Welcome to the Everyday PM Podcast, the podcast where we
discussed project management principles for your everyday
life. My name is Anne Campia and I'm a
certified Project slash Program Manager with a decade of
experience working in healthcare, retail, consumer
goods and tech industries. I'm so excited and welcome two
very special guests to our podcast today.
Returning to the podcast, we have Greg Christiansen, who is
the Vice President of projecthub.com who you may have
met through previous episodes. We've had coffee chats as well
as we just featured Project hub.com on a very recent
episode. So Greg, welcome back to the
podcast and we also have joining us Mark Weepel, who is the
author of Visual Project Management, who is also an
expert in project execution and delivering projects in less
time. So I am so excited to dig into
your expertise. Mark and Greg, welcome back to
the podcast For those who have not met either of you yet.
Mark, let's go ahead and start with you.
Welcome to the podcast. Please take your a brief moment
to introduce yourself to our audience.
Well, I've been doing a project management, working on projects
and improving project processes. I've created the for about 20.
Years I created the. Viewpoint Visual Project
Management Methodology. That's the subject of the book
that. I wrote.
And I if you wanted to go fast, then recall me.
That's kind of the way it works. Wonderful.
Yeah. And I, I get the feeling I I
definitely did some research last night.
So I have a few questions for you on how on how we are able to
do that as project managers. But let me throw it over to Greg
to reintroduce himself to those who have already met him.
But for those who are meeting you for the first time, Greg,
please take a brief moment to introduce yourself to the
audience. Thank you and I appreciate it.
My name is Greg Christensen. I am the Vice President of
Project Hub. That is a project and task
management solution. And I also do some Steam Ms.
consulting and a little bit of voice work on the side.
And as always, it's a pleasure to be here with you, Ann, and to
get another episode in the can. Absolutely.
And Greg, I feel like I should just invest in a second chair
that sits right next to me that you know you can come and
commandeer because you've been such a regular and frequent
presence on the podcast. So I can't express how thankful
I am that you are back with us today and bringing along your
friend Mark I believe your friends.
I hope your friends but bringing along your friend and expert
Mark to to join us in the chat today.
So we're going to go go ahead and dive in.
Greg, you've been learning a lot about project management and I
know that there are various methodologies that you've
learned and even you and I have chatted about briefly as well in
our coffee chats. But I know we've dedicated a few
episodes to talking about project management basics and
things like that, postmortems etcetera.
So you have been taking it all in because I know that you don't
have the project management background, but you are as
hungry as anyone I have ever met in terms of wanting to learn
more about it. And so with that being said, I
know you've invested so much of your time recently and learning
about the project management space and #1I commend you for
that. But #2, you mentioned how much
you've learned from Mark, who is our special guest today, and you
suggested we bring him onto the show as well to share his
expertise with our listeners. So again, very excited to dive
in there. We're going to be talking about
project execution and process improvement and all of that good
stuff. Look, you weren't kidding with
Mark's experience. I had to Google him myself and
just learn a little bit about our guests before we started
chatting. And he's got 4 published books,
15 ebooks, A plethora of a wonderful material out there
that is just for somebody as eager to learn about project
management as you are, Greg. There's just a lot out there,
and I can envision us doing hours of a podcast together.
But for today, why don't we focus on what you've been
learning from Mark up to this day?
Greg, why don't you share with us what you've learned?
Well, so I want to try to put it succinctly and kind of simply
like high level, but I'm really lucky to have that opportunity
to work with Mark for about 60 days now.
Now I knew of him previously and I had done some research because
I I know a lot about the concepts that he built, but I
didn't necessarily understand them.
So when we got to talking and working through things.
He pointed me to the right ebook that really helped me solidify
my understanding in a general sense, right?
I'm not a practitioner like you are, like Mark is, but
understanding what Project Execution Maturity is all about.
If we look at the Project Execution Maturity Model and in
his philosophy, what I've recognized and I've tried to
really hold on to because it makes sense, is how we can move
better, faster and really on time.
With a focus on execution rather than a focus on planning.
And that's kind of it in a nutshell.
But there there are a lot of different there's intricacies
and nuance that he could explain way better than I ever could.
So just at the surface level, I'm understanding what you need
to look at and what you need to focus on to really, truly
deliver projects at speed. Without any of the treacherous
pitfalls, there's there's a way to do that and Mark understands
that really endemically in my opinion.
So I love hearing about this collaboration.
You 2 have have the synergy that you have.
You know somebody like Greg who's who wants to learn more,
you found this methodology that you're essentially attracted to.
Mark, can you briefly explain your philosophy and that
methodology that Greg is talking about to to our audience?
Of course, yeah. Well, my background is
scheduling and manufacturing, and I came to project management
a little bit late in life. But I I was always the the guy
that got the call when something was in trouble.
You know, they hey my project. My my plant.
Is always late. I can't deliver on time.
Everything was just crazy. You know, help me pull this
thing out of the ditch. And I work a lot in the oil
industry and they're very, very date driven.
And. So I learned about this
methodology called Critical Chain Project Management and
taught that for a long time. That's very planning centric
approach and as I. And and I've also been involved
in the lead manufacturing and that sort of thing and we we had
a project with BP and Worley Parsons after the Gulf oil spill
where they had you know. They had.
BP essentially had to redo all of their engineering for all
their offshore. Maintenance stuff right.
So there are we got to we don't want another explosion let's
look at everything we're doing and and it creates this wave of
work on the engineering side. And so Mark you know you did you
and your team did a great job on the spill cleanup.
Why don't you help us with this and we'll give you a six month
contract and and I got in there and there's about 450 engineers.
And. Spread across multiple floors,
different campuses, across town, and they've got 450 projects and
you know, there's complete chaos.
And I was looking. At that and I'm.
Going well, we can't do what we did before.
Why do we take something that we did in manufacturing and do
this? And so we took this visual
approach that we've been using in manufacturing and applied it
to the engineering projects and the results were astounding.
I mean just unbelievable performance improvement in terms
of throughput and delivery and productivity and people were
happy, you know the temperature. The temperature really cooled.
But you know, the engineers weren't fighting anymore.
They could come in, they could say okay, here's where we go.
And it worked really well. And and I was, of course, I was
really happy. My client was happy, but I
didn't. What I wanted to know is why?
Why? Why did that work?
Why did I what? What did we do that made it.
And that led US-led me on a journey to identify the elements
for successful project execution.
That were repeatable and we could test and repeat and that
led to the execution maturity model.
The Execution Maturity model basically has three levels, and
the idea of the Execution Maturity model is it's a process
that you can leave your team through from.
You know, utter chaos, ad hoc to systematically optimizing your
your project process. And it starts with basic
collaboration. Basic collaboration means how do
we get people to talk to each other in a constructive way and
and by constructive. I mean.
How can we get people to talk together?
That moves the project forward, right?
So it's not. You know, people think about
collaboration, about throwing ideas off, but it's a very
structured process to say, you know, these are the things we we
do. These are the things we talk
about. These are the things that we
measure. And these are the things.
That happen to keep the project on time.
And. Once we complete kind of this
basic collaboration, then we move into the next level, which
is improved coordination where we are dealing with remote teams
where we're doing more. Sophisticated management, we're
doing more promising or doing using more probabilistic kinds
of things. And then we move into a third
level which is more geared towards optimization and
automation where we can say and closing the loop, essentially
closing the loop between planning and execution.
And using probabilistic tools, you know things like Monte Carlo
simulation and that sort of thing.
But we don't start there, right. So the execution maturity model
is 12 elements that take you through the basics of you know
what do we have to do to how can I optimize my process to make it
go faster and faster and faster and faster.
Yeah, that's incredible. And and I think I, I, I would
say that just in that scenario and and everything all your
experiences collectively, I can see how Greg has learned so much
in such a short and what what is really a short period of time.
And Greg, for you, you know how much of what Mark just explained
to us and and kind of illustrated to our audience this
the, the situations he's been in and how he's dealt with it, how
much of that has shaped your views?
Well, it's pretty incredible for me because once I had my aha
moment with really understanding how this works, I I use terms
like where the rubber meets the road.
I think what happened for me was understanding that model the
three tiers or levels like Mark was just explaining and then.
Getting exposed to those 12 principles or elements within
the Project Execution Maturity model for some strange reason.
Maybe it's serendipity, but I started to see it everywhere.
And I think you mentioned earlier in this episode and
where you could tell that I'm that I'm really on that chase
and trying to trying to really get that information in because
I'm liking it and I'm understanding it and I think a
lot of that came from. Mark and how he has presented
it. I have read a lot of his
materials, a pretty incredible amount and it's not all in
there. But the the process in general
and why that leads to process improvement and optimization is
making a lot of sense to me, which really empowers me to keep
going on that journey. So thanks to Mark's journey and
my journey converging, there was just all that that click.
That fit, that kind of general understanding that allows you to
have the confidence to keep working with that information.
Hopefully that makes sense for everybody.
I tend to ramble. Sorry.
No, no. I think that everyone has that
aha moment, right. If somebody who in your journey
whether whether it's learning about project management or some
other topic, there's somebody like Mark Weepel has been for
you, Greg. There's somebody that has done
that for people. And I think when you talk about
that click moment, I'm glad that you're able to visualize and
actually see what Mark has been teaching you and seeing it now
across some of the projects that you've had to deal with, which
is I think that's such a great moment.
It's such a, it's such a a wonderful time for somebody who
really is, is is interested and passionate about learning about
something when that starts to happen and that starts to come
to fruitions. And so Greg, how have you taken
this this methodology and and that thinking process and how
has that evolved since like that aha moment?
I think what I'm starting to look for and understand it's
really interesting. This might be coming from left
field, but this is actually a great way to avoid being stuck
or staying stuck if everything is a project and.
We learn how and and Mark could speak to this.
We learn how to check, change, and improve our behaviors.
Then we can in fact stay on a path of progress.
And it it starts to get really lofty.
At that point, and I'm, I'm really serious.
It's everywhere. If I'm stuck on anything, I can
just stop for a moment and say, is being stuck on this going to
help me move forward? The answer is no.
And what should I do with it? How can I move forward?
One of the things Mark taught me in some of the different
materials and some of the discussions we've had is and you
and I talked about this as well. And when we're working on
projects and we're trying to deliver projects, that's exactly
what we're trying to do. There are a lot of things that
can come up that are not that. In other words, we get into a
meeting. Mark likes the philosophy of the
standup meeting because it eliminates all the other
meetings and it keeps people moving and you don't have enough
time to stop and say, Oh well, and did this and that.
Mark did this and that. None of that has any possible
benefit. So when you're talking about
execution excellence, it's about the pursuit of improving your
process, which means you have to learn how to ignore things, not
recklessly, but practically. And can I speak?
Can I speak to that? Absolutely.
Well, the idea of visual project management and the stand up
meetings, it's not an old idea. It's been around forever and
ever. It's just people that don't use
it enough in project management, right?
So. You know a lot of people will
misuse their meetings, right? They'll have a project meeting,
and what they'll do in the meeting is tell you about the
problem that they have or tell them tell you about.
Where they are. You know what's the progress or
you know what did I accomplish and.
That sort of thing and. Really for solid execution you
have to change that conversation from what have I done and what
is the problem. To who owns what is the problem,
who owns it and what is the action associated with that,
right. So you're always looking there,
you're always changing the team from the rear view to a forward
look always, right. So and if you look at the
different levels in the execution inturing model at
different levels of management. How far in the future you talk
about is going to be different. So for somebody who's writing a
code or you know doing a design or something, you know that that
future may only be a few days. But if I'm a department head,
you know that future is going to be a month, two months and if
I'm a business unit manager, well, it's going to be six
months, right. So you know these the idea of
the. Constructive collaboration, I
call it collaborative execution. The collaborative execution
piece is really about talking about who's got the ball, what
is the play we're going to run and that's the IT, That's it.
If there's a problem when you need to do analysis, OK, you
take that offline because this meeting is about assigning
action, not reporting progress, you know, and you can report
progress at any time. You don't need a meeting for
that. You know, you can solve a
problem you don't need. You know, usually when we're
solving a problem, I don't need 13 people.
I need 2. And so one of the things that I
teach people about project execution is to make your
project meetings about the future, never about the past.
Unless you're having, you know, unless you're doing a deep dive
on, you know, an analysis on a project that you just completed.
Sort of like I liken it to, you know.
Football I like. The NFL.
You know those guys in the huddle, they're not going, oh
man, you were out of position and you dropped the ball and oh,
you missed that. That's not what they're talking
about. They're saying here's the play
we're going to run. Don't forget about that guy over
there. Let's go, you know, and very
little time. So you know, of course my team,
you know we. Call them huddles.
A lot of people call them huddles because it's just play
call, right? And that's.
The project manager is the play caller.
Typically a project manager doesn't own anything except the
project. And so.
His job is to call the play. So yeah, so that you're
absolutely right. If it's not, if it's a concern
in the past, that's a different meeting to have.
Not with the team. And.
It's sorry you let me get on my soapbox.
You no, I mean you you you kind of took the words out of my
mouth. There's a definite sports
analogy there and in that process and that thinking right
and and as soon as you said that there was my tiny aha moment of
this is a lot like football and it it is right.
Like they they they they can only watch so much tape on the
other team and know enough about the team.
But when you enter that game it's a whole new playing field
and with every play to your point it's just about that play
and how do we get forward progress and essentially yes
everybody wants to win the game. The team is going to want to win
the game. You know that's in the future.
So you're always looking ahead but you're never looking behind
in terms of Oh well we that we screwed that play up.
You know, like, let's try that. You're not doing that during the
game, so absolutely click for me as you're going through that
analogy. And I think going back to Greg's
earlier point, there's also life philosophies and what you're
teaching here, Mark, in terms of how you can, even in your
everyday life, check yourself. Am I progressing?
If I'm not okay, What do I have to do?
What's the action I have to do to keep going, Keep moving
forward. So go ahead.
I interrupted you. I think, I just, I think I got
in my soapbox and said everything I want to say about
that wonderful, wonderful. Well, I know that Greg has
mentioned a story about is it the Goldrat Institute and the
Goal. Yeah, OK, How?
Yeah, I told him this story, and I also warned him that.
So I told you that I worked. I started off at manufacturing
and my background was scheduling.
So I. Was designing and implementing.
Scheduling systems for manufacturing companies.
And in about 19. 86 We can edit that part out.
That's the year I read the book. A long time ago I was, I was
working in this plant and I was the materials manager and I
reported to the GM. And he called me, His office
said, hey Mark, I want you to go down to Brenham, TX.
Our sister went down there and they're doing something with
scheduling and I don't know what it is, but they're making a
whole lot of money. Go down there and find out what
it is and bring it back. So.
I flew down to Brenham, TX and, you know, it turns out that they
were working with the Goldrat Institute.
And. I knew the guy that he was
working with because I I was in charge of the local Apex chapter
and I had them come in to Tulsa and give a presentation, and he
gave me a copy of the gold. So I, you know, I've got the
original 1984 version of the heroin.
Yes. Anyway, so I said, Oh yeah,
yeah. So I called about my friend Don,
the botany at the Gold Rings and dude, and I said, hey, what are
you doing this stuff with our sister plant what we want to do.
And so he. We came to our plant and taught
us and I was like, Oh yeah, okay, great.
So we just implemented it and the throughput went up 20% and
we wiped out our backlog in the space of about 8 weeks.
And my. Phone stopped ringing and I left
that job and I went to work with the Gold Red Institute and Ellie
Goldrad and Donna Watney and a lot of other really smart people
and worked with Ellie. Until about 92, of course.
You know, we stayed in contact until his death.
It wasn't, you know, we're not enemies or anything, but I
wasn't involved in his business and he wasn't involved in mine.
But he taught me a lot. He taught me a lot about using
cause and effect and checking your assumptions.
And of course, you know, he started this critical chain
thing which. Has morphed over time and I've
incorporated critical chain into the execution maturity model.
But what I found was it that you know the the technical load to
do critical chain in some respects is is a lot because you
have to think, you have to change your thinking and you
also have to change your behaviors.
And I say, well, I'll just. We'll start with the behaviors
and make sure. You can do the.
Behaviors and then we'll add in the fancy stuff later.
So I don't know is that the story that I was supposed to
tell? I have so many I can tell, I can
tell the story. I'm meeting Ellie in South Korea
one time, you know, he was on the, he was on the same, the
same platform. I was meeting in the green room,
meeting in the green room in Seoul, you know?
I have to tell you, I think that story is great, but it's for me.
For and I don't know if I I don't think you and I got a
chance to talk about this. But Mark and I talked about it
for a while. I read the goal when I was very
very young because somebody sent it home with my mother and said
I understand your son's interested in business and he
has a a mind towards an interesting consulting bring him
this book and tell him to keep it.
And I got it. I opened it.
I had a note from her coworker. And I read it cover to cover,
and it was so impactful. And when I brought it up to Mark
and he said, yeah, I know him. Yeah, I've worked with him.
Yeah, This, this, this. And I was like, wow, what a
small world. And now he's telling me about
meeting him on a platform in South Korea.
I mean, it really is a small world.
But it's a, it's a brilliant book.
And I just like how Mark's able to kind of explain it and make
it so relatable, because that was.
Why the book was so powerful to me?
It's where I learned about a bottleneck.
What is a bottleneck? And I hung on to it the moment I
learned it for the rest of my life.
So it's really good stuff. And it applies to projects, you
know, because there's always, there's always a constraint in
in the project, there's always, you know, the projects are
different from manufacturing in that you know you're you're.
The bottleneck is always moving, right, because you're shifting
resources all the time, right. So you're you're always having
to do that. And I've incorporated that
aspect into the visual viewpoint, visual project
management process. It's in the second tier of the
project execution and trade model because what we want
people to do is we want people to go and chase those
bottlenecks and break them. You know, I I worked with
somebody one time and his philosophy.
He told me something and he said.
You know, every day. Or every week when I'm running a
project, I want to know what can I do to go faster, what can I do
to speed this project up? You know, obviously without
sacrificing, you know, the other constraints that you have in
projects. But this philosophy was every
day I'm going to come to work and I'm going to find out how to
go faster. And that was really impactful
for me. It's so important that I
included it in our consulting practice and when we're teaching
people how to how to execute projects, that is an element
that we purposely teach people how to do that, how to find it,
how to chase it and do it systematic.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think what's resonating in
this, in this story, that kind of being the third party in
this, in this duo here is, is is picking up on is there's just so
much that you you don't realize that you've impacted Mark.
I mean, just listening to Greg's story alone, this is one person
who has read something that you've written and is telling
you that it's impacted him and impacted him in such a way that
it continues to influence the way he sees Business Today.
And I'm only just meeting you and I know that I could probably
extend this podcast for another 24 hours to just pick your brain
about every little nugget that you gave us today.
But what I I think just from the outside looking in, I'm trying
to say is that just in what you've already published and put
out there for new project managers, mature project
managers, project managers who are looking to learn something
new, this is incredible work that you put out there and
you've shared with our community.
And I think for that reason, I just want to say thank you in
terms of what you've been able to just teach us in the short
time that we've chatted on this podcast.
And with that, before we get going on another topic, I'm
going to have to just click pause here because I think we've
left the audience with enough in terms of something to think
about in the execution model. I'm hoping that they'll come
back with questions and maybe, Mark, we can bring you back on
to answer those questions. But is there anything right now
that you're working on that you want to share with the project
management community? And also, do you have any
advice? Because we have an audience who
ranges from people who are just starting out, people who have
been there for a long time. Any advice that you want to, you
know, give to the community as well.
Oh gosh, put me on the spot here.
So what I do? Yeah, First of all, I'm super
appreciative and happy to be a contribution.
That's kind of what floats my boat.
You know, I don't do this for my for ego.
You know, I'm trying to help other people and that's why I
that's why I put this work out there and I thank you for that,
so. I think.
The most. What I would say is that for any
project manager and any manager of project managers is to
consider execution as a process equal to importance as preparing
a good plan and getting stakeholder by you and building
your budget and doing your risk analysis and all those other
things. There's not a lot out there for
people for for project managers. So I wrote it.
But you want to consider this execution is a process and it
isn't. Let's have a meeting and look at
the schedule that is not the process.
So that's I think that's the main thing that I would want to
say is execution is. A technique it's a it's a
process that is critical to the succession success of your
project. And you can have a great plan,
but you won't because nobody makes great plans.
You can have a great plan, but if you don't know how to drive
execution, that great plan doesn't kind of matter.
My wheels are turning. I don't think you could see it
in my face, but my mind is blown by what you've talked about
today. And I have so much that I want
to think about after we finish this recording.
Because from somebody who's taken, you know, a master's
program in project management, somebody who's read a few books
on it, who's who has colleagues who, you know, they, they follow
certain methodologies and processes.
This is one that really flips a lot of the things that you're
taught as a project manager. It flips it around.
It really does it, it, it and and and it's a great perspective
to have in my, in my opinion, of just learning about this in
terms of exactly what you just said, Mark, there's so much you
can plan and your project can still go awry.
So why not put the emphasis on the part of the process where
you're actually doing something and progressing and and doing
the work to get the project done.
I love that idea. I'm looking forward to kind of
ending this recording and going on to your website and reading
your ebooks and and getting all your books to, to learn more
about this. But that's just my level.
Excite of excitement after having chatted.
It's all my all my stuff is free, except the books of course
you have to go to Amazon to get those.
But all my white papers and stuff like that, it's all three
in the website projectsinlesstime.com.
So I was going to say control is an illusion.
I like that one. I like that one quite a bit
actually. I might write that down on my
wall. So all right.
Well, that will do it for Mark, Greg and I and this installment
of the Everyday PM podcast. Mark and Greg, you both have
been wonderful. The time has flown by.
So I really do appreciate your time today to share your stories
and and your insights with our audience.
Mark, let's start with you. I know you shared where your
books can be found, but if folks want to continue the
conversation with you, is there a way that they can find you
online? Yeah, they can that, you know
I'm on Twitter at at Mark Weckel.
You know just one word. I'm also, you know you can reach
me on Lincoln or those are the two.
Those are the two social channels that I've used
professionally. And of course my website is
projects in ustime.com and there's an e-mail link there.
So you can think that because right here because that's the
way I work. Mark, thank you so much.
And Greg, how about yourself? Well, for me, you can find me on
LinkedIn, Greg Christensen, and then you'll see the Project Hub
logo and you can figure out if it's me.
And then the alternative would be to go to projecthub.com and
actually sign up to get access to the Project hub.com platform.
And then you get that information, typically send a
registration link so somebody can get in there.
But that's another way to get in touch with me because I kind of
see all those things happening and either way.
Anybody that needs some help, wants to chat or anything like
that, just reach out and you all can find me on LinkedIn as well
as well as the everydaypm.com. Just a quick plug for our
podcast and video version of this.
Support the Everyday PM Podcast by giving us a 5 star review on
any of the podcasting platforms you were listening in on.
We are on Apple Podcast, Google Play, you name it, we're
probably there, Spotify, all those good things.
And you can also find a video version of this on my YouTube
channel, YouTube dot com forward, slash and Canthia.
Make sure to leave us a great comment, ask some questions,
we'd love to get back to you like and subscribe to the
channel. And I think that will do it for
all of us, all three of us today in this installment of the
Everyday PM Podcast. Thank you both so much for
joining me and until next time, take care.