n
1da34df6f9f78156f3653daf53ad5f46.m4a
00:00:00,000 funneling those things through that route so that I’m not because I will
slow it down. I’m not the worst people in the business to touch stuff. If I’m responsible for responding to customer queries or whatever,
00:00:15,000 I’m going to be the slowest person to do it because ultimately is a
business leader, the demand is on my time and whatever your role is, as a project manager, a program manager, whatever,
00:00:25,000 ultimately that’s the game is increasing the value of your time and being
able to either outsource, delegate, automate, hand over things to other people and you kind of have to play that loop. So yeah, it’s an interesting one.
00:00:40,000 I love your points around what you can do around automating things in
00:00:59,000 your email. I think for so many people that that’s the answer. [Music] 00:01:08,000
00:01:15,000 Hi and welcome to the Sunday Launch Project Manager podcast for 00:01:30,000 Sunday, the 4th of June 2023. This is your host, Nigel Creaser.
And today I’ve got part two of my chat with Alexis Kingsbury, the business process man. Speak soon.
[Music] I think it’s, it really echoes a lot of things that I’ve always kind of
tried to, I tried to talk to other people about it and I’m actually the,
the, the, the, the fact that you say, now you get the joy out of seeing
someone sort of, sorts and things out and I remember showing a client
of mine because I took, whenever the key thing I say about the me not reading copy emails is I tell people
00:01:43,000 that I don’t read them. I said, I’m not going to read it. I might reference it
later but don’t expect me to read it if you copy me if you want me to read it send it.
00:01:52,000 And, and I, and I helped her set up that same room on, on her, because
we talked about it and then kind of set it up on her. And she had, I don’t know, how many thousands of emails in a inbox,
00:02:04,000 unread or whatever, press the button and it started and she saw all
these unread the number going down, click, click, click, click, click,
click, click, click, click, click, click, click, and 300, 400, wherever the number was, a big number of emails disappeared and she’s like,
00:02:19,000 wow, that you could see a weight starting to lift off often because that
was 400 they didn’t have to worry about. And, and we all do it and we
shouldn’t but emails still, and we’re, I think it will be a long time people
are changes from that it will still drive a lot of anxiety, drive a lot of communication,
00:02:41,000 drive a lot of our, because it’s interesting you see lots and lots of instant
message or sort of like, yeah, more type of communications that were
always followed up by a weekly emails telling you what was on there. So that’s always, yeah, I think all the horrendous amount of noise, yeah, I completely agree is.
00:03:02,000 Managing that communication flow is really, really important, like if you own energy and be understood this, why I say like, often my aim is
anything that’s important shouldn’t be coming to me, which it sounds
like a really odd thing to say, like, but I’m basically saying, yeah,
00:03:19,000 invoices, time sheets, payroll, that should all be going to finance,
request for me to impair on stuff, marketing opportunities, that’s all going to marketing, new potential customers, opportunities to work
people, that’s all going to sales, support questions, customer success,
00:03:34,000 that’s all going to my support team, to some extent my job is about
working out who else is going to do stuff. So I’ll tell you now, and in fact,
I sort of friend, we were joking about the fact that, you know, like, you
know, I think a WhatsApp group that we were part of had got like 600 unread messages in it.
00:03:53,000 And I said, yeah, light is fine, I’m okay with ignoring it because at some
point someone will at me if I need to do something. And they said, oh, I
hate to see what your email count is and I showed them, and there was
an audible gasp, and they were trying to guess in the, in the car and then taxi off to a golf game.
00:04:12,000 They were trying to guess how many and I invite you in listeners to play the same game. How many unread emails are in the Lexus email inbox
at that point. So you need to understand everybody. Yeah, I’m going to guess a three.
00:04:29,000 Three unread emails. Wow, that’s a very brave get now. You are, you are out by orders of magnitude. The answer at the time was 145,000 plus something, something, something. So I wasn’t sure whether you would have marked all of them as unread, automatics.
00:04:45,000 No, no, I don’t even bother. I skim read and most get ignored because I
get a lot of email. It’s not the best way of communicating with me. And
most, as I say, most of the stuff that comes to me is either unsolicited
stuff or stuff that I’ve had to sign up for with because I blah, blah, blah.
I’m not able to skim read and see if there is anything that stands out as
important. Most of the time it’s not. And, and stuff, you know, I get chased if it is, it does matter.
00:05:19,000 But most of the stuff, I have team numbers that are responsible for it.
So I don’t, I don’t feel that same anxiety that other people would when
they’re looking at that number because, you know, I have some people
that say, “I don’t know, you click in it and unsubscribe and so on, it’s
like, why would I spend, why would I waste my time even doing that?” But I’m not, you know, there’s so much of that kind of stuff.
00:05:41,000 So listen, listen, listen, it’s not even worth my time doing that. Instead,
the game I’m playing really is what’s important that’s in here that, therefore, you know, that either takes up my time or whatever, that
genuinely I need, either, I need or won’t spend my time on. And as a result, how do I get that managed through a more efficient medium? And so that’s kind of the game through processes like, you know, my everything process. Like, if there isn’t a process that exists for
something, then the answer is, I have to work it out. You raise it with me in a meeting or I get some message and I have to work it out and I come up with an answer.
00:06:17,000 That is the least efficient process. That’s how I do it. But it’s how I do
with everything that doesn’t already have a process. Like, an invoice
that needs payment, there’s a process, a customer that’s interested in working with us. They, you know, they either go and download our
brochure at M and your dot link for slash discover or if they want to call
with us, then you change that last bit to forward slash discover. And then we have various like resources like ebooks on AI and all these
things. I know the URLs off by heart because I’m essentially funneling
those things through that route so that I’m not because I will slow it down.
00:06:57,000 And that one or the worst people in the business to touch stuff like if you know if I’m responsible for responding to customer queries or
whatever, I’m going to be the slowest person to do it because ultimately is a business leader that demands on my time and whatever your role is, you know, as a project manager, program manager, whatever.
Ultimately, that’s the game is increasing the value of your time and
being able to either outsource, delegate, automate, hand over things to
other people. And you kind of have to play that loop. So yeah, it’s, it’s an interesting one. I love your points around like what you can do
around automating things in your email. And I think for so many people
that that’s that’s the answer. And of course, as you say, like when you were talking about the transcription, the AI stuff is is huge. You mentioned using off the AI and there’s in other function.
00:07:47,000 And it’s come along. I used like D script even riverside that we’re using this podcast recording now. And you can use, you can use tools like
chat to you to then take that transcription and sort out of the editing that
you mentioned rather than have to edit it yourself. You could say, you
know, his common terms that I use that transcription often gets wrong, such as my company name, air manual or my name, you know, his, my
name, whatever. And then go right. Here’s a transcription. Now write it
into a. Try and proper transcript and it’ll do it all right and laid out
correctly and so on. And that is ultimately yes, there’s a bit of thinking
upfront there to document that as a process and work out. Okay, first I do this, then I do this, then I’m from this.
00:08:30,000 But now you’ve got something you can improve over time and you can
pass through other people like it’s, yeah, it’s game changing when you
start. When you start doing that through various activities because once
you start to get the benefits, yeah, it’s addictive. You start to realize, oh
wait, I’m just saved a day or two days of my time. I invest in this one amount and you keep on just playing that game right.
00:08:54,000 Yeah, I just, I get so frustrated with wait time. That’s the thing that bugs the hell out of me because there’s so much in processes where the
work is done. It’s the time to get it through the next bit of whether it’s an
approval, whether it’s a notification type thing, whether it’s having to
manually go and check. Like we’ve got things, we’ve got things before when organizations have been with this way you’ve had something come to you.
00:09:26,000 But the for whatever reason, never thought about it, it’s on it’s uploaded
onto a SharePoint site. Great. So in order to find out if your POs come
in or whatever it was, you have to go on that SharePoint site, you have
to go on there and you go on there and then you’re waiting for it and then you go there and then it doesn’t automatically refresh. So you have to press F5 to refresh the screen every 14 seconds and that’s what you spent that day doing because you need that PO because you need to get.
00:09:53,000 And then and then just looking at the power automate stuff within
Microsoft and went, what’s that? Severed. Let’s have a look. Oh, I can
set up a thing a rule that says this, this, this, this, this, this, send me an email. One file appears here. It sends me an info.
00:10:12,000 Yeah, with these criteria and then I was like, oh, that’s it. Done. It was a bit. Well, my coding skills aren’t the greatest. It was a bit ether Robinson and probably could have been a cleaner and a bit of manual stuff in there.
00:10:23,000 You could have improved it later, but it just meant that I could do it and
we, and then I’ve seen that evolving to other situations, but just little
things like that. I just, I’m a, I don’t know where I get it from or how, but
sometimes I’ll be there going, if I’m doing stuff in the kitchen, maybe it’s like I’m making a cup of coffee, making something to eat, tidy, or
something. Kind of find myself trying to go around the kitchen in the most efficient way to try and multitask it if I can.
00:10:49,000 So if I’m carrying something one way, I want to be carrying something
back the other way. Yeah, maybe I’m just, there’s so much just a wrong
with me on that, but that’s what kind of makes it. I think that’s pretty, pretty normal or at least it’s any wide day.
00:11:03,000 Yeah, and it’s just like it’s weird. Sometimes you think about doing something efficient, can save you 14 seconds or whatever. Just that
natural looking for those opportunities. And I think, I think with, and maybe that’s again, it’s the project management about there.
00:11:16,000 And then, it’s the critical path, that’s what I’m looking at. What’s critical
path to make my cup of tea, isn’t it? Yeah, and I’m not using all this, that’s probably true. And I suppose similar with me with my sort of background of management consulting, working on improving process and so similar thing, right?
00:11:31,000 It’s always looking for where can I eat this out and improve it. And yet
we might do it on a cup of tea and then spend four hours. And then go,
wait, why have I done that? And I think that’s the, that’s the kicker, right?
00:11:51,000 It’s overcoming those mental, those mental barriers to kind of do it. But I
think also, you know, you highlight a really interesting point around like
the technology side is that I feel like a lot of the technology sort of
plateaued for a few years in terms of what was possible. Like, or at
least the user interface for a lot of technology improved a lot, probably a
decade, but actually the nuts and bolts underneath it didn’t change that much.
00:12:17,000 And now we’ve had a fundamental shift with AI and what that
empowers us to do, that the game changes not just it’s already in over
the last couple of years, the amount of AI options and tools that have
something became available to the generation. And then we’re going to
the general public has massively increased, but also every day there are more developments that allow us to do stuff. You know, I was working with my engineering team and we were looking at particular
problem that our clients have and we’re looking at how we could write something that would utilize AI to solve that problem.
00:12:53,000 And we were reflecting on if we wrote that using standard code, it’s the
sort of thing that probably would have taken two, three weeks to write.
And we were talking about getting it done in like an afternoon and that
kind of absolute shift is pretty incredible. But I think the challenge for a
lot of people is like, oh, but it’s changing so quick or I can get my head
around, you know, what is all this AI stuff and is it going to make a difference?
00:13:20,000 And is it just a fad and so on? And it’s for our customers, we wrote a guide which we’ve now made available to everyone. So if people want
us, the business leaders guide to using AI and chat GPT, it’s available
at manniel.link/ai/ebook. And that the intent of that was to cut through
all the, you know, the hype and whatever and say actually how do you
make practical use of this kind of stuff to be efficient and to and what could disrupt, you know, disrupt what you’re doing and so on.
00:13:53,000 And I think for project managers, you know, we’ve been talking about
there’s various ways in which as a project manager, you could use AI to create your project plan or to help you create a status report or
whatever it is. Like to send to write and send emails to people to chase
project status reports or updates on what they’re doing or clarity on
what their blockers are or whatever. Those things that basically take up
huge amounts of your time and are not particularly exciting, like the best parts of the job, right?
00:14:26,000 And the exciting parts are working out how, you know, how can I
reduce this critical power, and all we’ve got this new constraints come
in and how can I make sure that I’ve got this difficult stakeholder that
other like that’s where the value is, but doing or doing those bits of bits and mobbs around the edges, like that stuff can be massively made
more efficient. And I think that’s quite exciting in terms of what it means
where we can be spending our time. Yeah, I think you were right. I think
I get a lot of frustration as I say, there’s two things, move, move, move, there were two or three things, move, moving the same information from one system to another.
00:15:03,000 Me manually doing it, dealing with a lot of these, not essential tasks that actually the value that I had as a squishy human being. There’s someone who has a relative level of emotional intelligence is about working with that stakeholder, getting to know them, understanding
them and delivering what they really need. And getting them to help me do that.
00:15:36,000 And then with the team, it’s the same thing. And really, I would have more time understanding those team members, but nine times out of
10, I’m just chasing the lead time sheet or with the customer, I’m just
sending a rag status report to explain why something has happened not
at all complaining that something. And all of these, these tools and I
think there’s a lot of things where people, is it going to replace my job? Well, yes, it is, but not all of it.
00:16:04,000 I listen to a lot of writing podcasts and a lot of authors are nervous, or
people like the fact that you’ve got chat, GPT can write you a lovely
story, a lovely short story, a very long story, and there’s tools being used
to facilitate and augment people’s writing. And it’s going to happen, it’s going to get used. It’s the next phase of Grammily, you know what I mean, is that sort of thing? Yeah, yeah.
00:16:35,000 But with that, with that creativeness about it. And but then it’s going to
be how are you going to do that because still you can’t, at the moment, and I don’t think it would get to that. You write me a story about something, please, that I can publish as a book to chat GPT. That
probably could, but it wouldn’t produce something that would be there.
00:16:58,000 That pivotal element of that idea that you need to have as your idea as
you as a human is the bit where we add. And then the same with that, what I would think of as the art bit, the art of managing and understanding that stakeholders requirement, understanding the team
dynamic, joining those two together and making that happen. That’s the
power. And agree. At the moment, and I’m wrong, I can’t see where the AI and that sort of stuff does anything more than augment that capability.
00:17:30,000 There’s still a core thing running through the middle that is us that has
to be there. Yeah, and I think the way to look at it is it’s a collaborative
technologist. The thing I love about it and the way to use it is that it has
to be back and forth. Like I came across a piece of AI recently where
you could take a YouTube video, for example, of this conversation and
you could use Opus AI, where you basically give it the link, and it will create a series of short videos 30, 40, 50 seconds, light you would create in headliner.
00:18:04,000 But it will essentially do that automatically by sort of looking at creating
a transcription, picking the bits content or that kind of stuff. Like
basically going to save you having to spend that pocket money. No, you
don’t. So sorry that they’ve lost their jobs on that, but like, but and that’s great.
00:18:22,000 But the it’s not picking the messaging to put out there. So it doesn’t
know what are the key points that you’re that are part of your brand or
your values or that link into an offer or whatever that you’re making at
the moment. It doesn’t have that sophistication. That’s why it has to be collaborative. Now Opus is an example of a clever AI, but one that
doesn’t yet provide that sort of back and forth where I said to you BT is
very clever AI that definitely does and say you can create a book as
you say by having that insight that you give. But a great example of
that. They’re related to like project management and so on. Be that right
now there are add-ons that you can put into Google sheets that allow you to essentially prompt chat GPT. Now what that means is that you could say right in a in a sell in a Google sheet.
00:19:19,000 So right, the these sells I’m going to give you some data, which are the last let’s say five weeks of wonder what might we use for project management like burn down or something like that right we could use
some kind of productivity metric. And we could say right a sentence that
summarizes any trend. And so essentially we’d send that office a query
to judge you BT and go right here’s the data and it will give a trend so it
might say yes currently trending now with the. Now you could say, but
it’s not smart enough to know that actually it said that it’s going down
and it’s described it as being good thing but actually that particular
metric in these be going up for it to be a good thing and actually it’s less about what it’s going up or down.
00:20:08,000 Well, I want it to be a stable and consistency is important like, but you
can tell it that so you could put that into the like let’s say this is what’s
good. This is what’s bad. This is what’s okay. Exactly. So if you get
output and you’re like, oh, it’s not very clever because it thinks this is like great tell it.
00:20:22,000 So now you can say, OK, here’s the numbers done. Good like ideally
we’re looking for consistency. However, if it’s going to be not consistent
then going higher is better going deck. Like you can set parameters and write that in normal language rather than have to do some really
complex like it can you know if this and then that and all these such
things and can condition for but say whatever instead you could just tell
it that and then it will write you your report it will write your your Rags
status report and say this is green and this is dead like you could have it do that.
00:20:56,000 Obviously there’s work up front and you have to put your smarts in there and you need to review it to make sure that it makes sense because you don’t just be checking that out each week because when
your boss or the other client says like this doesn’t make sense to me
you’ve said that this is like light it’s the buck stop with you. So you’ve
still got to do the review you’ve still got to go and have the conversation and ultimately you want to spend a bit of spending the time not on
producing the report but on saying so what. Like so if you know if I brought up to do you know okay what can we do about this you think
that’s where you want to be spending the time and I think that’s what all
of this is about is it’s a collaborative tool it’s I think the temptation for
some people is either to get one result out of and go that’s amazing and
then not really work out how to build it into their day to day business like activities and processes or to see it produce something poorly like we’ve all seen perhaps seen images of.
00:21:53,000 And images of AI produced images of people that don’t look quite right or the hand in the hands aren’t right and there’s too many bigger
fingers. Yeah, good example like our ebook like the you see the image
we’ve got not over the octopus if you look at this and video this one
make more sense but for audio like on the front of our guide there’s a picture of the octopus now we asked it for an octopus with some
speech bubbles and it does a fair job but what do you notice about the octopus is got too many legs. And that’s because mid journey the AI tool doesn’t automatically understand that when you’re doing an
octopus it should have eight legs and so stuff like that means that some
people throw it out they go like oh but it doesn’t it doesn’t understand
this it doesn’t it’s like yeah it’s a collaboration tool you have to go back and forth in the same way as even a spelling or grammar checker doesn’t get it right always.
00:22:45,000 You know it will try and correct people’s names company names all
these sorts of things and you have to have the the smarts and I want to
go no actually in this case ignore that so yeah I think there’s lots of project managers in my project reports. Project manger is yeah yeah
project manger is one I use a lot for some reason because my typing is so poor but it doesn’t get picked up. Yeah yeah exactly it spoke perfectly it’s all those project managers where we keep our baby
projects it’s actually yeah yeah and it is it is fascinating and I don’t I
think the it’s one of these topics which it’s every other article in LinkedIn
has got that on there nowadays and there’s a really AI stuff in impact
it’s going to be massive and huge in there and obviously it and we talk about it here because it’s it from a project manager point of view process is.
00:23:37,000 Is something that can get in the way and it can be something that can
able the project the end of the day the process is don’t get a work done
people do. And sometimes and I think from from I’ll describe would talk
about him and you’re a little bit knows if that’s right and I know we’re
just coming up on the hour so running quite quite well on this one. Just
the something I know is the other day that struck me is that there was a situation where you’ve got a process that’s really well documented
lovely work for look great fantastic to the right management level it looks like you’ve got processes in place.
00:24:15,000 I was trying to use a process and I was sitting there going yeah what do I do yeah I know what needs to happen but what do I do what is the
procedure for each of those process steps it sits sat underneath it and
in this instance I couldn’t find it where I was and that was struck me the thing that they how often there and maybe an organization will go
here’s all our processes it’s all fantastic we’ve just spent thousands of
paying on a consulting organization they’ve done us loads of is your diagrams we’ve got now all got a license for the show yeah we know now we can manage our business processes but then when you get
someone comes in it doesn’t understand what going on it’s how do I get
what do I need to spend John to get him to actually prove that or what do they need you know and those bits underneath and from our discussions on what I’ve been
00:25:04,000 with him and I think you’re kind of you you kind of drop down into that
layer without it being a library full of word documents that are kind of
just put on a shelf and never look down never updated and you’ve got
this process you can find a good document attached to it and I get the
feeding from talking to you the air manual does that so you bit of a plug for air manual just tell us about how that works and how that helps
people yeah so that’s a really good observation because I think what
you’re you’re picking up there is really my biggest frustration back when I was
00:25:40,000 in my management consultant sorting out processes for big companies
because that’s exactly what I do you know be brown paper on the wall and moving the post it notes around to work out what the optimal process would be and then I take that way and in the evening I then
type that up into some physiodargrams or case wise or whatever it was
maybe even PowerPoint if if they decided they didn’t want to use those tools and then we’d you know print that in a zero
00:26:05,000 and go get it laminated or whatever and it goes up on the wall and
exactly as you say like you’ve got that high level process but then how do you make sure that people do it and when you bring someone else
into the organization and say right yeah you’re you’re in charge of let’s
say working in finance processes it’s like you’re in charge of making
doing the procurement stuff and procuring like when it’s at a high level
it’s very difficult to actually know but what do I do and the steps and so
it takes a long time for people to get up to speed and even then they
don’t do things quite right and things are done inconsistently in this mistakes
00:26:41,000 and whatever and yet in theory we’ve got this really efficient process that stuck in the wall but for some reason we don’t seem to have
reduced the amount of head count that takes to do it and I think that’s
the problem is you know you have a similar thing with like stage gates
in projects we’re working with them a division of Sony where they had got this project team who had got these stage great gates of a
particular project process which is fantastic you know you want these
milestones so that you’re not working in working on things that haven’t been approved and so on
00:27:13,000 but the problem was that they didn’t have the detail clarity on what are
the series of things that need to happen so that you can get to a point
that you get approval to get to the next stage. And so everything was
either sloppy or painful because either it was sloppy because the kind
of like well you know we haven’t produced all these things but yeah I
mean this is a priority project anyway so let’s just start and yet actually we haven’t technically produced this project plan or reviewed this
project plan with the client or the internal like stakeholder and as a result guess what advice is on the bum you know months later when
we’ve spent so much time developing it or it was frustrating because
you’d have key stakeholders that you basically pushing these project
managers back and saying no I can’t approve this and yet the project manager is not even clear what they need to do.
00:28:01,000 And so what we did exactly is you say an airman you kind of bridge that
gap so an airman you can create your high level you know create your
outline of his the processes that I have in this area so for example project management here’s the as a project manager here’s the high
level processes that I have how to recommend a project how to provide a status update but also how to manage a project end to end through
these five stage gates right so you’d have those but then crucially you
can add essentially an infinite level of further detail where needed you
don’t want to add it just you know everywhere like where needed but in
airman you’re like it’s actually concertine is it so that you know you click
to expand the project. And then you click to expand and click to expand
which means that I can look at that you know this particular project
management process I can look at it and see it on one screen like one
page if you like I can see the entire thing but then I can click and I can
open up the let’s say the agree project proposal stage and I can see that’s made of six steps and one of the steps is to catch all
requirements from the inter the stakeholders and I can click on that and it expands that and I can see exactly one of the steps that are expected.
00:29:14,000 So the steps that are expected of me as a project manager when I’m
capturing that that input and what are the you know and I can click on a
little help content of suggested questions to ask or when I get to the
question on what’s the impact this will have there’s a little help content
that goes what if the one of the stakeholders struggling to quantify the
impact like and there’s a little thing that explains all that but I don’t need
all of that detail when I’m trying to just see one of the five stage gates or
you know the one level detail and that’s the key difference. Like what we found when that when I was a process consultant would create these video maps and then you’d create a load of word documents
which were work instructions problem is that they don’t marry up and so
on so if I change one. Yeah the video one is there now massive load of work to change the word documents and so on plus the word
documents are like 60 pages and no one likes looking at them you can’t follow them like to do the work because you go off and do something else and you come back and go what the
00:30:12,000 home where was I was I’m paid 32 or like you spend more time doing
that and you go I’m just I’ll just it for memory like I think I think I need
next need to do this until we created their manual as a tool that means
that it’s faster to do the work using the checklist you know like it’s it’s a
bit like I’ve got a funny example my kids age seven nine they’ve got a
checklist that they use every Sunday to get their bags ready for school
for the week ahead so that’s getting the swimming kit ready getting their
peak it their games kit getting the snacks in the bag making sure their
book their bags got their their books the pencil case their water bottle
00:30:50,000 all these such things super easy to forget any one of those right
including for me as an adult yeah and yeah and so it makes sense and
it’s helpful to have a checklist and of course they’ve done it lots of times
so you can use memory but the key is it has to be faster to use it and
that’s what the big insight that we had for our manual is like you need to
remove the friction because as soon as there’s the friction around oh I
have to open the word document then I have to find the various bits and
whatever suddenly it’s like it’s that you’ve lost already like that’s a team member is just going to avoid doing that wherever possible
00:31:21,000 and so that’s why we we kind of created them and you know to be to
remove all of that friction make it super easy to use and as a result like you know my team members when they do you know stuff in in their normal day to day roast I for example myself people when they’re on
discovery calls with customers they’re using a checklist live on the call
collecting data as part of it that you mentioned earlier about like we took when we were talking about freeing up our times using systems one
things that we were just in the process of releasing and adding is the
00:31:52,000 automations which means that one thing that my team do they follow
the checklist from a discovery call and at the end they click complete
checklist and it sends the data into the CRM and sends a message and Slack you mentioned that you hate copying and pasting between systems like that’s an example where we can you help me up yeah I’m
using a follow up from a discovery call from an hour down to less than 10 minutes by putting that in place and but the key is that that
00:32:17,000 wouldn’t work if the team didn’t fail comfortable using the checklist for
every single sales go every single discovery call they have they use the
checklist to do it and that’s the difference like you can’t you wouldn’t expect that from someone with a word document you wouldn’t expect
them to be like yeah I’m going to use this word document every single time so yes so that’s why while we created Manny always because
essentially we’d had that pain in our own businesses had solved it using a sort of partly
00:32:42,000 solved it using a mix of tools that was messy and you know you
mentioned like your own coding and how it was all a bit he throbbington
that’s kind of how it used to be for us until we kind of built Manny wanted to solve that problem and now we get to work with you know
low to vulcanizations to help them sort of solve these problems without
having to go through all the pain and stuff that we put out the team
00:33:04,000 through frankly yeah it just yeah it turns it turns ideal and it’s that sort of
thing that you want within a project you want that within an organization
really don’t you know I suppose it’s it’s how you can do that but I think I
think there’s a key thing is even if the organization doesn’t fit into that
getting new tools because obviously getting new tools and all of those
are still but taking that mindset of and I like the way that you describe that is that kind of thing where
00:33:34,000 meeting the person where they’re at and kind of you if you’ve got
someone who is in front of their laptop is on a on a mobile phone and this is part to do communication channels in general but if you’re
making something that someone can it that there’s no barrier to entry
for it it’s easy to do that’s why I I for the years I’ve been trying to look at
different things of automating using my echo to be able to just put it on
my multiple to do lists put an action on there that would end up flowing through to whichever one whether it be my personal my
00:34:12,000 work even but having the getting things done concept of trying to get
one place of tasks to do I I just want because what I want to be able to
do depending on why I’ve got in my hand or what I’m stood by I want to use that device now whether it’s an audio device whether it’s a the
phone or whether it’s from driving and I can’t touch it’s not on the laptop
or or I’m in it yeah I’m in into that kiosk in Havana which I know yeah just I want to be in a position where there’s nothing to stop me 00:34:46,000 and accessing and nothing’s going to stop me interacting with my
management techniques tools for me and I know I kind of got part with
different things yeah it’s now past night it’s late for you I know and
you’ve got young children like you’re gonna you’re gonna have to get
them up in the morning is there I think we can we can wrap it I’m sure that we could have another chat at a yeah in 12 or eight two months and everything would have changed and from the point of view of AI
and all that sort of stuff so we could go out now and there’s better be new stuff
00:35:19,000 but if there was one thing you want to say to project project
management community that’s listening to the podcast about your sort
of view on that productivity about on that improving delegation or on
anyone what’s the one thing you’d like to say to them yeah so I’d say
that if you want to get great performance and consistent results then
you need that clarity that certainty around the right way to do things and ultimately that comes down to having your documented you know processes your project management process and so on and
00:35:58,000 like and project managers get this right they they know that yeah doing
certain things in project management gets you better results and I think the more that you can make sure that those steps that clarity is
implemented and that gives you incredible power it gives you the power to make sure things are done consistently it makes you possible to
make it more efficient either by delegation simplification automation
using AI and so on but also can give you a bit of sanity as well because
you’re ultimately able to see what needs to be done and go through that process of identifying
00:36:38,000 where’s my low value median value high value tasks so that you’re
consistently set like even if there is a process that does make sense that is you even having it documented at the moment at least means that you can do it more efficiently you can improve it you can be confident that some some day maybe you’ll handed over but right now
it’s fine but it means that you’ve kind of got that road map road map for
it so I think that would be my key takeaway for people is to ultimately look at
00:37:06,000 the time challenge that and make sure that you’re making time for what
my for what matters most really if people want to find out what I want to get in touch with you whatever was the best way to get on you yeah
sure so for information about air manual specifically so you can find the
M manual at M manual dot co there’s a few resources that I mentioned
including our guide on AI and chat you pity and how to like get groups of
00:37:36,000 there as a M manual dot link forward slash AI forward slash ebook we
also have a brochure about air about manual about our approach and a four stage approach that makes delegation and and so much easier and how you can use process to reduce mistakes get onboarding of
employees really fast and all these such things people can find that at
M manual dot link forward slash discover from there you can also then I
think there’s a link on the back of the brochure to arrange a call with our team so I highly recommend those
00:38:08,000 I do also run a regular webinar on how to free up 15 hours a week and unlock growth so for anyone who’s a you know leader in the
organization project management looking to to help the organization to free up time people can check that out at M manual dot co forward
slash webinar or M manual dot link forward slash webinar both work for that and then yeah and then connecting with me like connect with me
on social media Alexis Kingsbury I am particularly active on LinkedIn but you can find me on most of the other forms as well
00:38:39,000 yeah or you can email me it Alexis dot Kingsbury at M manual dot co
but know that it’s not going to my inbox it’s managed by my team but you’re welcome to reach out you know if you want to explore
collaboration learn more about how partner and so on but yeah so I’d
love for people to reach out and social media is a great place to do that
like if you’ve if you found this useful share a key takeaway on social media tag me in I will see it
00:39:09,000 it’s the best way to reach it if connected with me brilliant brilliant well thank you very much Alexis and yeah have a fantastic rest of your evening and yeah thanks very much it’s been absolutely pleasure
thanks very much for having me here Nigel brilliant cheers well hope
you enjoyed that conversation with Alexis if you jump in the show no she can get along to M manual and get access to their tools and techniques
00:39:50,000 which looks great some great stuff there and I had a great demo from one of Alex Alexis’s team a few weeks ago and can really see how it
could benefit so jump along there have go and well speak soon see you
soon bye so this is my final wrap up every week you’re going to hear
this you’re going to get bored of it but you can always click next podcast if so
00:40:27,000 if you have enjoyed it if you listen to this podcast at the end of this show
and you think that was great I’d love to be able to help Nigel shout out
there are loads of ways you can do it the first and obvious way is to
share the podcast send it out to people if you if you know colleagues or
friends who’ve benefit from it think they’d enjoy it just send them the link grab one of the links send or send them to
00:40:56,000 www.nigelcrazer.com/podcasts that’s www.nigelcrazer.com/podcasts
and that will push them over to a link tree link and it’s got all of the different ways they can consume the podcast if you are feeling generous and have a big bag of cash you could grab a copy of one of
my books obviously they’re available in all the usual places and print and digital again jump on the website www.nigelcrazer.com/shop and
that will give you a list of all the different ways that you can contribute and grab copies of the book
00:41:42,000 you can get a lot of links to all my guests books on there as well where I
get a little bit of a kick back from them if you are of a sporting mind I have a number through doing some of my judo and running antics I’ve managed to secure a few affiliate links there as well so in there somewhere in the sponsors page there’s links to those as well so
clicking on to those and grabbing your if you’re looking to get super fit then that would be fabulous as well
00:42:18,000 I get a little kick back from those I have a Patreon account it’s patreon.com/sundaylunchpm so again you can ping something in there
by me a coffee or whatever and finally obviously the most important is coming back coming back listen again because the more of you that come back the more visibility I get
00:42:44,000 because there’s more times that you’re downloading and all the SEO
works and things like that so yeah that’s it so if you can help me out I would be much appreciated if you can don’t worry about it thank you very much. Cheers now. Bye
00:43:00,000 well it’s goodbye from me Nigel Creaser and it’s goodbye from him the Sunday lunch pm. Goodbye Introduction. Hi and welcome to project manager productivity hacks. Why write another book on productivity hacks? are they not enough of them already? The trigger was my interview with Sarah M. Hobern for my podcast the Sunday lunch project manager podcast
00:43:32,000 plug plug. Find out more at www.nigelcriser.com/seraM. Hobern. We
talked about improving productivity for project managers and during the
conversation I recalled that a while ago I started a blog post in which I
planned to share some ideas that I have used in my career to improve
my productivity and get out of the office that little bit earlier. Over the years I have shared these with others
00:43:58,000 and almost every time I received a positive and enthusiastic response. Having rekindled the idea I sat down and noted 11 hacks, tips, shortcuts, whatever you want to call them that I have used over the
years. Why 11? Well it’s one more than 10 this book goes up to 11 one
for the spinal tap fans. I see productivity is remarkably similar to an exercise program
00:44:22,000 we all start off with good intentions and some of the changes work great for us and others don’t. Some changes stick and become part of our
daily life whereas others are just a real chore. Even the ones we found
that work well for us and are straightforward to implement can under certain circumstances end up being dropped by us.
00:44:42,000 Sometimes this happens consciously and sometimes little by little over
time. Whether building healthier habits or improving our productivity it’s not just a case of making the changes and we are done. It takes
repeated work. If you find them hard to implement then they may not be
for you in your current situation. If you start using them and end up letting them drift then start again
00:45:06,000 Improving our productivity is something many of us strive to achieve
aiming for some kind of efficiency Navarna. Let me tell you it ain’t
gonna happen. Perfection is a myth. Give yourself a break. It’s a bit like yoga you can’t win at yoga no matter how bendy you get you can always be bendier that’s the same with
00:45:26,000 personal productivity you can’t win at productivity you can always be
productivity. Ed is that a word? I have not always been able to apply these hacks successfully but that is not a reflection of the hacks
themselves it is more about my ability to stick with them even though I know they work.
00:45:44,000 One last point as with your fitness regime trying to make loads of changes at once can spell disaster I recommend that once you have a
read of these hacks choose one that excites you maybe not excites but
seems to resonate and have a go at it. Once it is second nature to you move on to the next one that spoke to you.
00:46:03,000 If you find that the first one was not for you then bin it. Choose another
and try that one out then rinse and repeat. So on with the hacks.