So today we're going to be talking about how to be a brilliant project manager and with this
you can quickly build trust and manage expectation as a project manager. But just before we dive in
I just want to take a moment to give you today's pro tip and just remind you to take the time to
reflect on what you have done and what you've accomplished in these 22 weeks and to celebrate
the little wins. Those little wins over time will add up and they'll lead to one big one. So take
the time to celebrate the little wins. All right is everyone ready to dive in? As a reminder as
we're going through the material please put your questions in the chat and I'll keep an eye on that.
Now I'm going to hand it over to you Dion. Thank you Jenny. So yeah I'm glad we're able to get
together and talk about this. Actually this these conversations start to become more and more
they accelerated because now we have all these weeks and we have a common language.
We have concepts we understand together and so we're able to up level the pace at which we go
through things because if I say you should shape up a project or create a thin slice or do a deep
work session I don't have to explain what any of that means because you know. So now we can sort of
speak more in concepts and we can start taking steps two at a time. So we leave this type of
idea of how to be a brilliant project manager until we have a little more language and commonality.
So when we go through this idea firstly how you manage a project can very powerfully build trust
with your team or your customers by the way. If you are a company that provides project management
level something for a customer all of what I'm about to share would apply to them and in fact
would probably blow them away and really impress them. If you're just doing project management
internally in your own company then in your own organization this obviously applies too.
Just as a quick show of hands how many people do do project management of some kind or another for
customers? Anybody just raise your hands. Okay there's a couple of you. Oh okay quite a few.
All right so good I will bring some of that in. So one of the most powerful things I think as an
individual and certainly as a project manager that builds trust is to become known for always doing
what you say you will do when you say you will do it. And you know a lot of times people will say
well I'll do this and I'll do this and if something goes wrong with that commitment
it's amazing how quickly you can lose trust in someone who when you call them and say okay you
said it's going to be ready on Tuesday are we still good for tomorrow for Tuesday and they go
oh well and um and then and I forgot to call you and and so the next time they say it and then the
third time they say it eventually you have no confidence you don't have no trust in what it is
they say however it's not that milestones don't move it's how well you manage those changes for
instance I say I'm going to have it on Tuesday and then it's Monday afternoon and something happens
when that means I was nowhere I'm going to deliver to you on Tuesday I pick up the phone and I say to
you here's the key piece of information say when you just found out I just found out 12 minutes ago
this and this happened which means we can't do that thing for Tuesday I was on course to deliver
it first thing so tell them when you knew then tell them what the impact is and then tell them
immediately what the change is but I can have it to you for Thursday close of business how does that
look people will build so it's not change that destroys trust it's how on top of it you're on
how respectful you are I remember that we were building a pretty large project for an insurance
company it was a big project it was a 15 million dollar project and we were building this project
for this insurance group and I could see something was going to slip and I called the CEO of the
holding company the insurance group they own 13 insurance companies at the time and I called the
CEO and he was also 90 owner and I said to him oh you know I told him what the reason was we
wouldn't be able to make it the first question out of his mouth was when did you know what what
did what was he doing he was wanting to know can he still trust me do I know what I'm doing am I
being respectful to him as the customer when I said I found out an hour ago or two hours ago
you know I just met with my team and you were my first call do what do you think that did yes he
was frustrated that the thing moved but he understood and his trust grew because he knew
that so imagine the third time I've done that where I've called him and
Every time you're when did you know an hour ago, whatever, he
won't ask again, because now his trust is established. This is a
person who always does what they say they will do. And this
really de-stresses the projects, because it's not that things
don't change. So the next thing is, as we grow as a project
manager, this idea of being very simple and clear, and making it
about the relationship first and the project second, is key to
driving that trust. So, you know, we want to, when we do
have change, another way to build trust is to give the team
or the team leader, if you're managing somebody who's running
a project, is to give them maximum time to respond and
correct the situation. I've seen so many times people say, okay,
well, I understand, but I have to have it by five o'clock
Wednesday. And they say, there's no way it's going to take a
week, I don't, I don't care, just do it, make it happen. And
you might get something of an answer or something of a
product. But what you've done is you've broken trust that you are
unrealistic, while on the one hand, you risk, you appreciated
them telling you upfront, but then you, you changed and you
took away the margin they had. So, you know, so again, mistakes
don't break trust, just how you own them does. So with all that
sort of as a quick introduction, I wanted to talk
about how you jump in and set up your project. So I want to go
through just four M's, because that's an easy, sorry, three M's
just to go through very quickly how to manage major milestones.
And so the three M's I would give you if you're going to
manage projects, and you're going to set up projects, and
you're going to do, you know, these different elements, the
first thing is that you must give this thing meaning, we must
know why we're doing this project, or the customers know,
and it's amazing, even customers don't always know why. And so,
you know, I think that, you know, yellow ad can be very
great, because you're describing all the possibilities. And what
if we pull this off, and you're giving it all meaning, but what
we're trying to do is set the project up so that right from
day one, there's a very clear meaning. Now, that's different
from the mission. The meaning is, you know, how does this move
the organization forward? How does this change or reposition
them or, you know, help them serve their customers or help us
serve our customers? We have to give it very clear meaning.
Second, then is the mission. What is the mission that we are
on? So setting a clear mission means that we have to state the
reality as it is not as we wish it, we wish it to be, right. So
we have, remember, we, we call it out to call it up. So we have
to state the problem in the most candid possible way. This is the
problem. The problem is, you know, we need a million dollars
of sales, and we've got 600,000. In this, you have to state it.
And then the reason is, is because our customers don't trust
us, or our customers are losing confidence, or the customers see
initial value, and then it's falling away, we have to state
the problem really clearly. And so the mission is, and that's
why we've given it meaning the mission is now that we've stated
the facts, now we set up the possibility, what we're going to
do, so you tie the mission to the meaning. So as an example,
we're going to increase sales by 30%, not because we need 30%
more sales, but because we have an opportunity to go to our
customers and give them a improved product. At the moment,
they buy the product. And then over time, let's say you're
doing a consulting agreement, over time, you know, you notice
that the first 90 days, you're really useful as a consultant.
And then you start, you know, it's less than this value. And
the reason is, is that as a consultant, you know, you're not
empathetic to all their issues, you come in, you're the fresh
mind, the fresh voice, and you're saying things and asking
quote, all the dumb questions. But in reality, you're bringing
huge value, but then your value starts tapering off. And so you
realize that if you broke, you know, you're consulting into
three phases, for instance, and you're able to bring much more
value to the customers. So the meaning is, back to the first M,
we would give it meaning by saying, what if we pulled off
way more value to our customers, by dividing it into these three
phases, not just initial consulting, but then maybe
product management, or even, you know, project management or
whatever your three phases are, then the mission is to go and
create the three phases, and to sign up the first three
customers. So we would set the mission parameters really
clearly.
And the third, and it's at that point in the mission,
now you're going to shape up your project.
So you're going to shape up your project.
You know how to do that, right?
Start with the appetite,
work through the process of shaping up the project.
You would sit, you know, you would go through and say,
what's the big idea?
You know, where's 80% of the value for 20% of the effort,
Pareto principle.
You do a fat market design.
You know, you would solve it at a very high level,
50,000 feet.
Again, you can get through a shape up in 20 minutes,
30 minutes at the most.
You'd see where all the risks and rabbit holes are.
Where could we get stuck?
How could we amend the solution if we had extra time
and we could do better?
So how would we cut it down?
How would we extend it?
What could we cut out?
What could we add?
So that's the normal shape up process.
And then you would write the pitch.
Now, this time you're not pitching your team,
you're pitching your customer.
Maybe you're not pitching your team.
We're pitching your boss.
And so now we're talking about,
here's the problem we're solving.
Here's the solution.
Here's what it's not.
Here's what it is.
Here's where the risks are.
And the minute we do it in that sort of way,
what's happened is you have set the customer up
for huge success because you put the risks
and the rabbit holes and what you could add
and what you could cut out
is all being told to the customer upfront.
So right up front,
the customer is now in a very powerful position
to set expectations.
And they're thinking,
well, at a minimum, I'm going to get this.
I know that it does not include,
because you've said what it's not,
what's included, what's not included.
Again, that's just the normal shape up process
we've already gone through with the customers.
So now when we're putting together the miles,
we're putting together the mission
and the shaping up the project,
we know that it's really critical that we build in margin
because margin to succeed.
Now there's a difference between margin
and what most project managers call sandbagging.
Is everybody familiar with the term of sandbagging?
Yeah.
So sandbagging is you overstate the time,
because you can charge by the hour or whatever it is.
You don't want to do that.
And that's what's wonderful about shaping up the project
because you're telling the customer,
we're going to do this in so many sessions.
We're going to do this in three weeks.
You're not telling them it's 10 deep work sessions
or whatever, you know that,
but you're just telling them the outcome.
We're going to start on this date,
we're going to end on that date.
Hey, if things go well,
we're going to add in these two things.
If things go badly,
we're going to cut out these three things.
And so the customer right off the bat
knows exactly what you're getting.
Now you go to the next step and you tell the customer
what makes the margin work
is how they participate in the project.
Now, if you need very clear deliverables from the customer,
this is a time you laid out.
This is true, by the way,
I'm saying the word customer,
but sometimes your internal team is your customer.
Sometimes technology software house
is building something for the sales team.
The sales team is now the customer.
So the customer can be internal or external.
And at this point,
we want to be really clear about what our expectations are
in terms of deliverables.
I need this by this date, this by this date.
And so it's at this point,
we put together a very clear project map.
And so when we put together this project map,
what we're doing is we're creating
just a basic project schedule.
Now, a lot of people will use very complex software
for managing high-end projects with a lot of details,
and that's all fine.
You can definitely do that.
But what I found is the best or brilliant project manager,
the people who can keep the main things in their head,
they already know that if there's three main things,
and if this one main thing moves,
the cost is going to go up,
or we're going to miss the time.
So knowing if you can reduce it down
to the three main things that you need
to manage the project,
that will be the game changer.
And it sounds so obvious,
but when you're setting up a project
and you ask yourself,
what's the three main things?
When you're starting a project,
it isn't always immediately apparent
what those three main things are.
And later on, and of course,
we're going to talk about a little couple
of little modeling techniques
and other things you can do to help you find that.
But right now, we just want to go through this ideas.
Okay, so we set the meaning, we set the mission,
we shaped up the project,
and now we want to talk about milestones.
I would suggest in general,
try to keep to no more than three milestones.
Here's why three.
Again, we've gone through the neuroscience
of your brain can remember three.
Five in your brain is just a three plus a two.
So your brain doesn't like mapping five or seven or 12,
or it understands conceptually what those numbers are,
but three, it can directly visualize.
I think you can you can memorize five but three is always a good number so even if you're doing a talk three so that's why we had three points right meaning mission milestones.
The milestones here is, if you have three what you have to what we're trying to do is we're trying to predict and create predictability.
In the process, what I mean by that, that means, as I'm looking through the process I'm building smaller margins into the overall margin.
So for each milestone has its own margin, the project has its margin so overall what's happening is we're
we're teaching our team what we're going to do with this model, so why do we have margin, well what drives margin.
Margin is driven by the unpredictability of the project, so if you can ask yourself what part of this project do I have no control over.
So, for instance, let's say you know, for you need some sort of government approval or you need the county to give you, you know, a permit or you need.
Funding to come through for the second phase, whatever it is, so what you want to do is you want to isolate all the elements that make your project unpredictable.
We'll set those aside and then we're going to on the predictability side we're going to say okay let's assume we get all those things and it all runs and we've built margin for each milestone.
Now the unpredictability element, the part that you can't control, usually, if you dig into the unpredictability element there's usually just one thing that's causing it to be unpredictable.
Like you know the county permit or whatever it is, do we know someone at the county, can we get ahead of this, can we apply for it early, so there's usually something or a series of steps, you can take to soften and give you a little more control and predictability around the unpredictable elements.
So I know I'm speaking theoretically so just go through, so let's say we're doing a building project.
And we have no idea when we're going to get the book we're going to get the building permit, but what we do know when we look into it.
Is that in our county in general take six weeks to permit something like this, we don't have six weeks we've only got three and we needed we've got three weeks we've got to have and then we've got to start.
Then the next question is, do we have relationships or does somebody have relationship with, can we hire a consultant, is there something we can do to add predictability and remove out the non predictable elements.
And so, you know, having done big building projects, I can tell you that you know you can always find a way, if you put the effort and the detail and try to figure out how you can make your project predictable.
So now that we've sort of laid out all those elements, let me just give you a couple of just.
High points on how to become.
So we've talked about you know, creating meaning the mission and the milestones and as you're going through this.
I want to just talk a little bit about how to communicate with your team that's delivering the project and how to communicate with your customer, the internal or the external customer.
So the first thing I just want to come up with three ideas and there's at the start of the project.
Communicating very clearly to all the stakeholders, what do I mean by stakeholder, the stakeholders, anybody who's affected by this.
It could be the owner of the company, it could be the person who's ultimately going to live with it, so we're thinking of stakeholders we're thinking about who's going to help us build this.
Who's going to help us build this.
I do the project who's going to end up living with it.
And who's it going to financially affect.
And does this have an impact on somebody else, even though they're not using it directly.
So we want to know who does this impact and that so it doesn't just it's not just the people running the project.
Or the people, the internal customers it's all the soft connections that involve everyone else, so we want to notify that whole group that the project has started.
We want to tell that group we've confirmed roles, we have you know so and so is the project manager and we have this person doing the accounting of the project and whatever it is, whatever the roles are.
And then number three, and since I don't have to this is all part of starting.
State what done means done means this, so we know what done means, and we will consider it done when this happens.
And so what will happen is you can see the amount of expectation management is very detailed and when you put.
willing to put the detail into the expectation side,
into the relational side,
this is what makes you an amazing project manager.
So that's at the start.
During the project, keeping an eye on the milestones,
like, you know, we're coming up for milestone number two,
we're 10 days away from milestone number two,
we're three days away from milestone number two, et cetera.
Also during the project,
remember the concept of good news travels fast,
bad news travels faster, right?
When you have bad news,
let the stakeholders know immediately.
Now, of course, you know,
you can't have every little bump in the road
and cause chaos.
Oh, it's all gonna fail.
Obviously there's discretion.
And then immediately adjust expectations and reinforce them.
Yeah, we're not gonna have a Tuesday,
but we will have it on Thursday.
And then make sure you do.
So when you pick that second one,
you may wanna add in even extra margin and say,
you know, we can't do it on Tuesday,
but we think we can do it the following Monday.
And then when you pull it off by Friday, you're the hero.
Whereas if you said Thursday and you pull it off on Friday,
there you missed it again.
So you can see how very quickly
and how very easily it is to become
or be seen as a brilliant project manager.
Okay, so we talked about how to communicate
at the start of the project, during the project,
and at the end of the project.
Now, this might be one of the ones
where I've seen the worst execution of leading teams.
The first is when you end the project,
declare it and make it official in some way.
Gather the team together, gather the stakeholders,
have a celebration, depends on the project.
Get the customer together.
Take your team to the customer's office if you can.
Get on the Zoom call, make it a big deal.
As, and I would even give it a time.
As of 2 p.m. this afternoon, we completed the project.
Well done to the team.
It's officially done, handed off, signed off,
all good to go.
Then give very specific recognition.
We talked a lot about as a leader,
you wanna give very specific recognition.
So through the project you're tracking
and tell those little stories.
You don't have to say what every single person did,
but what you wanna do is tell little vignette stories
that move the elephant and the rider.
You remember the elephant, the rider, and the pathway?
Do you remember that story?
The elephant's the emotion,
the rider's the rational part,
the pathway is where you want them to go.
And stories move people emotionally and rationally.
I remember the time that Mary said this
and then we were running around
and then she went out and got donuts for everybody
and we all like caught our breath.
And it can be the little stuff,
but it makes people feel like,
I love to be on your team.
I feel so much recognition.
I feel so alive when I work with you.
It's this last piece.
And then make it a celebration.
Zoom out for a minute and say,
here's all the things we did.
Here's all the milestones we achieved.
And even on small things,
and we've talked about this concept before, right?
We've talked about it.
One of the great habits of a leader
is that you hit the pause button
and summarize what you've just achieved.
Well, this is certainly true in a bigger project.
You wanna hit the pause button and say,
this is what we achieved.
And you say, well, everybody knows
they worked on the project.
It's not actually true.
Most people worked on a piece of the project,
but they don't see the whole thing.
And especially if you can celebrate the first impact.
Remember we said we were gonna roll out
our new consulting in three phases
and we've got our first three clients signed up
this afternoon.
People are like, wow, we developed it.
We got a new customer in.
And so you've moved.
So guess what happens the next time?
If you go through what I just said,
the next time you recommend we do a project,
people wanna be on your team.
Customers, everybody wants to be your customer
because they know you're the person who does
what they say they'll do when you said you'll do it.
And you're very, very good at letting them know
immediately when something's moved
in one of the milestones.
I have one or two closing thoughts until
I see this chat going.
Jenny, if you can check with me.
I am, yes.
No questions.
Deb just pointed out and I like it
that letting the stakeholders know when there's a delay,
even if it means heading out into the facility
in the middle of the night in February in Minneapolis
to understand the issue and let the customer know
within two hours of you knowing.
So I'm sure that builds confidence.
Confidence from the customer.
Yeah.
I once got on a plane, flew to Houston
just to tell somebody that one of the accounts
in our forex trading program had missed its goal.
And he was the CEO of a petroleum company.
He had 20,000 people reporting to him.
He looks at me and he says,
I'm sitting in his boardroom and he says,
hang on, what did you come to tell me?
I start telling him, he says,
you could have picked up the phone and told me that.
I said, no, not on a mistake of this kind.
I got on the plane and came and presented myself.
That was the most respectful thing I could think of doing.
He said, in 30 years of having money managers
and investment managers,
I've never had anybody care about my money
as much as you do.
Notice how he translated my actions into caring.
And so he said, well, with that said,
but what do you want to do now?
Let's go for lunch.
And we just hung out and it was amazing.
You know, it built the friendship
because when you do this stuff, like you just said there,
who made the comment, Deb?
So I think that's it.
So just a couple of closing thoughts.
Never doubt your team's ability to deliver the dream,
to deliver the mission, you know, make it meaningful.
And when you close it all out and you connect the closing
to the original meaning, the original mission,
the original milestones, it all feels pulled together.
I felt like you were in control of the process
from the beginning.
Second thought about this is keep the grace level very high,
especially when it gets very pressurized.
Humor, keeping it lighthearted,
keep the grace flowing.
And, you know, make deadlines super serious.
We just don't miss deadlines.
And if we do and we move them,
it has to feel like an act of Congress.
It has to feel super serious.
And the reason is you develop decision integrity.
Back to that, when we do something, we say, we'll do it.
We don't miss deadlines.
And as you know, when you build that into the culture
of your team, then a team in crisis even
will survive the process and they'll trust you as the leader
because they'll watch how you pull them out of it
milestone by milestone.
And that is the bottom line.
You know, I think that, you know,
one of the things we instituted early on at Brilliant
was if you do a pitch and you miss your deadline,
you can't test that project for six months.
No extensions.
Because we talked about what could go right and go wrong.
And you had all that.
Unless it was completely and utterly out of your control,
that's a different matter.
But even then I didn't leave.
Still, maybe we leave it for six months anyway,
since it was such an unpredictable thing.
So look, a lot of this is more as much art as it is science.
But if you want to net it all out,
it comes down to the relationship management.
Great project managers are great relational managers.