Welcome to the APM podcast. APM is the chartered body for
the project profession. This special episode is guest
hosted by Emma Ruth. Arnaz Pemberton, chair of apm's.
Pmo specific interest group and director of consulting services
at Wellington. She'll be in conversation with
Kathryn. Lum of open.
Reach the fiber and network delivery.
Pmo at openreach was the recipient of apm's 2022.
Pmo of the Year award. The judges praised, the pmo for
working on relationships and on accessible ways to bring
benefits and also for generating Joy, through the work itself.
Listen onto here, Catherine talked about how and why the pmo
was established, the transformation Journey at went
on and also why pmo's have something of an image problem
and how to break the bias? Welcome to the latest AP on
podcast. I'm very happy to have with me
Kathryn. Lum from openreach the 2022.
Pmo of the year and program of the Year Awards winner.
Thank you for being here and congratulations, Catherine.
Thank you, Emma. So let's start with the easy
question. First, tell us a little bit
about you and your journey. Absolutely.
And so as I said, I'm Kathryn Lum more.
Caffeine Bell said for anyone who worked with me pre-marriage
I live just outside leads and I lead the transformation pmo in
one of upper reaches. Has business units and I suppose
my career as almost come full circle and as I actually started
my graduate scheme in a project control, pmo support will and I
kind of always say, it's the sliding door moment of my whole
life. Emma was was getting The
Graduate trainee position, a fabulous, small consultancy
company, which specialized in systems integration called
Centegra and I'm a first day I kind of turned up with an
incredible work ethic filled with common sense but my tool
box was empty and Oh, kind of coming from the middle of
nowhere in Cumbria pre-internet. I wasn't really particularly
worldly and I just really really felt out of my depth and but
very quickly found myself in a really great project team, you
know and after many years of boring jobs, when a student at
University the rule you know the role of being a project manager
of pmo. It really really it lit a fire
in me and then kind of followed. Lots of fabulous rotations.
Doing everything from pmo Project planning risk management
taking a Actions, you know, kind of understanding the end-to-end
project management life cycle, delivery framework, lots of work
in requirements, contract management, defects technical
service transitions working in service operations and I kind of
put all those different bits of the jigsaw together and an
account of found myself eventually becoming a project
manager. And at that point, I basically
spent all of my 20s finding the most demanding projects that I
could pack it up my little suitcase, Traveling all over.
The country are kind of living in hotels, three or four nights
a week. So yes I spent a lot of time in
London working on an NHS IT contract which was fantastic
kind of jumped over to Belfast. Got a bit of a neck.
First Transformation experience on a civil service project then
moved up to New Castle working with the government in Edinburgh
and Glasgow and a big devolved systems integration project.
And you know, if I'm really honest Emma, I admit I work too
much. Slept under my desk too often
partied way too hard. Sorry.
Sorry networked and but it really kind of expedited my
experience, which has kind of led to some pretty meaty program
manager and program director roles both on customer-facing
projects, but more recently, moving into transformation.
So What attracted you to kind of come back through delivery and
back into the pmo is an industry, it's interesting.
So I am absolutely a project manager by trade and about three
years ago. I was kind of program.
Gina a pretty meaty transformation program.
In my previous organization, they actually approached me and
into leading their we called it a TMR transformation management
office. But you know, for all intents
and purposes, it is a pmo. And I'll be honest, it a lot of
thinking went on. It was a really tough decision
and if I'm really candid, I think that's because because I
feel and I know a lot of my colleagues feel, there's quite
an industry-wide stigma surrounding pmo's, sometimes,
you know what kind of looked at as?
Oh stickers as policeman, you know, I spent much of my career
navigating and avoiding some of these kind of low value box
ticking pmo's because, you know, I often didn't feel the value
myself and when this opportunity came along, I did quite a lot of
ping-ponging and I kind of decided I could continue being
frustrated. I could win Jack could Moon
about the pmo's or actually I could use this as an opportunity
and do something about it. And the more I thought about it,
the more I just knew that I could make a greater impact
moving into. Hammer evolve evolve in the
model the value. And I kind of came up with a
vision that, you know, I really wanted to break the bias on the
perception of pmo's and, you know, obviously Emma, like every
pmo. You know, I wanted to ensure
excellence in the delivery of our projects and our programs,
but to me that's a given. But I do believe that a pmo can
kind of set the tone for how the whole team operates.
So I just want you to smash those perceptions and and do it
a little bit differently but that that was A tough decision,
to make it all kind of went through.
But, you know, every pathway isn't isn't positive and sadly
within days of starting this new role.
There was a, the board level leadership, changed the business
pivoted, the role kind of disappeared and became something
very different to the one taken another.
Well, don't lots of things in that year.
And you know, ultimately, I think the comment one, very
trusted and generous colleagues said to me was it was like,
putting Ronaldo. Ingles it was just totally the
wrong fit for me. And so again, you know, I could
kind of win John Moon again or I could just accept that it hadn't
worked out as I hoped and do something about it.
So, two years ago, Emma found a pmo senior manager role
advertising up and reach and I kind of decided to give it
another girl to find a place to to meet my vision went through
interviewing and got the rules. So yeah, that's how I ended up
at leading a pmo. That's a really interesting and
I think everybody that's listening.
That's worked in pmo, will be able to relate to that stigma,
that still exists in some organizations and trying to find
the balance of being the police, which is a legitimate part of
our role, as well as kind of driving the future and
innovating and, and doing all that other stuff.
So, I think that's, it's interesting that you've
experienced that as well. And I think like, I say
something that everybody will be able to definitely relate to if
They've worked with in or alongside a pmo for sure so
let's get a little bit more into the pmo itself.
Tell us a little bit about openreach so we can understand
the little bit of the context where you're pmos.
It's no absolutely context is everything so openreach.
I'm sure you'll have all heard about as intense in the vans on
the street but we connect millions of UK customers to The
Wider world through our Network. We provide more than 28 million
consumers. We connect more than 5.6 Million
UK businesses, and ultimately, the majority of the UK will be
an Old Pro each customer, but you just might not know it
because your consumer Network through what we call a customer
provider. So, I think about your internet
provider, like, Sky, talktalk, BT that there's 800 of them that
we work with as our customers and our purpose in a poem.
Each is massive, you know, sometimes is a little bit
dramatic ever, but you know, I consider moments in history of
that. Are that have changed the world.
You never think about the Industrial Revolution or a
little bit more recently in a moving from hot horses and cats
to cars or from black and white TVs to color TVs.
You know, there's all these changes and I think the
revolution that we are living through now is the move to
fiber. You know, many of us are you
know now able to work from home, thanks to new technology but
that was just Unthinkable. 10 years ago when we were all
dialing into Cole's on a fixed line headset.
You know, an old technology is continually demanding higher and
more reliable bandwidths so our mission.
And open a chest, the rollout fiber to at least 25 million
homes by 2026 and we're currently at 9 million.
So we're making pretty pretty good progress.
So that's kind of open reach, but if we kind of delve down
into a preach, I work in it. Split into business units and I
work in one of the biggest business units called effendi
fiber Network delivery to kind of put a bit of scale to that.
It's an operational team of over 12,000 led by a phenomenal and
inspiring managing Director. Matt Hemmings and we're
basically building and connecting our customers at a
most of those, you know, most of the 12,000 people are the
engineers that you see out in the fans on the street.
So we kind of jumped down into effendi the business unit.
I then work in a subunit in there called transformation and
change for an incredible inspiring and fantastic director
called Zen Bowen. And we've got about 130
colleagues in our transformation team, they're mainly project
managers business change experts.
And this team is responsible for transforming our business to be
fit to serve and to meet that strategy.
And I fit within Zen's team. And one of my teams is the
transformation p.m. oh, well, that's a huge undertaking and
very interested to see, you know, how you hit those amazing
targets. Let's talk a little bit about
your portfolio then within the pmo team.
What are the kinds of projects that tend to sit within your
portfolio? Are they all about delivering
fiber or you doing other stuff? As well, no definitely
definitely other stuff. And so this was again to scale.
It we've got any one time up to 200 projects, split across six,
programs in that portfolio. And most of those projects
involve, some kind of process people and often system changes
to imagine we're trying to schedule the work of you know,
over ten thousand Engineers every day.
That's really quite complex. So a lot of our projects around
scheduling that work more effectively, we do.
Sing travel time serving our customers quicker.
We've kind of dabbled into the world of data science and we've
got some fantastically clever algorithms to identify those
customers orders that are most likely to fail based on history.
So we can intervene early to deliver for our customers.
A lot of our projects are about automation improving workflows.
So there's less touch points, less points of failure.
You know, we really do try and focus on our customers.
So at the moment, we're doing a lot of work to improve customer.
Comes through a multitude of. Different channels.
And if you think about trying to roll out fiber 225 million
homes, you know but it's an insane infrastructure project.
I think behind her she has to wear the second biggest
infrastructure program in the country at the moment, we're
always out, you know, we're identifying like physical
tooling, you know, as a project the other day came on my desk
about jetters, right? My boy, what's this, you know,
these are things that can resolve blockages in the ground
that typically historically would have had to dig up the
road and put traffic Management in place, and all the
frustration that It comes with that, you know, we've got some
fantastic technology that can blow the fiber through the pipes
under the ground for many kilometers.
So we can build quicker. So it's it's just such a
fascinating business and, you know, in the last two years I've
been here, it's kind of really, really blown me away and what
were what were, what we're doing, Emma.
So yeah, our team doesn't actually deliver the fiber, we
deliver improved processes and ways so that the team's rolling
out, the fiber can do it more, effectively, and quicker.
That's really fascinating and mostly because most of us like
to say are consuming this and have no idea what sits behind
it. It's really really interesting
in within our Industries where the accepted that pmo's are
usually created to respond to a particular challenge or
opportunity. What was the trigger for your
pmo to be set up? No, absolutely about.
Well, we can we've seen the vision there, right?
And why we have to be successful.
And so it's of my director, Zane was a few months into In his new
role leading, a transformation delivery when he advertised my
rule and actually there was an incumbent pmo Emma, when I
joined the business with some really incredible people in it,
it just hadn't fully decided what it wanted to be or fully
defined the services. It was, it was gone up or gone
on offer and it was kind of existing in an environment
where, you know, it's I think we all know.
It's really, really hard to work without clear.
Executive support, you know, where missions and objectives
aren't fully defined, you know, and the team had some great
Frameworks and some Processes. But they weren't embedded the
word been adopted and weren't being used.
Therefore, the value wasn't been realized the Lords of governance
events happening, but there was just such a huge opportunity to
drive more value from these, you know, simple things.
I know every project every business suffers from this
certainly the ones I've worked in, sometimes it can even be as
best because it's really hard to identify one single list of all
the projects that were delivering across this massive
business, you know? And if therefore, for example
Emerson, once said to me, one another dates on every project,
Eject, how was impossible because every project delivered
in its own way with its own life cycle.
It's on Milestones, you know, and all buried in their own
project plans to you. You couldn't get that data and
that insight to drive the decisions.
You know, this was kind of leading to, you know, a bit of a
history of projects being delivered late more often than
we'd like, you know, and leading to disrupted operations, you
know, we're transforming the way they work.
But sometimes we were impacting that and so yes, every project
manager got some brilliant budget managers, but the doll,
you know, like we all like to do Project manager hats on.
We like to deliver things in our room where you know without any
Frameworks you know kind of work it out as you go along.
But this is a complex business. You've got to work with over 15
teams on each project because that knowledge wasn't codified.
You almost had to have been, you know, permits for a few years to
learn how to deliver projects. So, you know, for me, when I got
this job, it was just, you know, rather than that being
overwhelming, which it could have been it was actually just a
really, really exciting opportunity and a great time to
join. And getting to work for Zane as
well. Amazing, I love the concept of
the tacit knowledge that sits within the business and how so
many organizations don't take advantage of that and it only
becomes a problem or opportunity when somebody leaves and that
knowledge leaves with them. It's it's fascinating the whole
Knowledge Management piece. So, to drive that, then what
approach did you use to establish your PML?
Gosh. Well, I'd had Journey from A, to
B, as a project in itself, and if I'm honest, We run it as a
project as well. You kind of can't take the
project manager out of me. So you know when I first started
you know we worked really works really hard to understand the
business to really understand it as is and you know, started to
carry out maturity assessment as well.
You know, did a lot of interviews ran quite a lot of
Retros or Lessons Learned and you know, and and that kind of
led to basically deciding what we what we were going to be.
What did this business need to know that every p.m. on these be
entirely? Aunt and aligned to what that
business and that company needs. So we kind of worked on what the
services were. We were going to offer as a pmo,
you know, we you kind of said at the start of the call as well
but you know, preach we're also really lucky to win.
Not look it. But you know it's fantastic that
we also won the program of the year and and that's a
partnership program with Accenture.
So, you know, at that point we were able to build on some great
MVP work that we've done on that major program with Accenture and
it that really helped Stakeholder support and buy-in
as well, which is the key. So, you know, we agree division,
we agreed the services, which work for this business and then
I split the execution in two tranches.
So, you know, we're, we prioritized, first of all, a
delivery lifecycle framework, it some, getting controls with
perfected, some strong governance events, and we have
to improve our financial Benefit Management.
It took a lot of time. We didn't try and do everything
with pick those three things but it but it really Added to work
in our delivery improved benefits were realized and we
got that all importance. They're called a buy-in, but
that was only on one of those six programs because I do
believe don't try and design something and then roll it out
everywhere, design, something and pilot it, perfect it and
make sure it works so and so I suppose after that we wanted to
mature the pmo. So you know, the value was
proven on that one program or sponsorship from all those key
stakeholders was in place and we wanted to both widen and Expand
the pmo, so offer more services and also roll it out tomorrow.
If there are more of those programs.
And so our priority action was maturing our delivery lifecycle
codify in, even more knowledge, Emma into one place.
You know, we're introduced some strategic tooling at this point.
We felt we were mature enough to introduce tooling to drive date
control and able reporting Automation, and, and bolster our
risk management processes. This also meant was as a pmo
team could do more with the same amount.
Out of people because we were automating a lot of the work I
think in parallel at all times, I kept regular reflecting on my
my perceptions of pmo's of old and the biggest frustrations
that I had, and so in parallel, in our, we as a pmo team really
focused on the culture in our team and I want I want this pmo
to be there to Champion successful role.
So if a project fails we have failed, right?
Will stand up there. We failed you But if the project
succeeds, they are celebrated, they get the praise and it's
it's really different behaviors. So, that to what the team had
previously been used to working within our don't want
finger-pointing, don't want to be trying to catch people out.
Don't want to be like, trying to prove people wrong.
It's not about that. We're there to enable the
success. And so if, you know, if you
fail, we fail, if you succeed well done, you've done an
awesome job. So, you know, again that the
cultural bit I think has been a big part of Of of why we've
landed and been successful. So, you know, we piloted this
full pmo offering across two programs and we continue to
reiterate it, right? We took another number of months
to get it fully working. We ran a lot of feedback loops
and I've really tried to actively create a safe
environment to tell us what what wasn't working on the ground.
And, you know, we introduced a lot of gamification trying to
get people to adopt these new ways of working through fun
little are competitions and Prizes and things like that.
And, you know, I spent a lot of my time traveling.
The country actually doing really interactive training
sessions, you know, to support the rule out because we can, you
know, we you need a pmo capability, has to be at the
level to adopt this and to be successful.
So there's a lot of coaching and training and working with our
fabulous p.m. teams as well at this point.
Suppose suppose, you know, we started small with matured it
and then it was all about scaling it making sure that we
you know once the the not only the ways of working were tested
and proven actually the way that you successfully rule it out was
proven through the challenges we've had, and we scaled it to
all six programs across the full portfolio.
So that's kind of where we find ourselves today but you know, if
we kind of think that's the end of the story and you know that
that then would be wrong because the jobs never done, right.
But The pmo adapts. It changes and we must remain
relevant and valuable. So you know, we've always got a
roadmap. What's next?
What's the next thing we want to introduce?
What's the next thing we could, you know, make easier.
So yeah, lots of lots of exciting work to get to this
point, but you know, we definitely look forward with
what's next at all times as well, just irrelevant.
It's a fascinating and really inspiring journey and I think it
will be really good for other pmo professionals to hear it.
I remember I was involved in designing the pmo award with the
APM and what are the key things that we were really focusing in
on his legacy? And I think that's one of the
things that often gets missed, is like, when you move on to
something new and shiny, what do you leave behind, or is it
something amazing? Or is it something that because
you're driving it, it kind of Starts to wither away over time
and I think that's really impressive.
And one of the things that for me it's really important that
you've done and that's really focused on what do we need for
now. But getting into that
scalability and that Evolution to kind of really leave a
cultural Legacy about what you guys are doing.
So really well done for that and bedding and sustaining a project
is the hardest part of any project.
It's no different. This is a project in itself.
Isn't Amino embedding this way of working.
It has to embed and sustained. Enough for the future.
So, no, I couldn't couldn't agree.
More did you also find the question?
I get asked the most of all, I don't know if you do Emma.
But how do I start? Where do I start?
What do I do that? That's kind of the most common
question I get asked. Yeah, definitely.
I think that, you know, though, I wrote something on LinkedIn or
that long ago with that you know a few different tips on these
are the first things that you need to be doing and for me they
include firstly. No, the organization you can't
lift and shift a pmo. You need to And exactly what you
mentioned. What is the service?
What are the services that are relevant that are appropriate to
your organization? Reality also know your strengths
and your weaknesses within yourself and your team.
We do tend to find that pmo's get set up by maybe one or two
people and it's because they're there and they're available.
A lot of the time. They don't necessarily have the
experience and pmo, they have experience in delivery and that
can be really challenging because then we are setting
something up. Up because of our own experience
or not really looking at our internal customers.
You know, for me, the pmo is a service provider just like it.
We have a bunch of internal customers.
They consume our services and I think that's that's really
important. And that's where the Legacy
starts to come into play. It's much bigger than the
process and the lifecycle and the templates in the tools which
we need and are very tactical and absolutely add value, but
it's taking it to that next level.
I think that's what you guys have definitely managed to do.
Do now you've talked a little bit about people and the
Fantastic Team that you work with people for me are the most
important part of pmo. I always talk about a human
first approach, you know, speak to the humans before you speak
to the pmo people. So how do you manage the
competency of your pmo team? How do you upskill cross skill?
And make sure that your guys are staying motivated and ahead of
the Curve. I'll be honest, our team is not
typical of a pmo. We've got a real diverse team
with a mix of skills and experiences.
So some of the people in RPM or we've delivered projects to
customers internally and externally which is great.
Right. Have been a project manager.
Well, those have kind of seen the evolution of this p.m. our
role in up and reach over several years, sort of the
beading pmo for quite some time. Some of our people are actually
from operations. So they've come from the
operational side of the business and then, Might start with
little or even no, pmo experience, but they personally
have first-hand knowledge of how our business works.
And they also know how it feels to receive the changes that we
rule out in our projects. So to me they bring SME
knowledge which is just critical for us to be different, you
know? Because they understand that
perspective, it means we can really put the customers first.
We can do better Assurance bake make better recommendations
because we know the business more.
And, and my deputy sheriff said, to me the other day and I've
built a really nice team, haven't where and, and it sounds
really cheesy to say it. But it is certainly genuinely
the happiest most contented team that I've worked in.
And it's been about finding the right mix of skills but also
personalities. And at the moment, you know,
we're seeing in industry and really, really high churn, you
know, all over the place. But if I'm honest, I'm just, I'm
actually proud that we've been stable for over a year now.
You know, the team want to be here, they want.
To say they know our purpose. They know how we fit in there.
Know, why were critical? And I think at times P MOS teams
don't always do always feel that So we have daily stand-ups,
where we have two groups of work that we go through.
So one is what I call BAU. And the other is, is evolved.
And let's be honest, people have a bias, some people like to do
the jobs where they know what they're doing, where the turning
the handle, and they're running the reports and running the
health checks and running the government's and chasing up
actions. You know, so people really do
have a bias and a preference. So you know, some people prefer
the BAU, Some people prefer working in the evolved side.
What's next? What's coming up next?
What's the next new thing we need to do?
What's the next bit of business Assurance?
You want to introduce our make better.
So we give people the opportunity to have a preference
but we do get everybody involved in both.
So even those people that prefer to turn the handle are always
learning new things and being challenged and I think you know
that that brings a real satisfaction that I hope to the
team. And I think we can't forget that
we've operated and I started this job, we're in covered and I
think we're probably a year into covid at the time now is the
ping-pong of The office out of the office and it's been really
tough to convince people to return to the office.
You know, we do operate a hybrid model here at upper each which
is great and provides, great flexibility.
But you can't force people to come back into the office or for
me, it's about being trying to make it compelling so that
people want to come back in. So when we do ever get together
as a team, everyone just feels like they're buzzing they're
energized and I think you know our learning and our progress
really solves by working first the first.
So I'm always trying to To build on that momentum and and use the
enablers that we have as well. So, you know, like most
corporate companies were allowed, a few volunteering days
a year. You know, was a full team.
We've got together doing footpath, lay in this last year
or half the team, a few months ago up into the food bank, in
leads the other half, did some gardening at grenfell, you know,
we're had a lot of fun nights out as well.
And so I think we just got a really nice environment and what
we try and do fun things together to build those
connections as a team. But, you know, we do hold
ourselves to very, very high standards.
And I was asking my team, one of my team near the dead kind of
reflect on this question. And they just said, you know, no
one ever takes anything. Personally, we all believe in
continuous Improvement and we just want to help each other.
We do not want to bring each other down.
It's just a really positive, uplifting culture in the team,
but it took a long time, right? To get better and bring it.
Bring in some people in Yes, the people side I think is really
important and I think it's great that you've you've really taken
what's available to you, like you say like the volunteer
volunteer and days, I know that that kind of work becomes really
important to bring the team together and to be doing
something different. So I organized every year, a
project management Day of Service, where we get people
from industry to come and give pro bono support for a date, too
small to medium-sized Charities and it, you know it starts off.
As something nice to do. And actually, then very quickly
become as one of the most important thing that the team
does is to actually give something back from our
industry. So it's, I think that's really,
really good thing that you've done.
And you've mentioned it, briefly around, you know, what makes
your pmo unique and different and you talked about skill, sets
or pmo's a different. That's why I love my job.
Every pmo I speak to is is a different conversation outside
of skill sets. Is there anything else that you
say you would you think? Think would make sure your pmo
interesting different successful that people might be able to
take away? You wouldn't believe it today
with how much I'm talking, but I generally, I'm a, they'll be a
lot of people smoking now when I say this, that, that know me,
but I'm a real fan of succinctness and brevity, you
know, we are often surrounded by people who make things complex,
say a thousand words when 50 would do and kind of cause
confusion or distraction, with too much detail and and our goal
as a team is to always be simple and straightforward.
And I think, you know, I want us to be trusted if we say we'll do
something, we always do it. And to me, Me and I like, I we
have a monster action tracker in the team from every meeting
every piece of governance. Every action we ever get as a
team goes in that tracker. So, you know, we make sure we
follow through on everything to make sure that we build that
trust and that's made a big difference, because often you
sit in events, people say, they'll do something.
You never hear from them. Again will always go back and
make sure that we do it. I think our intranet is kind of
a real amazing tool that we've introduced.
We kind of get thousands of hits a month, sounds really obvious
but it just It just has everything in one place, really
clear guidance for everybody to support the successful delivery
of our transformation agenda. And I think the main difference
though, is our world. Why why why?
You know it's the why we really try.
Never to tell anyone to do something.
We spend time explaining the, why this is this is actually
been a huge focus on the team's development as well on that
culture that we had a whole two day workshop dedicated to why,
maybe if I try and bring it to life with a couple of examples.
So, you know, within we have to govern and many business
insurance activities. So we're a really highly
regulated industry and that brings lots of checks, you know,
heavily unionized need lots of Union engagement, but you know,
a real critical area, critical Assurance area for us is safety
safety first every time in this business, if you think about it,
every single change, every single project, we deliver has
the potential to impact the safety of our colleagues.
So, historically every project with a gauge, the health and
safety team contacts themselves to imagine 200.
Doing this ad hoc it was an industry in itself so you know,
it really, really basic thing we've done but we just centrally
govern and funnel all projects into the right.
Kind of health and safety Forum at the right time and you re use
one of your existing artifacts and you pop along for two
minutes. There's no work, no prep, bring
something you already have and just pop into this meeting for
two minutes and get the tick in the Box.
Because if your project, just something that in just someone
just just imagine that Guys, right, imagine the impact.
So we just literally as they're all, you know, so I don't have
time. Why do I need to do this?
We try and explain if they don't do this, what could happen and
all we want is two minutes and we've really made it as easy as
we possibly can. The other thing, we get a lot of
pushback and wide for. Did you know, when we first
introduced it? Why do we have to use this
system to put my status updates in guys, give us four bits of
information, once a week will reuse that in three different
governance event. You don't have to go into three
PowerPoint decks, you can, you know, leave us to do all the
donkey work. And that gives you more time to
deliver not be preparing governance events.
So it's all about the why and try, you know, we've tried to
design things to be as streamlined as possible as well,
so everything is don't do this. You know, if there's any
pushback, it's just give me a couple of minutes.
Let me just explain why this matters and and people don't
always agree, right? And, and genuinely will listen.
So, we've got a feedback loop on every email on every template
and actually, I sometimes go out.
I don't know why, but you know, actively trying to find things
to improve even further. So I do Do you know?
Run quite a lot of Retros across the program's gather feedback
and if something goes wrong or a project fails or something
didn't happen as it should, we'll get to the root cause and
then we could if I that learning into our framework and our
templates immediately. So we learn from that so that
every other project coming up behind a standards, has it built
into their framework that that takes real discipline and to do
that. But you know we set we set the
standards High, we do what we say we will and I think that's
kind of built. The respect and the trust and
they all kind of come back to. If they fail we failed if they
succeed, they get the prayers so and so.
Yeah, it's about the, why? And about listening.
Yeah, amazing. The spend a lot of time talking
to people about, why? Because if you can't articulate
it, no one else is going to be able to articulate it outlined
or understand why you're there. So I think that's really
important and and you know, value and perception is so
important in that and you know, we always say beauty.
Your values and eye of the beholder.
What do you think are the benefits that your customers
perceive from your pmo into the organization?
How do you change their day-to-day?
So yes, our p.m. I was helped us be more
predictable in the delivery of our projects and programs, you
know, and I'm a massive fan of tangibly measuring these
outcomes as well. So what, you know, our on-time
delivery has dramatically improved over the last year, and
we run Checked Health scores and these are trending in the right
direction. But again, this actually isn't
to call out and do performance is actually if I'm honest to
identify those project managers who might need extra support and
coaching. So it's, you know, it's got a
dual purpose as those kind of scores.
So to help people but make sure that our projects are healthier
than what they were. And as a business, as every
business, we've got to reduce our cost base both for a
longevity but also to invest back into that once in a
generational Information that were leading to go for fiber.
So benefits management, cost control is a big part of our of
how we measure our success. And last year, we actually did
our Target by by 15% which was can't go into numbers but as a
phenomenal amount of reduction in the cost base and I think to
me, people only go to governance consistently if it's good.
I don't know how many meetings in my diary.
I don't go to anymore because it's just not good governance.
Not Use of my time isn't driving value and I think the most you
know we have a lot of governance but I'm most valuable part of
our governance is I gating board.
You know people come to that consistently because you know
with could if I had years of knowledge into a framework and
all were doing is making sure the right deliverables have been
created at the right time that the right people have reviewed
and approved them. So that we're engaging our
stakeholders, we go through all of the learning from recent
projects and make sure we're not Making the same mistakes or
anything that went particularly well that were building that
learning in. And we make sure that because
every single metrics, team attends that every project has
all the people they need to deliver the next phase.
It all sounds really common sense, but if you get to the
root cause of why projects go wrong, it's because we're not
engaging the right stakeholders at the right time I were missing
just one or two important people out or we're not interlocking
with the teams that deliver the projects.
So you know are getting boards. Probably, you know, the fact
Comes to them and that is the big event of the week is
something I'm really proud about and you know Alex Grace and when
I had my a hugely recently dropped a note to the team
saying it was the best gating he'd ever seen.
Which was, you know, just just a phenomenal.
So yeah and I hope if I'm honest but the two are p.m.
Awards as well and you know sure that we're doing something
right. But for me why that is important
is we have wants to attract Talent into the team because at
the end of the day it's about people and you know, So if
people can kind of get excited and see how we work and want to
join our team that that for me is great as well.
That's really old sounds brilliantly.
Positive. What about challenges though?
Let's flip the coin. What are the main challenges
that your pmo faces? We can always focus on the
positive cat. We are where we got to, but
goodness me. This has been a journey.
I have a few more grey hairs and I did two years ago and I took
this job. And I think the challenges that
we faced and no different to the ones that any other p.m. office
is when I speak to two colleagues from other
businesses, but now the first one was that Policeman right?
It's really really tough to change the behaviors of some of
the incumbent pmo colleagues. It was about demoing the
behaviors. And for me it was actually about
being vulnerable and showing them that if something did fail,
there was no kind of comeback on them.
You know, and and really try to build trust in the team.
And, and by showing the value, by doing things differently,
I'll be honest. You know, most people jumped on
board and then it was all about a mix of headhunting.
So some people I've worked with in These businesses at chose to
come and join me, which is just phenomenal.
When people kind of choose to come and work with you again,
you know, we did rotate some colleagues, and we did a lot of
coaching, but that's led us to that.
Collaborative, helpful value-adding team that, you
know, has helped the business business successful.
And I think the W are often easy and appear Montana.
We keep saying it, but it's how you do it.
That's the key here. So the first one was changing,
the behaviors of the pmo, but outside of the team, you know, I
was going around the country, working with the project
managers for me. I actually just told my story.
So, you know, I'd stand up in my god.
I've been, you know, I resonated with them about those
perceptions and the challenges that they had, and I kind of
told them that I needed their help to build something that's
different. And to build a culture where the
pmo shows, Runner ability and creates a safe space for a
feedback. You know, again, you fail.
We fail, you succeed. Well done.
So it was it was all about getting the truth.
Stand, the respect of the project managers and building
those relationships at all levels from the, you know, the
program directors right down to the the more Junior project
managers we've had. So, you know, I know all of them
spent time with all of them and and resonated with them that
hope has helped build that trust.
And I think the next challenge we had is the Matrix
organization we working. So anyone here working for a big
company will also operate in a complex Matrix team.
You know we've got it teams data, aha.
HR operations themselves, change teams, etc, etc, etc.
And those teams need to come together at the right time on
every project. So, if I give you an idea of the
scale of the challenge, 15 different metrics teams, all
need to come together at the right point on 200 projects,
that's 3,000 individual engagements all happening.
Independently. So we worked with every single
team to contract on their services, what could we expect
from them? A standard and kind of agreed.
Best practice templates and we streamlined and agreed, you
know, engagement mechanics, you know, front doors.
And finally we then built that into our delivery framework to
give really clear guidance and assurance that that was
happening. So you know really try to give
give the PM's time to manage the projects not trying to work out.
Who should do this bit, who should do that bit?
How do I get in touch with them? Well, is that good?
Is that what good looks like? I've got no idea.
I've never worked with them before.
So a lot of our effort went into the Matrix organization and
getting all of that contracted And stood up so that was another
challenge and definitely an area think you know bigger businesses
you need to focus on. Are you won't be successful?
I think we can't pretend right? That change reluctance.
Are we call it change fatigue. You know, we're not transforming
a stable business, but one that's transforming and growing
rapidly and there's a lot of change hitting the teams.
So the teams are out there trying to do their jobs, trying
to serve our customers fantastically and, and, you
know, we got feedback that they were fill out every week or
every day, there was another change coming and it kind of led
to fatigue. So, you know, we've had to do a
lot of work to prioritize and group.
Our new ways of working on the, to arrive release Cycles.
We don't drop to them every day, or every week, we may be
dropped. And less frequently but in a
more controlled way. So they're actually ready to
consume and absorb it be properly trained you know in
different things at the same time so they can work in those
new ways. So you know, we often forget Ops
forget how it feels to be constantly receiving change.
So we really pivoted and focused on that.
I think if I didn't bring this one up, it would be, it wouldn't
be good, but this is something. I know that all pmo's struggle
with it will only work if our project managers adopt the new
ways of working, you know, and I project managers are so busy
delivering projects that at times.
They know they were almost quite reluctant themselves to receive
that change. You know, I don't need to work
to a standardized way of working.
Don't need you to give me these new templates, I know what I'm
doing. That was a pretty A tough one to
crack. And if I kind of fast forward
through lots of different solutions in attempts, we
ultimately brought those stakeholders into our gold user
group, we create a framework and give it to them.
These gold users were empowered to co-create the framework with
us. So they then helped us test it.
They helped us improve it. And then they became coaches for
are less experienced p.m. so, actually, they felt they owned
it. They felt it was their
framework, helping them do a better job.
Not something that p.m. I was In the Muse.
So you had always really championed cook creating and
sometimes those people that are very loud or very obnoxious, or
the ones that are the real blockers, get them inside, find
a way to bring them on the inside and put them in those
user groups, if you can, because then they'll be loud on the
shouting about what you're doing as well and getting that buy-in.
Now one destroys what one helps to build.
There we go. There we go.
And I think this was not my last one, so I could go on all day,
but it's For me, it's about the hero mentality.
I don't know about other people, but in all the businesses I've
worked in, I find that some people thrive on chaos, people
love saving the day. They love it.
When something goes wrong, you know, because they can fix it.
And sometimes as businesses, we reward those Heroes who saved
the day, we put them on a pedestal, you know it.
Oh my God. You've done amazing.
You've solved. This massive problem.
And that is brilliant. We need those people in every
business. But actually, sometimes I think
we forget to focus on the teams who are just doing the right
thing every time, so it doesn't go wrong and doesn't need fixing
now, behavioral change is really tough but really we've tried to
Pivot to celebrating the successes of people doing the
right thing every time, not focusing on the heroes after
something has broken. And it's that switch from
reacting to things to being proactive.
So, that's a big one that, you know, hopefully gives people a
bit of food for thought To see if that's something that they do
in their businesses. But who are those silent people?
Just doing it perfectly every time we shout them out.
Yeah, that's really cool. And um, and all kind of
professional social media. My my name if you like, is pmo
ninjas and I've always said that that a good pmo actually is like
a ninja sitting in the background playing in the
shadows making everybody else look good.
So yeah I can totally relate to that that and For me that's one
of the that's one of the switches that I've seen in the
industry from pmo's kind of sitting in their Ivory Tower
saying I'm the pmo. So people will do what I say to
that much more of a servant leader approach and kind of
being more willing to sit in the background and make sure that
we're enabling everything else to happen around as and not feel
like we have to get the praise every time.
I think that that's definitely an industry shift that I've seen
since I've been involved. So having said all of that,
what? Advice.
Do you have for pmos if they want to remain current people
that might be listening to? This might be like, oh, that all
sounds great. But I'd like to some practical
advice, please. What would your advice be?
Maybe not the advice you were expecting but this is advice and
I've given myself recently, so, you know, winning the RPM of the
Year. Award is actually really made me
wake up if I'm honest. And, you know, sometimes I sit
within a bit of an internal Cocoon of Upper Egypt and before
that, you know, in my last transformation role and I
stopped working with external customers three or four years
ago. And and actually winning the
award. It's opened up so many doors.
So this interview, Emma speaking to you, you know that the house
appear more conference and that I'm going to do and you're
willing to learn conference later in the year.
And you know I've received a few Network and invites and online
courses. I've been asked to go on our to
come to talk to people and actually met fifteen PM, or
colleagues from other companies on a PVP or training class last
week and every one of these engagements as has taught me,
something and it's given me ideas or Food for thought.
So, rather than like, my roadmap is, what I think we need to do
next. And by Network, and it's given
me so many more ideas. I don't even have time to kind
of collect them and think, what I'm going to do with them.
But for me, it's all about networking listening to other
people, talking to other people and, you know, not thinking.
I know, I know everything. So yeah.
My advice honestly, is to network.
There's a World opened up for me.
I did not know, was there in pmo and, and it's just, it's just
I'm brilliant. There, just isn't enough days in
hours in the day or two to get involved with everything that
I'd like to. So, yeah.
Just Network. I think just share experiences.
That's how you learn best, but back to that work-life balance,
right from the start with goes all the way around.
So, last question, if you had a time machine and you could go
back in time and give yourself some advice before you started
your pmo journey, what would that advice be I think if we
peel back the layers of the onion, ultimately it all boils
down to sponsorship. Does not how great you are, what
you do. A good sponsor will make or
break whether you are successful.
And to me there's a little bit about Gutfeld involved with
this. I think we can often be driven
by Peoples words but to me words tell you what they want you to
think and actions tell you what they actually think.
So take the time ask around and find the right fit for you and
where you think you could make the biggest difference and
therefore be the happiest. So spend time making sure that
you've got that sponsorship before you take any any new
rule. I think the second bit of
advice, I'd give myself and if I'm honest I probably need to do
this a little bit more because I think when we introduced
ourselves to each other and we both said, oh I'm a project
manager and a project manager like I should be a little bit
more proud to be pmo because if I don't Champion what we do, no
one else will. So you know, I think in our job,
we often focus on the negatives, the things that have gone wrong
and we can apply that to ourselves sometimes and say, oh
we're not good enough, we need to be better but no, I think we
should try. And they really, really proud to
be a pmo to be a modern ninja as you call it, Emma, and and
Champion ourselves so that then we're help to change the
perception. Otherwise we're never going to
do that. But ultimately to look after
yourself, you need to get a good Mentor.
You need to get a good support network, surround yourself with
brilliant coaches. This is not the easiest job, you
need resilience, right? And I'm good at what I do
because I care But when you care about something, it can be
really, really hard to take the knocks.
You know, and I really personally struggle with this.
And and that's the part. I've got, I've got two brilliant
mentors, a couple of coaches, and I'm just surrounded by
phenomenal people. I've worked with over the years.
That's the part keeps me going. So then I can can in turn keep
my team going. So, always surround yourself
with with good people and so that, so that you can look after
your team and be successful. I think that's that is amazing
advice that if we could all go back in time would serve most of
us at some point in our careers, for sure.
Well, one last thing to say and that's thank you Katherine, for
taking the time to support the pmo Sig and the APM podcast,
helping us reach out to our members.
So they're able to really learn from your experience relate to
the reality of pmo. The good, the bad, the ugly, as
well as the amazing winds that you guys have had.
So to finish, I will say if you want to know more about the pmo
specific interest group, you can search for a PM PM o Sig on the
web on LinkedIn or on Twitter or you can contact me directly by
searching for pmo ninjas. Thank you for listening.
Thanks to Emma Ruth and Catherine for taking time out to
join the APM podcast for this discussion and thanks to you for
listening. For more information on open,
reaches p.m. Oh, look out for the spring
edition of apm's project Journal out in March, which includes a
feature on Project professionals as changemakers.
If you've got any comments feedback or suggestions please
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