Management Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Kory, welcome.

Kory Kogon
Thanks for having me, Pete. Great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your work, Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager. I think a lot of people find themselves in that position of the unofficial project manager. Could you paint a picture for us for how that normally shows up at work?

Kory Kogon
Well, in today’s world, we’re knowledge workers, we’re paid to think, to innovate, to create, and execute. And when it really comes down to it, we are making things, things that have a beginning and an end. And as knowledge workers, we just quietly slip into the role of unofficial project managers without the training that official project managers would get. And people just use their talents and skills to push through when there’s actually a better way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, can you paint a picture for us in terms of how well is that working for us so far, in terms of the state of unofficial project management at work?

Kory Kogon
Well, the state of it is that, generally, 65% of projects fail, and that can include official and unofficial project managers. But more down to earth and real is that wherever I go around the world, or the country, and speak with groups on Zoom or in person, when you ask them why projects fail, they always give the same reasons, that there’s unclear expectations, that there’s no clear communication, that they don’t have the right people in the right roles, that there’s scope creep. It goes on and on and on to this very similar list all the time, everywhere.

And, again, it’s because we’re trying to get projects done by the seat of our pants, and it’s really unfortunate because when we become scarred unofficial project managers, because we all go into these projects sort of expecting those bad outcomes, and so from an engagement point of view, where are we when it comes to projects? So, that’s a little bit of the landscape that that we need to push through. And like I said before, there’s just a better way when people become aware of just the organic nature of us being unofficial project managers.

Pete Mockaitis
And this 65% figure, I really want to dig into that because, I mean, how precisely are we defining a project has failed?

Kory Kogon
You know, it could be it was off budget or it didn’t meet its scope. So, again, it’s a wide berth to say that, you know, to pose that number. I don’t have the empirical data for you exactly, but it’s an estimate out there.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess what I was thinking is like, if the project is to start a profitable business, I would expect, a vast majority of the, in fact, would fail. Although, if the project is to, you know – why is this so hard to think of an example? – redesign our loan approval process is the project. That feels very much like, “Okay, that’s within the control of an organization to do that.”

So, you’re not aware if it’s like entrepreneurial, sort of risky market-facing factors are at play within the 65% figure, or it’s pretty much, no, it’s just, this could have been done, but it didn’t happen because of those very ordinary means by which things fall apart?

Kory Kogon
No, I think it’s a little bit of both. There are all kinds of forces that affect everything so it’s a little bit of both. And those outside forces might be constants that we need to deal with. So, I think there’s a lot in there. I don’t want to say, “Oh, well, you know, if people clarified expectations, it would be 100%.” It’s very rare to even get to 100%. So, even if we took 65 and reduce that to 40 or 30, the return on investment to anybody would be amazing.

Even an entrepreneur starting a business and gets slowed down because things aren’t progressing as fast, so they couldn’t get the money fast enough. Or the building, I mean think about constructing a building for a business and when it gets slowed down, so even if we don’t into that number a little bit, regardless of the factors, the return on investment is pretty huge.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, then, I’d love to get your perspective on, from all your research and work here, what is the top thing that makes a huge difference and yet is done so infrequently in terms of ensuring project success?

Kory Kogon
The top thing, again not empirically, but just from our experience and what we hear a lot is unclarified expectations. And, again, you could be running the gamut of, “Is this a solo entrepreneur starting a business that has this project in their mind so they’re clear on their own expectations?” But even then, I can see traps along the way versus a 10,000-person organization where they’re working on projects and have big key stakeholders at the executive level, and everybody’s pulling in a different direction.

But I will say, clarified expectations. So, even an entrepreneur who is starting a business, if they are like, “Well, maybe we should do it this way,” or “Maybe we should do it that way,” and they don’t come to clarity to say, “Okay, we’ve got this clarity. Now let’s execute,” it really will step them back. So, I would say that is one of the biggest ones out there around clarifying the expectations or clarifying the scope of the project, first and foremost, is probably key.

I’ve also seen in some of the bigger organizations very painful scenarios of project managers trying to jockey the politics, and this key stakeholder wants this, and the other one wants that, and trying to do a project without that clarity, and it’ll kill you in the end.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Kory, it sounds like you’ve got a story in mind. Please, tell us a dastardly tale of unclarified expectations and what went awry.

Kory Kogon
Well, one story, one person that I talked to, it was just really amazing. She was talking about the project that they were working on, and it was a big team of people, and they’re four months into spending a ton on it, and a stakeholder showed up, and said, “No, no, that’s not the direction. We need to go in this direction,” and that person had a lot of influence, and they had to stop the whole project.

And once you stop a project like that, they had people that left the organization because of that, and trying to find the money to redo all of it just brought everything to a standstill. But it was more, you sort of had to be there, the pain on this woman’s face as she was telling this story of failure, and I think also, it’s not just that they didn’t clarify expectations.

It’s that how it makes people feel when, because no matter what, even though it was an outside force, if you will, to change something, all the good work that this person and the teams had done to get there suddenly went away, and it makes you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing, and there’s nothing worse than people feel like they don’t know what they’re doing, and I think that leads to shame, which is another terrible thing that people have to deal with.

So, the cost is not just financial. It’s social, emotional, all from this idea of, “Can we just get clear up front on what this project is?” And if we’re all clear, in this new world of agility, as we go, we’ll get feedback, we’ll do it in a measured modern kind of way, so we make the project better and better, to apply and supply the value that it was meant to supply from the beginning.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And what are some of your favorite best practices, or key questions, or means by which we can get outstanding clarity right from the get-go?

Kory Kogon
So, the first thing is to understand you do need to ask questions. It’s amazing to me, Pete, how many people will say to me, “Well, I’m afraid to ask questions because they’re going to think I’m stupid or something, that I don’t know my job.” I’ve been in executive leadership for many years. If you don’t come and ask me questions about a project that I’m involved with, you’re making a big mistake because then you’re trying to read my mind, and I will come to you later and say, “Well, wait a minute, what about this?”

So, best you come to me and ask questions and don’t worry that I’m going to look at you and think you’re not smart. That’s totally not true. So, that’s number one, is get that, “ I do need to ask questions of key stakeholders.” The second thing is, when you go to ask questions, is that you go with a clear outcome of the project. So, it’s not, “Hey, well, you know, senior leadership says it’s important, Kory, so I need you to tell me what you want.” I don’t have time for that.

But if you came to me and said, “Listen, from what I know so far, that this is going to increase our bottom line by 10%, or it’s going to engage our people in a way they haven’t been engaged before, so we cut retention,” now we’re talking, now I have some concrete things that I can go on, so I will make the time to listen to your questions.

And so, the last thing I’ll say on questions is make sure you come prepared with a couple of really good – we call this the question funnel – open questions, meaning, “So, tell me, based on what we know, why is this project important to you?” Detailed questions, so that when somebody says, “Well, it’s important because senior leadership said so,” that instead of like, “Okay, fine,” knowing that’s not a real answer, we can ask a detailed question of, “So, what does important mean to you? What does that mean to the organization?” and you drill into it.

And then a closed question, meaning confirm what you heard. When somebody says, “Well, I think we’re going to put $100,000 towards the budget.” Don’t run off and go, “Yay, we have $100,000.” You want to confirm it and say, “So, you said $100,000. Are we final on that? Do we need some meeting on that? What’s the next step to make sure that that’s the budget?” So, we close it up and get confirmation.

So, those three, the question funnel, in addition to make sure you don’t feel that it’s silly asking questions, and having a good outcome so somebody pays attention to you, and then these questions, you’ll be really set to clarify expectations.

Pete Mockaitis
I like the visual of a funnel there in terms of open at the top, it makes sense at the beginning that we can be a little more exploratory, broad, expansive, make sure we don’t constrict too early. And then, yes, at the end, making sure that we’ve got what we need, those key bits of finality and closure. Can you share with us any particular specific questions that you have found often open up oceans of clarity when folks take the boldness to go ahead and put them forward?

Kory Kogon
Well, it depends on the situation. I don’t know if there’s any magic bullet, and one that I said before, knowing what we know about the project, “How do you see its importance to our team, to the organization?” That, I think, is a main question. One of the questions that I said to you before, this idea of confirmation to knock out assumptions, which are killing a lot of organizations, because everybody assumes they know what somebody else is thinking.

And so, just every step of the way, without being obnoxious, “So, is that how we want to move forward? Is that how you want me to write that down?” So, just really making sure we have the confirmation. And any question that will lead to a more measurable outcome. So again, in that detailed question, “But what will success look like for us?” So, I should be able to answer that and other people should be able to answer that for you. If we’re doing an event to improve customer satisfaction, how will we measure the outcomes of this? That is key to an agile project management world we live in.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s huge in terms of moving past fuzzy language to concrete language, like, “We really want to delight our customers,” or, “We want to grow. We want this to be a big opportunity,” is okay. So, is any positive incremental amount growth, and thusly we get to celebrate victory, and what did you mean by a lot, “Oh, wow, your ‘a lot’ is way, way bigger than my ‘a lot’ assumption”? And so, driving to that extra level of confirmation can really be quite eye-opening.

Kory Kogon
It can, and this whole notion of squeezing out assumptions. So, I think a key principle for project management, which is a little bit out of, not left field, but I think will be of interest to everybody, is this notion that words are only the code by which I’m describing the picture in my mind. And so, when somebody says, to your point, Pete, “Well, make sure this is done in a quality way.” “Okay, boss, got it,” and off I go, and I do things in what I think is a quality way, and I come back and show Pete, and Pete’s like, “What the heck is that? That’s not what I meant.”

But the word quality goes back to those detailed questions. The word quality means something different in your mind than it does in my mind. And as a good project manager, if I understand that principle around language, quality, trust, any words you can think of, feast, any kind of word, we call it a fat word, because there are so many different meanings that it’s imperative that people ask questions to make sure we are on the same wavelength, “What do you mean by quality?” And you continue to drill down until you feel, without being obnoxious, but until you feel like you’re on the same wavelength with the person you’re talking to. That’s a life lesson, not just a project management lesson.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly.

Kory Kogon
As I know from my own home.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s funny is the word quality, it seems like, “Of course, we all like quality,” but that could actually be pretty dangerous. Like, Kory, if you tell me, you want something to be the high quality, I mean, watch out, because I’m thinking, “Okay, high quality means this is the best in the world in its category, or at least top 1%. Therefore, it’s probably going to take dozens or hundreds of hours to execute.” It’s like, “Oh no, no, no! When I said quality, I don’t want you to go deep into the land of obsessive, hardcore craftsmanship. I just mean it needs to not break.” It’s like, “Oh, okay, quality.” I’m glad I asked.

Kory Kogon
Yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. Well, so that’s one huge piece of failure there, is unclarified expectations, and we fix that by clarifying, asking a lot of questions, being bold, getting super clear. What is another major cause of failure and the antidote?

Kory Kogon
Well, I’ll give you sort of this overarching mindset that we say that project success equals value, plus people, plus process. And without getting into the details, the Project Management Institute updated their standard to one that more resembled the agile world, which means, “Are we bringing full value to the customer? And how are we being agile along the way to get there?”

So, we actually updated our mindset from people plus process equals project success, to value plus people, plus process, equals project success. So, to your question, the people part and the leadership part, much failure comes because project managers, in some cases, never intended to be leaders. In some organizations, they chose a technical track or a genius track, not a leadership development track, and a lot of people just don’t get it that people do the work. So, “Am I somebody that is inspiring people to want to play on my team and will play to win?”

So, with that, there are five behaviors. We said, out of all the leadership stuff out there, because if you think about it, Pete, when you think about the failure list – lack of clear expectations, lack of communication, wrong people in the wrong job, scope creep, all of that stuff – and then we’re saying, “Okay, yippee, we have this project to do,” and the people that are doing it are living inside that failure list unless a leader is its own failure, unless a leader knows how to pull them out of that, using a good process, and inspiring people to want to give their best.

And so, out of all the leadership behaviors out there, all the leadership development that people can take, we’ve narrowed it down and said, “You know what? For this, for now, if they just master five behaviors, that will go a long way to inspiring their team to want to do the work and want to win.” And those behaviors are: demonstrate respect, listen first, clarify expectations, extend trust, and practice accountability. And those five behaviors come from what we call the 13 Behaviors of High Trust Leaders. So, just those five.

And I always say our parents taught us to do those things, right? And when you’re under pressure, listen, I’ve been in leadership for many years. I’m born and raised in New York City. You probably can tell from my accent. I move fast and hard, and my default nature is just, “Let’s go get them.” And under pressure, not that I don’t want to respect people, but I have to be really careful, because my demeanor, I live in Arizona, my demeanor can be one that’s really to the point and a little gruff from time to time, and people could feel like I’m not respecting them.

So, when I’m under pressure of a big project, I really need to take a deep breath and think about it. Listening first also can go out of the window when you are under pressure. It’s like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I just need you to do it the way I said so,” which is I always say it’s so much easier to be a bad leader than a good one because I have to really think about being good, kind of thing.

So, all of these, clarifying expectations, for the team member, not just the project, but it’s not just, “Pete, just do this task with blinders on.” It’s, “Pete, let me explain. For you to do this task means that it’s the piece of the puzzle that’s going to make sure this all happens.” Like, “Whoa, okay, now I get what my task is as a contribution, not just a thing to do.”

Extend trust. People struggle with delegation. You got to let the team members do the work. And then practice accountability. If I am not a model of accountability before I hold you accountable, and if I let you show up late three days in a row, and the team sees that there’s no accountability, everything’s going to fall apart. So, those five behaviors are key to a project manager leading a project and staying off some of the failure list.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now you also mentioned you’ve got five project phases: the scope, plan, engage, track, adapt, and close. Can you walk us through those and some of the best practices there? It sounds like we got a little bit of goodness on the scope side. Any more you’d add to that?

Kory Kogon
I would. A key thing that people struggle with that they should be aware of, I mentioned, well, first of all, is how you get access to stakeholders, and I explained a little bit about that before, is you’ve got to have the right story to make sure people will make time for you. But then the other thing in scoping is making sure that you are able to get key stakeholders on the same page. That when they have differing opinions, are you good enough using those behaviors to get them in a room and help negotiate getting clarity on the scope? So that’s a key thing as well.

And I’ll also say within that first one around scoping is identifying key stakeholders. And it’s interesting because we give a little thinking tool called the key stakeholder dance, which is, “Who makes the decisions? Who has the authority? Who has the need?” Those are all the signers. The last two, C and E, is, “Who has the connection? And who is the energy?” And those are not signers. Those are people, like connections, I have people out in the field that they have so much influence in the organization that when I have somebody with negative energy or there’s politics, I can call them to the table and they can help smooth things over.

So, a lot of times that’s a big takeaway for people to really go back and revisit their key stakeholder list, and say, “Did I forget those people?” Because I usually go for just the signers and the ones we know. So, that’s scope. In plan, there’s really two key things to do. One is, “How do I identify and get my arms around risk?” so risk management. And people are working on a lot of projects at the same time. So, if we identify 10 or 12 risks, can we manage a million things? So, how do we prioritize risks and just focus on the ones that are really key?

And the second part of plan is the project plan, which is always everybody’s favorite part because they just tremble at the idea of a Gantt chart. And the interesting thing is it becomes this great visual scoreboard that once you know some project management principles, you’d be amazed at how easy a Gantt chart can be and how strategic it can become to your entire project and your team. So, that’s a little bit about a plan.

Scope and plan together, make up, “I’m ready to go, and now we just need to execute.” So, I’ll pause there, see if you have any questions.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. So, with Gannt charts, for those who are not familiar, can you describe this life-changing magic and what makes it so amazing?

Kory Kogon
Yeah, and people will say, “Kory, get a life. You get so excited about a Gantt chart.” And sometimes they’ll say, “Demystify success for the unofficial project manager,” because it is a demystification. So, a lot of people, when we ask them, what do they used to you know plan a project or to track it, and most times, and we do poll after poll after poll the, answer always is in the majority, Excel. And then some people are using some things like Monday.com. I mean, there’s a bunch of things out there, Google Sheets and all that kind of stuff.

And they use Excel, and it’s interesting because the Gantt chart program, so think, and I don’t represent them, Microsoft Project or Smartsheet on the Google side, and I have no allegiance to any of them, but essentially, they are Excel and project management principles included. So, here’s the big demystification, which I love, is when you understand the concept of dependencies, that one task must get done before the other task gets started, as an example, and you tie those things together, the software will allow you to tie those things together, and you learn the difference between work hours and duration.

So, work hours is, “Oh, yes, Pete, I can get that list to you, or the customer list together, in four hours, no problem.” Really? You have seven other projects going on, your team is busy, also somebody’s on PTO, and really the duration is two or three days to get those four hours of work done. So, if you input dependencies and duration in your task list, then you’re going to end up with what’s called the critical path. Another terrifying term to so many people.

The critical path is a wonderful thing. The critical path will light up in a Gantt chart and show you the shortest amount of time it’s going to take to get those tasks done that must be done on exactly the way you have them in order to finish the project right here. It lights up. So, suddenly, you have this magical strategic tool that shows you how this project needs to go, and how you might need to put your best people on critical path items because they got to be done right then and there.

So, it’s not for the faint of heart and it’s not for like brand-new people training. You want to make sure that you have the right people on critical path items. And if a critical path item is in danger, it allows you to think about, “Okay, Mary, you know what? You’re on a task that isn’t so critical. Can you help Pete out because we really got to get this done?” So, it just turns an Excel spreadsheet into a magical strategic project management tool that’s not as hard as everybody thinks.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, are you saying that you’d recommend, if you’re using Excel, try Project or something else? Or are you saying, “Get the magical plugins that make Excel do this for you right away”?

Kory Kogon
I’m not that good to know if Excel has the plugins, but I would say, and we say in our courses too, we’re not here to make experts of Gantt charts. And we’ll say it in the book as well, give it a try. So maybe it’s Microsoft Project, there’s a lot of online programs out there. Give something a try. Take a deep breath. Learn those principles, and then see how it works for you.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think a cool thing to highlight in terms of those principles and the notion of the critical path is that there are some activities that we can do serially. Okay, not serially, but parallelly. We could do some things at the same time, and it’s all good. Team A is working on some marketing stuff, which they can do before Team B does the engineering to make the thing actually exist. That’s possible. We don’t have to wait until we could actually see it and touch the thing in order to start getting some marketing things together.

However, when it comes to photographing the thing, it needs to exist first in order for it to be honestly photographed. And so, that is how you really start to see that differentiation between, “Are things done in parallel or serially?” and then the stack of things that are dependent on the prior things extend outward horizontally to become the critical path on a chart. And so, it really is pretty eye-opening. And as you go, “Oh, well, we can get started on all these things right now, but we absolutely cannot start this until that’s done, so we really, really, really got to make sure that this piece doesn’t get delayed here.”

Kory Kogon
A lot of times we just intuitively think about that as unofficial process, “Oh, well, you know, yeah, we need to do that, but we’ll check with them, and we’ll probably get that on Tuesday.” This makes it very specific. And you said it beautifully, things can work in parallel and these dependencies are finish to start, start to finish. So, there’s a few different ones in there that link them together.

I always like to talk about Thanksgiving in the United States dinner is turkey, you know, turkey dinner. And when you think about cooking, how all that works, you sort of intuitively know, “Well, I need to put the turkey in four hours ahead, but the potatoes need to go in ten minutes before the turkey is ready.” So, it’s very similar. We’ve been doing it intuitively, but when we get it down into a chart and let the chart help us manage, it’s really amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly, and then you start to have some fun thinking about the resources and the true bottlenecks, and it’s like, “Oh, well, this doesn’t even need the oven at all, so easy-peasy. I’ll just use the microwave for that, and away we go.” Okay. Well, so now let’s hear about the engage.

Kory Kogon
Well, that takes us right back to the people part because this is where, if we’ve got scope and plan, and we want to engage, this is where we need to help our people do their work and hold them accountable, so we say inspire shared accountability. And so, if you think about if we’ve got a good, or whatever you’re using, it should be a visual scoreboard, much easier in this day and age because everybody can go online and see what’s what, whether you’re working remote, or hybrid, or whatever. So, really good versus having to bring a chart into a room.

So, everybody has visibility into my well-done, whether it’s a Gantt chart, or however you end up doing it, and what we recommend, and we’re very famous for this at Franklin Covey, is what we call a team accountability session, because people are already rolling their eyes, saying, “Of course, you’re going to tell me to do another meeting.” We work our meetings and our accountability, we like to say, from the bottom up. That this is not about the leader holding the team accountable. It’s about the team wanting to play to win.

So, this team accountability session is maybe a once-a-week meeting, that is not a staff meeting, it’s not an operations meeting. All it is, it’s like, forgive me, using a sports analogy, but like a sports huddle. The team gets together and everybody commits to, “This is exactly what I’m doing this week to make sure this project stays on target.” And the job of the leader in that meeting is to only, what we call, clear the path.

So, everybody comes to this very short 15-minute meeting, of course, depends on how many people you’ve got on the team. Everybody knows where they are, and they are reporting out, “Hey, last week, I said I was going to do this thing, got it, done, moving on. Next week, I have a million things to do, but here’s the one thing I’m going to do to make sure this project stays on task,” and the project manager is in the background clearing the path, “You know what? I can’t get through to facilities, they’re not answering my calls. I can’t get my thing done to get the parking set up.” And so, great, my job as a leader, I’m going to call facilities so you have a clear path to be able to do that, and the meeting is over.

And that is just, so it’s the people are making the commitments to what they’re going to do to keep that project on track, not the leader, and so it creates this engagement by the team and they high-five and they go out. That’s sort of the cadence of accountability that we do. Doesn’t always go perfectly. Lots of times people come to the meeting, “I didn’t get to it.” So, what the leader has to really learn is, “How do I tell Pete? He didn’t do his commitments, and he just announced it in the meeting, how do I let the team know that I’m holding him accountable without embarrassing him in front of everybody else, and turning the team against me at the same time?”
So, there’s a lot of learning that goes into that, and also, “How do I, if somebody is chronic, where they haven’t shown up for three weeks, how do I have a performance conversation with them to understand what’s going on and set it right?” So, the pathway is to engage through this bottom-up team accountability. And I say bottom lovingly, meaning the people who are doing the work get to speak and make the commitments, the leader is behind them. And then, “How do I keep things going because something’s going to give because we’re not perfect?”

Pete Mockaitis
And, Kory, I’d love it for you to give us a demonstration. Indeed, let’s say I show up and I didn’t do the thing, how does one respond in that artful way that you described that checks all the boxes you’re looking to accomplish there?

Kory Kogon
It’s a great question, and I’ll do it with you. So, go ahead, tell me you didn’t do something.

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, yeah, sorry, no, I didn’t quite finish that one up.”

Kory Kogon
“Thanks, Pete, for letting us know. Can you tell us a little bit about what went…? I’m sure we’re all so busy. What happened?”

Pete Mockaitis
“Yeah, that’s the thing. There’s just been a whole lot going on in a lot of directions, and, yeah, unfortunately, I just didn’t get to that.”

Kory Kogon
“Okay. Well, I get that and, again, I know, I can tell it’s on your face, too, how crazed everybody is. We’re all busy. You made that commitment last week. So, what is it? Is there anything that we can do to help you? Because now we have that commitment and we need your commitment for next week. So, what can I do to help you to make sure that we hit our commitments by the time we come back next week?”

Pete Mockaitis
“Well, yeah, I appreciate the question. I guess it’s just really tricky with my boy, my youngest kid just isn’t sleeping well, and so then the rest of us aren’t sleeping well. And then, I don’t know about you, when I don’t get the sleep, I’m kind of dumber and slower in everything I try to do on a given day. So, I don’t…it’s probably not practical for anyone to show up and tend to the children in my home. So, yeah, I’m kind of drawing a blank.”

Kory Kogon
“Yeah, it sounds a little frustrating. Everybody in this room is really nodding. Everybody has kids. Well, here’s what I would suggest so we don’t hold everybody up. How about you and I take this offline and then we’ll figure something out. Does that sound okay?”

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, sure thing.”

Kory Kogon
“Okay.” So, if I had gone any further with you, the tension would really rise. Somebody might have said, “Well, you know, I had these three other projects and I couldn’t get to it, and you made the commitment.” So, somebody might have said, “Well, you know what, I couldn’t get to it yesterday. I’ll get to it tomorrow. And here’s my commitment for next week. I’m going to keep it really light, but I can get this done to make sure that…” and we would agree and go on.

But you pushed me to the second part, which is we need to have a performance conversation offline because, had I gone any further with you, like I said, the tension was rising in the room, and it starts to become embarrassing for everybody else.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and they don’t need to hear about you and me troubleshooting a sleeping…

Kory Kogon
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
In terms of just like respectful of their time. But I really do appreciate how you made it clear. And it wasn’t super ominous, like, “You’re going to get a talking to by the principal.” But it was just clear, it’s like, “Okay, that’s not just going to get swept under the rug. Something is going to be done to address that,” and so the team gets that memo. And so, if someone was new, it’s like, “Oh, duly noted, not getting to it doesn’t work here.”

Kory Kogon
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
“Okay, message received.”

Kory Kogon
That is the key, that when you do this well and don’t lose the respect of the team, like if it had gone further and we took the gloves off, that’s bad because what will happen is just group dynamics. The group will defend you more than the leader, like, “I can’t believe she’s doing that to Pete here,” that kind of thing. But what does happen, like you said, “I got the memo.”

And that’s the key, is by handling it when it happens somehow, what people are sitting there doing is exactly what you said, they’re like, “Okay, I am never, ever, ever, ever going to put myself in that position of not coming to this meeting without my commitments done,” or “I’m going to let Kory know beforehand so we can work it out.” And that’s the key, that’s accountability. That’s a great thing where people are thinking it up themselves instead of dropping the hammer on them, like, “You will do your stuff,” kind of thing.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that’s powerful, is that you didn’t need to shout, or be mean, or do name calling, or, like frowny faces. You didn’t have to do any sort of a toxic behavior for it to feel plenty uncomfortable such that I wouldn’t want to do that again. Like, people love to complain about their bosses, nor do I think I could be like, “Can you believe what Kory said to me?” It’s like, “I kind of can. Like, that’s seems kind of like a reasonable response from a leader, even though it sucked for you. Sorry you had to go through that.”

Kory Kogon
Right. And even when you said no frowny face, for me, some of my best friends, I’ll be sitting with them and I’ll get a nudge, and they’ll say, “Talk to your face,” because I could be showing my hand on my face. This whole thing around leadership, and even with these five behaviors, leadership is a choice. And project management, again, we didn’t choose to be people leaders, but if you’re a project manager, you’re leading people, and you have to talk to your face, and you have to be very measured about this and very self-aware, and emotionally intelligent in dealing with people and getting things done.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, so track, adapt, and close, we might do the quicker version of those.

Kory Kogon
We can, because if you get the first two groups done well, and we’re engaging, then track and adapt, we’ve been doing it all along. Track and adapt is really about the whole agile movement that we did have a scope, not that we want scope creep, but are we building in feedback loops, really listening to people to make sure that we are delivering value on the project? Market forces change, things change out there, and so track and adapt as a team. Do we have the agility to be able to do that? As a leader, am I leading my people in the right way around that?

Close is always so interesting because if you talk to people, one of the things they’ll say is, “Do you have a bunch of projects that never end?” And people will laugh and say, “Ugh, all the time.” So, we got to finish them because it’s easy to start them, hard to finish them. But we finish them and the most important thing, again, remember we want an engaged team, is to have that closing meeting. When I get that meeting notice, I roll my eyes, like, “Ugh, the closing meeting.”

And then when I’m in it, I’m like, “I’m glad we did it,” because the team gets recognized, the key stakeholders are there, and it’s a place where people can share a retrospective, “What went well? What didn’t?” people can voice their concerns, we can celebrate people, and it really sets people up to be even more engaged for the next project. So, that’s track and adapt and close.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell me, Kory, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Kory Kogon
I think what I said, this is not for the faint of heart but it can be done. And whether you are a solo project manager, these principles are in play. Or, if you’re leading a group in a large organization, the same things apply when you put your mind to it. So, I think that’s a final statement on that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Kory Kogon
Yes, I do have a quote, and that quote is by Dr. Stephen Covey, and it goes to everything that we’ve been saying. And what he said is that, “Fast is slow, and slow is fast.” And I really get on board with that in so many ways as a leader when it comes to projects, when it comes to managing home life, and 30 years in a relationship. Fast is slow. Slow is fast.

If you go too fast on a project, you’re going to pay the price at the end. If you go too fast as a leader trying to get work done and don’t take care of the people, it’s going to slow you down at the end. If you slow down, because I’m sure people on this call, Pete, also were going, “Hey, I don’t have time to scope and I don’t have time to go find other key stakeholders and all of that,” but we call it front loading, and so if you slow down to do the work up front, it’ll speed things up in the end. So that’s my favorite quote.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Kory Kogon
I’m a fan of Dr. David Rock, who is the founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute, for many years, and I was lucky enough to be able to get a certificate of NeuroLeadership Foundations. So, I love following his work because it’s very, obviously, research-based and has everything to do with how the brain works. And in this world of knowledge work, we have to optimize our brain.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Kory Kogon
A favorite tool, I think it’s interesting, here’s my old school-ness – tables in Word.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Kory Kogon
That is helpful to me because I write so much, and it’s always interesting when I see people write text in Excel, but a table for me is really good. And Notion now is a favorite tool of mine as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Kory Kogon
A favorite book is actually Quiet by Susan Cain, because I am a raging introvert.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Kory Kogon
My favorite habit is walking. I like to walk. Again, going back to the brain, that I work really hard, like so many people do, and continuously, and that is not a good thing, even in the day-to-day. You need to take breaks, and that break will increase your productivity by a certain amount. So, when I take a break, I like to go out and walk, and on the weekends, I live in the desert, so it’s a great habit to help me think. And a lot of times, I’ll come in my office, look at my computer, read something, and then go take a walk to let it synthesize.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Kory Kogon
We would point them to, you know, you can get the updated version of Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager at any of the booksellers, Amazon, etc. You can find me on LinkedIn, and you can go to www.franklincovey.com to see this and all of the other things that we have up there on people development.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be honest about their jobs?

Kory Kogon
Remember that it’s about the people, number one, if you’re a leader; and number two, regardless of your role, that you have every opportunity to work in your circle of influence if you let go of some of the things that you can’t do anything about. It’s a tough time in the world right now and in the workplace, and so if you just really take a deep breath, count to 10, and focus on things that you have control over, you’ll find that it’s easier to get through the day-to-day with a pretty good contribution at the end.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, Kory, thank you. I wish you much luck in all your projects.

Kory Kogon
Well, thank you, and thanks for taking the time with me today, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Anh, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Anh Dao Pham
Thank you so much for having me here, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom about project leadership and high-performing teams. But, first, I think we need to hear a little about your history of writing jingles and rhymes associated with team accomplishments. What’s the story here and can you give us some examples, please?

Anh Dao Pham
Yeah, this is a really silly thing. A few years ago, when I was working at Opower, I was one of the more senior leaders on the engineering team and I was asked to give the quarterly update. And the first time I gave that quarterly update, it was so dry I think everybody fell asleep, including me if I could have. But the reason it was so dry was because when you work in product development and you’re leading an engineering team, the engineering team’s accomplishments are very similar to the product update. So, the product team gives an update and then you give yours, it’s almost the same.

So, the next time I was called upon to do a quarterly update, I decided not to give the general product update and, instead, decided to write, like, a tribute to the team in a jingle format. So, I got some inspiration from The Brady Brunch tune, and then wrote a jingle about our product managers and our engineers and how they had delivered on this website product, and then got folks on the team to actually sing it during the quarterly all-hands, and it was a really big hit.

And from then on, it became kind of a tradition at Opower, so every quarterly update, they look for the jingle. We’d get a bunch of people to sing and we had some great, great things out there. And so, since then, instead of just giving normal praise or an update when I have, like, a big team accomplishment or a big milestone the team has approached, then, oftentimes, I’ll write a jingle and then I’ll recruit people to sing it.

And so, as an example, this last holiday season, instead of having, like, a big party because everybody was remote, I ended up writing 17 limericks for everybody on the team.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, limericks?

Anh Dao Pham
And I read them out like in a toast format, and it was a pretty big hit. There’s something very novel about writing a rhyme or a jingle, and I find that it’s very memorable, people really appreciate it, it shows them that you care in a very special way, and it gives people just that special feeling when being on a team.

And so, I want to tell you, I have a surprise for you, because I decided before I got on the show that I would write you a jingle…

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow, thank you.

Anh Dao Pham
…just so you can see this in action. It’s actually a limerick, so here it is.

There once was a host named Pete
Whose podcast was rather sweet.
He interviewed people with tips to share
For being awesome at work everywhere.
And on top of that, he gave it all away for free.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, lovely. Thank you. That is a first 830-some episodes, first limerick. So, thank you.

Anh Dao Pham
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fun. Okay, cool. Well, I’m excited to dig into those kinds of tidbits, your unique flavor and spin on project goodness. You’ve got a book called Glue: How Project Leaders Create Cohesive, Engaged, High-Performing Teams, which is a great title. We like those sorts of things here. Can you tell us any particularly novel, surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about this stuff over the course of your career and putting together the book?

Anh Dao Pham
I’d say the most surprising thing is that when I set out to write Glue, I didn’t realize how much of an influence books on social psychology and happiness would be and influence on the actual content in the book. And for a few years prior to writing Glue, I was doing a little bit of soul-searching, I read a number of books on the science of happiness and different social psychologists, like Adam Grant, Angela Duckworth, Sean Achor, just a bunch of very well-known authors in that space.

And it turns out that a lot of the work that supports the science of happiness, around how to make yourself happy ends up being really applicable content for how to motivate teams. And so, in my work and in Glue, I talk a lot about the science of happiness, social psychology, and how to motivate and influence people through those same mechanisms, which I think makes that unique. And, for me, it’s most important, when I’m a leader, to help teams not only deliver but do it in a way that makes them feel fulfilled and happy at work.

And so, I think a lot of that comes through and ends up being somewhat surprising or a novel content for a leadership book you don’t typically find as many studies around the science of happiness.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we love those here, so it’s no surprise that we have found each other. So, that’s cool. Well, then I’d love it if we could dig into some particulars. Could you start off with sort of the core message or big idea or thesis behind the book?

Anh Dao Pham
So, Glue, at the end of the day is both a project management leadership book, and the main principle behind it is that I wanted to be able to express to people how you can both manage teams and lead people in a way that makes them productive so that they deliver but also makes them really happy and inspired with their jobs, and that in turn inspires me and makes me feel better about my job.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. Well, so let’s dig in. Now, one thing that’s intriguing is you draw a distinction between a project manager and a project leader. What is the difference and why does that matter?

Anh Dao Pham
The main distinction between a project manager and a project leader is that you don’t necessarily have to have a title in order to be a project leader. Project leaders rise up through all parts of the organization because there is a need to have somebody lead a particular initiative or a particular team. And what I find is that people often, if they don’t have, like, an ordained title in some way, feel like they don’t have the authority to act in a certain way.

So, I wanted to make the distinction between somebody who has the official title of project manager, which has, like, a specific job description associated with it, versus a person who just may have risen up in the organization and is a leader of sorts but would likely need very similar tools and tactics to be able to make their team successful.

So, at the end of the day, you can be a project leader from any part of the organization. You just have to be a person who has stepped up to lead in some capacity on a particular initiative, and I’m hoping that this book is applicable much more broadly than just anybody with a specific project manager title.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then could you kick us off with a pretty inspiring…let’s see, I’ll do that again. Well, in getting a taste of what could be possible and at stake for us if we internalized some of these best practices, could you share a cool story of a project leader who was able to see a beautiful upgrade in the results they’re able to create by following some of these principles?

Anh Dao Pham
I wanted to start with an analogy from a different industry entirely, which is basketball. And I’m actually not a basketball fan, but one of the things that I realized as I was doing research for the book, was I was talking to one of my best friends who is into basketball about the book and about some of the principles that I was talking about, about being glue, and he said, “Oh, it’s like Draymond Green. He’s a glue guy. He plays basketball.” And I’m like, “Tell me more about this.”

And it turns out that there’s a phenomenon in basketball where there are players called glue guys who are extremely valuable to the teams but they are not the people who score the most points, so it seems counterintuitive. Like, typically, when you think about a star basketball player, you think about somebody like a Michael Jordan who scores the most baskets.

In this case, these players are most valuable not because they actually score the most points, but because they are true team players. And so, when they’re on the court, what happens is the teams have a much higher likelihood to achieve success and win the games than when they’re not on the court even though they don’t actually score.

And the principles around Glue are basically the same. So, it’s not about being a leader, being out in front, getting all the credit for something, or being the star player on a particular team. It’s about looking at a team and trying to figure out what you can do to actually bolster the productivity of the team and make them feel healthier, happier, complete the team where they may have gaps. And that’s what the essence of Glue is.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so that sounds like something we all love to be here in terms of listeners of How to be Awesome at Your Job. And now let’s dig into some of the particulars. I love your table of contents chapter titles. They’re so enticing and captivating, so I’m just going to go right through my favorites and ask bit by bit. First, how do we build rapport quickly?

Anh Dao Pham
There are a lot of ways to build rapport quickly. And, actually, you’ll notice that my book was endorsed by Robert Cialdini. He wrote a book called Influence, which is immensely popular.

Pete Mockaitis
We’ve had him on the show and we love him. Oh, he’s so good.

Anh Dao Pham
He’s amazing. He’s amazing. There’s all these tactics that you can use that help you understand how to build rapport with people and how to influence people without actually having authority. And so, a lot of the things are very simple. Like, in Robert Cialdini’s book, he talks about just making sure that you, when you speak with a person, you actually provide a reason for what you’re asking to do.

And when you do things like that, where you ask a person to actually complete a task for you, or make a request, and you provide them a reason for the work that they’re doing, it helps them understand why their work is important, and, ultimately, build rapport and helps them trust you more. So, that’s one principle.

Another one comes from Dale Carnegie, which is really simple. It’s just using people’s names. But in a multicultural environment, and, in particular, in a remote environment, it’s even more important that you use people’s names and that you also get their pronunciations correctly and that you know how to spell their names correctly. These are small things but they make a really big difference in building rapport with a particular person.

And then another type is, just make sure that you’re accessible and approachable. So, if you have a team that you’re trying to get know, maybe arrange some sort of social situation where you can get to know them better, take some time at the beginning of your meetings to pause a little bit, have some informal conversation to warm up, talk about their weekend. Make them feel like they’re people not just a person who’s actually completing a task but somebody you genuinely care about and are interested in. Those are the best things that you can do to start building rapport.

And then the final thing, which is something that I get quoted on a lot is I call the candy bowl, the magical candy bowl, and you’ll see this in the book title, or in the chapter title, where I always keep a candy bowl on my desk. And the reason that I do that is because it sort of embodies a bunch of these principles. It makes me approachable in the sense that it gives people a reason to actually come to my desk and talk to me.

Oftentimes, people actually come to my desk and then take candy when I’m not there, but it establishes me as a giver. So, even if I wasn’t there, they remember, “Anh has a candy bowl on her desk and I can come get it whenever I want.” And if I then talk to them later, even if we haven’t had a conversation, it actually creates a certain amount of equity with them, like I’ve deposited something in their virtual piggybank. And if I go talk to them later, they already have a warm feeling associated with me because I’ve given them something whether or not I know it.

And so, that to me is like a very classic trick, and I have always had a candy bowl on my desk since I can remember.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s lovely. I’ve got a couple follow-up questions there, Anh. One is what candies are the fan favorites, perennial, time after time?

Anh Dao Pham
Branded chocolate goes the fastest.

Pete Mockaitis
Anytime, like KitKat or Snickers or anything.

Anh Dao Pham
Yeah, Hershey’s, Snickers, Reese’s Pieces, anything that’s branded. I would try generic chocolate, like Palmers, during the holidays, when you get the Easter eggs and things like that, they don’t go quite as fast. But anything that’s like, yeah, KitKat, Reese’s, M&Ms, chocolate M&Ms, those go really fast. And it’s kind of my own experiment over the years, that’s something you see, what type of snack actually goes the fastest.

And there’s something interesting about the amount of candy that you put in the bowl as well. This is such a random nuance. But if you put too much candy in the bowl, especially if, let’s say, I get a brand-new bag of chocolate, and I dump the whole thing in the bowl, it goes faster. There’s something about the idea that there’s just a lot of candy that people come and take a handful of it, but if I ration it and put it out in smaller segments, then it tends to last a lot longer. People will come and take one or two rather than a handful. So, very interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
I absolutely noticed this phenomenon with, well, I was thinking, like, just drinking water in terms of if I have a big vessel of water, I will take bigger gulps more frequently versus if I’ve got a bottle of water in my last thirst, “Ooh, we better be sparing,” even though there’s more not too far away. It just gets inside you. That’s good.

Well, Anh, my next follow-up question is, when it comes to using names, how much is too much? Sometimes I feel like I hold myself back more than I need to, Anh. And so, now I’m just going to try a little bit right now, and you tell me when it feels excessive. I’m thinking when you address someone, of course, it just makes sense, or when you’re wrapping something up, like, “Thank you, Anh.” I guess every sentence would be too much. Do you have a sense for how much is too much when it comes to name use?

Anh Dao Pham
There probably is a too much. Like, yeah, I’d say every sentence is probably too much. But if you go back to what Dale Carnegie said, and I reference this in the book, the sound of a person’s name is the sweetest sound to them. So, if you can use it tastefully, in particular, if you can use it to address a person when you’re prompting them for a question, so I think that’s really important.

Addressing a particular person, addressing or acknowledging something that somebody said so that they understand that you actually heard them, those two, I think, are the most critical times to say a person’s name so that they really feel like you’re making a connection with them.

Pete Mockaitis
That is good. And I’m thinking about my buddy and mentor, Mawi, episode number one, he will insert my name right in the middle of sentences, and more than most people I know, and I really like it. He’ll say, “You know what we discovered, Pete…” and I’ll be like, “Well, what? What did you discover?” It’s like you have galvanized my attention, and I want to know even more.

And if I happen to be drifting, I really do feel, like, “Oh, I should be paying attention. He’s talking directly to me even though, of course, he was. We are really the only two people at this lunch.” But it has an effect, it’s a good one. Thank you.

Anh Dao Pham
Exactly. And then I think, in particular, if you’re working in a remote environment, using people’s names is extremely important. A lot of times, people have their cameras off, and if you use their name, they know you’re speaking directly to them even if they can’t see you. So, I think it is an even more important tool to be using now than it has been in the past.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And another table of contents prompt so juicy, what is the essential question to getting any project moving?

Anh Dao Pham
“What are the next steps?” It’s the most powerful question that you can ask. At the end of every meeting, if you leave and you don’t ask that question, you’re going to find that you’re going to be less productive on all of your projects. And so, if there’s no other question that you ask, if you’re silent the whole meeting as a facilitator, in the very end you make sure to ask, “What are the next steps? Who’s going to be doing them?” and then capture that information, you will be able to move your project forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. This reminds me of David Allen, for individuals getting things done, “What is the next action?” And it’s just magic how it gets stuff unstuck. And sometimes it’s so simple, it’s like, “Oh, I guess we got to look at our calendars to see when these three people can get together.” Like, “Oh, okay. Well, that’s not so hard. Let’s just go ahead and do that.”

Anh Dao Pham
Exactly. And I think if you’re doing any sort of leadership, in particular, project leadership, your goal really is to always be making progress. So, even if it’s small, as long as you’re moving the project forward with something like, “I know what the very next step is,” it doesn’t have to be the next ten steps, just the very next one, you’re going to continue to move everybody forward and make progress against your goals.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. Now, everybody asks you to teach a particular skill, which I would not have guessed – it’s notetaking. What’s up with that? Why does notetaking matter? And how can you do it in a way that is differentiated-ly excellent that matters?

Anh Dao Pham
I am very passionate about notetaking. This is one of the strange traits about me, and most people, almost everybody who’s encountered me even briefly at work, knows this about me. It’s something that’s actually, to me, a cornerstone of my success in my career. I take avid notes, I type very fast, I take avid notes almost on every call or meeting that I have, even if I’m not going to publish them, because it’s part of my learning process.

And the reason that people ask me about it is because I often publish those notes out. So, as a part of my learning process, when I’m learning more information, I tend to take them. And I don’t just sort of listen to things verbatim. I listen to things and then I rephrase them as I’m typing them, or I try to reorganize them. So, when I was in college, I learned, like, you could take…if you take notes in outline format, your retention of that information is so much higher than if you just sort of listen to something coming in one ear and then typing it out verbatim what people had said.

So, what I started to do was sort of reorganize the information, put it in such a way that it is summarized, and then send all that information out and broadcast it to people so that they know that they’ve been heard, they know whose action is next, what the next steps are, all of the things that were important as a part of those discussion get captured, codified, and then broadcasted.

And it is possible to be significantly better at taking notes than another person in the sense that if you take really good notes, in particular, in today’s environment when you’re managing a lot of projects, some things are moving very fast, a lot of things don’t get documented. So, oftentimes, a good set of notes is the document that explains what happened and ends up being a system of record for any decision-serving needs.

So, if you become that person who takes really good notes and people know that, you start to just have a certain amount of power because you hold this information and people see you as a person who has access to this information very readily. The other thing about it is, like I said before, if I take good notes, then I learn more than almost anybody else in the conversation. It just crystallizes my memory for it so that when people ask me about it later, I have much greater recall ability.

And when it’s summarized in that fashion, I once had a person tell me he went home after my meeting, and told his wife, “These notes were better than the meeting,” because a lot of times, meetings will meander back and forth.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Anh Dao Pham
But if you kind of like consolidate the information under certain bullets, you can read this nice summary, it refreshes your memory and you know exactly where to go after that. So, yeah, those to me are the big key traits around taking good notes, is making sure that they’re organized, making sure that they track, capture what’s most important as a part of the conversation, and that you share them out so that people know you have access to them and can refer back to them.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, we might have to do a full follow-up episode if you’re down to talking about notetaking, because if it’s your superpower, and no one else has brought that up as their superpower, and it’s yielding value, that’s certainly cool. So, I’ll just restrain myself to a couple follow-ups for this conversation.

Anh Dao Pham
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you’re not just verbatim writing all the things you hear, but you’re rather trying to get some organization outlined to it. So, when I hear the word outline, I could think of a very strict “Roman numeral one. Indent, capital A. Further indent, Arabic numeral one.” So, that’s like a very formal, like when I’m learning how to write a paper in grade school, outline. Is that what you mean by outline in terms of the transformation that you’re mentally processing stuff as you outline?

Anh Dao Pham
No, actually, it doesn’t have to be. If that’s really comfortable for you, or your word processing application automatically numbers things for you, I think it’s fine, but it’s more important that you sort of categorize information. So, if a topic meanders, as an example, sometimes, let’s say we talk about notetaking now, and then five more minutes, it comes back again.

What I would do is have a topic of notetaking in my notes, and then I would put a couple of bullets from the first part of the conversation, and then in the second part, I would move that up so that it’s in the same section. So, when somebody is skimming it, they can see all of the takeaways all together at the same time.

And it’s not so important that you have, like, a strict way of taking the notes. It’s that you’ve summarized the information. And what’s even more critical is that you summarize the information in your own words. So, don’t try to take notes verbatim as somebody said them. Try to restate them in your own words so that it comes out more naturally and to confirm that you actually understood what it was that was being said.

Because, oftentimes, when people speak, it doesn’t make for eloquent or concise writing, so if you’ve summarized it in a good way, then people can read it, get the takeaways very quickly, rather than trying to skim through all the uhms and ahhs that actually come out in a conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. And to give us a taste, can we find a sample of your notetaking somewhere?

Anh Dao Pham
Yeah, in the book, I actually put a few samples, one of the worst notes or no notes at all. So, if you just take basic notes, it’s still better than no notes. The second tier up is, at least, capture the key decisions and action items and who’s responsible for them. So, there’s a sample of what that looks like, then there’s sort of the next layer of fidelity, which is capturing a few key decisions in a little bit more detail. And then there’s sort of a more robust version of those notes.

And the sample I gave is from, like, a home remodeling project, which may have been overkill for a home remodeling project, but at least gives you an idea of the types of things that you would want to capture. Some of the salient points in the conversation that you might want to have for context later, those are the types of things that you might want to capture if you were taking really robust notes.

And, in particular, the why behind decisions. So, if you’re capturing just the decision but not why, if you take those in your notes, it again helps you understand it, and then it also helps you convey that information to other people.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. And I imagine it might vary a bit, but just to give us a bit of reference, if there’s a 30-minute meeting, which might have a word count of 4,500-ish words – that’s a lot of podcast ads experience talking right there, 150 words per minute – how many words or pages might your notes end up being?

Anh Dao Pham
It really depends on how efficient the conversation was. So, it could be that you had a 30-minute meeting but you swirled around talking about different options and deliberating them and debating them. In the end, your summary may have been as concise as maybe half a page, you said, “We talked about option one, option two, option three. We made this decision and this is why.” It could be that concise. And so, it doesn’t have to be verbose, it just has to capture the most salient points.

Now, sometimes you have a meeting, like I had one with one of my managers this morning, and we covered 15 topics, and it was 30 minutes, and it was, like, “Bullet. Here’s what we discussed. Bullet. Here’s what we discussed.” And that one ended up being more than a page long just for me to sort of capture those points.

So, I think it really depends on how much ground you cover. It’s not so much what your word count is but what were the most important things that you needed to capture and what’s the most concise way to capture them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now could you share with us the three levers to keep your project on time and on track?

Anh Dao Pham
Sure. So, this is actually the one thing in the book that does sort of follow classical project management. There are really three things: it’s scope, meaning how much you’re actually trying to achieve in a particular project; time, which is the amount of time it’s going to take; and then resources, which could be either money or the number of people working on a particular project. That’s like the classic triangle of constraints for any project management course you would see.

And when you’re managing a project, it’s really important for you to understand what levers you actually have available to you. And so, if there is something that ends up being a gotcha or surprise, which always happens, no project ever goes as planned, then you can look to see which of these constraints are movable. And the easiest thing typically to do is to increase your timeline but, oftentimes, if you increase your timeline on a project too often or too much, then people fatigue of the project and they feel like it’s not successful, so you want to use that very sparingly.

The next is resources. If you have any resources, you can throw at a project, or if you can clear things off of a plate of a person who’s on the project so that they’re not splintered, then you can get more capacity. That’s always a good way to go about doing things. And then scope is something that people forget is negotiable.

Because even if people say at the very beginning of a project the scope is not negotiable, the closer you get to launching your project, the scope gets much more malleable, and that’s for two reasons. One is that people are more or less willing to actually yield on things that they want very early in the process. And the second is that the closer you get to launching a particular project, the more clear you are about what you’re trying to achieve.

And so, things that seem like they may have been very important at the beginning tend to be more negotiable or more malleable towards the end. So, I like to lean on scope first, then resources, then time if possible.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that. I’m familiar with the triangle and the constraints. I learned that in college, and it was an eye-opener, and I love, Anh, those extra layers and considerations and weightings that you put on them. So, handy stuff. I’m just going to keep rolling through your excellent table of contents. Chapter 13, how do we communicate what’s most important?

Anh Dao Pham
Through every medium possible.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Anh Dao Pham
And this sounds funny, this is sort of like your question, “How much is too much when you’re using my name?” How much is too much when you’re articulating a goal? It’s almost never too much. And the reason is because people are very focused on their individual tasks, and it’s very easy for them to lose sight of what’s going on for a bigger picture.

So, if you’re trying to orient somebody against a goal, then what you want to do is, first, make sure that the goal is clear and unambiguous, everybody understands what it is. Then, second, articulate it in writing, verbally. If you want to plaster it on a wall, like, do whatever you can to broadcast the goal and do it in multiple mediums, and to reinforce it almost every chance you get.

I had a very funny example where I was marching towards a big project, and every day at the very beginning of the scrum, which is the meeting that we had for everybody, getting together to check in on status every day, I had a slide at the very beginning before we actually went to scrum that said how many days were left to the goal, till the launch date.

And so, 15, 14, 13, counting down every day. And two times, very close to launch date, I think I remember it was like five days to launch date, somebody pulled me aside, and was like, “Wait, when are we launching again?” And I realized, and so I just very politely said, “We’re launching in five days. This is the date.”

And it’s funny because people learn through different mediums. Some people are audio learners, so if you say it to them, they actually get it. Some people are visual, so if you broadcast it visually in some way, that’s when they get it. Some people need those things reinforced and some people actually need to say it themselves.

So, if you really want to know if somebody has actually ingested and internalized your goal, you can ask them to say it back to you, and only when they’ve actually articulated that you know for sure that they actually understood it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. And I guess you have to be careful with that so that it does not seem, I don’t know, patronizing or condescending.

Anh Dao Pham
Yeah, I think you have to just take the request and respond to them, and know that you’re going to be repeating yourself a lot but that it’s just totally expected. And as long as you’re always tying it back to work that people are doing, they’re not going to feel like it’s too much.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. All right, Anh, let’s hear Chapter 14. “When is your project done?” It’s not when I think. Do tell.

Anh Dao Pham
This chapter is actually about the principle of taking ownership on a project. And one of the things that I think is a big misconception is people put together a project plan when they start a new project, and there’s typically a launch date at the end, and that’s what you’re marching towards. So, let’s say you’ve got a three-month project, you’re launching towards the launch date.

And then at the end of the launch date, people feel like their project is done but that is not the case because, oftentimes, like I said, maybe you’re marching through that launch date and you looked at all these constraints because there were some sort of crazy surprise that happened, and now you’ve started to cut scope. And I like to call cutting scope very close to the launch date as roadkill. This was like roadkill on the path to getting to my goal. I started pushing things to the side, and saying, “Not critical. Not critical.”

So, once you’ve launched, there typically is, like, a number of things that still need to be happening in order for you to make your project a success. It can’t just be launch and sort of out on the ether. You need to go back and take care of all of the things that you don’t need in this roadkill along the way. Maybe you need to do additional communication to people who were stakeholders but maybe impacted after the fact.

So, a key example here is if you work in product development, or if you’re launching any sort of product or new thing, oftentimes, there are people who have to support that new thing once it’s out. So, it’s not just like making the feature available or the new product available, it’s also about making sure that the people who are going to need to support that are trained and have all the answers that they need to be able to do that in a sustained fashion, or there’s a place to ask later when there’s an issue with whatever that is that you’ve just released.

And so, all these things happen after a project launch date, but the project launch date is most commonly focused on as the end of your project. And so, in the chapter, I talk about this, it’s not so much that there are steps that you can do to say when your project is done. It’s more about an attitude. If you take ownership of a project as a project leader, and you think of yourself almost like the CEO of your project, then you don’t limit yourself to the scope of work that’s already been defined or what’s been defined to you by your title.

So, if you’re a product manager in my world, I might say, like, “Well, my goal is to define the product and get it out there.” But if I want it to be a success, I might have to do things that are beyond the launch date, beyond the scope of my role. And so, if you really think of yourself as an owner, and that you are paramount to this project’s success, then you will look to see what else needs to be done after the launch date. And until those things are completed, you’ll know that your job is not done.

The other thing is, always plan a celebration when you hit a big milestone. Don’t forget the tail end of a big project. It’s not done until you celebrate it with your team.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Anh, tell me, any final thoughts you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Anh Dao Pham
Sure. I’d say, at the end of the day, leading projects and leading people is not cookie cutter, and I think this is probably the biggest thing that’s not fully articulated this way in the book but, hopefully, is a big key takeaway for people. Most of the things that I do are very people-driven. I’m most worried about boosting productivity for the people on my team, and I do whatever it takes to make that happen.

So, every project, every team is custom, and you’re different, the way that you add your perspective to a team is different. And so, I would like to warn people against sort of blindly following checklists, and, instead, to think about ways that you can customize your approach based off the team’s needs and what you’re trying to accomplish, and the personalities on the team. And know that if you do that, you’re going to be a lot more successful than somebody who is just trying to apply some set of rules blindly without thinking them through.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Anh Dao Pham
Yes. From one of my favorite books on happiness, What Happy People Know by Dan Baker and Cameron Stauth, the quote is, “We don’t describe the world we see. We see the world we describe.” And I love this because it’s very telling about human thoughts, in the sense that we often think that things are dictated to us, but, in fact, we actually have a lot of power to transform our worlds based off of what we call ourselves.

So, if you call yourself a project manager versus a project leader, that makes a really big difference in how you actually translate your role and your sense of ownership. And so, I love that quote because every time I feel like I’m being limited by the way that I’m calling myself something or the way that I’m framing a particular scenario, I try to reframe it to see if I can change the way that the world is reacting to me.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I like that a lot. And I don’t know where I borrowed this phrase. I got it from a job description which I thought was funny. I think it said one of the requirements was to “Provide visionary leadership.”

Anh Dao Pham
Like it’s so easy.

Pete Mockaitis
And just like that, and I thought, “All right, what’s on my to-do list today? Okay, provide visionary leadership. Check.” But I found that when I say that to myself, like, “Okay, I’m going to write a bunch of emails to my team and the collaborators, right,” it’s like, okay, so one view is, “Okay, that’s a thing that’s got to get out the door, a bunch of emails. Check, check, check.”

Versus if I say to myself, and I’m kind of joking and I’m kind of being highfalutin for the fun of it, it’s like, “All right, on my to-do list is to provide visionary leadership on these course adaptations.” And then, sure enough, I really do feel more jazzed about it, and really do spend some more time providing useful feedback and direction that is more enriching for folks.

So, yeah, how I describe that to-do list item really does shape how I perform it even though I was kind of joking.

Anh Dao Pham
Yeah, there are studies about this. It’s called jobcasting where you take your job, and you try to put it in a bigger context. So, for example, you’re a podcast host, you could say, “My job is to create podcasts,” or you could say your job is to put more information out in the world so that you can help people all over the world be better at their jobs. The second one is going to be so much more inspiring than the first, right?

So, the way that you frame what you’re doing has a very tangible impact on your perspective and how motivated you are going to be to do that job. So, I think that that’s so insightful, and the fact that you actually have the power to change your own perception by describing it differently, I think, is just phenomenal.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Anh Dao Pham
Now, this is a hard one because a lot of your prior guests have cited lots of great studies, and so I was trying to find one that I felt was unique. And I ended up landing on a study that Sean Achor, who’s the author of The Happiness Advantage, did to himself, which I think about all the time. And it’s a very novel study about what it takes to adopt new habits versus what it takes to deter yourself from stopping…or to deter yourself from continuing to do old habits that are not so good for you, and he calls it the 20-second rule.

And the experiment goes like this. He wanted to play his guitar more often. And so, he had a guitar that he bought, it was in his closet. And he decided to see if he removed the friction from playing the guitar by just buying a stand and then putting the guitar out in the middle of the room, whether or not he would actually play his guitar more often.

And it turns out, just the additional friction of getting off of the couch, going over to the closet, getting the guitar out reduces the amount of time that he would actually play on the guitar. So, he had a lot of success in just moving it from one location to another. And then he did another experiment which I thought was so funny.

He had a remote control that he typically used to leave on his couch so that when he watched television, it’s there. That’s what everybody does. Their remote control is right on the television, so you plop down on the couch and got it, and then you turn it on. But he wanted to stop watching as much television and, instead, read more books.

So, what he did was he took the batteries out of his remote control, and he put them in a drawer that was a few feet away, and he said he timed himself. It took him about 20 seconds if he were to get up out of the couch, go to the drawer, put the batteries in and close the remote control to start using it. And his goal was to see if he created that little additional friction if he would stop watching television as much.

And so, what he found was he did. He stopped watching television as much because he was sort of inherently lazy in that additional 20 seconds. The friction actually caused him to pick up the book that was, like, right within arms’ reach on the couch rather than watch television. So, I find that to be like a fantastic study. And in my real life, I use it both at home as well as at work when I think about why people are not responding to me or not able to complete a different task that I asked them to do.

I see, “Is there a way that I can make their job easier?” So, for example, if you ask people very open-ended questions, it’s difficult for them to answer because they have to craft a response from scratch. But if you give them statements that they have to react to, that takes a lot less brain power so you can be much more effective at getting responses that way.

Another example is in my home life. My husband is 6’2” and I’m 5’4” and so I love Post-Its, I put them…write things on them all the time as a reminder I want to give him. There’s one trick that I have done more recently and that is very effective. It’s when I have a reminder for him, and not me, I write it on a Post-It and then I put it at his eye level, not mine. And just by writing with it being right in front of him instead of right in front of where I would be, he has a much harder time missing it, and knows it’s for him.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And a favorite book?

Anh Dao Pham
A favorite book, this is really hard. I’ve just quoted What Happy People Know by Dan Baker and Cameron Stauth. That’s one of my all-time favorites in terms of happiness as well as The Happiness Advantage. And then in terms of non-self-help or happiness books, I recently enjoyed a couple of memoirs. I really liked Untamed by Glennon Doyle, and then also Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a particular nugget you’re known for, something that people quote back to you often?

Anh Dao Pham
Outside of notetaking and the candy bowl effect?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s plenty really.

Anh Dao Pham
I’d say, yeah, those are nuggets. The one thing about the book that’s actually been very controversial and has come up quite a bit is I do have a chapter about planning where I state that I believe plans are optional. And this is almost like sacrilege for the project management community, but it’s created a lot of controversy.

And it’s not so much that I’m against planning. It’s that, like I said before, I’m against people following things blindly and doing things for the sake of doing them, rather than doing things with specific intention. And so, I challenge the notion that every single project needs to have, like, a detailed project plan. Instead, if you’re looking for ways to boost team productivity, tailor a process to your team, plan when your team needs a plan, and be thoughtful about it. That, to me, has been like a really insightful takeaway that most people have come back to me and ask me about, and particularly controversial.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Anh Dao Pham
I’d love it if folks could find me at my website, it’s www.GlueLeaders.com. Pretty easy to find. You can contact me there, find everything about the book, and also a link to this podcast once it’s available.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Anh Dao Pham
Yeah, actually. I was listening to your podcast, and I think it was episode 830 with Dr. Waldinger where he cited a Gallup quote that I also cited in my book about making friends and making best friends at work, and how that increases both productivity as well as enjoyment. And if you take nothing else away from all this, there’s a lot of little tactics and tricks that you can do to build rapport, be more organized, take notes. But, at the end of the day, to me, the most rewarding thing at work is when you make personal connections.

And so, what I would love to advocate people do is don’t just think of your job as a job. Think of it as a way to make meaningful connections with people, and to accomplish great things together, and bring part of yourself to work. And the reason that I started writing jingles is because I like to rhyme, and it’s silly, but it’s very uniquely me. And if you love to cook, maybe organize potlucks. If you love ping-pong, maybe organize a ping-pong tournament.

My husband and I like to play poker, and so now we’re thinking about combining my love of cooking Vietnamese soups and poker with a “pho”ker night. So, those are things that you can do to bring to your workers, and it makes it more rewarding when you actually create genuine friendships, and then accomplish things together. So, what I would say is find ways to connect with people at work, make friends, and in doing so, hopefully, both your job as well as your coworkers’ jobs will be more rewarding.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Anh, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much fun and good glue.

Anh Dao Pham
Thank you. So nice to meet you.