Dr Mike Clayton, The Online PM Course Guy
This month I talk to Dr Mike Clayton, Mike is a Business Author, Conference Speaker, Facilitator, and Trusted Advisor
......but these describe what he does, not who he is.
Are you looking for a curious soul, committed to intellectual rigour, transparent communication, and the highest professional standards?
With Mike as your speaker, you are in safe hands, assured of honesty, entertainment and insight.You can always rely upon his work to be rigorously researched, carefully crafted and extensively rehearsed.
Project Management website: https://onlinepmcourses.com/
Website: https://mikeclayton.co.uk
Active YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/onlinepmcourses
Always happy to link with listeners: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeclayton/
Twitter: @OnlinePMCourses
Facebook PM Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theprojectmanagers/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/OnlinePMCourses/ - a comprehensive set of PM themed boards
Hope you enjoy the show and until next time remember project management is funny.
Thanks,
Nige
Unknown Speaker 0:00
Right. So today I'd like to welcome to the podcast, Dr. Mike Clayton, who's your business author, conference speaker, facilitator and trusted advisor. But his website says this is described what he does not who he is. He described himself as a curious soul committed to intellectual rigour, transparent communication and highest professional standards. Formerly a senior manager with 12 years until it consulting Mike specialised in delivering an integration of complex change in diverse range of private and public sector organisations. Is experience included roles in a 60 million programme for BA PLC two major projects within the post office, extensive infrastructure projects for for Transport for London, and Keystone project for the MOD General Motors and local government. He was director responsible for the launch of a new business for Vodafone management, working in leading, working in and leading a wide variety of highly successful teams, has given Mike a valuable insight into organisational change teamwork and leadership skills. He presents a personal point of view and real tools. From the 13 years of consulting and management experience. This is combined with knowledge gained from working and trading with some outstanding leaders in business and personal development. Welcome to the show, Mike. I'm glad
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to be here. Looking forward to it.
Unknown Speaker 1:28
And it should be an entertaining time. So let's crack off with the first
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question. Where did Mike appear from?
Unknown Speaker 1:38
Wherever you go? Well, we need to have that conversation if nobody's had it with you, Nigel.
Unknown Speaker 1:45
Or do you just mean the hospital name?
Unknown Speaker 1:47
I just mean the geography of
Unknown Speaker 1:51
the now defunct rural northern hospital, which isn't as far north as it sounds. It's just slightly north of the river in London. So yeah, I was born in North London, up in North London went to school in North London. So that's me. Really? I'm a Londoner.
Unknown Speaker 2:05
Right. So you born in, in North London? Yep. That's it? Isn't there any I thought everywhere above the wealth gap was North?
Unknown Speaker 2:15
Yeah, I say it's not. No idea why it was called the rural northern hospital except possibly.
Unknown Speaker 2:22
It was quite close to quite close to the Northern line, I suppose.
Unknown Speaker 2:26
Well, probably yes. Yeah. So so with with you being there, where are you? Now? You still in that area?
Unknown Speaker 2:31
No, I moved out of London. What would it be about 2002. I moved into borders of sorry, in Kent. Technically sorry, but you wouldn't know it looking at a map unless the board was marked. It's a little kind of cast. But then 1010 half years ago, with my wife, we moved to Hampshire, which is where I'm now sitting in the market town hall stood just outside Winchester.
Unknown Speaker 3:01
And for those people who I've got quite a few American listeners to the show that
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is in the south part of England.
Unknown Speaker 3:09
That's right. Yeah.
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So
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you mentioned your wife, their family, kids?
Unknown Speaker 3:16
Yep. One wife, one child, one daughter. 10 years old.
Unknown Speaker 3:20
10 years old. You're better than 12 and seven my girls.
Unknown Speaker 3:25
Oh, you got those two?
Unknown Speaker 3:26
Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. Yes. It's it's an interesting time. Yeah. The 12 year old knocking on 13. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 3:35
Yeah, knocking on 27.
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So you mentioned that you grew up in London? Yeah.
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And
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what, when you were growing up in London, what didn't? Mike Dr. Mike Clinton want to be?
Unknown Speaker 3:52
wants to be Dr. Mike Layton for a start. I think my mother was hit the doctor more than I did. But now I was a was interested in science, right from where as far back as I can remember. But there was a TV series, and I'm gonna date myself rather badly here for anyone who remembers it, called the key to the universe, which was about to then remarkable new discoveries in particle physics. And I just decided that was for me. And I wanted to be a physics researcher, and discover great new things. So that that was the plan from about the age of 1213 very clear plan, nearly came about could have come about,
Unknown Speaker 4:40
but then changed her mind at some point.
Unknown Speaker 4:44
So that's, yeah, it's it's the usual sort of thing. I've not heard someone who's at 10 or 12, said they want to be a project manager yet?
Unknown Speaker 4:54
No, this isn't the sort of thing that comes up is it? And it's a shame that I one of the I said I often say when I'm training people is that really and truly project management is one of those skills that ought to be taught properly at school, and not just call it a project and and then have kids running around like lunatics trying to make something at last minute, but teaching proper project management skills at school would be such a benefit to young people and to society.
Unknown Speaker 5:25
Yeah, I've had that conversation myself before. I think it's the it's the organisation skills. The every single thing you do around life, you have it as it can be a project. Yeah, you, if you paint in the living room, if you're painting they're doing the garden and the guys all have heard on other ones where I've talked about the fact that I tried to introduce a camera and board into my family when do some gardening stuff which didn't quite work. So I made a different technique.
Unknown Speaker 5:53
I created a very
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kinesthetic
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campaign for technique for my daughter actually basically got a piece of chalk, we've got these kind of flagstones which are covered in moss and it's starting to eat into the, into the mortar. So I wanted it offered, I'm not my knees aren't as good as they used to be. So I, I let knelt down and on each flagstone, I wrote a sum of money. And I told my daughter that every time she cleaned it, the last clean the most off, the last thing she could do is clean off the chalk and claim that sum of money.
Unknown Speaker 6:26
Very good. Very good technique. I think I might use that.
Unknown Speaker 6:30
But I did get worn by my wife that if when we were planning our wedding that if if she saw anything that resembled again, sharp and the wedding would be off
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structure instead?
Unknown Speaker 6:44
Nice.
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Yeah, I think
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we try to apply it becomes in it when we realise that it, I think, I think it's partly to do with
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the fact that we are get so used to thinking in that kind of manner, that
Unknown Speaker 7:04
if you and that's the way our brains organise things now. And I find whether it's the simple things of using a Trello, to organise it to keep our shopping list, using Trello, to keep ideas of things. And it just is that's a good place of good bucket to hold into. And then you can take that and then start thinking, as you say, is a Gantt chart, you start thinking dependencies, you start thinking, What am I going to do on that? And it just comes natural when you've done it for for as long as we have? Yeah, certainly as long as I have. So, obviously, you got completely obsessed with particle physics and
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education, what did you do then from that point of view? So
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theoretical physics degree,
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PhD, actually left the idea of particle physics behind for my PhD and went into low temperature physics. So research, liquid helium three, in the a phase for anyone listening who knows anything about
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low temperature physics, which,
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if you're listening, that'll be you. And then, for reasons that are still not completely clear, in my mind, when I got off of the lectureship, I decided I wanted to try something different and wants to go into and decided to go into consultancy, management consultancy. And it's one of those that I think a lot of people have that. I can find one particular point in their life where they made a big decision, which could have gone two ways. And always wonder, I haven't got any regrets about choice. I've made everything good in my life came as a result of the choice I made. But I've always wondered what my life would be like if I've made the choice, which was to accept the lectureship and become a full time academic physics researcher.
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Where would I be now? We a Nobel Prize
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might be next, you might have been the alternative? Brian Cox?
Unknown Speaker 9:05
Well, yes. Well, I did. I did my PhD at Manchester. That happens, at fact, in the research group that's now headed by Andre guy who is a Nobel laureate. So yes, I, you know, things could have been different, but I'm very happy with my life as it
Unknown Speaker 9:22
is now. This is the way to business kind of you got to
Unknown Speaker 9:27
you, as you say, you get those moments of choice. And
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you've just got to, you jump with it, and you go within, and I find
Unknown Speaker 9:38
a number of the people I've spoken to, they found a similar step where something either imposed or something as a choice of them as meant that what they were aiming at isn't where they've gone, but where they've ended up with a project management. They've applied the same energy, enthusiasm, and professionalism for one of a better word to the project management approach, and found that it gets similar sort of rewards that they were getting doing the other thing.
Unknown Speaker 10:09
Yeah. And I think, for me, the I approached project management, I suppose in a fairly rigorous logical manner as I as I did science. So I think that the scientific background has served me well, I think, yes, it is possible to be that kind of soft, cuddly project manager. And I've known people who really are not scientific in any way, shape, or form. And some of their approaches, I find frustrating, but they they are equally as successful, just by shifting their focus and, and making up making up the gaps that appear to me to be there in a different way. So that and that's another thing that I love about project management is the way that they're there, there's a whole such a big wealth of tools and techniques and methodologies, that there's room for every style.
Unknown Speaker 11:09
Yeah. And I think, I think it's interesting you say that with Colin, new add on, it was on the June episode, Colin Ellis, there's in his new book, the project book, he's got a section about different types of Project Manager. And Andy, it maps on really closely, I think, to the model called the disc model. Yes. which some people are where some people aren't, I actually, I picked it up from a podcast called manager tools 10 years ago, 15 years ago, probably be actually before that I'd read a book about it in another guys from another different person, but kind of got reintroduced to it later. And I find that it's those behaviour, tools and any ease, you will have, say there's four different ways of project management and you will apply them, you've got your default manner, as you say, there, you've got your your scientific background that takes you down a certain level of detail and rigour that you will need to put in there. But also imagine that you lean on the other styles of project leadership, when you need to in certain projects, whilst it may not be your natural, immediate go to you, we think it's will change a little bit same with with a normal behaviour models of desk and it's kind of Yeah, I find it interesting thinking of it that way, because you can I am not a detail person at times, but I can be very detailed and very precise. I'm a failed accountant. And and I can get down into that very detailed level. Yes, not where I'm not true. But sometimes need to have to remember need to.
Unknown Speaker 12:56
I think that's I mean, for me, anytime hear anyone arguing that one way is right, and another way is wrong. I immediately question their credibility, because and it's not that I think compromise is such a fantastic approach. It's the fact that flexibility. Yeah, you have to have a variety of responses. I nothing frustrates me quite so much as the waterfall versus agile debate because you get these kind of
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daily face on either side.
Unknown Speaker 13:28
And yet, it but I tell you, I always go with that one was it's the screwdriver and a hammer.
Unknown Speaker 13:33
Yeah. You use the right tool.
Unknown Speaker 13:36
Yeah. But if anyone if anyone likes the idea of a personality tests, project management, but wants to have a bit of fun with it, not a serious on my online pm courses website. There is a What is your project management personality quiz, which exposes seven I think personality types. It's not entirely serious. Although everyone who's done it has given me feedback says it's spot on. It's not scientific, it is just a bit of fun, but it it captures the the nature of how people approach project management. And I have had people saying, I've I got the right, have I got the right answers. And of course the answer to that is yes.
Unknown Speaker 14:21
You haven't told me what first night you came out with, but it's the right one.
Unknown Speaker 14:26
If you after this, if you ping me along across the link to that I'll include it in the show notes for people so they can get it get a hold of that and have a listen. Have a have a go at it. Yeah, I'll do so myself as well. So when you moved into management consulting, what was it that? What was it that dragged you into the bright lights of management consulting?
Unknown Speaker 14:47
Well, I think when I was when I was an undergraduate as well as doing a physics degree, I was heavily involved with the Student Union organising all the events Entertainment's cross the street body. And, and I kind of really like that, and I and I like the idea that you could take a big or a small event, and you could plan it, and you can make it happen. And there was a huge sense of satisfaction, and it was very real. And that was what kind of frightened me and a bit about the research is that it was the long term this of it, of course, then I didn't realise that, you know, projects could last many years. But the idea of doing a project and getting that kind of almost instant gratification, and it all. So that's what attracted me to project management was the possibility of taking on projects and advising people. And that kind of drew me in and the more I learned about the project side of it, the more I gravitated towards project management as a specialist and within consultancy. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 15:53
that makes sense. So I'm just gonna ask you a question that he just answered before.
Unknown Speaker 16:00
He must be psychic. Is that one of your personality traits? I don't know.
Unknown Speaker 16:04
Just go with that. So
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you're going to ask that question.
Unknown Speaker 16:08
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So within your management, consulting and within your initial PME. So what sort of industries have you been in? I know, I mentioned some earlier on what industries have you worked with it?
Unknown Speaker 16:19
I, when I started in consulting, I was with a niche, small consultancy. And all our clients were in the local public sector. So local authorities were my main clients housing associations to a degree, big NHS, by the time they weren't trusts, they were regional regions and things like that. But then, when my phone got bought out by what was the time to cross then became deployed. It expanded out to central government to voluntary sector, you know, large international charities, but also manufacturing of work, manufacturing, industry, telecoms, financial services, senior business and transport sectors. That is that I mean, I have to say that is that been the best thing about both my career as a consultant. And then as a trainer, training people across the UK, is the exposure to such a variety and diversity of different types of industry sector, whatever you call it, and the different people that come from it. So I've had a had some fantastic experiences, and learned about, you know, so many different sectors,
Unknown Speaker 17:36
brain sounds like that, that diversity is always I think, something that appealed to me within the project management. arena was that chance to get something new. And maybe that's my slightly flaky mentality of Yes, I quite like that new shiny squirrel
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project,
Unknown Speaker 17:58
it's always I find that was getting the stuff over the line is good, fun and started. Starting the project else was good fun. That bit in the middle sometimes can get a bit weary on it.
Unknown Speaker 18:10
Yeah. But it's, that is exciting. I find it exciting that that bit of learning the new, the new environment, and this question I get asked a lot in training. Because I do a lot of live training in the UK. And one of the Communist questions is do you have to be an expert in whatever it is you're delivering? As a project manager? I think there are two answers that you're here, which is yes or no. But mine is very clearly know your expertise in project management, as long as you've got a the humility, but be the kind of the technique of growing in the experts that you need, and listening to them and understanding how they can drive the technical side of it. You can then focus on really, how do you coordinate all of that, make it all work? And how do you engage the stakeholders and manage your risk and stuff. So I, I've pretty much never delivered a project when I was with Deloitte, where I was going in knowing the sector, and quite often knowing that, you know, even knowing that the technology or whatever behind the project, it was always something new and discovering that. And that's exciting.
Unknown Speaker 19:23
Yeah, just think that. Am I kind of I'm in your camp with that thing. I think there may be some industries where you insert levels that the knowledge of having that that whether it's that sector, or that technology knowledge starts to become very valuable when you're in things like I'm not against her position that the construction industry and the the sort of major engineering industries, it's kind of starts to become an advantage there. Because it's very detailed, very technical, and probably easier for you with a science background to be able to grass them quicker than someone like me from a finance background. So yeah, and I think it does depend on the nature of the project is that because if you are building a bridge, there are a number of things that within a building a bridge, a massive bridge across the river, is there are things in there, you just don't know. You don't know. Yeah. And that's, that's where you get the holes. And that's where as you say, you absolutely need those good people who are specialists. And if you have an ICF, quite often I find quite
Unknown Speaker 20:31
odd
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job advertisements for project managers slash architect slash business analyst. And it's kind of Which one?
Unknown Speaker 20:42
Yeah, well, let's there is that little bit of I mean, I'm a huge believer that we shouldn't go too deep in our knowledge and expertise at the expense of breath. But you I don't think is credible to claim that much depth across that bunch. Breath. That's that is the jack of all trades, isn't it? And it's not plausible?
Unknown Speaker 21:04
Yeah, I think the thing is, what you do is as you step into different roles, and different industries, as part of project managers been just common sense as you go deeper, while you're there, yeah. And you you mug up on the industry, you mug up on the technologies, and you get to know them. And as you say, you got those experts around you you sit with them go explain it to me and baby language so I can get an understanding properly.
Unknown Speaker 21:28
Yeah. And when it is very technical, the reason for having those conversations isn't so that you can get by with that knowledge. It's so that when something hits you, you actually know which expert is the one to go to or where the boundaries lie. You're not trying to become that expert, just trying to figure figure out who is the right expert for which which issue and that works for, as always worked very well for me.
Unknown Speaker 21:55
Yeah. And I'm working out what the dumb question to ask is. Yes. If you know, if you know what the question is, is sometimes the hardest thing, not not knowing the answer. It's working out what question you should ask first. Yeah. So you went into the management consultancy? And you kind of was looking towards that project management role. What do you remember as being your first as you remember being a proper project that you were project managing?
Unknown Speaker 22:28
This the first, the first one was that to remember it? I don't remember the details of it or what exactly for it, but it was a small property development. We are working for local authority in Essex, and it was a small property development, and it was really helping them to manage the the planning side and the capital expenditure aside for their contributions. I can't have a much any more details on that. But I do, I do kind of remember, in my mind, some of the personalities involved. And I'm starting to understand that there was more to project management than just kind of keeping, make making able to do list. and stuff, which is kind of what I assumed it was it was like my conception of project management then was it for that steak was it's a to do list. And it's actually making sure you do everything on the list. And after that, I would pretty much get you through anything. It I don't think I was far off, actually. But there's there there are other other wrinkles to it. And that's what I kind of started to learn at that stage.
Unknown Speaker 23:40
Yeah. Other than food project management described as who does what, by when? Yes. At its basic fundamental. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 23:49
That's what it is.
Unknown Speaker 23:51
Yeah. Well, that Curiously, at that time, I didn't know the word stakeholder but I was discovering then what stakeholders were and how powerful they they they are in terms of delivering or not project. So it was it was great learning.
Unknown Speaker 24:07
And they're elusive as well, I find they there's always one stakeholder somewhere that will pop up just before you need it just after when you needed them to do something new, you know, one pop up going, but what about me?
Unknown Speaker 24:22
Yeah. And you think
Unknown Speaker 24:24
you've got everyone on board? And there's one that will pop up?
Unknown Speaker 24:27
Yeah. That was your first What? What was your biggest
Unknown Speaker 24:32
project? And when I say biggest one I don't mean necessarily is money. number of teams, what it? what felt like the largest and it might be impact on your customer. It might be impact on society. And whatever definition of large meant to you might be just personally big for you. And what did you learn from it?
Unknown Speaker 24:58
I think probably was the largest in in just about any sense. And it certainly was the last major projects I worked on before leaving Deloitte and moving into training. It had a huge impact on me. And the way I think about many aspects of project management today. And probably had the biggest impact on a chunk of the world it was the congestion charge in London. So for listeners who aren't Londoners or aren't British aren't aware, what would it have been, I suppose it would be mid mid 90s, then Mayor of London decided that to reduce congestion, he would impose I think the first city wide road user charging to try and reduce congestion in London and Deloitte were appointed as the principal consultants and project managers for the project. I wasn't the project manager for the project that was a chap called, called Brian green. But I was brought on board to help with the master planning process and then stayed on the team to lead the the sort of sub projects I suppose you can think of it as a programme, I guess. So the the component around the tender process. And so that was a big project, obviously huge project came in at, I suppose around a billion pounds worth of capital expenditure. And I had a, you know, a large team working for me on the commercial side. And so yeah, I guess that's the one and and I was felt particularly proud of that, because years earlier, you know, conversation late at night, as you have. We were trying to figure out how do we solve the London Transport traffic problems. And I'd suggested pedestrian icing inside the Euston road. Now, the congestion charge didn't go quite that far. But interestingly, that was the boundary of the zone. So I kind of called it years ahead. And and there's a lot I know as a Londoner who preferred to travel around London by public transport. I'm very kind of proud of what that achieved for a while now traffic's bounced back. And before we back to where we were back here at the turn of the century, when it went live.
Unknown Speaker 27:39
I don't know if I mentioned this, but I'm sure I read something somewhere they were talking about having sort of vehicle free weekend or weeks within the congestion charge area or and they were they were going to actually fully shut the roads come over someone to propose that which kind of kind of goes towards what you're saying there is pedestrian knows what it
Unknown Speaker 27:57
would mean. Yeah. And actually, there's there is a chunk of Central London, which if you pedestrianised it up and and let buses and public service vehicles through it, it could probably work. I think you'd have to find a way to allow commercial deliveries at some point. But I don't know. I'm not policy wonk. Technically, I know that pretty much whatever you want can be made to work, because there are project managers out there and smart people who can figure it But yeah, I think I think the big game is in is on a missions charging now, isn't it?
Unknown Speaker 28:37
Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. So what did you learn from that? What was the biggest learning from that piece of work?
Unknown Speaker 28:43
Well, it's interesting, because when I, you interviewed Peter Taylor, and his, you know, famous contribution is the idea of the lazy project manager. And when I, when I first saw that, I felt that title before I got to know Peter and read the book, I thought it didn't sound particularly good. rather like project management for dummies, or the whole dummies series, I thought was kind of insulting to readers. But until I discovered how well written quite a lot of them are. But when I read piece thing, I thought, well, actually, this is this is, this is something I've been talking to audiences about for a long time. But in a different way, because I got accused by my boss, I kind of discovered how to really let go as a project manager and let work streams and work stream leaders kind of run the project. Yeah. And I got a keys to my boss being complete waste of space. He said might Why are we paying you every time I come past I see you sitting on a sofa, drinking coffee and chatting with one of the managers? Will you actually contribute to this project? I said, Well, Richard guy, most of my contribution is sitting on the sofa, drinking coffee chatting with the managers, and thank you for your time certain about my caffeine intake. But I kind of set up the whole of that kind of tender process to be modularized, with different experts running the evaluation of the different tenders, because they were asking about that dozen different major commissioning packages, some of which had to be commissioned, in a way so that the technologies would work together. But and, and I, I taken what I learned on previous projects, in terms of getting the the work stream leaders who were the experts to plan their work, actually, I gave them the constraints. I said, figure out how you're going to deliver it and and figure out how you're going to hit each of these milestones. And they did. And I then figured, well, once I've done that, then actually, when we get into delivery, my my job is to make sure that they're sticking to their plan and help them out if they're not, and coordinate all their activities, but not actually get involved in them actively. And so I think I kind of made the joke that actually, once you're in delivery, if you've done your job, right, as a project manager, and your team are well supported, then you are going to spend quite a lot of time sitting on the sofa, creating coffee, which is a different way of expressing fundamentally the same inside that Peters pedals far more successfully.
Unknown Speaker 31:24
It is it and I think you
Unknown Speaker 31:27
did touch some sort of logic with me when I read Peters book. And as you just said, there, that whole point of you get the right people, you give them the right instruction, you give them that autonomy and as a product, and as you say those stream needs to be kind of project managers. It's it's if you're not giving him that autonomy. And it's that's the people talk about the servant leader leadership thing, and the I'm guessing a lot of your conversations there are right, what's stopping you doing this? And what's stopping you complete in this? And how could you help? Yeah, to remove those blockers. And they talked about the the idea of the scrum master of removing the impediments. And that's the same kind of role you're doing there. And you're sitting there with those guys and go, what do I need to do to help you do what you've committed to do? properly and easily? And rather than going right, show me how you're doing every lead in thing and let me take everything off. And as I, as I said before, me not being a detail person I can I kind of, I think delegation is, is under used in project management.
Unknown Speaker 32:39
From what I've seen,
Unknown Speaker 32:40
yeah. And actually, interestingly, I, I created online courses, not for the project management sphere, and then started selling them on my project management website, and the one that sells the best is the delegation one. But you're absolutely right. I mean, if I'm doing my job, right, then I've got, I don't have to worry about how each of my work streams is going because I've had a recent update, which means if one of them runs into problems, I should be aware enough that everything else is in a strong position, to then turn my attention to doing what I can to help out and, and in fact, I think the single biggest contribution I made to any of those work streams was when one of my teenager said I, you know, we've messed up, we can't we, we know we've got the numbers wrong, but we can't figure out where they've gone wrong Your life is because you're an accountant. And, and of course, the thing about being a lawyer is, although we were the consultancy, did have some sisters and brothers in another building and costs. So I could make myself useful by making a couple of phone calls. And within an hour, I had a highly experienced accountant, forensic accountant turning up in a taxi. And within an hour, he'd found where the numbers were wrong. And it was a simple error. And he found it and it was all sorted. And so my contribution was finding the finding the resource they needed. And that is and I'm glad you mentioned seven leadership because that is very much my thing, in terms of the model of leadership that I like best. And and that is the role of the servant leader is to find the resources and and to protect your team from the that crap that organisations throw at them. Yeah. So and get on with it. Get on with their work.
Unknown Speaker 34:28
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Unknown Speaker 34:32
So,
Unknown Speaker 34:33
obviously, that was your biggest piece. And it same, the congestion challenge, depending on your point of view, wherever we see a massive, successful piece of work.
Unknown Speaker 34:43
What, on the flip side of that?
Unknown Speaker 34:45
What is your biggest screw up in your project management career?
Unknown Speaker 34:47
And, and again, critically, what did you learn
Unknown Speaker 34:53
with this, I mean, you learn more from your screw ups than you do from your successes, and truth. And and I think the biggest the biggest one in terms of learning, I suppose there were two but the one that was really a genuine a project management script rather than a kind of professional script was in straight out as coming straight out of like a lot of consultants year 2000 projects, I went straight into a brand new, let's build a web web x business project. And it was on incredibly tight timelines. It was based in Holland. And it had a team of about 80 people from our firm, and a lot of other people from other firms as well. But I went on to be launched director for this new venture which was at the time owned by management. But during the process management was bought by Vodafone so became Vodafone project. And it was a huge project huge, highly technical, highly complex project great off of a project where I turned up, and I had absolutely no idea any of the technology. It was over the course of several lunches and dinners with with team leads and experts, I kind of got a sense of how it all fits together. But my role was really just to bring all the different strands, the commercial, the Technical Marketing strands all together into kind of one project that we could monitor and oversee it was more programme management. But I have always wished that in those days like we do now and had camera in my pocket, because my door, I've had it anytime I've had an office as a consultant on a client site and office to myself with my staff, and had launched director on the door, which I'm still fantastic. I just wish I had a button on the desk. But I it was it was very stressful. There was some interesting project politics which we need not go into, for reasons that are become obvious. But I was I felt I was under enormous stress. I was working long hours, some of the team were local to the Netherlands or able to reasonable commute to from Belgium. Some were flying in on three weeks on one week off from places like Canada, the United States, Malaysia. But I was flying out on a weekly commute, getting the first flight out from City Airport last flight back on Friday evening. And typically I was getting into the office at seven in the morning in order to try and get some work done before. Things got crazy. And I maxed out my credit card on pizzas. Pretty biassed, but it's buying the best part 100 pizzas every night, so they're out about 11 o'clock. So that was the kind of crazy thing and it is just getting, it's just getting crazy. And I was under quite a lot of pressure to deliver. And they were one or two people who were looking for people to blame, frankly, for things that weren't going right. And not to put too fine a point on it, I cracked I just couldn't, I couldn't hack it at one point, I went into a bit of a meltdown. And the stress got to me and for about 24 hours, I was not much used to anybody. And luckily, I pulled myself together and we actually delivered in every way that matter to the client, we delivered. But it was at that point that I kind of realised I needed to learn a bit about the the whole stress thing and and how to avoid this ever happening to me again, and and start to understand what was happening to the people around me as well. which is fantastic. Because although I've written four books on project management, I am a project manager to my core.
Unknown Speaker 38:58
My best selling book.
Unknown Speaker 39:02
Today's is actually my book on stress management, and people. So how do you as a project manager comes to write about stress management about time, that influence and I say well, actually what is a project manager doing every day, if if once you've mastered the technical stuff of planning, it's influencing it's it's managing time, it's managing your stress. So what I really learned there is the importance of looking after yourself and of being able to detect stress in yourself and your team and to bring it back under control before it gets too crazy. Or if it does get too crazy actually understand what's going on and how to fix it. And all of that I learned out of that one experience and the determination that it was never going to happen again. To me. Yeah, it happens to people all over the world every day. But
Unknown Speaker 39:59
yeah, I think
Unknown Speaker 40:01
from the project managers, and I bang on about this can be a lonely place
Unknown Speaker 40:08
as a project manager, because you are
Unknown Speaker 40:12
given a lot of autonomy, you're given a lot of rope. And
Unknown Speaker 40:18
you take responsibility for your team. And as you say, You're that shield from the organisation for your team, you kind of get important both ways, aren't you? And
Unknown Speaker 40:31
you're in that middle ground where you're not.
Unknown Speaker 40:36
whilst you're representing the organisation, you don't have the absolute autonomy to do whatever you want to do it. But you know that you've got to kind of help your team get it done in spite of the organisation sometimes. Yeah, and and spot in your stress triggers is quite difficult. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 40:54
If you're not paying attention, I've been had a couple of
Unknown Speaker 41:01
points where I've gone through stress related instances there and some one extreme case, and it was it scared me because I didn't spot it. And I didn't realise No. And I think quite often all of us as we deal with what's going on, and we bought it all up. I mean, you don't take it home to your family, you don't share it with your boss here. And you kind of it's just you and your little whirlwind in the middle there trying to be that safe, calm. I don't know how many analogies I just mixed. And you're trying to be that CEO calm for everyone. And it can and you just said there can immediately you saying that you're doing flying out first flight on Mondays last flight on a Friday, immediately, my ears perk up and say, That's not very good. And then then you say you're doing seven to 11. And then immediately you think, well, if you're looking at someone else doing that you'd be going Hang on a minute is probably not the right thing to do. Right?
Unknown Speaker 41:58
Yeah. But when you're doing it, it's kind of well, it's just temporary. Yeah, it's just for a bit.
Unknown Speaker 42:05
But there's also the failure. I mean, this was what was this, this would have been about 19 years ago. So I was 19 years younger. And of course, there is a certain age range when you are still invincible. You're not of course, but they were just going to tell you that. And of course, there is that other thing, that kind of quite a macro approach with some of the big consultancies and probably some of the big engineering firms, which is there is an expectation that people will, it's, you know, it's there, you're expected to go the extra mile. But what that actually means is, is actually run yourself into the ground. And so I think there's that whole conspiracy of the company and the expectations and your own ambition, and your own sense of self identification as a bit of a hero. There are project managers that do have that kind of hero, complex sense that I won't ask my team to do this, but I'll do it. And of course, then, of course, if you are a good project manager, and you have a loyal team, the thing you forget is that your team will go out of their way to support you. Because you've worked hard to build that map that relationship with them. So you're not expecting them to go the extra mile, but sometimes leading from the front is actually dragging people into a bad place. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 43:26
yeah. Because you set the stall, don't you? And if you're there from seven till 10 o'clock, people around, you see that as being the norm. Yeah. And whilst you're seeing it as being an exception for this, and it's for me, other people tend to think, well, I should be and it's not necessarily an explicit I should be, and they may not even realise they feel that but it feels like and I was listening to and it's a phrase Seth Godin uses a lot around people like us
Unknown Speaker 44:00
do this. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 44:02
And that's what the project, you would set that store, wouldn't you? And you'd be there going, I'm doing this. So they look at you and think, well, that's what we do on this project. Yeah. And that, and it any builds in there as a culture, doesn't it without it being explicitly said. And then suddenly, you find out as you say, you're spending thousands of pounds on pizzas?
Unknown Speaker 44:23
Yeah. And which is an idea.
Unknown Speaker 44:28
Going back
Unknown Speaker 44:30
to more put, whilst actually that whole area of project management stress is fascinates me to be quite honest, on how we, how we better deal with and better protect our project managers. But
Unknown Speaker 44:43
going beyond that, what what was your proudest project delivery?
Unknown Speaker 44:49
So all the projects, you've managed to get over the line, buying pizzas for everyone, whatever it needed to be done, and getting it over that line? And going,
Unknown Speaker 45:00
yes, we did that? Yes. Strangely, it's not the gift to set up dominos pizzas from, from the pizza company in The Hague. And it's bizarre, because I think there are a lot of people nowadays who don't actually recognise this and people who were around at the time, wonder whether it's money well spent, but yes, 1000 I mean, every big consultancy, people out there doing it, I, I lead the delight, contribution to the 80,000 programme for BA PLC, which at the time held, you know, seven of the UK Well, I say six the UK's largest airports and Southampton plus airports around the world and all sorts of other interests. And I,
Unknown Speaker 45:49
I took on leadership of that project.
Unknown Speaker 45:54
From from delight perspective,
Unknown Speaker 45:57
in interesting circumstances, let's say, when it was seen by the firm, as a project in serious risk, and I was asked to cry stabilise it, and we didn't just stabilise it, we turned into a huge success, commercially for off. But more importantly, and probably the causally huge successful BA they know they went really smoothly for them. And given the amount of equipment and the amount of technology that their engineers found that did have potential year 2000 problems. The fact that there was, you know, probably fewer faults on the first of January, than they would normally expect to deal with. It was it was a huge, huge success. And I and I think for me, it was the first big project I I got to manage. The first time I was working cross such a breadth of different activities, different
Unknown Speaker 47:01
types of people.
Unknown Speaker 47:04
It's where I really crafted a lot of my understanding of what makes a good project manager what makes a good team. What makes a good consultancy assignment as well. So, yeah, and it transformed my career as well. You know, my career wasn't going very far very fast. Up until then I was brought on to that as at the request of the clients, it happened, who met me and thought I really understood what they wanted. When the team leadership before that point, didn't. And, and, and I turned that into the the basis for pretty much everything I've done since.
Unknown Speaker 47:48
So really, under that I was around then I was doing YouTube videos and projects myself within Barclays. And so and the biggest news worthy. I think that that I remember newsworthy year 2000 bug Millennium bug problems that people were worried about on the street with planes falling out of the sky. That was that was the big worry. Yeah. Not landing properly. And that was
Unknown Speaker 48:16
that that was British Airways problem. Yeah, thanks, Paul, Alaska. But it's interesting, because I
Unknown Speaker 48:20
would if you but if if
Unknown Speaker 48:23
BA weren't able to let them land? Yeah, they'd soon fall out the sky. We know Petra, we know that from watching die hard on me. So
Unknown Speaker 48:30
I say the big I seriously, I think the biggest single risk
Unknown Speaker 48:36
in terms of scale of risk, not necessarily potential outcome. Because although it would have been a press publicity nightmare, it wouldn't nobody got hurt. But actually the things that we were there were most engineering concerns found was was the baggage handling systems they have so complex, but I'll tell you that that planes falling out of sky thing it might be one of the things I tell people is if you're a project manager is you need to carve time out of your week, even it's only half an hour to find somewhere quiet and just think. And just let all of the things you've heard over the last week, all the concerns, just bubbled to the surface, you need a bit of quiet time and I, I created this ritual of marking myself as being a meeting of five weeks, we're working in Gatwick Airport at the time. And one of my friends or colleagues said, we're trying to find you. And we discovered there is no maximum five where I was Costa Coffee, actually. But I had the I was sitting in not not really coming up with anything insightful. And I heard someone on the phone booking an escape holiday, this was a couple years out. And it suddenly occurred to me that I'd heard in a meeting just that week, something that surprised me, which is the biggest fly day. Certainly back then, for a number of the UK airports is not over the summer at the first of January, because that's when people go on their skin holidays. And I just thought if I phoned up the airport and said, I'm planning to book a skiing holiday, but I'm worried that it won't be safe because of the millennium. But what they would say. So I went back to the office and I I use my mobile rather than the office phone. I didn't use the internal directory, I just phone directory inquiry said I want to speak to get with. So I got got it let's get we're going to set to address this call handler picked up the phone. I said I'm you know thinking of like, and and she went silent, except, you know, is it going to be safe to fly. And if she went silent. And then she said what I expect it will be but I wouldn't thought to myself, I'm not sure that that's actually what corporate HQ would want them to be saying. And that kicks off a whole new work stream. And it was just because I spent that half an hour not doing anything that you know, completely new work stream. And over the course of six months or so we managed to get everyone trained with scripts that were approved by engineering and by legal and and every quarter, we reviewed those scripts and revise them as and when we had new information or so i think that you know, and it's those little learnings that I had so many of them over the course of what was for me a two and a half year project, and so many different experiences that you know, I kind of crafted a lot of my understanding there.
Unknown Speaker 51:37
Yeah. That's it's fascinating that because they start ability to reach beyond the project scope and go, what is the business impact? What is going to happen to the business? And as you say there, if not picking up that not spotting that point. And if left as it was, obviously BA the way they get their money is payments for everyone that goes through the airport. Yeah. And therefore, if on that on their busiest day, yeah, as you
Unknown Speaker 52:13
say that it's like it's like,
Unknown Speaker 52:17
New Year's Eve. Anywhere that sells in Christmas presents for blokes to buy for their wives. Yeah, that's their biggest day, isn't it? So not supporting that makes a massive business impact? Not just the project tick the box? We've delivered the project.
Unknown Speaker 52:31
Yeah. Moving
Unknown Speaker 52:33
kind of slightly different angle on your achievements. Yeah. And thinking about what your proudest project achievement was not necessarily related to the delivery. But something that wasn't about Yes, we made that project go live. What during your course of being the pm on this piece of work? What is the thing you friend made you giving you the most
Unknown Speaker 53:03
pride? Hmm.
Unknown Speaker 53:09
I, I once told a storey
Unknown Speaker 53:14
and I just kind of publicised a bit of it on social media. And I didn't actually say what the storey was, but I I kind of attributed the success I had to one of my former colleagues. And he emailed me and said, I have no idea what I've said to you that you felt was so influential, but it's called Wrexham krill, who I think now is very successful. executive coach, and he and I were had kind of had fairly parallel trajectories at the lights and he was at the time had started running a project for I think, for the Ministry of Defence somewhat before I moved on to the projects I was doing and and we met up and one of the things he said is now you're running a good project, you got a real responsibility to do something with that success. Don't just kind of bank the success, but actually, you've got a stable successful projects do good. And
Unknown Speaker 54:22
shortly after that conversation, I got a phone call from
Unknown Speaker 54:26
the resourcing people. So to look at the lights, and I guess all the big consultancies, you need a resource. You ask the resourcing people to find you someone to fitter template, terms of seniority, experience, expertise, whatever. And so I put in my request, and they find up, so we've got someone but I have to say, you know, this is not well liked. He has, you know, number of his assignment managers feel that he's letting them down, whatever. And so we're going to be asked you to keep an eye on him. And because this is his last chance, and I, my heart sank for a moment, I thought, okay, we'll see what I said the guy too, and I sat him down, I said, Look, I don't know if you know, but you come with a health warning, and not really surprised about that. And I said, Look, concentrate, well, this is this is what I've been told. So you've got a choice. If you carry on like that, you won't be on this project for much longer. And I'm fairly sure this will be your last project. But if you say to me, now you want to change that perception, I will help you to change that perception, I will help you to do a good job. And I will therefore be able to say in good faith that you've done a good job, and we can start to turn this all around. And he said, that's what he wants he you know, and we. And the great thing was that when he rolled off that project, he was the only team member on the entire project who got a letter, thanks for the client. So that made me enormously proud. Partly, it made me proud of him. And if I'm absolutely brutally honest about it, partly it made me proud that I actually did the right thing, when it would have been actually much easier, say, I'll wait, I'll get someone else. But I didn't. And so I'm kind of proud of myself as well. But the principle works. And that's, you know, your critics are expert kind of pointing out to me that we can do that as, as successful project managers. If we create some space on our projects, we can start to invest in our people, or whatever else needs needs our investment. Absolutely, I think that's
Unknown Speaker 56:45
absolutely spot on.
Unknown Speaker 56:48
Moving now through, we've kind of gone covered the history of, of your project management, I know that obviously, you're doing other things now. And looking on your website, there's a whole raft of it. So what made you move away from the delivery of project management and then into the the other roles and setting up your own business and the books the speaking blogging, etc, etc, etc.
Unknown Speaker 57:17
I think it's, it all comes down to philosophy of the around the work I was doing. As we kind of came towards the end of the 90s into the early 20th 21st century.
Unknown Speaker 57:33
I was very clearly with a number of other colleagues that delights
Unknown Speaker 57:39
kind of mentally aligned to the idea of integrating two of our service lines, we had a service language called programme leadership was which projects, programme management, and all the good things that you and I know how to do. And there was another service line, which was called change leadership, or which was the management of change all the soft skills and, and I had come firmly to the conclusion as had a number of our colleagues on both sides of that, divided between two service lines that actually we were really talking about two ends of the spectrum rather than two distinct disciplines. And that you can't be successful in delivering change unless you can manage a project and you can't be delivering a successful successfully deliver a project unless you can manage the change aspects of it. And you have to be able to play across the whole spectrum. And sure, there are always going to be people who are going to be most comfortable at one end of the spectrum or the other. But I saw it as being very much what I think thought we should be doing to to bring those two services and lines together, integrate them more closely. But around the, you know, 2001 2002, it was quite clear that too late, at that time saw their future, or their immediate future in enterprise resource planning, ERP implementations in AI, big it implementations using those tools plus all the web tools, and that the message they were getting from their clients was they wanted project managers who could make technology projects work and they weren't interested in all the soft side of it. They just wanted the kit to work. And I was earmarked as one of the project managers who would be very, very capable of delivering that stuff. albeit not a technologist. And that's what the firm wants me to do. It wasn't what I wanted to be doing. And interestingly, having had conversations, that's pretty much the way, the firm and I suspect pretty much all of the big consultants have moved is much closer integration of those disciplines, because it makes sense. But it was it wasn't right for me to stay on their terms they wanted me to stay on and in the you know, weren't when right. So I felt I had to believe and having made the decision that I wasn't going to stay on, I also made a decision not to stay on to project management. I loved doing training, I trained project managers and lawyers for a good number of years, I'd done all the kind of landmark training for the big promotions that people got, I was involved in those training courses, internationally. So I wanted to get involved in training. So that's how I how I came to kind of set myself up as an independent trainer and start pretty much from nothing. Right?
Unknown Speaker 1:00:37
Must have been an exciting project.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:41
pretty hairy one. I mean, it was, it was six months before I actually, you know, won my first engagement and, and I kind of used the promise of my first first income to supply the laptop, I need to hats a project the slides from so it was Yeah, it was it was a period. But you know, I learned that I learned the art and craft of cold calling, which is something I never want to go back to. But
Unknown Speaker 1:01:10
yeah, you do what you need to do. And can my business grew from there? Brilliant.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:19
I've got a few final questions. But before we go into that one, the last float I have there. What What do you something I need to write it higher up in the interview things is what do you do when you're not teaching people to project managing project managing?
Unknown Speaker 1:01:38
You mean, what else am I teaching them or what I do when I'm not teaching when I'm not working? When you're not
Unknown Speaker 1:01:44
working? It's mostly it's mostly a family. But I'll tell you the thing that I've been doing most of work wise over the last few years is putting my training courses on video. And I have become a bit of a hobbyist film editor and started to get into motion graphics as well. So that's actually quite fun and, you know, playing around with video equipment and learning how to edit videos and stuff that's, that's occupying quite all my time as well. But yeah, you've got you've got a couple of daughters. They're probably at that age. They're pretty, all consuming. I think she's starting to get to the age where I can get a bit more time to myself and my wife get into their self but still last little bit big draw on our time. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:02:36
yeah, I'm stomach.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:38
What was the last project the podcast that you listen to?
Unknown Speaker 1:02:43
Yeah, the last one I listened to was you and Peter Taylor, cuz I saw him there. I thought he was sad.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:51
Get a storage. Yeah. Really said Yeah. Especially
Unknown Speaker 1:02:53
with these. He's got his 10 year anniversary. This year is the with the book as well. So I think, yeah, he's always entertaining. And what about the last project blog? Do you read?
Unknown Speaker 1:03:07
At the moment, I shy I must confess, I tend to write far more than I read. And finally I die. I read quite a lot of not blogs. But I rushed out a blog just yesterday about the new PMP exam that p&p announced a week or so ago. And that that calamity, and funnily enough, I think, I may not be the first person to blog on it, but I couldn't find anyone else. So, so because I was looking for that. But I tend to, I'm going to forget the chaps name. Now. Let's get to know, Dave Gordon produces a digest of blogs every week. And he I don't know how he does it amazing. But you know, this is this, usually about 20 really good quality blogs that he's found and has summarised in one sentence. And I just want to browse that every week, looking for one or two that attract me. So I'm not a kind of faithful reader of any particular blog. So though, interestingly, I'm starting to I'm starting to think of a kind of little project around other people's blogs that I can I can start for my my own audience. But yeah, so I just I have no idea what the last one is. I think the probably the last one that I yes, I do remember that I did relatively recently this and the last one, but the one that stuck in my mind was, again, a very kind of high powered analyst, talking about how he's been appointed to the, to the to help lead the team that's going to produce the next pin book and saying that's going to be a very different beast to the current one. So anyone, any any PMP out there, it agile is going to be a much bigger thing forum for the PMI.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:05
Yeah, well, yeah, it makes sense. It's another tool that we're using. And it's used extensively, isn't it? So? Yeah. And I think it's that as we discussed earlier, it's it's a good hammer. Yeah. When you hammer in the nail?
Unknown Speaker 1:05:19
Yeah. My only problem is, it's not a hammer I I learned to use while I was actively managing projects, because it didn't exist. Although I do take issue with actually saying we're so new. We were doing, we were doing incremental and iterative stuff back in the 90s. And I'm sure yeah, I'm sure the Paris Hilton one go?
Unknown Speaker 1:05:40
No. Was it rational rose and all that stuff was? hats and yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:05:46
yeah. But even even just in traditional, particularly project management, we still wouldn't we still aim to release our projects in chunks and with you as we went? So I've probably no more agile than I think I do. I think if I probably examine it, it's it's an overlay of techniques and methodologies around quite a familiar familiar ground.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:08
Yeah, my my, my experience of it. And the training has been my main experiences, a little bit of trying to apply, apply, and it is, I find it really, really good.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:21
When applied to the right thing.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:23
Yeah. So
Unknown Speaker 1:06:25
on that, just thinking about last couple of questions here was, what would be the top tip that you'd give to a seasoned project manager out there? Just that one tip to someone who's been 1020 1015 years in project management, what would you What would you say to them?
Unknown Speaker 1:06:46
Yeah, when you asked me to do this, and you gave me some hints about some of the questions you might ask, and you hinted that you'd ask this. And actually, in my mind, I was going to talk about servant leadership. And we've blown that one out of the water. So that the, the the one role that I always tell people starting out, but I think we need to remember it as seasons for your managers is that it's your stakeholders that will determine the outcome of your projects, not in terms of what happens, but how it's perceived. And therefore, whether it's a success or not, you can you can build everything you promised to build, and you can build it as well or better than you committed to building it. You can bring it in on time and under budget. But if your stakeholders don't like it, it's a failure. And so it's not, it's not a tip in terms of giving people advice they've never heard before, it's a urgent reminder that you are never giving enough time to engaging respectfully with your stakeholders. So that I think we're gonna go with that one, given that we've done seven leadership's death.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:58
Fair enough. Fair enough.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:00
The final question of of the day, what would you tell young Dr. Mike, when he just stepped into that first project? on that first day in project management? At? Where was it? I'm trying to remember, I've got it written down congestion, isn't it? No, that wasn't the local authority once. Yeah, yeah. So in that property developers, and you've gone down there your first day with you? Yeah. Bright, clean, shiny project book and your shiny shoes and briefcase, I guess. Back it back in the day? What What would you say to Mike,
Unknown Speaker 1:08:40
I should probably say two things, I think there's one thing I did well, which I think I should have done well, and I would would would say to myself anyway, which is to use your project management experiences as a platform for learning, for learning about all sorts of different disciplines like stress management, time management, like influence and communication, and all of the different skills which aren't, strictly speaking, project management skills, but without which we cannot manage. The thing that I did, I didn't do well, nearly as well as I could or should have done, which is also to use project management as a platform for building a network, really, and truly, I got on with the projects, and I delivered the projects, I engage with stakeholders purely around their projects, and therefore didn't take nearly enough of those relationships on beyond beyond the duration of the project, which is a massive some regret. So that those those would be it. I shouldn't give you a bonus, because it's all about him. Box seven coming out. I mean, I when I go, I don't know if you, your PMPV Yeah, but you know, I got pin box six in a post. And it's just this massive, great thing, the one tip, I would say absolutely, to the younger MC, which I'm afraid is not a tip that's available to to any new project managers listening, or that probably is just as valid is get your PMP in now, because if I have done YPMP in 1996, when I got the first edition of the pin book, it had, I still got still got it on my desk, it's 174 pages. And it makes sense. And it's printed on white paper. You know, so if you're if you're a project manager now and you're thinking about doing your p&p because, you know, you see a career ahead of you do it now. It's only about 600 pages. By the time you're my age, it will probably be about 900 pages, and it will be only available plugging straight into your brain.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:51
So
Unknown Speaker 1:10:52
I think there's 2002 when I did mine, so I'm glad I did it. I guess Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:10:57
something like that.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:00
Well, that that is my questions. That's everything that I was planning to ask and more. If people want to get in touch catch up, grab one of your books, get in touch with you some of your training, what's the best way for people to get ahold you?
Unknown Speaker 1:11:17
Okay, if they're interested in project management, as you already saw, the place to go is online PM courses.com. I sell all sorts of project management courses, they're my own core courses for people who need to do traditional plan project management. I sell soft skills courses that are relevant to project managers like managing change and delegating leadership. But I also have certification courses for things like PMP and Scrum as well on their says agile courses too. And lots of free stuff as well. There's a weekly, a weekly article, which is a big read and may not be right for people with lots of lots of experience and knowledge but certainly for there's a lot of good stuff there. attached to that there's the YouTube channel. I do videos every week on YouTube. Look out for online PM courses on YouTube as well. And all the usual channels, Facebook, LinkedIn, always happy to connect with people. And if you're a member of the Association for project management, a pm here in the UK, then look out my article in every quarterly edition. You'll find a one page thought piece from me and I think the summer edition must be out fairly soon. Right?
Unknown Speaker 1:12:39
Cool. Must Britain finally then thank you Mike for your time and your interesting and entertaining storeys. There's some fans fascinating stuff in there. And have a wonderful evening.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:54
I've really enjoyed it. Thank you very much for hosting me.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:57
No problem. Thanks, Mike. Cheers. Thank you. Bye bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
