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00:00:00,000 [Music] Hi this is Nigel Crease and with the Sunday Lunch Project Management podcast episode for Sunday the 28th of March all our clocks are gone forward and today I’m chatting to
00:00:26,640 Benzie Goldwyn about some different angles on team management and 00:00:55,040 first a few words from our sponsor. [Music] [Music]
It’s me again we don’t have a formal sponsor for the podcast we’d love
one so if you’re interested ping me an email at www.nidelcraiser.com or
grab hold of me on any of the social media channels whilst we await an illustrious sponsor by the way that rates are very cheap.
00:01:20,240 I just like to promote a couple of my books I have two books on project
management that I have written previously what I have written the first
one was called when I was a project manager if you’ve not heard of it
and you have Kendall limited you can get it for free on digital if you are
00:01:38,000 not on Kendall limited it’ll cost you 99p unless I can get Aradon to set it
for free which they seem to struggle to do at the moment it talks about
it’s the story of four project managers talking about their illustrious career you may recognise some of the theme and the second book what is
00:02:00,960 project management the sketches a further continuation of hilarity and
poking fun at our profession which hopefully will rise a smile and some recognition and projects and people you’ve met through the years so grab a couple of them jump across
00:02:19,920 to Amazon or jump across to nidelcraiser.com open up a shop and
you’ve got all the links there and well that’s it we are on with the news
this week’s been an interesting and challenging one in the office and I’ll talk about that another date
00:02:46,080 we have after bency today we are going to be having a couple of other
great interviews I’m going to move to fortnightly rather than the month not sure and maybe have this at the brunch I’m just going to do
fortnightly and then do do the interviews and occasion in my drop to a month when it’s quiet
00:03:09,760 but I do have a couple of great interviews or really in the bag and I’ve
got another one coming up in a couple weeks when I’m interviewing on
the subject of disc which is a behavioural model Liz hopes so we can
try to get together to have a little while and mainly because of me we’ve
00:03:31,120 not managed to sink diaries properly so I’m really looking forward to
that conversation it’s a topic that I think is really useful for us the other
topics I have is about introducing jazz into your projects and the other
one is on product in the automotive industry product management in the
00:03:52,880 old toy industry so both of those topics again a whole quite a varied set
of topics after that I’ve got none scheduled I think I’ve got some targets
and I will be paying eight to people but I would call like if there’s anyone out there who knows of anyone who would be interested in
00:04:17,040 talking about project management resilience mental health and project
management I’d be really interested to chat to them because I think it’s
just a topic that especially with the lockdown or all pandemic stuff as project managers we are under a lot of pressure and tips, tricks, comments,
00:04:40,240 thoughts, processes would be really useful for everyone I believe especially coming out of always hopefully us coming out of this
pandemic so if you know of anyone please get in touch into queries out Nigel Prisa.com or anything at Nigelprisa.com to be free.
00:04:59,040 What else has been going on? Oh the next book is I made a little bit of
headway into it in the last week too I’ve got it down to I think I’m 70%
complete now on the edit and I think it’s going to be another edit but it’s
pretty good I spotted that I had a lot of standard texts at the back that I
00:05:21,120 hadn’t marked off as being reviewed and then I’ve cut the tweets though so it makes me feel like I’m on the downward run now so I’m opening
next few weeks I’ll be able to battle that off and I will be calling out for
advanced readers so if you do fancy being part of my advanced reader community
00:05:38,960 you send your copy of the book and all I ask is you read it and give me
some constructive critique really and even if it’s on one page but again
if you don’t get chance to know your chance to even if the critique is a thumbs up or thumbs down that’s something so again ping me
00:06:01,840 a rc advanced reader community at Nigelprisa.com and I think I’m going
to shout out now and let you guys get on with get on with listening to my interview with Benzy Golden so I’ll speak to you when I come to work.
00:06:26,240 So today I’d like to welcome Benzy Golden to the show. Benzy is the CEO of Perthlow and he’s worked in various areas of software and
startups as well as consulted with organisations on business strategy. He’s energized by finding better ways of doing things and the one
00:06:48,320 that’s one thing excites him most about his work. His company Perth
their mission is to help people and help projects to be more successful using cutting edge technology and research and one of the things in
their mission statement is they have is that they they they help to say we we hope to
00:07:07,520 revolutionise the way teams execute projects around the world not for
the sake of revolution but for the sake of going to work on a Monday
morning with a smile and I really like that welcome to the show Benzy. Thanks. Thanks, thank you very much. That’s great. We had a few technical challenges before
00:07:25,360 but we’ve got past them which is good and yeah you just your mission
intrigues me your your approach intrigues me on the things I’ve read
about Perthlow and and seen on social media etc and so really looking
forward to having this chat about improving project team success. So but before we delve
00:07:47,600 into that tell me a little bit about you and your background where where
are you from people may have picked up a little bit from the accent and
where are you now and how did you get there? Sure. I’m originally from
South Africa so apologies in advance if some of our words aren’t very clear
00:08:06,720 from our best. I’m currently in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the Midwest and we got here because they want to bring startups out here and invest in them and we I was obviously looking to come to to the states to get investment and to grow so we’re here but we’re still very much a distributed
00:08:32,880 team from day one and I never met my co-founder for the first six months. And you know in terms of my background it really is strange
that it has nothing to do with project management at all. However a lot of the sort of projects that I worked on are companies that are consulted with we’re working on projects
00:08:59,680 and we didn’t even realize you know after sort of doing some courses in
terms of like I’m looking at the you know some of the PMR material on
project management all of these things are like you know spark ideas or
memories of like oh this is you know this is risk management or this is you know
00:09:22,240 estimation planning which a lot of it just the words weren’t you know the process and the words just weren’t the same and now learning a lot
about it you know is both I see both sides of it so being objective and
coming originally from the people side of things the last product that I built was a
00:09:43,600 ratingless performance management software which turned into purple actually because we found this huge gap in project management in
terms in the training skills you know day to day or just the perception of
what a project manager or a project lead is responsible for it’s very process
00:10:04,160 oriented it’s very much about you know executing tasks timeline budget
resources and a lot of jargon and a lot of processes and charts and you know structures and and those are all good and important but our
philosophy and our argument which is really based on research is that if you’re
00:10:27,120 not empowering monitoring constantly the people that are executing the
project the team there’s really no use in in in worrying so much about
process and task when the people executing the task are not supported
and empowered so that’s really how it is to bring the the people side the more
00:10:52,240 human side of project management which is no longer a you know soft
skills or soft side of project management it’s essential in this world it’s
new world of work yeah I agree it’s it’s um I’ve heard it said in definitely you know again chart never delivers a project a risk register
00:11:14,880 never delivers the project any of those tools that are all very valuable and useful but they don’t actually deliver it and and we can find
ourselves spending an inordinate amount of time and I’ve done it myself
um trying to go through reviews do you finance reviews do you risk or you get all
00:11:33,120 that stuff going and actually then it gets in the way of that
understanding what the people are doing understanding what that what
they need in order to do the next step of the project and it’s kind of you
spend you can find yourself in that loop I suppose have been a PM of reporting the problems
00:11:53,040 rather than dealing with the problems and that’s kind because the
because it’s the people who can solve the problems isn’t it right yeah
that’s uh that’s really what our product is built around is utilizing the
people that are executing the project utilizing information that is in their head
00:12:11,440 about what’s happening in the project in a day to day basis not just relying on the project manager or project lead in terms of you know
when something’s sort of blowing up or a fire to put out our job is to alert project managers in real time when things may be going wrong what way and why
00:12:34,480 as opposed to um you know being surprised so what was sort of like going back to like you said your your um um product that you built before the the the rating-less performance management how just this
as that was the the genesis of this what was that because that intrigues me as well
00:12:57,520 because obviously at the end of every year everyone gets their ratings
and or partway through whatever the the cyclist and it’s always quite a
a torturous process I think for both receiving and giving that sort of thing
and then organisingly balancing it and all that sort of thing so what
00:13:15,120 what triggered all that um that kind of approach was it at a personal
experience or was it just someone asking to do it yeah yeah well what
triggered it was a bad performance review uh if I thought it was not accurate um fair enough we’ve all been there yeah something that I really have I’m
00:13:35,840 going to use this word uh I don’t use this word largely I’ve really hated the process the whole methodology of performance management didn’t
make sense it doesn’t make sense everyone is revolutionising over the
last few years it’s not a new conversation it’s been going on but I mean majority of companies
00:13:53,280 are still doing ratings um and there is so much proof of how inaccurate and bias ratings are and how it doesn’t increase performance but it does the exact opposite and how employees take sick days before and after the performance reviews stress goes up managers hated HR hates it employees
00:14:15,280 hated but people still do it so I mean the solution that people did is okay
we need to scrap ratings what are we going to do continuous check and
continuous feedback the problem is they use those ratings for rewards compensation you know upskill development whatever it may be now that another ratings so
00:14:35,280 I thought we can remove we can get insights without using ratings and
the way to do that is just to digitize some of these conversations and then also to use a thumbs up and thumbs down and become more work
oriented as opposed to individual feedback and more team are oriented so it was really
00:14:57,920 started to evolve into a team based performance software and and moved away from individual you know feedback um and so the next progression of that was looking at how you know other technology
vendors were designing their solutions for teams and a lot of them said yeah we’re team performance and then
00:15:19,440 when we looked at it was all individual and then I would aggregate everyone’s rating into the team but they had no feature for project teams and project teams as you know work completely differently to functional teams organizational teams and they come together this panel and then you doing
00:15:36,800 this performance review or just any type of review that is at any point in
time it’s not contextual to the work it’s not contextual to the team the
timing is just off it makes no sense so to us it was very clear that there
was a gap in the market here there was a need here and it’s sort of a double
00:15:55,760 edge sword that’s like okay we’re helping contextualize you know
performance conversations for a team but also we’re helping increase project success rates because we are identifying issues at an early stage so it was sort of a win-win and we were like we got a double down on us well make sense make sense
00:16:14,320 yeah yeah it does and just I suppose the thinking the thing that always
goes there for me is all the first flag that pops up for me on when you
talk about a team is if you’re rating a team the the individual and this is the kind of challenges I imagine you’ve kind of conversations with
00:16:36,880 these the challenge back is yeah but what if you’ve got one member of
that team who’s carrying everyone or everyone is carrying one member of the team whichever way or blend of thing someone comes into the
team they spend five minutes that’s all they do they step away they get the same reward as
00:16:51,840 other people and it’s the whole little red head and conversation from
that book and that sort of thing so how do you how do you square that
circle so we don’t do it any individual feedback or rating the team is always rating themselves as a team so we’ve designed templates and questions
00:17:11,680 with organizational you know psychologists and experts in the space to
make sure that people so most in a type of team health check or pulse survey software as we’ll ask are you stressed or are you you know
supported in this we ask everything on a team level so when people are this
00:17:33,840 are thinking and processing the the the question the input they’re now associating not just themselves in their own experience but the
experience of the team and the sentiment of the team and collectively the research shows that it’s much more accurate the results of that
00:17:50,880 and so what we do is we identify issues on a team level that the leader can then go and investigate further and and also and it’s also anonymous obviously so you know no one’s calling anyone out you know you need a minimum of three team members on a on a on a on a project to actually use
00:18:07,840 per floor otherwise it’s you know it gets obvious who’s saying what and
it’s really about self-reflection so we don’t hold this data for project leads
alone the data is some of this data is shared with the team and ideas
we bring this up share it in your you know on your video call share the screen and
00:18:31,360 discuss it talk about it as a team and it sort of takes you know you could
say like oh this is only for a very mature team you know a very mature manager but I think in a way we see it as it takes like army teams makes them marine teams takes marine teams makes them navy seal teams and every team
00:18:52,400 can benefit from some in office and there’s different you know use
cases for every type of team or project but you know again I always talk
about research because you know I love things that are proven not just
you know somebody’s idea but self analyzing teams that are constantly assessing
00:19:13,120 themselves where they can be better or obviously higher performing
teams so that’s what we’re enabling essentially yeah I suppose it kind
of it goes to the move to the kind of agile approach with and very much
that is about that self-reflection and kind of having your retrospectives at the end
00:19:34,640 of each of you sprints to kind of just all sit there and go well how are we
doing and even their daily standards are kind of it that those kind of
timely interactions on things happening I know listening to a podcast
I’ve listened to for many years the manager tools podcast one of the things
00:19:53,040 that they talk about is while you build it up it is about feedback and
performance and things like that is that and I’ve always I’ve tried to do it
sometimes poorly but I try anyway is the giving feedback at the point when the activity happens now whether it’s good good bad what it doesn’t matter
00:20:13,040 feedback feedback it’s a loop isn’t it doesn’t matter whether it’s just bit
to data at the end of day and if you turn to someone and say the way
you just presented that that was really good keep it up tell it right in it
down and saving it until the end of the year when it’s buried in the bottom of
00:20:29,600 the it it it will they’ll still sit there but they’ll go which meeting was that
you thought I did that in when you say it at that point in time you haven’t got six months between when they did something good I don’t know
what you’re saying that that was really good keep it up that six months you get
00:20:50,800 the benefit telling someone that don’t you whereas if you wait six
months they’re then we’re oh that was good was it all keep doing that
then you’ve got a big gap of productivity that both you and that person
has not had a chance to benefit from and on the flip side if there is something they’re not
00:21:06,400 doing or that is harming their career or causing you problems or
causing some of that if you wait and then tell them at the end of the
year well on this day you did this and that was wrong how would they got a chance to fix it unless you the sooner you tell someone the sooner they can
00:21:23,120 fix it and I guess and again that’s that’s the whole this whole principle of
the adjunct I’ll kind of approach is the sooner you spot this problem you
can do something about it if you wait until and I’m not being an an an
agile devotee or a waterfall devotee I use the right hat use a hammer for
00:21:43,280 a nail and screwdriver for a screw and sometimes you need to both of
them to build what you’re building but that ability to quickly turn and and
change the direction is really beneficial and in these kind of things in
any kind of project if you wait until a lessons learned session at the end of the project
00:22:04,080 well we all know what happens with those most of the time those
lessons learn get put in a drawer underneath but if you learn them all the way through you can tweak as you go along and that can’t and I
don’t know if I’m going down a down a rabbit hole slightly ascure I can I’m kind of seeing
00:22:19,040 some correlations there because it allows you to you at well both you
and the team to adjust what you’re doing in a more timely fashion and I’ve known I’ve seen a lot of organizations moving away from the
traditional once every year 400 questions staff survey or what’s it’s a staff engagement review
00:22:49,840 as they probably got changed the names to them so they didn’t sound like staff surveys and there’s much more frequent questions being
asked but smaller quicker do in five minutes which I from what I think
that’s kind of industry why that’s starting to happen more and this kind of sounds like it
00:23:08,720 supports that sort of thing as well that we yeah now 100% the the movement called microfeedback micro learning micro coaching I mean
we’ve trademarked micro reviews but we didn’t you know intended to be used for reviews and like we don’t really like the word views to be honest and to be honest with
00:23:32,320 you also we’ve stood in some ideas from agile and scrum retrospectives so yeah we we’ve brought that to the masses in the
sense of you don’t have to be an engineering team or product team to
do retros to selflessness on a weekly basis you can be an HR team you can be a sales team it doesn’t matter
00:23:51,120 they agree yeah so the rocket as an agile retros yeah and I think it’s
one of those the things that when I started getting involved with the
agile stuff looking at that and going yeah once every month looking at
how you’ve done as a team even if you push it that long once a month
00:24:12,320 spending an hour what went well what went crap what should we keep
doing and then tell other people just having that hour or two hours to sit
back and do that yeah a power that has regardless of what your team is
it’s just it’s even I’m quite done and I’ve tried to move project manager and
00:24:35,120 techniques into the family but even as a family yeah doing that sort of thing right what’s what’s gone well this month what have we enjoyed
what we all happy about you know I mean for it even just as a concept
you kind of sit there I think well why why wouldn’t that be a bad thing to open up that
00:24:50,160 communication channel that is isn’t there and just and and it’s painful
and hard for everyone to do that sort of thing isn’t it until you’ve got into
it a little bit and once you get used to it it’s like a new scrum team it’s like we we’ve we’ve I’ve been in situation where we’ve had when our teams
00:25:06,720 before now where we’ll we’ll just we’ll have a we’ll run our improvement
activities in an agile it using agile tools not really an fully agile but using
agile tools and using those same things you plan your retrospective you sprint reviews and just go what’s going great first guys what’s
00:25:25,680 going terrible and then we all just raise the things and then write what should we do about it and rather than me just sitting there moaning
about stuff I get a chance to be able to do something about it yeah and
what’s really important is the enabling a space of psychological safety as they
00:25:45,200 call it which really means people feel comfortable to speak up to have
ideas and suggestions you know and they won’t be penalized for it or made to feel uncomfortable and not only that a step further is that
they’re actually you know listen to an action it’s like it’s great if everyone
00:26:04,160 feels comfortable to just say everything then nothing happens here you
know what I found with Adra and I said I don’t know a lot of them with
the engineering teams firstly it’s all work based I don’t hear anything
about people or well-being or you know somebody could have been in a serious
00:26:23,600 I don’t know accident you know the week before and could have
affected you know development cycles but it’s just about you know how
it’s going to be better you know estimation planning and all the same I’m like you know there’s other issues in the team maybe things are going on home whatever
00:26:40,560 you don’t want to talk about that necessarily with the whole team so I’m
saying is to just be aware of holistic retro in terms of incorporating team and people and then the other thing I would say is I mean the other
thing I saw was like for a mode team they’ll use let’s say Trello to do
00:26:56,720 retros yeah so and just move over done well done better etc etc and
then it becomes an exercise but the question is what happens with that
data that is produced going forward are you actually learning from it
going on in the project and the next project are other people in the organization
00:27:18,720 now other projects learning from your learning and that’s what we’re basically doing is is now because you can do these you know these
concepts in in Perthler but it’s always in the system and and it’s always
analyzed and a tradition reports so you know nothing is deleted and the intelligence
00:27:39,360 becomes when you as an organization have hundreds of projects and now we sort of know what works in 1000 and then we have and then become you know a recommendation engine yeah and I suppose that’s
where you start getting to the point where you can you run in the project and you start getting
00:27:58,000 metrics or flags that are coming out of this particular project’s feedback and then matching it to other ones and go hang on a minute this one
went all pear shaped when that was happening with that I mean it’s kind of that one we can do something about it here’s what here’s some of
00:28:18,320 the things that would happen and you could you can immediately
intervene on those and I know there was a conversation I’ve had with a
couple of people at different times around trying to get beyond your own organization with that kind of information and get aggregated
00:28:38,480 and the information industry information or or just you know and and
being able to pull that together and and obviously the difficulty is is
getting any sensitive data and making sure it’s protected etc but also competitive advantage for some organizations are going to hold back on but when you
00:28:58,560 think of it as a if you just put your project delivery hat on on how we could approve it if every single project was able every single
organization gave every single piece of project data to some trusted
organization and we were able to pull all the lessons learned and all the flags and all that sort
00:29:15,440 of kind of information together the power of something like that would
be incredible in a learning sense and how to flag it point of view it’s a
hell of a thing to try and get to I imagine it’s it’s very possible it’s a partner with us and in a sense of like you know you have
00:29:35,680 PMR, APM and UK I think right here they have the network they have they have a lot of data and they do the surveys once a year etc but
technologically it’s not something aggregated and you know distributed
that’s I mean you’re talking about our backlog yeah in terms of like AI data science
00:30:00,320 yeah well a couple of the conversations I’ve had with and I’ll spin off the names of people we’ve had Jonathan Norman and Andy Murray from the major projects association of really UK and the major projects
knowledge hub and I know they’re talking about that kind of how to get
00:30:20,240 when you’re talking the big mega project type information I know that
Ricardo Vargas has some stuff in a similar sort of thing that he was
looking at doing in the AI side a bit and he’s got it on his website and and and Shark Tower up in Scotland with Craig McKay looking at that
00:30:40,000 kind of thing and it kind of all of these things with all these people I’ve
spoke to you kind of sit there and go hang on all of those they’re all
you’re all coming at a slightly different angle but you’re all trying to try and get that same thing isn’t it that kind of database
00:30:55,440 and I don’t mean database I mean data driven knowledge rather than
which can help flag that to us as as PMs or as organizations rather than
having to have that you know a lot of the time that the things that you’re talking about are going to be the
00:31:14,560 gut feel of the PM and that’s of the PM who knows the team well who
can sit there in the room and go I can feel the temperatures wrong that
conversation over there flag and but in these remote organizations that
we’re in now picking up that that that team dynamics a lot harder and it’s
00:31:39,360 going to get harder because I personally believe that remote working is
beginning going to get more and more the norm there’s that many large
organizations and I think you’re all going to start following suit on right let’s do this work and you’ll you’ll obviously with the way you set yourself
00:31:56,560 up with a distributed company never mind the distributed teams you’re going to get more need for us to have tools that feed us that thing rather than being sat in the room and watching two people standing
face to face by the water cooler in a heated argument and come well I got a team
00:32:18,240 problem here or a bunch of people cheering in the corner whatever that
dynamic is you don’t get that now in the remote region unless you start switching on everyone’s webcams having everyone at home doing that
and then that defeat the objects the whole point of that that remote working is to
00:32:32,640 give that flexibility to people as soon as you start saying you’ve got to
be on teams all the time you’ve got to be on Skype all the time you’ve
got to be on Slack all the time you’ve got to be all the always available at defeats that flexibility for anyone then doesn’t it?
00:32:44,560 I remember them yeah so where do you see if someone wanted to use
it at a tool like you want to and you’d obviously want them to use your tool where how where does someone choose to put this into the
organization is it the projects organization are choosing to put it in is it the HR
00:33:06,000 organization to put it in is it is it individual projects that are tending to put these things in what do you see them with those sort of dynamic
with that side of it? Yeah well companies that have served in to answer a question or one sentence it’s different
00:33:23,040 based on the company and how they operate companies that have a PMO that you know are responsible for projects in the company we would speak to them you know ahead of PMO direct of project
management and obviously they would be able to administer it to their project teams if a project manager
00:33:46,000 or a project lead I don’t want to limit it to the term project manager yeah yeah projects that then that model is not project manager but that
project yeah yeah um if they wanted to use it in their team and I had the
ult on a meal authority to do that then I can and the what we did is we built it as a
00:34:05,120 plug-in to slack or Microsoft teams right so that means is you don’t need
a whole implementation you don’t need and it’s obviously cloud-based
you don’t need a whole training session you could literally never talk to
me and plug it in and use it um because we know there’s so many tools and apps and
00:34:25,920 there’s just no need for another one um so the team is actually never coming onto our app they’re always engaged through slack and teams um and then HR would really only come in in fully project-based organizations um where this is a people enablement tool and a manager enablement tool um we don’t see
00:34:46,720 it as an HR tool it’s a manager tool the only time where we would encourage the participation of HR would be the L&D learning and
development coaching side of things because if we have feedback on a
team that needs some development in certain area we need to bring in other
00:35:07,280 people that are specialised in that case if the actual manager is getting feedback on the leadership and they want to get some additional
training or coaching you know it’s giving you visibility and insathy you never got before and now what do you do with that? Sometimes you need to get
00:35:25,680 external or internal you know people that are um are able to sort of help
with that so that’s where we see talent side coming not for using the data for any type of performance reviews. Okay, nice, cool. And I suppose looking as a as a team member what does that that feel like
00:35:48,480 but what is it that the experience of using Perflow? What do I see? What what happens? What yeah what happens? Yeah, I’ll stop saying
what? So at the beginning of the project so we want to make sure that
everyone’s set up for success. Yeah, at the beginning of the project we make sure that
00:36:06,640 everyone is clear on their role in expectations of the project and by
literally asking them, are you clearing expectations for this project? And
they have to say yes I’m 100% crystal clear or I could use a little more clarity and if they say we’ve used a little more clarity then
00:36:23,520 we tell the project manager hey you know Nigel either a little more
clarity in his role and on this project like you know intervene here.
That’s the only individual data that is not anonymous because obviously
doesn’t help know that the whole team doesn’t clear who’s not clear you know um that’s
00:36:44,400 the beginning of the project then we do this project kickoff and project
kickoff really is making sure that everyone is not just clear on their role
and an expectation but the purpose of the project the goal of the project
what success looks like and what are the success criteria. So one of the things
00:37:01,680 we have in Perflow is called success measures. Success measures are
different measures that we know will contribute to the success of this
project and we want to continuously self analyze on these criteria and
then throughout the project the team is giving feedback to the team and the team
00:37:16,640 lead on how they’re doing against these success criteria and suggestions on how they can improve like you know are we doing well um could we do better how can we improve. And that goes through 32nd feedback loops through Slack and Teams out the project um and throughout the project we have different
00:37:35,440 interactions and feedback loops through Slack and Teams and then we also send the team results of the sentiment so we say oh your team has given feedback and that’s what everyone thinks and that really prompts conversations and that also holds the project manager accountable
00:37:53,280 to to interview and take action on some of these results but really we
want this to be a collaborative experience where the team is actually
from the get go a part of the decision-making part of the discussions and communications around you know the the project performance engagement of the team
00:38:14,720 and really like I said continuously self analyzing and and and and
feeling you know safe to bring up any issues any red flags at any point
in a project they can bring up red flags um because again ideas to give
the project leader any type of information that would help them to keep the project on
00:38:36,400 trend and then at the end of the project we close up so you can incorporate your team health checks your post-project reviews or
project kickoffs all in perfler sort of like a three-in-one solution yeah um
so you don’t have to do surveys or or google forms or paper or camber and boards
00:38:56,560 it’s all digitized in one centralised place yeah and then you’ve got the
aggregation of that data to be able to give you that sort of sentiment
feeling isn’t it I suppose yeah and project lead you you have visibility on all projects in the departments and looking at trends and hotspots
00:39:13,120 yeah I can kind of see that depending and and do you think you’re
never from say from a PMO point of you do you aggregate that then up
to get um sort of portfolio or program level sentiment and on to the full
PMO sort of thing does that work as well yeah 100% you can basically assign
00:39:33,520 different products to one program and that would be sort of an entity in
itself yeah and then at someone leading that part can sit there and look at and I suppose you’ve do do you have a when you have those team
sentiment things is the the team leader the project leader involved in
00:39:50,720 those and kind of do you use different questions different sort of um uh
um topics if you like as well with the different people in different roles
and in the team I know those so I’m guessing there’s lots of them that will be common yeah he’s the air conditioning okay
00:40:10,560 whatever but there’s going to be some that’s going to be there so very
specific to a role as well yeah yeah so firstly the project manager gets
their own questions in terms of not a lot because obviously it’s more
about I mean they they contribute to every micro-review but in the team pulse
00:40:28,560 they get asked more along in the lines of do you have organizational support you know project sponsor engaged or you know active and
then stakeholders get their own set of questions so I mean we have a
library you select your own but internal external stakeholders whether
00:40:48,000 it’s internal or client um professional services um you can include them
in feedback loops so you getting a 360 view project lead project team member stakeholder and we actually calculate an alignment score
based on um the sentiment so if a project lead is like you know we’re doing great at this
00:41:10,720 and the team’s actually doing terrible at this and the stakeholders like
yeah that’s all right like there’s a clearly a misalignment yeah so it’s another area that’s useful because sometimes again it’s when you’ve
got your stakeholders and when I hear stakeholders I hear customer it’s kind of
00:41:27,600 if and if you’re not and your project sponsor if you’re not delivering what
they need and maybe the people beyond them as well if you’re able to
reach beyond that um then it’s the projects of fail whether it’s whether you’ve met the budget time and
00:41:46,240 quality the project’s a fail unless the the real people who need it see it a
success and those end stakeholders and it having that capability to do
it while you’re doing a ship again I flip back to the agile thing isn’t it’s where you’re doing your demos and you’re demonstrating to
00:42:01,520 the people are going to use it and they’re going yeah that’s what we wanted or know that’s completely different to what we said you do
you’re kind of giving that it kind of feels like it’s a sort of as along the
side of that as well is that if you’ve got the questioning right if you’ve got the
00:42:16,640 the queries right people the sentiment will come out rather than the
direct question sometimes is that a fair comment because if you say is
it okay they’ll go yeah I think it’s okay but then when you ask them
another different way they might it may rate a flag that says actually there’s something
00:42:33,920 obscure as you say if everyone thinks he’s the garden’s rosy and the
most important person who’s end using this out there is going no it’s
terrible I can probably think of some um good examples in industry and
over the last 12 months on different things from government and things but it but it is
00:42:52,160 it is about that end users experience sometimes with some of these IT
systems and are you delivering a benefit so suppose it goes does it go
to benefits management as well have you do you take it to that point after and and continue on that that topic with those stakeholders
00:43:11,040 yes so you can actually I mean it’s pretty flexible you can schedule it
how you like how often you like or when you want to go and also what questions to ask um you know who you’re asking what and gather
whatever insights you want to understand from a state all this without the project
00:43:31,920 you can also identify different success criteria which they may have
feedback on so for instance so designing a mobile app and it’s I don’t
know user experience is one of the things that they very you know we
want an unbelievable UX UI for our customers you know it’s one of the
00:43:51,840 deal-breakers and all we chose you as a firm to build our app and and
you guys are pride yourself in user experience well then that’s that’s a
success criteria for the project you selected at the beginning and you select the stakeholders to to provide feedback on
00:44:10,320 user experience so now throughout the project you have a graph on how the team is project is doing on user experience and you can see what the stakeholder thinks the client thinks versus what the team
versus what you think and that’s when it gets interesting is it’s like oh I didn’t realize that
00:44:31,520 you know because it’s because it’s continuous and it’s anonymous you know we’re automating conversation but in an honest way yeah so it
gets interesting yeah because I suppose the thing is is with a lot of
these things you’re saying there with um and you’ve got a product that enables this
00:44:50,560 you’ve got the research and the technology behind it in some ways you
can do this there is a way to do this yourself as an organization and you could do it very much um chalk and torque you can do it through
spreadsheets, jureboards, trellis and all that I suppose that that the anonymity gives
00:45:11,680 and I know with employees every type of stuff that the anonymity is a
key thing from all directions to get that to allow people to feel they can
without any um even even if there aren’t going to mean it wouldn’t be
any recommendations there’s still a fixed people could feel that they would be and therefore
00:45:32,960 would resist being totally honest and that’s what not what you want is
that you want people to be totally honest about their opinion and even if
what they say in their opinion you could sit there and go well actually
they’re coming at it from a wrong lens or okay so their lens is wrong so why is
00:45:50,640 their lens wrong even that’s an answer isn’t it to say well we need to do
something and that anonymity bit of it seems to be a big thing in all of
these um in this kind of um surveying um for it to make it useful and like
if it goes back as far as 360 reviews in some ways you don’t necessarily know who said
00:46:14,720 what about you in the 360 review except for when and I find this is when they write something because generally if you know your people
well you know who’s written which one gives it to just the tone of the
way they write um and uh which is and again I imagine is a difficult
00:46:33,440 thing to deal with when you’re actually getting written specific specific comments on stuff rather than scoring somewhere as you can just
there’s the way that your approach is it taking a scoring on something
that sort of temperature check or is it a um more descriptive feedback or is it a bit of both?
00:46:50,320 um we don’t produce any numbers in particular right not a little bit so
we’ll never see a score um because you know strongly I feel about that
yeah yeah yeah yeah lie-step license statistics isn’t it? yeah you will see colors in terms of charts you know green red orange um and you will see percentages
00:47:15,040 in terms of the percentage of the team that felt a certain way yeah um and funny enough to point about anonymous one about customers asks if we could make a non-anonymous because they are on a very transparent culture and they don’t like the idea of you know
00:47:34,800 not knowing uh people like hiding behind a an avatar not in a real name or person in the water so I mean obviously this again back to the research anonymous wins in terms of honest kind of feedback the the thing there is obviously you’ve got if you’ve got an
00:47:58,000 organization wherever one feels trusted and doesn’t feel that there’s
this threat of a discrimination then great yeah but that means that if there’s one person who feels that way you’re not going to get their honest opinion and uh whereas that on an anonym and and one person
00:48:15,920 may be fine to that organization but you don’t know whether it’s 50% of
your organization or two percent of your organization that will modify their response because they feel that someone might come and sit on
the shoulder and go well or talk somewhere I say well you know so and so they’re not
00:48:35,520 very happy about this yeah and and just that feeling was going to it’s going to change what you know it would change what I was doing if I felt that a survey was not anonymous um depending on the kind of question in there and depending what was coming there I would think about what I was saying
00:48:51,840 whether that’s a good good reflection of me and my level of trust and oh
but I just I just I know I would just sit there and think well maybe I
wouldn’t maybe I wouldn’t be as a negative in some situations in that scenario and that’s the problem isn’t is
00:49:12,800 it’s not going to reduce in that scenario it’s not going to reduce the
number of people who are really happy giving your feedback because if
people are really happy they’re happy to know that other people know that they’re happy but that’s where you don’t need to take as much action isn’t it is where
00:49:25,680 people are not happy or or don’t feel something’s right or feel something’s misaligned that’s where you want to know that because
that’s where you want to be able to go hang on 90% of the team think
we’re under not aligned with our success criteria whereas if you had 40% of it you’re going to take a very
00:49:44,000 different action something right right yeah I mean company culture is
very a lot uh I’ve seen most are not you know in that space of like yeah fully transparent everyone can say what they want without any reprimand and and and and any judgment like you know that’s unicorn culture status and
00:50:08,720 it’s obviously much easier in startups you know small teams just stop
you can’t like you know they do cultural transformations and they’re like okay now everyone this is going to be our new culture yeah so I go okay yeah I know what of my my former interviews on here Colin Ed
00:50:31,760 Colin Ellis who’s written a book on on culture uh culture makers and
culture hacks he’s very much a case of yes he would strongly sit down
with you on that on that point there and agree with you I think because as he talked about is you can have a you can have a really strong culture in an
00:50:53,360 organization or in a department and he talks about it in this point and
say you got this really fantastic culture because they hate their boss
and they hate the company’s goals but they as a team love each other
and they think they’re brilliant and they’re really really really and they’ve got great culture
00:51:09,600 internally with themselves which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s in the right direction and that’s the thing is as standing there from an
organization and we are this kind of culture from the top down yeah it’s
not there is it it’s it’s a society is made up of the parts not of the leader
00:51:27,520 and that’s the that’s the thing you’ve got to and that’s why it takes so
long to change culture and sometimes it’s almost impossible to change culture because it’s not something you can make you can engender it but you but you can’t make people be a trusting organization or or
00:51:45,680 or feeling completely open and yeah and I’m yeah and I’m not sure there’s any and like you say it’s unicorn I’m not sure there’s any
relationships where you can say absolutely anything to another person without them would potentially have a future date
00:52:06,640 yeah being impacted by what you said to them yeah I’ve got things that
people have said to me 20 years ago when I was in it’s aware which I’m
not hunting them I’m not not serving revenge cold but I still remember
the things they’ve said and it’s still it’s still it was still I would still
00:52:26,720 make a judgment of them based on what how they had treated me and
the space noddle you welcome to share yeah well I’m not gonna go that
far it’s hard to say that’s it well that’s it I know you know I saw so I was talking to someone along a bit judging people there and that whole thing of
00:52:45,840 some people I was talking to about the fact that they they were fairly
young youngish teenagers who didn’t like eating in front of other people
because they didn’t want to be judged by people while they’re eating
which which kind of maybe it’s in my hand my background I eat like a pig so you know
00:53:06,160 I mean I kind of got nowhere to stand I’m being worried about looking
like some some finesse to person eating but it just just it people do judge it’s true people do judge and people do do take on board what you say about them even if it’s meant with love yeah yeah it will
00:53:27,120 it will affect later and that and I think I personally think that anonymity
does break down those barriers and some of those things that actually
you I wouldn’t say about someone because um all right the organization
maybe but maybe more more personal point of one I wouldn’t say about
00:53:45,680 a specific person but about because I’m trying to think I’d have put it if
you said it to them they would they would know my how you meant it it
could be taken the wrong way but in an anonymous situation about the describing something to do with the team
00:54:08,320 and a score of that or a score I know you’re not a score but you know I
mean you’re you’re you could actually have something in there and that
that I think that that total transparency is not helpful either sometimes
because if you are you just tell someone something too candidly it just
00:54:26,000 won’t have the effect you want it to have yeah and that’s why we like
the approach of team basis because you can’t insult a team no you can
insult a person but if you say that’s not I think the team is like you know
when you do this more people aren’t going to get individually insulted
00:54:46,480 well they may recognize it but they’ll deflect it but the point is like it’s a
it’s a collective thing that is um not directed at anyone in particular yeah um so I mean we’re far away from getting team based rewards right I mean people are like experimenting with it it’s very tough it’s
00:55:05,920 I don’t know about that I mean I’ve I’ve I’ve struggled with it many times
as you said that you think right there’s a team they’ve done really well
um brilliant okay so we’ve got 25 people who’ve been involved in this
project and there’s four of them that have been cradle to grave have been
00:55:25,360 critical to it and then the rest of them have dipped it and absolutely for the bit they needed to do they’ve done well and they’ve been giving
them ballet but and then you go right that’s all go for a meal let’s let’s
give a reward and it feels like in in balanced but again it’s every one of
00:55:45,360 those cogs in the machine to make that project work were absolutely
critical and they may have all done a brilliant job there may have been a few hangers on but they’re but but there’s always going to be the number of the team who tend to have done a lion share of the work because that’s
00:56:02,560 just a nature work isn’t it yeah and that’s to say is as a team how do you
reward that team without recognizing the individual contribution but also
without belittle in the the the the other’s contribution as well it’s again it’s a minefield isn’t it yeah yeah it’s uh something I have to
00:56:22,240 figure out with time yeah well when you’re first did that we’ll love you
back on the show yeah yeah it’s it’s tricky but I mean recognition is the
cheapest way to reward and motivate people in the smallest of ways in a public recognition channel on slack or teams um it’s just a human
00:56:48,720 thing you know we like being recognized publicly even if you’re an
introvert you still like it yeah I think the thing is is that yeah you’re with
those you need to do balance on the individuals on how they don’t like they say with the introvert there the
00:57:05,920 introvert knowing that other people know that they’ve been thanked it’s
fine standing them up in front of a room of a thousand people yeah a
prize that’s not the right way and it’s that that how you that that that um
for for anyone else as big room with a prize and a statue I’m happy for
00:57:26,880 that it’s so fine if you people want to recognize me um but other people
I think it’s um you’ve got a balance isn’t it on that side of it but that again it’s that feedback the comment I said before that meeting that
presentation you just did that was really good well done um that’s that’s
00:57:43,680 that’s recognition um who don’t I can’t imagine many people out there
who really don’t like someone coming up to say that was a really good
presentation well done I really enjoyed it or yeah stop judging me right
yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah that that could be the the situation but um
00:58:00,000 yeah that’s uh that side of it’s quite fascinating so I think we’re kind of
coming to a natural end on on our conversation here and um it’s been
really interesting I kind of this whole um working out the sentiment working out how to motivate a team working out how to catch things
00:58:18,880 early it it is a an endemic problem that we’re always gotten there’s always ways to improve it and um hopefully everyone’s picked up a
couple of ideas here if um if someone wants to get in touch find out
more about uh what you do or whatever what’s the best way to film to get hold of you
00:58:38,240 yeah you can uh you know me bency at perflow.co you can link them me and you’re linked in you can just go on our website and um you
know contact us or sign up on the homepage for a demo if you want to you know trial perthlow um and yeah we uh thank you for
00:59:05,120 thank you for the chat it’s also been I love how we’ve gone in different
directions but it’s all related it’s all related yeah and I think that’s it isn’t it
it’s one of these things where you can you sit in the middle and there’s
lots of things that’ll drop into it and and could help and benefit so
00:59:21,360 again thank you very much for your time um and uh i’ll uh well have a
wonderful rest of the day thank you thank you so that’s it thank you very much bency for coming on the show uh and chat in about
00:59:45,040 teams there um nothing much for me to say other than i usual um thank
you for listening um if you enjoyed the show could you uh please share
it on social media tell your friends give me a like the youtubers like and
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01:00:07,280 do that that’ll be brilliant i’ve mentioned the books more than once this
time so if you can um feel like you can put your hand in your pocket or
even grab the free one um pop a long term as on or onto my book page you’ll find the links there um if you have time and you have
01:00:27,360 the inclination uh a review on any of the music platforms etc would be
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who want to listen to it as well uh he helps people helps people find the podcast easier um as i say sharing on social media we
01:00:51,360 got the patreon page if you want to buy me a cup of coffee uh for wellon
uh uh recording this that’ll be a great great for the received as well um but more importantly come back next time and have a listen to some more fantastic guests i’m so lucky to be able to get on this show
01:01:10,160 uh look at yourself and let’s make some noise well it’s goodbye from me
Nigel Kreese and it’s goodbye from him the sunday lunch pm goodbye