Welcome to the IPM podcast. APM is the childhood body for
the project profession. My name is Emma DeVito and I'm
the editor of project apm's quarterly journal and your host.
And this podcast, I'm speaking with caramel McConnell MBE
apm's. Opening keynote speaker, edits
change changes conference, this tomb.
She founded UK charity Magic. First more on that later is a
tech, entrepreneur co-mentor and best-selling author of the book
change activists to make big things happen, fast, published
by Pearson, just to give you a little bit of background on
caramel, she works with corporate Leaders with values to
support people and Planet. She has worked at senior levels
and BT, UBS and 20th Century Fox, ran a successful Tech
leadership development firm, based in London, starting with a
role as an IT project manager and BT.
While working as Senior Tech manager and UBS caramel found
out about the problem of children.
Arriving at school too, hungry to learn.
She began delivering breakfast to a small group of schools, and
seeing the big difference. It made to children who
concentrated better and behaved better.
Caramel remortgage, her home to take a sabbatical leaving her
City role to set up a new National charity.
Magic breakfast, this is now raised over 15 million pounds
for school food, deliveries and provides a nutritious breakfast
to and school-age children every day after 20 years as founder.
And CEO caramel step back from Magic breakfast in 2020, to
refocus on supporting great Business Leaders.
She was awarded an MBE for her services to school food and the
New Year's honours list 2016. Welcome caramel.
Why don't you tell us how you got into project management and
how it has served you throughout your career?
I left school when I was 15 and I went into a career in
insurance and my first job was to train as a marine cargo
claims adjuster. And they said, the most
important thing is that you finish this project and I said,
what's a project? And so from age 15 I was kind of
kind of told you. No?
Okay, well, you have to plan the stages and you have to make sure
that was very good. And my biggest experience with
project management though was a BT because it became something
that I got a bit obsessed about because there were so many
things floating around. So many big strategic
initiatives, and I was a very Junior, it person and was trying
to figure out how does this big organization work.
And I thought, what I'm going to catch on to is someone who makes
things happen that I I can see. So I ended up in a technology
team with this fantastic boss, Peter Bamford and I had been a
sort of social activist on the quiet.
I've been involved in anti-nuclear, work, anti-racism,
work, and then got involved with this lovely Guy, Peter Bamford.
And he said, look, you're a community organizer.
There's this project that's coming along it's called boat or
something. Anyway, it turned out to be the
beginning of the internet and I was really lucky to be on one of
the very first teams and BT working on on broadband.
And he said, well, you're bright and Community organizing.
He said this probably means that we'll have less faxes.
And that would be good, wouldn't it?
That was, that was the original High vision for the program for
the internet. And, but there was a lovely,
lovely chap. Tim berners-lee, who I believe
had a good career, who was advising it?
And it was a, it was originally a military system to try and
create, you know, end-to-end data, that was.
So I got very, very interested in data and very interested in
project management. And I was like, okay, tell me
exactly. When we will know that we have
done this. It's like, well, when you and I
can communicate using our computers without the need for a
telephone, that was one of our, and we worked on also.
I mean, it was such fun because I ended up loving loving, loving
it because it was in the same way as activism, it was
absolutely about the learning and how quickly we could absorb
the learning into the next stage of development, and could we all
learn As much as we could that we could share with each other.
So, I did a master's in Broadband, protocols into endesa
Logistics. My name is this in the 1990s
year, 1995 I6, but I was at BT for a note, with the earliest
internet stuff that I was doing was 1993, that was really early.
And so which so we figured we're figuring out essentially into
and protocols. So that was kind of how to open
kind of you know, BT copper analog, you know, fttp go to the
cabinet going. To the, you know, it was all
about very very limited amount of data on copper.
So this idea that you're going to put enormous amount of data
meant. You know what, we're gonna have
to completely change our infrastructure.
We're going to need a new data Logistics approach.
We're going to need to change the whole way.
We do business, we're going to need a mobile operator because
that's going to get really big. If we can do, can we can we do
mobile? Is that going to work?
Hmm. What it was?
We call it 02 or something. Yeah.
Okay, let's do that. And I got an A and it was really
exciting and I He's very lucky and BT were a very good employer
in that they took me from being a secretary making tea for for
directors to being would you like to join in?
Okay how would a community organizer that was trying to do
a protest need to do this and you know so it was it was very
exciting and I learned a huge amount about project management
particularly about the need to not go off piste.
What do you mean by that? Well just because without new
things all the time and we'd have to sort of hold ourselves
to we said we were just going to do this we're just kind of
figure out whether this bit of data goes from here to here
reliably and we're Not going to add on to it mobile and we're
not going to do it in India and we're not going to do it when oh
no, no, no, no, because all of us kept saying, ah, that's
great. And what if we did this and I
was like, no, no, no. We have to be really, really,
really completely fixed on getting this bit to work,
because if that bit works and we can go on to the next bit and
that was, I think very, very from the activism, which is
like, you know, you have to secure the winds, you have to
get an article in the Press, you have to get a bit of, you know,
a sponsor who will talk and You know, all the and also the
active is a taught me to not be scared, you know?
So when I was on my Master's, I I really felt that the success
of the programs that I was working on and versus success of
other people's or failure of other people's was really due
to, I thought, at the time, the personality and the sort of
capacity that people had to build close quality
relationships and build trust, and I did one of my Master's
project. X was what are the, what's the
commercial value of values? You know, can you put a value in
the marketplace of someone building trust?
And and anyway, this is before CSR and there's a so I had no
idea and lovely guy called in violence was the chair.
And I just sent him a fax because we still had faxes
saying, what do you think the commercial value is to be T of
us having values? Because all these values on the
wall or customer-centric could log Brave and all this kind
Don't have, that is how we work but might be and white, you
know? And it came back and it was
really interesting about well if organizations can do things with
trust, then they're going to have all sorts of benefits, like
keeping the best people, and customer loyalty.
And a way of moving on in the world because you've got good
people with you and you're respected because you are
trusted and I made Central part of everything that I did on the
project management side that we will do what we say.
We're going to do, we're going to do what we say we're going to
do. So we're not going to add 10
things. For the project, we're going to
deliver the project time cost quality.
We're going to do it as we've promised to, and we're going to
keep our promises to ourselves. To succeed in a world of
increasing uncertainty and complexity.
We must change the way we work. We're excited to open the doors
to our brand-new a p.m. conference taking place in the
eights of June 20 23 at the Vox Birmingham, join us as we
explore how the role of the project, profession must adapt
to navigate change. So we can contribute to a
cleaner safer, more prosperous, and inclusive Society across two
streams. You'll learn the tools and
skills needed to address the Strategic cultural and
operational by Is to drive positive change, addressing the
shift from enabling change to driving change.
Because when project succeed Society benefits, we can't wait
to see you there. Visit a p.m. dot org dot U, k--
/ events to book your place today.
Project management has been my savior.
I swear to God because the ability to say write what does
success look like, you know, the beginning the middle and the end
and I'd also I was invented, this thing called pre mortems in
DT as eyes too late when we're bloody kicked out, isn't it as
total losers? Why don't we sit here and kick
ourselves about to see what we, what we're planning to get
wrong, really? And it was the best thing
because it allowed all the egos to come down a level and say,
well, Don't think we're going to get the second stage of funding
for it, because was that them? Well, the guy's about to get
sacked and he's our only Champion own right, okay?
Hmm. That'll probably do it, that
will probably kill us here and in any anything that I'm doing
now. I try and do a pre-mortem.
Anything at all, you know, and given that I'm fighting, a great
habit of personal laziness procrastination, inability to
focus honest-to-god honest, to God, I'm telling you, I'm
telling you, I can only do things when I'm absolutely
moved. Do them, okay?
See you have to be really motivated and bought into it and
you want to do it because he genuinely interested in it.
Yeah, exactly. And for most people, I think
it's the same and we're motivated and bought into having
a roof over our heads, kids having some, you know, some food
on the table. So we're pretty motivated to
stay at the place where will we will be paid to have the life
that we want and that's a big enough motivation.
But beyond that, if you think you've got that, I think it's
really important to start with the heart.
No and I have been kind of the way that I've worked on projects
and the sixth biggest success. I've had on Project has been
where it's been that you've got people excited about it.
Well they feel like wow that would be really good really good
but the project management side. I think from BT and the activism
the combination of activism and project management I think is
this change activists idea which is, you know, we do have to
bring for the next iteration of capitalism for the next
iteration. None of our Lives.
We have the opportunity to do things that excite us and move
us and if you don't know what that is, then try stuff.
You know and if you're somewhere that leaves you absolutely numb
with boredom then just check out why you've chosen that and
think. Okay.
Is that what I really, really want?
If you want to be numb with boredom, you know for many years
and just get paid, but be numb with boredom for through the
working day, then fair enough, that's everyone has their
choice, right? But I'm I think that
particularly project managers are the great doers of
capitalism and the great doers of organizations and the and the
people who bring change, you've got the ability to get people
excited about a bigger outcome and especially doing something
more than just profit. You know.
That's, that's the big motivator, I think.
Because, yes, we can hit the prophet.
Yes, we can do the technical stuff, but can you do it in a
way that gets people to really unleash their potential, that
gives people a chance to find out who they are.
That gives them a sense. The purpose of the organization
that you can have really good meaty conversations about what's
good and bad in the world together as a way of making the
project succeed. A talking about project success,
what are the characteristics that you've noticed of project?
That becomes the success? What do you need to do?
Well, I guess, I mean, you know, kind of initiation planning
execution and closure, right? The four stages of project
management each day. Age, I think you have to ask the
big why, you know, kind of why we're doing it.
And, and do that in terms of, not only a sense of yes, it will
improve things, it will give us Returns on Equity will improve
our reliability, all the technical stuff.
But also is it, is it something that we care about at at
initiation site? Particularly, because while
you're sitting there and what about the earlier?
You've got to be able to say to people Okay, we're going to do
this project. It's going to be quite a big
deal to do this project and this is why if there's a big enough,
what it was, it was it nature. I said, who said that, if
there's a big enough, why you can get through any amount of
how? So, if there's not a big enough,
why? I remember being on a big
project management, it feasibility, study a BT, which
right? It's a really big.
While is part of our program management approach.
We've got sign off on it, we've got budget turned out to be
moving 12 chairs and a table from one room to the other.
Could we just do that? Can we just do that?
No, no. It's part of the system.
You've got to make sure that they're signed off, the plugs
going to be there, the chairs and there.
It's going to be signed off, and it was like, the big enough why
get through in about how? Mmm, but, you know what about
giving everybody, the ability to communicate with the to each
other without needing a phone connecting computers.
Be able to send each other information on a computer
instantly rather than through a letter or a fax.
Is that worth jumping up, don't you?
Yes, it is. It's quite, that's quite I think
this whole thing about at the initial stage, know that, that
Inception stage, you know, you have to check out all the
technical stuff, but you also have to ask the big, why?
And it's not a bad idea, to sort of kind of do a pre-mortem.
Are we excited about this is? Is there a clear purpose?
Does what's the Strategic Direction on that?
Does it fit with everything else that's going on?
And what kind of what were the plan look like?
So every stage in at the initial initiation stage, while you're
doing the planning. What?
Okay? We're going to do it.
Let's do the plan. Is it is what's the big?
Why are we excited about it? Why we're excited about it?
What's the Strategic Direction? What's the purpose?
How do we buy into the purpose? How do people feel about the
purpose? And then, let's get to the plan
and the same on the execution and the same on the closure.
If you've got a kind of flywheel going, where you're sort of
really investigating, you know, the biggest possible definition
of success as well. You know, it's like you keep you
dare yourself like days. Self to have the conversations
with the sponsor like, okay, you've been given a lovely
project feasibility brief, could you go away and find out whether
we should be in, you know, should we be based in Dubai or
shall we build that over there or shall we do this electrical
whatever? Okay.
You know, have you got does that?
Is that something that excites you and moves you?
Because I mean, Steve Jobs said, you've got to have that passion
to keep you motivated. Dated through the dull times,
you know, if it's dulled to begin with is going to get
considerably duller by next Thursday, you know?
So, you know, and again, unless you, if you choosing to go down
the dull career route, that's fine.
Everyone's got a choice of dull or exciting career Roots, but
going back to that, that sort of the project management side is
the project success is so much more likely to be achieved if
you've built in Shannon and purpose as well as planning.
I see that you Mentor CEOs today.
DT furnace out that levels are kind of c-suite level that they
understand what project management is.
Well I definitely think there's a shift in the last few years.
I mean, before I was running the charity and I was working, I was
kind of working in Investment Banking doing big big scale,
technology change. I set up a set up a consultancy
called holistic management, which was Trying to sort of say,
you have to make sure that you've got the sense of people
and the planet and everything you do.
It has to be we have to set up this slightly more 3D, slightly
more holistic definition because look, look at how many projects
are failing just because of one's crashing through the, you
know, kind of data. But it's no one cares or it's no
one's talking to each other or half the team of left or half
the team of burned out. And I just like, I want to do
this based on the combination. Nation of activism and the great
training. I got a BT and so I set up this
company and was having a great old time doing, you know,
large-scale change in the city and the big thing was no, I had
as a project manager there, I had no access to the most senior
people in the bank. I was a definitely a
middle-level, the big change. I think now is and I'll tell you
about the change from Investment Banking and Technology to
running a kids charity feeding hungry kids.
Is that the big change is now? I think that CEOs, recognize
that if you want to get something done, you've got to
have a strategic project management office.
You've got to share the information, the boardroom has
got to have a better connection to its project managers in order
for the things that they that the organization wants to happen
actually happen. You know, if you've got another
letter, if you've got another layer of managers, all you're
doing is slowing things down. So used to have the board you
know and then used to have the you know the deputy The board
managing director is some stuff, and then you'd have the project
managers and the in the time that it used to take to commute
from the board meeting to the next people to the next meeting.
You've lost bloody time and now it's, you know, in a fast
transparent Global Market. You know, the only USP is trust
and the board has to talk to the project management office.
Has the board has to talk to the project managers to get things
done and it has to be in real time, you know?
And if it's being held up by something like, okay, atrocious
market conditions, or Something was going on fine, talk about it
and sort it out and make it happen.
I think there is a, I think there is a big shift now, but
project management is seen as a strategic resource that seen as
something that is, you know, Mission critical to success in
businesses, in a way that it wasn't 20 years ago that and
that's exciting because it needs to happen.
Tell me about magic breakfast because we don't have a lot of
time left and I really want to speak sex.
I know how important that was to you.
Yeah, well what when I was working in the city, I was PBS
and because I've been thinking the chance to write a little few
little thought pieces about the combination of activism and
technology and what it was going to mean, you know, particularly
at the kind of post, Y2K post.com bubble, sort of stage
and I thought I'm going to do a little bit more writing and I
got the chance from Pearson to put a book together called
change activists. And when I I was doing the
research for that. And very happy in my, in my job,
in the city, doing these big change programs, I went out to
speak to a group of nurses and a group of head teachers.
And my question was, are we in the city helping you to create a
fairer as well as a richer society?
And I was involved in all sort of, you know, philanthropy thing
that you to go out and paint shirts and you go off and do
charity days, everything. But I thought the main thing was
to kind of try and keep building in people and Planet into every
part of the project, you know, that was my CSR.
Lily, but I'll go off and have a chat and so these head teachers
and ask that question about are we building a fairer as well as
a richer Society? Just said, well, we all have to
bring in food every single day of the week in order to be able
to teach because so many kids are coming in hungry.
They do. They're just, they're just the
most important lessons are taught in the morning and
they're not able to concentrate. So we bring in bananas digestive
biscuits and would you know, kids are putting their hands up
at 9:00 so mr. Got tummy ache because they're
not had anything since lunch the day before.
And I was like, hmm tell me this.
Why aren't the parents feeding their kids?
Why what? You know like breakfast is not
expensive. Why aren't the parents giving
their kids some food before they go to school?
And they just looked at me and they looked at each other and
said, if to understand Kamala parents are hungry as well, most
of them are working. They're working long hours that
got multiple jobs, their bills have gone up.
They have very, very little money.
They can't not pay their rent. They can't not put the
electricity money in, so they just reduce the food and they
lose meals and selves, and the kids.
Relying on school for their food.
And I had this horrible moment. Honestly, I'm aware, I was kind
of I'd grown up in Northern Ireland, and dagenham.
And my mum used to get kids in after-school and feed them
sometimes. And I just thought I had no idea
that, you know, to bus rides down the road from my office.
There were kids going to school hungry.
So I started dropping, I said I don't know anything.
I'm a technology person. I know no knowledge up but I can
do my shopping over there and I'll drop some food over to your
five schools on Saturday morning.
So I just went Saturday mornings book.
Bagels. The cereals dropped him into the
schools within a week. I had 25 schools, asking me all
your the lady dropping breakfast around being geeky.
I said, look, I'm a technology project manager.
Can we do some measuring of the benefits and they said, okay.
And they said, well let's measure the amount of fights in
the first plague. Run playground.
Okay first fights. Okay and I said, attendance and
punctuality, can we do that within two weeks?
They had said they said kids but are out looking for food in the
morning are here at school. They're here on I'm we can give
them a toasted Bagel glass of milk and they are settled and
ready to learn. And I just thought God Almighty
the cost of a breakfast which is nothing.
These kids getting a morning of study, sorry, fast, fast
forward, went home, had a chat with with, with my partner,
Catherine, and we ended up remortgaging, and I thought I'm
going to give myself a year off change work in the city, and I'm
just going to bully the local authorities and the the skull
people and make them understand that these kids.
Get no breakfast at home. They've got to have a breakfast
at school and then I'll go back to work and it didn't quite pan
out like that within, you know, we grew and you know this
morning as kids coming back from their Easter holidays, magic
breakfast, the great team there is reaching 200, 220 thousand
kids every morning in 1,000 schools, Family action, which is
another organization that we work with is also delivering to
thousands of children, and but there is a big gap.
I mean, so many kids now, are living in food, poverty.
With the cost of living crisis. If we can just make sure every
child has a breakfast and a lunch and something to eat
during the school holidays, then we, as a society, I think we'll
have done something, that's basic and decent but yeah, so it
was a big shift and I didn't expect that either unexpected
accidental career which has been somewhat saved by project
management because at least I could say right?
No child too hungry to learn, that's what we're going to do.
We're going to make sure we're going to deliver.
So lovely deals with And you know, during the lockdown and
missing delivered two million breakfast, when the kids are at
home, got Quaker, Oats magic breakfast story on there, we've
had so many wonderful supporters.
Heinz little kind of, you know, magic breakfast, story on the
side of the no added sugar beans.
I just, you know, you just want in the same way as I hope on
every project, one of the big outcomes is how do unleash the
potential of everyone in our team.
How do we give everyone a great? It's giving that child, the
chance to learn now is that was magic breakfast and I stepped
away. 20 years. I had a plan, 2018.
I submitted my two-year resignation with a plan to
leave. And I left in April 2020, which
was not again the best timing, but the team there are
fantastic. And if anyone wants to learn
more www, magic breakfast.com. But I like his set, you have
optimism and not skepticism about business, being part of
that positive, societal change. And that that's A really nice
perspective to still have after Decades of working in the city,
you're absolutely right about that.
And I think the big project the big project is how we put, how
we make the transition from this kind of capitalism to the kind
of capitalism that is genuinely going to solve the climate
climate crisis and the social and racial issues that are in
front of us and we can do it. You know, we've I really feel
that we've come through. Just look at how we got rid of.
Big tobacco. I know it bounced back in a
million ways. I mean, right now, if we were
able to, for example, help the food industry to stop marketing
junk. Food, in the same way, we could
save the NHS 5 billion over the next five years.
Transition, transition and project management is the great
fantastic unlock for those kinds of big changes, which is why I'm
probably quite glad that I learned the skills.
I will be proud to be a project manager to the day, I die.
One thing I'd like to ask is about being a leader of a
project team or a leader. In general, what things should
you do to tap into that? Feeling of passion?
It's so so overused but but motivation how do you how do you
get a team to feel motivated and work together?
I tried to write change activists to help people who
have the desire to be leaders in their own lives or at work or in
any other setting and change activist is someone who takes
action in line with their values even if it goes outside their
comfort zone. So for a leader, it is about
taking the action but is kind of agreed on and to be the one
who's brave enough to say this is, this is a good thing to do,
this is why we're going. To do it, have that sense of
values and sense of purpose and to go outside your comfort zone
as a leader to to make sure people are involved to make sure
that the people who have paid the least and have maybe got the
best perspective or involved to make sure that you've put the
taboos in. You know, if you're a great
leader, you can take people with you because you show that
personal courage that you're taking action that you believe
in it and that you are willing to put yourself on the line.
Follow you, when they, they see that you are a stand-up person,
you know that Rosa Parks statement of you stand up for
something or you'll fall for anything, you know, but you just
that people come with you and of course.
So if you align yourself with something that's a dud idea or
something that hasn't got values or something isn't going to
bring people with you, fine, you know, you kind of might be paid
in some other way but you're not going to have an easy time
bringing with you. If you're there and you're
bringing people with you and you're doing it with with an
open honest loving heart and saying, to people.
This matters to me and it's going to make things better.
And I'm going to take action, I'm going to put myself in the
line. That's what leaders great
leaders do, and they bring people with them.
I could talk to you for another hour, at least everything and
then it's been really nice to kind of meet you and I'll see
you at the conference and thank you for your time.
Absolute pleasure, lovely, talking to you.
Thanks again to Carmel for joining us and to you for
listening to the APM podcast. Don't forget to look out for
more episodes or to rate and review as wherever you.
Get your podcasts and to read a p.m. project journals.
Big interview with caramel and the summer 2023 issue to welcome
you to get in touch with your comments feedback and
suggestions by e-mailing us at a p.m. podcast at think publishing
.co.uk. This podcast has been brought to
you by APM the childhood body for the project professional.
Ian for more information. They p.m. visit a p.m.
Dot org.uk.