#158 | From Corporate Redundancy to Thriving Consultancy: Guy Thorpe's Journey

Career disaster strikes in the most unexpected moments—ask Guy Thorpe. Two weeks after receiving Employee of the Year honors at a major life insurance company, he held a pink slip after an organizational restructuring. This shocking pivot catalysed an entrepreneurial journey that would transform his professional path.

Guy's candid conversation reveals how being viewed as "just another cost center" pushed him to launch Value Key Consulting. His transition from corporate employee to successful consultant offers a masterclass in resilience and strategic career planning.

The episode covers critical insights for both project professionals and entrepreneurs. Guy shares his early mistakes and the systems he developed for consistently generating client work. Project professionals will appreciate Guy's concept of treating your career as your most valuable project. Whether you're recovering from a career setback, considering entrepreneurship, or looking to elevate your project management impact, this conversation offers both practical advice and inspirational perspective. What career disaster might become your greatest opportunity?

In this episode, Guy and I discussed:

• 1:15 Guy's Story: From Award Winner to Redundancy
• 5:10 Starting a Consulting Business After Corporate
• 11:37 Balancing Business Operations and Client Delivery
• 18:40 Treating Your Career as a Project
• 29:54 Managing HiPPOs and PMO Strategic Evolution
• 44:49 Power Skills in the Age of AI
• And more...

Guy and I discussed the following books: 

• The Trusted Advisor Book
• What colour is your parachute book 

This podcast is sponsored by Agile Management Office (www.agilemanagementoffice.com), providing high-impact delivery execution in an agile era for scaling businesses. 

Thank you for listening to this podcast. We welcome any feedback. www.agilemanagementoffice.com/contact  

Make sure you subscribe to our newsletter to receive access to special events, checklists, and blogs that are not available everywhere. www.agilemanage

Transcript

Welcome to Agile Ideas with Fatima

Speaker 1 0:00

You're listening to Agile Ideas, the podcast hosted by Fatima Rabouchi. For anyone listening out there not having a good day, please know there is help out there. Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of Agile Ideas. I'm Fatima, ceo at AMO, mental Health Ambassador and your host On today's podcast. I have Guy Thorpe, who hails from New Zealand. Guy has 25 years of delivery and consulting experience in project program and portfolio management, setting up and running E and PMOs. Having spent 12 years in the UK working in the London financial services market, he moved back to New Zealand in 2010 and has been living in Auckland ever since. He enjoys delivering projects through a wide range of different delivery methods, including design thinking, agile-based scrum, kanban and more traditional waterfall, and advocate hybrid approaches. Please join me in welcoming Guy to the podcast. Hey, guy, welcome. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 2 1:06

Thanks so much for having me.

Guy's Story: From Award Winner to Redundancy

Speaker 1 1:08

It's interesting because we've been following each other on LinkedIn for a while. I've seen lots of your quality content and people commenting on it. And then you were at our event last year and you spoke and people were really positively commenting about your talk. And then this year I thought why don't we? Yeah, why don't we do this? So I think it's an interesting conversation. So, yeah, pleasure having you here.

Speaker 2 1:32

Yeah, thanks so much. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while now.

Speaker 1 1:36

So let me get started with something I think might be really interesting and timely. I read that you were made redundant after winning employee of the year, so tell us about that and what was your mindset in that transition and how did you turn that into a positive.

Speaker 2 1:55

Yeah, it was actually. It was a really pivotal moment for me, really. I think Let me roll back the story a little bit for you. So I was working for a large life insurance company. I was operating as the PMO manager and I'd spent sort of two years building this amazing team of individuals that were all working together. They were all talented, they were doing really, really well. We seemed to be humming along with the projects and the organization was kind of loving the work we were doing. We ended up with delivering some amazing work. I ended up winning the Employee of the Year Award for the collaboration side of things and the sort of innovation that we were bringing to the organization, which was fantastic. So I was riding high. We had just done an employee survey. We ended up with a. You know my team ended up with 100% satisfaction around the team and how we're going. So I was on a great space. But I think pride cometh before a fall with some of these things.

Speaker 2 2:52

So a couple of weeks later, the organization's head office announced that they'd made an actuarial error. There was a $90 million loss on the books, and so they needed to make some cuts. So, in typical style, they rolled in an external agency who came in and looked across their subsidiaries and decided that they needed to cut the workforce in the third in lots of locations. Probably what was most disappointing is that they didn't look at our office and go hey look, you've got a really amazing team here who can help manage this transition. What happened is we ended up being seen as a cost centre, as an opportunity to strike some cost out of that. So two weeks after the black tie event for receiving the award for Employee of the Year, I got handed a pink slip and told that I had a couple more weeks to go before I needed to exit the building, and so that was a bit of a crash. To be honest with you, I'd kind of gone from a position of feeling so confident, feeling like our team was doing really, really well, and in my head, thinking that the PMO function we'd built was invaluable and that people would see the value in it for helping with transformations and those sorts of things.

Speaker 2 4:09

So once I sort of got out of the organisation and had a bit of time on my hands and working through things a really big period to reflect, you know, personally and then also professionally, where I wanted to go with things from here. You think that you're kind of indispensable and then all of a sudden you're not and I spent a couple of weeks licking my wounds and then all of a sudden you're not. Now I spent a couple of weeks licking my wounds and, you know, feeling sorry for myself. But coming out of the back end of that, I decided that there was an opportunity here for me to do something different. I could either go back into another corporate and try and relive that process all over again and still be at the behest of potentially cuts, redundancies, budget shifts, all these sorts of things, or I can try and do something that is going to make me happy and kind of start to fulfill that desire to be entrepreneurial and start to build something of my own.

Starting a Consulting Business After Corporate

Speaker 2 4:57

So that was the start of kicking off Value Key Consulting and really lit that fire around. How can I help PMOs in the future avoid that similar circumstance where you're kind of in the crosshairs for budget cuts and those sorts of things as they come up? How can you start to learn from some of those lessons to make sure that you are demonstrating that value and being seen as a strategic partner to that kind of top table rather than being seen as potentially another cost center. So that was great. That was probably six, seven years ago. You know, we've kind of built our business off the back of that really, and that was a great, although it was a horrific moment going from such a high to such a low. I look back now and I think maybe it was the kick in the pants I needed to get moving and get started doing this thing.

Speaker 1 5:44

Wow, what a story. It's, um, it's. So I'm sure it's not unique, but it's something that appears, um, it's. It's very common, in the sense that PMOs are usually the first to go. That's the first thought, and you've just made that very clear with your story.

Speaker 1 6:00

It's disheartening to to see that you had to experience that and I think I like that. You mentioned that you did have to spend, you know, a few weeks licking your wounds because you know, when you're coming off something so positive and then you're effectively, you know, kicked in the teeth, so to speak. It's, yeah, it's very disheartening. It reminds me of a story of working in again, maybe it's a financial services thing, but working in financial services very similar to what you described around this and most, you know, amazing program management, function, really successful, positive, you know, accolades, lots of flowers, and then being told not just myself but my team being told we all had to take a significant pay cut to keep working and be demoted, and it's counterintuitive. But it's interesting because something like that happening has now led you to where you are today, which is exciting.

Speaker 1 6:51

So tell me, you've gotten to a point where you realize you're going to do your own thing? How did you know what kind of business you were going to do and where did you start? Like, what did you? Where do you start If someone listening today is going and they've gone through the same situation or something similar? There's a lot of people out there looking for work and you want to give them some motivation to get on with doing something for themselves. Where would I start?

Speaker 2 7:13

Yeah, I think you need to do a little bit of self-reflection around a couple of things. Where's your passion, to start with? So what are you interested in? What do you enjoy doing? Start with, so what are you interested in? What do you enjoy doing? What's going to light you up as you do this professional piece of work or whatever it may be?

Speaker 2 7:31

The big statements around follow your passion and do all those sorts of things is great, but we can't always do what we want to do all the time. But you need to be at least excited about it and interested in it, rather than feeling like it's a sledge and it's going to be a hard, hard slog to try and get your way through. So being interested and excited about something is really important um, knowing where your skills base lies. So knowing what you're good at um and being really, really honest about that as well. So, uh, you know, if you you know if you're really really passionate about um cars, for example, but you know very, very little about them, it's gonna be quite hard to sell yourself as a mechanic in that space as well. So when I looked at my kind of skill set, I know that I had a really strong base in around PMOs. I knew that I'd had a long history in managing and delivering projects. Also knew that I'd spent a fair bit of time and working with project managers and sponsors and supporting them as well. So I kind kind of looked at that skills base and thought well, actually there's a whole bunch of skills that are transferable and usable for clients moving forward. And so my thinking moved from great, I'm excited about doing some work in the spot. I've got these sorts of skills. Rather than just being working with one organization, how about you start to work in a kind of a fractional basis where I can work with lots of different organizations and spread that skill set around a little bit? That started to lead me towards well, that's great. Maybe a consulting type model is what I need to start to look at.

Speaker 2 9:00

It's easy to quickly move into. Well, I'll go contracting, and I've spent 12 years contracting in the UK. I loved it, had an amazing time. But it's easy to quickly move into. Well, I'll go contracting, and I've spent 12 years contracting in the UK. I loved it, had an amazing time. But it's quite transactional on the basis if you deliver something, you complete the engagement, then you move off onto another one and away you go, whereas I wanted to start to form longer term relationships with clients where we'd do a piece of work with them, build an established trust. We would step away for a period of time and allow them to absorb that use, that work with that, but then, when they're ready to take the next step, they would trust us to come back in again and work with them as well. So for me, it was a lot around the relationship type that I wanted to have with clients moving forward and build something, rather than it being just a single transaction and an engagement on each time.

Speaker 1 9:47

And it's interesting because the model you described, I think, is becoming more invaluable. Clients like that peaks and troughs sort of model in that approach because if you go back to the scenario where we started, if you were doing PMO on a fractional basis, in that instance they could have just said, look, we need you to step away for a little while, as opposed to shutting down and removing all the hard work and effort that was put in so you got it.

Speaker 1 10:11

I think that's yeah, that's really evident, and I think you're right with the passion side.

Speaker 1 10:15

Um, I remember once speaking to a really smart um professor who a professor friend who I mentioned earlier he was telling that a lot of his students, who a lot of them, are part of an international project management cohort and often the questions that they have is how do I know what my passion is like? Where do I find that? Because often we may be good at a lot of things and we may like a lot of things, but not necessarily can become a business or maybe a business that can sustain us so um. So one resource and I'm wondering if you have any, but one resource that comes to mind is I think there's a book called what Colour Is your Parachute. I'm not sure if you've heard of that, but it's one that's really just helped to kind of reframe what you're looking for. Is there any other resources that you can think of, be it podcast, books, people you follow, quotes, anything that you used during that time that you reflect on that may be useful for others?

Balancing Business Operations and Client Delivery

Speaker 2 11:08

Yeah, I think you know there's a lot of books out there and I guess if you're looking at where do I want to go with the type of business and things that I want to set up and those sorts of things, I think there's a book called the Trusted Advisor which is a really good book around. How do you, how do you build and establish a boutique consultancy, for example? That was my biggest area of interest at that point in time and it's got some really good information just around. If you've come out of working in an organization and then you're stepping into setting up your own thing, how do you establish trust with clients? How do you build that trusted relationship?

Speaker 2 11:42

And I think that was kind kind of one of the biggest learnings for me moving from working within an organization where you are working with a particular team and a particular leadership team to suddenly trying to establish and build trust with a range of different people and a range of different clients, and that's a whole different skill set to take on board and learn as you go forward, board and learn as you go forward. I think those that have got a traditional consulting background of work for a big four and then are stepping out and going on their own, probably have a lot of those skills or have worked in that space. But if you not have that traditional consulting background and you're coming out from working, having worked in different organizations, it's a whole new skill set to learn right. And I'm sure you've, you know, similar experience right of uh trying to. How do I figure out all these sorts of things? How do I go from being uh in a one particular role to suddenly having to wear a multitude of hats around running a business?

Speaker 1 12:34

oh, 100%. And you know you just reminded me of I don't know if did you ever end up going, even as through your business, back to that insurance company.

Speaker 2 12:42

I haven't yet, weirdly enough, no.

Speaker 1 12:50

I was going to say because I remember sort of ending up leaving that corporate and end up saying I'm just going to come back as a consultant at some point and charge them more and they'll listen at that time. And you know, strangely so that ended up happening. So I was just curious if it's evolved, maybe they'll listen to this and realize what they lost and then bring you back in on a fractional pace.

Speaker 2 13:08

You never know. Yeah, that's fine. It is funny one of those things you mentioned when they're paying for you in a different capacity, it is really interesting that clients tend to listen to you in a different way, which is it's a bit of a shame really, given some of the talent that some organizations have and some amazing skills that people have, but they will take the opinion of an external rather than the people within their team.

Speaker 1 13:31

Absolutely so. They probably pay a lot more as well for that external advice. More than it would have taken had they brought, you know, the smart minds in their organization together and said let's look at this together and like solve this problem together, with the way that we have to do it in small business because we don't have the resources to afford big name consultancies.

Speaker 2 13:50

You got it, yeah yeah, and that's one of the you're talking about the genesis of kind of what got me excited and moving and I think a big bit for me was around spotting an opportunity in the market where there is big four consultancies out there that have, you know, really bright, intelligent people and working in that space but the cost associated working with them can be quite prohibitive for smaller organizations.

Speaker 2 14:17

You know those that might be just simple startups or getting moving, or it might be organizations that are small businesses but are not quite ready to sort of step into the world of engaging a big four consultancy. So one of the things I wanted to do with ValueKey was how do you fill that gap around supporting small businesses as they grow and start to need some of the mechanics around good PMOs, good project delivery and things as well, but don't really necessarily want to go down the big four route. So a big part of our approach was really around going out and targeting and looking at those clients and seeing if there's opportunities for us to support them in that space and see where we could go, and it's been really successful around that market.

Speaker 1 14:58

It's really a good area to touch on because as small businesses I agree with you seldom do we have any extra resources and typically we're trying to do everything ourselves. So I think, having the flexibility and also the other thing I think that boutique consultancies can provide, that the bigger firms can't is the agility and flexibility. Often you're working with the owner so you can move at pace, you can make changes, decisions on the fly, you're not having to, you know, not only pay for fancy offices but also go through the hierarchy that is, you know, a larger corporate. So I think that really helps and I find that that resonates with clients and, as you said, you build that trusted advisor relationship which is integral to help your small business grow. Integral to help your small business grow, of which I wanted to touch on when we think about small business growth.

Speaker 1 15:50

You start, you decide to have a business. Now I'm not sure how, how things are in New Zealand compared to Australia and other parts of the world, but a lot of the time I speak to people who think that starting a business, you know you've got to do a million things all at the all at the front door. The first start, at the start of your business. You've got a name, you've got a website. You can do all these amazing things and get them all done quickly and and that's what they're waiting for before they take the leap reflecting back, um, you know, I think you touched. Touched a really good point. The first and most important thing, I think, is that stakeholders um stakeholder network and that stakeholder relationships, because you'll probably be able to touch base with people that you've worked with before who I presume know you know trust and, like you, that are not going to care that you don't have a website ready to go or your business name. What was your experience in getting your first few clients?

Speaker 2 16:35

yeah, yeah, I think you nailed it. Um, I did it all the wrong way to start with. To be honest with you, um, I spent an inordinate amount of time designing a business card. I wanted the logo perfect. I wanted it in. You know, it's amazing gold foil. I wanted a nice, thick business card that came with it.

Speaker 2 16:53

I labored over a website. I wanted to make sure that the wording was right. You know all these sorts of things. I thought that I needed to present a professional image for the organization, but, but in reality, no one cared about any of that stuff.

Speaker 2 17:07

What they care about is the trusted relationship that you have, and they need to have a sense of feeling that this person's going to, if I recommend them or if I work with them, they're going to represent me well and they're going to make me look good in this position if I, if I bring them in, you know, and this is what it make me look good in this position, if I bring them in and this is what it took me a little while to cotton on to, because I built all these websites, did all the business cards, and then it just waited and it was crickets chirping in the background, no clients were coming in and then it dawned upon me that I really needed to get out and start engaging my network and I think advice for anyone who's wanting to step into building their own consulting business is it's relationship based. It is all about the strength of the relationships that you have with people within your network. Build upon that and you know it's a real ability developing the ability to go out, talk to someone within your network, get them to talk about their pain points. What are they experiencing, what are they going through. There's a skill in drawing that out.

Treating Your Career as a Project

Speaker 2 18:11

There's a skill in being able to summarize that in such a way that it resonates back with them, then talk about the benefits associated with solving those problems for them and then, only at the end of that process, talking about the service offering that you can do to help them get that outcome. It's a skill that takes a little while to develop, but you've really got to get out of your comfort zone and get out there and engage that network. It's really easy to sit in your office and wonder why nothing's happening and it takes the skills development particularly if you've been a project person or you've been a doer and a deliverer to suddenly just step into this whole new role around trying to sell an opportunity, a outcome, these sorts of things. That takes a whole new skill set to sort of polish up on and develop if you're wanting to go down this route.

Speaker 1 19:03

And then thinking about going from a big, structured corporate environment or let's say, some corporate environments are structured, some aren't but going from that into then a small business. Can you even share an example of what you learnt from corporate that you were able to then apply in your small business, or what you learnt from corporate and decided not to bring into your small business because you realised that that would set you back?

Speaker 2 19:27

Yeah, yeah, I think the structure and the professionalism that comes with working with a corporate is a good background to work with. You get an understanding of how senior leaders are thinking. You get an understanding of what are they concerned about when it comes to project delivery, project structures, governance, all those sorts of things. What's on their mind, what are they interested in and what are they not interested in. And I've sort of taken that and translated that. So when I were talking with clients, I used to talk a lot about the theory and the practices and the tools and templates. Senior leaders are less interested in that stuff. They're more interested around how do we save more money? How do we get better benefits out of our projects? How do we make sure that our customers are seeing the value in the things that we're delivering? This is the stuff that's important. They don't care that you've got an amazing business case template that you can work with, or they don't care about the kind of the frameworks that you're going to introduce. Give me the outcome around how it's going to set. So I think what I learned out of working within corporates is an understanding of what's important to that leadership team and how you can package up your services and your products to help them achieve those outcomes.

Speaker 2 20:44

One of the things that I didn't want to take out of a corporate was a really big hierarchical structure within the organization that I create. We've tried to create it as flat as we possibly can, and what we try and instill on within our team is getting our team to operate as if they're the owner from the get-go. So they're empowered to make decisions, they're empowered to do things on behalf of a value key, as if they were owners of the business themselves. I can't be in every engagement, I can't be at every piece, but if I equip my team with the skills and trust them enough to make decisions, then they generally make the right ones and they're up for it, and that helps build trust with the client but also helps make sure that the team feel that they are trusted and involved as well.

Speaker 1 21:38

I haven't heard that before. I don't think. Having your team, you know, act like the owner and giving them the bandwidth, the accountability, you know, the guidance and the support to do that, I think that's really clever and I can see how that would be valuable when you're building a small business because, as we know, being in the weeds working with the clients, doing some of the delivery work, but then also running a business I call my role a CEO and I'm sure you're going to empathize with this the chief, everything officer, because we do everything from sales, marketing, hr, at least when you're starting out before you can afford which is generally a really far time down the line of when you can afford to bring in that support. So how do you balance being in the business and working on the business, like, do you have any techniques, ideas or suggestions you can share?

Speaker 2 22:25

Yeah, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think when you're you know, being a small business has the advantages of being able to to do those things that I'm talking about around empowering your team to make those decisions um, I get it. When you're in a bigger organization, you have bigger structures. You need that structure to enhance decision making and protect shareholder interest and delegated authorities, all sorts of things. That's one of the beauties around running a smaller team is that you can actually be closer and more involved with those things. For me, how do you wear multiple hats? I think it's been really clinical around the systems that you've got in place for yourself. So if you take, for example, marketing and content creation, when we're a smaller business, we just don't have the marketing budget that a larger organization has.

Speaker 2 23:15

So, we've got to be really clever around the tools and techniques and the platforms we use to market that. We want to punch well above our weight and get out there. So what we do is we create content and things like LinkedIn and we're really purposeful around how we do that. I used to be really shotgun at doing it. I'd just post stuff, put it out there, hope that it worked and see what would happen, and it was never really targeted and it was never really leading people in a particular direction. A lot of it was a bit like it's quite sugary and kind of feel good kind of stuff and get lots of likes and those sorts of things. But we quickly realized that actually that doesn't lead to building a trusted relationship with clients and those sorts of things. When you're chasing likes, actually what they're really looking for is is this a person I can trust? Do I value their opinion? Are they saying things that resonates with me that I could actually work with this type of person going forward.

Speaker 2 24:12

So we've developed our own content development system where we've got a particular idea. We'll develop that into a newsletter type content which we'll put out to our audience to start with. We'll then spin that off into two or three LinkedIn posts. So if you're not subscribing, you're still going to get to see that content and engage with it. And then we'll also transfer some of those bits and pieces into video type content as well that we can work into youtube. Really cheap, easy ways of doing things, um. But we've got better and better that we can now reduce the time from kind of the idea generation stuff right through that multi-content development and multi-platform type content approach. So what the advice is really is work your systems out, um, you know, don't be haphazard about it. Get really, really clear on what works for you, uh, and how you can put it out there and then continuously refine it, just like you would with any kind of delivery approach. Right, you're kind of looking for opportunities to refine it, smooth it out, take the same practices and approaches to your, your business as well.

Speaker 1 25:14

I think it's. It's a good, it's a really good point. In relation to bringing up marketing, I found the first two most pressing areas of business that I had to get right was finance. So that was one of the first once I had some budget, that was the first hire. I did hire a bookkeeper in accounting and fractional accounting, but bookkeeping et cetera. So I think that was definitely number one, partially probably because I don't like the math side of things, which I'll admit, but also it was just so important to get that right. I remember being a sole trader before having a company over 10 years ago and really stuffing it up and making mistakes along the way and not really having proper processes in place, and the bookkeeping, you know, side of things really helped with that.

Speaker 1 25:57

On the marketing side, I agree with you completely. I think repurposing the content in different ways across multiple sources is far more effective than trying to create completely new content for all these different platforms, and the reason for that is we might assume that when we post something on LinkedIn that everyone that we're connected to is going to see it. They're not. They're not going to see it. So you can then repurpose some of the content in a different way and add a spin on it and put it on YouTube or the podcast. What we do with this? We put it on YouTube, we turn it into a newsletter, we put it in, but it's the same content, so it's effectively being really efficient. So I think you're bang on systems and processes and I would recommend finance, in addition to marketing, as a key starting point for focus.

Speaker 2 26:36

Yeah, without a doubt, and, look, I was a lot like you kind of the finance side of things.

Speaker 2 26:40

I wanted to engage someone to help me with that piece. What I've learned, though, is that I've kind of I've come back around to, you know, working with my accountant a little bit to educate me around what's important in that space as well. So we look at the balance sheets together, we work through those pieces so I get a really clear understanding of things like cash flow, you know, operating expenses, all those bits and pieces too. So, you know, I'm really happy that he handles all of those pieces, particularly tax not a big love or of trying to understand all the tax laws associated with it but feel comfortable that he's kind of got that space. At the same time, I kind of want a working understanding of how it all comes together as well. So, yeah, you kind of yeah, that's a learning for me around. How might I operate at a level that I can kind of trust people to do the bits but know that I've an understanding of how those bits work as well?

Speaker 1 27:32

A hundred percent.

Speaker 1 27:33

That even applies like even if I think back to corporate.

Speaker 1 27:35

I'm not sure about you, but there was a time I remember running an EPMO and I had there was a team of five including myself, and I had three and not including myself three people in my team that all had life-changing, traumatic experiences and they were all off at the same time.

Speaker 1 27:53

So we had our vendor management person, our finance analyst and our project administrator that were all MIA, that were just not available due to some really serious life changing events. And if we, if I, had not spent the time to understand to a degree those roles to to be able to hang things together and I think it's the same with finance If you don't understand it enough to have an eye on it, or what if your accountant changes or retires you know those sorts of things then you get into a point where it's stuck. So I think, as a CEO, as a chief everything officer, I think it's important that we take the time to understand enough about each part of the business so that you can jump in and out depending on you know what's happening at the time and I assume you've probably got a good handle on all those parts.

Speaker 2 28:37

Even though you've hired people to help, you support them yeah, I'm always learning, though, to be honest with you, and I think you know I've got that kind of curious mindset where I constantly want to know bits and pieces and more about bits of the areas that we work in, but, yeah, having the trust in the people to do the stuff, but then knowing enough to kind of ask dangerous questions and uh, and ask things about it purely from a point of curiosity, because I want to know more rather than checking up on them, um, and that just helps me keep a better view of the business and where it's going yeah, absolutely, and then so thinking about the concept of ceo.

Speaker 1 29:10

but I want to go to corporate now know one of the things you talk a lot about is treating your career like a project. You know, I want you to help us. There's a lot of practitioners on the phone, on the podcast rather, that are listening, that are probably in that space now, maybe early in their career. So what advice can you give someone who you know is maybe early or midway through their career? To treat it like a project? What do you mean by that? And help us understand what that looks like?

Managing HiPPOs and PMO Strategic Evolution

Speaker 2 29:37

Yeah, I'm really glad you asked me about that because it's actually something I'm super passionate about. I think, as project professionals, a lot of the time we get wrapped up in the world of delivering projects. It's what we do, it's what we're. We've kind of developed a sense of mastery around and we're good at it and we'll go from delivering project to project barely without a breath in between, and then a lot of the time you kind of you'll look up after three or four years of delivery and thought, great, I've done an amazing job for this organization. But what about myself? Where am I at with my career and what have I developed?

Speaker 2 30:12

And for me, you know, kind of there was a real moment and I think it was about 2007 when the GFC hit. I was living in the UK, working on a range of different projects within both public and private sector, and then all hell broke loose with, you know, the GFC. Organizations were going under. You know Lehman Brothers, you know, kind of crashed. The project I was working on got shelled and I got kind of pushed out into the job market at that point and what I'd realized is I'd spent probably the last six or seven years chasing the money. I'd gone from contract to contract, getting paid really, really well, which was fantastic, but not really pausing to work on myself, develop myself, you know, and look at my career as a whole. And so you know, in 2007, it was the opportunity to look at it and go. What should I be doing here to actually advance? You know my own career if I want to be in project management in the long term.

Speaker 2 31:06

And I met up with a real seasoned project professional who was kind of a bit of a legend in the London market and one of the things he said to me was you need to look at your career as a project. You've got all the skills to do and deliver projects. You need to make sure that you're treating your career as your most valuable project. You will work on it over an extended period of time, but bring those skills to bear and start to think about that. And so for people who are earlier in their career or even individuals who are kind of well-advanced in it, the opportunity to stop and pause and think about where am I going when you're delivering a project. You wouldn't just charge on into delivery and keep on going and hope. You ended up in the right space. You'd have a clearer idea on kind of what the end vision was, what's the outcome that you're wanting to achieve out there. So you know, I encourage individuals to stop and think about it and go. Do I want to be moving towards a senior project manager role? Do I want to be working in a particular industry aerospace? Do I want to be moving towards a PMO role in my career? What does that look like? So have that kind of that idea of that end vision of kind of where you want to go. I would couple that with it's cool to have the end vision idea, but be open to opportunities as they come along within your career as well. And I talk about being micro ambitious, and what I mean by that is look at your big idea of where you want to go, but be really ambitious about what the next step in that journey might look like. So if you wanted to move towards being a senior PM and you are new to project management, your probably next logical step is developing a whole bunch of experience and being a good, all-rounded project manager. So what does that look like with? What are the skills that I need? What is the network I need to develop? What's the reputation that I need to develop along the way and what's the kind of the training, the knowledge that I need to acquire to make those things happen as well. So that's the next micro-ambitious step that you need to work on Plan it.

Speaker 2 33:12

There's probably another big thing, right? You wouldn't uh, you wouldn't start a project without some form of a plan. That might be. Uh, you know, you've got a very clear idea of what the next six to twelve months looks like, and then you'll rolling plan that as you move forward. Um, you might just treat the next six months as a sprint and go for it and learn a whole bunch of stuff. At At the end of that sprint, we're going to look at what are we going to do in the next stage of activity. Where do we want to go? I've learned a whole bunch of stuff. Don't like the sector. I'm going to pivot into doing something else. I want to move into the finance sector, or I might want to move into the public sector, to do something completely different with a not-for-profit. So planning your career is also really important as well, being open to the change, being open to moving in different directions, but having some form of plan is really important.

Speaker 1 33:59

And, yeah, I like what you said about micro-ambitious. That's great. I've never heard that. It's a really cool term. But I think also it sounds like you're talking about being proactive, not passive, in your career, particularly if you're paying attention to it, which I think is good. You talk about flexibility, so sort of that agility coming in in terms of being able to pivot and decide which path you're going to go. I know, definitely. Think about the industry question. I think if I go back to 20 years ago when I started, the thing that rang true and maybe I didn't know it at the time, but now that you're talking about it I was like, oh, I didn't think of that, but my number one goal was to get as much different industries experience, because I thought having as many industries would help me then figure out which industry I like best and that had worked. Is there any examples that you've used early on in your career to put this into practice?

Speaker 2 34:53

Yeah, I think you're right. One thing I just want to cover is I think a lot of people, when they look at their career, they go. It's up to my manager to manage my career. I'm in an organization. I'm trusting upon them to do it or they'll go. I'm too busy to think about this. I'm just going to keep moving forward and take the next opportunity that's in front of me. That all leads to significant career drift over the long term. I think you end up in a position where you need to be proactive, as you've mentioned, around managing your own career, being really, really hands-on and involved. So making sure that you know where you want to go and how you want to go about it and what your next logical step is in that space. Sectors is a really interesting one, because I think if you look at how project individuals are paid, sector is probably the most significant factor in remuneration. So you can be a highly capable and skilled project manager, but working within a particular industry that's not very well paid.

Speaker 2 35:57

You might be the best project manager in that sector, but you're never going to compare to someone who's probably average within a really well-paying sector as well. So I think one of the things I think as a project manager is figuring out where your comfort lies and where your interest lies. Some project people are quite happy to stay within a not-for-profit sector, for example, because it resonates with their values and what they're interested in, and remuneration is not important to them or as important to them in that space. That's great. Then, if that's where you want to be, then pursue opportunities within that particular sector. If you are interested in, you know, having a really solid remuneration, then you need to look at which sectors are going to pay better in that.

Speaker 2 36:42

Things like investment, banking, things like aerospace these sorts of industries are going to give you a higher base of remuneration, but they come with higher levels of stress, commitment, all those sorts of things that come with it as well.

Speaker 2 36:57

So a big part of looking at your career is going what's going to work for me in my personal circumstance? Do? I have an exceptionally busy family life and I'm a committed and involved dad and I want to be in my kid's life and you know, picking them up from school and doing those sorts of things then maybe chasing that high pressured environment with the higher remuneration might not be what you particularly want to pursue. At the same time, you might go well. Actually, there's a another sector which I really personally resonates with me around health care, for example, and that's an industry that I want to go into. So sector plays a really important role in your remuneration base the type of pressure that you're going to expose yourself to within your project delivery, but also the learning opportunities that come with it as well. So there's a whole bunch of stuff you can take from different sectors.

Speaker 1 37:50

Yeah, I think some people probably haven't thought of it like that. Um, you're right, the sectors definitely play a big part in sort of the remuneration conversation. I think, as you're young, I know for me when I was young, but for a lot of people, maybe early on in their in their career, probably have a lot more, um, flexibility. Some of them might be still living at home, they probably don't have a mortgage over there, maybe they don't have children, so you have the ability to take the job. Whether it's high paying, low paying, it doesn't really matter as much early on because you're trying to figure out what you like.

Speaker 1 38:20

And one of the things that I recall trying to do but as a contractor it wasn't really possible all the time was, I think, if an organization that you're working at offers any sort of training, any training at all whether it's fire warden, training from memory or a train the trainer, any opportunity you can get to accumulate training and experience and skills, look for it and take it is one of the things I think I recall pretty much early on. One question we get asked a lot that I wonder if you've got any news on is how do I get industry experience in an industry that I haven't worked in, because that's often a question that I get asked. Any ideas in relation to that?

Speaker 2 39:00

Yeah, I think if you're wanting to target a particular sector and move into it, I think, again, it comes back to being proactive, right? So how do I go about looking for opportunities in that space? So there's a couple of things that we would normally look at doing is one is look at job opportunities within that particular sector. So go through the job boards, look at the skills that they are looking to for those particular roles. What they require Be that the behavioral type aspects, be that the technical skills, and be that the regulatory type of requirements that come with it as well. Look at a whole bunch of jobs, take out that information and start to put it down onto a notebook. So what you'll get is the theme is around what's important for them, or what recruiters or employers are looking for from that kind of skills base. The second thing I probably encourage them to do is around networking.

Speaker 2 39:55

All right, so one of the things that we help project managers with when they're looking to ascend their career is when you look at your network. It's based around three components there's a personal network, there is a operational network and there's a strategic network. Your operational network is people within your existing organization that you work with that you transact with to get projects delivered and make your way through. Your personal network sits outside of that, and they are people that you interact with in your personal life. So it might be you know the parents from the football club that you interact with, but they work in different sectors and things as well it might be friends that come to a barbecue. What sectors do they work in? And the last thing is the strategic network which is around.

Speaker 2 40:42

Are there people that are available in different industries that I can connect with? And so we're living in an age where connecting with someone in a particular industry is as simple as three or four clicks on your mouse, right? So never have we had that opportunity before. Being purposeful about that is really important. So you could actually target a particular industry and go, hey, there's this person who works in a PMO within that sector. If you approach it in the appropriate way and you connect with them, you follow their content, you comment on their content and then you DM them and say, hey, listen, I'm really interested in learning more about the sector. Can you tell me more about what's the types of things I should be particularly looking for, the skills I should be developing. Most people will be more than willing to offer you some of their advice and guidance. You can even warm that relationship and say hey look, would you have time for a 15-minute conversation with me? Keep it small, so it's not a massive commitment and we can talk our way through. That creates a whole bunch of opportunities for you around forming a relationship with someone in a different sector gold as far as information.

Speaker 2 41:57

Coming back, your way around what's required as well? Probably the last one, but they might point you towards things like industry events or conventions or those sorts of things. Get out of your comfort zone. Go and enlist in one of those events. Go along and listen to the talks, the discussions that take place, the presentations that are required, and meet people. Right, it feels a little bit awkward sometimes. You've got to get out there and introduce yourself, but immersing yourself in that environment If you are dead set on moving into a different industry, this is what it's going to take to figure out whether this is the right space for you.

Speaker 1 42:30

All really good points. I think all of them and the last one really ties back to what we said at the start around networking what you don't want to do and, again, learning the hard way. I'm sure there's peaks and troughs in our businesses. We don't want to be going and marketing and trying to meet events and attend events and do all of these strategic networking and do it when we are sort of effectively desperate for our next paycheck or our next engagement, because that is well one it comes across when you're talking to clients. So I think that's all really yeah, really really relevant at this point.

Speaker 2 43:06

It's such a good point and it's kind of one of my biggest learnings early on with setting up consulting businesses is that concept around. You know, working on the business and working in the business, as you mentioned, and I think it's really easy for project people to get immersed in the doing, the doing. We love it. It's kind of the stuff that kind of lights us up.

Speaker 2 43:25

But at the same time you've got to be thinking about what's the next engagement. Otherwise what you'll have is a very stop-start pipeline of work. So whilst you're working in an existing engagement, you need to be thinking about what's the next engagement and what's the other engagement beyond that. Sometimes engagements can take three to six months to reel in because you're forming a relationship with that person, You're creating trust, You're working out what their pain points are, you're putting opportunities in front of them to come down and work with you. That can take time. You don't want to come to an abrupt halt at the end of one engagement and then start looking. You need to be reeling engagements in continuously whilst you're working on existing ones at the same time 100%, maintaining the relationships as well over periods of time.

Power Skills in the Age of AI

Speaker 1 44:12

Like I meet with people you know once or twice a year, every year, regardless of whether they've got any work or not, because you're 100% right. Recent engagement is an example, particularly in corporate. It took six months for us to get the green light and we've started it, but it took six months and had we not been promoting and you know, and and and sharing content and ideas and meeting people, then you're not going to get that opportunity to to move forward. So I think that's a really good point. Now I know we're kind of close. We're close to finishing up today, but there's a couple more things I want to touch on. One of the things you talk a lot about is the hippo in the room. So I wanted you to tell our audience what's a hippo in the context of project management and how you can manage that relationship better.

Speaker 2 45:01

Yeah, look, I can't state claim that I've kind of come up with this term. These sort of dangerous animals have been knocking around for a while now, but I really do kind of love the sense that comes with these pieces. So, particularly when you apply it to project sponsors, you're generally dealing with people who are quite senior in nature. You're generally dealing with people who can be quite time poor. They're used to working within a particular operational role and delivering in a particular way, used to working within a particular operational role and delivering in a particular way. And what we know is that when you sometimes put sponsors into a project environment, what they do is they'll quite often lean upon their operational experience and their operational style of management into a project that doesn't necessarily always mix and work particularly well. And so there are a whole bunch of different dangerous sponsor types, hippo being one of them being highest paid person's opinion.

Speaker 2 45:56

And what we see with HIPPOS and comes out with sponsors is sometimes, when you're working on a project and you're looking for collaboration and you're looking for sharing of ideas, if there's not trust within a particular project team in our environment, a lot of the time we'll revert to the highest paid person's opinion. There could be a really valid and amazing idea coming from a quieter, more reserved individual in the team, but sometimes they won't feel that they've got the platform or the opportunity to talk about that, and hippos sometimes do themselves a disservice because they'll feel that they're delivering with a strong directive style to drive a project forward. And what you're looking for is really clear, concise decision-making. Sometimes that doesn't work well when you're trying to create an environment where you're wanting to hear more ideas, you're wanting to come up with different opportunities to go in different directions, and what we know is as smart as you are as a sponsor, as a leader, if you've got 10, 15 smart people around you, you're not as smart as 15 people combined, right? So why not have the opportunity to hear these points of views and these different opinions and bring them out?

Speaker 2 47:13

So a lot of the coaching work that I do and the training work that I do with individuals and organizations around sponsors is making sure you check the hippo at the door sometimes, you know and making sure that you are creating an environment where other people's opinions are being heard and valued. You might unnecessarily agree with them all the time, but you have to create an environment where that comes forward. Otherwise, what you'll end up with is a room full of sycophants where everyone's just saying yes and agreeing, but in their head they're going. This is the worst idea possible. I don't know why we're going to do that. And when the project ultimately derails or something you know happens and it's a failure, you know they'll turn around say, well, I thought this all along, but I never said anything. Right, you don't want that. You want to be able to scale it. So you have an environment where other people's opinions matter, and it's not always going to be the highest paid person's opinion that wins out overall and that wins out overall.

Speaker 1 48:13

Yeah, it's really a good point because it is often the loudest voice in the room and we have to work around that and deal with that. Sometimes it's better they don't turn up at all and let the teams not have their creativity stifled, I think. So, yeah, it's definitely one of the, as you said, many dangerous animals that people can look up or look into that are going around. One last thought before we get to wrapping up. I know that there's a lot at the moment in the PMO space that's been evolving and changing, and you've been in this space for quite a long time, both pre your business and in your business. What is the most exciting thing that you're seeing in the world of PMOs or projects in general that you're most excited about you?

Speaker 2 48:54

know what. I'm going to try and avoid going down the obvious, which is talking about AI, because you know everyone's talking about that and, without a doubt, there's opportunity in that space and it will absolutely revolutionize the way that we work within PMOs, which is fantastic. I think the most heartening thing that I'd see is actually the change in the relationship for PMOs with leadership teams. I think what we're seeing more of is a realization of around the role they can play in being slightly more strategic and helping with decision making, and particularly from my own experience of working with organizations, is they're looking for more around the, the tools and the techniques to drive good portfolio management. Um, things, particularly things around how do we prioritize the projects that we want to work on? How do we ensure that we're going to see, you know, the, the benefits realization, how do we make sure that we can monetize these things? All these sorts of things are now starting to come to the table and be present.

Speaker 2 49:55

So kind of that more strategic relationship with leadership teams is kind of what I'm seeing more of, which is fantastic, really keen and really pleased to see that PMOs have kind of started to shake off that impression and that kind of that stigma around.

Speaker 2 50:12

You know process control, templates, policing you know more being seen as actually they've got a really strong role to play in guiding how we execute upon our strategy. How do we make sure we've got an optimized portfolio of projects? How do we make sure that we've got the right you know the right types of projects to deliver, both on sure that we've got the right uh, you know the right types of projects to deliver, both on innovation and keep the lights on how we know that we've got that mix, the big levers that come with guiding and steering our organization in the right direction. That's the stuff that kind of really excites me around pmos and where they're going, and it's really refreshing. I think it's great that'll only be enhanced by artificial intelligence bringing in and helping us with some of the rudimentary mechanics around reporting and dashboards and those sorts of things.

Speaker 1 50:58

Yes, 100%, and you're right. I'm glad you didn't say AI, because AI is everything everyone's talking about, but we don't understand enough about it now. But you're spot on. We had our global PMO leader event and that was a big theme about the strategic role PMOs are playing, and it's even evidenced by, you know, the PMI acquiring the PMO Global Alliance, which is, I think, the largest community of PMO professionals. So it's starting to happen and we're getting a seat at the table and it's for people you know, like yourself and other leaders in this space, that are really helping to drive that visibility. So I can't thank you enough for the work that you do in that space. So, yeah, on behalf of others, thank you.

Speaker 2 51:36

Oh pleasure. Thanks very much for that.

Speaker 1 51:39

Now we always end with our final question. Is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners, a call to action, a piece of advice or a question to ponder?

Speaker 2 51:49

Yes, there is, I think, following on from that theme around artificial intelligence, I think I'd like to be slightly contrarian here and go down the route around. Projects are about people. At the heart of it, it's around delivering outcomes that are going to benefit people, organizations, communities, whatever that may be and I think sometimes we're getting lost in the bright, shiny new things around artificial intelligence. But when you bring it back, it is about projects around delivering for people, and I think to be an effective project practitioner, you need to be able to influence and you need to be able to guide people. And I think we are all too concerned around how do we get the new technology rather than around how do I sharpen my people skills to make sure that I'm an effective motivator, influencer, communicator.

Speaker 2 52:43

That comes with it to project people is make sure that when you're developing your career, you're treating it like a project that you're also prioritizing. How do I build not soft skills, because I don't like that term, I call them power skills. How am I developing my power skills? So I am super competent when it comes to influencing, guiding, motivating individuals, telling stories. Artificial intelligence will give you the data and the information, but how you communicate that through your own voice and your own writing will ultimately influence individuals within the room to be able to go in a different direction. So don't lose sight of the fact. It's not just technology, it's also around us as human beings and the way that we connect with other human beings as well.

Speaker 1 53:29

Well said. Thank you, Guy. I appreciate your time and having you on the show today.

Speaker 2 53:33

Absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1 53:34

Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Please share this with someone or rate it if you enjoyed it. Don't forget to follow us on social media and to stay up to date with all things Agile ideas, go to our website, wwwagilemanagementofficecom. I hope you've been able to learn, feel or be inspired today. Until next time, what's your agile idea?