This month, we have two excellent guests on the show, links to their episodes below.
Lloyd J Skinner CEO of greyfly.ai, responsible for leading the company’s board and strategic initiatives. With over 30 years of experience in programme management, he has successfully overseen projects worth hundreds of millions of pounds, including major change and transformation efforts. During his time as a programme manager at the BBC, he managed thousands of people, chairing both project-level and programme executive board meetings, with his programmes being recognised as best in class. (transcript)
Brenda Neckvatal helps the strongest leaders deal with the messiest people—because leadership gets real when emotions get loud, trust gets shaky, and egos start swinging. She’s a three-time bestselling author, an award-winning Human Results expert, and a serial entrepreneur featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Inc., and US News & World Report. (transcript)
Have a listen / watch their interviews here:
Lloyd
Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/sundaylunchpm/episodes/194-Lloyd-Skinner–The-Greyfly-AI-Guy-e37ta71
YouTube:https://youtu.be/mS0ply-i_J0
Brenda
YouTube:https://youtu.be/bamIgz9x5s8
For other pod services, jump to here
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Lloyd’s Transcript
Nige (00:01)
I am delighted today to welcome ⁓ Lloyd Skinner to the show. ⁓ Lloyd is the CEO of Greyfly AI and he’s responsible for leading the company’s board and strategic initiatives. ⁓ With over 30 years of experience in program management, he has successfully overseen full lifecycle projects worth hundreds of millions of pounds, ⁓ including major change and transformation efforts.
Nige (00:24)
During his time as a program manager at BBC, he managed thousands of people and chaired both project level and senior program executive board meetings with his programs being considered best in their class. ⁓ He’s an evangelist who advocates the potential to revolutionize project management ⁓ across multiple industries using AI. ⁓ And he’s a seasoned speaker delivering ⁓ UK and global talks to events organized by APM, British Computer Society.
Nige (00:53)
and PMI and GAPMO, which is a new one for me. And in addition to his role at Greyfly, he serves as a non-executive director at companies with turnover of over 15 million where he chairs board meetings and helps guide the company’s success. ⁓ He has a Master of Science from London School of Economics and particularly interested in AI as we’ll probably get and how it can approve project success. ⁓ Lloyd, thank you for coming on the show. You’re welcome.
Lloyd Skinner (01:19)
⁓ Thank you, Nigel. Thank you for inviting me and thank you for ⁓ introducing me. I’d almost forgotten about my whole bio then, but that’s brilliant. Thank you for that.
Nige (01:29)
It’s interesting when you write something and then you hear someone else reading it. It kind of makes you think, Oh, hang on. Did I say that? It’s not me is what I find most of the time with some of the some of the things I’ve written. So tell us a lot of it. Tell us a little bit more about you. Let listeners know where you’re from. A little bit more background.
Lloyd Skinner (01:32)
No.
Lloyd Skinner (01:35)
I’m like, who is this guy? ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (01:51)
Yeah, of course. ⁓ So I was brought up in Buckinghamshire actually. So my hometown was a place called Ellsbury, ⁓ a good old grammar school. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (02:01)
⁓ But I was kind of lucky. I went off to university ⁓ and once I’d done it, I did a degree in business studies. ⁓ But ⁓ then I went on and I did a master’s at LSE London School of Economics in information systems. ⁓ And bizarrely enough, that’s part of the backstory of ⁓ where I’ve landed up. ⁓ know, obviously both of us have some grey beards here, Nigel. So we’re of a certain age. And I actually went on my
Lloyd Skinner (02:31)
25 years post-master’s anniversary so I did a master’s in ⁓ early ⁓ 90s and actually I got bumped into my business partner, my co-founder ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (02:46)
And we started talking about the technologies that we’d learned in the early 90s hadn’t at that stage been applied to project management. So this sort of coincided with a good moment in my life. And that’s really where Greyfly was born from, know, talking about how you could apply technologies like AI or big data to the world of projects, as it were. So, so, you know,
Lloyd Skinner (03:16)
university graduate. ⁓ Work-wise, ⁓ I spent lots and lots of years consulting. ⁓ I was sadly excited by critical paths and per charts ⁓ and started working as project planner, program planner, PMO or project support office ⁓ before they were even called PMO. Got a bit blurred between supporting projects, delivering projects, ⁓ ended up working at the
Lloyd Skinner (03:46)
see as you mentioned they’re running some big projects and then laterally into Greyflies. ⁓
Nige (03:55)
So it’s obviously AI is a hot topic and we met last year at the PMI synergy event where you were on stage and I thought I’ve to get him on the show to chat about this because I think one of the things of and I talked I’m sure you know Ricardo Vargas from the PMI and numerous other different things that I had him on the show in 2019 I think it was in 2020.
Nige (04:23)
And he was talking then about ⁓ AI and how you could use AI for project and building big data stores to improve ⁓ information between AI and things like that. that back then it was kind of like that was in ⁓ pre-chat GPT and it was kind of like, yeah, that sounds really good. I that’s hard. That’s a big thing. That’s a long way down the line before it becomes something that could be ⁓ actually used. ⁓ And here we are, ⁓ five, six years later.
Nige (04:52)
And ⁓ four or five years later, sorry. the ⁓ the project management, the what the whole industry, every industry, from design, from movies to game, every, every industry is now ⁓ at this little wake up call and being impacted on these tools and the way that we work changing because of these tools on a day to day basis. I’ll give you a great example I spotted the other day was had a guest like yourself.
Nige (05:21)
whose bio was written in the first person. ⁓ So I thought, hang on a minute, I need to change that five minutes before I pulled out copilot, ⁓ copied it in there. It’s in the in with the name ⁓ X and ⁓ boom, rewritten. ⁓ And ⁓ whilst and I don’t use it that often from that point of view, ⁓ I tend to go right, I want a nice pretty picture for something I want this or some odd thing that I want to do. And ⁓ and ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (05:29)
Yeah, yeah.
Lloyd Skinner (05:35)
Yeah, fantastic. ⁓
Nige (05:51)
It’s ⁓ the actual productivity benefits that are available with it are starting to seep into my ⁓ usage of things. ⁓ I think a couple of years back when early on this guy called Tom’s planner, ⁓ where they created a tool where I just went in there and so show me a project for delivering an ERP. And that’s what does the prompt suddenly you’ve got a plan and then you expand that bit then you’ve got a detailed planner kind of sat there.
Nige (06:20)
as a a PM or planner like you were, ⁓ you can spend 20 minutes and you’ve got a straw man to go into a workshop with, rather than spending two days getting the straw man to then be able to critic so so you can see that productivity. ⁓ So ⁓ that’s me talk a little bit of my thinking of where I’ve gone and seen so far, and I’m sure you’ve dug deeper into this. But ⁓ what was it that made you go hang on? ⁓ AI is the thing. And then was it
Nige (06:47)
Just before that chat GPT did you have that much prescience or was it just after what what was that? How did that that conversation with your colleague start? ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (06:52)
⁓ Yeah, so you know, you mentioned Ricardo. Ricardo and I are good friends. So weirdly enough, we did a panel this week where we had 700 people on it. ⁓ So, you know, it’s still a very popular subject, this AI and project management. ⁓ I actually started my journey, it’s almost seven years ago now. That moment that I had at that post-masters, that 25-year anniversary, that was the spark.
Lloyd Skinner (07:19)
⁓ And it also dovetailed ⁓ with ⁓ my personal life. So I ⁓ just moved to Bristol. ⁓ I was planning on taking quite a major PD type role.
Lloyd Skinner (07:35)
⁓ But life changed at the last moment and I pulled out of that and found myself with a bit of free time on my hands. So I started, I was organizing for BCS, the British Computer Society talks in Bristol. ⁓ So I had this 25 year anniversary. I had these talks I was organizing where they were sort of a wake up call for me about my love for technology.
Lloyd Skinner (08:05)
⁓ that it’s, you know, gone into, drifted away, project planning, project management, et cetera, that I was, you know, more at the overall level. So I wasn’t getting into the detail, if you like. So ⁓ you had these both moments that made me start thinking about, ⁓ hold on a minute, could you start applying technology to project management? And my business partner, she,
Lloyd Skinner (08:35)
We worked for the big four consultancy companies in an assurance and audit vein and we got chatting about ⁓ the assurance cycle if you like. So if I just very quickly describe that at the highest level, once you’ve determined ⁓ what project or what scope you’re assuring, what do you do? ⁓ You go and gather up a load of information, ⁓ you interview people,
Lloyd Skinner (09:05)
⁓ You try and make head of tail of that you pull it together You then compare to what good looks like you then write a report for the particular customer or client You might then update it and you present it what we realized was ⁓ very early that that cycle if I changed the language to say well, what did we do we ingested data, you know both written data and interview data
Lloyd Skinner (09:35)
⁓ We ⁓ used that to train the models and compare to benchmarks ⁓ and then we presented a set of insights. So before you know it, the typical AI machine learning type cycle ⁓ really, really lends itself to assurance. ⁓ And that’s what was really ⁓ behind ⁓ our gems of ideas.
Lloyd Skinner (10:05)
around the application of AI and project management. And, you know, just go back to what you said earlier, this was way before Gen.AI appeared, you know. So, 2022, November 22, it seems to be the milestone where, you know, chat GPT was launched to the public. So we were playing in this more machine learning world rather than the Gen.AI world. Obviously these days we’re playing both areas, but yeah, that’s…
Lloyd Skinner (10:35)
That’s how we started getting into AI ⁓ and ⁓ sitting underneath that, why question was my experiences that unfortunately, and again, I know this is well trodden grounds, but when you compare to the original plan and budgets, projects don’t tend to deliver to time and plan. So the gem of the idea was could we use machine learning to accelerate assurance, which will then ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (11:04)
⁓ improve project success. ⁓ So yeah, that’s how it all started, Nigel.
Nige (11:11)
Brilliant. It sounds like it’s interesting because obviously before AI, cloud was the big thing, wasn’t it? and, a client cloud was suddenly there and still is, but you mean that was suddenly came ⁓ out there. ⁓ And I remember going through the training on that I did on Azure and AWS. And in both cases, there was a machine learning ⁓ element or service that was in there ⁓ already. And as you say that that ⁓
Nige (11:38)
a capability for certain things was there, but not in the way that sort of chat GPT unlocked, I think, unlock the potential of it more than anything. And then by unlocking that potential, then also unlock the demand and therefore that’s what’s created the what is an exploding industry is probably a reasonable thing to
Lloyd Skinner (11:51)
Yeah.
Lloyd Skinner (11:58)
I ⁓ think the point about chat GPT is that
Lloyd Skinner (12:05)
it became so accessible. So it’s almost a B2C product. ⁓ That suddenly, you know, you can jump on it and I’ll park to one side security and, and, and hallucinations and all of that types up for one second. But you as a user, suddenly, I dunno, I remember going round to friends at Christmas that year and him saying, ⁓ I’ve just written a set of songs for my six year old daughter. You know, it was like,
Nige (12:20)
Yeah.
Lloyd Skinner (12:35)
And it was like, you you could be a kid in a toy shop, in a sweet shop, you know, in terms of what could I do with this? So it was like a massive wake up call, if you like. Whereas, you know, ⁓ we’d spent years with the greatest of respect to people saying, you know, just think about the benefit you could use to apply AI and project management. ⁓ you know, lots of people were inquisitive about that.
Lloyd Skinner (13:02)
But taking that into a commercial arrangement was a leap. It was like, oh yeah, very interesting. Anyway, back to my day job, as it were.
Nige (13:15)
get no real stuff, not ⁓ the future that’s years down the road, which is kind of it felt like. It felt like for me before then, ⁓ that sort of stuff was going to be ⁓ the… ⁓ And literally, ⁓ I have an aspiration to write a novel. And some of the things that ⁓ I was writing in a ⁓ 40 year plus novel ⁓ were things like ⁓ automated note taking in meetings.
Nige (13:45)
and transcription and action taking, which for me at the time was an any fact show it off anyway. So I’ve got that there is the, can probably see it and don’t know if you can see that. So that was a chat GPT or copilot, I can’t remember which one. It’s what asked him to do. Plus with a little bit of editing on the back of it with a bit of blue, but that was two minutes to do that.
Lloyd Skinner (13:53)
⁓
Lloyd Skinner (13:57)
Yes.
Lloyd Skinner (14:00)
Yeah.
Nige (14:14)
And that story included a future technology company. And in that future technology company, they had like an Alexa app. And that app would sit in meetings, take notes, and give you those notes and send them out to everyone, make sure the actions are highlighted and done that. And then you kind of sit there now and Microsoft Co-Pilot’s doing that sort of at 60%, 70 % of that my envisage now.
Lloyd Skinner (14:35)
Well, plus some, plus some. mean, ⁓ you know, ⁓ let’s face it, we’re entering.
Lloyd Skinner (14:43)
I mean, people call it the next industrial revolution. I’ve always been a bit of a futurist and sci-fi type buff. So when I was at LSE in 91, my dissertation was about virtual reality, you know, and whether that is feasible. It’s probably a whole new subject, if you like. But, you you talk about the team meetings. I remember Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You remember the fish that put in your ear that did it all.
Nige (15:09)
And I’ll see you next time.
Lloyd Skinner (15:11)
Yeah, exactly. Automatic translation so that you and I could speak in different languages and what came out was understandable. Well, that’s starting to become real, you know? And so ⁓ I think in a way, ⁓ technology is starting to catch up with creativity. know, whatever your thought was, and ⁓ I’m a positive person, so I’m not into Armageddon or Mad Max. I’m, ⁓ you know, who knows, but I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful.
Lloyd Skinner (15:40)
⁓ that opportunity of really helping humankind prevails badness. Now, who knows, especially with some of the tyrants that may or may not appear in the world at ⁓ the moment. But it is ⁓ almost like everything is becoming real. And you’re talking about the book cover there and the tea meetings. ⁓ I think it’s almost like… ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (16:08)
⁓ any stone, ⁓ you know, if you think of the stone, it’s going to get turned over shortly. ⁓ And it’s not just that, it’s the capability of bringing technology to market and the speed that you can bring it to market. ⁓ And ⁓ I think ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (16:27)
That’s kind of interesting. So, you know, the startup ecosystem that is moving so rapidly and it’s actually those big companies that can’t necessarily keep up with this as well. ⁓ And, you know, again, ⁓ so from that point of view, ⁓ we are still at the foothills of this ⁓ revolution.
Nige (16:41)
Thanks. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (16:54)
You know, but you can see it. ⁓ know, every company, we’re doing co-pilot, we’re experimenting with this because it’s back to it’s accessible and they’re using this type of stuff at home. So, but it’s only just beginning, Nigel, in my view, you know.
Nige (17:08)
Yeah, I agree. I agree. Thinking about the sort of stuff from us as a career, it’s always your career project manager, you’ve done all the different planning and all that sort of stuff. And I know that when we had the session, people people matter most is the conversation we had last last year. And ⁓ three of the talks had AI as a large stream of the conversation in there. And ⁓ and ⁓ that sort of very right reasons in the fact that it’s going to change ⁓ our industry.
Nige (17:38)
it’s going to change our profession. Sorry, as project managers, it’s going to change what we do, ⁓ how we do it. ⁓ And sometimes why we do stuff as well. ⁓ But ⁓ I suppose from your perspective, where do you see, can say ⁓ in, ⁓ in the next five years, ⁓ what do you think ⁓ the project manager role might, how it would look different ⁓ in your brain? ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (18:00)
Yeah, ⁓ I would caveat it with what I said previously, which is, you know, the big constraint there is how fast companies adopt, as it were. ⁓ And some will go a lot faster than others. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (18:21)
Anecdotally, ⁓ I’ve to tell you, I sat on a talk the other day, which was ⁓ an academic talk. I like to go on these talks occasionally to see what the theory is saying. ⁓ there was ⁓ a ⁓ major university chap delivering a talk who had sponsorship by one of the world’s biggest technology companies. ⁓ I support Chelsea, they play in blue, if you get the idea of which
Lloyd Skinner (18:51)
company it might have been. ⁓ Anyway, ⁓ he had done some very interesting research where he’d looked at all of the control functions to do with project management, so scheduling, budgeting, procurement, resources, etc. ⁓ And what he’d done is he’d categorized the functions between the level of tasks
Lloyd Skinner (19:21)
⁓ data and absolute data. So by tacit data, how much ⁓ human interaction, human interpretation was being taken account of. ⁓ And he ended up concluding that ⁓ these functions could be undertaken completely by AI and these functions still needed a human intervention. And I can tell you ⁓ that basically on the latter side, ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (19:51)
He’d ended up with ⁓ decision making, influencing human communication and on the other side he was proposing that…
Lloyd Skinner (20:01)
subject to adoption that every element of project management could be undertaken by AI. Now, now that is probably the extreme of what we’re talking about. But and when we’re talking about five years time, yeah, I think that what we’ll see is especially this year with the advent of AI agents and also the advent of the major
Lloyd Skinner (20:31)
software providers creating more AI based solutions. So this morning I was looking at Microsoft Project where you your point about the creation of the project plan, a few little variables, ⁓ there’s the plan. So I think ⁓ in the short term some of the trends that we’ll see will be about ⁓ working out where the human intervention stops and starts.
Lloyd Skinner (21:01)
⁓ And within that, things like empathy, things like ⁓ creativity ⁓ will definitely be the domain of the human whilst these systems start taking increasingly the amount of automation away from us. I think the other threads will be things like, ⁓ you know, we’ve been talking about it for years, but data silos.
Lloyd Skinner (21:31)
you know, linking data from ⁓ all elements of a project together. And by that, I mean from strategy, through design, through delivery, ⁓ even into operations. You know, can you imagine starting to link, you know, the actual outcomes of projects with the ⁓ project progress in its own right? So sustainability is probably a big, big ⁓ operational output there that I think will start. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (22:01)
linking together. ⁓ And I think by default that will mean hopefully we’re more managing at the risk level ⁓ rather than the issue or the change control level. In other words, we’re being more proactive ⁓ rather than ⁓ reactive, as it were. So ⁓ for me, what we’ll see is more about the human at the centre, more about linking all this data together. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (22:31)
across the broader definition of a project along with the thread of things like sustainability more importantly. My biggest hope, Nigel, is that actually that means we get more projects right first time. So when we put the budget together, are not that 60 % or 70 % or 80 % of projects are over budget.
Lloyd Skinner (23:01)
actually get that stage of the project more correct. Sorry, that may have been a long answer, but there was quite a lot of threads in there. ⁓
Nige (23:09)
Yeah, it was quite an open ended question when it really to be fair, and ⁓ it’s one of those ones that you get. It’s kind of Yeah, that’s not a five minute answer. Too weird answer in any of these things. And I think ⁓ it’s interesting because ⁓ the thing that I ⁓ have seen for many, many years and ⁓ as in one of my ⁓ silly books that I did there talking about lies, damn lies ⁓ and status reports. ⁓ It kind of that that
Nige (23:38)
where we get away from the fact that you’ve got ⁓ that project manager writing a status report. ⁓ And it’s articulated in a way that is ⁓ sometimes not entirely ⁓ the whole truth and nothing but the truth scenario. It’s kind of just a bit of what I want to tell them this time. ⁓ And you kind of move away ⁓ where we can get, can we get to that point where ⁓ there’s an empirical ⁓ nature to those, that data that goes on those reports that’s automatically created, that isn’t mouth
Nige (24:08)
manipulated 10 times into five different spreadsheets in order to get to someone and get that. ⁓ I was chatting to a guy, Steve Rapton, ⁓ earlier this month around ⁓ some stuff that he’s been doing and how his whole thing was about being able to get from ⁓ and ⁓ that you’ve got, if someone’s doing some work, ⁓ you can track what they’re doing on there. It flows through all the way through all your program reporting through to your benefit realization, as you just talked about before as well.
Nige (24:37)
and having those systems that do those things, because quite often there are bits of system that break out and do bits and therefore then you have ⁓ a PMO or PM ⁓ moving stuff from one place to another. ⁓ And that means there’s a an influence you can put on those those reporting you haven’t got that. I think I’ve heard it described as a golden thread all the way through. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (25:01)
Yeah.
Nige (25:02)
And those things that you talked about there is I can see how that do it. The one thing that I find quite interesting is there’s a is the and I do like it’s one of the few things I get riled about actually is when there are things quoted on LinkedIn around projects fail 70 % of time 90 % of the time. And I kind of I immediately say what do mean by fail? No, because that’s defined fail defined succeed because
Lloyd Skinner (25:26)
Yeah. ⁓
Nige (25:30)
If you are delivering to time, cost and quality, that project can be an abject failure ⁓ because ⁓ if that time, cost, quality that you got given at the beginning and you worked out and you thought what you were going to do, ⁓ that’s fine. If you did it perfectly, but what you deliver has no benefit to the organization. What’s the point, whether that be ⁓ like countries, whether it be businesses, whatever, then ⁓ it’s, how you, how you ⁓ make sure we’re measuring.
Lloyd Skinner (25:49)
Yeah. ⁓
Nige (26:00)
the right thing and thinking about the right thing. Now, fair enough, if you said we’re going to do this, ⁓ getting within that is part of the story of success, ⁓ but it isn’t the whole story of success. suppose, how do ⁓ you see that? And then maybe that’s how Griffly comes in. How do you see ⁓ those ⁓ things happening and are you improving in those? ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (26:09)
it. Yeah. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (26:15)
Well, ⁓ yeah.
Lloyd Skinner (26:18)
⁓ I’ll on to the success question. I was actually part of the PMI working party that’s been redefining project success. So ⁓ I’ll come back onto that in one second. But I just wanted to pick up on your point about data driven and data led. ⁓ And ⁓ I think that’s a fantastic point and apologies, I should have mentioned it more. That is the ideal that, you know, we’re looking at facts. Now, again, depending on, you ⁓
Nige (26:23)
and I’m happy
Nige (26:31)
Yes, sir.
Lloyd Skinner (26:48)
know I’m a social scientist so ⁓ what do you mean by fact which sort of touches on your point as well. I think also for me the point I’d like to make is that so we’re in the world of project prediction ⁓ I can give you the most accurate prediction ⁓ you know in the world ⁓ you as a project sponsor can absolutely just ignore that.
Lloyd Skinner (27:13)
and decide what you want to do. You know, so for me there’s two angles there. There’s one about, you know…
Lloyd Skinner (27:23)
reporting on the factual thing, both before and after the event, as it were. But then there’s also this change management piece that is so important to sit along any technology innovation, any technology revolution as well. ⁓ So that’s the first point I was going to make. The second point, just going back to your ⁓ point about project success. So ⁓ I don’t know whether your viewers have seen this new definition from PMI. ⁓
Nige (27:30)
Thank
Lloyd Skinner (27:53)
But basically ⁓ the example they always use, and there’s lots of people that use this example, is the Sydney Opera House. So that particular project was massively over budget, massively delayed, but I don’t know about you, Nig, I wouldn’t mind jumping on a plane to Sydney to go and see it now. ⁓ So what they’ve been redefining is A, ⁓ almost what is a project in the first place, because the tail of that project, back to benefits realisation,
Lloyd Skinner (28:23)
⁓ was many many years ⁓ after what we would traditionally call a project, you know, the building element of it and the fit out element of it. ⁓ So what they’re pushing is a much longer duration and the term that they’re using there is about value. It was worth the effort and expense to get the value. Now the other dimension there as well as time was what it depends on
Nige (28:33)
So, I’m going to use that.
Lloyd Skinner (28:53)
who you’re asking as to whether it’s a success or not. So the project manager who was responsible for that Sydney Opera House probably got kicked around the head 28 times by all sorts of people for being over budget. But if you then ask a member of the public or the person working at the operational site, it’s a massive success. what they found, the two ⁓ most, they did this massive survey, 17.5,
Lloyd Skinner (29:23)
2000 people yeah, and what they found was that the two biggest factors that led to this ⁓ Success of a project this longer term success of a project was one ⁓ measure it yeah and and ⁓ back to AI ⁓ The second thing was and this is interesting was make it sustainable Now now it’s sustainable in the broadest sense. Yeah, so but good for people and
Lloyd Skinner (29:53)
planet and all that great stuff. And they were saying that if you start your project with those in mind, you’re more likely to succeed. And of course they’re not throwing away time, cost and scope for the actual, you know, if I call it the original project period, but they’re just saying we need to start looking at the longer term. ⁓ And then, sorry, I’ll just finish off. ⁓ Then you think, well, ⁓ where can you apply AI in that type of guys? You can apply it.
Nige (30:23)
⁓ Yeah.
Lloyd Skinner (30:23)
at every stage from the strategy, the idea stage through to the delivery, through the design, through the delivery, through to the monitoring and the realisation as well. So ⁓ yeah, so hopefully that makes sense. ⁓
Nige (30:38)
⁓ It does and it is and I think it is a ⁓ fascinating topic in itself ⁓ and ⁓ hotly debated because you know, maybe in other countries it’s different but the British media ⁓ and the newspaper media if you have a large government project ⁓ that goes over budget it’s front page news and people get hold over the coal coals on it ⁓ and never it’s all about how much it’s cost and that money could be spent doing something else ⁓ is always the thing.
Lloyd Skinner (31:06)
Yeah.
Nige (31:08)
You know, I that’s always the thing that’s trotted out with all of them and might be completely true. Some of these might be poorly managed, might be poorly allocated, might be poorly thought through. ⁓ Some of them are just it’s project delivery and it’s never straightforward. ⁓ And actually, even though it might go over 20 million, which sounds like a big number or 10 million or whatever, ⁓ it’s a big number, absolutely. But in relative terms, what you’re delivering, ⁓ not necessarily.
Nige (31:33)
and in the relative terms of the value you’re delivering. that’s where the value thing comes in, that benefits realization. But that end bit isn’t newsworthy, it? It it isn’t, isn’t headline worthy going. They’ve increased it by 20 million pounds, which means that we will get 10 million pounds extra benefits. Forget the 10 million pounds extra benefits, 20 million is the thing that gets quoted. There was a conversation, I know it was at the session we were at and I remember Adam.
Lloyd Skinner (31:55)
Yeah. ⁓
Nige (32:02)
Bodison talking about ⁓ the ⁓ unexpected benefits of projects. They talked about the delivery of electricity through the channel between Europe and the UK, ⁓ which is something I’d not heard of before. And I thought that’s quite an interesting thing of, ⁓ do you think and ⁓ just made me think there from a point of using AI, ⁓ that we use AI to build plans, ⁓ predict what’s going on, those sort of things.
Lloyd Skinner (32:12)
Yes.
Nige (32:29)
Do think there’s an opportunity where you’ll be sitting there as a project manager, go, right, we’re building our benefits realization, we’re building our benefits value of our project. And as part of as maybe ⁓ as part of delivering through the project that you’re using AI to go, right, okay, can you ⁓ can you identify opportunities ⁓ of ⁓ non intended benefits of what we are implementing? ⁓ Could you see that something that just ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (32:55)
Yeah, ⁓ totally, totally. ⁓ I mean, even identifying the benefits and having more confidence in those benefits in the first place and also, you know, things like ⁓ it’s very mechanical exercise. If a project slipping, what effect does that have on the benefits? ⁓ Or, you you think about if I include this extra scope.
Nige (33:09)
⁓ Thank
Lloyd Skinner (33:18)
what effect does that have on the benefits and the cost and all of that good stuff as well? So, so for me this whole ⁓ intelligence ⁓ around ⁓
Nige (33:25)
Thank ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (33:29)
Project scoping, project delivery ⁓ really lends itself to AI ⁓ and ⁓ you know the challenge becomes there’s almost ⁓ how can we unlock all of that data which you know let’s face it we haven’t ⁓ configured or prepared for it to be accessible traditionally you know ⁓ so you know we might not have even documented Nige it might be half documented or you know in this person
Lloyd Skinner (33:59)
person’s head or that person’s head or those 10 people had different views but we never put them together. So there’s massive potential for AI in this. Even if it’s pour all of those documents in one place and say, tell me the contradictions in these design documents. ⁓ I was on a call the other day with an organization who’s done ⁓ absolutely ⁓ unbelievable stuff about litigation ⁓ in the construction sector.
Nige (34:28)
you
Lloyd Skinner (34:29)
Hot topic yeah costs millions if not hundreds of millions on certain projects and all they were doing was pouring all of the data in a knowledge base and by all of data I mean project design documents BIM documents ⁓ emails ⁓ Teams chatter and they were basically saying pull out contradictions. Tell me what the hot topics are prepare for this particular litigation and prepare the reports
Lloyd Skinner (34:59)
⁓ they were saving hundreds of thousands of pounds with litigation lawyers. Yeah, so it ⁓ wasn’t the end step, yeah, they were still bringing the lawyers in at the end, but it was the preparation step, know, very much so. You even back to your example right at the beginning, you know, that first pass of preparing for that workshop, preparing for that litigation, what a fantastic opportunity. Now, you think about if you could then apply that same logic at the design stage,
Lloyd Skinner (35:29)
⁓ Now wouldn’t that be fantastic and and the design I mean including the benefits pieces as ⁓ well So so yeah, the short answer to your question is is is yeah, I think there’s huge benefits there ⁓ It is interesting you were talking about the the government projects and and you know, think I think ⁓ I totally concur the headline grabbers You know the Daily Mail’s of the world will always jump on that. I ⁓
Nige (35:36)
Thanks. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (35:59)
did some analysis of last year’s, it’s called GMPP, so the government’s major project portfolio. ⁓ And ⁓ I can tell you, yes, there was some big headline grabbers, HS2 probably being the most well known, but when you look under the cover, a lot of those projects are overspending significantly. Now I know some of the people and I know they’re doing a fantastic job to try and address that, but it goes back to projects are not ⁓ easy.
Lloyd Skinner (36:29)
Yeah, anybody that thinks it’s not a profession, you know that that thinks that you can just pop something in overnight Yeah, it is not an easy job to do and that’s why I love Adam Boddison from the APM He’s always talking about making sure that we are a profession Why aren’t we at the same level as accountants? Why aren’t we at the same level as lawyers and I love that, you know And I think over time we will see that you know as we get to this moment where
Lloyd Skinner (36:59)
People realize that everything we do are projects. Everything a company does is a project. ⁓ yeah, so for me, I ⁓ really chimed to you about the headline grabbers versus the benefits, but I do know those people are working really hard to address that using AI as well.
Nige (37:22)
want to just just give me and the audience a little pocket view of what obviously Grayfly is is your business and your baby that you’ve started and there’s a load of benefit that you can deliver out to projects and and maybe some of the listeners don’t necessarily have the influence I don’t know maybe to come and grab the software for but some of the the thinking behind it and the approaches in there they may be able to apply that some of that so what tell us what is what is Grayfly what does do?
Lloyd Skinner (37:53)
⁓ So we’ve been basically researching and development AI products. ⁓ Our flagship product is called Intelligent Project Prediction. ⁓ So hopefully, you know, it gives you an instant idea. It does what it says on the tin. ⁓ We were really fortunate that in November we actually won project of the year ⁓ for both innovation and technology at the APM Awards. ⁓ So we’re currently holders of the 2024 ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (38:23)
project of the year. ⁓ was absolutely life’s greatest moment night. Not quite as good as when I scored that goal in the semi-finals of the under 12 cup from outside the box, but it was up there. I was very happy man as it were. ⁓ the core product, IPP, intelligent project prediction, what it does is it ingests ⁓ data from the host organization and the
Lloyd Skinner (38:53)
First time you do it, you’re trying to grab as much high quality historical project data ⁓ and we do that so that we can train the machine learning models, the algorithms to be able to predict accurately. ⁓ When we bring that data in, as well as doing a data maturity assessment, because we obviously want to work with the customer to improve the data quality back to generally the relationship between
Lloyd Skinner (39:23)
data maturity quality ⁓ and ⁓ prediction accuracy and project success. So there’s a broad, ⁓ crude relationship. we want to work with an organization to improve their data. When we bring it in the first time, what we do is we create what we call an exploratory data analysis about it. So those people in this world is like descriptive analytics. ⁓ What happens? Why does it happen? ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (39:53)
⁓ Are they early? Are they late? And what are ⁓ the reasons behind that? Is it, I don’t know, all projects, I’m based in Bournemouth, all projects in Bournemouth are always late, ⁓ as opposed to projects in Birmingham, which are always early, you know? So what are what we call the features associated with that? ⁓ And what that allows us to do is to set the KPIs ⁓ around the portfolio that we are going to attempt
Lloyd Skinner (40:23)
to improve through the adoption of our systems. ⁓ So the hardest bit is getting that data ready, training the machine learning models, yeah, configuring the backend and how you’re going to visualize that data as well. So we then take on a regular basis ingest of project progress, yeah, we compare them to this morph of data ⁓ using machine learning algorithms and we say, ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (40:52)
the most likely outcome of your project yeah so it said so that’s the most likely budget that’s the most likely schedule and we compare that to what’s being reported so that you can then ⁓ act upon it yeah now what I’ve described there I’m talking about live projects but of course if you know the patterns in the data you can apply that to projects not yet started so if you know projects out of Bournemouth are always late and you’re proposing
Lloyd Skinner (41:22)
a project out of Bournemouth, then you know that there’s a chance that that also may be late as well. Now, obviously I’m giving a very basic example of one geographical feature there. There are more features associated with it. So that’s our core product, if you like, is prediction about live and not yet started projects ⁓ and the why question as well. ⁓ More recently, what we’ve done is said, well, you know, if we look
Lloyd Skinner (41:52)
at this what and why, the third leg of that is well what can I do about it? What’s the point, you know, it’s like many years ago they used to say don’t just give me the problems, give me the answers, give me the solutions as well. So we play into that ⁓ and as of today the way we play into that is first of all we look at those features so we will make a recommendation for every project as to how to bring it back to the budget. So if I go back to my basic example, this
Nige (41:59)
Yeah. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (42:22)
one, we’re suggesting move it from Bournemouth to Birmingham because there will be a saving. ⁓ Of course, ⁓ it’s data driven, ⁓ so there needs to be a piece of work outside of the system to check whether you can’t just drop Bournemouth and move to Birmingham. Sometimes it’s not that easy, but data driven, that’s what your data is telling you. ⁓ The other bit there ⁓ is this challenge that you and I really know about, which is things like lessons learned and risk.
Nige (42:28)
⁓ Yeah.
Lloyd Skinner (42:52)
Disks are shelf-wet. Yeah, so it’s about unlocking that data and serving the right lessons ⁓ to the right projects as ⁓ early as possible ⁓ in the lifecycle. And to do that, we match through features, but we also use Gen.ai to start summarizing, objectifying both lessons and mitigations as it were. So that’s what we’re doing today. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (43:22)
Hopefully that makes ⁓ sense to your audience and to your listeners obviously. ⁓
Nige (43:28)
Yeah, they probably make more sense than me, but yeah.
Lloyd Skinner (43:32)
What happened? Why? What can I do about it?
Nige (43:35)
Yeah, and think it’s really interesting that they took touch on lessons learned there is something that for four years in every good quality project, ⁓ you do your lessons learned at the end of the session, you go end of phase, you’ll do a lessons learned and ⁓ agile started to ⁓ get that retrospective. So you’re doing it more frequently ⁓ on those sort of projects, which is really good. ⁓ And it’s great for those projects, because you’ll ⁓ learn that lesson, and you’ll adjust it in the next phase or your next sprint.
Nige (44:06)
problem I find is that when you start a project, you don’t, there isn’t a button to press to go, where’s all the data for all these projects that are like this one? To give me ⁓ input person who knows that is the people who’ve done it before. And if you’re lucky enough to have ⁓ Jenny who has worked on this kind of project in every instance that we’ve done it, and knows it upside down inside out, ⁓ but then they go off sec, ⁓ you’re up shit Craig. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (44:16)
Yeah, exactly.
Lloyd Skinner (44:33)
Yeah. ⁓
Nige (44:35)
Whereas if you’ve captured that lessons learned, captured those variations that you’re talking about, ⁓ and you can press, I’d love to press that button going in my organization. ⁓ When I’m doing a project like this with these parameters, Bournemouth, Birmingham, all these different ones, ⁓ what is a typical outcome ⁓ that and what were the, what were the stumbling blocks even, even if it didn’t give me an outcome, if it said, ⁓ think about these five stumbling blocks, ⁓ because these are what the lessons learned and you got
Nige (45:03)
All right, let’s make sure that we don’t have ⁓ this person on that thing or we don’t use this supplier. Those sort of things you just don’t know if you don’t know.
Lloyd Skinner (45:09)
Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ Well, that’s exactly what we’re playing into there. It’s exactly what we’re playing to. ⁓ I remember when, ⁓ back in the day, when I ran projects.
Lloyd Skinner (45:24)
that ⁓ what I used to do is ⁓ over my experience, yeah, I had a couple of things. I had ⁓ a ⁓ vanilla work breakdown structure and a vanilla risk log so that I could accelerate ⁓ creating the work breakdown structure or the risk log. It’s the same principle in my mind, yeah? ⁓ I’m just doing it in a ⁓ digital format to be able to get there a lot quicker. I still need to validate.
Lloyd Skinner (45:54)
⁓ I still need to validate those ⁓ risks. As of today, I do as an individual. ⁓ So again, for me, it’s about unlocking that knowledge and that could have ⁓ huge benefits for an organization to fast track getting to whatever the design challenge is or whatever the discussion is. So for me, ⁓ that’s the point there. So everything you describe, that’s exactly where we’re
Lloyd Skinner (46:24)
playing that. ⁓
Nige (46:25)
Brilliant. It’s placed my… I wouldn’t say I’m a detailed person, but I do like data. And I do like to have empirical data and be able to… It’s my training as an accountant for 10 years. And that’s probably where come in. Being able to go, I know what that number is. I know why that does that. Or here’s something I need to understand. Those are the things… Well, the value is that exception reporting. Because one of the things I do find is, and I have done for many years, is…
Lloyd Skinner (46:40)
Yeah.
Nige (46:54)
a lot of reporting, lot of analysis and a lot of things you get through ⁓ the ⁓ project management profession or finance profession is a lot of data ⁓ and not a lot of exception data. ⁓ And it’s the exceptions that ⁓ are the things that you need to focus your time on. ⁓ But being able to find those exceptions means you’ve got to do lots of analysis yourself and go through it or know or experience. And then that leaves you in a position where ⁓ you miss things.
Lloyd Skinner (47:23)
Yeah.
Nige (47:23)
Whereas if we’re able to pull out those exceptions, pull out ⁓ the, ⁓ I suppose that the question around causality and ⁓ correlation, ⁓ that’s ⁓ again, that’s the hallucination thing you’re talking about, ⁓ whoever it was, Adam again, talking about ⁓ the line on people’s necks, isn’t it, on photos and that causality and correlation kind of conversation, ⁓ being able to sit.
Lloyd Skinner (47:32)
Yes.
Nige (47:48)
If you’re trying to solve every one of those, but seeing the ones that are important, the ones that are going to impact you and you can go, actually, no, it’s all right. That’s just, that just, it’s just, ⁓ just happens to be that all of our projects in Bournemouth ⁓ are worse than the ones in Birmingham. And actually ⁓ we’ve realized it isn’t anything to do with that. It’s to do with the fact that we’ve got this person from Bournemouth working on them and it’s not the geographic location. It’s the individual’s ⁓ Understanding that underneath. ⁓ I just.
Lloyd Skinner (48:11)
It is the person. Yeah, there’s a couple of things there you’re saying that is probably worth chatting about. One is, you know, depth.
Nige (48:17)
loading the data up is crazy thing, isn’t it? ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (48:28)
if you like. So we know the deeper that you get into a project, the more unique that project is, because it’s got that person, because it’s got that time of the day. So I think one of the risks in this, or one of the challenges is that projects are unique, but at a certain level, they tend not to be.
Lloyd Skinner (48:58)
And I remember being taught by a chap, ⁓ my first other big job when I left ⁓ university, I got a job consulting at ⁓ Telco actually. And the chap there was a real hard-nosed Yorkshire man who delivered big projects and ⁓ directors you like. And he always taught me about ⁓ succeeding projects, a majority of the work was about creating the right
Nige (49:01)
Thank ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (49:28)
environment for success ⁓ and that work on the 80-20 rule, Lloyd, because if you get 80%, if you get your big risks under control, the little ones will just bounce off and you’ll manage them at action level rather than significant level. ⁓ you know, ⁓ and I know these are words and translating that, where is that bar ⁓ of data and information is not necessarily easy. ⁓ But for me, that’s been part of the
Lloyd Skinner (49:58)
⁓ guided ⁓ analysis that we did and that was the second part. So for me it goes back to this human technology dimension which is guided analysis. So in our solutions we have this principle called guided analysis. In other words we try and lead you to look at the right challenge and your example of Bournemouth is really good there because we’re saying actually you’ve got a problem in Bournemouth and according to your data these are the attributes of those projects where you’re
Lloyd Skinner (50:27)
Creating challenging Bournemouth. What you now need to do is go and investigate. ⁓ and and and and by the way Bournemouth when you look at the cross your portfolio is costing you this much Therefore focus on Bournemouth not focus on this other type of projects over here Yeah, but ⁓ you know go back to our five-year window in the short term The human needs to go and get that you know, they need to go and investigate further They need to go and understand that as well and then
Nige (50:44)
Yeah. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (50:57)
you’re back into, you know, where does bias stop and start? yeah, levels plus guided analysis. That’s, know, ⁓ we’re not quite there. The computer’s not quite taking over ⁓ every element of what we do yet, aren’t you, though? ⁓
Nige (51:12)
Yeah, I can see that. ⁓ One final question for me, suppose. ⁓ Obviously, you’re going into lots of different organisations and looking at adopting these things. ⁓ I can guess what the answer is. But what ⁓ do you see is the hardest challenge for organisations to be able to adopt these ⁓ kind of top technologies and your technology and that sort of stuff? ⁓ I’m assuming there are other competitors that are trying to do the same sort of thing. So it’s kind of a,
Lloyd Skinner (51:31)
So, so, so, so, so, so,
Lloyd Skinner (51:35)
Well, every day more competitors, you know, what’s going on there. But anyway, that’s a different debate. me, you know, I like to categorize them onto ⁓ both the technical barriers and then the human barriers. So on the technical barriers, because we’re talking about machine learning, it’s about the data and making sure that you’ve got the sufficient high quality data to train machine learning models. Now, the challenge there
Lloyd Skinner (52:05)
⁓ is depending on the type of organization, the legacy data may not exist. Yeah. So if ⁓ you’re building a new city in the Middle East or something, and you’ve never built that city anywhere else in the Middle East, where’s your training data, as it were? So again, you can unpack that and mitigate that. ⁓ But part of the challenge is the historical data and along with that point about did we actually configure that
Lloyd Skinner (52:35)
historical data well in the first place. So once you’ve got that data and worked out what data you’re going to use, actually, you know, and you may need to integrate various data sources and all of that sort of stuff. So there’s definitely a sort of technology thread through this, but, know, as an organization, we’re becoming smarter and smarter in the way that you can do that in an accelerated fashion.
Lloyd Skinner (53:05)
from the point of the first moment to the accurate prediction, ⁓ that’s part of our everyday lives that we live to try and make quicker. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (53:14)
The second part of the constraint is actually the harder one, I think, which is the human side. ⁓ So, so, so, so you get from the, ⁓ you know, all of that typical stakeholder management analysis stuff ⁓ is as important, you know, so you’ll get, you know, people that are high influences with high impact that either believe or don’t believe. Yeah. So you need to create a change management or an adoption plan. Yeah. So you need.
Lloyd Skinner (53:43)
you know, back to our example earlier that I can give you the best prediction, but the exec can ignore it and go, look, I’ve got my pet project over here, as it were. so, so, so, those adoption plans and addressing resistance to change or, or, ⁓ or, ⁓ or, or, know, even how you train out the use of systems and all of that sort of stuff, especially when, you know, people are increasingly nervous about, you know, is AI going to take my job? ⁓ You know, all of that stuff.
Lloyd Skinner (54:13)
as well. you need… ⁓
Nige (54:14)
⁓ Right. It’s the new technologies that resistance, isn’t ⁓ it? All new technologies, there’s always going to be, it has ⁓ over the hundreds of years.
Lloyd Skinner (54:23)
⁓ Since you and I did projects, ⁓ it’s just that it’s coming to the formal in this particular AI world as it were. So ⁓ for me, again, I’m not teaching you suck eggs here, but it often gets forgotten about in ⁓ the same way it does on a project. ⁓ depending on who you’re talking to, is change management a subset of projects? Is it ⁓ even or whatever?
Lloyd Skinner (54:53)
⁓ All I’m saying is you must have an adoption work stream as part of any of ⁓ this AI project management process. ⁓
Nige (55:03)
Brilliant. Well, I noticed him we’re coming up on, no, knocking on the hours ⁓ chat here and I’ve ⁓ taken us topics all over the place as ever. ⁓ If, ⁓ what’s there anything that coming onto the show that you had in your back your mind to all I want to have a chat about that. And then we’ve not got anywhere near it. And you want to just share ⁓ that or share ⁓ a nugget of information for people to think about.
Lloyd Skinner (55:28)
Yeah.
Lloyd Skinner (55:29)
Well, first of all, I must say I didn’t realise you’d written the book Lies, Damn Lies and Status Reporting. I love that. ⁓ I love that. ⁓ you know, because obviously I was thinking you were going to say ⁓ and statistics, but, you know, ⁓ but yeah, I love that. And there was a whole thought around that that we could have. ⁓ For me, I guess that the point that I get asked ⁓ all of the time is as a project manager,
Nige (55:43)
Yeah. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (55:59)
you know, what should I be doing, you know, to think about this? And for me, there’s sort of different lenses there. I would hope that as a project manager, you are naturally inquisitive around this subject. It’s hard to ignore it. I mean, we’re being hammered by all the professional bodies. I know about you, obviously, my LinkedIn is all about AI, whether it’s around projects or generally. So I would encourage
Lloyd Skinner (56:29)
encourage anybody to be inquisitive. ⁓ the second part of that is to build up your knowledge and, you know, whether that is looking for the appropriate accreditation or training courses. mean, LinkedIn does a load of free stuff, YouTube, there’s lots of whether it’s following certain companies or certain individuals to see what they’re talking about ⁓ or being part of networking groups. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (56:59)
All of that stuff I would encourage you to do. The other thing I would encourage you to do is make sure that your organization is having an active conversation as to what they’re planning to do about AI and project management. What is their AI readiness plan? What is their transformation plan as well? So for me, the one thing I just wanted to get across there was to encourage anybody who’s listening, who wants to be relevant in
Lloyd Skinner (57:29)
the future to get on this AI and project management bike. ⁓ just the last thing, I appreciate we’re all so damn busy doing our projects. ⁓ So this is a bit like, I’m sort of saying, training courses where we always put them off unless the company forces us to do it. So you probably have to find the time and prioritise it above others. ⁓ Last thing,
Lloyd Skinner (57:59)
there is don’t get lost in a gen AI hole as well. is a lot bigger than just gen AI.
Nige (58:06)
⁓ Yeah, you can you can get to that point where you end up and I started it was right. ⁓ What pictures can I generate of what ⁓ using discord or gen I or any other so yeah, so I kind of yeah, and I sit there thinking, why, why, why am I bothering with that? I don’t need to do that. But it’s quite interesting to learn that the scale of the complexity of its capability and therefore, ⁓ from my point of view, if it can do ⁓ it, I one of the ones I ⁓ shocked me was my
Nige (58:36)
popped a bit of audio into ⁓ an audio ⁓ mimic of me and then did text to speech and it mimicked me and I was like, ⁓ yeah, I can only just tell it’s not me. It was. ⁓ It’s impressive, it’s scary and now I imagine it’s even better if I put the video in it’s, I know it can do the video even better. mean, it’s just, yeah, this is amazing.
Lloyd Skinner (58:45)
That’s scary. Is that scary or is that good? I don’t know. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (58:59)
It’d probably give us better answers than you and I have had, Nigel, as well, you know, so. ⁓
Nige (59:05)
⁓ I might try and do that. I’ll see if I can pump this into it and get it to do it right. Can you do another interview on this with me and Lloyd? ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (59:14)
Jimmy, you what, I’d love that. ⁓ I’d love that. Get these guys talking about, I don’t know, football is obviously one of my passions, but ⁓ maybe not obviously, but ⁓ you know, I would love that. ⁓ And for me, ⁓ you know, that goes back to that accessibility point as well. But, you know, again, this is just my view is that, ⁓ you know… ⁓
Nige (59:22)
⁓ Salmon fishing. ⁓
Nige (59:31)
Yeah. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (59:41)
We as professional project managers, yeah, it’s very easy to go down in rabbit holes. Before you know it, you’re the AI expert on this platform, that platform, know, create requirements, create use cases, ⁓ no, no, no, no, no, hold on. You know, our role as project management is about facilitating and bringing people together to drive the desired ⁓ design and outcomes ⁓ of projects. ⁓ Whereas, you know,
Lloyd Skinner (60:11)
⁓ It’s almost like, you know, I don’t know everything about Microsoft Word There’s a certain level that I know which gets me by you know If I want somebody to make the best-looking report then you know, I’d use an expert in that so so this this is that sort of Danger if you like that we end up being jack-of-all-trades master of non So so so for me, it’s a bit like, you know, what’s your company doing? Because that’s where you should be taking your your stick
Nige (60:33)
Yeah.
Lloyd Skinner (60:41)
from as well but you as an individual make sure you’re upskilling yourself. ⁓
Nige (60:46)
That’s brilliant advice. ⁓ Thank you so much for your time, Lloyd. If people want to get in touch, find out more about GenFlight AI, Gen, Grafite AI, think. We’re mixing up everything ⁓ there. What’s the best thing to do to get a…
Lloyd Skinner (60:55)
⁓ Rave my area. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (61:02)
⁓ So there’s a couple of things, you know, I’m a big LinkedIn user. So you’ll find me on LinkedIn, you’ll find Greyfly on LinkedIn, start there. There’s obviously a website, there’s calls to, you you can get in touch that way, but LinkedIn is probably the preferred. ⁓
Lloyd Skinner (61:20)
⁓ vehicle or channel as it were. There’s lots of great stuff on our website as well, know, ⁓ lots of downloads, lots of recordings, ⁓ including Ricardo Vargas ⁓ and others as well. So there’s some interesting stuff. So back to being that inquisitive. Yeah, so LinkedIn, would suggest, Nigel.
Nige (61:44)
⁓ Well, thank you very much for giving me so much time. yeah, ⁓ lot of food for thought for people, maybe open people’s eyes to ⁓ the next phase. I think the advice of ⁓ it’s coming, get ready, ⁓ get in there and get and understand it is really, really good. ⁓ But you have fantastic rest of your day and a wonderful weekend.
Lloyd Skinner (62:05)
Thank you, Nigel, thank you for having me.
Nige (62:09)
My pleasure. Cheers, mate.
Brenda’s Transcript
Nige (00:00)
Today I am delighted to welcome Brenda Neff-Addle to the show. And I’ve said her name wrong straight away. I was panicking about it and I’ve done it wrong. Brenda is a relentless entrepreneur, an international award-winning human resources, human results professional ⁓ and a three-time best-selling author. ⁓ Only does she help business leaders get the people side of their business right. But she’s also a specialist in crisis management, ⁓ government contracting,
Nige (00:30)
HR compliance ⁓ and mentoring to rising, ⁓ mentor to rising entrepreneurs, business leaders, HR champions and professionals. ⁓ She’s been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Inc., as well as US News and World Reports. ⁓ And she started out as a HR C, HR Sprout ⁓ after solid 14 year career in retail management. We’ll find out about that. ⁓ And ⁓ so Brenda, welcome to the show. I’m puncturing your intro there.
Nige (00:58)
I’m sure you can ⁓ give me bit more detail. ⁓ Like I say, welcome to the show. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (00:59)
Sorry.
Brenda Neckvatal (01:04)
Thank you. We’ll just blame it on the cycle in the moon. That’s all right. ⁓ Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.
Nige (01:09)
⁓ It’s great to have you on. ⁓ Just tell people a little bit more about the background, where you’re from, what you do, those sort of things. Just bit more about who you are. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (01:22)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I’m over here in the United States and we’re in the East Coast in Virginia, right on right in the Virginia Beach area. So I’m about for reference and context, I’m about a good three hour drive south from Washington, D.C. So it’s you know, politics can get a little spicy down here just as well as it does everywhere else in the United States. And Lord knows they are loading the pepper right now. So
Nige (01:27)
⁓ I’m ready. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (01:50)
with our new president. yeah, no, I’ve been practicing in the field of human resources now combined total within my entire career is about a little over 30 years. You know, lot of the stuff that I did in the retail industry prior to actually permanently taking a seat and going that trajectory had a lot to do with it. So the big thing that I’ve always focused in on, wasn’t planned.
Nige (01:53)
Yeah. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (02:19)
It just kind of happened that way. turned out that I had a very, very strong knack of being able to, and there’s my director of security in the background, ⁓ being able to actually identify patterns and patterns of behavior. So ⁓ when an employee would do something ⁓ that was outside of the lines, ⁓ my ability to actually figure out, like, you know, I can look at a project and I can literally, like, ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (02:45)
go backwards to the starting point and figure out how do we get here? Let’s ⁓ and go backwards. So like, ⁓ what do they call that? Remanning it, right? So I can do the same thing with human behavior as well, because I’ve seen it ⁓ so many times and it’s amazing how many times people repeat the same thing, even though they’re not in the same situations, right? ⁓ Like if I see, you know, John, Jill and Jack doing this and, ⁓ it’s consistent, ⁓ can tell you that
Brenda Neckvatal (03:15)
Mike, Nick and Sam are likely to do it as well. Right? It’s that kind of thing. It’s like figuring, figuring that stuff out. So, ⁓ you know, I have, I call, I refer to my phone as the, the Hey Brenda hotline. So when that thing goes off and I have somebody that says, Hey Brenda, I got a, I got a person who’s, or I got a man or I got an employee who’s blah, blah, blah, blah. So it’s usually like a consistent series of the same kinds of things over and over and over and over again, which
Brenda Neckvatal (03:44)
Has helped me figure out again patterns that way I can best advise my clients, right? Probably a really good example is we had You know, I posted on my social media today, know mark had called up and he had an employee that seems to be She’s really good The problem is is that she magically seems to take him around and round and round in circles when it comes to him holding her accountable and he stops and he’s thinking to himself like is this me like am I going crazy like have I lost my touch
Nige (04:00)
We’ll
Brenda Neckvatal (04:14)
And I’m like, no, you just happen to be up against somebody who’s really good at doing that. And by the way, here’s how you interrupt it. Right. And so he’s trying to do other things that he quickly found out weren’t working. And instead of making the matter worse, which is one of his biggest fears, he reached out, gave a call and he says, hey, can we talk through this? And I’m like, yep, absolutely. ⁓ And so that’s where I wound up finding myself becoming ⁓ being really good at crisis management. I’m just one of those weirdos that just seems to know what to do.
Brenda Neckvatal (04:42)
And so I’m not afraid of making a decision ⁓ and an executive decision. I’m not even afraid to tell executives to not do something that they shouldn’t be doing. Right. So, ⁓ you know, in a helpful manner, because it’s all about really, you know, taking care of their interests as well as the employee. So it’s finding that delicate balance between the two. ⁓ That is always a challenge. So. ⁓
Nige (05:06)
It’s interesting with the ⁓ security ⁓ side. Just think about the sort of HR side of it. It’s something that is, ⁓ it’s an interesting dilemma, isn’t it? Because obviously, ⁓ the HR organization is there for the organization. ⁓ And whilst there is an element of employee protection and support there, but fundamentally, they are there to serve.
Brenda Neckvatal (05:09)
Yeah, he’s all full of it right now.
Nige (05:34)
the organization. that’s where their priority has to be. ⁓ As a ⁓ profession, it must be really difficult to hold that balance between the two ⁓ between those ⁓ individual priorities, because obviously, it’s the company that is the king, like it’s always but how do you do you find ⁓ that sort of thing when you’ve had situations where it’s ⁓ put you in a bit difficult question, so often, putting you in a in that ⁓ conflict? ⁓
Nige (06:02)
I’m sure you have all ⁓ the people you’ve dealt with here in that conflict position. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (06:07)
Yeah, you know, so I look at it from a very strong ethical standpoint. ⁓ And, you know, we have to look at, first off, we have to look at the whole situation. And if we don’t have, like, if we’re not asking good questions, we’re not getting good answers, which means that we’re making decisions off of incorrect, incomplete, or even bad information. And we can’t have that happen. ⁓ You know, sometimes one minute detail that a manager has not shared can literally change the entire situation.
Nige (06:22)
or you have any help, any support, any opportunity to do it.
Brenda Neckvatal (06:36)
I mean, they would think like it has no bearing, but you’d be surprised at it. And more often than not, the ones that they think don’t have a bearing actually are the missing piece of the puzzle. But, you know, when it like I’ll give you an example years ago, I had this a long time ago, I had a CEO, we had an employee that we caught lying and intimidating intentionally another employee. And the CEO has zero tolerance for something like that. And as do I. Right. But.
Nige (06:57)
⁓ Thank
Brenda Neckvatal (07:03)
You he immediately wanted to fire him and I said, well, I said, look, here’s the deal. I strongly believe first off, let’s take a look at the situation for what it is. You basically have a bully that’s just trying to intimidate a younger employee. But you know what? The guy doesn’t have much of a spine, which is the whole reason why he’s being a bully. And nobody disagreed with that. We all know him to back down from levels of authority. And I said, you know, I honestly think there’s two things that we can generate from this. I don’t think termination.
Brenda Neckvatal (07:33)
Really is the first thing that we should be considering the first thing that we can see what we should consider is first off giving him a chance to rectify this and change it because the guy has institutional knowledge, you know, he does produce really good quality work, but You know what? There’s nothing wrong with us letting him feel the pressure of his mistake for a little while to give him a moment of pause and realize that he screwed up And if he can turn it around great in addition to that
Nige (07:55)
⁓ Thank
Brenda Neckvatal (07:58)
We really don’t have a lot of documentation on his prior performance and I think we might be up against a couple of challenges So I really don’t want to go there if you guys are open to that ⁓ And they said well, what do you recommend? I said well first off like I said we allow him to feel the pressure of his of his decisions Which basically means is that the company goes silent overnight? In other words because he and his boss had a really close relationship. I said he and the boss don’t get a chance to talk
Brenda Neckvatal (08:27)
He sits there in quiet has a little adult timeout to realize he’s really screwed up and he is kind of looking at his career down the barrel of a gun But we have no intention and there’s nothing wrong with giving somebody a moment of pause to experience that So when he came back it so they agreed ⁓ I said but I do recommend that we document this as a final warning in other words. We’re not tolerating this ever again ⁓ He’s gonna have a long road to hoe to fix the problem
Brenda Neckvatal (08:57)
But this isn’t our problem to fix, this is his. He created this monster and he has every opportunity to actually rectify it. He’s gonna eat a lot of crow and I think that’s a really, really good dose of medicine. So the CEO thought about it for few minutes. He goes, you know what? He says, I really wanna let the other guy, says, but I really like your approach to this. I said, all right, then we’re gonna go in, here’s our plan. We sat down with them and the very first thing, and he was, you could just tell the man was sweating bullets.
Brenda Neckvatal (09:27)
Right? And I told him, said, look, I said, I’m not going to let you, I’m not going to have you sit here wondering what this conversation is going to lead to. I’m just going to tell you right now, we’re not terminating you. And he’s like, ⁓ thank God. I said, however, ⁓ that comes with a price tag and that’s what we’re going to talk about. Right? And so, you know, that’s what I’m referring to is doing what’s in the best interest of the company and doing what’s in the best interest of the employee. Right? It’s not fair. And some people will use those like,
Brenda Neckvatal (09:54)
⁓ Keeping the employee on the edge throughout the entire conversation to find out whether he’s got a job or not. That’s not right Just just be upfront you direct. Hey, listen, we’re not terminating you ⁓ but ⁓ You’re going to fix your problem Not us you right you’ve damaged your working relationships here, but you can turn them around and I told him I said I have every confidence in the world that you can do this I said and the reason why is because I’ve seen it firsthand, you know, so
Nige (10:07)
Yeah.
Brenda Neckvatal (10:23)
I said, you’re a smart guy. You’ve got the right kind of pizzazz. So let’s you know, we’re going to give you an opportunity to do this. But just understand if you pull this stunt again, we’re done. And he goes, yes, ma’am. And a year later, he’s like, you know, he came back and he says, I got to tell you something. He says, I know the CEO wanted to fire me because his boss told him so. And he said, the fact that you went to bat for me, I didn’t expect that at all.
Nige (10:35)
Yeah.
Brenda Neckvatal (10:51)
And I said, well, look what you’ve been able to accomplish. I said, you know, people are now feeling more comfortable around you. They trust talking to you. You have a better relationship with the very person that you were messing with. I said, ⁓ this isn’t us that did it. He said, this is you. says, yeah, but you taught me the hard lesson. He says, and I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate that. So sometimes adults, we kind of need a hard lesson every now and again, especially when we go that far out of bounds.
Nige (11:08)
Thank
Nige (11:10)
Thank you.
Nige (11:16)
Yeah, it’s interesting because ⁓ the ⁓ in some ways it’s easier for an organization ⁓ and for lots of organizations and performance management is an interesting topic that you could spend several hours talking about but ⁓ it’s easier to get rid of someone or there’s two ways of it either one way people ignore it ⁓ and then just let the behaviors carry on that’s an easy way because if they’re a high performer then the justification is there ⁓ or
Nige (11:44)
As you say, you need you can get them out the door because then you don’t have to mess about. You just need to make sure that you’ve got the right ⁓ piece of paper or put a compromise agreement in or whatever you do. ⁓ Whereas actually the longer term benefit for both ⁓ parties could be that investment as ⁓ you’ve done there ⁓ to try and bring that coach that person, ⁓ get them through. ⁓ get the company gets the benefit of that knowledge, that person and a good person there.
Brenda Neckvatal (11:51)
Hmm.
Brenda Neckvatal (11:59)
Hmm.
Nige (12:13)
And that person gets the chance to be able to redeem themselves and be a good part of the organization. ⁓ it’s hard to do, isn’t it, as an organization? especially in ⁓ most subjects like that, where ⁓ bullying is really, really… ⁓ I think it’s always been in the workplace. ⁓ I think it’s called out now, obviously, for lots of different reasons. It’s ⁓ actually called out now. But it is really a difficult ⁓ topic. ⁓
Nige (12:42)
⁓ it’s ⁓ immediately you think, right, that’s just not, you can’t ⁓ carry on with that. But then it’s all about those ⁓ subtle pieces of what the actual resolution needs to be. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (12:53)
Yeah, and you have to take the person into consideration as well You know you have to determine whether this person and their prior performance in their prior behavior and their consistent behavior is Actually telling you is this person ⁓ you know able to go through that level of rehabilitation self-rehabilitation ⁓ Or are they in the category of they’re not a matter of if they’re a matter of when you want to get rid of them, right?
Brenda Neckvatal (13:20)
And in this case, this guy wasn’t like this. was ⁓ like he was always messing with people. He’s always fun and with people like he’s always pulling their leg. He’s a jokester. Right. ⁓ The man did not have a malicious bone in his body. And we know that. Then if you’ve got somebody who has a little bit more of that narcissistic personality where ⁓ they’re not happy, if everybody else is, you know, happier than them.
Brenda Neckvatal (13:44)
⁓ They’re constantly seeking external validation of some kind and they’re just like high drama high maintenance They don’t there’s a certain thing that they don’t get and that is is that their actions or what causes where they are today This guy has always known that his actions create his environment Because he’ll always clean up the joking part with you Well when he came out in our conversation and he says well I was just joking when I said that and I’m like no you weren’t
Brenda Neckvatal (14:14)
And he knew I had him. You know? So, ⁓ when you do that, when you call that person out that has ⁓ that really true strong ego challenge that I was just talking about, ⁓ you can sit there and say, well I was just joking. And if you go, no you weren’t, and then they will justify the hell out of it, right? ⁓ Or you can stop them and say, well be funnier next time. And then they get the point that, okay I crossed a line.
Brenda Neckvatal (14:42)
But that has a very short lifespan. This other person right here totally turned everything around 180 degrees. So it’s all dependent upon whether you believe the person is capable or willing to do something like that. And that’s all based off of how well you know them and their patterns of behavior and what you see them doing. And if you see them never taking accountability, standing up, fixing something that they knew was wrong or saying, my gosh, it totally screwed up, then you know what? ⁓ You don’t have a chance with them. And an exit would have been appropriate.
Nige (14:59)
Thank ⁓
Nige (15:09)
you
Brenda Neckvatal (15:12)
But if they’re willing to, know, if they are relatively somewhat of an adult, they might do it begrudgingly, but they’ll do it to correct themselves.
Nige (15:23)
That’s interesting. It’s that. ⁓ Yeah, give that, ⁓ it’s not that, give that second chance. It’s ⁓ behaving the way that is appropriate depending on the situation. can get that, the whole thing of joking and ⁓ banter, bants and sort of stuff that ⁓ people just don’t, ⁓ you can do it and you can kind of go, hang on, I didn’t consider how someone might take it. ⁓ And like you say, not be… ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (15:24)
Yeah.
Nige (15:49)
You can have something which isn’t meant in the slightest in the way that it’s taken and you kind of got to balance that ⁓ and work out how you deal with it. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (15:57)
Yeah, and you know, here’s a little secret nugget is that employees, good employees will totally be loyal to your principles and not your preferences, right? So if our principle in this example is that we’re not gonna stand for that level of in, you know, you’re outside of integrity, you’re communicating poorly, we’re giving you an opportunity to correct yourself. And if they do it,
Nige (16:01)
Thank
Brenda Neckvatal (16:23)
That reflects positively on us at first people say why do they keep this clown around? But then next thing you know, they see this person stepping up Rather than stepping out And then then when they see a noticeable change in behavior, they recognize that hey listen leadership has Has you know grasped the hold of the situation has taken care of it? So, you know, that’s the thing is like if we’re leading and executing based off of our core values based off of
Brenda Neckvatal (16:53)
Ethics then your good employees are gonna totally dial right into that and then they’re gonna understand that you know what at the end of the day This is you know, we everybody’s got their problems. We’ve got our issues We’re perfectly imperfect beings ⁓ all coming together to figure this big mess out, but you know what they’re treating us well they’re taking care of business and They’re getting rid of the people that really you know are not worth keeping around that’s how employees are gonna start looking at you and
Brenda Neckvatal (17:22)
You know, ⁓ when you hold people accountable to that, believe it or not, that’s how you actually make a connection with your employees. It really is, you people say, well, you got to connect with your employees. It’s like, that’s not about trying to win them over. Your employees, your good employees are going to connect with you again, based off of your values, based off of your ethics ⁓ and you know, not your preferences. Because if you’re inconsistent,
Brenda Neckvatal (17:50)
Then they’re going to say, well, one day they’re doing this, one day they’re doing that. Those are preferences. But if you’re consistent with everything that you do, every decision you make within your values, your employees are more apt to connect with you over that because you’re dependable, you’re predictable. They totally understand where you’re coming from. They may not always agree with it or like it, or when it gets applied to them, it may seem like a little bit of out of fit, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Right. You stand firm, you stand your ground and they know where they stand with you.
Brenda Neckvatal (18:19)
And when that happens, that’s how you make that professional connection. And that’s what it is. We need a professional connection with our people. And that happens in a number of different ways.
Nige (18:29)
⁓ I think it’s really important from ⁓ what you said there was around ⁓ setting expectations and setting boundaries ⁓ and that’s what I’ve seen in organisations where ⁓ there’s a set of things plugged on the wall but ⁓ they don’t mean a lot ⁓ and you can’t ⁓ judge them on where the boundaries are and think the thing is then is there’s no boundaries set or ⁓ typical behaviours.
Brenda Neckvatal (18:45)
Yeah. Yeah.
Nige (18:57)
that the organization is there. People will adopt their own and ⁓ go to another talk about culture generally, but ⁓ culture in organizations ⁓ isn’t what the management make it anyways, ⁓ the people and behaviors when the management aren’t there, that is the culture of your organization. ⁓ And I suppose it’s, ⁓ I think it’s where there’s ⁓ where people don’t have those boundaries set. ⁓ It’s harder because ⁓ as an individual, you hold back a little bit ⁓ or
Nige (19:27)
and too far, or you’re going to go that way and without that guidance, it’s kind of your guessing. So it makes it really difficult. And I think I’ve heard lots of things like, I mean, take it to the audience, the project management community. I think we’re very much in a difficult management position where you’re coming into an organization or work within the organization where you don’t quite often you don’t have direct control or direct
Brenda Neckvatal (19:47)
you
Nige (19:55)
management accountability for the people that you’re directing on a day-to-day basis ⁓ and ⁓ where there is ⁓ poor behavior, ⁓ performance issues, ⁓ whilst you can call it out, ⁓ you’re not the one who necessarily can deal with it. ⁓ And I ⁓ find that quite a challenge because then it’s kind of how do you filter that behavior into another ⁓ area but also maintain ⁓
Nige (20:23)
I’ve got to deliver my project. if I get rid of that person, whilst they might make my project better if they’re causing trouble, but I still need them to do it. And then someone will say, that’s the person you’ve got. Have you seen that sort of thing? then if you’re talking to my audience of project managers, what sort of view would you be seeing? What kind of things would you say for them to think about?
Brenda Neckvatal (20:39)
Yeah
Brenda Neckvatal (20:42)
So you started going down the path of expectations, right? Expectations are some of the best things that you can ever set. you know, like sometimes, like first off, expectations should never be assumed. They should always be clearly articulated. And sometimes, like your expectations may even have to be a little negotiated. So if you look at your project management, you know, it’s like, hey, listen, I need this thing done by Friday at five o’clock, right? And then you may have somebody that all of a sudden is dealing with an absolute blow up and
Brenda Neckvatal (21:12)
They say, well, hey, listen, I got like seven other things that are due Friday at five o’clock. Can I get this thing to you at Monday, eight a.m.? Yeah, sure. Not a problem. That’s the new expectation, right? ⁓ The boundary didn’t move. It was just a time thing that changed, right? ⁓ The expectation still is that thing has to be done and it has to be done within a time constraint. But. What happens is that leaders were it.
Brenda Neckvatal (21:40)
⁓ You may not have a leadership title, but if you’re leading a project if you’re leading an effort You still have to have reasonable boundaries and expectations and they don’t mean a thing unless you actually ⁓ Back them up. There’s got to be support to that right? So my ⁓ one of my old teams all they were so funny There’s I’ll give you an example here and we had this big it was a long conversation one day ⁓ over pizza that we had this
Brenda Neckvatal (22:09)
And everybody started laughing. They said, we always know where we stand with you. And I’m like, well, that’s a really good thing. But how do you know that? And they said, well, we know when we’re getting close to like your boundary, when somebody says something and you’re like, seriously? You know, like it doesn’t make sense. And it’s just like, where did you pull that one out of? And so we know when something starts to aggravate you, you always say, seriously? And now I’m laughing. Right. Because I really am like, my gosh, I do do that all the time. Right.
Brenda Neckvatal (22:37)
So it’s really funny because ⁓ like where I live I live right across the water from the largest ⁓ Naval station in the East Coast which is Norfolk Naval Station, right? And so any ship that’s in a harbor of military wise will always have a set of two boundaries or two two buoys ⁓ one is an orange set of buoys those are your warning buoys and that’s furthest away from the stern and then about 15 feet away from that are the white buoys
Nige (22:38)
Thank
Brenda Neckvatal (23:07)
So the orange buoys ⁓ is your last chance to make a good decision. ⁓ Your white buoys, if you cross that white buoy, you’re gonna get tagged with a bullet. It’s as simple as that. They’re gonna take you out. That’s just the Navy. Every Navy does something like this. This is what ours does, right? So somebody was joking with me. Her husband was in the Navy. She goes, yeah, seriously, it’s like the orange buoys that you say. So we got in this whole conversation and somebody said, yeah, but you know what? When you hit the white buoys with Brenda,
Brenda Neckvatal (23:37)
She just tells you she goes, we’re not going there. ⁓ I just started laughing ⁓ and we were I was red in the face and you know, some moment we’re joking around and laughing in this one woman yells out. goes, watch it. You’re getting close to the white boy. You know, and it was just it was just hilarious. So, you know, they know my boundaries and it’s like, hey, when I say seriously, it’s just like, OK, we’re we’re now in the danger zone. And then ⁓ when I’ve had it, like, yeah, we’re not going there. You know, like when it’s inappropriate, it’s out of context.
Brenda Neckvatal (24:06)
You’re sitting there trying to pull one over me and I’m calling you out on it. It’s like, that’s it. We’re not, you’re not able to go past me on this one, right? But even still, when I set expectations with the team, and this is what I teach people, it’s like, when you set an expectation with something, with somebody, understand that people who have more difficult personalities, the reason why they push back on that is something is in there where they’re afraid to fail.
Brenda Neckvatal (24:33)
But not only are they afraid to fail, they’re also afraid to be called out as a failure. So what do they do? They flare up, they push back, they create drama. And those are the individuals that have some of those narcissistic tendencies, or they could people that really need to have validation. ⁓ And when you ask them for specifics, like, okay, so help me understand, ⁓ what is your concern on this? They can’t give you anything solid.
Brenda Neckvatal (25:01)
It’s sound, it’s just drama. It’s round and round and round, round and round, right? That’s their ego coming out. So if you understand that if you’re dealing with something, if they come back with something substantial to say, well, if we do it this way, there’s three steps that are gonna wind up getting avoided and it’s gonna create a mess over here. And it’s actually gonna wind up making it late going to this right. They’re giving you something articulate and substantial. Now you know you got something to work with.
Brenda Neckvatal (25:27)
⁓ And it’s really, this is simple stuff when you get really good at hearing it. It’s either gonna be this or it’s gonna be that. You’re either gonna be dealing with ego or you’re be dealing with a real problem which is something that they cannot solve on their own. Otherwise, it’s their ego that becomes an obstacle.
Nige (25:43)
Yeah, ⁓ it’s interesting because I have conversations with people ⁓ over the years of ⁓ trying to get a ⁓ kind of straight answer from your project manager. You’re always looking for the ⁓ have you finished yet? What’s the task update? ⁓ And how you can go around the loop around someone not ⁓ giving you a clear view of ⁓ I think it will take this long ⁓ and I’m this far through ⁓ and that sort of ⁓
Nige (26:11)
You ask for that kind of statistic and you get a four minute explanation of why they can’t give you that statistic. And I never thought of it, actually I saw your post on LinkedIn and I never thought of it by whatever. It had essentially been a method of deflecting from answering the question for whatever underlying reason, whether they’re sitting there and they’re in the meeting and they’re going, oh crap, I never thought that. He’s asked me a question I didn’t think he was going to ask me.
Brenda Neckvatal (26:29)
Yes. ⁓
Nige (26:40)
paddling ⁓ or it’s someone as you say consciously ⁓ just don’t want to do that and I think ⁓ fortunately I think most most of times when I’ve been involved it’s been the former rather than the latter around anyone consciously doing that but I’ve never thought about the fact that ⁓ yeah that could be that behavior is about avoiding ⁓ losing faiths isn’t it and being seen to fail ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (27:02)
⁓ It is. Yeah, and it’s a really hard thing to navigate. And matter of fact, in this, I’m gonna give your listeners a gift, a free gift. And I’m gonna give you a sneak peek right now on what this free gift. So I actually have three phrases that I’ve used consistently for well over 20 years. They are magnificent, they work, ⁓ and they will help navigate some of this. So like what you were saying, Somebody gives you a one minute chasing their tail type of answer. ⁓
Nige (27:14)
Alright. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (27:32)
It’s very easy to come back and say, okay, well help me understand why that happened. Or help me understand ⁓ why this isn’t being done. ⁓ And then they start doing the chase. And then the things they say, well, you know, this thing came up. I’m like, okay, so help me understand why that thing came up. And what’s happening is that you’re not letting them off the hook. That’s also another form of accountability. ⁓ Because that’s what they’re doing. ⁓ They’re just trying to get you off of their back because they’re either unwilling to tell you something, they’re hiding something,
Brenda Neckvatal (28:02)
And if you don’t listen more and talk less, ⁓ what’s gonna happen is that you are going to be, without even realizing it, at fault for silencing them because you’re talking more instead of getting them to talk and give you the answer. And they’re gonna find comfort in hiding behind that.
Nige (28:22)
⁓ I can feel I’ve done that in sessions before now, where I’ve ⁓ done that simple, not being that four year old conversation is kind of what popped in my head there ⁓ of why. ⁓ You know, I mean, you talk to a four year old there, ⁓ why is the sky blue? Well, because there’s no, why? Why is that? Why is that? And that’s that curiosity kind of conversation, it, yeah, ⁓ digging a little bit deeper. I know I’ve let, I have let people off. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (28:27)
It’s easy to do.
Brenda Neckvatal (28:30)
you
Nige (28:52)
because I’ve gone, it’s just going to take ages for this conversation. ⁓ I’ll pick it up later ⁓ and then I don’t pick it up later and then it bites me on the earth. So yeah.
Brenda Neckvatal (28:57)
Yeah, and you know what, and some people are… ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (29:03)
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know what? A lot of people also think that if I apply and it’s, it’s a, it’s an instinctual subconscious thing. If I start to apply pressure by being the one that talks the most, it’s going to squeeze that information out of there. And in fact, what it does is you’re just putting them into a box where they don’t have to say anything at all. You’re giving them the out. Yeah.
Nige (29:22)
Yeah, that’s really, that’s really, tonight’s call was worth it. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (29:32)
And you know, but these are the, you know, the thing is, that somebody, somebody thinks that they’re doing something the right way. was just one, they don’t know who they’re up against. ⁓ And number two, they may not deal with that kind of personality on such a regular basis, or now it’s, it’s in, it’s been introduced into the environment and nobody knows how to deal with that. When in fact, it’s always seems to be the same. And this is a lot of the stuff that I work with my coaching clients on is when I get that call from that, Brenda hotline, right?
Nige (29:36)
Sorry.
Nige (29:41)
Yeah. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (30:02)
And then what they’re trying to in fact do what they think is right without realizing what they’re doing is creating more harm rather than good. And believe it or not, you can actually build a trusting relationship with somebody who’s a raging pain in the backside. Because it’s how when you meet them where they are and you don’t allow them to push you around, but you’re not nasty about it.
Nige (30:03)
So,
Nige (30:13)
you
Brenda Neckvatal (30:29)
They may resent the fact that you’re not picking up with their laying down, but you’re still maintaining trust. Like, Hey, listen, I know you can do this. I have every faith in you that you can make this happen. Yeah. Go out and get it done. And if you have problems, come find me and I’ll help you out.
Nige (30:41)
care. ⁓
Nige (30:46)
Yeah, that’s powerful as well. ⁓ You said there was three things you were going to give away for free. What was the other two?
Brenda Neckvatal (30:53)
I have no so that one thing ⁓ and in it has three phrases that I will teach you how to how to navigate So there’s three three phases and maybe a bonus But one of them was that helped me understand I mean that is like ⁓ that is my go-to phrase ⁓ when somebody comes up like hey I got a problem. It’s like okay great help me understand what’s going on. Just want to say what’s happening because they’re only gonna give me the surface stuff I want them to go deep because I’m listening for the things that
Nige (30:55)
⁓ What? ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (31:22)
they haven’t yet figured out or haven’t told me or I’m listening for how much of this is a problem that I really need to fix because maybe they just need to get something out of the way and it could be ⁓ a light lift on my part but is it really as heavy of a lift because some people will come to you with a problem for something they simply just don’t want to do.
Nige (31:42)
See ya.
Brenda Neckvatal (31:44)
And we’ve all run into that. Yeah. ⁓ Yeah. I did it too early in my career. like, and now it’s just like, you know what? I really don’t want to do this. I just tell them I really don’t want to do it. Do I really have to do this? ⁓
Nige (31:46)
Yeah, I’ll tell it. ⁓
Nige (32:00)
Yeah, there’s certain things you think, you know, want to go to battle because I don’t want to do it. And then you sit there and go, oh, how we bothered. I’ll just do it. I don’t think it’s right. I don’t think we should do it. But it’s going to cost me so much energy and emotion and the benefit for me or the organization is going to get out of that fight for how long to put through isn’t just not enough. I kind of just chalk it off as being death and taxes kind of scenario of some things whilst I could be annoyed at it.
Brenda Neckvatal (32:25)
⁓ Exactly.
Nige (32:28)
consistently afterwards, you just kind of just get on with it and go right to accept it or just don’t do it and get told off.
Brenda Neckvatal (32:35)
Yeah, and you know, here’s the thing the power of everyone’s leadership whoever’s in a leadership position or leading something the power of your ⁓ power of your leadership will always lie in your ability to follow up and If you don’t follow up a couple things happen, obviously what you just said like I would much rather not do it and get told off But here’s the thing when somebody is withholding that and you don’t trust but verify that the work is getting done
Brenda Neckvatal (33:04)
⁓ You as a leader face something that you don’t want to face and that is isolation You’re either being your they are either isolating you from the problem or they or you are Accidentally isolating yourself from the situation. ⁓ That’s when you get t-boned. That’s when you get surprised, right? And my policy has always been never t-bone your boss ever right?
Nige (33:10)
care. ⁓
Nige (33:15)
Okay. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (33:32)
⁓ If the leader is that toxic to where ⁓ isolation is starting to become a problem, like, you know it in your gut, you know, it’s one of those things that comes up, but you don’t have a word for it just yet. Like emotion, like you got junk in the basement kind of a thing. It hasn’t yet worked its way out and you don’t have any language to put on it. That’s what isolation is. And so all of sudden you start feeling like, ⁓ don’t feel like I’m knowing everything. That’s because isolation is present.
Brenda Neckvatal (33:58)
They’re either, you know, you’ve either isolated yourself from the team, you’ve pushed them away ⁓ or they’re not willing to tell you something and having the team ⁓ isolate you away from the information is lethal. Because then all of a sudden it’s like, why the hell didn’t you know that? Why aren’t you following up? Now all of a sudden your head is on the block.
Nige (34:12)
Thank ⁓
Nige (34:18)
⁓ Yeah, and I’ve been in situations since of like, where it’s that, ⁓ there’s a…
Nige (34:29)
There’s a feeling that there’s something that you don’t know, but you can’t quite get the answers out there from the team to actually ⁓ tell you what you need to know. ⁓ they assume that you’ve got that knowledge. ⁓ I’ve been in situation where I’ve been into a new area and they’ve assumed that I should know all that stuff. ⁓ I had one team who was members of our sick. I was covering for them. I haven’t done that part of the role for a long time.
Brenda Neckvatal (34:33)
Mm-hmm.
Nige (34:59)
and certainly not in this area. And I did not have a clue about half of the things were there. ⁓ But I wasn’t being, ⁓ there might be a number of different reasons, but I didn’t feel like the team were kind of there with, okay, ⁓ you don’t know this stuff, Nig, so we’ll help. It was kind of, ⁓ you’re doing that, why haven’t you done that? You need to do that. And that was the kind of coming from the team ⁓ of things that they needed to get moving forward that no one told me until it was too late.
Brenda Neckvatal (35:05)
BOOM!
Brenda Neckvatal (35:21)
you
Nige (35:28)
And I was kind ⁓ of ⁓ yeah, yeah. And it was really hard because I didn’t feel it felt like I was being set up to fail. ⁓ And I don’t think it was ⁓ intentional from the team. It was just ⁓ they they were in that situation. They’ve got this ⁓ new person there that they’ve made assumptions on on what they could they do and don’t know. And I think it’s really interesting the way that ⁓ that dynamic of
Brenda Neckvatal (35:30)
Yeah, you’re flapping like a flag in the wind. Yeah.
Brenda Neckvatal (35:51)
Yeah.
Nige (35:57)
⁓ as you say, the t-boning ⁓ of your boss and trying not to, trying to as much as possible, give them as much information as you can. ⁓ But then you get ⁓ that whole thing where I’ve seen it, where ⁓ people don’t report the status ⁓ of a project, say, ⁓ other than green, because ⁓ what they get is not help to solve the problem.
Brenda Neckvatal (36:03)
Thank
Brenda Neckvatal (36:06)
Yeah. ⁓
Nige (36:26)
they get more work to report about the problem. And as a PM, as ⁓ a senior stakeholder or senior project sponsor, ⁓ if ⁓ someone raising an issue on a project, ⁓ or even it could be just a BAU source, ⁓ if by raising that issue, it creates a whole raft of more work for those individuals, ⁓ the little thing in your brain goes there and you go, well,
Nige (36:56)
I won’t say anything yet. I’ll see if I can solve it. I won’t say anything yet. I’ll see if I can solve it. I won’t say, oh crap, it’s hit us. You know mean? To get to that point where it’s too late. Whereas they could have gone, heads up, this is what’s going on. And people say, oh, don’t like no surprises. That’s my rule there. Until you go to them and tell them, we’ve got this problem that’s potentially going up. I don’t like surprises. Forgive me solutions. And you get other managers like that are going, I don’t want surprises. You go there with a…
Brenda Neckvatal (37:08)
Yeah.
Nige (37:24)
you’ve got this problem, it’s coming down the line, I might need your help, just go away and give me solutions. And it’s like, ⁓ hang on, ⁓ this is ⁓ preparing you ⁓ in case I can’t get solutions. ⁓ But the thing is, if in that scenario, if I’ve got a boss who does that to me, ⁓ that isolation that you’re talking about, ⁓ I’m going to start doing that. I’ve never thought of it or heard it described like that before. ⁓ I’m going to start ⁓ my human nature.
Nige (37:53)
he’s going to drive me to go, well, what’s the least, what’s the last painful? What? ⁓ I don’t want to get clipped around the ear every time I warm them up to something. ⁓ And actually, most of the time you’ll warm people up to something and then solve the problem. So what you end up doing is going, okay, so those getting pumped in the ear for those ones, ⁓ or getting clapped around the head for one big one that might not happen. ⁓ You’re ⁓ in a chimps just sit there and go, yeah, that’s more painful all the time than this one. So let’s avoid it. And it saves up that problem later, doesn’t it?
Brenda Neckvatal (37:59)
Hmm
Brenda Neckvatal (38:23)
Yeah, so there’s two things that happens when you’re when you’re faced with that. So first off isolation leads to exposure, right? You you explained it without really even you know clapping those words together Isolation leads to exposure then all of a sudden, you know, that’s when you’re left out there trying to figure out How am I gonna fix all of this because now I look bad I feel like a total ass ⁓ and I’ve got people on my team now I can’t trust even though I’ve told them my expectations that you come to me ⁓
Nige (38:24)
So that’s it. Thank you.
Nige (38:29)
Thanks your time. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (38:52)
and tell me what’s going on. The other thing that you’re gonna start question is how much of this is a hidden agenda, right? So something about hidden agendas, which ⁓ is pretty awesome. If you think there’s a hidden agenda out there, ⁓ our tendency is to want to like run, run, run, run, run and get through it and push our way, because we wanna get to the answer solved. Honestly, if you suspect that there’s a hidden agenda, all you have to do is just start slowing your roll. You just slow yourself down.
Brenda Neckvatal (39:21)
And because first off, you’re aware something could be going on, right? That’s the first thing. And then the second thing is that the truth is actually going to bubble up to the surface. So if somebody is doing something out of oil, ⁓ you’re going to pick up on it when it happens. And at that point, it’s like, yeah, I, know, ⁓ when, it comes to the, big accounting for whatever’s going on, the bosses are like, were you aware of this? And I said, you know what? I had a sneak in suspicion that was something going on.
Brenda Neckvatal (39:49)
And very clearly this was the deception that came from it. So now you can speak in a very articulate way, in a very confident way, right? Whereas before you’re just trying to like, oh shit, now I got stuff going on and I just gotta push my way through there and I just said a very bad word, so sorry, you can bleep that out later. But it’s just kinda, you know, that’s what’s going on in somebody’s mind. like, I gotta push a needle and figure this thing out. When in fact all you need to do is just make the, like if you think there’s a hidden agenda, just make it known to the powers that be. It’s like,
Nige (40:18)
Thank
Brenda Neckvatal (40:18)
This something’s not right here. I’m not I think that there’s something else going on So I’m just gonna let the truth surface to it and then we’re gonna deal with it that way At least they know that you’re dealing with it, right? But again, you know, the this is that that exposure that exposure is just it’s not a good place to be It’s not a fun place to be How do you prevent that from happening? Well, I’m gonna give you another little goodie. It’s not in my class I should put it in there, but I’m going to give it to you right now
Nige (40:26)
⁓ Yeah. ⁓
Nige (40:41)
Thank
Brenda Neckvatal (40:47)
My favorite question is, that when you are in that situation where you’re doing your follow-up and you’re figuring out that people aren’t telling you or doing what it is that they’re supposed to do, ⁓ once you, ⁓ you know, it sounds like you’re ramping down and you’ve gotten everything under control. Then I always stop and ask the question, okay, so what haven’t you guys told me yet? And they can’t get out of that question. What haven’t you told me yet about this situation? Well,
Nige (41:10)
you
Nige (41:13)
⁓ Thank you.
Brenda Neckvatal (41:17)
We haven’t told you about this yet. Why we didn’t think it was important. Okay, ⁓ let me help you get this back into focus again This is where my boundaries are. This is what’s important to me ⁓ this stuff not so much Okay, this is what I need know so it’s an educational moment at the same time I mean you have to constantly not only reinforce your boundaries, but you have to help people understand What’s important to you or what’s important to the project and what isn’t and that question of so what haven’t you told me yet?
Brenda Neckvatal (41:46)
Not necessarily a threatening question. It is your last bitch effort to give me important details because if you don’t tell me this You’re gonna start getting up against Brenda’s white buoy ⁓ That’s what you’re gonna face ⁓ We’re not going there. Okay, you know what I mean? So you’re giving them a one last chance out ⁓ And and that is a very humane thing to do. It’s a very compassionate thing to do
Nige (41:46)
you
Nige (41:59)
Yeah. Yeah. ⁓
Nige (42:07)
and that’s where we end.
Brenda Neckvatal (42:11)
And it’s a very straightforward thing to do. And honestly, if you really want to, you know, if people want to be treated like adults, ⁓ treating them in a very straightforward, honest manner like that is probably some of the most loving, compassionate things that you can ever do to somebody.
Nige (42:26)
Yeah, I think it’s hard though, isn’t it? I think there’s that whole thing of trying to be honest and what’s it called radical candor with people and things like that. And then people can take it the wrong way or you can take it too far. Yeah. It’s like radical candor isn’t telling someone they’re a dickhead. isn’t. There’s a way of doing those sort of things, isn’t there? It is about being honest. It’s about being
Brenda Neckvatal (42:50)
Well, yeah.
Nige (42:56)
⁓ telling the whole ⁓ thing rather than a partial thing about some of the behaviour or what you have an issue with and you can do it and I do find it really hard especially with my character type ⁓ I kind of I want I want everyone to be friends to be quite frank I want a nice calm enjoyable fun time where everyone just gets on and it’s all right which ⁓ as I was talking to another interviewee the other day Nick Fewings about
Nige (43:26)
teamwork. He’s a teamworkologist is his description and I getting those teams together and ⁓ I struggle when there is a ⁓ big conflict between team members. It plays on, not struggle, it plays on my mind. I try to work out what’s going on there, try to understand who ⁓ is the protagonist, who is an, ⁓ and sometimes it’s kind of, ⁓ I need to take one person aside and say, you can’t, what you’re doing is causing this.
Brenda Neckvatal (43:29)
Hmm.
Nige (43:55)
Do you realize that? ⁓ And it’s hard. ⁓ It’s challenging conversation for me to build a take someone aside and say what you’re doing isn’t helping you make. And to someone else and say look, they may be having like that, but your reactions that that isn’t helping you. You’re choosing to decide and ⁓ there’s this just ⁓ you’ll get and quite often I go through the model of the disk model and go that with people and I was trying well got a new project and try and talk to people about that. ⁓ To have that ability to.
Brenda Neckvatal (44:09)
Yeah.
Nige (44:24)
to understand other people’s default behavior patterns and understand why someone always behaves like that and not like me. Because if everyone else behaved like me, the world would be much better, obviously, except stuff wouldn’t get done. People would get missed ⁓ and occasionally I’d annoy someone. But ⁓ that would be like the whole world. And I think it’s hard for us all to spot the fact that the world isn’t perfect if everyone’s like us. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (44:30)
Yeah. ⁓ Yeah.
Brenda Neckvatal (44:36)
You
Nige (44:51)
those things you’re talking about there, it just really makes me think it’s how do I, how do I, ⁓ sometimes you can’t stop that conflict because you need it. Because ⁓ without it, you don’t get best results because you get different opinions. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (45:05)
⁓ Yeah, and you know the difference between that type of productive conflict that you’re talking about and the destructive conflict There’s one the one element that enters in that makes it different from being constructive conflict to destructive conflict and that’s judgment
Nige (45:22)
Thank ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (45:23)
Judgment plays a big play, a real big role ⁓ in our interactions with each other. So when we are executing judgment, people will hear in their minds, like, I don’t understand why they do this. I don’t get why this is happening. That’s judgment, even though you don’t have an answer to it, because you’re to evaluate, ⁓ you’re trying to figure out where the wizard is behind the curtain in this, right? And it doesn’t unfortunately work.
Nige (45:33)
Thank
Brenda Neckvatal (45:50)
It just introduces judgment and then the other person will smell that instantaneously. So when you’re able to have a conversation, like what you said, you’re pulling somebody’s side. You know, one of ⁓ the tricks of the trade that I learned years ago was that, listen, when you do this, ⁓ this is your outcome and you can feel that that’s not working for you, correct? Right?
Nige (45:55)
you
Nige (46:06)
Thank you.
Brenda Neckvatal (46:15)
Okay, but if you were to take a different approach and maybe consider doing something like this or doing it in this way or doing it in this way, I think you might have a better outcome. Right? Now, if you opt not to do that, that’s 100 % completely on you. Just know that if whatever you’re doing is interrupting this, this, and then you’re outlining consequences now versus giving them an option, what you’re doing is you’re reestablishing a boundary. You’re doing everything without judgment.
Nige (46:26)
and thank
Brenda Neckvatal (46:44)
But you’re also letting them know at the same time if you decide to take any other route ⁓ then ultimately unless it’s a productive route then ultimately you’re gonna wind up having to come back and have a harder conversation with me. I really don’t personally want that. There wasn’t a lick of judgment in any of that. Not one. It’s just laying it all out. And that’s what I mean by straightforward, right?
Brenda Neckvatal (47:08)
It’s just like, listen, when you’re doing this, this doesn’t seem to work very well for you. Why? Here are your consequences. But I think if you were to re-approach this and look at it this way, choice is totally up to you. This is not up to me. This is not my problem to fix. ⁓ But I think if you do it this way, ⁓ rather than doing this way, give it a try. See how it works for you. If you botch it up, give yourself some grace, fix it again. But
Brenda Neckvatal (47:36)
Again, there’s no judgment coming from me on this. I just want you to be successful. And we miss that because what happens is that if we’re not judging something, especially women, if we’re not judging something, we’re not pointing out that that that critical element there because we’re trying to avoid something negative to happen. And ultimately, what’s going to happen is a person is going to look at you and go. Yeah, I really don’t like you right now. ⁓ But they can respect what you’re saying when you’re doing it without judgment.
Nige (48:07)
It echoes that for me. The 50 odd, 60 odd shows, 70 odd shows, it’ll be soon. I think I probably mentioned the manager tools podcast in every single episode, which is kind of, I’ve listened to here and their feedback model is very much in that vein of ask for permission first and then when you do this, this is what happens. Can you do it differently?
Nige (48:34)
and even leaving it to that level of not even giving suggestions. They’re ⁓ a professional. They know what they’re doing. They’ve got ways of doing it. ⁓ That’s what happens when you do that. People think of you like this way or this happens to a And if that person then goes, well, don’t care. Well, ⁓ we took a back to our last conversation in the drama creators. You kind of get a view on that. Whereas you give them that ⁓ option of being able to adjust their behavior. If I can give you some feedback ⁓ about something that’s
Nige (49:04)
slowing your career or slowing or stopping you getting the best results out of what you do ⁓ and out of your interactions. Surely you’d want me to tell you is the kind of conversation with someone that some people will say no, not the really useful thing to find out. ⁓ Some people would say yes and then not do anything with it and just think, that’s it. But I think there’s there’s that thing of how you ⁓ as managers ⁓ providing that feedback, providing that support to those individuals who are struggling.
Nige (49:33)
is critical and hard.
Brenda Neckvatal (49:38)
Yeah, it is and you know, like I’ve had that conversation at me. I had one of my favorite all-time mentors. He’s retired now. We still talk to each other ⁓ and we’ve kept in touch now 25 years almost. Yeah, it’s been a long time ⁓ and ⁓ He said to me he says you know what he’s like you are really rough around the edges I’m like you’re singing to the choir. ⁓ I totally get that
Brenda Neckvatal (50:06)
He’s like, but I, he says, I like your straightforwardness. And he said, but you have quite an edge to you. said, yes, I do. And he goes, oh, I thought this was going to be harder. I said, no, I’m well aware of it. I said, I’m working on softening it. And, know, it could be a long time to figure this stuff out, right? I didn’t have a mentor. I didn’t have a leader. I didn’t have anybody I could look up to. I never was surrounded by a group of people that knew how to speak to other individuals. And it wasn’t until I got into that job.
Nige (50:10)
This
Nige (50:23)
you
Nige (50:30)
Thank ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (50:36)
where I actually heard that there are millions and billions of people out there that don’t have that. So they’re going from what they know. ⁓ know, it’s, you know, except for the people that are intentionally doing something, the vast majority of people are just doing the very best that they can with ⁓ what they’ve gotten, you know, to model from, you know, and, you know, aside from the coaching that I do.
Brenda Neckvatal (51:01)
my courses are designed to actually give people what I had the fortune of getting and that is like re-evaluating the approach to something that’s going to not only help you win because let’s face it when we’re facing that we want to win it but it’s also going to help the other person win as well and whatever gaps are existing are just going to help them come together because you know like I was telling you ⁓ like earlier like my you know I had a client by the name of Mark he called up
Brenda Neckvatal (51:30)
And he’s feeling all these different things. He’s feeling frustrated, right? He can’t seem to figure out like, how do I get stung up into this conversation every time I do this? It makes him second guess his leadership, makes him second guess himself, and all of a sudden his confidence is starting to drop when in fact all he just needs to do is a little tweak and then be aware of it every time it comes up. That comes with practice, that comes with failure, and it comes with grace.
Nige (51:48)
Thank you. ⁓
Nige (52:00)
Yeah, I think that ⁓ you mentioned mentorship and had a lady I was talking to recently ⁓ on mentorship and I’ve had a mentor when I’ve gone through some difficult times ⁓ within, ⁓ well, and some good times as well, but ⁓ being able to bounce, ⁓ is it just me? Is it me? Coming to conversations with someone who isn’t involved in ⁓ the thing itself. ⁓ I find so valuable because sometimes they’ve gone, well, yeah, if you look at it this way.
Nige (52:28)
maybe you’ve got a different view of it and they kind of, okay, that’s good, that’s reset it. Other times they just go, no, it’s not you. It’s just the situation or it’s just the person. It’s not something I’m doing wrong. Or if I’ve done things, I’ve tried to do it differently and I’ve gone, you’ve kind of done everything I would have done. These are people who’ve done very well in the organisations. And I think it’s, as project managers, I think it’s very important to have that drawn to the audience of.
Nige (52:58)
to have that output of like Mark, you see, you’re ringing you, ⁓ people in that organization are much more ⁓ open to that mentor coach is to have ⁓ someone on the hotline on there, whereas us down in the middle management arena, it’s less ⁓ common. But I think as a PM, it can be a very lonely place ⁓ because ⁓ the team you’ve got is…
Brenda Neckvatal (53:21)
It is.
Nige (53:23)
Temporary so whilst you can build a relationship from brilliant relationships and brilliant teams. It’s very transitory It’s it’s that place of where your your peers if they’re There’s a relationship between what you’re doing your piece But they’re fed you’re very disjointed from each you can’t turn if you’ve got a bunch of people doing product marketing For example, you’ve got a product marketing thing going on. You need someone who’s in that to do it You can kind of join together and work on it
Nige (53:52)
with a project, it’s less, I find it’s less ⁓ cross-functional. But you know, it’s just you are you’re there. You’re the one you’ll it’s your fault. ⁓ Because you all goes wrong, ⁓ And ⁓ yeah, yeah. And they’re just getting that mentorship to make you realize that actually, there are that that confidence is a lot of it sometimes, isn’t it? I’m being able to just say to someone like you said, to to like those, well, if you do this, isn’t this
Brenda Neckvatal (54:01)
Yeah. Yeah. That’s leadership.
Nige (54:20)
you may be able to pin them down a bit better and hold them to account without ⁓ because sometimes you look at something like that and you’re well, am I just being ⁓ unreasonable? That trying to get an answer? Is it more complicated? ⁓ Those digging down conversations are just so powerful.
Brenda Neckvatal (54:28)
Hmm
Brenda Neckvatal (54:36)
Yeah, anytime I work with somebody anytime i’m, you know in front of the camera teaching ⁓ you know doing one-on-one like The big thing the three things that I have a goal for number one is to bring clarity Like let’s get clear on what’s going on. Let’s get clear on what you’re saying and what your approach is And then the second goal is to is to help you increase that confidence because let’s let’s face it We will lose our confidence when it comes to it when it comes to project management
Brenda Neckvatal (55:05)
you know, company corporate leadership, just even small business leadership. ⁓ This even happens within your own family structure, right? So clarity, confidence, and when you start getting those things dialed in, then we take a look at cohesion, right? The three C’s, right? Clarity, confidence, because when you have those two things, that’s when you really start building the cohesion within your team, within whatever project that you’re working with. And a lot of people are trying to go for cohesion.
Nige (55:28)
you
Brenda Neckvatal (55:34)
but they have zero confidence and ⁓ it’s a foggy day. They have no clarity of anything. ⁓ So that’s the goal of clarity, confidence and cohesion. ⁓ That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re gonna be on a unicorn riding through the clouded fields of success. That just simply means that you’re gonna be able to navigate every challenge ⁓ better that comes your way. And that’s the goal, right? Getting to that endpoint faster and saving money. ⁓
Nige (56:04)
Yeah, yeah, it just makes, yeah, it’s that. ⁓ Yeah, clarity is such an important thing in everything we do. ⁓ And sometimes we rush things and don’t realise there isn’t clarity in our case. ⁓ I think with a family of two daughters, ⁓ clarity about what I want to happen ⁓ can lead to an argument with my teenage daughter, ⁓ because they haven’t clearly heard what I’ve asked to be done or ⁓ set my expectations. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (56:16)
you
Nige (56:32)
then we can have a big fight and then we’ll break up and it’ll be all right. I think it’s different zones and different switches within work. It’s that if you’re, know I’ve been, when I’ve not been clear with what I expect of someone and when I expect it, and it’s my whole thing of project management, who does what, my when, most of my action, don’t, my titles on my action logs has changed in the last 12 months because somebody’s done,
Nige (57:03)
description, name of a sign, multitude of it. Who, what, when, there, it’s that. I’m not clarity, then. I’m trying to drive those sort of things. I’m just looking at the clock, and we’re knocking on 57 minutes, and we haven’t talked about a third of what I wanted to chat about, because I look at your bio, and I’m like, oh, wow, I can’t do that.
Brenda Neckvatal (57:24)
You’re a do a rapid fire.
Nige (57:25)
I want to talk about I want to talk about your Navy SEAL community, talking about the naval stuff, I imagine. But maybe we do that another time.
Brenda Neckvatal (57:34)
Yeah, ⁓ I’m happy to hang and we can do rapid fire or whatever you want. I’m good. ⁓
Nige (57:39)
⁓ Well, I think, was there anything that you wanted to cover that I didn’t let you so far? ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (57:46)
I was really into our conversation. ⁓ But here’s what I will do. I will let people off the hook because I know some people like, okay, so what’s this free thing that you’re giving us? So the free gift, right? So I have a course that I call Impact Scripts. And I give this course away for free because I want to see people win and be successful and start to get a sense of how they can navigate through these difficult conversations. ⁓ Give yourself some breath.
Nige (57:58)
Yeah.
Nige (58:01)
Thanks. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (58:13)
Give yourself, take the pressure off and build up some confidence. So it’s very easy if you go to my website, heybrenda.com ⁓ and you fill in your name, you’re gonna go ahead and put in your email address and then ⁓ there’s a little spot that’s gonna say what’s the one thing that wowed you that you heard on this and then it’s immediately gonna get you to enroll in the impact scripts. ⁓ And it’s available to you, ⁓ like I said, there’s a bonus that’s in there as well. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (58:41)
You we’re not having you exchange your credit card for anything. It’s just this really is my gift to your listeners. ⁓ And I’ve had a lot of people come back and tell me like, holy cow, this really helped me out a great deal. And they’re very interested as to what comes after that. So, ⁓ yeah. Impact scripts is very, very powerful stuff. I do it automatically without even, I say these things all the time without even thinking about it.
Nige (59:07)
That’s brilliant. So I’ve just jumped on the hey Brenda.com. said, yeah. ⁓ Brenda. Yeah, there you are. There’s a picture of you on there. So I’ll be filling me name in there and ping that across to you. I’ll put a link in there, but that’s easy. But I like the hey Brenda thing as well. Everyone’s on the phone to you. Brenda. ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (59:12)
HeyBrenda.com ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (59:21)
Love it.
Brenda Neckvatal (59:25)
Hey Brenda hotline. ⁓ That’s what it is. I answered the phone. They’re like, Hey Brenda. And I’m like, here we go.
Nige (59:31)
⁓ Aside from that, if people wanted to hear more, find out more information, what’s the best way that they can get hold of you or get in touch?
Brenda Neckvatal (59:37)
you
Brenda Neckvatal (59:39)
Yeah, actually the very first step would it be to go to the hey Brenda hotline? ⁓ Hey Brenda website ⁓ calm ⁓ The other thing is that you can also reach me like I’m on all the social media channels and it’s Brenda neck bottle Hey Brenda comm is just way easier than Brenda neck bottle calm, but I do have that website out there ⁓ If somebody wanted to you know, talk to me about potential coaching or even speaking that’s at Brenda neck bottle calm and they can see my name right right there, but
Brenda Neckvatal (60:08)
Yeah, I’m on all the social channels and all that stuff. So LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, Twitter.
Nige (60:14)
⁓ Brilliant. Well, Brenda, thank you for so much time ⁓ and ⁓ Head of Security for their contribution as well. ⁓ And yeah, it’s been fascinating and I’m sure that there’s definitely for me a few nuggets in there that ⁓ I’m going to try and implement ⁓ over the coming days and weeks and months and years, hopefully. ⁓ So you have a wonderful rest of your day and thanks very much.
Brenda Neckvatal (60:22)
He know he’s done a good job, isn’t he? ⁓
Brenda Neckvatal (60:42)
Thank you. Well, thank you for having me. really, really, really enjoyed this. This was fun.
Nige (60:45)
⁓ Brilliant me too. Cheers
