that one can practice in working together. It’s trying to get the team members to stop talking about what they are doing. Stop talking about the “I,” that this is what I’ve done, this is my challenge, and talk about “we” as a team.
When you can bring that “we” into play, people are interesting. They now have a bigger obligation, and they don’t realize it. But it’s interesting. If you can tell a person, “I want you to do this,” and they fail at doing it, and they come back and you question, you know, “Well, why did you fail?” “Well, I tried my best; and, you know, it just didn’t work out. I failed.”
But that same conversation when you were in a team, and you take the leaders and the sponsors all out of it, and one member of the team isn’t performing, and it’s bringing down the whole team, all of a sudden that person feels much more obligated, even though it’s their peers. So how you notice this very quickly, it’s when people start talking about themselves, and they start talking about the issues they’re confronting, and they’re not talking in a united voice. You’ve got to get the “we” working together, and they’re going to come back down to sports teams again.
The goalie is only one position in a soccer or English football game. If he lets the ball in, well, is it his fault if he makes a mistake? The one would say, “Yes, it is.” No, it’s not. Someone kicked the ball first, so the defense failed because they allowed the other team to kick the ball. Then when the team starts realizing that every person on the field has a role, and when one of those individuals starts failing at their role, it impacts everybody else.
Kevin and Kyle
KYLE CROWE: John F Kennedy once said: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” Negotiating is such a fundamental skill that you use virtually every day. It plays a critical role in both the success of your career and your life outside of work.
KEVIN RONEY: I generally have a mindset that everything about a project is negotiable. However, my objective is not to win every negotiation but to achieve a mutually acceptable solution for both parties.
KYLE CROWE: Good preparation avoids being caught by surprise, so coming to the table with a solid plan will provide you with an essential background for effective negotiations. And, be patient, take your time to reach satisfactory agreement – you can’t rush this process.
KEVIN RONEY: Negotiating plays a critical role both in success of our careers and our lives outside of work. There’s a course we offer at Velociteach by Neal Whitten called ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE NEGOTIATION SKILLS. I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn some important tips to become an effective negotiator.
Dr. Chester Karrass said: “In business as in life, you don’t get what you deserve you get what you negotiate.”
Not Playing Favorites
BILL YATES: Kevin, one of the points that you made in your writing that really resonated with me was you said, “Okay, here’s a way that a leader can disengage or create disengagement, and it’s by assigning all the important tasks to just one person on the team.” So, it’s almost like, as a leader, I have to be careful that I’m not playing favorites or that I’m not saying, okay, these are my two or three team members out of the 10 that I can go to, I can count on. I’m going to assign the most important stuff to these team members. You know, it sounds good in terms of resources, but it creates disharmony and disengagement for those other team members.
I may have seven team members who go, “Hey, why is it that Bill always gets to do the fun stuff or do the presentations in front of the client or do the important stuff? Seems like we’re always clapping for Bill in the meetings. What about me? Why don’t you assign some of that to me and let me shine?” That to me was a very good point and advice to a project leader to be sure that you don’t fall into that trap.
KEVIN TORF: You’ve got to allow the team to grow. Any individual in the team that wants to be that “I” like we just discussed is actually being very selfish. They’re hurting the whole team. They are taking away the opportunity for some of the less experienced team members to be able to learn and grow. And when you’re in a team, and you can learn that, that’s when you get to that ultimate level of performance.
So, I use as an example in the book the Montessori system, where they put three age groups of kids together. And the rationale – and there are many reasons for it. But one of the rationales for that is that the younger kids will learn from the older kids by watching them and seeing how they do things. The older kids will learn from the younger kids because of the questions those younger kids ask each other. The middle age group will get a bit of everything.
And the Montessori system works extremely well. Kids that do come out of those programs do have a level of more maturity, and they grow because they’ve learned to work with people together.
Teams in the context of what we’re discussing are no different. There’s always going to be someone with more experience than somebody else. I think we’ve got to try and promote the team in such a way that the person with the most experience is not the one that just should grab and do everything. They need to become the mentor and help the rest of the team grow.
And again, it comes down to the team winning because you’re only going to win when everybody’s playing. Well, one of the forms of agile is agile scrum. And the scrum comes from the term of a rugby scrum. And now we can go back to our South African roots, greatest rugby team in the world; you know?
WENDY GROUNDS: Of course. Of course.
KEVIN TORF: If you understand the rules of a scrum, it’s about the team working together to exert the same equal force. When the team doesn’t exert the same equal force, the scrum will move or collapse. And that’s actually a penalty to the other team, the team that caused the scrum to collapse or move. So, it’s the same in business. If you’re not working all together, you’re going to fail. And it’s because you’re not working in a united way. And in the scrum, each person has their own responsibility. And I know they’re all big and bulky, but force is not the only attribute that wins that scrum. It’s about knowing how to strategically be together and united.
Asking for Help is Not a Weakness
WENDY GROUNDS: Very good points. Also, within the team, when you’re talking about the Montessori students and just working together, and the older ones and the younger ones. And I’m sure you’ll find the younger ones are willing to ask for help when they need it. Now, we need to carry that over into regular project teams where people are not afraid to ask for help. I think sometimes it’s seen as a weakness rather than a strength when you’re asking for help on something. Can you talk a little bit about that? And do you have any examples of a leader who has modeled this well?
KEVIN TORF: A leader that’s modeled this well is the leader that doesn’t participate in that conversation. People behave differently…
BILL YATES: Yeah.
KEVIN TORF: …when they have that oversight. You will conduct yourself very differently and having a conversation with me, where if one of your superiors were watching the conversation. And a leader needs to know when to get out of the situation, to be a leader, because they need to allow the team to grow, and they’re not going to grow if everything they’re doing is being scrutinized.
So, the best advice I can give a leader is be a leader. Get out of it. Let your team grow. Let your team empower. Let’s get back to the first words we used at the beginning of the podcast. Empower the team to actually fail even, if necessary, and let them learn from that failure because that’s how we mostly in life learn from anything we do. We fail at it, and then we, you know, have a retrospective; or we analyze why we failed, and we grow.
But if there’s a leader that’s preventing that and changing the dynamics of how the individuals on the team engage, they’re actually being detrimental to the overall goal and objective of, you know, letting their team mature correctly.
Lessons Learned from Mistakes
BILL YATES: Another sports analogy that you gave that really resonated with me was in terms of failure. Failure is natural with sports. And those teams that are the best, they learn, you know, they do the lessons learned. They look back at the tape. They call timeouts during the middle of a project, during the middle of a game and say, “Okay, we’re not doing well. How do we adjust?”
Then you gave the example of Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan is – I consider him the GOAT for the NBA for basketball. You know, there’s a lot of fun commercials and all playing off of the GOAT, the Greatest of All Time analogy. But Michael Jordan, he lost over 300 games in the NBA. He lost a lot. But he also is 6-0 in NBA championships. So, he learned how to win.
What I love, too, is the idea of having a team leader who recognizes the influence they have with the team and knows, to your point, when to be a part of a conversation and when to set it up for other people to deal with it, and to step out of the room, not be a part of the meeting. “You guys meet separately on this later and just, you know, give me an update later in the week. I don’t need to know it right now. I trust you guys. You’re smart. You’ll figure it out. Go do what you do.”
KEVIN TORF: So, I’m very territorial. So, I live in California, so the GOAT is Kobe Bryant. You know, so I just want to put that on the record just like, in South Africa, we’re the greatest rugby team in the world.
BILL YATES: Yes.
KEVIN TORF: The All Blacks and the Aussies, they really are second to where we are as a team. So, I just wanted to make that slight correction.
BILL YATES: Yeah, I respectfully note your position.
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah, I’m going to have to wave the Michael flag. My daughter was a Tar Heel. So, yeah.
KEVIN TORF: There we go.
WENDY GROUNDS: We’re going to have to disagree on that one, but we got you with the rugby.
KEVIN TORF: Excellent. Good, good, good. You’re hearing me, and you’re listening.
BILL YATES: Yes.
KEVIN TORF: Great. Now the question really is, yes, learning. We learn by mistakes. But we also learn by the people helping us. You know, the Kobes and the Michaels weren’t successful by themselves. Although most people think they were, they weren’t. They had a team working around them. The team might have optimized their talents and their strengths because they were very talented. But they still had the support of the team working together to allow them to be as successful as they were. And they learned from their mistakes.
And you’re right. The whole governance of coaching, you know, what does a coach do on the sidelines? You know, there’s multiple things they do. They’re reminding the team to do the things they practiced because hopefully they were practicing. They’re reminding the teams strategically what they might have done prior to the game is look at what they’ve challenged against and how that team’s performing.
And, you know, I can relate these all to business. How’s the business going? How’s the market going? The market’s tanking right now. Stock market’s down. What do we do? How do we react? What do we change? How do we change our behavior? In a team it’s no different, whether I’m playing basketball or I’m building a project that, you know, I’m moving a large data center or implementing a new application. You’re going to be dealing with all of these challenges all the time, and you need to adjust, which comes back to, you know, that whole theme about keep things simple.
If I can really focus and reduce the amount of time that I’m focusing on a small effort, even if it’s wrong, the implication is minimal because I didn’t spend six months and then realize I was going down the wrong road. I spent one week and said, “This is the wrong road.” And I make those changes, and I adapt all the time. And that’s how the Michaels and the Kobes became the greatest basketball players.
Protection from Burnout
BILL YATES: Kevin, a follow-up question. Along the lines of burnout, let’s say, you know, I have 10 team members; and maybe eight of those team members seem to be pretty healthy in terms of balancing work and life. But I’ve got two members of my team that, no matter how stressful the project is, you know, whether things are going pretty even keel right now, or we’re at a bigger push, or even, you know, an easier time, they always seem to have their plate full.
I mean, it’s not like they’re crying wolf. They’re busy doing things. They’re not over allocated. When they’re providing 100% to the team, it always comes across like 150%. It’s like, “Oh, why did you have to take that home last night? Why were you here first thing this morning, working on this two hours ahead of everyone else? How can I protect you from burnout?” What advice do you have for a leader in those situations?
KEVIN TORF: Well, I’m probably going to look at you for advice because I burn the candle at both ends all the time. So, I need help.
BILL YATES: Okay, look in the mirror and speak to yourself.
KEVIN TORF: It’s a challenge. You know, it does come down to personality, and it comes down to some individuals. And it’s self-inflicting. I cause all the problems myself. I really do. I take on more than I should, but that’s who I am. I don’t think I’m ever going to change. What I need to learn and respect is, when I’m working with a team, how that impacts the team. And I’ve got better. And it comes down to that team working well together and, you know, trying to not be distracted. But it’s hard to change sometimes who we are and some of the things we do. And this question I think was designed for me, unfortunately.
BILL YATES: This just turned into an intervention.
KEVIN TORF: Well, there we go. No, well, I’m very passionate. I enjoy what I do, and I love doing things. I don’t think I can change. Put it this way. After all these years, I haven’t changed yet.
BILL YATES: Ah, yes.
KEVIN TORF: So, let’s – let’s just assume there’s going to be no great miracles coming my way.
BILL YATES: No, this honest conversation is perfect. I mean, I think for some leaders, that’s what they need to realize is, okay, some people are just wired that way. So have open and honest and probably ongoing conversations with those team members to make sure they’re still in a good place.
KEVIN TORF: Yeah, no, you know, the thing is, if it’s working, don’t break what works.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
KEVIN TORF: If it’s not working, then that person’s got to realize that all the other projects or where they’ve engaged is causing the team to fail. That’s part of their coaching experience. But if the team’s doing well, and they’re doing well, and they’re burning the candle on both ends like I do, you know, let me be. Let me do my – let me do what I do. One of the things about good project management which we didn’t discuss today, and we can have a whole podcast on that, is transparency. You know, that’s what allows the teams to evolve, to allow them to be empowered. They’ve got to be truthful to each other, and they’ve got to be transparent.
Getting the Job Done
WENDY GROUNDS: I think it’s a perfect segue for you to tell us a little bit about your book: Getting the Job Done. Can you just describe your book to us and tell the audience how it can help them?
KEVIN TORF: I looked at what has allowed me to do the things that I’ve done. And I do have regrets. Not many. But, you know, I wanted to study more than I did, and be more academic in the things I’ve accomplished and done. But I didn’t. And, you know, life took me down this road. So I was, you know, forced to learn a lot of these things through failure, like we spoke about, and find ways to adapt and evolve and pivot. And there was always something that I just clung onto. It doesn’t matter what struggles I had, or the challenges I faced, or the situation. You were only measured on what you get done.
BILL YATES: Mm-hmm.
KEVIN TORF: You know, and no one else cares about the effort. And I think someone else told me back years ago, when you go to the grocery store, and you’re paying for your groceries, and they ask for your $10 or $20, and you say, “Well, I don’t have the $20. But let me tell you all the great things I’ve done in my life and all the wonderful people I’ve helped.” And the person says, “I still need the $20, sir.” Or ma’am. And it just taught me that, at the end of the day, if I’m responsible for building a project or executing on a project, there’s only one measurement that counts. It’s like the team winning the game. It might not be pretty, but did I win? And getting the job done is by far the most important.
And, you know, now the question is, how do you make it pleasant in getting the job done? How do you help yourself in getting the job done? Because most of the time, you’re your own worst enemy, so you shoot yourself in the foot. How do you prevent that? But again, the goal, the winning the championship is getting the job done.
BILL YATES: That’s powerful.
Find Out More
WENDY GROUNDS: Would you tell our audience where they can find out more about what you do? If they want to connect with you, if they have any questions, where should they go?
KEVIN TORF: My name is Kevin Torf. I’m fortunate enough to run a company called the T2 Group. That is a company that focuses on building large and executing on large projects. They can go to my website. If anyone wants to engage, they’re more than welcome to. And probably the easiest and best way is send me a LinkedIn message, or my email is pretty much available, as well: kevin.torf@t2group.us.
BILL YATES: This has been fantastic. It’s incredibly helpful to me to speak to someone who has an engineering background, a tech background, and has learned through good and bad how to make teams better. We’re all about project success. So, the advice that you’ve shared today and your transparency is super helpful. Thank you for your time, and thank you for sharing your advice and tips with us today.
KEVIN TORF: No, I think the thanks goes to both of you for reading my book, first of all – so that’s one more person – and having those questions and making this a very informal but very formative conversation. I look at more of this now on the practical side of things. It’s, you know, how to take all of the tips and advice and put it into practice. And, you know, sometimes that requires a lot of massaging to get it to be where it needs to go. So, your questions reflect a lot of that. They’re just more very practical about how you take something and make it work.
Closing
WENDY GROUNDS: That’s it for us here on Manage This. Thank you for joining us. You can visit us at Velociteach.com, where you can subscribe to this podcast and see a complete transcript of the show.
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Graphic Photo by Jeffrey F Lin on Unsplash
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