Welcome to the IPM podcast. APM is the charted body for the
project profession. Hi, I'm Emma divita, the editor
project apm's quarterly journal in this our project innovators
season of podcasts. I'm speaking to project
professionals who are leading projects in a negative way is a
time where many of us are hoping the world of work and projects
can be reset in a better way for a post covid World.
In this episode, we'll be meeting Joe Stanford.
Head of corporate portfolio office At arm's length body
health education England to talk about how she's going about
leading the collaborative development of the project
profession in the NHS. It's no mean feat.
Not only is she trying to knit together a network of an
estimated 10,000 project managers across 250 NHS
organizations but she needs to identify who is doing the
project work in the first place. It's a tall mountain to climb
but the Ultimate Prize is not only to further professionalize
project management with the NHS. And have it better recognize
within the organization and accorded a proper identity, but
to create a collaborative network of support.
Best practice and a culture of taking project management
training and accreditation. Seriously, Joe is a true
innovator. And there are many lessons
others can learn from her about how to raise the status of
project management within organizations, formalizing and
professionalizing it and creating a strong network of
supported peers. I spoke to Joan mid-December and
we pick up the conversation when she tells you a bit about the
program. She's leading.
Hi Jay, thanks for finding the time to talk to us.
How are you? I'm great.
Thank you. I'm really happy to chat.
Great. Well, I know we've picked up it
close to your heart. Could you explain a little bit
about the task? You set yourself and the context
in which you're working? Yeah.
So having sort of worked in other professions that worked in
the Arts, the private sector, and sort of central government
before coming into the NHS. I was really surprised to find
that. Um there was no coordinated
project profession in the NHS and no organization responsible
for the 10,000 plus project Workforce, and their development
and training. And that to me seemed like a
really risky State given that the how huge the NHS is and how
complex, and how constantly evolving the system is.
And so, you know, in my role, as head of project, profession for
health education England, I contributed to the development
of the project profession for the Civil Service, as part of
the heads of profession Steering group, and that was made up of
head to profession from Department of Health and Social
care and the other arms like bodies.
However, the Civil Service Frameworks don't apply in the
NHS. It's a wholly.
Separate, ident entity from government.
So in order for us to implement a similar professional
framework, we need to adapt it for for the NHS.
And so, I volunteered to lead that work with the other arm's
length bodies and starting is sort of 2016.
I started leading on the NHS project profession program.
The program itself has sort of nine work streams and that's
including Operational model, and framework, the competency and
capability framework Learning and Development for the
profession, including for apprenticeship programs, online
and Regional communities of practice.
And there's a really key element around, Workforce data and
Analysis, and part of that is about improving equality and
diversity in the profession like many parts of well, public
sector, and private. At sector the balance of
equality. And diversity is not good in the
more senior or strategic roles and we want to really change
that and we want to really open up opportunities for everybody
to really make the most of their talent.
And so as part, as well as that talent management, and then
things like events and conferences, and that then forms
a whole sort of Ecosystem for the profession, then in the NHS.
Why is this so close to your heart?
Why does it matter so much to be doing this at heee?
I think there's two key. Things one is, I fundamentally
believe in the human rights to health and that that should be
available and open to everybody and it, you know, irrespective
of wealth or status or ethnicity or gender.
I think it should be something that is a fundamental human,
right? And therefore, for me and having
a real All kind of sense of purpose for my life and
something that I think adds value for the time that I'm
here, I want to leave a legacy that leave something leaves the
world, a bit better than when I came into it.
And for me, keeping the NHS sustainable future Generations,
that seems a very worthy cause to put my time and effort into.
And why would you consider what you're doing to be inevitable?
Because I certainly do That is very kind of you to say.
So, I think I have to have to admit that anything that I've
done has been through my learning from others who are
really leading the way in Innovation.
So, I've been really inspired by some some really amazing figures
out there. So I think that some of the
insights for me, were from people like Eddie.
Oh bang. Who runs the pentacle virtual
business school? So creating that virtual world
of cube, where you kind of work and collaborate in a kind of 3D
World in a really engaging meaningful way.
We've been working in that way, for the last three or four years
and that really helps to deliver transformation in a
collaborative way from anywhere. And that's that, that's a
fantastic Insight but also learning from him about the
future and that the world is changing faster than we are
learning in. Adapting to it and being mindful
of that. It's about how do we keep
learning and evolving and keeping up with new
developments. So that's a key element.
One of my project Heroes is Steven, Carver who is, you know,
brilliant not just at the technicalities of project
management but also when projects go wrong and he's a
fantastic Storyteller. And, you know, the profession
needs charismatic figures like him to really bring home.
Values in the profession ads. You know he he lectures on the
project leadership program at Cranfield, one of one of my
close kind of Inspirations has been dr.
Tom watch horn, who was The Innovation lead for national
service? Has Scotland in the NHS and she
is well as a facilitator and tutor in Cube.
Also delivers Innovation, using things like Lego serious play.
And she's helping us to deliver a five-day hackathon.
Using Lego series play at project Community Festival that
we're running apprenticeship week in February and that's
going to be tackling real current and HS issues.
And so that's really fantastic. Practical problem-solving stuff
that helps really transform how we deal with issues.
And then for me there's something really fundamental
about understanding yourself and understanding leadership.
And so for me having a really fantastic and effective team is
about how I work as a manager and a leader and so so the work
of Dan pink around motivating, teams hand, Daniel goleman
around emotional intelligence and a lot of the work around
applied Euro. Science for Effective change.
I think those are all really fundamental things that project
managers and leaders should have in their toolkit.
And it's all of those kind of elements, combined learning from
others. Learning from the great work
that's been going on in lots of different areas, pulling that
together and tackling what is effectively a very big and
complex challenge in the NHS where this hasn't been done
before. And so that's that all of those
people. And those, those people have led
the way in their different fields have really helped
inspire me to give me the confidence to try and make that
change happen in the NHS. If you got any advice for
project leaders who are inspired by the work of others and who
need to turn that inspiration and to form of experimentation,
which could be daunting. There's always a risk.
I think it won't work or you won't have the outcome, you
intended. It sounds as though you're
taking those risks and a happy to experiment.
So is there any advice you could pass on about how Do that.
I think there's a couple key things around.
That one is about building in time to experiment.
So I have a team of nine that work.
Very closely with me in the portfolio office day-to-day and
as well. As some additional, folks we
come together and we have a to our learning development session
every week where we experimentation, we we come
together. We bring new challenges, new
ways of working. And that's a safe space to do
that, testing and experimenting and learning and then we refine
it. We find what works for us.
And also we then look at applying that to other teams and
other programs. So spreading that learning and
one of the great things about working in Cube is that we can
work in there as a team, testing things out and experimenting and
then pass that on by working with other teams in that space.
Well, the other thing that's fundamental to it, is building a
culture that is a learning culture, that is a coaching
culture, that's about openness and honesty.
And that is about testing and experimentation.
And therefore, if you knew, if you build a team who work in
that way then you know, anything you try is okay and you just,
you just take the learning from It.
And you look to see how you can apply that in a way, that makes
a difference. In order to do this, people have
to accept that failures. Okay.
So how hard is it for you to convince your colleagues that
it's okay to make mistakes? It's okay to experiment.
I think the thing is, you know, it's kind of doing away with the
word failure because you know I don't think it necessarily helps
the cause and the thing about experimenting is that you're not
necessarily Implementing something in a big sweeping way
that could potentially go wrong. The point about experimenting is
you're doing it in a in a small and safe way that tests out what
works and what doesn't and you know Thomas Edison very
famously. Sort of said it's not that I
failed. It's just that I found 10,000
ways that don't work and them and it's the same thing about
engendering a, an idea of curiosity.
And testing and refining. And if you try something out and
it didn't do what you expected to do.
You take the learning from that and go, oh, that was
interesting. You know what can we do to do
that differently. So it really is a mindset thing
and and and when you when you look at it that way, you know,
sometimes it's not that you don't make mistakes because
sometimes you say things that come out the right way or you do
something that has unintended consequences things, you hadn't
planned for and I think Something like that happens.
You just holding hands up accounts.
Go say I'm really sorry. That's not what I thought was
going to happen there. You know, and you you kind of
explain what you wanted to do and you're open and honest about
it. And, you know, people are from,
you know, very accepting and forgiving of things like that.
And I think if you've got honesty and integrity and the
best interests of people that heart, I think, you know, people
are very forgiving. If something doesn't always turn
out quite as Planned, how far along your program?
Are you Joe? And what if you manage to
achieve so far? So, it's a big program
obviously. And so, we've sort of chunked it
up, and the program has three key phases over five years and
we're in the middle of phase two.
At the moment, we have excluded 2020 from the time frame.
You know, that it had a significant impact on Engagement
and progress this year due to a lot of our key stakeholders, rib
being redeployed to tackle, the covid-19 challenge at.
So you know, we've sort of put a little bit on hold but in simply
in Phase 1 what we did there was do an awful lot of research
background, you know experimenting looking at design
testing things out and particularly going out.
And finding what everybody else has done out there.
What works, what doesn't, how did it go?
What can we take from? You know what you did and and
then sort of building a kind of framework for the program and
then some key components were around the development of the
community platform. And that was fundamental because
that then gave us a way to connect communicate and engage
with people across, you know, the whole NHS landscape.
So having that we can then share things with that we can get
people involved in testing out elements and we can kind of
connect and update people and what's happening the other kind
of Key Products. We develop from the the sort of
first phase was we developed some core skills, online
learning modules and this was around teaching people, the
basics of project management change management benefits
management. And also we did a module for
sros with these are the people who are in some kind of project
management. Rolling already or for anyone
who's interested in finding out more.
These are for everyone on the basis that whilst there's
probably about 10,000 people in the NHS whose full-time day job,
it is to do program project management.
Everybody dabbles in it. And a lot of people in
certainly, in other professions and in other roles are either
doing change involved in change and projects or they're leading
them without necessarily having had the training.
To do it effectively. So for me, one of the
fundamental challenges was, how do we skill up everybody to have
a basic competence so that they know what they can and, you
know, can't do in relation to project management and have a
basic understanding of it. So for me, it's a bit like first
aid training. So you want everybody to train
to be trained up to be a first aider.
But you know you only want to select number of people to be
trained to be clinically you know, expert in the Field.
So, the thing about having people trained as first aid, as
they then know what's outside their scope of practice and know
when to pass it on to a professional, and that's what
we're looking to do for the NHS, is to build the skills.
We launched those five online learning modules in October last
year, so just over to about 14 months.
Now, they've been out there and they have been, there's been
just over 5,200 different, you know, people accessing them and
learning from them. And what kind of range of people
you getting, you getting Medics all sorts?
Yeah, absolutely. We I've been asked to do some
some training sessions with some Public Health fellows and some
some GP fellows. And again it's about giving them
a basic understanding and some kind of core skills for them to
apply it to the kind of small local changes that they do
themselves. So that's one element of it is.
It's not just about professionals.
It's about project management is called skills for everybody.
So really part of what you're doing is creating A much more
formal identity for project managers and letting people
understand what project management actually is and what
it is not absolutely. And I think that's that's a
really key element because until we get everybody understanding
why it's important that at above a certain level of risk and
complexity, it needs a more complex and experienced kit.
Skill set it. It continues to be risky.
So that's a lot of perhaps enthusiastic amateurs.
That could have fairly catastrophic impact on the
system, but not necessarily aware that they're doing that
because they're not aware of the consequential impact of the
change. They're putting in place, so
raising that awareness and raising that up.
Understanding of you know to what extent you are then
effectively, licensed to be competent to manage.
Change is important to then say, well actually I now know that
this needs to be picked up by somebody who's got no more
professional skills and experience, you've done a lot
for ready. What's left to do?
I mean 2020 has been a massive hiccup to say the least, but if
things can move towards a greater semblance of normality,
perhaps or 2021. Was top of your list to achieve,
we have a festival, a week-long festival during the
apprenticeships week that dates to the 12th of February.
And at that Festival, we are going to be launching the NHS
project and change capability framework.
And so that's the competencies. The roles the skills and
experience that everybody will need and 2mm to launch that.
Across the the NHS alongside that we are launching for
apprenticeship programs. A level for project data analyst
program level for associate project manager at level 6, BSC
and project management and the level 7 systems, thinking
practitioner MSC. And so, as part of that, it's
going to be 500 people. Hopefully, from across the NHS.
We've got some really great and fun things.
Playing and some really great and inspirational speakers.
Part of the point of the festival is really about
building the culture and the behaviors and the environment.
That says, actually if we work collectively together, if we
work openly and honestly if we support each other and coach
network and train and share, then together, we will be so
much stronger as well as supporting the system and The
environment we work in in the NHS to be both evolving and
sustainable. It's interesting.
You say that because I know there is perhaps a culture of
competition between the NHS is 250 organizations.
As that be one of the challenges you faced. it has, I think it's
It's a tricky situation because this is reflective of a sort of
political ideology, which is necessarily in the best
interests of patients and health outcomes.
And therefore, what it's created, as a very disconnected
system with competition between organizations but also very
disconnected. Group of people.
The one thing we found quite shocking, was how disconnected
people were even within the regions from their counterparts?
Hearts in other organizations. And it's taking those quite a
long time, to really build that Network up to connect people
together. We one of the one of the
developments we've got is around Regional networks, and I think
the thing about getting past the organizational barriers is, we
bring people together in terms of what they have in common and
what we have in common is that we are project professionals.
We are here Because of a sense of Greater purpose, because
we're here to to improve the health and well-being outcomes
for the population of this country and and that's above
politics and organizational boundaries.
And I think if we can focus on that, and focus on the support
and development of the profession and individuals
within the profession, then, you know, we don't need to worry
about those infrastructural constraints.
So I think that's, that's a real element of the challenges that
we've worked around. His is starting with, you know,
kotter's Coalition of the Willing.
We've got people together who also equally passionate and, you
know, to see it as a compelling Vision.
Getting them to work with us, getting them to share that
enthusiasm and you know, excitement with people within
their networks and pulling pulling everybody together, you
know, and this is all been done by volunteers.
So it's all in addition to the day job which to be honest is
quite full on anyway, but actually it's having that shared
purpose that passion and commitment to something that we
genuinely believe adds real value in the long run.
Obviously, you know, that you got the usual constraints
around, you know, funding and resourcing and lack of sort of
system ownership for it. But actually pulling together
like-minded, people who really want to make a difference.
You know, nobody comes into the really the NHS or the public
sector for an easy life. It's it's hard working.
It's challenging. But actually, you know, for most
of us it's because we have, you know, a compelling need to have
purpose in our lives and to make a difference.
What have been the other main challenges you faced.
Another one I imagine is trying to explain What project
management means to those above you to senior leaders within an
organization, has that been a challenge and how have you
overcome that? It has been a challenge If we're
honest. I think like any sector there
are there is the core business of the sector which is usually
kind of not project management. So in health, it's you know,
clinicians. It's kind of medical people
working and leading the sector who don't necessarily have
knowledge and Kills around project management.
And so getting influence at a senior level getting Champions
and ambassadors. And, you know, sponsors for it
has been tricky, because there is no natural home for it.
Unlike the unlike government, which has the infrastructure
projects Authority, there is no function within the NHS that is
responsible for project management, for oversight of it
all. The development of the workforce
and, and their capability. And that's one of the things
that we've been looking to to do is to actually get a kind of
Hosting organisation and a senior sponsor.
So one of the things that we did actually when we were performing
as a group, we had a workshop that brought everybody from
across the regions together and we spent two days doing a Lego
serious play, build of the vision for the profession and
also what the challenges were, and also the opportunities.
And actually one of the opportunities was Finding
ambassador's of, you know, to, to support the profession, who
were senior people in their own professional whether that's
medical or financial or HR mod, but who were sympathetic and
understanding and getting them to tell the story.
For us, getting them to share that with their peers with their
counterparts. And that's that's a way to
engage people that we've found has has really helped to.
I think get the message across in a way that is heard and
respected. It's enough of that really, to
shouting about the benefits that good prefer project management
can bring, there's two elements to it that are really important.
One is about understanding the consequences.
Of not doing project management effectively, and that's not just
about following the processes. And again, we have this
perception that project management is all about filling,
in forms, or writing Gantt, charts, and writing reports.
And in a way that's like, saying, well, all the nurse does
is filling a patient's record and go, but the record is
really, just a summary of the activity you've done, which is
the core part of your role. And that's a Outputting that
change in place and I think that's the bit that is perhaps a
bit invisible to people is that a project manager is a doing
roll. It's about engaging, it's about
working. It's about getting your
stakeholders involved. It's about setting up, you know,
sort of products and testing them and getting input and
refining that and then at the end of it, you will provide an
update on how that's going. So some of it's about increasing
An awareness of the dynamic, nature of project management and
and the people-centered nature of it, which it is in this
sector. And what we can do as project
managers and professionals to to raise awareness of the
activities of project management and the skills of project
management. And for me that's through things
like coaching and facilitation and mentoring one of the Things
I've done with my team is apart from actually setting the team
up in a way that everybody's role reflects their natural
abilities and also their areas of Interest.
So I wrote the team's rolls around them as individuals
rather than try to fit them into a role.
And the great thing about that is, if you fit a roll around,
somebody's abilities and interests, they We'll just get
on and do amazing things. If you set them a per person and
outcome to achieve and they're interested and you know it you
know you know greater doing it and you give them the training
and the skills they need they will do fantastic things.
And then what you can do is you can use that skills and
knowledge to do things like facilitating and training with
project teams doing coaching with project managers providing
a sort of an objective peer review or Challenge and that
helps I think build some of the Either might be lacking.
What other advice would you give to project managers and
organizations who are Keen to formalize professionalize and
win project management? The recognition it deserves.
So I think that's probably three key things that I would you
know, suggest the first one is go out there and see who does it
really? Well, go and ask them about it.
Go and give. No go and borrow all the stuff
that they do, you know, find out how they did it.
Learn the lessons from from, Them and I've been really
privileged to have some some really great people, give me you
know advice and support and information about that how
they've done things and and some of that's about doing outside of
your comfort zone and outside of your your sector.
So where's Robinson at sellafield, who runs the project
will has run the project Academy there for many years and done an
absolutely fantastic job of building the profession.
You know he and his colleagues have been incredibly generous.
Rest in providing their advice around things like
apprenticeship programs. And and it's things like that.
That that about learning from others, don't reinvent the
wheel, learn what good looks like go and, you know, find out
how it works. And then going, you know, borrow
some of that stuff. The second thing then, is around
getting that senior leadership engagement, it is really
fundamental, and if you don't Have a voice at the table, it's
finding a sympathetic ear that does have a voice at the table
and finding those ambassador's and champions who can influence
their peers for you. The third thing then is around
building that Coalition of the Willing get together a group of
like-minded, passionate enthusiastic people who believe
in what you're trying to do and then you support them, you if
they need some training development if they need some
advice and guidance you know it's a I think we're getting
back to a sharing and bartering kind of culture rather than
these sort of biggest donor contracts because a lot of what
we're doing is Round Mutual support and benefit.
So if you want people to help you to develop an embedded, what
can you offer them in return? Have you got any advice around?
How to ask people to volunteer their time and their energy when
they've already got a full-on job to do and you're asking them
to do something extra volunteers are self-selecting.
You can't really just kind of go out and ask them and I think
it's a bit of a scattergun approach.
You don't necessarily know who's out there.
What we did was we did a whole whole series of webinars and we
invited everybody that was in our community and in our
Network. So, and as a starting point that
ones that are interested will come along.
You share, what you're doing? Your passion and enthusiasm for
it. What is it?
You're trying to achieve, what are you trying to deliver?
And then you ask them, you know who's interested in helping out,
who would be prepared to volunteer?
Who would be interested in helping with this bit of that
bit and be specific about it? You know, it's not a kind of
can't launch to get people's time for everything, but people
usually pretty interested in one particular element or another.
And therefore, you know, tap That and use that knowledge and
experience. But also same time, say what can
I offer you in return? One of the things that's been
really Quite startling for me recently is we've done a bunch
of webinars which was about raising awareness of the
profession as a pipeline for people to come into it and even
just within my own organization, there's about 3,000 people
working in health education, England, we put on a webinar,
introduction to the profession. Come along and find out more
about it. If you want to learn about
careers and and how to progress in project management, we had
over 100 people turn up. And and the thing about it was
we knew almost none of them. They weren't people who were
already working in programs and projects in actually, but they
wanted to, they were interested the passion, how do we get in?
How do we, how do we learn? How do we get a job in it and
there was so much untapped potential in that group of
people, it was fabulous. And of course when we started to
talk about the festival and looking at Roots into the
profession and how can we support people to to get that
experience in order to The knowledge to get their first
role. When we sort of said, you know,
we're running these events. Would anybody be willing to help
out? We had all sorts of people.
Volunteer, if you don't ask, you don't get any, don't find out
who's interested. Yeah.
Any other days and dates don't take it.
Personally, I think the when you try and put changing place and
and again some of this is about, I think the Neuroscience of
change which is changes frightening and it's Is it
requires physical mental effort, you know, a lot of our energy is
taken up by the brain. And when we try and put change
into place, that is actually exhausting.
It burns energy be mindful of the fact that when you're trying
to do this you're going to meet an awful lot of resistance.
It's not about you it's about individuals potentially feeling
out of their comfort zone. Feeling a bit threatened feeling
that they are somehow out of That with what's going on and
when that happens people tend to retreat and it can be very
defensive or you know they will you know when you'll get a an
offense is a good defense and they'll cry and push back.
I think the thing about it then is looking at how you can make
it, as least threatening as possible, make it as comfortable
as possible, how you can reduce the, the kind of sense of
anxiety that people. I'll feel where they feel like
they're they're they're out of their comfort zone and in an
area that they're they don't understand.
And so that can be that can be very personal.
I can be a one-to-one and I think there's the something
about not just the the actual change, you want to put in
place, but how do you set the environment to enable that
change? And one of the things about the
kind of Applied Neuroscience learning, I've been doing
recently is about how Create and develop a growth mindset and a
learning mindset that opens up the kind of audience to be
curious and interested in the change as opposed to threatened
by it. So that's why I think
understanding emotional psychology and understanding
Neuroscience is really fundamental for program project
managers, because if you can tap into that understanding, then
you can shape Up. How you engage with people in a
way that is more likely to achieve the outcomes you want to
and and reduce the resistance and the barriers that that
you'll get from people what a brilliant way to end a
conversation packed with so much advice.
It's been brilliant, talking to you Joe.
Thank you so much for sparing, the time to talk to us.
Thank you. It is, you know, my passion and
my favorite subject at the moment.
So I'm always happy to talk about it.
Thanks very much Emma. Thanks again to Joe for joining
us and to you for listening to this fourth episode of apm's
project Innovative series. Don't forget to look out for
more episodes in this series or to rate and review us wherever
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