Acknowledging change and acting: The case for project professionals

Speaker A: Hi and welcome to the Agile in Action podcast. Today I'm joined by Professor Adam Bodison, CEO of the association for Project Management. Hi, Adam, how are you today?

Speaker B: I'm very well, thank you, and it's, uh, a pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Speaker A: I'm excited about our conversation today. We are going to talk about acknowledging change and acting the case for project professionals. I'm, uh, going to ask you what you mean by project professionals in a moment, but maybe you could talk a little bit about yourself, your background and the association for Project Management.

Speaker B: Of course. I'm Adam Boddeson, I'm the Chief Exec at the association for Project Management. My background, ironically, is not in projects. I've been in this role for about three years, but my background is actually what I would call a blend of education and enterprise. So what does that mean? So it means I started life out as a maths teacher and through my career I've really got involved in educational charities and then gradually to professional bodies and professional bodies. At their heart are educational organizations, learning organisations, but they're also delivery organisations and professional corporate organizations as well. So that's where that blend of education and enterprise comes in. The organization I work for. So association for Project Management has been around for about 52 years. It's the only chartered membership association for the project profession in the world, something we are incredibly proud of. As it says on the tin, it's a membership association with around about 45,000 individual members, around about 500 corporate partners that we work with, and of course an increasing number of fellows and chartered project professionals.

Speaker A: It would be a good way to get started is to have you define what you mean by project professionals.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a really good point. And that distinction between, as you say, project management and project professionals is important because I would see one as a subset of the other. So I'm talking about project professionals in a very broad sense. So that would include those who are project managers. It would also include those who are involved in project control. Some of the specific agile roles that you mentioned, the Scrum Masters and all of these types of organizations, but even those in very specialist roles as well, risk analysts and so on. That's all part of this. So I use project professionals in a very broad sense, and this might be slightly controversial maybe to say on this podcast, but I'll say it anyway. Agile, I would say, is part of that wider, uh, project profession as well. It's one of many different methodologies that you can deploy to actually deliver a project But I recognize that even within the world of Agile, there are dozens of different, uh, approaches. The thing that we stand for as an organization and the thing that I care about most is that there are certain fundamental universal truths, if you like, and principles that I think apply almost irrespective of the specialist role or the specialist methodology that you choose to deploy. And that's what I'm really interested in talking about today.

Speaker A: Yeah, and we'll definitely get into that. When you and I first spoke, you were coming in real passionate that we need to start acknowledging change and acting on it. So let's talk about that. What's going on in your head when you talk about change and then acting on it?

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think my starting point is why do we bother doing projects at all? It's a classic question that every organization should ask themselves, which is, if we weren't here, who would miss us? When projects succeed, society benefits. And I suppose the main thrust of my response to your question here is anybody who's involved in delivering projects, they're involved with it because they want to make society a better place, they want to improve the world in some way. It's not because they love process or they love a particular methodology. It's the benefits they're interested in. And that's important. Right. If you think about what's going on in the world at the moment, it's a huge amount of change, arguably more change now than ever before. That could be technology, AI, geopolitical turbulence, even things like we look at the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals that set out what's going to be needed to solve some of the biggest problems facing society today. All of that requires change. It requires projects to deliver them. And these are pan sector. This is not just. When I talk about projects, I'm not talking about just infrastructure or telecoms or anything like that here. Yes, they're part of it, but they're just one part. We're seeing legal, project management, professional services, we're seeing retail and tourism, hospitality, the health sector, uh, space. So it really is broad. But the point is, all of these projects, what they have in common is that when they are delivered, when public money is spent on these and are delivered, actually society does improve and get better. But there is a problem. Uh, there's a problem, Bill. And that problem is that we actually haven't got enough project professionals to tackle all of these challenges that the world's facing. We've got a particular study that has identified that the amount of project professionals we would need, for example, to Solve some of these world's problems is 25 million short between now and what we need by 2030. So over the next six years, 25 million globally, that's absolutely enormous figure. And some countries are just hoovering up all the project professionals. So if I take for example ksa, so Saudi Arabia, they've got some of the world's biggest mega projects that are building things like NEOM and the Line, and they can pay really well. Right. They can offer good salaries. So you've got people who might be doing humanitarian projects, charitable projects and so on. And they're being attracted over to some of these projects in the Middle east and so on. So it's really quite challenging. But we do need to get that professional recognition for project professionals. Because when they get that, when leaders get that, that these are, ah, the change makers, these are the people that can drive change both at societal level but also at uh, a business level as well. I think that's when we'll really start to see the benefit from the project profession.

Speaker A: You're talking about all of these big changes that are happening in the world. Many of these changes are happening in real time. AI, of course, being an example, you used a lot of other examples around the globe where we're trying to solve for major climate problems and things shift on the regular. And very often I think that what people might think when you start talking about project professionals is we have all these people that want this strict adherence to things and therefore may not be willing or able to change quickly. But I think that you take a different perspective on that and I would love to hear what you have to say about that.

Speaker B: Yes, feel quite strongly that the project profession gets, uh, unfairly a bit of a bad rep when it comes to this. There was this strict adherence to a kind of rulebook of processes and methods and quite technical terminology being used. And you almost needed a, uh, qualification as a project manager to be able to understand what the other project managers were saying. And I think that's part of the reason why the profession hasn't been accessible to the C suite. Because leaders talk their own language and it's certainly not the same language as that they're talking in. The project managers were talking years ago. But I do think that's changed. And a great analogy for me for how that's changed is the marketing profession. The marketers were in the back room designing the posters and the TV adverts and whatever else. They weren't in the boardroom delivering strategy, but they are now, you know, now you've got chief marketing officers driving strategy in the boardroom, making some of the biggest decisions in an organization. They went from being quite, if you like, a technical profession, a backroom profession, to being a boardroom profession. That was driving strategy and really making it different and moving the dial. That's the trajectory that I think the project profession has been on. So I think it was this immovable, strict methodological rule book before. And there are some, uh, important parts of the profession where that is still true. But I largely think it's moved now into being a strategic profession as much as it's a technical profession. And that means that it is able to drive major change. And when I think about the project profession, I almost think it's interchangeable with the words strategy execution, because I think what the CEOs really want most CEOs are trying to deliver change in some way. And these project professionals, they've got the keys to delivering change. There's a lack of a join up there. And that's partly because the C suite doesn't understand the profession. And it's partly because the profession has still got this legacy baggage, if you like, of the past where people think it's something that, ah, it isn't. So there's this bad rep, which part of the reason I've come on this show today is hopefully to try and set the record straight.

Speaker A: Well, and I think even folks in the agile world will say that they're getting a better app too. And I think that a lot of that is driven by AI for some reason now everyone thinks that agility is too slow. I do agree with you. Uh, there is this element of having a strategy and then having to deliver on, um, that strategy and having someone that is very tied to it. And very often, I guess in the world of agility we would say, oh, that's a product owner or product manager, that person's talking to the customer and things like that. But there are other roles in an organization that go above and beyond a small team doing work. There are these roles that cut across the business to think about. We're going to deliver this. The technology might be one piece, as you said, marketing might be another piece. Sales. How do we enable all of these people to work together and collaborate together while they're also doing other jobs as well and figure out how we're going to get that delivered and someone that can really take the reins on that and make that work and cut across all of the various business units and organizational supporters and detractors is really something that's important right now. And I feel every few years we say, and now it's even more important. And I feel like we're at that inflection point where we're saying, and now it's even that much more important. Again.

Speaker B: I think that's true. I think it's really interesting that there are a lot of particularly senior people in an organization who tend to have that cross functional role that you've described. Often haven't maybe come through, uh, a project route to become a senior leader in an organization. They may have come through an operations route, for example, or a technology route and so on, but then they find that because they're a senior person in an organization, someone says them one day, oh great. As uh, somebody who's senior, you can take responsibility for making sure that this project is delivered really well. And it's almost like, ah, you can do this off the side of your desk. So they don't have the time necessarily to be able to do that well. And actually that project sponsorship type role is something that is a particular skill set that it's just assuming that senior people, they'll just know how to do that. And sometimes that's true, sometimes they have picked up that experience on the way. But often there is a benefit to having some formal development in how to be a really effective project sponsor. And it's one of the gaps I see even in some of the most mature organizations, whether it be agile, other methodologies that are really good, organizations that are making sure their project professionals are trained, those who are delivering the project. But when it comes to those who are sponsoring or on the governance side of the project, often there isn't been that formal training on how to do that. Well, there are these, what are called accidental project professionals. So people who are never uh, going to describe themselves as a project professional, they have another core role in the organization. But as you say, they have this role in delivering other projects. And I don't think there should be an expectation for them to have to be a project professional. But there is something about having a project mindset. And a great analogy for me with this would be the world of finance. We're not saying everybody needs to be an accountant, but there are certain roles where it helps. If you've actually got a basic understanding of accounting, you actually know what a budget looks like and all of these types of things because that's part of many different roles. So there are many, I think, aspects of skills and competencies associated with being a project professional which are relevant to many Organizations and I think it's uh, an organizational level about saying, do we understand where we are on that maturity journey? Do we understand whether individuals have sufficient competence in the specific areas that are going to enable them to contribute to projects, particularly those cross functional ones, in the way that we would expect them to be able to do? So I think learning and development and the routine work that HR and people colleagues will be doing in terms of assessing the competence of people across the organization, I think this should be a key part of that.

Speaker A: Yeah, we have a lot of leaders that listen to this podcast. Do you have a success story that you can share?

Speaker B: Absolutely. There are many success stories. One of the IT projects they have to do was to bring in what we call the electronic prescription service. We used to have a system here where if you went to visit your doctor, your gp, they decided that you needed some medicine, they would give you a handwritten note authorized by the doctor to take to your local pharmacy and then they would, you would exchange that for your medicine. And they decided that was a pretty insecure system for lots of obvious reasons. So they wanted to make it uh, an electronic system. But the problem is that all of these different local doctors, surgeries and all of these different private pharmaceutical companies are uh, not linked together. Actually this was a government funded project which was delivered on time to the required specification, within budget. And there were many people involved in that who were not project professionals. These were people who were, as I say, running their own businesses. These were clinicians in some cases whose main job was actually seeing patients. But they had to be involved in this because it had to work for them. So that stakeholder engagement piece and that kind of co production, if you like, of the solution was really, really important. So that's just a great example, uh, I think of those accidental project professionals getting involved in a project that's gone really well.

Speaker A: This is one of the biggest challenges that we do focus on. Um, when we start talking about project management, it's not just a team, it's the bigger, holistic. How are we going to roll something big out across multiple teams? And that's where I think project professionals really do. If your particular business unit has a unique aspect to how it works and that project's going to impact you, my experience is that the project professional will always be there to make sure that they're supporting you and making sure that that happens and they will make sure that the issues get raised and they can help you resolve them. Um, that's something that I think we sometime forget about, is that there is only so much time in a day. Things are always busy changing, there's always fires to put out. So now when you have this big project coming down the path and people say, just devote some extra percentage of your time, well, there may not be that extra percentage of the time. And very often companies won't say, we'll take this off of your plate. So who's going to help you with that? And it's almost always project professional to the rescue.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'd agree with that. And I'd go even further than that. One of the things I think that project professionals do particularly well, which is really hard to do if you are, uh, within a single function or you're responsible for delivering just one particular aspect of a project, is they've got that laser sharp focus on the benefits, not just the outcomes. They have a great expression for this, by the way, in the Netherlands to describe this situation where you deliver all of the project outcomes but actually there is no benefit. And it's a medical expression where they say the operation was successful, the patient is dead, which is slightly morbid but slightly humorous at the same time. But I think that's what project professionals, as I say, are good at because they will constantly be looking at, is this project going to deliver the benefits? Do we need to change some of those outcomes? Change what the focus is on a day to day basis to make sure that when it's completed it does deliver those benefits.

Speaker A: Okay, so you talked about benefits and outcomes. I completely agree with that. And by the way, I think this is something that I personally have been proud of, not just in my own career, but watching other project professionals through their career is this ability to get everyone on board. Because if I'm talking to the cfo, their version of benefits and good outcomes might be very different than the cto. And there is some element of, uh, getting individuals together so that you have a unified understanding as to what those are. Otherwise it's a battle through to the end. And I'm curious, are there any other primary focuses that you would want to put on a project professional that cuts across these different boundaries that we often see almost getting in each other's ways? Not on purpose usually, but it happens.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think the other one, and I referenced it slightly earlier on, is the stakeholder engagement piece. We're talking a little about the kind of internal stakeholders there. But I think there's also an external aspect of this because you mentioned the cto, the cfo, if you were to put all of their benefits together that might be still completely different to what the customer on the street thinks is a benefit as well. So I think it's that trade off between internal and external benefits, and that requires really effective stakeholder engagement. I think that's a key part of it. I think the other thing is around lessons learned. This is something else that project professionals do. So once you've delivered the outcomes, that's not the end. Right. It's then about, uh, how we document the things that have gone well here and why did they go well and what the challenges were and things that went wrong and what we did about it. So the next time that we come to do something like this, we don't make that same mistake again. Usually when you get to the end of a project, it's dark. Thank the Lord that's finished. I can move on. And it was really hard work, particularly if it was an IT project with lots of bumps in the road. But the project professionals are still there. They document the lessons learned. And then even better than that, when they initiate a new project, they apply those lessons. They straight away get all those lessons learned out and say, what can we do differently this time to make sure we don't make those mistakes again?

Speaker A: Sometimes as an organization, we feel like, here's something that we can do. And then all of a sudden five people put up their hand and they say, we already tried that, it didn't work. And one of the things that I think project professionals have are a really good understanding as to why that didn't work. And there's very often no skin in the game for them. It's more about, here's why it didn't work. We think that it still could have, but for these reasons, and had we done this differently, and I feel like that's something that we sometimes will actually skip over and find that there is a real opportunity for something. But because a bunch of people said it didn't work once, it won't work again, as opposed to why didn't it work and what are the things that we could have done differently? So if this does come up again, we have some sort of, uh, understanding so that we could fix it next time.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's true. And as you were talking and I was thinking that this idea of what do we mean by something didn't work? There are many different versions of what that means, and the same is true if you tip that on its head. What do we mean by success? We don't have the same common understanding of what success is. To extend the Thing I was talking about before is success. Just that we delivered the outcomes. Yeah, we did everything we said we were going to do within the budget and, um, within the time. Is that success? Is it that we've delivered the benefits? As I said before, is it that actually we met the expectations of the business case? There's all these different things. So when we talk about project success and all these different stakeholders, having a common idea of what success looks like from the outset is really important. One of the interesting things I do see, though, and um, perhaps this is particularly challenging within the Agile environment, is this kind of re baselining that happens because the context is changing so much that you say, look, we set out and this is what we are aiming to achieve, this is what success looks like. But then the world changes or you discover new things and so on. And so you go, okay, actually, maybe success isn't quite like that anymore. And when you've gone through 20 iterations and you come up with an outcome which was nothing like what you set out to do at the beginning, you kind of say, is that success? Have I changed the criteria to make it so that I was successful? Or actually, have I just been really pragmatic and flexible to make sure I deliver what the customer wants? And that's always an interesting commercial conversation when that kind of thing comes up.

Speaker A: People that are listening to this podcast right now are saying, yes, I do need project professionals in my organization, and yes, we have a lot of change going on and maybe some of our efforts just aren't doing well. What is some, um, advice that you might give those individuals?

Speaker B: Really great question. And I, uh, think when it's relevant for every organization, I say it about my own organization. Look, we all face challenges, and if everything was going perfectly well all of the time, right, we wouldn't need half the people we have in organizations. So I think, first of all, we shouldn't see it as a failure if things don't go to plan, because sometimes that's just the reality of the world we live in. But there are some things we can do about it. So the first thing I would say is, do we actually understand the maturity of our organization when it comes to project delivery capability? Do we understand, um, the capability of our individual people and individual functions? And as I said earlier on in this podcast, that's something that needs to be proactively captured, not waiting until something that's gone wrong and then say, oh, crikey, let's just check we've got the right people with the right kind of skill sets here. So I think that needs to be done proactively rather than reactively. And then there needs to be a plan to, uh, raise that capability and build the maturity in the specific areas that the organization wants to focus on. I think there are also some structural things. As an example, if I look at most C suites, they're quite traditional in many respects. Maybe it's not true in the IT space, but in kind of larger organizations, larger corporates, they'll often have a CEO, they'll often have a coo. And that COO role, I think, is an interesting one. And I would question whether that is still the most appropriate role to have in this day and age. But let me unpack, um, what I mean by that, because I think if we go back 50 years ago, most leaders in most organizations were delivering a lot of business as useful, and, um, probably a relatively small amount of change. I would say that's probably tipped on its head now. So I think most leaders are having to deliver major change in their organizations and probably a tiny amount of business as usual. If that's the case, then what is the Operations director role there, uh, to deliver this tiny amount to bau? Or are the operations directors really overseeing change? And if they are overseeing change, is it right to think of that as operations, or is it better to think of that as change or transformation or projects? So should we be actually having a Chief Projects Officer or Chief Transformation Officer instead of a coo? And would that change kind of focus on the expectation of that role? Would that mean that person sees that they have to have a slightly different skill set than maybe a traditional CEO? And therefore would they be better equipped to stop things going wrong in the first place, or if they did go wrong, actually better equipped then to understand and to deal with that. So I think there are two very quick things. I suppose my final point on this would be that when we think of things going off plan, um, it's easy to think of things that have gone wrong, but there might be what I think of as unintended benefits. So, yeah, it wasn't in the original plan, but actually it's something good. So a great example of this is the Channel Tunnel, right? The tunnel that links England and France, that was built to transport people primarily between England and France. But years later, it actually turns out it was very useful for transporting energy between England and France. And in these days, where energy security is such a huge issue, that's proved to be a really important benefit of that project. But that was not in the original business Case not even dreamed of. When we come back to this notion of project success, it failed on some of the things it set out to achieve, but it delivered some of these things that weren't even in the business case. It makes that uh, success criteria a bit more murky again. But I think leaders should be looking out for when it's a change. It's not just things that have gone wrong, but things that have gone well that weren't in the plan as well. That's really important.

Speaker A: I love that one of your two quick things was just replace a COO with a cpo.

Speaker B: It could be a change of skill set, not necessarily a change of person. I think it's the nature of the focus, uh, on the role. Am I delivering the same thing every day? Is it just operational if you like, or is there something unique with a clear defined start and finish about what I'm trying to achieve in that role?

Speaker A: Yeah, and that's fair. I think I was being a little bit more bold with your statement there, but I do think that there is something to be said for that. The thing is that when we do come into an organization, we have a tendency not to train people through university on project management. Right. So if you are even going through a master's program very frequently, there'll be a lot of finance, there'll be a lot of strategy, there will be a lot of here's how you manage people and this is how you organize a company. But then there'll be this maybe week long thing if it happens to be in there around um, project management, which is so core to the way the business gets done. So I do think that there's something to be said about really thinking about whatever you title that role, whether it's COO or there's another role called the Chief Project Officer or there's a combination really thinking about the skill sets that are required in order to accomplish that. And think about that because, uh, at some point that strategy, you're going to have to deliver on it. And that's where project professionals help you get there.

Speaker B: Absolutely 100% agree with that. And actually I think we are, in fairness to the academic world, I think we are starting to see changes. If I think about MBA programs, traditionally they were hr, finance, marketing as the kind of core pillars if you like. But the project professional stuff is in there, the project management stuff is in there. But it's either ah, an optional um, module or it's scattered to the wind a bit. There's a bit of risk over here and A bit of cost estimation over here and a bit of stakeholder engagements over there. But what we're starting to see now is MBA programs where project management is formally being recognized as a fourth pillar and as something that's key to those in the C suite. And it only takes a few institutions, particularly those who are, uh, who are better known to start doing that before everybody else starts thinking we're missing a trick here. So I think the tide is turning on M that one.

Speaker A: That's wonderful to hear. This has been a great conversation with you, Professor Adam Bodison. I think this is a great way to wrap up the podcast. I would love to know if anyone in my audience would like to reach out to you. Is there some way that they can do that?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I just say two things. So one is people can reach out to me. I'm on LinkedIn. My handle on there is AdamBoddison. I think there's only one person with my name on, um, there, uh, so it should be easy to find. And then also I talked about association for Project Management earlier on. If you want to know more about them and what they offer. Uh, the website is apm.org uk yeah.

Speaker A: And this is not sponsored, but I'd love for you to talk about some of the things that you do for community outreach.

Speaker B: So the association, I mentioned our corporate partners earlier on, we also have a, uh, charity partners within that as well. And we have a charitable rate which is about 10% of what we charge corporates normally. So it's a pretty good value. And what that means is we work with charities and not for profit organizations to help them build the kind of maturity that we've talked about and to actually then deliver what is a public good and a public service. And so we've got everything from the Girl Guides, so they work with us, uh, right through to things like charities that uh, support children. So the BBC Children in Need are on there, uh, and a whole range of other charities. So that's something we're particularly proud of. And we have that third sector network which is growing. And as an organization we also give our staff volunteering days as well. So we've got about 160 colleagues who go out, uh, into the society and actually try and apply some of their own passion and their own skills to help causes that are particularly important to them.

Speaker A: That's really phenomenal. Thank you for running such a great organization. I know you have a great team behind you. There's. And if anyone's interested in looking to join or to be a part of what you do. I'll, uh, make sure that Adam's LinkedIn link is provided on the agileinaction.com website, including the association for Project Management. Thank you again, Professor Adam Bodison, for being on the podcast today. I really appreciate it.

Speaker B: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.