Welcome to the Everyday PM Podcast, the podcast where we
discuss project management principles for your everyday
life. My name is Anne Campia, I'm the
founder and host of the Everyday PM Podcast.
I've also had the sincere and great opportunity of working as
a project manager across various industries.
And I'm very excited to welcome today Matthew, who is a former
federal chief audit executive. He's had executive oversight
over billions of government, billions of dollars in
government projects. He currently helps public
service and nonprofit leaders identify early warning signs in
project management. So we are here today together to
talk about early warning signs, a public sector perspective on
project leadership. So Matthew, welcome to the
podcast. And for those who have not met
you yet, net, please take a brief moment to introduce
yourself to our audience. Great.
Well, thanks very much for having me in.
It's great to be here. Yeah.
So I spent the first half of my career in project delivery and
client services. So it was always on the the
front end stuff. Did that across a number of
different countries. And then what I found myself in
the Canadian capital of Ottawa. It was the, you know, the
biggest game in town was government.
So I naturally found my way into the largest employer there and
through kind of a funny sequence of events, developing learning
programs and networking events and all this type of thing, I
found myself doing that for the audit community, which I knew
nothing about. But I dove in head first, feet
first, not sure which which is the case there.
But in any case, I made a good run of it and decided to make a
a bit of a career of it. So I spent the next 15 years in
audit and in oversight as well and covered, yeah, as you
mentioned, huge major projects in a, in a host of different
departments and agencies. And one of the things that stuck
out to me over and over and over again was that although the
audit side would scream you need to pay attention to risk, it's
so important on the project side.
Very often it was seen as a compliance exercise.
So, you know, let's get this done with, let's pop it in the
plan and then let's move on with the real work because that's
where we need to dedicate our energy.
And for me, I because I, I'd experienced both sides of the
fence. I knew that there was value
there. That kind of both were missing.
In a sense, risk management is meant to be a clinical activity.
It's really meant to be strategic one.
And let's build that into the leadership trades, leadership
tendencies and try to make sure that we're using it to protect
project ambition and not hold it back.
So that's my mission. That's that's what I try to to
preach to, to all the public sector leaders that I work with.
That's very beautifully said and and outlined there.
You know, the everyday PM audience is we have a plethora
of folks, obviously folks that aren't project managers
whatsoever. This enjoy the podcast.
But we also have a wide range of project leaders who are just
starting out their career and kind of then now into that maybe
the tail ends of their careers. So the way that you outline that
makes it feel like auditing, risk, all of those things are
inherently part of every single project, no matter your level
experience, what type of project, and that sort of thing.
So let's talk about the universal nature of project
challenges because you did mention that project management
challenges are universal across all sectors.
Your experience overseeing billions in government projects,
what surprised you the most about how similar these
challenges are between public and private?
And do you have an example that you can share with the audience?
Well, I, I'd say that, you know, we always say, especially in
change initiatives, and I mean, most projects are, are change
initiatives of one form or another, whether it's just
introducing a new version or completely redoing something
existing or building from scratch.
And you know that the older dodge is that people will be
your biggest enablers and they'll be your biggest
detractors, right. So that's, that is going to be
the biggest measure of the success is how many champions
you have and how many people, you know, negative announcers
you have that are trying to bring it down to a certain
extent. And so those people elements are
so often they're addressed to a certain extent, right?
We, we talk about stakeholder risk or, or something like that,
but it's very high level and we group everyone in the same
bucket. But one of the, the biggest
disciplines that, that I find and I teach PMP as well, is how
little attention is paid to, to stakeholder management, not in a
general sense, but you know, your stakeholder is not a client
organization because there's, you know, 1000 people there, 500
different jobs, etcetera, etcetera.
And they all need different things.
So, so missing that key opportunity to not just, you
know, coddle people and make sure that they have what they
need, but to, to try to breed champions for your project
because that is going to be the biggest unseen risk.
And we can, we can go through all the different people
elements, but I'd say that people in many different
categories end up being the biggest risks for most projects.
And I'd say that that applies public sector, private sector,
big organization, small organization, pretty much across
the board. And, and I love that you bring
this up. You know, I, I always, I'm so
fascinated with the evolution, evolution of our role in our
industry and that, you know, even just you using terminology
like project leaders over project managers and champions
and that sort of thing. Just in the history of our role,
you've seen this emphasis on people and the soft skills are
what PMI, at least Project Management Institute calls the
power skills that are inherent in our role as well.
I love that you talk about it stakeholders first.
It's not anything around the traditional iron triangle
parameters of a project of time, costs, qualities, whatever that
you know used to be. So in your experience now with
stakeholder engagement and understanding your stakeholders,
do you have any practical tools or tips that you typically go to
1st as you're helping others understand how to engage
stakeholders, how to in essence lead them?
And then I guess the the other part of my question is, are
there any early warning signs that folks can spot when it
comes to stakeholder engagement, for example, disengage
stakeholders? Yeah, absolutely.
So when we look at stakeholders and when I talk about
stakeholders as well, you know, we often we're we're talking
about others, right. So maybe it's a partner team,
but you know, it's going to be users or government regulators
or something like that. But stakeholders to me is
everyone under the sun. And that's the official
definition, of course, but, but in practice it doesn't often
seem that way. So when I say stakeholders, I
mean, you know, steering committee, I mean senior
executive leadership, I mean peers, I mean end users, I mean,
you know, if IMIT is helping out in a, in a way and you're not
part of that group. So it's pretty much everybody
under the sun, including the project team, of course.
And the, the key, I think, to, to establishing a foundation for
success is understanding their motivations.
And also, it sounds funny, but understanding their
understanding. So how do they see the project?
How do they see it either adding or detracting from their
everyday life? And they might be completely
neutral, but they might be completely neutral right now
and, and not so much when we're ready to, to release or to
implement. So trying to understand where
they're coming from because we tend to bucket people into very
specific roles. So if we're looking at seat
steering, committee oversight, executive leadership, most of
the time we're trying to get through those conversations
right. What reports can I give that
tells a good story and then I can just get out of there.
And, you know, uneventful meeting is a is a successful
meeting, but that's to a certain extent.
Sometimes that's going to actually just kick the can down
the road. So conversations that were left
unsaid will come back to roost. So do we want to deal with those
early or do we want to have those blow up in our faces down
the road? And then the second thing is, of
course, from top level all the way down, we can get things out
of these conversations as well. It's not always about pumping it
information and trying to get them to understand you.
The key element is US understanding them because that
can take us down very intriguing paths.
It can open up new types of solutions and like I said that
having these true conversations and unfortunately letting some
people vent at us sometimes can release the steam and and start
to build true understanding and and build true support across
the board. Yeah, absolutely.
And, and for those who you know, I have, I teach as well, and I
get this a lot from students when we get to this part of PMP
prep, which is, well, I have all these people, I have maybe a
list of 20 people or something on my stakeholder register.
How do I get to know each individual at that level?
And so do you have any tips for folks in terms of how to make
sure they spend enough time in this area able to gather the
information they need to to, you know, get that insight that you
just just described? And what are some of the things
that have worked for you, maybe some of the things that haven't
worked for you when it comes to gathering information about?
People, yeah. So the I mean, talking about
trying to understand and trying to, to, to, to, to build
champions that goes within the team as well.
And I'd say that project leaders, if they are trying to
be the face of the project at every turn, they are not only
doing the project, it's a service, but but really wasting
opportunity. So the more that we can empower
our own team to become the external facing champions, the
better. So we're going to cover more
people. Our team members are going to
feel that much more vested because it's their project.
They're not working for a project.
They own the project, they own the results and we can just
cover so much more ground. And you know, sometimes we do
have to categorize people. These types of folks will treat
in this sort of way. It's not going to be a
one-on-one relationship for tons of different people.
I mean, as I said, you know, some of these projects that I've
touched to their, their stakeholders ultimately, but
potentially even in the 1,000,000, right?
Not even just in the hundreds or thousands.
And so we're going to have one-on-one coffees with a
million people. That's not too likely.
But, but, but we can try our best to, to try to scale that as
much as we can. And the only way that we can do
it is, is for me to, to recognize that I, I can't be the
only one who's talking about this project.
And my team is going to be chomping at the bit.
So why not empower them and try to delegate as much as possible?
Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome.
I have a question that I've been really eager to ask you and I'm
excited to get to this question now because you're talking about
people engaging with people, empowering your team to also be
the champion with you. You stepped into a role that
carries a a term or a word that I think, at least in my
professional experience, people get nervous around, which is the
word audit. Big A.
Yes. And for you to be in that space
and I know when you described your professional journey, you
said, you know, I went into the space not really knowing what it
was, if I recall what you said. And so I just think you have
such a unique vantage point when it comes to project leadership
and being in that role. And where my head is going is
how did you get around that notion that audit is kind of
maybe associated with something negative or scary or whatever
those feelings are that conjure up when people hear that word?
And how have you spent your career in this space and, and
been able to gain the trust and, and the, you know, the work of
your stakeholders? And I just want to hear more
about that perspective because it's not a space that I
typically play in. And in my experience, it's
always been kind of tied together.
So I'm hoping you can kind of demystify that as well.
Yeah. Well, I mean, I'll say if I'm
going to stumble backwards into the profession, I'm glad I
stumbled backwards in the public sector.
And the reason that I say that is largely, especially when you
get into larger organizations that are heavily regulated, you
know, even financial or, or anything like that, these
organizations are largely mostly focused on compliance.
They don't need to worry too much about how things are going
because at the end of the day, what is the color of the ink,
right? If it's making lots of money,
things are going well. If it's not, things are going
poorly. We might want to figure it out.
We might want to leverage some on it for sure.
But the, the predominant driver there is going to be compliance
to A, to a certain extent in the public sector.
It does not play so cleanly. Every single organization, I'm
sorry, not every single, but what 9 out of 10 government
organizations, if not more make no money, right?
They only lose money, they only spend money.
So you have central revenue collecting taxes or whatnot, but
everybody else is spending money.
And so that, that line is blurred significantly and it
becomes very difficult to challenge whether or not we're
doing well, right? Things are murky, priorities
change, their political motivations involved.
And so it can become a quite a challenge to, to determine
whether or not they're doing well.
And that's where internal audit comes in heavily on the public
sector side. And that was really what I clung
to. And I always, let's make sure
we're, we're taking care of business.
I mean, we don't want to break any laws, those types of things.
But the perspective that I always took and the perspective
that I brought into the many, many, many difficult
conversations that I had to have, the many tense
conversations that I had to have, the perspective that I
brought was both sides of the table are trying to ensure that
the organization is delivering the best results.
We're just coming at it from different angles.
I'm making sure that we're keeping an eye down the road so
that something doesn't appear suddenly out of nowhere and
they're trying to deliver the best results.
And to me, they're complimentary different ultimate stakeholders.
I reported directly to the head of the organization and, and you
know, so there's, I'm not part of the hierarchy, but, but that
was my motivation. And so it allowed for me to,
whether or not they saw it this way, it allowed for me to to, to
deliver bad news while feeling good about it to a certain
extent. That was perfect.
You've already calmed me down for my my, I was concerned that
you were currently auditing this podcast, but no, I think that
that it's a partnership, right? Yes, I, I, I completely see it
that way. Now in terms of you, you're
ultimately both after the same goals.
And so I appreciate you kind of breaking that down for us.
So, you know, now I'm curious because you spent many, many
years in your career as the chief audit executive and now
since leaving federal service, you've been working with, you've
decided to work with nonprofits or, or other public service
organizations. So tell me a little bit about
how that transitions been for you.
And has there been a big curve in terms of adapting what you
used to do versus what you're doing today?
Well, there's, I mean, there's definitely a curve in, in the
sense that, you know, starting your own business versus being
part of an organization of thousands and thousands of
people. So, so there's that perspective
for sure. But it was from a directional
standpoint, no, it wasn't difficult because this is, this
is kind of been a pain point of mine for a while.
So a lot of folks in my former position, if they were to, to
get into developing their own advisory and consultancies, they
would get into audit risk management, you know, leveraging
what you know. But for me, as I said, you know,
at the very beginning, the crux for me was always that that
disconnection between the risk and the project leader.
And that to me is, is the biggest, possibly the biggest
reason why a lot of public sector projects do fail is that
the comprehension of what risk is and, and how it can enable a
project is largely missing and deliberately so in, in, in
certain extents. So for me, trying to build that
understanding and, and try to deliver that aha moment that
we're not talking about something bad here.
We're talking about knowing the road ahead of you so that you
can avoid the potholes. That becomes pretty, pretty
satisfying to me and, and ultimately becomes satisfying to
the people that I've worked with as well, because they realize
that a, they kind of dropped one compliance exercise right that
now they're, everything they're doing is strategic in nature.
And secondly, it can enable them to, to aim a lot higher.
It's, it's not about let's scale things back it, it's really
about let's, let's still aim for those moon shots.
But we have to know what we're getting into and being able to,
to build in some plans to, to, to deal with whatever comes to
us. So for me, that was the most
inspiring part of having a lot of these conversations.
And now, you know, now that I've, well, we keep talking
about it, but now we kind of shed that, that audit title.
And so the, the defensiveness kind of comes down a little bit
too. And we can talk more as peers as
opposed to, as I mentioned, two sides of the table.
Oh, in, in just the last, you know, 3 or 4 minutes.
You've calmed me down from that, the tie of that term.
But yes, I, I can see how that would translate really well into
that sector. Was there something about
working with the public service organizations just in general
that from your experience previously and then translating
now into your own business, is there something about that group
that you were really thinking, this is the group I want to help
and target with, with getting them to where they need to be?
Well, partly because I mean, I know the guts of of the public
sector, right? I've again, again, one of the
advantages of my previous roles was that I had to know the
entire organization inside and out there.
There are kind of silos that they could do certain things
exceptionally well and that's really what they focus on for,
if not that job, maybe even in their entire careers.
But for me, top down, do a, a massive dive into every corner.
So I, I, I know how not only the areas operate, but how they
operate with each other. So I, I, I kind of know all
those, that, all the squeaky wheels in the organization and
how those translate into, into successes or failures #1.
Secondly, there are, I'd say that there are a lot of
universal risk. And we talked about people being
one of them. For sure.
There are a lot of risks that are unique to the public sector.
So the political you know, enablement or insurance, however
you wanna call it, that's huge. Lots of people shifting all the
time. So one project leader leading,
you know, a long term project from start to finish.
It's almost never happens. And that would apply to so many
senior staff members as well, even the heads of the
organization, they might be in and out, you know, once every
year or two years. And plus we get the central
funding, we get the massive oversight, all these different
elements that by themselves aren't necessarily unique to
just the public service, but they're amplified when they,
when they all come together. And so that can be pretty
suffocating. And, and you know, very often
there is this reputation that people have or that they assume
that the public sector should have is, is that, you know,
well, they're slow, they don't work hard, they don't think
things through. They, you know, on and on and on
and on and on. And while I'm not going to say
that every single individual in public sector is, is a
superstar, of course, there are tons of exceptionally talented
and bright people who work much longer than a lot of people I
know in the private sector throughout, you know, through
the days, through the weeks, through the weekends, and
especially in the executive ranks.
I mean, that's free, right? They're working for free.
They're just dedicated to putting in all that extra effort
to get some across the finish line.
And another unique thing is we talked about all the oversight
and the impositions and the reporting and the tools.
The infrastructure very often sets them up to fail.
So here they kind of burn themselves out, driving them
into themselves into exhaustion, really caring about delivering
important results for for citizens, for taxpayers.
And it doesn't get there. And they're kind of lost.
They're wondering what happened. I couldn't have worked harder.
My team couldn't have worked harder.
Everybody said we were doing a great job and it didn't get
across the finish line. And so I have no answers.
And you know, that can be very demoralizing.
So so the flip side of that is it can be very inspiring if we
can figure out what the problem is and turn that fading or
failing project into a success. You know, what you do and the
way you've described it sounds like a lot of fun.
So for folks who you know are interested, they're listening to
our conversation. They're not too familiar with
audit and risk and how that weaves into project leadership
and the roles that you can have. What would you say to those
folks, you know, as our parting as my parting question?
And if you have any parting advice for for the audience in
terms of if they're listening and they're thinking, man, what
Matthew does, that sounds like a lot of fun.
How could I get into that? I'm currently a project manager,
project leader, and I want to do that.
Do you have any advice for that part of our audience?
Well, I just reach out to if they do have interest in, in
either audit or risk management, is that that's what you're
asking if people have interest in that?
Yeah, if they do just reach out to their to their team.
So if, if you're in an organization large enough, just
reach out to the internal audit group or the risk management
group or, or whatever they might be called there.
Because one of the, the, the big pushes when we talk about PMI,
the IAA is the same thing for, for auditors and, and they love
the notion of, of sharing competency.
So you coming in, doing a year, going back to a regular job,
that type of thing, because again, understanding is the
biggest, biggest driver because a project leader going into to
something like audit risk management, they learn that side
of it, but they're also teaching, right.
And so again, when we have people with very fixed careers,
auditors, risk managers, if that's what they're doing from
the time they graduate right through their, their careers,
they might not have that exposure to what it means to run
into real hard realities on the fly that kind of came out of
nowhere for them. It's, it's a theoretical, it's a
paper exercise. And you know, should have done
this, should have, should have, should have.
Sometimes life just doesn't work that way.
And so the more that project leaders can educate them as
well, then it's a sharing of knowledge, building of
competence, sharing of capacity. And it's a it's, it's a win, win
and win for the organization as well.
Absolutely true synergy in the way that you put it.
So I appreciate that. So Matthew, that will do it for
our time today. I honestly, I could probably
talk to you for another half hour.
So before I take the rest of your day, if folks do want to
continue the conversation with you, where can they find you
online? Well, one of the guides that I
put together sums up a lot of what we talked about, a lot of
these hidden risk, and so developed a short, Quick guide
called The Seven Red Flags of Failing Projects That Most
Leaders Miss. It's a succinct guide with some
concrete actions that can be taken if leaders are
encountering issues, especially in the public sector, and that
can be found at projectredflags.com.
It's a free download and you'll find it there
projectredflags.com. And thank you for sharing of
your tools. Yeah, I'll make sure all the
relevant links to Matthew are in the description of this podcast
as well. You can follow the Everyday PM
or myself, I'm on LinkedIn and the Everyday PM podcast is on
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comment or feedback on what you thought of today's conversation
as well as subscribe to the podcast for future episodes.
So that will do it for Matthew 9 for this installment of the
Everyday PM podcast. Thank you for listening and
until next time, take care.