Welcome to the Everyday PM Podcast, the podcast where we
discuss project management principles for your everyday
life. My name is Anne Campia.
I am the founder and host of The Everyday PM and I'm so excited
to welcome back to the podcast a very special guest and one of my
favorite people, Brian Summons, who is the senior internal
consultant for strategy activation at the Children's
Hospital of Orange County. So Chalk Hospital, Brian, you've
been on the podcast before. It's been a minute.
I'm so happy that we found time to reconnect and bring you back
on professional journey. Now, you and I have had some
like offline conversations to the point where we said, let's
just bring this topic to the Everyday PM.
Let's have a conversation about it because I'm sure there are
project managers out there wondering what do I do next?
So why don't we just dive into it instead of just going into
your introduction, Brian, because we're going to talk
about you and your role. So let's start with this.
Many PM follow the traditional corporate ladder within one
organization. You know, you could go project
coordinator, project manager, senior PM, whatever that may be.
But you chose to pivot into a strategic consulting role.
So can you walk us through that aha moment when you realize the
conventional PM path wasn't for you?
And what specific experiences or skills from your PM background
became your secret weapons as a now strategic consultant?
Absolutely. And Anne, thank you.
SO much for having me back. Absolutely.
It's it's been a while. So I'm, I'm glad to be back.
I think that that aha moment for me happened as I was thinking
about my next step kind of as a project leader, you know, as a
project manager, like you mentioned, there's different
tiers. So you can be PM, senior PM, you
can go into program management and portfolio management.
And, and I've kind of done all of those roles.
And so as I was in management, I think my next move would be to a
director level role. And so rarely what I noticed is,
is it seems to be a cap, right? You cap out as a director and
there's rarely project management officers across the
organization and, and so you kind of get pigeon holed into
being a director. So you'll be a director and then
you'll go to your next role and it's a director of project
management or a director of this or that.
And for me it just didn't sound appealing.
And So what I, what I did know is that you can't just solely be
execution focused. And maybe the aha moment for me
was maybe you need to look at also being strategically
focused. And when you marry the two
things together, you know, with the strategic focus and project
management, you get strategy activation.
Talk a little bit about the role itself for those that you know
maybe have not heard of that title or or how that would
function internally. Yeah.
So internally, you know, our team is charged with bringing
our strategic plan to life. And so my core audience and, and
group of folks that I work work with are, are initiative owners
at the VP level. So really working in partnership
with them to understand, you know, what strategic things can
we look at from a performance standpoint that is going to
drive performance and also help us reach our goals and then
holding them accountable to those things.
So we identify a set of tactics that we want to tackle within
the fiscal year and assigning different milestones.
KP is completion indicators, things of that nature where
we're tracking the progress throughout the fiscal year and
ensuring that the things that we intended to do get done.
I also have a unique opportunity to jump into a couple of
projects every now and then as well.
So the very highly visible, very strategic things that we're
doing, when these things need course correction or if they
need some consulting to get things back on track, I'm
already kind of embedded within the project and I can step in
and and help to ride the ship. I'm also afforded the
opportunity to kind of stand up some committees and focus some
of the efforts as it relates to committees and structure and,
and things like that as well. So it, it's really a, a dual
purpose position where you can do a myriad of different things.
You can solely be tracking the plan and to the plan and helping
to develop the plan. You can jump into some projects
and right when they kind of need some direction and right the
ship. And then you can also be working
to stand up some of the different committees and things
like that and and provide the structure and things related to
that. So it's really a position that
allows you a ton of opportunity, if I would say so.
It just sounds like such a fun role.
I mean, obviously you and I grew up in project management, so you
always kind of think like, how do I add value?
Where, where's my place in the organization?
And some folks think, you know, that could be leading other
project managers and that sort of supervisory role, which you
and I have kind of both been there done that as well.
Some folks, you know, as you get further into your career and
start to really open up like you mentioned, what are the
organizational objectives? How can I make that connection
point if I'm just APM? And I'm sure a lot of the folks
in our community who are kind of in that interesting spot in
their professional journey where you're trying to decipher for
yourself, you know, what's the next step?
Is it leading people that will, you know, satiate me?
Or is it going to be being that connection point kind of
strategically to to be able to flex not just your project
management muscles, which is what you described, right?
You still jump back into projects every once in a while
as well, But then you get called in.
You're the pinch hitter for something's off track.
Like Brian, what do we do, you know, or how is this particular
project adding value to the organization?
And you're that connection point.
So there's it's such a beautiful journey that we make as project
managers and, and just hearing your side of you know, you, you
did the, the management part of it, the leadership part of it.
Now you're kind of in many ways you're still doing that, but
it's not just people, it's the organization, it's the
objectives, it's the KP is, it's the ROI, all the things that an
organization would care about strategically.
And you're that connection point.
So cool. And I'm just happy that I got to
watch and and still getting to watch your journey through this.
So let's talk a little bit about now that you've clarified what
you do as a internal strategic consultant is what's the biggest
myth about transitioning from what we would call an in house
PM to a strategic consulting role, Something that you maybe
wish someone had debunked for you earlier?
And on the flip side of that, what unexpected challenge caught
you completely off guard that traditional PMS considering this
past should prepare for? Yeah, I think the the biggest
myth is that strategy work is really all about big ideas.
I think in reality, you know, strategy activation is really
about clarity and alignment. And you know, most
organizations, they don't struggle to come up with
strategy. They really struggle to make it
real. And so you have different
departments, they kind of interpret their priorities
slightly differently and leaders are kind of aligning
differently. You know, my group brings all of
that together. And, and so we kind of focus on
the goals together, We create the goals together and, and we
attack it that way. And it's been, it's been really
good seeing it happen that way. And I think, you know, for me, I
think the biggest shift is like just really shifting away from
execution focus and really moving into more of a strategic
focus about the big picture. And we have this big strategy.
How do we take little pieces of it and make sure that we
accomplish all of the things at the same time?
Sure. Sure.
And you know, I know when you're consulting across multiple
clients and industries, you know, there are certain patterns
that you'd probably pick up and what we call anti patterns as
well that may be internal PMS, like when you're embedded in
that way at an organization might not be able to see.
So can you share an example of how this outsider insider
perspective has allowed you to solve a problem or unlock an
opportunity that probably a traditional embedded PM might
have overlooked? And also tagging on to that, how
do you balance being the expert consultant while still remaining
humble enough to truly understand each client's unique
context? Oh, that's a doozy.
So I'll tackle the first part of it first.
It it's really about seeing the whole organization right versus
just being in this bubble. I remember as a project manager
working in IC, we're doing really impactful projects across
the org, but just never really getting to see the impact of it
or never really understanding how this one project connects to
a larger strategy or you know, you would hear like this is
going to improve this or improve that.
Now being at the, the upper level, right, you can see the
whole organization and you see these projects happening all
kind of simultaneously, but also how they all connect to this
larger strategy or initiative that we're trying to push
forward, which is impactful for me.
And I think, you know, in hindsight, if I could, if I
could go back or if I could even share with people, I would say
step outside of the projects sometimes and really understand
our visualize what it's what it's actually doing and, and see
the fruits of your labor. You know, depending on your
organization, depending on kind of the tempo of things and how,
how things are moving, you may not always get the time in
fast-paced environments. You're doing 1 project after
another project after another project.
So as you complete 1-2 more are coming in.
But in this role that I'm in now, multiple projects can be
going on all at the same time in different domains, and you get
to see them kind of all going together and really see the
fruit of all the labor. So it's been a really eye
opening experience for me. Curve, curveball question here,
Brian, that I did not tee up for you prior to us getting on and
recording this episode is let's talk a little bit.
Thank you for that response. By the way.
Let's talk a little bit about the tears, right?
Because it feels like a role like you're in requires some
level of experience being able to make those connection points,
being able to step outside of what typically would be like
your tactical day-to-day execution.
PM My question is, can a project manager just jump into a role
like yours? Like what are some of the things
that you would see, let's say on a job description, some of those
requirements that project managers want to try to build
on? Now, if they're listening to
this episode and they're like, yes, I want to do what Brian
does. Like I want to, I want to do
exactly that. How do they get there?
Could you paint the picture or maybe a quick road map of of
what that could look like for a project manager?
I would say the the first thing to do is really start to think
outside of the box. Don't don't limit yourself into
OK, I'm just doing this and this is all I'm doing.
I think in my role, I rely very heavily and, and most project
managers do on relationships and building strong relationships.
I've accomplished so much just leveraging the relationships.
So can people step from PM right into consulting and kind of
doing strategy work? Absolutely.
I think project managers can do anything.
I think that you have to get your mindset right and it helps
when you're doing stuff like looking at things with a
strategic eye. So when you're when you're
managing the project, don't just focus on this project, but focus
on the downstream implications of the project.
Focus on those KPI's and understanding how do these tie
back and what do they tie back to Ask those probing questions
to find out more. Talk to your leadership and let
them know, hey, I'm interested in having more of a strategic
view of projects and not just being solely focused on
execution because I think people can't raise your mind, right?
And I think in the job market, a lot of the times, you know,
we're trained to just work hard. And when you work hard, things
will just naturally come your way.
And I can absolutely tell you you'll just be working hard and
then ultimately maybe even a little teed off.
Yeah, things don't naturally just come your way.
So I think, you know, being vocal and advocating for
yourself, looking at things with a larger lens, being strategic,
asking, OK, yeah, we're tracking these KP is, but what are they
tied to? What are the downstream impacts?
If we don't do this project, what are we overall trying to
solve? How does this connect to the
organizational strategy? And when you're asking questions
like that, people perk their ears up and they and they want
to know like why are you inquiring about things like that
'cause it's just not naturally what most PMS do.
They're focused on what scope, time and budget.
And so I think even PMI is shifting away from looking at
just those benchmarks for project success and they're
looking at different things about how you can deliver and,
and measuring delivery, right. And so as we all shift and and
change our focus, if you're interested in pivoting and going
in a different direction because you want to become a more
well-rounded leader and you want to have a strategic lens, those
are some of the things I would recommend to do.
And then ultimately you get shit done.
You get the execution part out of the way too.
So alongside what Brian just mentioned in terms of there's a
path for you and this is what you should be signaling and
looking out for and understanding of how the value
add is there for this type of role.
We also then flex our PM muscle even in this type of role, which
is Brian will still get the work done.
He'll still make sure whatever needed to get done and the
connection points and the alignment get done.
So it's you get a little bit of everything.
So I'm, I'm not going to say I'm jealous of where you're at right
now, Brian, but I am super proud to know you and know that this
type of position can exist for our community.
And so for folks listening to this, you know, listening to
what Brian was saying in terms of how he described the role,
you may not see this role as listed, right?
It may be titled something differently, but look for some
of those terms that Brian was using in terms of how he's
described his role at his organization.
And the even crazier thing about what you get to do and the
beauty of it is that you still get to be an internal
consultant, right? Which is very, very different,
which we didn't decipher that in this episode, but which is in
some ways vastly different than if you were to bring what most
people know consultants for, which is this external party
that kind of comes in and does that sort of consulting.
So I guess maybe to tie up this conversation, maybe we, we end
with that, which is what is it about you being internal facing
like an internal employee to your organization as a
consultant that makes it different than if we were
looking at roles, PM roles that were our strategic roles that
were kind of external coming into an organization.
Yeah, I think the superpower is that we know the business.
There you go. We know the business, we know
the people, we know the business.
And so we can dive in and things that are a little bit foreign
leverage relationships and turn things around very quickly
because we, we understand the business, we understand the
mission, we understand the priorities and so and, and we
understand the culture. I think a lot of your external
consulting revolves around changing a lot of those things.
And you know, internally I'm leveraging a lot of those things
to just move things forward. And so I, I think that's
actually the superpower if I were to think about it and, you
know, in my mind typically, you know.
Strategies don't really fail because of bad ideas.
In my mind, I think about it, they typically fail because of
unclear priorities or disconnected execution.
And that's exactly what I'm there for, to clear up the
priorities so that we can focus on the things that are most
important and then connect the execution to ensure that
everything that we set out to do that we're actually doing it.
And then we're reporting out and we're reporting out on it and
making sure that it's visible to the rest of the organization.
So I think honestly, that's the superpower, if I were to say.
Incredible, Brian, I time has flown already and I'm over here
grinning because I'm like, what do you want to be when you grow
up as APM? And I want to say I want to be
Brian Summons. So for folks listening and want
to continue the conversation, I, I know Brian, you've, you've
mentored a ton of PMS in our community as well and just
helped clarify that path for people.
Where can they find you online? Yeah, LinkedIn is like my
playground. I'm there all the time.
You can find me Brian Summons PMP on LinkedIn and happy to
connect with you. Send me a message.
We can connect and talk about a host of topics so looking
forward to. It everyone find yourself a
colleague, a friend like Brian I.
We are consistently just watching each other's career
growth and cheering each other on and I think everybody needs
that as part of the project management community.
For folks that want to continue the conversation with me, you
can also find me on LinkedIn by my name.
I'll make sure all the appropriate links are dropped
into the description of the podcast.
So for folks that want to continue to listen to the
Everyday PM Podcast, we are available on all of the
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you got to do to make sure that we feel and hear your support of
this episode. So that will do it for Brian and
I on this installment of the Everyday PM Podcast.
Thank you so much for joining us and until next time, take care.