Episode 1: the ultimate PMO

 

AI Transcription:

 

 

Boyd

Hello, I’m Boyd Kershaw, co-owner of Practicus a change and transformation business that helps people and organisations navigate change. For those of you that don’t know us, we achieve that through three channels. The first is resourcing, interim, permanent and fixed term, we have a consulting channel, where our main focus is on PMO and data services. Our third is our advisory service. This is an innovative and free service where we collect customer and business challenges and map them to our community of the best and brightest people we’ve known for 20 years. So, our customers get to have practical conversations with experts who have already solved similar problems in the past.

Okay, enough shameless plugging from me. We’re here to talk about PMO. So, let’s get started. We spent a lot of time speaking to organisations about their business problems and challenges and the way that they manage their journey of change. We speak to large customers SME’s about portfolio programmes and projects, most of them have some form of PMO. And I have to be honest, I’ve got to say about 50% of those PMO’s are not perceived well within the business.

At Practicus, we don’t like to whinge and moan about the negatives, we like to shine a light on the positive. So, we’ve decided to make a four-part podcast series to champion the cause of PMO. To speak to inspirational guests and explore what good looks like. We want to change some of those negative perceptions. In fact, we’re on a mission to change the way people feel and think about PMO and get to the heart of how to drive value from a PMO.

In our first episode, we’ll be looking at the ultimate PMO. And we want to talk to people who’ve been there and done it on a global stage. So let me introduce you to three inspirational guests today, each of them has seen their fair share of PMO’s over the last 20 years. And I’m going to start with Martin Hunt.

Martin has 20 years PMO experience across organisations of all shapes and sizes. He describes himself as passionate about PMO choosing to focus on value add and transformational PMO functions and not the tick box approach. Martin has been managing and leading PMO’s for the last 20 years, for all manner of organisations from Orange to HSBC, from within insurance. He likes to educate others to the benefits of project portfolio management. Welcome Martin.

We also have Mandie Beitner, she’s a global transformation leader with a laser like focus on results, whilst keeping an eye on how they’re delivered. She’s a seasoned interim who’s delivered numerous engagements from PMO leadership to strategy realisation, and most recently as Chief Operating Officer. Organisations she’s supported over the last 20 years of her career include the London Stock Exchange to BP, cutting across banking, law, mining and media sectors. Mandie works with boards to help them make the strategic objective goals real. She has been described as a fast-paced commercial operator who keeps things on track, gets things done, and delivers tangible ROI. She believes the ultimate PMO should have the status of air traffic control, and she’s developed her own methodology in support of that, Mandie, good to see you today.

And finally, we have Ian Golding. He’s a CIO and often a sponsor of PMO. Ian and Practicus have worked together on numerous occasions over the years. He’s been a CIO for global businesses, private equity, charities, and consultancy have been owned and sponsored many a programme itself, he’s also advised set on and supported many aboard, he brings an exec perspective to what a high value PMO should bring to any portfolio of change. But interestingly, with his experience, he also looks through the lens of an owner or investor. Good to see you again Ian and welcome.

So, let’s get started. So, we’ve got some great firepower in the room today. So, what are we going to talk about first? We actually had a list of questions that we wanted to cover and realised that will take about six hours to get through. So, we’re going to keep it quite focused around a few key areas of what the ultimate PMO can look like. Rather than take for granted that everyone listening understands fully what a PMO does.

Can I just start with asking you guys what your definition is of the ultimate PMO?

Mandie Beitner  

There are so many different versions of the PMO. But the one that I think is relevant is it’s a neutral function. business focused, must be partner driven. So offering a service to partners rather than doing it to someone and that it’s a function that gets things sorted. And I call it air traffic control.

Boyd

Nice. Yeah, I like that. And what about you Ian from a sponsorship perspective as well?

Ian Golding

Well, I’m conscious that I’m surrounded by experts. I would say that let’s take it for granted that a PMO is something like the Centre of Excellence for how you ensure all the right requirements are gathered the portfolios to put together and all the right methods and artefacts are applied. I think that’s probably a given. But I’d say for me, the point in addition to that, that I think is really critical is how the PMO can connect everything that goes on to the wider organization’s purpose and strategy and I guess we’ll probably get into that a little bit more later

Boyd

And Martin, what about you?

Martin Hunt

For me, a PMO is a customer focused entity. By customers, I mean, not just the projects and programmes, but the customers at the senior levels, and making sure that they are able to make the right decisions by empowering them with the right information to make those decisions to deliver a successful outcome for the organisation.

Boyd

Great. Yeah, yep. Excellent definitions are, you know, some of the feedback that I’ve got from customers, it’s about maintaining a level of quality. Some talk about keeping everyone in line. Other people talk about providing, you know, prioritise view of the portfolio to the Exec. But I’ve got to say, there are probably about a 50% of people I talk to PMO doesn’t have a great perception within the business. I don’t know what your experience is but, if we talk about perception, why do you think PMO can get a bad rap or, or have a bad perception within companies,

Mandie Beitner

I think it’s because the admin side is, for whatever reason, blown out of proportion, and you know, things like setting up meetings and taking minutes and the whole tracking. And, you know, just being let’s say a policeman is taken, too literally. And I think that there is this perception that it’s an overhead, and it’s not adding any value. But a true PMO, the way we’ve all described it is everything, it’s the all ears, all knowing, having all the information and everything else that you can have to make decisions, and it’s pushing for the correct answers to the problems that come up. And that is what is not known, which is why I think that PMO has a bad rap. So it looks like it’s just sitting there doing not very much, but actually, it’s difficult to quantify some of the benefits and the value that a PMO can bring because some of them are softer and more intangible, and it takes a bit more to do it. And it’s not necessarily that obvious. But I also think some people take the easy option of just doing some admin.

Martin Hunt

I personally am insulted by the fact that 50% of your customers are not getting the best value out of their PMO. A PMO for me is and taking on some of Mandie’s points, it’s a fantastic part of the organisation, it is the central hub, the glue that holds everything together, it’s it can add so much value in enabling the exec and the senior ELT, whatever we wish to call them, to actually make informed decisions, to give them the information and empower them to make the correct decisions to make sure that they are prioritising the right programmes and projects and initiatives. Not only that giving them the governance in place, that they know that things are being managed correctly. And I think when you’ve got a collective team of PMO people, you can actually really enable all of those different functions, the ELT, the projects, programmes, initiatives, all to make sure that they’re they’re delivering to a high quality and standard, and also give them the right information. You know information is key data is key. We’ve been going through the last X amount of years, everybody focusing on data, garbage in garbage out, good PMO gets the right level of data, gets the right information to enable those decisions to take place.

Mandie Beitner

I think the other thing is that PMO’s don’t tend to be sitting in a neutral position. And they are not able, even if they do have the information to give, you know what I call courageous integrity a chance. So they cannot actually do and say the things they need to or they don’t get heard, because they are difficult things to say. And I often find that I’m having to talk to the exec about making sure that that wherever that function sits, it’s neutral.

Ian Golding

I agree with that and I think it’s the same sort of functional dilemma that all the different traditional functions have in an organisation is that they can sort of feel like you know, the PMO, like HR Finance, or other parts of an organisation are there for its own ends, which is actually completely useless when we know that but actually, behaviorally, it’s quite difficult to sort out and to your point Martin, I think an organisation needs to want or feel that it needs to have a PMO with that ability to gather the right information, to actually be a bit provocative, but in a helpful way to actually get people to see not only that the, all the artefacts and information is gathered and commenting on that, but actually give people the right queues and nudges with executive sponsorship to make things happen. So clearly, if it’s seen as bureaucracy, and not much gets delivered after X weeks, months, or even years with a lot of money spent, that’s not going to go down well,

Mandie Beitner

The wrong people get the blame though don’t they. So actually, teat project managers and the people who are actively managing those pieces of work should be the ones that are being looked at and that’s not actually the case. And actually, some of this isn’t really about the whole tracking. It’s about the whole collaboration. It’s about the, you know, bringing people together. It’s about the consistency, it’s about the automation, it’s about all of those softer, softer isn’t quite the right word, but it’s those things that come together to make a nice recipe and a nice cake if you don’t have all of those, not gonna happen.

Martin Hunt

10:05 

I’m a lover of analogies. And the analogy I use when I go into any organisation is you buying a car. And my analogy is if you’re going and buying a low cost cheap car like an I’m going to use Ford Fiesta as an example, when you buy that all the dealer is interested in is that you’ve got a licence, and you’ve got the money to pay for the car, If you buy a Range Rover, they bring you in, they show you all of the different functions of the car, they book you a day’s training course to take it off road give you instruction on how to use it. And the thing with a PMO you need to educate. I found I’ve needed to educate the ELT, how best to use a PMO and what functions a PMO can deliver to you. So in other words, it’s not just give you the keys, here’s the PMO there you go, it’s there’s got to be engagement all the time teaching you how to go off road with a PMO. How to utilise a PMO how to empower the PMO to challenge people, you know, both up and down within an organisation because you’ve got to challenge the projects and programmes to make sure they’re delivering what they say they’re delivering. And you’ve got to challenge the ELT to say, actually, you need to be kicking somebody’s backside and say you’re not delivering.  

Mandie Beitner

To take that analogy one step further. I actually think the PMO is a Formula One mechanic. And there are certain people who I think are Formula One drivers, and a mechanic can usually drive but not the other way around. I think that particularly is quite important. Because it’s not just about the delivering it’s about have we got the right people in the right place at the right time doing the right roles. And are we meeting the strategy? And I don’t hear that. I just hear. Let’s try. are we tracking to the right deadline? But are we questioning whether or not what they’re doing is right. Are we questioning have we got the right people at the right time? Are we questioning whether or not that particular project is going to deliver the particular value add that the organisation wants? I don’t think that happens.

Boyd

It’s an interesting point. I think one of the challenges I see is sponsorship, and what are the sponsors actually looking for? And how should they be a sponsor? What are they trying to get out of the PMO? I think that can be lacking?

Mandie Beitner

I agree. I think it’s about education which is what Martin was saying, I don’t think a lot of people have seen a good PMO. And actually, it sort of brings me on to the point I don’t think we should be calling it PMO, because it means something. Well, it means different things to different people. But it doesn’t talk about how you’re delivering the strategy. And that’s what a PMO should be. You know, there are the pieces of a PMO that are going to deliver, let’s say the more foundational things on projects, but actually it’s the wider value add that’s more important.

Boyd

What would you call it then?

Mandie Beitner

Either strategy realisation office, which I think some people have started calling it and Gartner have certainly started calling it a few years ago, strategy realisation. It depends if it’s a transformation type thing, I might call it transformation management office, those sorts of things. But I think unfortunately, the PMO has got such a bad rap in terms of performance in the past that actually sometimes a rebrand is probably the only way to change it.

Ian Golding.

I think we’re generally agreed that it has to be very, very closely tied in with strategy or there’s no purpose. And advantage of that means that it probably will get the interest and hopefully support of senior colleagues that are charged with creating that strategy and ultimately delivering usually in executive roles. I’m just wondering what happens if that’s not the case? I mean, because a lot of people talk about transformation, and there is authentic transformation, it is a real thing. But it’s also can be buzzwordy as well. So what happens when there is less executive sponsorship? I mean, everyone goes quiet, everyone’s watching for a miracle to be delivered, a flying pig or something. I mean, you know, how does that all end up? It just seems to me just gets more and more awkward as time goes on the gulf of expectation. And what’s actually being delivered gets wider, it’s probably harder for people to comment. So it seems to me that seeing all this upfront is critical to avoid that incredibly awkward situation that can arise later.

Martin Hunt

I think a good Transformation Office should enable and work with the senior exec on how to come up with that strategy. Because when you look at good PMO’s they know what’s happening on the ground. They may not technically be able to deliver a new data centre or something else. But what they can do is they can turn around, say actually look, you know, we are spread thin, with resources, you can’t actually just come up with a strategy that’s going to require 50,000 more resources to deliver this, whatever this transformation is, and you need to engage and use the PMO to help define those strategies, and then empower the PMO to go out and work with the different functional areas to actually implement and engage and drive forward that transformation strategy.

Boyd

So where should the sponsorship sit then?

Well, I personally think it should sit in a function of its own at the top level, and I’m being deliberately vague because different size organisations need different things. But, can I just go back to the point that you made about being able to get people aligned and what have you, I actually think that because these functions don’t sit in a neutral position, they can’t then drive aligned objectives. And actually, if the top of the tree, whatever that is, doesn’t set the same objectives, it’s never going to work. Because people always deliver for the benefits they’re going to receive. So in other words, if they are going to be paid on a particular objective, that is a completely different objective to somebody else, it’s never gonna happen. So unless this sits in a neutral position that can help the big cheese for want of a better way of putting it. Get that right for that one particular thing. I personally can’t see how it works. And I’ve been, honestly, I’ve seen it so many times. And the only thing you can do is use persuasion and be a chameleon to help these people and talk them through, what is it in it for them specifically, that will then help them to at least support it?

Ian Golding

And of course, we could debate which executive role it could or should sit under. And I kind of think in some ways that could be a bit of a distraction, really, because it probably just has to be in a place that can be seen as fairly neutral that has the right span of influence to get all the stakeholders together, can I just suggest that perhaps I would be a bit more interested even a level down as to for the specific programmes within the portfolio, knowing that there’s very, very clear, even powerful sponsorship for the individual programmes with an executive sponsor. So the wrap around is important to make sure it’s well functioning. But if the programme itself doesn’t have the sponsorship, and everyone’s waiting for a miracle to happen. That’s really not a good form.

Mandie Beitner

You’re absolutely right. I don’t think any programme project portfolio can be delivered without a sponsor being visible and supporting it. But I think, I’m not sure if I’m hearing you say that, do you think it should be its own neutral function? I don’t actually think it should sit in anybody else’s function at all, I think it should be its own function of its own,

Ian Golding

I think it should be able to be neutral, but at the same time have teeth across the organisation where needed. So to me, I think it needs to be able to not be seen as a pigeonholed, separate function. So I think the span is very important.

Martin Hunt

I think on that front its the autonomy. When you empower a PMO, you need to give it the autonomy to make those decisions to give it the teeth to challenge and also to deliver, you know, because although it’s not delivering the projects, it’s assisting in delivering because it’s understanding what resources they need. It’s understanding the financial impact, the return on investment, it’s making sure that those are delivered.

Mandie Beitner

Do you actually believe that the PMO doesn’t deliver the projects? So it is a common thing? Everybody says it’s the PMs that are delivering, actually I don’t agree.

Martin Hunt

No, sorry, that maybe was a flippant remark. But no, I agree with you. I mean, I’ve got my hands dirty on numerous occasions, helping to deliver projects, and assisting the project and programme leads in making sure that they are delivered. But it’s not seen like that. You know, we mentioned earlier about a PMO seen as this sometimes admin function which gets right up my nose, and makes me angry. Because it’s not it’s yes, there are admin elements of it, because you know, there are the reporting side and the risks and issues, milestones, plans, finances, everything else. But that’s part of it, the real value add is actually working with the programme leads, the senior exec the the big cheese, and making sure that they understand all of those different components and how it from the strategy down and back up, how that is affected, and a really good PMO. And I’ve worked in some really good ones and some really bad ones. In fact, I’ve set up some really bad ones, because the organisation wasn’t willing to listen to me. But that’s another story. And I think, you know, we can we can really make a difference with the PMO Transformation Office strategy realisation office, I’m actually going to use that one. So I’m steeling that. Thank you. And I really do think that we together Yeah, I know, there’s only a couple of us around this table. But we can affect the world with this podcast and telling people about what we can deliver for them that value add,

19:21 

Ian Golding

I do very much like the idea of having it closely connected to strategy, because I think there is sometimes a bit of a divide between the exec teams and the non exec board, that that divide can be a bit uncomfortable, whereas I think some board members can take a closer interest without becoming operational executive involvement with what the PMO is doing, if it’s delivering the strategy that board ultimately is endorsing, and needs to see to be delivered. Has anyone seen that be uncomfortable when perhaps the board or the execs, no one really sees exactly what’s happening all the time? All the time? Yeah. Pretty much every other 50%.

Mandie Beitner

20:02 

And they also become very uncomfortable that I’ve seen many times where I’ve actually given them the transparency and visibility of what’s actually going on. And they’re completely surprised by it. That’s when we’ve done our job well, right, because they are actually surprised by where something is or what’s what’s got issues or not, or you know, where the budget is, whatever it is.

Ian Golding

20:23 

Well, the inconvenient truth is better, perhaps than a convenient lie or gloss

Martin Hunt

20:29 

I actually call that the dilution theory. Because what happens is, and I’ve encountered a number of times, it’s where I’ve, you know, as a PMO transformation office SRO, we’ve gone out, and we’ve got the facts and the facts are this, this project programme portfolio needs a hospital pass, it’s really it’s that dire, and you’ve written, you’ve got all of the facts, you’ve given it to somebody, they dilute it before it gets up to that next level, and all of a sudden, you’ve gone, we’ve red, yeah, we’ve not delivered anything for the last nine months, we’ve spent 10 million over budget, by the time it gets up there. It’s we’re all on track got some minor issues, you know. No, that’s not what’s happening. But you don’t, you’ve not been empowered to actually deliver that message because somebody has overruled you.

Ian Golding

It just puts off the bad news?

Mandie Beitner

Well, I think people are afraid to do it. And it comes back to my courageous integrity and the neutrality of the role. And the whole, being afraid to say something’s red, irrespective of whether someone’s told them that they shouldn’t put it red, the amount of people that are terrified to make something red. It gives us the opportunity to get something sorted out.

Boyd

That can be a cultural thing within an organisation as well.

Mandie Beitner

Well, it’s fear management, isn’t it?

Boyd

Yeah, it is your right it’s fear management, then also within PMO’s, when you’ve got the capability to challenge, you know, go and challenge the business, challenge the programme managers, rather than sitting back and just receiving information, because if you’ve got the capability to go and challenge, then you know, you’re gonna get a lot more you’re gonna get the data is going to be a lot clearer for you, then you can report a lot better up.

Mandie Beitner

Yeah, I mean, data is key. In all of this, we’ve talked a little bit about it. But for me, you can’t do anything without data. And if you saw this picture that I’ve got here, it’s got data at the very bottom, that is the foundation of everything. I think, I think honestly, though, the softer part, because once you’ve got the data, you’ve got the evidence, there’s very, you know, once you’ve done your route cause analysis, if you need to, and what have you, I think it’s really difficult to change a culture whereby, if the PMO is reporting in to the Exec or to the, the people who are responsible for delivering, so let’s, let’s say that rather than the Exec, and they don’t want to get called out, they’re not going to let you do it.

Martin Hunt

No, they don’t. And that’s the dilution theory I was talking about,

Mandie Beitner

And it’s putting your head head above the parapet? And is it gonna get knocked off? Which is why I’m quite, and I’ve seen it so many times, which is why I’m sort of challenging a little bit about where should it sit, I completely agree with you about span, couldn’t agree with you more, it has to be organisation wide. But it has to be somewhere that is really neutral.

Ian Golding

23:09 

Well, the relationships are going to be very important. Someone is able to actually talk to the the people that are the pinnacle of providing that exact sponsorship so that people can navigate perhaps that difficult news that needs to be shared, hopefully, well, well in advance before it becomes a big problem. But again, I think that those relationships can allow that upfront kind of pre remediation is probably not a real word. But you know, getting ahead of the issues before they manifest

Boyd

Your talking about RAG status there, customers I’ve seen, some go from green to red, like where’s the orange? You know, and that’s when you know, you’ve got a culture that is too scared to tell the truth too scared to say what’s really happening, it should never be green, red

Ian Golding

I’ve seen things go from red, and then the basis of a reassuring conversation and they go to green, not based on any evidence to your point, Mandie, but just because people feel reassured that something is perhaps has a better chance after that conversation. And it makes no sense at all. It’s not being evidence led.

Martin Hunt

24:07 

And that’s the dilution theory. And also, the coffee machine culture, as I call it, is where you get somebody in that position where their programme project portfolio is red. And what they will do is they will do, they’ll go on a networking exercise, they’ll go to the coffee machine, they’ll talk to a senior sponsor a senior this they go, oh, yeah, you’re gonna see this, but don’t worry about it. I’ve got it all in hand, you know. And they have those conversations. So when you actually rock up with your, your data, and you go, look, the data is telling me it’s red, and you’ve got to believe me, they then go, it’s okay. I’ve had those conversations. Everything’s sorted, and it gets diluted. So by the time it gets to the top of the tree, everybody’s going, Oh, everything’s fine.

Ian Golding

24:47 

So in the meantime, the taps running, the money is being spent. Yeah. And nothing more is delivered.

Martin Hunt

24:53 

And one of the reasons I’ve stayed a freelance for so long rather than take permanent roles is because I’m not afraid to put my head up against You know, above the parapet, because I realised early on in my career, that if I wasn’t there to challenge people, they would get away with murder. And for me, that’s wrong. Because, you know, people pay me because of my skills and my knowledge. And I’m grateful for that. But my skills and knowledge mean, I’m there to say, I’ve done the data analysis, I understand what’s wrong. Now listen to me, because you’re paying me. Yeah, you can’t frighten me. The only people I’m afraid of is my wife and my mum, everybody else is irrelevant. Okay. So therefore, you can do nothing to my career or anything else, that’s going to hinder me, from me telling you the truth, as I see it, and that, you know, be at the red, back to green to Amber. Yeah, whatever. I’m there to give you the facts, the data, but sometimes they don’t want to hear

Ian Golding

25:46 

I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? I mean, you could actually have a well-run programme.

Martin Hunt

25:50 

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that’s, that comes back to the value add, we were talking about earlier, you know, if I giving you this information, I’m a problem solver by nature. So I can give you the information, I can say, Look, if we do this, or if we do that, or if the programme manager accepts that they’re red, and we can assist them in getting it back to green or we can replan we can do whatever, but you understand it, at least you can make that informed decision, that will get it back on track, or you just you know, you cull it you cull it there and then but that’s what really good PMO and unlike think me in particular, can do for an organisation,

Mandie Beitner

26:25 

I think, I think coming back to the maturity of a PMO, I think let’s just say we had the foundations in place, I actually where I would strive to get to, is to preempt some of those things coming up before they even happen. So I mean, there’s some very simple things that you can do, if there’s a if you’ve got an estimation for amount of time, and something hasn’t started before, then you know, it’s going to be a problem, right? So do deal with it. You know, it’s about sorting, as in my sorted, you know, the, all the things that may come up and the things that have come up.

Martin Hunt

26:58 

A tool I use is the raid analysis when you’re doing planning. So for every milestone, and I say this to every project manager, I’ve got loads of mantras, but this one in particular, when you’re planning a plan, yeah, and you’ve got a milestone deliverable. Let’s work out the rest of the issues of the assumption and dependencies for each one of those milestones. You know, it’s like getting up in the morning, you know, another analogy, when you get up in the morning, you know, you have your shower, you have your breakfast, you get dressed, you leave for work, wherever you drive, get the tube, get a train, whatever it is, in your head, you’ve already built the risk, the issues, the assumptions, and the dependencies, you know, you’ve got to have money in your wallet or on the money and you can’t pay for your train journey, you got to make sure you’ve got milk, so you can have your cup of coffee, you got to make sure your hot water is working. So you can have a shower, all of these assumptions and issues, risks and dependencies you’ve got there. And if you apply that logic to when you’re doing plans, and understanding that it drives out the data that then enables you to preempt those sorts of things, there’s always going to be a curveball, but generally, you can you can understand what most of those things are,

Mandie Beitner

27:59 

I think you have to course correct as you go through. And actually, if you haven’t started at the top, in other words, understanding what the strategic imperatives are for the organisation and mapping those, prioritising and mapping those projects, portfolios, whatever, against that. And then you don’t have that whole, this is more important than that i.e one to N, then you can’t make those sorts of decisions anyway. And then when you get into it, you need to be able to course correct. And so I’m saying that even I agree with you completely about, you know, from a project and programme perspective. But I think when you go up that level higher, you got to have that whole, that whole discussion across the board, which comes back to the objectives thing and an alignment thing. And you can preempt some of those things because you know, how certain people are going to behave or not. And I think that unless, unless that is a constant conversation, so I’m quite agile in the way I like to apply certain things in the PMO. I don’t think I don’t think I think you should mix all the different types of practices and use them in conjunction with one another. And I think this kind of approach needs to be very agile and very iterative and course correct as you go.

Ian Golding

29:15 

That’s very interesting, because you’re talking about a level of sophistication is sort of being able to see where it’s all where it all could be headed. So in a transformation of any scale, there are likely to be a lot of projects underway, probably some of them quite complex, quite opaque to very, very senior people that are not going to be close to the detail. Yeah, but a lot of dependencies. So, you know, I think we talked a bit about the difficulty in breaking bad news. I mean, it’s perhaps it’s not so binary, that everything’s kind of broken, or it’s not, not perfect or otherwise. And, you know, maybe being able to just show different scenarios. Perhaps that’s another thing that PMO’s could do more because I think execs like to feel they’re making decisions. So rather than just saying that something could crash and burn, obviously not very negative, or not very positive message but maybe showing that here’s a, here’s a scenario that’s a bit different might cost a bit more money, but overall deliver something much more beneficial or not, I don’t know, think I just trying to find that again, it’s still still comes back to trying to navigate relationships and working with the people that ultimately have the power and the authority to sponsor and make things work. And I think that was also related to the span and influence of the PMO. And the leaders.

Boyd

30:22 

Going back to that point, talking about engagement, because we get a lot of people who are owning PMO’s, they’ve got a lack of engagement, whether it’s from the ground up or from the senior execs down. So how would you guys advise someone running a PMO to improve their engagement with senior leaders, or even the people who are delivering projects?

Martin Hunt

30:41 

For me, it’s all about marketing. Yeah, and I’ve realised over the last number of years, I have to become a salesman, as well as a head of PMO, whatever you want to call it, because you have to go out and market. You know, it’s almost like building a sales document saying, you know, this is what a PMO can do for you, you know, it’s got heated windscreen, it’s got you’re using the car analogy again, and going through all those things. And then, you know, the coffee machine culture, I try to go and see everybody that’s at that level and say, Look, this is what we’re doing, you know, does this fit in with what you’re looking forward to? How can we help you make those decisions. So I go out there with my list of 10 or 20 things that can add benefit to them, work out which ones are going to add benefit to those individuals. So if it’s a CFO, they’re going to be interested in finances and how the projects are being run from a financial perspective, making sure they’re not going over budget. So I’ll make sure that I’ve got that in my back pocket, then I’ll go and see a CTO or whatever, CTO, sorry, and I’ll go right, from a technology perspective, you want to make sure that we’re getting the right technology, be it new technology, enhancements to existing technology, and making sure that we’ve got a pack that that meets their requirements. And it’s that salesmanship that you need to go out and sell to all of the different members of the ELT, I keep calling it ELT, it’s stuck in my head for some reason. But yeah, going out and selling it to each one of them. And then delivering that and making sure that they can also communicate back then down to you. Because one of the biggest things and biggest issues I’ve come across is they make these decisions in their ivory towers, but they don’t then feed it down to the people on the ground running the projects and portfolios. And you need that two way conversation.

Boyd

32:21 

You can’t deliver it all though can you?

Martin Hunt

32:25 

Of course not, no, you’ve got to tailor some of this stuff so that you’re getting the key people who make the key decisions, you’ve got to get them on board and make them understand what the PMO is delivering for them.

Mandie Beitner

32:37 

I think that brings me to the PMO as a service, which is a concept that I was delivering somewhere. And actually, that seemed to work quite well, because you then have a service catalogue that’s got a bunch of tools associated, which is what you were saying, and you can sell that service. And actually, that’s where the revenue generation comes from. And everybody then knows what they’re going to get, or at least should get. And I agree with you completely about the marketing and the branding, which is another reason why think we need to change the name PMO. But I think that, you know, the multiple lenses could be, could be shown through that pick and mix, you know, service catalogue approach, which is what really we should be doing? Yeah, so you know, but don’t don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because someone’s finance that they see things in numbers. They wanted pictures, which was really quite an interesting, interesting lesson.

Ian Golding

33:31 

Mandie. Did you use a cake analogy earlier?

Mandie Beitner

33:34 

Oh, sorry, yeah,

Ian Golding

33:36 

I’m not very good at analogies. I’ll be worse at the car analogy, as my friends and colleagues would know. But I mean, so think about the cake with all the layers of the capability. Um, you know, I think we’re also sort of talking about how to get everything baked into this cake. So it all delivers a cake, and not just separate ingredients strewn all over the place. This is the essence of the cultural dynamics that we have to navigate so that, you know, the PMO, the product, the digital, the teams that all have the brilliant expertise, that they’re actually creating something all together.

Mandie Beitner

34:08 

it’s the collaboration and the teamwork, and it’s all the softer stuff. Yeah, we can carry on talking about tools and all of these things. But actually, the real trick of it is how do you get these people to work as a team, going in the same direction with the same goals and understanding or at least agreeing what the outcome should be. And those outcomes need to be bought into by all these people. There’s many ways to skin a cat, like you said.

Martin Hunt

34:38 

But that’s an interesting one, because on a roll that I’ve been doing recently, it’s all about that, working with those people and collaborating. So previous incumbent, not not in the role that I’m undertaking, but a previous incumbent in in different role was No, you’ve got to dictate, you’ve got to dictate and I’m like no, that that, unfortunately, has put their backs up. And you’ve been doing that for three months and nothing has been achieved. And so if we actually collaborate with them and actually get them on board, as an example, one of the finance process, one of them has developed a really good finance process online. Well, let’s not reinvent it, let’s use that, everybody else was bought into it. So we collaborate, and that way they feel that they’re adding value to what I’m doing. But also, they feel like they’re involved in it, they bought into the idea, and they want to make it succeed. So it makes it a lot, a real easier sell, when you’ve got people and you collaborate with them and bring on board some of their scenarios, or some of their work ethics.

Mandie Beitner

35:31 

I think it’s a balance. You know, it’s like that age old saying velvet glove and Iron Fist, isn’t it? Which I did write an article about recently. But I do think it’s about that, you know, it’s about having that framework, but the understanding of the emotional side, and the, you know, the personal side, and finding a way to get through, because sometimes being soft isn’t going to help you either. So I think  both that needs to be catered for, actually, and it depends on the person.

Boyd

36:04 

What about when organisations have a low project management capability? They might have people running projects who’ve been there a long time, or they’re, you know, SME’s. So how should the PMO change when the project management capability is fairly low?

 

Martin Hunt

36:22 

I think we mentioned earlier about education. What I tried to do in that scenario, and again, previous roles that I’ve had, I work with them. And what I do is I sort of upskill them on project management methodologies, project management approaches, and also what governance is, so that you work with them, and you, you almost handhold them for a period of time, I have a rule of thumb, which is six attempts. So six times to write a report, hopefully they get it by the sixth attempt, and then they can, you know, walk on their own two feet. And I approach it that way. So that they’re actually getting something from us in terms of the value add, but also, they’re educating themselves so that they become better.

Mandie Beitner

37:05 

I think, actually, it’s a skill of its own, I think there should be a career path of its own. And I think that there should be a centre of excellence. And to go along with that the training, but I think there should be guidance checklists, you know, I mean, the amount of people who can’t write a report, and then depending on which level the report is going to means a different type of writing as well. So, you know, all of that needs, I think, is something that you have to help almost walk the walk with them, you know, hold their hand a little bit.

Ian Golding

37:38 

Can I suggest something that’s not meant to be confrontational, but you promote a thought, and boy, do you know, what if an organisation has limited or sort of next to no project capability? Well, I mean, I think there are scenarios where organisations might be growing, or they think they need a PMO. But it kind of depends. There are many ways of managing activity and organisation and sometimes setting up a PMO that can be perceived as bureaucracy, when people perhaps already have their North Star, might be some of the professional services organisations I’ve been in, doing brilliant consulting work for their clients, their clients are dictating what their needs are in the working. And that’s their value stream. That’s their North Star. And that situation, it can be worse than having no PMO to set up a PMO that’s trying to add a layer of something that isn’t needed or wanted or accepted, as long as that work gets done in the right way.

Martin Hunt

38:28 

Yeah, I was I was, funnily enough, I was saying something to Boyd earlier. I’ve had several interviews over the last 10 or 12 years, where I haven’t got the job, primarily because I’ve gone in and the role they were looking for wasn’t a PMO, it was something different. But they they just went automatically, oh, we need a PMO because we need somebody to do the admin or do this or that. And when I actually sat down with them in an interview and actually went through what they required, it wasn’t a PMO that they required, they needed a senior programme manager, or they needed two or three good project managers rather than me. So I’ve done myself out of several jobs. But I’ve sort of tried to educate them that actually PMO sometimes isn’t the answer. If you’ve already got those skills, and people are doing that Northstar, as you mentioned, you don’t necessarily need that PMO. I’m not saying they won’t need a PMO in the future. But generally, sometimes when they’re starting off on this journey of running programmes, transformation programmes, strategic rationalisation, programmes, etc. They don’t necessarily need that PMO on day one, and they need to actually get the house in order before they do that.

Mandie Beitner

39:29 

I actually disagree. Well, if you don’t have even one person to look over the whole thing, right, irrespective of training and setting up, you know, a centre of excellence and all of that kind of thing I get you may not need that. But what you definitely need is that whole air traffic control, which which is what we were talking about at the beginning. And if you don’t have somebody involved in that in the beginning, when all of this is getting set up, it will get set up poorly, the standards won’t be in place, right, the reporting won’t be in place. So, even if they’re not actually doing the work, and they’re not actually doing the reporting itself, if you don’t have that there, forget it, it will be a mess.

Boyd

40:16 

This goes back to, you know, the ownership of a PMO at a portfolio level, I’ll give an example. We’ve got a customer who has a very large retail customer and we’ve spoken to various stakeholders, they don’t talk to themselves, they’ve got multiple PMO’s, running across the organisation in different ways. There’s no one sitting at the top of that, bringing it all together. It’s just interesting to get that view, and we’re fortunate to speak to different people inside the organisation. There’s a really good point that you made before Mandie is having a career path for PMO. You know, a lot of PMO people that I talk to, when I go back into their career and start, you know, talking about how they got to where they got to, a lot of them fall into it. It’s not something they go, I want to be a PMO person, where do I start? You know, how do I become a support person? Should I move to an analyst, should I be a manager? Should I be in a portfolio? I’d like to see more of a career path within organisations where, you know, this is a really good job, a really valuable job within an organisation. I don’t see it.

Mandie Beitner

41:30 

No, I completely agree. And, in fact, very few of the organisations I’ve worked in have actually got it as a skill set on its own, or a career path on its own. I think that what tends to happen, and I’m not sure why,  is that somebody will start off as a let’s call it a more of an admin or a project manager. And then they think that going up the project management route, is all going to be a start as an analyst and then become a project manager, because that seems to be the hierarchy. And actually, I don’t think that’s right at all. Admittedly, I fell into this, I’m not gonna lie, I fell into it and I absolutely love it, passionate, passionate, as we say. But I do think it’s a different skill set that is just not catered for period.

Boyd

42:15 

I think as well, you sort of take into account the personalities and behaviours of people, because they tend to fall into certain roles within a PMO. You’ve got people who are very analytical, people who love process, but they’re not very good at influencing, they’re not very dominant. So they naturally fall into and the PMO can naturally fall into an administrative function. And so it does depend on the type of personality you’ve got on those functions today.

Mandie Beitner

42:42 

I admit there was a rather large organisation I was working for. And when somebody asked us to set up meetings, I said, No, get your PA to do it. I did, because I wanted to make a point that we’re not an admin function. We are, you know, an expertise in us in our own right. And you have to, you have to stand up and be counted.

Boyd

43:05 

You do but if you’re working against the culture, and especially, you know, you guys come in all of you are senior interims. And I think there’s an advantage of that, Martin, you talked about it previously, you can come in, you can make some change, you’re not having to worry about your career and their organisation.

Mandie Beitner

43:21 

I was actually perm in that organisation funnily enough, I’ve gone between the two, depending on what the organisation wanted. And I, at the heart of it, I’m a change agent. I’m a transformation person. And so therefore, to effect that cultural change and to effect that kind of thing and move forward. You have to do certain things like that.

Ian Golding

43:44 

I think that’s fair. And just to defend. interims so I don’t know if there are people that go into into interim roles that literally just want to do the work for some weeks or months, and leave, but I suspect we’re not of that mindset. So. And for me, I’ve done permanent roles, I’ve done interim roles, but even if it’s a relatively shorter, interim role, I care passionately about what happens later after I’ve left because I also feel that that’s the kind of the mark of success. And I’m very proud to say that I’ve remained involved with every single organisation to some degree that after I’ve left, and it’s amazing to see the progress later. So you know, I think we’re actually talking a little bit about that, that need for that independence of thinking regardless whether it’s a permanent or an interim role. But I think we also talk, you know, the kind of the character or the ability to, for someone to be able to have those conversations and I’m sure that can be defined in terms of a career path and certain competencies, etc. But, you know, it’s like other roles, I mean, someone’s going to fit well into one company for the journey they’re at, and a brilliant person in a PMO role in one company may just fit very badly for no reason of their own in another organisation, just because it’s the adjustment to that journey, read what’s needed. Sometimes you need someone that’s abrasive sometimes you need a lot of charm or you still need the core competencies are there for sure. But fitting into that into that. And those cultural dynamics are really key to success.

Martin Hunt

45:04 

One of my key things that I’ve really enjoyed over the last number of years is mentoring, your mentoring PMO people, you know, I did some work for a large bank. And I had a team of 26. And out of that about half a dozen needed mentoring to enable them to understand what the role was. And it was fantastic because I brought them along on the journey, and sort of really increased their skill set, but also gave them the passion for what a PMO can deliver. And some of them have gone on to be successful, I still keep in touch with them to this day. And for me, that’s what the PMO is about, yeah, we’re talking about that career progression. When people sometimes come into the PMO, we mentioned some people just fall into it, that’s fine. But if they want it to be their career, you need to mentor them, give them the skills and make them understand how they can add value to organisations. A handful of people that I’ve worked with at a large bank, they’ve all moved on to become heads of PMO or lead PMO’s… I don’t want to take credit for it, because it was them that did the work. But hopefully, some of the work that I did with them has paid off to enable that.

Mandie Beitner

46:08 

What we’re talking about really is having that change element as part of your personality, and being able to be that chameleon, you know, very empathetic type of person, so that you can work around whatever it is that you’ve got, I think, I think that’s probably something that we don’t really talk that much about, actually,

Boyd

46:30 

I think leaving a sustainable legacy to your point Ian and that can be anything right, that can be PMO, sustainable PMO. We get pulled into projects where we’re having to start again, it’s gone in a three, four or five year cycle. But with PMO, they’ve lost the sponsor, that person’s gone. The PMO has gone down the toilet over the last couple of years and they’re having to start again, there’s a new sponsor, but that sponsors not really, they’re not really involved in PMO. So, you know, lots of companies having something which is sustainable, whether it’s a PMO or not, is really important. And you made a really good point I’d like to summed up your experience Ian it was really well said, I know you’re available soon for a CIO role.

Ian Golding

47:13 

But also Boyd, I know from your experience that you would care very, very much about understanding before putting, because we’ve worked together, you’ve put in whole leadership teams for me in some roles, understanding those dynamics is huge. I mean, who wants to see a really brilliant person go into a role, and then they fail through no fault of their own. I mean, how demoralising is that. And that’s something that’s on us, right? So you know all those things, you’re able to preemptively sort that out

Boyd

47:39 

Using Mandie’s phrase chameleon, as an interim, you do have to be a chameleon. I’ve worked with you Ian like you say on a number of occasions, you’ve been different people in different roles in different sectors, you know, and you have to be that

Ian Golding

47:51 

I think that is adjusting to the organisation being true to that organisation. And again, it’s like, understanding that we’re really there for that organisation. Again, what’s the dynamic of a PMO? To make sure the organisation is successful? That’s what we’re about. Yeah,

Ian Golding

48:31 

What are we going to do about the 50% of people that from what

 

Ian Golding

48:38 

Will it change over years to come? I mean, is there a wave of I mean, is perception going up or down? Or is it steady? Do you have a thought on that?

Boyd

48:45 

At the moment? It’s, like I said, it feels 50 50. And I think that sometimes has to do….You know, you’ve got to think about this… this is across 11 different sectors. This is across organisations that are 200 to 20,000. You know, different cultures, different ambitions, different goals, different business models. So, you know, it does depend, I think, I think organisations can take some learns outside of their own sector. Know, we’re talking about PMO here and sector is something different. But you can take a different mindset and a different approach from someone else doing something similar in a different sector,

Mandie Beitner

49:21 

I think you’re right actually Boyd because the same was true of technology not too long ago, everybody hated technology. It was always their fault. And it’s the same, it’s the same idea actually.

Ian Golding

49:33 

Maybe the different exec sponsors could be seconded into champion the PMO in an organisation so that everyone at the most senior exec level has to think about what it would mean for others in the wider organisation.

Martin Hunt

49:51 

I also think it’s cyclical, because having been in this industry for a number of years. It’s almost like, you know a new CEO comes in and he outsources, five years later another CEO comes in and insources, and it’s that cyclical motion with the PMO. Sometimes you go through that phase where, actually that it’s all the PMO’s fault, let’s get rid of them sort of thing. And then they realise that they’re not getting the information, they’re not getting the enablement, they’re not getting the engagement. So all of a sudden, they go, Oh, we’ve been without the PMO for two years, our projects are failing. Let’s bring one back in.

Mandie Beitner

50:24 

You didn’t mean outsource PMO though did you?

Martin Hunt

No sorry,

Mandie Beitner

Because I really don’t agree with that no, no,

Martin Hunt

Me neither. Because then you then you literally are turning it into an admin function.

Mandie Beitner

Well, you’d lose all of your IP that’s the bottom line. All the information or the education, it goes to a third party, it’s not, you know, I Why would you do that as a business? I don’t understand

Boyd

50:48 

Are you talking about PMO as a service? Because that’s that’s part outsourcing.

Mandie Beitner

50:54 

Not really, it’s just a way of describing how you would provide your service internally to the… it’s everybody understands something as a service. So it’s a way of branding it or marketing it, I think, but actually outsourcing PMO

Ian Golding

51:09 

You wouldn’t have a completely detached outsource team?

Mandie Beitner

51:11 

I’ve seen that. And I wouldn’t Yeah, I wouldn’t

Ian Golding

51:16 

So have you seen examples where there’s an understanding of the organisation?

Mandie Beitner

Yeah, it doesn’t work.

Ian Golding

I wonder why people would even

Mandie Beitner

I agree with you.

Boyd

51:24 

I disagree with you. I mean, we’ve done PMO’s as a service where it’s worked. But you have to have a knowledge transfer process in place, we would have the understanding from the beginning.

Mandie Beitner

51:34 

But is it the whole thing? So I think, yes, you can do that. Let’s say the more detailed lower level, the more repeatable things that you would do. So the planning and the, you know, reporting and certain things like that, what you can’t have is that top level Central Services, which is looking at prioritisation of the portfolio, the strategic way that you need to deliver, those sorts of things. I don’t see that as being very well delivered by an outsider.

Mandie Beitner

53:07 

I just want to come back to what Boyd was saying about you’ve seen it working, I think we’re talking on two different levels. Because I’ve, I’ve hired let’s say people like Practicus, etc, etc. I’m not talking about that. What I’m talking about is literally giving it over to somebody in India, or that kind of thing where there is limited contact limit, it just doesn’t work.

Ian Golding

53:29 

Well, that would be purely administrative.

Mandie Beitner

53:34 

Well I’ve seen them try to.

Martin Hunt

And I think, again, that comes back to perception. And it almost in some organisations, they see the PMO as a back office function. Yeah. And it’s almost like, oh, it’s back office function, we can just outsource, we can outsource that. And that’ll be done and everything will be hunky dory. And that’s because they don’t understand that value that it can add. So therefore outsourcing it is. Yeah, it’s an easy option.

Mandie Beitner

53:58 

Now, what I have seen that works very well is I’ve had PMO functions in various regions that are responsible for certain particular things. So you know, maybe Krakow, or Hong Kong or Canada, wherever it happens to be, that works quite well, because you’ve got 24/7, you know, customer service type model. And, you know, there’s always the argument about a regional PMO versus a global or central PMO. And I don’t think you can do without either.

Ian Golding

54:31 

And it’s hard to generalise because some organisations might all be in the UK, middle of London, some might be globally distributed. And they just find their way of working

Mandie Beitner

54:40 

And matrix as well, which I found quite interested. The whole federated matrix kind of view is quite tough at times, which is why actually then the PMO actually becomes far more far more important. And you know, there’s sorry, I’m getting on to a slightly different topic, but when there’s the whole fashion of moving towards agile deliveries and not needing to have PM’s and this and that, and the other, actually, that actual skill set is still required. It’s just required in a different way.

Martin Hunt

55:11 

It’s funny, you use that moving towards agile and once again, worked for an international bank that was pretty much agile based. And they were like fighting? No, no, thank you, Mandie. I agree with you know the words. But they they kept telling me they were. But what was really interesting there was they were like, Oh, we don’t need that we’ve gotten and we have a scrum every week that does everything we need. And then you looked at the book of work, they hadn’t 10,000 items on there. And it came back to that whoever shouted the loudest got their item further up that list of book of work? And you’re like, well, no, that’s not how it should work. We should be prioritising based on business requirements based on return on investment, etc, etc, etc. But it didn’t work like that. It just it was just a free for all. And it was really hard to say no, where’s the PMO should be working with the business partners to say what the strategy is, where we’re delivering something and how the priority is defined. And it was a continuous struggle to try and get that work and get them to understand how that worked.

Mandie Beitner

56:14 

That’s partially a function of money. I think once when you’ve got that amount of money, you don’t have to look at the pennies. Rather, they don’t I think they should, but they don’t. And and given the size and complexity of what I think we’re talking about, I think that because the visibility at that top level, and the hierarchy, that pyramid of information, wasn’t there. It it exasperated the situation,

Boyd

56:41 

That’s a really interesting point. So I was talking to a customer a couple of weeks ago, they’re a UK business, they’re turning over about 80 million family run business, chucking off a shedload of profit, and someone’s gone in there to set up a PMO. And the biggest challenge that this person has got is,  why do we need to do this? We’re making a lot of money, we’re in the right market, it’s with us. Why should we do it?

Mandie Beitner

Do more for less, more for the same.

Boyd

57:11 

And so this person has come in to write a PMO strategy. One of the directors, the new directors had said, Well, you need to write a business case to pay for this function. So put that into your strategy. But he doesn’t see that as the biggest challenge, the biggest challenge he believes is cultural.

Mandie Beitner

57:28 

I think having written a business case for enterprise PMO in the past and actively having the numbers that prove that you would save an awful lot of money year on year net, and it literally paid back within a year. And it still didn’t get through. It just tells you what environment we’re living in.

Boyd

57:49 

Why wouldn’t you do that? Is it leadership?

Mandie Beitner

57:54 

I think it’s about the understanding of the importance of it, and back to the value add, again, because at that particular time, or in that particular place, it was far more about what products can we get out there? What how can we make more money, it’s all about growth, or it was at the time. And so because again, function of money, they were looking at, well, I spent money on that, then I can’t spend money on this, but did not recognise that actually, if they had spent money on that they would have got more products out anyway.

Ian Golding

58:30 

Makes my brain itch slightly because I mean, in that situation, it’s like, it would definitely be a mistake to go into a role where people literally don’t want it or they don’t feel they need it. However, I do don’t know that. I know. But that’s the conundrum is that how to actually sell it and ensure that there is that demand, or at least from sufficient people that can actually give support. And of course, at the same time, hold the PMO accountable to you know, deliver the savings or the benefits or protect the risk brand reputation of the company, whatever.

Martin Hunt

59:00 

And I think that comes back to my point earlier about being a salesman, a marketeer for what we’re gonna face because my role going in is to sell the value of what that PMO can deliver, and make them understand what it is there for them. And I think that that’s just when you start, that’s almost 80% of the role, is selling those benefits of setting up? Yes, it’s very important. You know, the risk and issue process is a risk and issue process.

Ian Golding

59:23 

But it’d be reasonable to expect something to be delivered that is tangible in the short term to prove that wouldn’t it.

Mandie Beitner

59:29 

I think though, that things change. And even though the mandate is there, for example for some roles, and for the people, let’s say that you’ve been interviewed by it’s not there for the bulk of the rest of the organisation, but you won’t know that. I mean, I it’s about asking some tough questions in the interview in some respects, you don’t always get that back. And it’s about your ability to persuade people that it is the right thing to do.

Ian Golding

1:00:18 

We seem to be coming back so many times to the most senior stakeholders sponsorship, people needing it, wanting it, understanding that.

Boyd

1:00:25 

And I think I think, you know, part of our job is to ask the question, Why, why, do you believe you need that. And, you know, for example, talking to stakeholders about getting them to articulate the value of PMO, and why it exists. What problem is PMO solving within the organisation?

Mandie Beitner

1:00:44 

it all comes down to, I think, all roads track to four things, time, cost, quality and satisfaction. The satisfaction, one is about you know, is the most, is the softer one, and you get a lot back, but you can’t really measure it so well. But every single thing about what we could say that the PMO can do, it can reduce the cost, reduce time, or be more efficient with your money and your time, and improve quality. And that applies whether you’re agile or not. I’ve heard other people talking about, well, that doesn’t apply to agile, well, it absolutely does. In fact it does more so actually. And then I think people do forget that a happy team or teams that know what they’re doing, or are really what I call a property because you know, you can put people together and they’re not really a team, the amount of satisfaction, job satisfaction, and then good deliverables, what good looks like, comes out the end is difficult to quantify, and it always comes back to the dollar or the pound, you know, the quality is going to be… you’re going to save money because the quality of the product is better. And therefore you won’t have to rework or, you know, we’re saving money or we’re changing the process. So therefore, we’re getting rid of waste. And we’re going to have less steps in the process. And we’ll have a cheaper resource doing x y z because they can, again, it comes back to the money monetary value again. So I can’t see. For me, there’s lots of things we can say about giving visibility and making decisions and everything else. Actually, it comes down to those four things.

Boyd

1:02:17 

Yeah, I think it depends on I think it depends on the culture of the organisation, and what the what the organisation is trying to achieve. And I can’t disagree with that. I think it just changes depending on the size of the organisation and so forth.

Mandie Beitner

1:02:32 

And actually, it’s the relationship between the whole, those four things, and those things would change depending on culture and actually, quite frankly, the budget they’ve got and, and the things that they’re trying to achieve in terms of strategy.

Boyd

1:02:45 

Yeah and I think it depends on where an organisation is and why. Why they’re bringing in a PMO or why they’re changing their PMO. A lot of times I speak to customers where prioritisation is the key for them, especially coming out of COVID. You come out of COVID, You know, you’ve got revenues lost. The execs are really focused on where are we spending our money? What projects are the most important, not just for the next 12 months but for the next two years. Three years. Do we need to change our Target Operating Model? And so, you know, the visibility and prioritisation has become the key value point within a PMO.

Mandie Beitner

1:03:21 

It’s really interesting you bring that up? I found that because of COVID they were getting rid of PMO’s, which was totally the wrong thing to do. Yeah, totally, because that’s exactly what they needed. So I’m pleased that you’re seeing that that’s coming back, but I don’t think they should, they should have taken the opportunity and used those skills to actually streamline what it was they were going to do through the COVID period.

Boyd

1:03:44 

What we saw is actually organisations got rid of project management teams. And I’m talking big teams of 100 / 120 programme project managers, change managers, because the project’s you know, they weren’t doing as many projects, they got rid of that capability. And then when they came back in and wanted to ramp things up, they just didn’t have the capability there. And so PMO going in bringing in PMO function to the organisation has definitely helped with that. But they’ve lost a lot of capability.

Martin Hunt

1:04:15 

I think also on that front is that they are using the portfolio and picking the right projects and programmes to do. They’ve had a bucket list for three years, and they’ve really just sat on that bucket list and gone, we’re now out of the mire, right, let’s just do the lot. And they don’t understand how to prioritise. Getting rid of the PMO function and organisation…. I did some work for an organisation a little while ago who got rid of it completely had no change management experience at all, started to try and recruit and all of a sudden the markets bear because everybody’s being recruited left, right and centre, they can’t afford to get the people in, and therefore they’re looking at this book of work and they’re going well how do we prioritise?  You’ve got to prioritise not just on the return on investment, but what’s going to be good for the business etc, but you have to prioritise and what you can actually deliver with the people that you’ve got and the people you can get.

Mandie Beitner

1:05:03 

I’ve got this. Well, this methodology that I’ve been building for God knows how many years and part of that is about prioritisation. And there’s something called Managing for value, which is an economic profit model that this prioritisation mechanism, let’s call it is based on. And I I truly have not seen an objective way of prioritising across the board in any of the organisations that I’ve worked in. And I’ve implemented that five or six times now. And I cannot understand why it’s not thought about because for me, it’s very obvious and to during COVID was the time that they should have taken to analyse what they were, what they should be doing, and what was going to give them the value. It’s like, you know, the government putting money into infrastructure and things like that, during bear times, its the same kind of idea in my view. I just didn’t see that. I didn’t see that at all, which actually surprised me immensely.

Boyd

1:06:03 

Your methodology that you’ve developed sounds really interesting. We could probably spend just a podcast talking about that, yeah, but can you just give us a bit of a flavour of it?

Mandie Beitner

1:06:13 

So essentially, there are a number of steps, the first step is actually to understand what the strategy is, right? What does the organisation want to do. And then there are a number of elements that go along with that. So there will be things like fix or fail, that you have to do it, right. And therefore they’re going to be weighted higher, there is going to be legal things or regulatory things that you need to do, they may not need to be done now, but they need to be done. So there will be a time frame associated. There are things like operational effectiveness, there are things like customer satisfaction, or employee satisfaction, those sorts of things. And they’re weighted, and what and you don’t look at the projects at all, until you’ve agreed that collectively. So it’s a collective agreement, that that that is what we need to focus on as an organisation and the value needs to come out of those projects, then you get the list of projects, and you actually score the projects against that criteria. And then once you’ve scored the projects, you literally can do a one to n, because you know exactly what’s going to add the value. Yeah. So that’s a very simple way of putting it and then what I do is I put it into something called an air traffic control, where you can see who’s getting what, when, and actually if the organisation can do what’s right for the business, rather than for an individual function or an individual person, then actually, it tends to drive out that funnel that we were talking about at the beginning.

Boyd

1:07:43 

That’s interesting. I’ve got a customer who is in the education sector, CIO, hasn’t been there very long and they’ve got a bucket full of projects. And she put it into a plan for the Exec. And then she said it would take them 20 years to do and so that prioritisation would be key for someone like that.

Mandie Beitner

1:08:05 

I love doing it. It’s so fascinating seeing the responses, because it’s not necessarily… the first time I did it many, many years ago, it was a real surprise to all of us, including myself about what actually came out as more important. And you have to put the human element on top of it once you’ve got the data. And then what we did was we printed it out on a, you know, great big wall chart. And I saw people coming over to the desk to look to see where things were happening and where it could impact, for example, customer operations. So you, let’s say there was a product launch and if they didn’t know about it, the phone lines would go down because they had too many calls. You know, it was all of those sorts of things. And can technology deliver what they need to do is marketing involved at the right time? Yeah, whatever.

Ian Golding

1:08:47 

It is very interesting that we went from your very good filtering, prioritisation type criteria, which are actually very, very useful. And you said without looking at the dirty detail, kind of list the laundry list. But then as soon as you get into what that list of proposed projects might be, that, again, I think is where the PMO needs to be kind of all over the organisation to understand this, because there might be all sorts of people describing things as projects, they’re not really projects, there’s a whole grouping of things that should work together, otherwise, we’re just encouraging ineffective silos. But again, I mean, mentioning that, because that I think, is the difference between a PMO just, you know, shuffling data around just showing people the sorts of things happening, versus making sure it’s actually going to deliver something in aggregate, you know more than the sum of the parts is so important.

Mandie Beitner

1:09:33 

The number of times I’ve come across, I’ve looked at a portfolio and there have been four HR systems being implemented or there have been, I mean, it’s quite unbelievable. So, you know, remove the duplication of effort or they will be doing something in a completely different way. Or there’ll be big gaps. It’s quite unbelievable how how many times I’ve seen that.

Boyd

1:09:54 

Yeah, there’s a charity which will remain unnamed. The biggest project with the biggest risk was actually started by the CEO. And there was no governance. It wasn’t even in a project or in a portfolio. Until we actually got under the covers of what all the programmes and the projects were happening, you know, discussing that, the biggest challenge was the one that the CEO started without any governance.

Mandie Beitner

1:10:21 

It’s amazing, isn’t it? And then all those projects, which are not necessarily classed as projects, but all these pieces of work that are going on, and how do you fit the strategic with the tactical, because there are tactical things that you need to do that say they’ve got some kind of issue that’s happened, or you need to get rid of some technical debt, or whatever it might be there, there has to be a way which I call structured programmes of change, right? That you pull those things together, and you have some kind of flex in the, when we were talking about workforce planning or resource management, where you can pull those things in because they’re going to do something similar. Or you’re touching that particular process or that code,

Ian Golding

1:10:59 

How do you handle the long list of what might be smaller, functional, specific projects that don’t tie up together in aggregate to deliver something more useful?

Mandie Beitner

1:11:11 

Well, I think that they will tie to something. So I’ve never come across where something’s just totally out there on its own and it’s a small thing, never ever, actually, in all the times, I’ve analysed lots of different portfolios, because they will be touching finance or they’ll be touching HR or they’ll be touching the CRM, or they’ll be touching something. And you look to see where another more substantial project is working on that particular piece and you add it in. It’s like being modular. The way I would describe it as you have these different modules and you push them in as and when the time… and it depends on when they need to be done.

Ian Golding

1:11:48 

What if someone’s working on a project and they say oh don’t worry, that’s for my team over here you don’t need to worry about that.

Mandie Beitner

1:11:58 

I would go and prove why, you have to use evidence for that kind of thing.

Ian Golding

1:12:05 

And that can be a slightly awkward conversation because people are used to autonomy. And in a world where 10 or 15 years or more ago, but not recent history, things could have been organised separately, it just doesn’t work.

Martin Hunt

1:12:16 

I actually walked two people off of a site in recent past where they were updating a live system via a computer in an office. They weren’t even assigned to that they were from an external party. They came in and they were updating a live system via a PC, allegedly a server that was underneath the desk, but I didn’t see that. And I actually escorted them off the premises going like you just can’t come in and do that. That’s the it’s it forms part of the KYC portfolio, you’re not allowed to do that. Yeah. And they were Oh, you know, Fred has said I can. I’m sorry, I’ll speak to Fred and put Fred in his place. And they were like, but it’s part of the project. There is no such project. You know, where are you getting the funding from this? Or who’s paying for you? And it turns out, yeah, there were a couple of doors… Ha, we’ll make sure we get you in sort of thing…. Pet projects. Yeah. And funnily enough, going back to that, prioritisation exercise, I found in a couple of years ago, there were people who were manipulating the scores of the portfolio to try and get theirs higher up the list. So we were doing a very simplistic portfolio.

Mandie Beitner

1:13:23 

That’s why you have to agree. Yeah, I think that the strategy and the numbers first, you can’t if you do it the other way around, somebody will find a way around it.

Martin Hunt

1:13:31 

Exactly. And somebody was actually manipulating it, so they were giving themselves higher scores, but I’m not a five, I’m actually a seven.

Mandie Beitner

1:13:41 

And if you do it collectively, other people will argue against them.

Martin Hunt

And part of the problem was, it was very silo based.

Mandie Beitner

1:13:52 

I wouldn’t even bother doing it if its silo based, because it completely defeats the purpose.

Ian Golding

1:13:58 

I think a useful conversation to have for any organisation setting up a PMO is also to be be clear that, you know, PMO, portfolio management isn’t going to be like a choke point for everything happening in the organisation. And that’s, that’s probably falls into the 50% kind of bucket, where, it has a bad press, where it can be perceived as bureaucracy, I mean, people still need to do their work. And there is a certain amount of innovation that people can do. Not in the example you just described, Martin, but you know, like, where people can get on with things. And I think understanding where an initiative becomes a project or a programme. That’s quite clear, but I mean, my my feeling on that is that even though even though it might be hard to define that, and you could argue forever about this, and that and the other, I think, you know, just having good transparency and visibility is the is the main thing for that as long as teams are open and transparent what they’re doing and so it can be guided if and when it clearly becomes part of something else.

Mandie Beitner

1:14:51 

So if you know something’s going on, and it’s not necessary, it’s a smaller thing, or it’s a proof of concept or something like that. At least if you know It’s going on and something else comes in, you can stop the rot. Yeah. If you don’t know what’s going on, it’s impossible.

Ian Golding

1:15:06 

You know, there are all sorts of ways of dealing with that, innovation funnels or whatever, you know, and to be honest, I think it can be quite positive as well to show the organisation that it actually celebrates the fact that people are doing something, but understand that that thing can’t develop too far without being properly funded, if it’s actually going to succeed.

Mandie Beitner

1:15:26 

For me, that’s about gating.

Ian Golding

1:15:29 

What I understand to be the correct terms that you’re using Mandie, of course, but like, how does it relate to people in their day to day as well?

Mandie Beitner

1:15:38 

So you always need money to do these things, right? One of the Agile principles I like is that you give a certain amount of money to do a certain amount, and then you have to keep coming back to prove your value.

Ian Golding

1:15:50 

And even if it’s time, people’s time, which is often taken for granted.

Martin Hunt

On that note I find a lot of people will try and get things under the door by saying they’re BAU. And they’re like enhancements to a system and they’re BAU enhancements, but you’re using change resource. You’re costing us money. But like that’s going to come out on my part. And then at the end of the financial year, they come back at the end of the year and go, Oh, I’ve overspent my BAU budget, can I have an extra couple of million. It’s another education pieces on making them understand if it’s a project, you may be able to capitalise that and save the organisation money.

Boyd 

1:17:38 

Just on a point of, and you guys have been involved in lots of different PMO’s, national, global scale, if you can think back to some of the PMO’s that have been run the best. Whether it’s a, you know, for whatever reason, whether it’s a sponsor, or just the structure or the culture… Talk to us without, you know, breaking an NDA, talk to us about, a project or business where you’ve seen a PMO run fantastically well.

Martin Hunt

1:18:08 

I’ve got one. So I worked for a telecommunications company. It was it was that I can’t say but they were colour. It was Red that’s the one. No, and the PMO. I actually went in to set it up. And it was fantastic. Because I was actually given project managers as my resources as well as PMO people. So I was able to work with them, educate them on what good governance looked like, on what good project management looked like, looked at what the customer wanted, and the customer, this time being the board and actually implement something that made sure that the board was given the right information, made sure that the projects and programmes that were being undertaken, were managed correctly. And it worked really well. Unfortunately, it came to an abrupt end when a new director came in and went, I don’t want it, I don’t want that function. And I was like, surely you know what we’re giving you, it’s that salesmanship, you know, this is what we’re giving you, why are you not interested? However, on the back of it, I must admit, I got quite a few of the, what were the old board who sort of contact me contacted me after and said, If we ever we need you again, would you be available, which I thought was a compliment to them, not just me, but all of the team within that staff. And it was it was just that autonomy to be able to actually go in and affect that change.

 

Mandie Beitner

1:19:36 

I actually am thinking about the question more as is it the right PMO for an organisation rather than the best? Yeah, so I’ve seen things work really well. Or, I’ve seen PMO’s implemented that are not right for the organisation, or I’ve seen things at the combination have the two. So I think the best that I’ve seen is somewhere where the mandate is actually respected, and the funding for it and the support for it, even, even though it was difficult, was really good. That’s not to say that it was particularly successful in the end, because the funding was pulled and things like that. But I think actually, it’s more about what’s right for the right type and the right type of PMO for the type of organisation. I think that I’ve been in some organisations where they just don’t have the right type of organised type of PMO and that’s frustrating. So best I would say, the ones that actually listened to all the things that we’ve just discussed and willing to consider it and potentially implement it.

Boyd 

1:21:00 

Yes, it’s an interesting point, isn’t it, because there is a certain amount of process and structure that is probably needed across most PMO’s. But it’s the tailoring to an organisation, at that particular time bespoking it to the organisation and the people and the culture is probably the most important thing.

Mandie Beitner

1:21:15 

And giving it, allowing it the time is, it’s like, you know, when you’re doing some form of programme, it doesn’t finish when the, let’s say the technology is delivered, it only finishes when everybody is on board and reusing all those processes and everything else. The same with a PMO can’t just implement it and expect it to be there. It takes time to embed.

Ian Golding

1:21:35 

I think there are no shortcuts in what you describe, you know, it’s matching, as with all roles as well, there are people that are good for a certain role, what’s required for a certain point in time and doe the PMO that’s true as well. I mean, I’ve been in and out of maybe a dozen or so organisations and, and some of them hadn’t had a PMO, some of them have actually, quite large ones and have had a PMO and decided after spending significant amounts of money that they didn’t need it. And it was not because they didn’t want to manage things well, they had it I mean, going back to the client analogy, it actually depends what’s your Northstar and how you’re ensuring you get the quality. And you don’t want to cut everything, so there are many different ways to create what would in some situations become bureaucracy for a particular organisation, but I think my examples would probably be rather than a particular individual or particular programme, or PMO, would be the best one to be probably where the team has been able to put the organisation first not their own team. So not being siloed, we’ve talked quite a lot about that, where they can call out structural problems, where things are really just not going to go that well, scenarios, you know, showing, well something could go better or worse. If we do A, B or C, I think that can be powerful. The storytelling analogies probably do actually go down quite well. I think brilliant stakeholder management is really, really important. And I’ve been in a situation where some perhaps quite shy retiring, but brilliant PMO specialists have not felt empowered to have those conversations. But it’s quite magical when they can just get other people having those conversations. And you know, when I say stakeholder engagement is not being friendly and nice to everyone. It’s actually just understanding the mapping and the interaction for others to have those conversations. But you know I think of the most satisfying experiences I’ve had or seen of when mentoring coaching other people or a really bad problem, a programme that is really important to an organisation is able to turn around, and everyone can breathe a sigh of relief, and actually something gets delivered that is really impactful. And that’s ultimately what we want to see from our PMO is helping organisations to achieve.

Mandie Beitner

1:23:40 

I guess to add to that, I think the thing that excites me is the using of the data and innovating the use of new tools and automations and things that help the PMO to do the role. That for me is the key. That’s what the best one should look like. Automating, for example, that whole prioritisation process, and including it in the finance process. That kind of thing, which was fantastic, actually,

Martin Hunt

1:24:07 

It seems for me in the last 18 months, two years it’s become invaluable, because in Teams, you have a planning tool, and I use it as a scrum board. I’m using the terminology but I’m not using it as an agile. And what you can do is you can you can create tasks, add lists of what needs to be done, assign it to people, make sure that then gets added to their calendar. And you can sit there you can add all of these things in and literally it just communicates to everybody on a regular basis what needs to be done. And then you use that as the in to talk to people. I used to have a mantra sentence it’s or send an email and go and sit on their keyboard until they answered it sort of thing. But with Teams, it does a lot of that legwork for you and then you pick up the phone and go. So I need this thread I need that you know about it because it’s been popping up in your inbox all week and sending new messages all week. Have you been able to do it you know, do you need help doing it? Can I help you and assist you in making sure that we get the right information from it. And all of a sudden that Team’s functionality, it used to be Microsoft Project was the tool. And you could ping people from that. But now with Teams, you can do it a lot simpler and a lot more efficiently. And embracing that new technology. And the way things have changed has really enabled PMO’s over the last couple of years, in ones I’ve been using, to really enhance the communication and the engagement with different sort of sets of people.

Mandie Beitner

1:25:25 

I think collaborative PPM tools are a game changer. There’s obviously a number of them on the market. And I think, again, that depends on the type of organisation and what type of PMO you need. They should have the basics that we were talking about earlier.

Boyd

1:25:40 

You’re right, we, we partner with a company called Kivue, and they’ve got a tool called Perform. It’s a portfolio tool, it’s not a project management tool, it’s portfolio tool for senior execs to get instant data. And he’s got a really good principle that all stakeholders like it’s five and one, it should take senior execs five minutes to digest the information and one minute to make a decision. And it’s specifically good for organisations where they don’t have a really high project management capability. And only allows them to input a certain amount of information consistently. And then like you said, Mandie is getting the automation where they can spend their time doing something else rather than reporting. We did a really good business case business case with an FD. I won’t talk about the company, but it was quite a large organisation. And they took on this tool perform. He wasn’t too sure about the business case at the beginning. But when we worked it out, we went back six months later, and we worked out the time it was taking for them to do their reporting. at a senior level it was saving them such a lot of money, because they didn’t have to spend all that time doing it because it was automated. And the same with the project. people inputting information that cut their time down by 75% as well.

Mandie Beitner

1:26:59 

Yeah, so that business case I was talking to you about earlier. That’s part of what it was about.

Ian Golding

1:27:05 

Just helping people to make decisions as well. We touched a little bit on how I made my opinion, I think executives like to make decisions, but it’s sometimes it’s difficult. If there’s a lot of anecdote and opinion rather than evidence, the data has to be relevant to what the world is. But you know, I think it can be pretty awful when you see an organisation has a great brand and unable to make the important decisions that actually ultimately affect its future. So you know, again, I think another very powerful facet of a PMO is to be able to present information for decisions. Beyond the programs themselves.

Martin Hunt

1:27:38 

I worked at an organisation where I went to a senior sponsor, and I said, Do you realise it costs 120,000 pounds a month to build a two page report. And he was flabbergasted, as as I was when I did the number crunching, because there were 12 teams, two to three people in each team, the project programme managers time and everything else. And then there was a collective reporting team that actually collated all of this information, built the report, and it was like a two and a half week process. And I went through and said, like 120,000 pound a month to produce a two page report. And you get 20 minutes a senior exec meeting to talk about that report if you’re lucky, because depending on how the agenda went, and he went, Oh, my God, I’m gonna stop that.

Mandie Beitner

1:28:20 

Yeah, but there’s a balance isn’t there because you’ve got to have the visibility. So how do you fix that?

 

 

Martin Hunt

1:28:28 

Yeah. And I, you know, going back to that message, I’d like to think that, you know, I always say to programme project leads, you know, half an hour a week to do your report, and half an hour week to meet with me to talk about it, that’s one hour out of a 37 and a half hour week, or 40, hour, week, 35 hours, whatever, one hour is all I need of your time a week, I won’t bog you down with meetings, I won’t bog you down with bureaucracy. If you give me that time, then that’s it. That’s all you need to do.

Mandie Beitner

1:28:54 

But there’s a bit about quality in that because I’ve I’ve tried that before. And then what you get, you just can’t use or it’s not understandable for the people who are not in it every day.

Martin Hunt

1:29:05 

But that comes back to that education piece I was talking about earlier that four to six week, sort of six, four to six time education period. So you do get that right level of quality, because I’m a great believer in the quality. Yeah, garbage in garbage out. I’m not interested. I want exactly what needs to be said. And therefore that’s what you know, I work on.

Boyd

1:29:23 

I spoke to an interesting head of PMO the other day, and I really hope that it’s going to work for him, because he’s gone and he’s done a strategy and he’s set up a business case for the PMO to run. And I really liked the way that he’s positioned it. He’s linked it into four key strategic objectives. That’s great. He’s got sponsorship, he’s got money to do it. He’s also linked it into improving the capability of their delivery teams, which is great. And he’s also linked it to benefits realisation rather than just saying, well if we get this over the line, and it’s actually about the benefits, so are we saying I believe we can use PMO to raise the capability of delivery. And if we do that, we’ll get better benefits. And I said, that sounds fantastic. You know, he’s quite new. And along the journey, I’m like, I want to keep in touch with you, because I really want this to work really well, for him. And it’ll be a great case study to say, look, this is how it can be done.

Ian Golding

1:30:19 

If this podcast series runs long enough, you’ll be able to have that as the last in the series.

Boyd

1:30:25 

He’s a young guy as well, he’s gone into a new sector, bringing a fresh idea from what he’s done in the past, that customer didn’t have a clue about what to be doing or what it could be. And I really hope it works for him.

 

Mandie Beitner

1:30:43 

It’s sector agnostic. In my view.

Martin Hunt

1:30:45 

Yeah, I agree. A PMO can fit anywhere. Yeah. And I think I’ve proved that in all the different organisations I’ve worked at, you know, financial utilities, energy, telecoms, etc, etc. It’s how it’s implemented and how it works for the organisation. I think I mentioned earlier, your risk and issue process is pretty much the same wherever you go. It’s a risk. It’s an issue. How you manage it may be tweaked for each different organisations, but generally the process is the same. It’s how it gets implemented and how it gets managed continually to make sure that people are aware of what it’s giving you the information.

Ian Golding

1:31:21 

It’s like holding up a mirror to people and showing them perhaps a dimension they didn’t really think about before.

Boyd

1:31:28 

I use your your phrase to him as well, because he’s ex military. I used your phrase air traffic control. He loved that.

 

A huge thank you to our guests today, Martin Hunt, Mandie Biden and Ian Golding. For all your insights and knowledge that you’ve shared. We could have easily gone on for another couple of hours. In our next episode, we’ll be exploring the practicalities of how you actually build the ultimate PMO. Until next time, bye for now.