Transform your project teams into high-performance delivery engines! In this episode, we talk with Laura Barnard, author of The IMPACT Engine, who shares her powerful framework for transforming project teams into top-performing teams. Listen in to learn Laura’s insights on creating low-stress, high-impact success in project management, building trust, and adopting valuable strategies for driving successful change and avoiding common project management pitfalls.
Chapters
00:00 … Intro
02:31 … Meet Laura
05:36 … The IMPACT Engine
09:23 … Having the Right Mindset
13:02 … Leading with Patience
15:20 … Setting the Pace for the Project
18:31 … Changing the “Haters”
19:58 … The “Can of Sean”
23:31 … Kevin and Kyle
24:33 … “Give Them What They Want”
28:29 … The One-on-One Interview
33:00 … The Five Why Technique
37:48 … Common Mistakes with PM and PMO Integration
43:58 … Connect with Laura
46:13 … Closing
Intro
LAURA BARNARD: People do change all the time. What happens, though, is that we forget that the reason those changes are successful, usually, is because they are self-driven. Right? People feel they want autonomy, they want freedom, they want control over their lives. And so, what happens is we say, “Oh, well, those people are resistant to change.” No, buddy. You’re just shoving change at them and doingchange to them instead of bringing them with you to the process.
WENDY GROUNDS: Hello, and welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. I am Wendy Grounds, and in the studio is our project management expert, Bill Yates. If you’re enjoying the show we’d love to hear from you. If it’s on our website Velociteach.com, on social media, or your favorite podcast app, your feedback 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.
Today’s episode, we have a powerhouse guest lined up for you. This is Laura Barnard, the author of “The IMPACT Engine.” She’s been at the forefront of integrating PMOs and project management into organizational strategy for nearly 30 years. She founded her first PMO in 1999 and has spent nearly three decades driving strategy delivery and sustainable change for global giants. Through her company, PMO Strategies, she’s helped organizations unlock the full potential of project management. Laura is actually a good friend of Kendall Lott, and he’s someone we had on our podcast a long time ago, Episode 79.
BILL YATES: Seventy-nine.
WENDY GROUNDS: Seventy-nine, yeah. We had Kendall Lott and Selena Buchanan on our podcast, and they were talking about project management design volunteering, which was really a very interesting episode.
BILL YATES: Yes, it was. Time flies. I can’t believe it’s that long ago.
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah, it was 2019, mm-hmm.
BILL YATES: Yeah. The book that we’re going to talk about with Laura, she actually mentioned, she makes a few references to Kendall and some of the work that the three of them have done together. This book is called “The Impact Engine,” and I’ve got to tell you, I enjoyed reading that book. I thought the one pen I was using was going to run out of ink because I kept underlining, making comments in the side. So, I look forward to being able to talk through some of these key ideas with Laura in this conversation. I can’t wait to dive into this.
Meet Laura
WENDY GROUNDS: Hi, Laura. Welcome to Manage This. We’re so thankful that you’re here, and you’re joining us today. We’ve been wanting to talk to you for a long time, so thank you for being here today.
LAURA BARNARD: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It’s such an honor to share some interesting insights with your audience.
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah. No, we’re looking forward to getting into talking more about your book. But let’s find out a little bit about you. You’ve spent, gosh, three decades, I think it is you said, from small nonprofit organizations to global Fortune 500s, just helping them integrate PMOs and project management into their strategy. Now, what has been your inspiration? What’s your why behind what you do?
LAURA BARNARD: Well, it’s funny because it didn’t start really with, “Oh, I want to be in project management.” Right? Because three decades ago there wasn’t really a whole lot out there, at least not that I knew of, around project management and PMOs. Sure, people were trying to deliver on their strategy, and they had ways to do it. And yes, there was project management out there. But I was actually a computer science geek, also kind of by accident. I got a computer science degree from Virginia Tech, and I was one of only four women in my graduating class.
However, I noticed really quickly two things. One, I loved really big scary change; and, two, I was a translator, meaning I could talk the tech speak, but I could also translate for the business so that they could have conversations together, and was usually the one that went and grabbed the whiteboard marker and would run up to the whiteboard and say, “Okay, let’s figure out how we’re going to solve this problem.” And I know that many of the people in your audience are that same way. We’re the ones that grab the whiteboard marker. And apparently there’s a whole career in that called project management; right?
BILL YATES: Translator is such a good way to put that. I like that.
LAURA BARNARD: Yeah, well, then, you know, you can go into a room of people and say, “Okay, who here grabs the whiteboard marker and runs the whiteboard?” You know who your project managers are; right? We’re the ones that want to get it done. We love, you know, bringing people together to solve big problems. And I was really fortunate early in my career to be a part of leading-edge and bleeding-edge technology and business and transformation initiatives. And that’s what I fell in love with was helping people solve big problems. So, once I did that and found out, “Oh, project managers do that,” then it was an easy, natural transition there.
And then in 1999 I got the chance to build my first PMO. 1999. I had no idea what I was doing. None at all. So, I had to learn a lot of things the hard way. And then as I would learn, “Oh, don’t do it this way. Do it that way. Oh, that’s why your stakeholders are running in the other direction when you talk templates and process.” Right? So, I started to learn that there were better ways to do it, and then realized that I could help others. Again, going back to the theme of what I really love is helping people do big things, and this was my path to do that. So, I did it inside organizations for 15 years, then started doing it with my own company 11 years ago. And I’ve just been having a blast ever since.
WENDY GROUNDS: And now you’ve written a book. Congratulations on your book.
LAURA BARNARD: Thank you.
The IMPACT Engine
WENDY GROUNDS: It’s a very impressive book. It’s called “The IMPACT Engine,” and it outlines a system for evolving stagnant project teams into high-performance delivery engines. Can you give us a very broad overview of “The IMPACT Engine” and how it works?
LAURA BARNARD: Sure, absolutely. So, what happened was, along the way, learning all of these mistakes and what I could learn from them, the lessons learned from that process, the tried-and-true, “Okay, if I do this, it always works; if I do this, my executives run in the other direction,” I wanted to take all of those lessons learned and share them with other people. So actually Kendall, my dear friend who I reference in the book, said to me, gosh, probably a decade ago, “You need to figure out how to explain to people what you do because you do it so naturally now.”
One example was when we started the Project Management Day of Service and ran this big event with a bunch of volunteers that I talk about in the book, I had a way that I did it. And he said, “You need to figure out how to explain that to other people.”
And it turns out what I was now taking for granted was stuff that a lot of people didn’t know. So, I turned that into this framework that takes you step by step by step of building or elevating or even rescuing a PMO or a transformation team. Well, we call that kind of impact engine the operating model for your organization that drives strategy delivery. And so, I organized that into well, what do I do? Where do I start? What do we want to make sure we don’t skip? And what is that step by step process? So, we did that in our organization with the clients we served, built a training and implementation program that students and clients have been using all over the world for years and years now.
Then finally, and I hate to admit it, but I started talking about writing a book a decade ago. And I know it was a decade ago because one of my best friends I also talk about in the book, Mike Hannan, had his 10-year book birthday the same month my book hit the market. We had talked about writing them at the same time. And I was like, “Oh, that’s embarrassing.”
But 10 years later, I actually got the book, you know, out there in the world so that I could get it into everyone’s hands and give them the really important step-by-step process of delivering organizational strategy and capabilities, whether it’s for internal customers or external customers, in a way that makes it easy and step by step and gives people the encouragement and the guidance to keep going and do the hard work.
But maybe it doesn’t have to be so hard, if you can skip all of the mistakes that I had to learn mostly the hard way; right? Let me give you fewer battle scars and just get you to the right answer and explain why that typical advice you’ve been getting from Googling your way to a PMO, for example, just doesn’t work.
BILL YATES: Yeah. The book is fantastic. Kudos on the book.
LAURA BARNARD: Thank you.
BILL YATES: There are so many elements to the book. I’ve got the physical copy, so I’m not looking at a Kindle version or anything. It’s beautiful.
LAURA BARNARD: Thank you.
BILL YATES: It’s purple, which is my sister’s favorite color. So, I grew up with purple; and, you know, I have a very strong association to the purple in the book. I like it.
LAURA BARNARD: Thank you. There’s so much of it because obviously it’s my favorite color, too.
BILL YATES: Okay.
LAURA BARNARD: Always has been; right?
BILL YATES: Yup.
LAURA BARNARD: You know, when I wrote this book, I was very particular about the publisher I would go with because I was like, it’s going to be purple. It is going to look this way. It is going to have these colors. It’s going to say these things. It’s going to use this quality of paper. And I have to be able to explain the impact engine system the way it exists and works. I didn’t want to work with a publisher that was going to be like, let’s make it eight steps, or four steps. Nope. This is what’s worked.
And I know it works. And if I’m going to make a promise to the reader, I have to be able to back it up. We’ve got a decade of experience with clients and students doing it. And of course, then all of my lessons learned from before that.
Having the Right Mindset
BILL YATES: One of the things that you hit on early in the book is the concept of a mindset, the right mindset. There is a thread woven throughout the book that I appreciate so much, which is the proper mindset for change and change management. You know, we talk about all the time projects are all about change. And just for that single statement, that makes projects difficult. It makes leading in projects more difficult. When you talk about change management, you take such a practical and healthy approach to that. And I love it. I want to quote you from the book. You say, “People don’t resist change. They resist having change done to them.”
LAURA BARNARD: Mm-hmm, yeah.
BILL YATES: Which I thought was so refreshing and such a good way to look at that for project managers who are having to lead these initiatives that are bringing about change. So, talk further about that mindset.
LAURA BARNARD: Yeah, for sure. So, what happens for a lot of people is that they get so busy focused on the change they’re trying to make that they forget that it’s actually all about the people. And if you want change to happen, you have to shift your focus from the thing you’re creating or the project that you’re doing to the people that are actually responsible for driving the results of that project, not just the people that the work is going to happen to, but the people that are part of the project itself. And so, what happens is a lot of people get so busy focused on all of the what we’re doing, they forget to connect people back to the why, and they start forcing the change on people, assuming that people understand what that change is all about and why it’s important to them.
So, what I often find when I go and speak on stages, and I’ll have hundreds and hundreds, thousands of people in front of me, and I’ll say, “Raise your hand if the people in your organization are resistant to change.” What do you think happens? All the hands go up; right? So, all the hands go up and everyone says, “Oh, especially in my organization.” And then I say, “Okay, well, put your hand down if you’ve ever met anyone that’s gotten married.” Right? And then everyone looks, laughs, hands go down. I said, “On purpose.” And then I say, “Okay, or had children on purpose.” Right?
So, we do change to ourselves all the time. Hobbies, change jobs, buy a new car, move to a new city. People do change all the time. What happens, though, is that we forget that the reason those changes are successful, usually, is because they are self-driven. Right? People feel they want autonomy, they want freedom, they want control over their lives. And so, what happens is we say, “Oh, well, those people are resistant to change.” No, buddy. You’re just shoving change at them and doing change to them instead of bringing them with you to the process.
So, if you remember, and keep the core mindset that people love change when they’re in control of it, when they’re a part of it, and they understand why it’s so important. So, if you can go back, stand beside them, hold their hand and say, “I’ve got you,” and take them on a journey of change that connects what they care about, you know – we know the term WIIFM, what’s in it for me; right?
If you know they’re WIIFM, what they care about, and can connect what you’re doing to that, which we teach you to do in the book, then you’re able to bring them on a journey with you through change, put them in the driver’s seat instead of you always driving, and let them be a part of it and getting those outcomes. You’ll get there faster, you’ll get better results, and you are all set with shifting the whole focus and hitting that resistance. If resistance is happening, that’s on you, not them.
Leading with Patience
BILL YATES: Yeah, that is such a key statement and kind of the follow-up question that I had related to this. You talked about the great need for patience when it comes to that leader; okay? I’m leading this initiative, which probably means I know more about it than just about any other person.
LAURA BARNARD: Yeah, right.
BILL YATES: So, I have probably gone way down the path further in terms of what the change is going to look like, what the future state is going to look like, what success looks like, all of that. I’m, like, months and months into a book that people are just starting to pick up and read; you know?
LAURA BARNARD: You got it, yeah.
BILL YATES: So, you talk about the need for patience in the leader, and the leader going through this initiative needs to only lead at the pace that those who are being impacted by the change can follow. So, in other words, I’ve got to pick up on their receptiveness and how they’re doing in the journey, and not go too fast or I’m going to lose people. Thought that was a great point you made. Talk a bit more about that.
LAURA BARNARD: So, I have a confession to make. I am incredibly impatient. I was impatient when I was a kid. I’ve been impatient my whole career. And the reason is because I get excited about the future state; right? I get excited about where we’re going, and I can see it. And I remember decades ago now, back when I was in more of a technology focus, starting to find my way in being able to be the business translator. So, I’d be in those rooms, grabbing the whiteboard marker. And I would say, “Oh, well, obviously this is the answer. Let’s go here. We’re going to do this, and this is going to happen.”
And a manager came up to me, I’ll never forget, his name was Andy. And he said, “Laura, imagine you’re going through the alphabet.” Like you were talking about with the book; right? “You know, imagine you’re going through the alphabet. You’re all the way down at Q, and we’re back up here at C, and we have no idea how you got there. So, you’ve got to take us one step at a time, one letter at a time, and bring us with you through the process.”
And so, what I realized is that my excitement and passion about where I wanted to go needed to be tempered with, okay, they don’t see what I see yet. And project managers, I think, are natural future predictors; right? We see the future, we plan for the future, and we’re all about the future. I needed to stay in the present and stay with them and meet them where they are so that I could take them on that journey and connect with them and what they care about today.
Setting the Pace for the Project
BILL YATES: Yeah, that’s fantastic. And again, I’m going to quote you back at you because I thought it was such a good statement.
LAURA BARNARD: Okay.
BILL YATES: “Do the change with people instead of to people.” There again, it’s back to that mindset, and it respects the proper pace, which yeah, I’m with you. I get impatient. I thought this was such a strong reminder for project managers. What are some signs when you’re going too fast as a project leader, what are some signs that, okay, whoa, I need to slow down?
LAURA BARNARD: So, I think there’s a lot of things. One, it’s when you see this resistance, or we talk about a fun way to organize the people in your stakeholder groups into fun categories. We call it the lovers, the haters, and the just don’t cares. And everybody focuses on the lovers; right? They are early advocates, your champions for change. They get it. And they see the future.
But then you’ve got the haters, and everyone tries to avoid them. Like a lot of people don’t like the conflict. But I say hug your haters, baby, because those are the folks that you know who they are because they’re talking to you. You know that they are not happy with what you’re doing. And so, if you’re going too fast, and you hear people saying “That’s never going to work” or “That’s not going to happen,” stop and listen because you know what they’re going to tell you if you really ask the right questions is all the possible things that could happen with your project that could derail your success. And you know what we call that in project management? A risk register; right?
BILL YATES: Yeah, mm-hmm.
LAURA BARNARD: We want to know all the things that could go wrong. And then I like to give them the whiteboard marker and say, what would you do if you had to fix this? And you start to get that engagement and support. But you at least know that they’re interested in problem-solving with you because they’re so busy complaining. They want their voice heard; right?
BILL YATES: Yeah, yeah.
LAURA BARNARD: There’s another way that people react when you’re going too fast, and that is act like you don’t exist. The just don’t cares; right? And so, they’re the ones avoiding you. They’re the ones that won’t engage. They’re the ones that are like, oh, I don’t know why I should even bother. That’s a sign that you haven’t slowed down to bring them with you through the change process. You’re doing it to them. So that’s another form of resistance that you have to be very focused on because those are the ones that can derail your success completely because they’re acting like you don’t exist, and what you’re doing doesn’t matter. And especially if you need them to care. Like, if this is a sponsor, you’re in big trouble; right?
BILL YATES: Mm-hmm.
LAURA BARNARD: So, these are the signs that people don’t normally look for. They avoid the people that are the haters, and they ignore the people that are ignoring them. Those are actually signs of resistance that, if they should care, and they don’t, we’ve got a problem that we need to focus on. So that’s just a way that we like to kind of meet all of our stakeholders where they are.
And that’s usually a hint that you’re going too fast is that you haven’t brought them with you. They don’t see the picture you see. They’re all the way back up at C, and you’re down at Q, and you’ve got to make sure you slow down. And that’s hard for impact drivers – that’s what we call our community – because we are the ones that want to make change happen, and we get so excited about it. But sometimes as an impact driver you have to get in the passenger seat and simply navigate instead of always driving.
Changing the “Haters”
BILL YATES: Yeah. One of the points that you made in the book, Laura, was those haters.
LAURA BARNARD: Yeah.
BILL YATES: Once you get those flipped over to the lover category…
LAURA BARNARD: Yup.
BILL YATES: …they can become your strongest champions.
LAURA BARNARD: Oh, absolutely. You know, so here’s the secret, though, with those. You don’t just give them the whiteboard marker and say, “How would you solve this?” and have them build your risk register. And you implement their suggestions and give them all the credit; right? That’s the important part. You have to give them all the credit because then you can say, “Well, Joe’s great idea that we implemented, aren’t you so happy Joe was so supportive of this, and Joe is getting all the credit?” And Joe’s like, “Yeah, that was my idea.” You know; right? So, then they have no choice to become in the lover category because remember they were vocal before because you knew who they were.
So, if you can take the strength of them being vocal, having a voice, and maybe influence and turn that around to your advantage, you can go so much further. But it requires patience, which I know is hard for us. And it requires really investing in the people. A lot of people, you know, project people are so busy. I’m so sick of hearing how busy people are; right? Busy does not equal productive. In fact, busy gets in the way of results and productivity. So, if we can slow down and make that investment – we always tell everyone else to plan before they do. Well, we’ve got to do the same.
BILL YATES: That’s true. That’s true.
LAURA BARNARD: Plan our strategy for taking care of the people, and the rest will fall in place.
The “Can of Sean”
BILL YATES: Before we leave this topic, there was one – there was a section, I think it was back towards the end of the book, where you talk about a character, I don’t know if it’s actual name or not, Sean.
LAURA BARNARD: Yeah. That’s his actual name.
BILL YATES: Okay.
LAURA BARNARD: Yeah.
BILL YATES: Sean is a bit of a sensei. So, this was your specialist, you know.
LAURA BARNARD: Yeah.
BILL YATES: It’s like in case of emergency you would open up the can of Sean. You would send Sean out there.
LAURA BARNARD: That’s a really – I have to make sure he hears that about him because that is hilarious, and so true. It’s like when you need the emergency, you pull out the can of Sean. That’s great.
BILL YATES: Can of Sean. Sean had a unique ability. He would not lean too heavy into process with people early in the project or in the initiative. In other words, he was doing what he needed to do, but he was listening and replying back to those involved in the project or in the initiative in the language and the speed that they could take at that moment. It’s like he was able to just work his way through apparently very difficult initiatives to get there. Tell us some of the secrets to his success.
LAURA BARNARD: Uh-huh. Well, I think that simply he made it about the people. He would not just shove a bunch of templates and process at people. He wasn’t saying, well, we’re following this step in the EPMO methodology; right? And he didn’t lead with the geeking out on the PM stuff. He just said, okay, well, the next logical step is to figure out what success looks like. You know, let’s figure out what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and what success looks like, a.k.a. a business case
Okay, well, let’s lay the work out on the schedule to make sure everybody knows what’s happening and when. Okay, we’re building a plan. But he just used plain language, and he made it their idea. And he would say, hey, where do you think we should go next with this? Or what do you think the best way would be to do this? And would just kind of guide them to the right answer without shoving the right answer in their face or shoving templates at them.
And it was just cool to see because he always kept them in the driver’s seat. Because, by the way, I can think of a particular situation where they were so anti-process, we could barely get Sean in there to work with them because they were so afraid that the PMO was going to slow them down. And I had been in there trying to rebrand.
He was a perfect example of, okay, you’ve got to go work with the naysayers, the haters, and weave your way into, you know, helping them solve this problem. And they were wildly successful. But what the cool thing is that when he revealed that they were, you know, oh, you’ve been following the EPMO process all along, they all kind of laughed. It was like, oh, that’s so funny. We didn’t even notice. Because they were so busy patting themselves on the back for such a great job, they’d done that they had no idea.
And he would call it a Jedi mind trick. He’s like, I’m pulling a Jedi mind trick on all of you. You didn’t realize it, ha ha, but you’ve been following our process all along. It was just so fun to see. And I worked with him in multiple companies and have stayed friends with him to this day and asked for advice and guidance. And when I asked for his permission to use this story in the book, he said, “Yeah, absolutely. But don’t give away all my secrets.” I’m like, too bad.
I actually spend so much of my time now coaching our mastermind students. We have this mastermind called the Impact Accelerator Mastermind. I spend so much time trying to turn everyone in there into this Sean that knows how to do the mind tricks necessary to make it about the people, bring them on the journey, and not shove all of our PM speak at them. And it just is so much more effective and gets the leaders a seat at the table so much faster.
BILL YATES: Yeah, that’s great.
Kevin and Kyle
KYLE CROWE: Do you want to become a better project manager? What are some project management best practices? For example, since all project work gets done through people, project managers need to be good at working with others. Also, a good project manager should be able to eliminate any obstacles that can keep a project from going rogue, and to advance the project forward.
KEVIN RONEY: Many project managers are good at planning. They can create excellent project charters, Work Breakdown Structures, communication plans, and the like. But, when it comes to executing the plan, they sit back and leave it up to the team members to carry out the work by themselves. That won’t work! A good project manager remains involved and engaged to drive the project forward.
KYLE CROWE: To plan, execute, test, and implement a project requires vigilant oversight. It’s also wise to recognize the stress that arises from change, uncertainty, and risk events.
KEVIN RONEY: We have help available! Look no further than Velociteach highly acclaimed course: Best Practices in Project Management. In this practical course, you will learn how to leverage knowledge and experience of seasoned project managers. Packed with tips, tricks and practical techniques, this course delivers help and sound advice to you. Go to our website to check it out.
“Give Them What They Want”
BILL YATES: Laura, I want to jump into this. It’s one of the mantras that you had in the book that I really love. And it goes like this. “Give them what they want before you give them what they need.”
LAURA BARNARD: Mmm.
BILL YATES: Talk a bit about that key strategy because I felt like that was so impactful for those of us project managers that are out there that are like, oh, but we’ve got to use all my templates. I’ve got to get that risk register out in front of my project stakeholders and have them start giving me input, or I need to fill out the charter. You know, we can just overwhelm people with information sometimes, and we’re not really listening or giving them what they need.
LAURA BARNARD: Mm-hmm. So, when I first started building PMOs back in the ‘90s, like I said, I had no idea what I was doing. I couldn’t just Google my way to a PMO like you can today and get eight million results. And the problem is today you can get eight million results; right?
BILL YATES: Yeah, right.
LAURA BARNARD: So, I learned a lot of lessons, though, over time in those early years. I finally learned it was called a PMO or like a strategy delivery team or transformation team. And I started searching for classes and books and all these things, like this is what you should do. So over time, after I had a few PMOs under my belt, I said, okay, I know what to do. So, when I go into a new company, I will immediately know exactly what to do, what medicine they need to take; right?
Well, the problem is that that’s when I started hitting resistance is when I would go in and say, “Oh, I got this. I know what you need. I know what your problems are.” After just doing a quick survey of the organization and what I saw the problems as, I would then start implementing what I thought they needed. The problem with that is if your stakeholders – and this applies to projects, building a delivery team, PMO, it doesn’t matter. If your stakeholders don’t get why that is important, then they’re going to resist it. They’re going to say, “I don’t need that.”
Imagine all of the times you’ve heard stakeholders say, oh, we don’t work with the PMO, or we don’t do project management because we don’t do this or we don’t do that. Or we don’t need all of that administration or overhead or box checking or all of that stuff that we hear. The reason is because we’re coming in saying, “Oh, I know what you need.”
And the stakeholders don’t know how to connect that risk register with better business outcomes. But what I can tell you is that, when I talk to C-suite executives, when I talk to business stakeholders, when I talk to people that are on projects or customers of projects, they do know one thing, and that is what they want.
BILL YATES: Yes.
LAURA BARNARD: Right? They know the business problem they’re trying to solve. You’re the expert on how to get them there. But if you keep shoving all your expertise at them and all of your templates and tools at them, they’re going to say, wait, I don’t want that. I just want better results. Every CEO I talk to says, “I am being asked to make decisions all day, every day, and nobody’s giving me the information I need to do so.” But if you go talk to like the PMO, they’ll say, “What are you talking about? We have 62 reports with 500 metrics that we’re giving our boss; you know? Of course they have the information.”
No, no, no, no, no. That’s data. That’s not the three things they need to know to make a decision; right? And so, if they don’t have those three things they need to know, they’re not going to be able to make the decision. So, what the executive wants in that scenario is what’s going on in the organization, what got done, where do you need me, what decision has to be made, and that’s it. That’s where you stop; right?
And if you give them what they want, you can build credibility, build trust, and then they will give you an opportunity to give them what they need once they trust you, and you’ve taken them on that journey, and you’re not hitting resistance because they’re very clear about what you’re doing and why that’s going to help them because you’ve answered what they asked for; right? Which means we start simple. We start small. We don’t shove a bunch of stuff at them. And we just go fix the thing; right?
BILL YATES: That’s right.
LAURA BARNARD: Just go fix the thing.
The One-on-One Interview
BILL YATES: I know, go fix the thing. You talk about how do I know what that thing is, the pain point? I want to get grassroots, low-level stuff here because I thought it was so powerful what you shared about one of your favorite tools which is the one-on-one interview.
LAURA BARNARD: Oh, yeah.
BILL YATES: So early in my project, early in my initiative, I want to make sure that I’ve got a crystal-clear vision of what that pain point is. I know what they want, and I want to ask it of the most important person. So, in this case you could call it the sponsor, you could call it the executive. Let’s use executive because, to your point, that brings up some follow-up questions too. But we’ll get there. But when I have the conversation with the executive, the best way to do that is a one-on-one interview. Talk about that a bit. Why is that your favorite technique, and what have you seen come from that?
LAURA BARNARD: If you can, I recommend one-on-one interviews with as many people as possible; right? But absolutely start with the executives because you have to put yourself in the executives’ shoes. They’ve got a lot of information coming at them. They all have decision fatigue. I have never met an executive that didn’t have decision fatigue, didn’t have a bunch of things coming at them that they don’t know how to process. They don’t really usually know enough to be dangerous from a technology perspective or in certain details, but that’s not their job. And they love when somebody will just give them an opportunity to talk about, “This is the business problem I’m trying to solve. This is what I care about,” and give them the space and the confidentiality to just be able to talk about what’s going on.
And you are far more likely to get that from any stakeholder, but in particular the executives, if you give them just the space to breathe and just tell me what’s going on, what’s keeping you up at night, what are your challenges, you know, what are you not seeing that you wish you were. Whenever I do that with executives, I get the good stuff; right? I get the things you won’t hear them say in a room with other people. They just are with you, and it gives them a chance to kind of let their guard down a little and just say, “Here’s what I care about,” without an audience. “Here’s what matters to me. Here’s the pain I’m seeing.”
And, frankly, a lot of people think, “Oh, well, it’s the executives.” Or they’re scared to talk to them, or they’re scared to get in those conversations. And I have a little secret for everybody that maybe everyone doesn’t realize, but executives are people, too.
BILL YATES: [Gasp]
LAURA BARNARD: Right?
BILL YATES: Shock, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
LAURA BARNARD: Yeah. So, they’re human beings, and they want somebody to tell them the truth. A lot of people, you’ll have middle management that’s hiding the red on the status reports. Everything has to be green. Everyone’s hiding the truth. And then what happens is they get smacked in the face with some big, huge, blow up that they could have seen coming if somebody had talked to them about it, that they could have prevented. And they don’t know about it because everyone’s just hiding things from them or preventing them from having real conversations.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
LAURA BARNARD: So, what’s cool about these one-on-ones is that you’ll get the good stuff. And if you keep asking one simple question, which is, “Can you tell me more about that?” you might even get to the tears.
BILL YATES: Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah.
LAURA BARNARD: So, like the real frustration. And that’s where the gold is.
BILL YATES: Yes. Yeah.
LAURA BARNARD: Especially emotionally tie something that they care about to the success that you can drive, you’ve got them. Right? And then you’ve just got to go do that. So that’s why it’s my favorite. You get the good stuff. But here’s the important thing to remember. You have to keep their confidence.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
LAURA BARNARD: If they find out that anything you said in there that was meant to be in confidence got to somebody else, you will have destroyed your relationship that – and you probably won’t be able to get that trust back. You can use what they tell you to make an informed recommendation without having to spill the beans on all the details they gave you about who’s annoying them today.
BILL YATES: Yeah, that’s so good. And Laura, in the book – here’s a little plug. But if people want to know, “Okay, if I do get this time with this executive, what do I ask them? I’m nervous.” You’ve got great example questions, pages 99 through 100. You had some great questions in there. You also give great advice. What if the executive puts you on the spot? “Okay, Bill, I’m glad you’re in here. Now I can tell you what I really want from this project.” And then they start to describe, and they turn around and say, “And you’re going to do that; right?” So, you talked through that really well. Again, you share some of your scars. I appreciate that.
LAURA BARNARD: Yes, yes.
BILL YATES: And there’s great advice in the book on that, too.
LAURA BARNARD: For sure.
The Five Why Technique
BILL YATES: Really good stuff. So, another technique that I wanted to get into, after you’ve had those interviews with the executives, and you have a better understanding of what’s important to them, their pain points, then you want to get to the root cause of that pain. And you’re a huge fan of the five why technique. Love it. Talk about why that’s your favorite tool, and describe how you use it.
LAURA BARNARD: Okay. So, first and foremost, one big problem we have is that, even if people do the work to do the assessment, what happens is they’ll gather all these inputs. And this is where the danger comes in to say, “Okay, well, now I know what you need because you complained about this.” Well, the problem, and I start explaining this right at the beginning of the book, and then really get into it in this section you’re talking about, one of the problems we have is that people will just start attacking symptoms. They just start saying, “Oh, well, you complained about this, and that’s because we don’t have project managers trained, and you complained about that.”
Everybody hears projects take too long, they cost too much, we don’t have enough resources, project people don’t know what they’re doing, like all of that stuff that comes from the project planning and execution space. And the problem is is that is usually symptoms of another underlying root cause.
BILL YATES: Yes.
LAURA BARNARD: And usually, and sorry to break it to our executives listening, but they’re part of the problem; right? Usually, the problems are starting before the projects ever kick off. For example, do you kick off every single project you have because the budget was released, and so 99 projects are being done all on day one. Well, no wonder nobody’s moving. Have you ever been on a highway when it’s 100% at capacity? No one’s going anywhere; right?
So, the problem we have is that a lot of project people are taught to just attack symptoms instead of getting to the root causes. And those root causes often are happening at the beginning of what we call the strategy delivery life cycle. So, there’s all kinds of things that you can fix, but to know what thing will actually create the positive ripple effect of change, you have to do this root cause analysis. And there are so many techniques. In fact, in our organization, when we go work with clients, we do the five whys, but we also do some more advanced techniques for root cause analysis.
The reason I like the five whys, and I didn’t invent it, but it’s just super simple. And the whole idea is they give you a complaint or a problem or a pain point, and you ask why? Why is that happening? And then when they give you that answer, or you go talk to those people, for example, projects are taking too long and costing too much. Well, let’s go talk to the project managers. And you ask them, why is this happening? They’ll say, well, because the teams are always behind on their deliverables. Well, let’s go talk to the teams. When you talk to them, they say, well, my boss is changing all my priorities; right? You see where this goes.
So, you have to actually dig until you get to the thing that, if you were to fix that, a positive ripple effect of change would happen, and you wouldn’t have these problems. And all of sudden projects aren’t taking too long and costing too much. In fact, we’re getting more done because we fix the fact that every project was number one priority, or they were all happening all at once, or whatever that root cause is.
The reason I like this so much is that most of us have met two-year-olds; right? And so, what do two-year-olds say all the time? “Why, why, why?” Right? It’s easy for us to get to why it’s easy to do. Like you don’t even need any fancy tools. You don’t need to remember anything. You just need to be a curious toddler, and you just need to explore and investigate and stop with attacking symptoms and really get to that one thing or that fewer number of things.
And that’s the cool part is that, if you get to the root causes, you can actually fix one or two or three things and take out a hundred different symptoms that are happening throughout the organization.
BILL YATES: Right.
LAURA BARNARD: So, you’re far more effective and can just do one thing and please a lot of stakeholder groups, and give a lot stakeholder groups what they want, which is even better; right? More impact faster. The whole idea is accelerating strategy delivery.
BILL YATES: That’s so good. In a meeting I was in yesterday, we were looking at how to optimize our website. You know, so we’re doing deep research, and there are 5,000 errors of this one type that are coming out if you look deep, deep, deep. And you know, at first you look at it, oh my gosh, there’s 5,000 things we have to fix? No. When you look at the root, there are three. There’s three places where we need to update the code. Once we do that, those go away. Yeah, it’s the same…
LAURA BARNARD: That’s a perfect example. That’s the thing is that people usually get overwhelmed with 5,000 errors. It’s like, we don’t need to panic. Just take a step back. And now I do it so instinctually that this is all a part of the, what do I do naturally now that I can put into a simple framework or a simple way for people to think about it so that it doesn’t have to be so hard or feel like 5,000 errors all at once.
Common Mistakes with PM and PMO Integration
WENDY GROUNDS: Laura, I want to jump in with a question. You, I’m sure have come across many times CEOs have made some pretty common mistakes when it comes to project management and PMO integration. What are some of the common mistakes that you see, and how can those be avoided?
LAURA BARNARD: Yeah, absolutely. So, I recently wrote an article because I’m starting to get some articles out with the C-suite executives to kind of tell them, hey, remember that whole “You’re a part of the problem?” Let’s make you a part of the solution; right? So, there was a recent CIO.com article that I wrote called “Four Steps to Shift from Outputs to Outcomes,” and the role the C-suite can play. I took a lot about this in the book from the delivery leaders’ perspective, project managers, PMO leaders, transformation leaders. There’s a lot in the book for them, but there’s a role that the executives should be playing that they’re not currently in many organizations. And it’s all around shifting the focus to outcomes, business results aligned with strategic goals, and that this is the key to unlocking value in their organization.
So many executives complain with things take too long, they cost too much, you know, so what if they’re on time on scope and budget, we’re not getting the business results. But they’re not taking the time to support their people, their delivery people, and actually understanding what that means. And we have a big emphasis in our organization on helping project people become what we call “impact drivers,” which means becoming business-minded, business-focused leaders.
So, there’s four things that I talked about in this article and that I’m trying to get in front of as many C‑suite executives as possible to help them understand what they should be doing differently. And first is embracing this mindset shift.
So, here’s a perfect example. Project managers are often hired for their certifications. That sends the signal to them that their value is in what they learn to get that certification, meaning all of the, you know, training around on time, on scope, on budget, on value management and the process and the templates and the stuff, you know, and so they get so focused on perfecting the outputs and the deliverables that they forget why they’re there is to actually solve business problems and get to those better business outcomes.
So sure, you can hire people for their certifications, but then you’ve got to quickly show them that success isn’t by applying as much as you’ve learned from the PMBOK, for example, to everything you know and everything you do. It’s about saying, how do we use the best of this in the right way, the right tools in the toolbox to do this job, to accelerate getting to those business outcomes? So that’s number one is if the business leaders understand at the C-suite, but they’re not explaining it to their project people, that’s a gap that we need to close.
The second one is – and, you know, I was just doing a keynote session, and I asked the audience, how many of you define your strategy over here? Oh, that’s right. You’re not even in the room. And then the project budgets defined over here, and you may or may not even be a part of that. And then poof, go execute on all these projects. There’s no connection between the strategy of the organization and the work that the people are doing. Like 95% of the typical workforce does not understand their company’s strategy.
And if that is the case, how can the project people deliver that strategy? All the project people, the change leaders in the organization are the ones that execute on that strategy. If they don’t even know why they’re doing it, how can they get to those better business outcomes? So, number two is really creating specific and direct alignment from the strategy of the organization, the why, and then the roadmap to get there in terms of those products and projects, and keeping that connected. So that’s number two.
And number three, and this is a painful one for our executives, they actually have to prioritize. I know, me included, every executive wants everything to be a number one priority, and all of it to be done tomorrow. Right? And so unfortunately, though, going back to that highway scenario, if you were doing all of your projects at once and treating them with equal priority, the ambulance can’t get through. And so, you don’t want a packed highway. You want ideal flow. And so that means that we have to prioritize all of our projects and start them when we actually have the people to do them.
So, if your team is coming to you saying, “We have a resource problem, we don’t have enough resources,” actually what you have is you’re trying to shove 10 pounds of projects in a five-pound bag. Right? You have the people you have. It’s about optimizing the work and staggering it out based on priorities so you get optimal throughput.
And then the last one, and I know this is a pain point for a lot of our project people, once the strategy is defined, and let’s say it’s thrown over the fence, and the project teams are off doing it, they can never find those sponsors or key executives ever again. Right? Or they just come to a status check-in at some point, and they’re like, “All right, how you doing with that?”
So instead, you want to stay present, stay engaged, discuss the outcomes everywhere, discuss the strategy everywhere. Make sure you’re removing barriers and answering questions, but constantly reinforce with the people doing the work why they’re there and why the work they’re doing is so important, and what success looks like in a measurable and visible way so that everyone’s moving toward it.
You know you’re going on a road trip, but you have no idea what success will look like or what vehicle you should even be in. You’re going to have a tough time getting where you’re going in a way that meets the success criteria. So those are four very specific things that leaders can do across the C-suite that can rapidly accelerate their ability to get to those business outcomes, bringing their people with them through the change process.
BILL YATES: Those are so good. And that’s some of the stuff that we preach, too. You’ve got to have those sponsors as executives. They need to be there for the kickoff, sure.
LAURA BARNARD: Right.
BILL YATES: But they need to be a constant presence. It’s human nature if we see that, hey, you know, the CEO was here. The CIO was here a few months ago, but I haven’t seen her since.
LAURA BARNARD: Right.
BILL YATES: She’s probably not interested in my project anymore. Huh. You know, maybe I should be looking around.
LAURA BARNARD: Yeah, for sure.
BILL YATES: Those are so good. Thank you for sharing those.
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah, very good.
LAURA BARNARD: Absolutely.
Connect with Laura
WENDY GROUNDS: Laura, before we let you go, how can our audience get in touch with you, find out more about what you do? And also tell us about your podcast.
LAURA BARNARD: Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate it. So, I’m all over LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn very easily. It’s just Laura Barnard, B-A-R-N-A-R-D. And my forward slash on LinkedIn is just that. So, I got a LinkedIn profile early. So, you can find me there for sure, definitely connect with me. From there, you can find a ton of places that I’m online, YouTube and others. I’m doing a lot of videos related to insights from the book and quick takeaways for people.
And yes, the podcast is called the PMO Strategies Podcast. We are almost at 300 episodes in the bank now recorded. So, it’s been – we’ve been running that for years. And it’s where you get sometimes some tough love, sometimes just some sweet old love, and me saying, like, “Listen, this is what you need to do and how you need to do it.” So, there’s a ton there. And we have students and other thought leaders that come talk on that podcast all the time. And then the book, you can find out about that going to ImpactEngineBook.com. We’ve got all kinds of templates and resources and additional support there. And then our main website of course, PMOStrategies.com.
BILL YATES: Laura, thank you so much. This has been just a fun conversation for me. As I was reading the book, I’m laughing, I’m making notes. Great advice, whether somebody’s running a small project for a not-for-profit; a bigger, more complex project for a not-for-profit or a for-profit company; or they’re actually taking a hold of a PMO or trying to implement a PMO. There’s advice in there across the board. So well done in terms of making something scalable, approachable, and practical with this book.
LAURA BARNARD: Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And I’ll have you know that I was very intentional with using the term “delivery leader” as opposed to “PMO leader” or “transformation leader” or “project manager” because it’s all of us that are responsible for delivering change in organizations. And my favorite term for all of us is “impact driver.” So, thank you so much for having me here today. And a huge thank you to your audience who’s filled with impact drivers that are doing that hard work in their organizations. What you do matters. And I thank you for doing that hard work. So, thank you so much for having me here today.
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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