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00:00:00,000 [Music] Hi and welcome to the Sunday Lunch Project Manager podcast
for Sunday the 10th of October 2021. This is your host Nigel Creaser
and today I’ve got the second part of my interview with Sabrina Delis, the charity CEO.
00:00:27,300 [Music] Oh yeah, so we haven’t got a sponsor this week so I’m gonna
plug two things. The first thing is my charity raising webpage which I’ll put in the link where I’ve been running the London marathon more about that in a little bit.
00:01:02,300 And I’m raising money for Alzheimer’s research, which is a horrible nasty disease that we’ve had experienced over the family. If it’s something that is mean something to you, I’d really appreciate your
support. I think I’m currently sitting at about 1100 pounds and which is
fantastic and I just love to get up. So that’s number one. Number two is putting note in your diary beginning in November.
00:01:33,300 My fourth book project manager productivity hacks will be available on
digital download through Amazon and hopefully shortly after that if not
on the same day, hard back and paperback. So no doubt I’m about it on
social media and on here but just put a note in your diary, get ready to
grab a copy, although you could pre-order a copy. So links in the show
or just jump on to NigelCreaser.com, jump to the shop and there’s links there too.
00:02:10,300 So that’s it. [Music] Well, what’s been going on in my news sequence?
I’ve mentioned before I’ve been off ill earlier in the year and I’m back now in the throes of going through a,
00:02:51,300 what’s the word, face-drytor? I did my first, since the last episode I did my first two back-to-back two days and then I’ve done a three days
back-to-back this last week which has gone okay. From a mental health
point of view, it’s not too bad, no super anxiety things. Something I don’t
know if I’ve shared on the show before that had been doing on a daily
basis. I’ve got five criteria that I want to see how I feel at the end of
each day, whether I’m feeling upbeat or not or whether I’ve had some anxiety or whether there’s been frustration or whether I’ve ever achieved something.
00:03:37,300 And I just rank and want to five and scribble a little note about why I feel
that way and I find that quite useful just to help me get context on the
day because when I write down the reasons for whether something’s up
or down, it makes me think well yeah it was just because of that one
thing and I think it’s really useful doing my daily retrospective as I call it
stealing from that. The agile community’s terminology, I’m not doing a
stand-up with myself in the mornings or anything like that or doing any. What I do do day planning, I think we all kind of do.
00:04:13,300 So that’s going well, please with that I’m not finished all the counselling
that I’ve been going through over the past. I think it’s 20 weeks or so
probably longer than that in total which is a really great difference. So
ever onwards, ever upwards, one thing I would say is that I set it to a
colleague that long ago is that if you are feeling any of the similar sort
of things that I had when you’re feeling down in days of feeling the pressure, feeling that stress, that anxiety,
00:04:45,300 the counselling has been really good to help me identify what’s caused
it, identify what continues to trigger it, maybe causes too strong of it, but
some of the underlying things in my life that are feeding this and some
of the behaviours that I’ve had that have helped feed it some more. And
it’s difficult to get that context on your own or even with family members and friends but having that external person.
00:05:17,300 So if you have access to it, I would do just grab that access. It’s really,
really helped me. On a similar note, one of the things that I did earlier in the year was up in my exercise regime and running was one of the biggest parts of that really.
00:05:41,300 I’ve always found it to clear my head when I run, when I don’t get chairs
to run and I don’t get outside, I know I can feel that a little bit of
twitchiness. And as part of that earlier in the year, I’d signed up to run
the virtual London marathon and for those who don’t know what that is,
rather than going down to London and because it’s quite difficult to get.
You can, the introduced last year as part of COVID, a virtual marathon because they couldn’t run it in London.
00:06:11,300 So they had an app that you record your time on and you plot your own
route and the way the virtual works is you can do it any time in the 24
hours on the same day as the London marathon. You can break it up, it
makes it really inclusive for people who want to contribute, want to be
part of it, or want to raise some money. We’re something with such a
high profile event. And for myself, less than a hundred yards from my house, there is the Montagomri Canal.
00:06:45,300 And I ran along the Montagomri Canal, heading out to into England from where I am because I’m right near the Welsh border. I went to
England over to the village that my mum grew up in and kind of took her selfie outside the house where she grew up. And then back to the
house where my wife and girls were ready with my F1 pit stop for more food and drink.
00:07:11,300 And then off to interwales, inter-deepest archies whales for a few miles
and then back again. And with a surprise, having quite a few friends
and a little friend who actually done his, which I tried to you Mr Jones. On the same day, it turned up to cheer me on and then my mate who
was running with me as well. So I was delighted to finish it. I set myself
some goals. I think we all set these goals. I kind of went minimal viable product. My minimal viable product really was finishing it.
00:07:45,300 Although as long as I tried my hardest, it would have been there. But I kind of didn’t feel concerned about doing that. And then I had my
moving time because with Strava you could record your moving time as well as your elapsed time. I wanted to get that below six hours and
elapsed time. At six hours and then I was looking at 545 as a moving
time and then 545 as an elapsed time and had incredibly lofty goal of 530.
00:08:16,300 I didn’t hit that I was on target for the 545 for quite a long way and then
we all started to come off a little bit towards 1920 miles. Probably on
that, and it was not too bad, kind of covered and ended up doing it in
moving time of 5 hours and 56 minutes. Which is great, I was pleased
to do that. That was one of my higher goals. And last, there’s still some unfinished business with that distance.
00:08:51,300 I’m really pleased I’ve done it. Just desperately now waiting for my
t-shirt and medal to pop through the post from London Marathon, which
I’ll probably wonder around wearing for a week or more. So anyone who donated to that, thank you very much. For us as mentioned on the
thing, that’s how time has researched you. Horrible nasty disease, you watch people disappear gradually front your eyes, the person that you’ve known, which is heartbreaking for the families.
00:09:25,300 The person themselves kind of hardly knows what’s covered on, but for
you as an individual as a family member or a friend, it’s tough to watch. So that was last weekend and yeah it was a great weekend, a great
event. I’ve also had both my daughters, both your parties and the last
couple weeks, which have been a great time and part of, I think, of,
00:09:58,300 going back to the middle health thing, one of the things that I’ve found
myself doing was struggling to stay in the moment a lot of the time. And
even with them and one of the things I found this time that was great is
that both of their celebrations I was able to be with them in the moment
and not thinking, “What else have I got to get done? And I’ve got to do
this work, doing that, which is one of the things that I’ve found myself doing a lot of, like, flitting, lack of focus.
00:10:33,300 And it was really pleasing to be able to be in the moment. So again, I
know this is not a mental health podcast, I’m not an expert, but I feel
like sharing this, because we don’t, there is still a level of stigma about
talking about it. Even me talking about it, I find, and I was talking to someone the other day and they said, “Depression and this ad depression.”
00:11:01,300 And it, there is still something, which is societal about mental health problems that we need to deal with. And you as project managers and
you as leaders within your organisations can make a big difference to
people’s ability to talk about it. And I think also in our role as a project manager, I’ve said this many years before is that we’re in a lonely
position quite often, because you are there, you’re the leader of a small business, independent entity that’s being the project.
00:11:42,300 And your management team are, they look to you to deal with it and get
everything done, your leadership, your team, your whither, all looking to
you to be the representation of your organisation. And quite often, it can
feel a lonely place, and that can make it really hard. So having a group
to talk to, having someone to talk to, talking to your team about it as
well, and where they are getting the pressure to be able to pick up on what’s going on and help them, because it creeps up in suddenly getting you’re in a, in a not-great place.
00:12:27,300 So what else I was going to talk about? There was something and I
can’t remember it is, so that I think I’m not going to waffle on any more
for you. We’ve got a second part of our interview with Sabrina Dennis. And don’t, I’ve just remembered what it is. There we go.
00:12:43,300 You can tell this is scripted, heavily rehearsed and prepared to the end
of the level, not. I’m a sat in my kitchen with a cup of coffee, thinking I
need to do this morning for a go off and do other things. What it is I’ve been contributing and utilising a new initiative set up by Jonathan Norman, which is about project management and about,
00:13:14,300 it’s usually a product called a Piner, where a question is posed by, a video question is posed by someone, and a number of us have been
called the delivery experts, quite, quite humble to be included in that
title. Give our views on those particular ones. If you search on LinkedIn
for a hashtag delivery experts with Jonathan Norman, I’ll put a link as well in the show notes.
00:13:45,300 You can have a look and have a watch of some of the great information
that’s coming from people on these thorny little topics. The latest one is
about sponsors, project sponsors. I think it’s good to get any small snapshot videos at different points of view and quite engaging and useful information there.
00:14:07,300 So I urge you to jump along and have a listen to that. Also, I interviewed Jonathan a few months, I can’t remember whether it’s
months or years now, seems like only yesterday. About him and his role in communications within the knowledge management within the major projects association.
00:14:31,300 So, just go back and have a listen, it’s a really good interview. That’s
talking of interviews, as I said, I’d be letting you get on to Sabrina. So,
I’m going to let you have a listen to the second part of interview with Sabrina Dennis, the charity C.
00:14:46,300 Not to be too late. Touching on some of the things that we’ve got, obviously, said you ran that project in August. If we talk project management tooling and things, how did you do that?
00:15:08,300 What was it? What was that? How did you turn around that team, make
sure you got your stake, all delivered, get everyone there and all that? Was it purely a whole hands that pumped? Did you use some of these techniques? All of them actually.
00:15:22,300 I take for granted now. I mean, you say around in August, but
sometimes it felt like it did run up to that project. I’ve had a few projects like that. Oh my goodness. We were running onto the ground, but I
think it really, really was looking at it for what it was. And I think that’s the first thing. I think it’s character.
00:15:43,300 So, me as person, in general, I’m quite calm person, even in the face of
horrendous stress and things that pile in up. I’m still quite calm person.
So, we just looked at it and we, from the minute we sent it off, I kind of
said to our coordinator project coordinator, so just have a look at this
and map it out. Just map it out and see what you think this is going to look like.
00:16:08,300 And we do quite, we are quite a creative team. So a lot of the stuff,
even though we have the software and we follow all of this stuff for long term projects and short term projects and stuff like that. This was
literally click chart paper pen and let’s get together. Let’s hack out this
project and that’s what we did. We looked at we just for me. I’m just
looking for the risk. Where is it not going to work? What don’t we have?
And what do we need to fill in the gaps with because majority of the project in terms of the actual delivery.
00:16:40,300 Okay, when we break it down and we look at the report, it wasn’t
actually that long. It was four hours, it was four days a week, it was four
days, it was like four hours a day. So, realistically, let’s break that down. What are they going to do each hour? So we assembled the team, we have a team of outreach and youth workers who do outreach and youth work anyway.
00:17:02,300 So it was a case of just mobilizing them and saying, right, get
everybody in. This is what we’re going to be doing. Who’s available? Who’s not signing up? And you’re not signing up for a day. You need
any of the commitment for the entire period because that’s it. That’s
what it’s going to be. So it was really for me, a lot of literally one day of, yeah, a day of planning. We knew it was going to happen. There was
no turning back and we turned around and we said, right, let’s plan. Let’s break it down into each day.
00:17:35,300 Let’s look at the venues that we’ve got now one of the things, one of the
risks that we identify that in the project proposal. And we had said that
we would use a school location, two school locations, but one of the schools by the time we’ve got the proposal cleared, had closed. So we’re not going to be using that school.
00:17:57,300 So what are we going to do? What we’re going to fix? Where we’re
going to go. The contingency was just that we might just condense it
down into one location and break it off and break off and go to different spaces because actually we could do that. And we just looked at
stripping it back a bit because it was so short and I just, and I mean, the go ahead was given on the Thursday night.
00:18:20,300 And the money was in the account on the Monday and we were delivering next week Tuesday. And literally seven days, one on five days, work. And days to get done.
00:18:36,300 So for me, it was very, from the many I said to, for me, it’s a
coordinator, listen, map out the program, send a draft of the program to one of the outreach that you for workers and see what they agree. We’ve got a lead, lead you work anyway. That will kind of just look
things through. And we have a process map for all projects. So in our
organization, one of the things that I spent, new enough, a whole year on was developing all our systems and processes for things.
00:19:06,300 So if I, if somebody’s not here, you can go to the manual and know how
to do something. And then, you know, the thing is, I’m actually one of the major reasons why we could just do this so quickly because everybody was like, right, how do we do a risk assessment for this
project or how do we, what’s the referral form for this or what’s the
consent that we need. And it’s all in the manual under under projects.
00:19:29,300 And the template for registration, we have a template for how to set up
an event break, we have a template for what a program flyer marketing material should look like. There’s almost like a model, we put that
model up, we open it, we say, right, we need that, and that, we take that
out, we sort of amend it to fit the program and we get moving. So there is literally a template for everything.
00:19:57,300 Brilliant, brilliant. And that’s kind of been looking at the delivering
projects. There is all the projects that I’ve been dealing with having that
methodology that you talk about, actual methodology, isn’t it? It’s that
I’m guessing is, is your standard methodology of a project manager and
then you’ve added your flavor on top of that layer of all those templates that you need no specific operational things that need to be.
00:20:23,300 Yeah, we eat, it’s learning lessons years ago now that I’m glad, I mean,
it was a painful at the time, you know, things don’t work. But God, I’m glad that that happened because how an earth would, you know, if I
look back and think about us doing this, what we delivered in August,
you know, 10 years ago, we wouldn’t have been able to do it. Because we just wouldn’t have had the capacity, we wouldn’t have had the systems of processes, we’d have no methodology at all.
00:20:51,300 So, you know, down to it. And I’ve been very adamant that every time
we produce something, if it’s something new, we’ve got to systemise it
to that outside of any of us in the team. Someone else can do it. Yeah, to perpetuate that beyond yourself is important, isn’t it?
00:21:10,300 I’ve got to remove myself from the lack of delivery because we do so
much initially and, you know, it’s not, it’s not really sticky and get tired
and resentfully mentally, you know, it’s not good. But the thing is that I
think again with that is that as your role of CEO isn’t to deliver, it is it’s
to prioritise to decide to identify opportunities to make sure what you’re
delivering the benefits you’re getting there, you know, in theory, as that
role, if you’re pivotal to making things happen, fair enough, you can
delve into key things every short, but if you’re pivotal to making every
single thing and every single decision in the organisation, then that’s not tangible, is it?
00:21:51,300 You need to be able to drive it down to the level of the team who have a level of autonomy to do it. And then you can decide whether they’re going in the right direction and give help where they’re doing it. Absolutely, absolutely. And that is our number one failing in small
organisations and I say that to micro organisations where you’ve had
you divisionary and you’re the CEO and you’re the HR department, you know, delivery, you know, this and that.
00:22:20,300 And then all of a sudden you’re sick and you can’t do it anymore, what
happens to everything that’s still supposed to carry on, you know, so
I’ve been adamant from the very beginning when this, when we created
for the foundation as it is now as a charity that I wouldn’t be the person
that’s delivering anything, I would steer, I would guide, I would make
sure I look for opportunities and etc, but I’m not going to be in the room on the day when it’s happening. And one example is during that
program, so, okay, we have this four-week block of everyday activities with 11 to 16 year-on-MC children. We’re the same week we launched, we started the project, we launched the charity on the weekend, and
that’s another event, that’s a 150 people filled dinner, dancing event with speakers and decoration and all of that.
00:23:17,300 And then we launched the event of the summer program, so some of
the programs still having to happen, we’ve got another project event
that’s happening on the last day of the summer program. So there’s so many different elements in the middle of that, having meetings and
we’re going here and we’re going there and so that’s capacity that is,
you know, making sure that you’re not doing it all because what I’ve just
described is impossible without those systems and processes in place.
So it’s the delegation, it’s something I talk about and I’ve heard before is
a round, and actually listen to podcast recently with some friends of mine, Cobraik, Mark and Andrew C. and Shrewsbury, they’re talking
about their 10 lessons they learned over the last whatever years and
one of the things they talk about is making sure that there’s certain things they outsource to other people.
00:24:11,300 And certainly, they don’t do and whilst they would naturally want to hold
on to it and I’ve a lot of us are the same, there’ll be things either we
think we’re the only ones who can do it or we think we’re the best ones
to do it, sorry, or we think that they are kind of fun and you kind of enjoy
doing them. And those are the harder ones to be quite fun to get rid of,
but you kind of sit there and you kind of got to look at it and go for me and my objectives as project managers as CEO, is that me doing that
the most influential thing for the organization. And quite often it isn’t and
every single task I think we should really be looking at and going right I’m doing this is that the best use to this hour of my time.
00:25:07,300 If not, give it to someone else, it may take an hour and 15 for them to do it, including 15 minutes of you coach them, it may be
organizationally it’s an hour and a half of effort. But if you’ve got an hour
then to spend pitching for half a million quits worth of funding. And that
piece of work is just a report that you need for some other piece to close off.
00:25:33,300 You start on an extreme example and usually subtleties in the middle
there isn’t it, but it’s that whole thing of all of the tasks you’re doing you should be looking at that and can I spend this hour better because
we’re it’s incumbent on us as individuals to be as efficient and in effect.
If we’re the organization’s resources as we can and we are one of those resources and we’re the we can spend ages looking at everyone else
and making sure they’re doing it and it’s really terrible at optimizing our
own work. And then end up actually still haven’t do all that pitching or other things and you end up.
00:26:09,300 And it’s it’s it’s difficult to do that self-management thing and imagine it
is in in your role it exacerbates it because I’m guessing with you starting you were right in the weeds of seeing the actual impact that you’re
making in the eyes of the people working with. And now you’re stepped
back away from that a little bit and it’s probably quite difficult to not want
to be seeing that impact and getting that positivity as well sometimes.
Yes and no I think for me I always struggled with being in the I mean I
do the deal in all of that but one thing I always struggled with is it being
about me or a particular person so I I remember when we first started out and from a husband first started and stuff everybody would know him and say a Nathan Nathan Nathan for everything I’d be like that can’t be right because it’s an organization that’s doing this.
00:27:07,300 For me I’m quite happy for me I win when teams teams of all of our
organization are doing things and I see it and I didn’t know like I didn’t
know that’s what I think they have kind of the project yeah I know I don’t
need to know the post that you’re going to post and socially like I just
want to know the words getting done and it’s mean doing excellence in the scope and the things that we’re supposed to be doing as an
organization that’s what I want to see. And everybody’s in trouble to
that but it’s it’s for me I kind of I really enjoy in sex stepping back a little
bit and actually not having to be the face than the person doing and
knowing is and it’s nice to really enjoy watching team evolve. So we’ve
had one of the lead practitioners for our parenting program she came to
into the organization at the age of 15 she was a young person that just
used to come to the Fridays sessions that we used to do way way back
and she just used to say I really want to work with you guys all my I
want to just work with you forever I used to be like okay this is okay.
00:28:22,300 That’s lovely what you sure that’s all the things that like you do you sure this is what you want to do in front of being and she went away she went to uni she came back and she volunteered and she volunteered and she funded me everywhere when she was at my shadow. And now
today she’s really practitioner so when it comes to anything to do a
kitchen table project that yeah I created that I founded that you know I have worked so hard to develop actually now she’s leading on it and
that for me is the win. Yeah yeah I can see that yeah because it’s that
you’ve enabled someone else rather than delivered something else in it as brilliant.
00:29:06,300 Yeah and there’s enough there’s enough sunshine for all of us I don’t know. When it comes out behind behind the clouds. Yeah yeah see
yeah at the moment we’re not getting a lot of weeks and it is September after that after all.
00:29:20,300 But I’m sure. So just thinking what next for your organization where is it 00:29:38,300 going what are the goals and the aspirations? Well domination.
No the goals the aspirations I have for first class foundation currently
we’re regional so we work cross west midlands and a little bit wider
west mayor’s here as well so it’s an sequential side so sure actually do
so whether it and but I would like to be taking us national in the next
two years and international after that a lot of our programs and I firmly
believe our forever programs that will be here forever as long as I can make them sustainable and my plan is really to grow us to the point
where you know you’re not hearing first class that but you know what it is you know what we do and we are the best at community outreach engagement for black minority ethnic groups.
00:30:30,300 I really just want to see lives of young people be changed for the better
I want them to have fair equitable access to all that’s out there for them
and that’s what I strive to do. The bottom line for me is when I know
that we’ve worked hard to support families I know that young people will
be safe and I know that they’ll have access and be able to do the things
I want to do but there’s so much work to do. In terms of just developing
that strengthening families supporting parents and not just in the justice system but just in general just day to day life supports.
00:31:10,300 I’m making sure that we’re that real real real real actual role model for
your people because they lack that. So if people wanted to get in touch get involved find out more what’s the what’s the best way to get in touch. The best way is to get online at our social media so you can
follow me at just s denys and on twitter and instagram and LinkedIn i’m Sabrina denys.
00:31:40,300 You can follow the charity at scnationuk or you can email check out our website www.firstcastfoundation.org and you can email info at sclegacy.co.uk We will answer everything instagram, youtube, social
media, LinkedIn whatever it is email us you can email us through the
website as well and we get that so there’s loads of ways that you can contact us. Sabrina thank you for your time it’s been a fascinating
conversation and it sounds like an organization that is on the up and delivering some fantastic results there and well making changes in
young people’s lives positive change you can’t you can’t say anything
but it’s great so thank you for your time and have a brilliant rest of the day.
00:32:35,300 Thank you so much for having me it’s been a pleasure. Thank you. I
hope you enjoyed that second part of that interview with a wonderful Sabrina Dennis and thanks to her for giving so much time to chat.
00:32:57,300 That’s it really now if you are how enjoyed it please tell your friends tell
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00:34:11,300 Thanks look after yourself and have a great day. Well it’s goodbye from me Nigel Criesa and it’s goodbye from him the Sunday lunch PM goodbye. [Music]
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