AI is making teams faster, but is it helping them deliver more value? In this episode, Galen Low explores why organizations must move beyond productivity and focus on outcomes. We discuss how AI is reshaping project management, the importance of questioning whether work should be done at all, and the evolving role of project leaders in orchestrating people, technology, and results in a rapidly changing world.
Chapters
00:00 … Intro
02:54 … The AI Productivity Trap
05:52 … When More Productivity Creates More Problems
08:54 … Should We Even Be Doing This?
09:38 … Moving from Productivity to Impact
14:11 … Collaboration Becomes the New Bottleneck
18:06 … Why AI Should Be in the Room
22:55 … The Future Role of the Project Manager
27:54 … Positive Risk & Opportunity Thinking
30:14 … What High-Performing Teams Will Look Like
33:08 … Escaping Productivity Without Progress
37:49 … Find Out More
39:27 … Closing
Intro
WENDY GROUNDS: Hello, and welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. I’m Wendy Grounds, and in the studio with me is Bill Yates and our audio engineer, Kellen Porter. We are so thrilled to have you with us today. If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love to hear from you. You can comment on our website, Velociteach.com; on social media; or your favorite podcast app. 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.
In this episode today, we’re sitting down with Galen Low. He is the co-founder of The Digital Project Manager. And we’re going to unpack what’s really happening inside teams as AI reshapes how work gets delivered. Galen has more than 17 yearsexperience leading human-centered digital transformation across government, healthcare, transit, and retail. He has seen the same pattern repeat. Teams adopt new tools, but their delivery systems stay stuck. Today, he helps project people get skilled, confident, and connected so they can thrive in the digital space and stay ahead of their craft. He is also the host of The Digital Project Management podcast, and he’s going to tell you a little bit more about where to find that at the end of the episode.
BILL YATES: We’ve been wanting to have this conversation with Galen for quite a while. And now with all the AI conversations we’ve been having, this is a perfect time to engage Galen. We’re going to talk about a topic that’s near and dear to Galen’s heart, which is AI can lead to productivity traps. We’ll talk about those traps. We’ll talk about some of the bottlenecks that we’re hitting now as we move quickly through things thanks to this AI tool. Now we’ve got new bottlenecks. How do we deal with those?
We’re also going to ask Galen what are the traits of a high-performing team in this new environment that we’re in and talk about some other things like collaboration and some of the things that set apart the best project managers and project leaders from those that seem to be treading water. So, delighted to have Galen joining us and can’t wait to get into these things with him.
WENDY GROUNDS: Hi Galen, welcome to Manage This. Thank you so much for joining us today.
GALEN LOW: Thanks for having me on the show.
WENDY GROUNDS: I’ve looked at the work Digital Project Manager does, and I’ve heard some of your work and your podcasts. And so I think it’s just a great opportunity for us both to get together, the three of us, and to talk.
GALEN LOW: I’ve been an admirer, as well; and I’m glad we’re getting to work together.
WENDY GROUNDS: Finally do.
BILL YATES: I know, back at you. It’s been…
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah.
BILL YATES: I know it’s been a long time ago, Wendy and I talked about having you on,and then I can’t remember what got us distracted, and now we’re finally back on. So here we go. This is great. Thanks for joining us.
The AI Productivity Trap
WENDY GROUNDS: And definitely a really relevant topic. What we want to do is talk a little bit more about AI and teams. And I think we’ll start off with talking about how AI is definitely going to make our teams work faster, but it doesn’t really mean they’re going to be more effective. So what’s happening inside teams right now? What is your opinion on how work is changing?
GALEN LOW: Oh, that’s a great question. Okay, so the way I see it is that a lot of teams actually right now are in a productivity trap with AI. That sounds a little more cynical than probably the opener ought to be. But honestly, from where I stand, like,people have been given the tools, and they’ve been given a directive to deliver more. But that’s been largely left up to interpretation; so they’re using the tools to do their work faster, to create, you know, like beefier outputs that look ready to ship, and to fill in any of their own individual knowledge gaps along the way. And as a result, you know, there is a lot of low-level admin work getting automated. There’s intelligent workflows being built out to cut out low-value manual work.
And, you know, sometimes these things are saving, like, lots of time, like sometimes a cumulative week per month for a team. There’s lots of detailed reports and stats with diagrams being generated in minutes instead of days. And there’s lots of prototypes or even, like, finished-looking apps and websites being, you know, presented as done. And we’re, you know, we’re racing at this speed. This is, like, unprecedented speed. And then what do we do with it?
Well, most teams just, like, crash it into a wall; right? Some of you have days of humans reading through, like, reams of AI-generated documents to provide feedback to people who maybe didn’t even understand the output in the first place, so they can get aligned together and make decisions together that may or may not support the overarching goal. And honestly, I think that’s why a lot of the teams I’m talking to, at least, like aren’t finding the same level of gratification in their work anymore. They feel like they’re doing the right things; right? Do AI, work faster, do more. But they still feel like they’re failing.
And so, coming back to this idea of the productivity trap, the productivity trap is that more speed and more stuff doesn’t guarantee better results. And honestly, team-based collaboration doesn’t work like that anyways. Like it doesn’t just deliver outcomes because individual team members were able to, you know, work in isolation in fast-forward; right? Teamwork is about having a shared goal. It’s about having a shared understanding of how to work together to achieve that goal, to become greater than the sum of our parts as people, not as individuals, because we’re armed with AI.
And I think that’s where a lot of things – there’s this, like tension, if not, you know, full-blown friction, maybe even despair for some of these teams because they’re like, “We’re doing it; right? You know, I’ve shaved all these minutes off of my day. Like we must be doing it. This must be the answer.” And employers and teams and businesses and the results, they’re not showing what people want to see. And so there’s a bit of a disconnect there.
When More Productivity Creates More Problems
BILL YATES: That’s so good, Galen. And I love the two words you use there, “productivity trap,” because I could see this in, man, I think about the report set that I used to give to my sponsors with some of the utilities we worked with and some of the financial departments. And that was like their sweet special sauce anyway. They love reports. They were financial analysts and accountants. So if I could give them three reports, okay, if I could give them 30 reports with the same effort on my part, right, because I’ve got this AI muscle behind me now, I’m going to give them 30. And I’m going to fill up their inbox or throw it on the shared server.
And I’m like, “Oh, man, that feels so good.” And there’s a part – the problem is part of them felt good too; right? They would look at it and go, “Oh, this is fantastic, man. I’ve got more data than I could ever need. Let me bring in my team, and we’ll….” You know. And so then you used to have all these resources. And it’s like, okay, yeah, you’ve increased your productivity. But to what end? You know, what is it in these extra 27 reports that actually brings value, that gives something meaningful? Or did you just do it because you could? You know, I’m afraid I would do it because I could. And maybe even my sponsor would follow me right into that productivity trap.
GALEN LOW: And, you know, I know I sound pretty cynical about it. Like I’m sure it’s a blend. Like I’m being deliberately obtuse. I’m being deliberately sort of divisive. You know, certainly there are loads of professionals using AI to generate really good stuff. And sometimes the same professionals that are just like, you know, there’s fluff in it. And I think that distillation is something that we need to have better discipline around. But you’re right, you hit the nail on the head. Productivity feels good. There’s, like,that, you know, neurological response to getting something done. We’ll get into it, but it’s like we’ve been trained this way. We’ve trained ourselves this way through decades and decades of work. Like modern work culture is about productivity.
BILL YATES: Yes.
GALEN LOW: Maybe not anymore.
BILL YATES: I know. I mean, I could even see me having the conversation with my sponsor. I used to only have enough time to give you three reports. Man, I can give you 30 now. That’s so good. I’m not going to charge you anything extra. Which, again, that sounds great to the accountants that were my clients. But, you know, then there’s the internal costs on their part of, yeah, but now I’ve got, again, 27 extra reports that maybe I need to pay attention to or maybe I don’t. So there’s, like, indirect costs are even greater than, you know, any fee I would have charged them before. Yeah, productivity made this available. But again, to what end? Oh, this is a sticky thing.
GALEN LOW: It’s the instant gratification too; right? Because it feels good at the moment. You don’t even think about it. And then it’s like, whatever, quarterly results time. It’s end of year; right? You’re doing your, you know, self-assessment, your performance review. And you’re like, wait, like nothing changed, actually. Nothing material actually changed. Like we don’t have that piece of the puzzle to sort of make this go at the speed that everyone’s expecting AI to go.
Should We Even Be Doing This?
BILL YATES: So that leads to a question that I think you helped us think through this, and I can’t wait to go into it. The question is, should we even be doing this anymore? So that takes some awareness. Like how do I know when I’m in that productivity trap? Me and my team, how do we ask that question of ourselves? Should we be doing this anymore?
GALEN LOW: Okay, I like that. I’m going to take a running start at this because, you know, I see this every day. We talk about this internally every day. This notion of stop conditions; right? We’re all, you know, about success criteria. But in this day and age, when everyone’s moving at speed, and there’s an opportunity cost to using any resource, AI or human, we also need a way to be like, well, when is this not worth pursuing?
Moving from Productivity to Impact
And so I think the productivity trap, where it starts, is that we haven’t actually trained our workforce to, like, understand what creates impact and how to create impact. Some people, you know, have learned it, have intuited it. It’s part of what they picked up along the way. But I don’t think a lot of organizations are intentional about it. It’s like, if you do what’s on your JD, do your job description, and that will create impact. Like, there’s just this, like natural trust there that that’s how it works. We all work together. But it’slike, it’s this old model. And, like, when I think about productivity, the more I think about it, the more archaic I think it actually is; right?
This is just something that, you know, came about and was more popularized in the early 1900s, right, during the manufacturing revolution, where like you could actually do more faster, and that would translate almost directly into impact. Right? More things for sale, more things to sell, more money, done. But it’s not really that simple for most businesses today, even in manufacturing, by the way. And so in the meantime, like, we’ve all been raised with this idea that productivity is good.
There’s, like, so many productivity tools out there. We obsess over it. You know, I’ve got my – I probably have four to-do list apps in hopes that I can sort of get more done, cross more things off the list, find something to automate, maybe just like multitask. You know, we’re doing these additional things that may or may not deliver impact or create value. And I think that’s the sensibility that we are working with today.
And so coming back to the question of, like, okay, should we even be doing this anymore, I don’t think we’ve actually challenged our people to challenge the work and think deeply about it. I think a lot of organizational structure has been like, cool, like either top-down or it’s flat, and we do our specific roles, and that should be okay. Everyone, you know, agrees to the plan. It gets, like, set in stone, and we do it. Or we have these, like, iterations where we can change it. But honestly, I think that we’ve also measured performance based on that premise of people following the plan and completing their tasks and working well with their colleagues.
You know, when I look around, even the people who have historically rocked the boat have also been seen as the people who are like the derailers; right? They’re like agents of chaos, taking things off plan. We had it all set up. We were going to do these five things in these seven days. And you’ve come in and been like, listen, should we even be doing this? And it’s still jarring, right, in most work culture. Not every sort of work culture, not every team culture. Some folks have really embraced this. But A, it’s not something we teach. B, it’s not something that’s universally respected. And C, it then creates this context where people don’t want to be that person, to be like, listen, is this even – is this even what we should be doing?
And if I say this, this is like a great project manager question, too. It’s like, what happens if you realize your project is not going to add the value that everyone thought it was going to six, seven months ago? You can say, “Hey, I think we need to stop this,”and you might be out of a job. Your team might be out of a job. Your team might be benched. You know, you’re creating this impact that is a negative thing. Whereas in fact you can probably create just as much value, if not more value, by stopping doing something, or by changing a path instead of, you know, as my friend Bill would say,having a plan where the plane crashes beautifully into the mountain.
It’s something we need to say more, to be like, listen, should we even be doing this? Maybe the answer is yes. That’s okay. But things are changing so fast right now, and the notion of value is still blurry. And businesses are operating with uncertainty.
So we can’t necessarily, and I think any business leader would say this right now, we can’t necessarily trust that we know what the future will hold. And therefore, we don’t really have a destination; and therefore, we might have to change a whole bunch. But we don’t have a culture necessarily of saying, okay, well, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this after all. Maybe we should be doing this instead. What would it take? Can we do some analysis? Can we pivot there? Would that create more value? Or should we release these resources and have them focus on the bigger initiative? My friend Steven, he was like, listen, like, it doesn’t matter if you have built the world’s greatest hotel on an island if there’s no way to get there.
So that bridge or that ferry, like that’s what’s going to create the value. Otherwise, you’re going to have a ghost hotel on the middle of an island that no one can get to.
So it’s like, well, okay, well, maybe we should use our resources to help with the bridge or prioritize the bridge over the hotel; you know? Like, it seems like career suicide. It seems like relinquishing your purpose; right? It’s like, oh, I’m here to lead this project;but it kind of sucks, and maybe we should stop. Like it’s not a – it’s not a normal muscle to exercise.
Collaboration Becomes the New Bottleneck
BILL YATES: Yeah, yeah. There are so many things that you’re saying that I feel like they resonate with me. One is, so a couple of words, “impact” and “collaboration.” Thinking about the impact that AI is having and the productivity that we have gained, the space that we have, the ability to kind of step back and say, all right, this process is quicker than it used to be or more efficient. So, all right, I have freedom in my day-to-day now that I used to not have. How can I use that the best?
Well, you know, back to my example, probably the best thing is not to go, awesome, I can give tenfold the reports I used to, to my sponsor. Yay, this is awesome, for free. You know, there’s no upcharge. Instead, why not collaborate? Early on, you mentioned that, and then we’ve had long conversations about KPI, about OKRs, those kinds of things. Now that I have AI as a muscle or an extra stakeholder on my team, and I see that I’ve got space, why not collaborate with my sponsor, with my customer, and say, hey, look, here’s some efficiencies that we’re gaining, and here’s some extra data or new report styles that we have that I could provide to you.
But let’s meet elbow to elbow, and let’s just take a look at the data together. Help me understand what’s valuable to you and what’s not, what’s actionable to you and what’s not.
Last thing I want to do is fill you and your team up with more fluff, right? I could do that, and there’s a part of me that kind of gets goosed and pretty jazzed about doing that. SoI’m trying to fight that urge in me. I want to give you what’s valuable. I don’t want to overwhelm you with so much you never even look at it. So let’s look at this together, collaborate. Tell me what makes, what helps you make decisions.
And I think, you know, and I want you to speak to this a bit. There’s a – many of the projects I did were for external customers. So there was a bit of a, you know, I don’t want to show too many cards to the customer because then they may start getting into our business going, well, how profitable are you guys? You know, what are the fees? Show me your hours in more detail. There’s that natural pushback that I think a project team could have, of I don’t want to share too much with my customer or with my sponsor.
But there is this opportunity more than ever to collaborate and really get at what is the impactful data? What are the most valuable things that we can provide you now that we have more data, now that we have more productivity? Preach to us. Tell us how to free up and trust and build trust with our customer.
GALEN LOW: First of all, like I’ve – I’ve been on agency’s side a lot of my career, as well. And, you know, that conversation, well, I think it’s the right conversation, in some of our heads is like, well, that’s also a good way to end a contract. Hey, we’re so efficient now. How can we – what else can we do to make sure we get paid the same fee so I don’t have to downsize anyone. It’s sort of this economic factor to it. But, you know, you see a lot of organizations trying to move away from hourly billing or capacity models because now it’s like, all right, well, we need to be delivering value. And I think that’s why it’s the right conversation.
The people who understand the value flywheel for the organizations that they’re working with, or even the vendors that they’re working with, are the ones that are going to have a better understanding of where value lies. I think that conversation is an important conversation. It’s also possibly multiple conversations are just baked into the ongoing conversation of, yeah, talk to me about, like, your business is changing. Our business is changing. Value in general is changing. Technology is changing. Like, let’s keep this conversation active around what, you know, this sort of like VUCA world; right?
It’s like, instability, like nobody has the crystal ball. Nobody knows what’s going to happen in two years. We’re placing bets everywhere. A lot of money’s going into it. A lot of energy’s going into it. A lot of people are, you know, have mixed feelings about it all. Let’s just get that out in the open.
Why AI Should Be in the Room
But I think the thing you said about collaboration, I think, for me is key. And I know I’m a bit biased because I’m all about like teamwork and leading teams and, you know, getting great performance out of folks. You know, not by whipping them, but like by improving where we’re actually not good at collaboration.
And the thing that I’ve found, the conclusion that I’ve drawn is that AI has been speeding up this like individual, like a lot of teams are using AI sort of individually to give themselves, like, a personal productivity boost. So they’re able to create more, do more, get more done.
And then two things happen. One, it’s like sprint hit a wall, sprint hit a wall, sprint hit a wall. And the wall is like these moments of collaboration. And I kind of alluded to it a bit earlier as maybe a frustration, but I actually think that’s the problem to solve. Like when you hit that moment where you’re like, oh, no one knows who makes this call. Nobody knows who makes this decision. We’ve got to find the stakeholder somewhere. And then they’re like, okay, well, that sounds like it needs to go to legal. Okay, but legal goes over here. And they’re like, well, this has broader implications. And suddenly that project or that initiative that’s meant to deliver value in a competitive marketplace where speed to market is the thing that’s going to – like speed to market might be the value.
And you’ve got it stalling. Or you’re sitting there trying to explain your 30-page report that you didn’t generate yourself, where you’re like, okay, maybe that part was AI, but I still believe in this number. And you’re trying to get your colleagues on board. And it’s like, it’s just a messy, slow thing, you know, or like deciding how to work or like resourcing people. Like resourcing, it’s in a lot of ways very rudimentary compared to what we’re able to do now. But we think of it as, okay, how many days do you need, you know, Jorge for; right?
And it was like, okay, well, I don’t have 12 days. Suddenly it’s 15 days. And we’re like, oh, everything’s sliding now. There’s better ways to utilize the way we work together. And I think collaboration for me is a good keyword because I think we need to use AI collaboratively.
So like I’m big on personal productivity. Don’t get me wrong. I’m big on people running experiments and using AI and, you know, and building efficiencies, automating workflows. I’m a huge fan of creating, like, the systems, the next-level systems that are going to utilize AI in the right ways. But I’m also big on the idea that AI should be in the room when we’re all in the room. And I know there’s a lot of talk about, like, oh, how are we going to work with AI agents? Are they going to come to stand up? Is this weird? I don’t necessarily mean that.
But, I mean, like if we’re in a room, and we’re doing work together, and we’re having a meeting where we can achieve something because we can work quickly with AI, and it’s in the room, and it’s helping us get on the same page and understand one another and make good decisions, that takes that wall away; right?
Instead of having this wall where we’re like, okay, well, now we have to have a 90-minute meeting to present this idea and talk about it and then send people away to make a decision. And we might not even know who the decision-maker is. It’s like we need to create that context where we are using AI together. It’s, yes, a thought partner. It’s sort of this facilitator almost; right? It’s helping us translate between our sort of siloed language on a cross-functional team, and it’s helping us get better at collaborating.
And I think that’s – I’m painting ahead a little bit. But the interesting thing about all of this, and the question you asked, is like the conversation is how do we all work together better? That’s like a tough conversation. That’s like saying hello is like I love you, but we wouldn’t say that out loud, blah, blah, blah; right? You know?
But it’s a, okay, well, let’s talk more. Let’s talk more about how we can work better together and create more value. Yes, there might be an economic factor to it, but the better we all understand how one another create value together, then the better we’ll be able to come up with ways to make that happen instead of falling into the same traps from systems and models that were designed decades ago. A lot has changed. We can’t use that as acrutch. We need to revisit and reimagine how we get things done.
BILL YATES: You know, it just strikes me, Galen, that trust, it comes back to trust with the team. It’s like the team needs to trust each other and feel safe so that they can, within a team setting, bring up, hey, guys, guess what I just used this week? I was doing some Python coding, and I found this AI tool, and I fed in this, and here’s what I got. Everybody’s like, oh, my gosh, that’s amazing. So I wanted to share that with you guys so you can do the same kind of thing. So now what do we do with this extra time we have?
So here’s the problem I’ve run into. Now I’ve got to build test cases for all this stuff. I don’t trust the code 100% that AI just built, so how do I, you know, oh, yeah, I’ve got some experience with that. Let me share some tips. There needs to be that trust so that people aren’t seen as Bill’s kind of holding back. He’s got something up his sleeve,and I don’t know what it is. You know, the whole team needs to benefit from that, andthen talk through some of the new obstacles that are coming up. Because to your point, it’s like you run really fast, and then you hit a wall. And so I think teams are experiencing that and feeling the frustration, so I’m glad you brought that up.
The Future Role of the Project Manager
WENDY GROUNDS: Do you see that the project manager is an orchestrator? Or how do you see that fundamentally the role of the project manager is changing?
GALEN LOW: I love the word “orchestration.” Don’t get me wrong. And I think it’s necessary for all the reasons that we just talked about. Collaboration is messy. It’s difficult. Somebody needs to have the map and understand how to navigate from point A to point B. But two things. One, I don’t think the specialization of, like, delivery, delivering a project, delivering value, you know, leading an initiative, I don’t think that should be a singular, okay, that’s, you know, your problem. We don’t have to think about that. Just like any great project manager knows a little bit about what their team does, I mean at least the great project managers I know, know enough; right? They speak the language, they’re able to play translator, they learn a little bit about development or design or research.
I think that also needs to happen in reverse, and I think it does happen to a certain extent; but I think that notion of delivery; right? The, okay, well, what are the mechanics of us creating value together? I think that should be a team sensibility. I don’t think it should be like, all right, Sue, you figure it out. I’m going back to my desk. I think it should be more of a, okay, listen, like, how can I help get us to the next step? How can we be working together to, like, move this forward because, you know, we all care about creating value together, and we all know how the sausage is made; right?
Not like you used your project management sorcery, and we’ll stand over here. But it should be a, yes, it’s still, whatever, your Dungeons & Dragons team; right? It’s like you still have somebody who is leading that charge, the plan. But it shouldn’t be a mystery to everyone to like how teams work together to deliver value. And I think that’s something that it’s not going to change overnight. But I think it’s the right sensibility I think for any professional to be like, okay, there’s no excuse anymore; to be like, I don’t know, that’s like a – that’s a design word. I don’t know what that means. There’s no shortage of information out there. We can educate ourselves. That’s – that’s a thing we can do.
But then it changes the role of the project manager. And I gave a talk, I guess it’s old now. I’m old now? Anyway, it was like, you know, it was a couple years back, and we were talking about, you know, the role of the project manager and where could it go. And even to this day, I think nobody can really know for certain. But there’s definitely a couple paths that I think are interesting that somebody who has a project management skill set could sort of head down. And so the one obvious one for me is, and for a lot of folks, is the sort of like elevation in terms of, like, going from project to program.
Okay. So maybe now you are overseeing the strategic delivery of a number of initiatives instead of just one. You know, you have more bandwidth, you see the bigger picture, your teams on their individual initiatives don’t need your day-to-day guidance on, you know, how to steer the ship towards the island with the treasure on it. And youkind of, like, elevate. So I think that’s kind of like a normal thing that still happens. You know, it happened before AI, as well. But I think the other one that I find really interesting is it comes back to what you said, which is designing new ways of working;right? It’s like, okay, well, we’re so close to the collaboration. We’re in the trenches. We see – we’re that layer in between, we’re that layer between, you know, business outcomes and our business stakeholders, as well as like our team of specialists.
And I think that, again, some of the old models aren’t going to work anymore. They need to either be tailored, which is a, you know, big word that the Project Management Institute has been sort of championing. And I would go even one step further, to be like, okay, well, if we’re tailoring, then actually we might need to sort of design different ways of working for every team, for every project as technology progresses. Because what we did on the last project even might not be what we should do on the next one. And what an opportunity to innovate on like a different way to work. And then, you know, to your earlier point, share it with the world, share it with our teams. And it might not be the answer for everyone. And I think that’s okay.
I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all, everyone has to do this thing sort of situation anymore. I don’t think that’s the business context anymore. It’s like, how do we work best to deliver value, you know, at pace and at quality. So I think there’s the sort of methodologies bit, as well. And then I’d go into, like, just risk. I would elevate risk because we’re all moving fast. Stakes are high. The market is shifting. And, you know, when I think of risk management, when most people think of risk management and projects, they’re like, okay, well, yes, like let’s sit down in a room, you know, regularly, once a week, once every two weeks, go through the risk register and be like, okay, could this thing happen or not? You know, what could impact our project? And I think we need to think bigger than that.
What actually puts a project at risk, positive risk and negative risk? Like it needs to – we need to be looking like at the market. We need to be looking at the competition. We need to be paying attention to the customer. Like it’s not just delivery risk. I think there is a role to be played by someone who understands the risk to be able to navigate.
Positive Risk & Opportunity Thinking
BILL YATES: Galen, I’m so glad you mentioned positive and negative. That’s something I haven’t really thought about. But yeah, with this new space or capacity that I have as a project leader, positive risks is something I should really get into more, looking for opportunities, given that maybe we have better productivity, maybe we’re able to deliver faster than we thought we would. Okay, so how can I kind of expand this project to deliver more value to the customer?
GALEN LOW: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. A lot of people have been saying, and it’s become quite en vogue, even though I agree with it, the en vogue saying is, okay, we need to be delivering outcomes, not outputs. And, you know, I think that ties everything together with the productivity and, you know, the power of AI. You know, not just more outputs, but we need to be thinking of outcomes. And a lot of people pause and go, like, I don’t control the outcomes. It’s an ecosystem of things beyond my control.
And I think that, you know, a lot of people will push back, and they’ll be like, that’s not realistic. Sorry, you know, Project Management Institute has their M.O.R.E. framework, their N.E.X.T. framework. You know, and even just businesses around the world in crafts that extend beyond project management are thinking that. They’re like, well, listen, how do we get to the outcome?
And I think you’re right about the positive risk thing. We call it mostly opportunity. And when you are looking for opportunity, even if you are not in control of everything that creates that value, you are doing what you can to create the conditions for value to be realized.
So, for example, if you’re like, no, we’ve got to stay on time because that’s what the plan says – and don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot of occasions where that will be true, where we need to stay on time. But to even do the analysis, chat with the team, be like, well, listen, this could be more valuable. Let’s open the hotel two months earlier, when the bridge is ready, and that’s two months of extra whatever, awareness, revenue, blah, blah, blah. Marketing might come in and be like, we’re not ready to, like, make any, you know, fanfare about this hotel opening. That happens in August, not in June.
And, yeah, then at least you’ve had the conversation. But you’re thinking about the opportunity to create more value, not following a plan blindly, but adapting to what you know to be value, and especially if value is a moving target. So yeah, 100%, I think that is positive risk, even though it’s like the least sexy term in the world and very confusing, is actually the key to all of this; right? It’s like, how can we create the conditions for value to be realized? Let’s be a little bit opportunistic. We don’t have to tell everyonethe sky’s falling. It probably is. But there’s another side to it. There’s some positive opportunity, as well.
What High-Performing Teams Will Look Like
WENDY GROUNDS: We want to look ahead in two to three years. What is going to distinguish those high-performing teams from teams that just move faster and get a whole lot more done?
GALEN LOW: I think the teams that will be considered high-performing are going to be the ones that do the best job of eliminating silos within their collaboration model. This is not going to be realistic for everyone, but this is my sort of utopian vision over the next few years. I think that, you know, there’s a lot of organizations that are trying to hire based on skill; right? Skill-based organizations rather than title-based organizations,and their work structures reflect that. And I think that happens at the team level, as well.
I think, you know, the teams organized by skill set and not by job title are going to do better. I think the ones that don’t have a culture of sort of pitting designers against devsor, like, pitting technical architects against researchers, you know, like I think that whole adversarial specialist culture, that will need to go away in order for teams to be productive, to get on the same page, and to work together to achieve value.
I think that, again, coming back to that idea that I think everyone should know a little bit about each other’s craft and what they do. I think, again, that silo of, like, “Listen, your problem now, throw it over the fence, done.” You know, I don’t even have to think about what you do or how you add value. I did my part. I think not good enough in two and three years.
The high-performing teams are going to be like, “Cool, I know what you’re going to do next.” And because I thought of that, like, “Here’s the things you need in the handoff,”and maybe I’m not even going to, like, step away. I’m like, “I’m still here. I’m working with you because I know your process, and there will be opportunities for me to collaborate with you.” And we can make something greater than if we just did an assembly line like a factory to, like, create “value widgets.” So I think that’s going to be something that is sort of germane to a high-performing team.
And again, I do think they will be using AI, but yeah, not to churn out more stuff, not to create more reports because they can. I think they’ll be using it to make better informed decisions together at speed. That idea that maybe we’re in the – like maybe we’re in the room together, we’re collaborating, AI’s in the room, we’re using it as a tool to help ourselves get aligned faster, to make decisions faster, to collaborate better, to kind of get on the same page. Okay, like, I don’t understand what this concept is. Okay, well, let’s have the same vernacular. Let’s have the same language to collaborate, and let’s break down these silos. We’re all responsible now for everyone’s contribution to the value that we’re creating, and that value that we’re creating must be greater than the sum of its parts.
Like, even if we just gave Jerry AI 50 agents, right, and then just do stuff, that output should not even hold a candle to the output of a team that’s got fewer agents, less AI in the mix, but working together, doing that human thing; right? Collaborating, being creative, innovating, and creating something that is, you know, emergent; right? That’s going to be greater than what we would have done if we did it alone. That’s been the thing that historically has pushed us forward.
Escaping Productivity Without Progress
WENDY GROUNDS: Okay, Galen, we have one more last question for you, and I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this. So what can an organization start doing today that will put them on a path away from productivity without progress? We just want to talk a bit about value delivery.
GALEN LOW: First of all, I have to say it out loud, it’s not going to change overnight. But you can start tomorrow. And I keep coming back to this idea that we haven’t asked a lot of our employees, a lot of our colleagues, to deeply understand, or even at a service level understand the business mechanics of how our organization creates value;right? That flywheel, it’s like, well, we do this, and then what happens, and what does that unlock, and then what happens, and what does that unlock, and how do we grow a business, not just 10x revenue, and not just from a capitalistic view, but how do we progress as an organization? And that’s honestly where I’d start.
Someone posted the other day, they were like, no one washes a rental car. And yeah, if you’ve washed a rental car, I’m not judging you, you are a saint, thank you. But, you know, if you don’t feel like you own it, you’re not going to take the same care about it. And I’m like, okay, that’s interesting. And then I’m like, but also you can’t just give everyone a car. You know, you can’t just Oprah it and be like, you get a car, you get a car, you get a car. You’re all going to business school tomorrow, and then you’re going to come back, and we’re going to understand how to, like, create value together.
But I do think that there’s this cross-visibility and a transparency that needs to happen where the training is around, okay, first of all, let’s expose the right amount of information, the right level of detail about where our business is at, what our strategy is, and maybe be transparent about the fact that, okay, well, we don’t really know where it’s going, but this is how our business works. This is your role within it. And let’s start a path, let’s start down a path where, you know, I want to be able to empower my staff to make good decisions, and some of them without me, ideally, because I don’t want to be the bottleneck either. But I want them to, you know, see value the same way together.
And I don’t think it’s like, you know, having everyone take the same course, the same 50 courses, and then suddenly it’s going to work. I think it’s a gradual shift of appreciating value at various different levels and understanding how it gets created. And I think it is about that delivery muscle. I know I’m, like, I’m biased here, but I would say everyone should understand the mechanics of value delivery; right?
How does teamwork create something that is viewed as a success in the eyes of the business or the organization we’re working at? It might not be money, it could be life saved, it could be a whole bunch of different things, and let’s start working together at a flatter level with fewer silos, speaking the same language, supported by AI, moving at speed, but being able to start hitting those bottlenecks, those choke points that used to be those walls.
And, you know, and after the first week, yeah, you’re still – you’re just dodging a wall; right? And then, like, after a couple months, you’re like, okay, well, that – that wall’s a door now; right? Or maybe it’s a window you still have to jump through. You parkour it; right?
And then it’s, you know, suddenly, eventually the wall will go away. And I think that’s, like, decision-making sort of paralysis, right, or ambiguity. Whereas, like, decisions are getting made faster, instead of stalling, you know, to get escalated far too high for something far too dumb. And we keep moving, and we own the value. We are speaking the same language. We are communicating with context, not just, “Hey, my thing’s done, good luck,” but like, okay, here’s what it means. Here’s how it contributes to value.
And then getting back to your earlier question, getting to the point where we can be like, okay, well, is this even the right plan? How can we be more adaptable in our approach? Let’s just not do stuff for the sake of doing stuff or because we were told to, like that won’t cut it anymore. We need to build into a context where people can say, okay, listen, let’s pause. Let’s pump the brakes a little bit. You know, we move fast enough anyways. We can pump the brakes now and go, okay, is this even going on to create value? Is there a better way to create value? Like, are we staffed for that? How can we sort of rejig the puzzle? That might be a bigger decision.
But the thought to have that, thought to be like, should we even be doing this, and what should we be doing instead, I think is one of the, like, end goal muscles of like, okay, now we’re thinking about the work and thinking about value. We’re not just being productive. We’re thinking about impact. It’s, you know, it sounds squishy; but actually,when you start moving down that path, I’ve seen a lot of teams make a lot of progress with their AI strategy, with their transformation as a business, based on just that alone; you know? Not overthinking it, just looking at those choke points and going, okay, well, guess what? Those aren’t technology choke points. Those are human choke points. What can we do?
Find Out More
WENDY GROUNDS: Galen, if our audience wants to find out more about what you do and resources that you may have to help them navigating the future, where can they go?
GALEN LOW: Definitely connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m one of two Galen Lows, I think, out there. I’m the one that has a project management tagline. I think it’s something like “Fixing what’s broken about projects in the age of AI.” Connect with me, send me a note. Also, I would go and create a free account with The Digital Project Manager. It’s free. You can receive our wonderful newsletter. Our editor, Kristin, sends twice weekly. You’ll have access to all the articles on our site, and you’ll get VIP invites to our online and soon to be in-person events. And I would also say listen to the podcast. We’ve got the podcast, The Digital Project Manager podcast. It’s a fun one. It’s conversational. And we do try and dive into the practical realities of AI transformation from a delivery perspective.
Yes, sometimes we know they’re about project management, but it’s not just about project management anymore. I think it’s about delivering value. It’s about deliveringchange. It’s about change management. It’s about transformation in a digital world. And for better or for worse, you know, that’s a lot of things now. It’s not as narrow as it used to be.
BILL YATES: Galen, thank you so much. This has been a long time coming. I’m just delighted that we’re able to have this conversation with you. You come in contact with so many different people of various types of projects, and just hearing your perspective and seeing the impact that technology and changes in technology are having on teams and leaders is very helpful for us to be able to process it with you. So thank you for your time. Thank you for your contribution. And it’s just a pleasure talking with you.
GALEN LOW: Thanks for having me on. It’s been an honor.
Closing
WENDY GROUNDS: That’s a wrap for us here on Manage This. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you’d like to learn more, head over to Velociteach.com. You can subscribe to the podcast and check out a full transcript of this episode.
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Until next time, stay curious, stay inspired, and we’ll catch you on the next episode of Manage This.
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