Welcome to the APM Podcast, brought to you by The Chartered
Body for the project profession. My name is Emma De Vita, and I'm
the editor of APM's Quarterly Journal, Project and Your host.
In June, APM held its annual conference in Birmingham under
the heading of Change Changes. The event explored how the
project profession must adapt to the changing nature of change
itself in a world of increasing uncertainty and complexity.
It emphasised the enormous contribution that projects can
and do make to forging a cleaner, safer, more prosperous
and more inclusive society. The day kicked off with an
inspiring talk from Carmel McConnell, founder of Magic
Breakfast and longtime project professional, about the
importance of having purpose in your work and how projects
should be used to bring about some good in society and the
environment. Her presentation set the tone of
the day, and there followed honest and thoughtful
conversations about how project delivery can be improved and how
project professionals can gain a sense of real fulfilment from
their work. The place was buzzing with new
ideas and shared experience, and this podcast We've compiled some
of the key insights that emerge from the first stream of
sessions at the conference, which will focus on the
transformative impacts that projects can have both on
individual lives as well as economic, social and physical
landscapes. So listen on to hear highlights,
including what happens when a project needs a reset, the cost
of social value projects, and the future of professional
bodies in a rapidly changing world.
In our first clip, we hear from Joe Stanford.
Joe is a project professional who has spent 20 years working
in the healthcare sector and is currently CEO of the Healthcare
Projects in Change Association. She appeared on a panel that
considered the challenge of measuring social benefits.
So there are ways to measure social benefits and if you look
at the management of portfolios, it talks about the social return
on investment and how you kind of calculate some of that.
The challenge is more about the practical application of it.
So having worked on projects where they've had to have, you
know, impact assessments that look at the long term benefits
of changes to things like legislation and regulations,
part of that calculation is looking at translating health
outcomes and the increased improvement in health or the
reduction in the use of services because people are being
treated. Poster there are ways of
measuring it and there's there's tools and and guidance out there
so. So there there are definitely
the tools for doing that. The the problem often is how you
then review and evaluate it and certainly the Department of
Health and Social Care hasn't really got to the point where
it's able to then evidence how well it's delivered.
I once had a a chat with the chief economist at DHS who used
to sign off all of the impact assessments and used to do all
of the calculations of them and that was at the start of the
project to say you know what is it we're going to achieve.
And I said to him, How many of these did the you then?
Evaluate to measure whether or not what was in the impact
assessment was actually achieved in practise and he said none
ever. So part of the problem and and
we we kind of discussing this sort of earlier is that where
you have a very much focus on say one year budgets or
three-year rounds or you've got a focus on delivery but not
outcomes And your measures are well the business plan for this
year is we're going to deliver this, this, this and this and
you go and So what where is the measure of the outcome being?
Reviewed and achieved to say not just are we delivering stuff,
but what are we measuring in terms of the benefits.
And that's an organisational portfolio issue.
It's the it's where the the business plan should be
translated into outcome measures that say whether or not we are
achieving it. And I think there's a real gap
here between the project profession that might be looking
at, well, with this project we're going to achieve these
outcomes, but we don't achieve them.
The business achieves them. Who's working with the
operational delivery teams to say and how are you reviewing
and monitoring and measuring the outcomes of the changes that are
being made? I think there's a big piece of
work to do for the project profession and the sort of
business and upside of things to work together on that as a more
holistic approach. I think the cross fertilisation
and and working between professions to deliver those
outcomes and measure them is the gap that we need to work on
collectively. Our second clip is taken from
the panel session on Remapping for Success, which explored why
it is incumbent on project professionals to ensure that
projects are properly set up and resourced so they can achieve
vital social outcomes. The panel was asked whether, in
their view, organisations are prepared to introduce social
value benefits and projects if they increase the upfront costs.
So let's hear the views of all three panellists, Gillian McGee
of AstraZeneca, Andrew Morgan of HMRC and Mike Hudson of the
National Trust. So I I, I run some of the
governance for our portfolio of projects and and through the
various gateways that we have for approvals we actively now
factor that in and yes sometimes it does increase the cost of
delivery. But you know I I I don't I I I
honestly don't see that we have a choice because we can't when
when we're I'm I'm particularly thinking about some of the
global sustainability challenges around carbon efficiency and so
on. I I I just don't think it's
responsible for us to be sponsoring projects where we're
not taking an opportunity to make that better.
I think we've building on what you're saying, I I think we've
been used to producing cost estimates.
But again talking with a number of attendees today, an area that
often concerns us more is perhaps estimates of the pounds
benefit and in the social value arena sometimes that can be
really difficult to put real pounds against.
Often it's seen more as intangible benefits.
And so I think there are some real opportunities there in
terms of growing our capability for improving benefit estimation
and of course that then came to balances the view in terms of
the. Effective inflation on cost and
so on and so forth because potentially we we kind of see
that affecting the benefit side as well.
Yeah, I mean, I I guess for us they're so caught to what we do
that and that you're absolutely right.
There will be trade-offs in terms of what what is ultimately
affordable, but it may work the other way.
It may be that. Projects that can't start to
demonstrate social benefit or that they're the ones that ended
up getting, you know, deprioritised and it's the ones
with social benefit included that that do.
I mean, I think there is a challenge around how we, how we
measure, but yeah, so I don't personally see them getting.
Crowded out. The next clip is taken from a
session entitled Calling for a Reset in Response to Change,
which looked at when it is necessary to reset a project or
programme that has strayed off course, and how to make that
happen. Here is Jack Hewitt, an
associate and programme and project management at global
built environment consultancy firm Arab, discussing the role
of the project manager in identifying the need for reset.
You almost think about the different types of roles that
people in a project team or a programme team would play at the
point of a reset. And I think if I were to look at
it through that lens the the first person that I'd come to, I
mean fundamentally you're not going to achieve a reset without
a project manager putting their hand up and saying something
needs to happen here. We're at risk of of not
achieving our stated objectives, outcomes, benefits, whatever it
may be. But I think that that's almost
take that as a given and I think probably the the next personal
role with a particular skill set that's valuable.
There is the sponsor for that project and that might be a
senior responsible officer in some palaces.
It might be a project sponsor in other certainly in my
infrastructure. World project sponsor is the the
one that always comes through strongly.
But having an advocate there that's not part of the project
delivery team but understands the context and help us help
develop the business case in the first instance and knows what
the targets of the project are. Having them embedded in that
kind of progressive assurance type position throughout the
life cycle of the project means that number one, they can be
really astute in identifying any deviations that might be
beginning to occur on the project but also be they have
that further reach within the the client organisation or your
own organisation whichever part of the project that you come
from. But having the reach and the
resources and the knowledge and experience of the.
Answer is really valuable in terms of getting the message out
there as to something needs to change here and I think finally
perhaps a little bit of a left field one, but one that
certainly to me is really important is someone.
They don't have to be a dedicated benefits management
professional, but someone who understands that there are
broader, particularly in this stream for today's event, social
benefits, for example, social value benefits that are involved
in projects. Having someone that is tracking,
monitoring and doing that across the business and drops into
particular projects with a with a strong understanding of them.
They can be crucial in terms of helping to spot the risks of of
of needing a reset and then to help manage the process of
delivering them to. A final clip comes from a panel
session that asks the question, where do we go from here?
It explored where the project profession needs to be in the
next five years and how it needs to evolve.
Let's hear from Professor Adam Bodison, Chief Executive of APM,
and Lucian Dragon, Managing Director for Europe at PMI,
discussing the risks and opportunities facing
professional bodies. For me, bringing a professional
body, one of the things I'm often kind of asking myself is
what's the role of a professional body now compared
to what it was 20 years ago and what it might be in 20 years
time from now. And is it, will it be different
or will it be the same? It will obviously be different.
So we've got a future proof, the professional body to be there to
support the profession. And and one of the changes, I
think, again, kind of from a risk perspective is that 20
years ago professional bodies were all about somebody coming
and joining the professional bodies as students, then
becoming an associate member, then becoming a full member,
then becoming a fellow and so on.
And it was quite a vertical route through our membership
grades and we see this in every profession.
But that's changing. We see it in the wider world of
work outside of the profession. People now are quite happy to
join an organisation for a job and knowing at the outset I'm
gonna do this job for three years or five years and then I'm
gonna go and do something different.
So there's this. And we see that as a horizontal
movement now, back and forward through the different levels of
membership and so on. There's a risk there, but
there's also an opportunity. So the risk is that you end up
potentially losing people and the edges of the profession
become even more fuzzy than they are now because people come in
and out of them. But the opportunity is, I always
say, if you've ever been in a profession, even for a short
time, it's a bit like the Hotel California you can check out,
but you can never leave. So I hope that these people that
come through the profession take that knowledge of the profession
and tackle some of the misconceptions that exist about
what it is and what it isn't, and share that with the wider
workforce and particularly with leaders who who some of whom I
think have a fundamental misunderstanding about what
project management and project professional broadly actually
is. Well to add to that the the
point you just make around you know the the awareness basically
missing right with the individuals.
I think I wanna go back to the whole topic about the the talent
gap right. We we mentioned there's there's
massive amount of people that we need to bring to the profession
to solve for the challenges that are upon us.
And I think that is a role of an association as well to make
people and organisation and decision makers aware of the
relevance of the profession and how they can create an
environment in in in which the the professionals can actually
strive. Right.
And we we start thinking a lot about you know how do we bring
new people to the profession which isn't known to crazy much
and which doesn't seem to be very attractive.
A lot of people see project management more as a.
You know it's all about processes and and spreadsheets
and risk management and it doesn't come across very
attractive to, you know, young generations, right.
So this is where we want to focus as as organisations like
APM and PMI to bring new people to the to the profession
showcase that working on projects actually impacts, you
know, large scale challenges, solves these challenges, impact
society. But how do we bring these young
people in and also think about other audience that not
necessarily are at our forefront now, people that want to change
career, right, People that have been kind of doing project
management in an accidental manner.
How do we make them aware that this is actually really a
profession that they can really get good?
That and kind of grow in in that in that field.
How do we help people who had took a break right back to the
work space. How do we help them to reenter
the workspace and and one particular demographic group
maybe that I would like to highlight here are our women.
Quite frankly we we, I mean I'm actually very pleased to see
that many you know women in the audience here today.
But I still think globally that's what we see when we ask
our our global community. We do see a massive gap still in
the gender representation in the profession. 2 third of global
project management roles today are done by mail which isn't a
problem right. But I think where, where we kind
of want to kind of push a little bit.
More for acceptance and diversity really is around
bringing women to the to the workforce and we also found in
that survey that we did with the global community that women seem
to be a little bit stronger naturally in the soft skill side
of things. So what you refer to as the
human side like things we need to focus on when technology
takes over the process pieces maybe women seem to have what we
found a bit of an advantage there naturally.
And another interesting factor maybe to share is when we
surveyed the people that are in project management, male and
female, we found out that the gender gap actually gets much
smaller when when we talked about, you know, who has a
leadership role in project. Management for men, that was
like 2023% of these people in projects are in a leadership
role and for women that's 20%. So that's really a bit of a
smaller gap there, which is kind of indicating a little bit that
there is an advantage for bringing women to the profession
because they progress a little faster into leadership roles and
therefore are a very good match to the profession.
We also found in that survey, if I can share that in addition,
that women have a natural tendency to more easily open up
to newer technologies. Maybe the adoption of AI and all
of that is something that would drive a little bit differently
and they are usually also more open to new ways of working.
Seems to be something we found out on a global.
Survey that we did. So yeah, kind of going back to
what the role here is for us, it really is to identify that
massive gap that there is and come up with ideas of how we
bring new people to a profession which needs to be known more,
quite frankly. That concludes our WRU of the
Change Changes Conference. Next year's conference will be
returning to the Midlands on the 5th and 6th of June 2024.
To register your interest in the event, visit apm.org.uk/APM Dash
Conference slash 2024. APM runs more than 200 events
every year, ranging from webinars and award ceremonies to
day long conferences. You can find out more at APM
Events. That's It from us for this
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Thanks for listening.