You’re Measuring the Wrong Thing : And It’s Costing You Millions

"What do you want to achieve?"

In this episode of the Pulse Podcast, host Mark Pratt engages with Benjamin Smith, an experienced project manager, to explore his journey from engineering to leading global project teams. They discuss key strategies for empowering teams, navigating cultural differences, and the importance of governance and metrics in project management. Benjamin shares insights on the shift towards outcome-based working, the challenges of defining outcomes, and the role of language in securing opportunities in the European market. The conversation also touches on the future of project management in the age of AI and the significance of personal connections in securing freelance roles.

Key Takeaways

✨ Empowering teams is crucial for project success.
✨ Understanding cultural differences enhances global project management.
✨ Defining clear outcomes is essential for project alignment.
✨ Outcome-based working is a growing trend in project management.
✨ Effective governance and metrics drive project success.
✨ Language skills can open doors in the European market.
✨ Building personal networks is key to securing freelance work.
✨ AI will augment project management roles but won't replace human skills.
✨ Soft skills will become increasingly important in project management.
✨ Embracing change is vital for project success.

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Transcript

Mark Pratt (00:02.338)
Benjamin, welcome to the podcast. How are you?

Benjamin Smith (00:05.44)
Do you thank you? How are you?

Mark Pratt (00:07.288)
Fabulous, thank you for asking. Yeah, yeah, very well. It's a brisk November day here in the UK, just north of Milton Keynes, I am coming to you live. We're about to the Wilder You, Benjamin.

Benjamin Smith (00:19.092)
Just outside Dortmund in Germany where it's about three degrees and bright winter sunshine. It's beautiful here.

Mark Pratt (00:24.662)
Lovely, lovely. Well, maybe we'll get into a little bit of that kind of where you kind of base yourself as a contractor and as a project manager. That'd be really interesting. But where I'd love to start is kind of at the beginning, which is always a good place to start. And I don't know about you, Benjamin, but when I went to school, I didn't aspire to be a project manager. I probably didn't even know what one was. And I don't think many of our colleagues did either. It's kind of something that...

most people end up falling into or an opportunity presents itself and they get into it. So why don't you share with us kind of your story about how you kind of made your way into being a project professional.

Benjamin Smith (01:05.44)
Sure, I began in construction with my dad. He was a plumber, had a little company, nothing fancy, but really hard working. I was always around the trade from a very early age. I cleaning my fittings in my dad's garage with wire wool. I was always an engineer at heart. I took things apart. Sometimes, he went together again afterwards, which is a...

Interesting. Always some spare parts, know, they're in the hand. But then I got a sponsored degree with a conferring of construction, doing construction management, but it really wasn't me. After a couple of terms at Saunders University, I said, folks, I need to do something I'm passionate about. So I did a political science degree, which seemed to be a great plan at the time because I wanted to do something, really wanted to dive in, got involved in student politics, was culture after three years, run a society.

After that, went into IT because it something I was also very passionate about. Initially, I tech support. After a while, you start growing, you go through a couple of different iterations of helping people, and suddenly I was the guy with the ideas. I was doing development at the time. I'd moved into apps packaging, and I was the guy saying, why are we doing this? Why couldn't we try this? Wouldn't this work better? And long and short of it, ended up being, first of all, a...

apps project manager, then an infra project manager, and then I became a scrum master and from there went off around the world.

Mark Pratt (02:29.067)
I think a lot of our listeners will resonate with that journey. I had a similar journey myself, started with a software development background, programming away when I was six years old. yeah, when I did it at uni and took a software engineering degree and then when I did various software development jobs before kind of, I think, yeah.

for falling into project management, pretty similar as your career progresses. tell us about how your career progressed then and some of the more impactful and perhaps some of your more favourite projects that you've worked on. Tell us what your forte is, Benjamin.

Benjamin Smith (03:08.32)
Wow, okay, so I've done lots of projects over the years. think some of the best ones have been the ones where I've been able to make a real difference. So Genomics England, who were the 100,000 genome projects, got me in to do an assessment of the end-to-end platform. They have three main parts of their solution, three different architectures completely. And I did a monitoring assessment and security check, which meant I to talk to everybody, from the clinicians to the academics for writing the piece of code to the techies actually on the platform.

And it was great because I got to learn about Genomics, I had no idea at all about. I was able to apply my knowledge of systems because they had so many different systems in play that it meant that to be able to take a top-down view, zoom down and say, this plugs in here because you need this. And then be able to talk to techies on a one-to-one level. They got that I knew what I talking about, but they also, I could also take their requirements to management and say,

there's a problem here, we can fix it by doing this and here's why. And there was trust in my ability because they knew I knew the techies and I was able to talk business to them. That for me was really important because that ability to be able to relate a technical to a business has something that the first time I actually really ever had to do that. And it's so valuable to have that skill and to be able to learn why it's important and to be able to nurture it, I think. That was a really key one for me.

Mark Pratt (04:31.008)
Yeah, I think that's the first kind of top tip.

of the podcast right there. I think a lot of people who kind of get into project management, I guess I would reflect from the conversations that I've had, my own experience and similar to yours is you approach it with a particular subject matter expertise, particular technical skill. And the thing that kind of, I guess, makes you a great project manager, or certainly one of the attributes is the ability to kind of distill that hard career earned skill down into something that everybody

else can understand and translate between the business, however you define that, and the techies, however you define that. I think that's the first sort top tip. yeah, to be a great project manager, think it does take a lot of communication and distillation of deeply complex subjects into simple things that everybody can understand. Okay, awesome. And then what are the sort of top tips and attributes like that have you sort of learned along the way?

Benjamin Smith (05:26.813)
Absolutely.

Mark Pratt (05:33.886)
Benjamin.

Benjamin Smith (05:35.242)
Well, I've been lucky enough to work across the globe. I've worked in Japan, the US, all over Europe and the UK. I think the biggest thing is to empower people is the greatest strength you can have.

If I tell you how to do something, you'll go and do it. And if I know how to do it, you might get it right, or you might not understand it, you might get it completely wrong, or I could be wrong. If I ask you as the expert, how would you do this project, or how would you take on this task? And you tell me how you'll do it, and I say, okay, well, how long do you think you might need? Add some buffer in, and then step away, and then offer any support needed. I think that's the greatest thing you can do for a team, is to help them.

achieve and then get out their way because you're not the expert in running an SAP process or a success factors process or Salesforce or Pega. You're there to enable other people to do what they do and to tell them, okay, I've got your back. I'll help you. And that's my role to help people to achieve. And if they do well, then we all do well. So empower people, help them to achieve what they can achieve.

Mark Pratt (06:39.656)
Yeah, awesome. Yeah, I completely agree with that point of view. I think that's absolutely right. People love being in charge of their own destiny and no one likes to be told, or not many people like to be told what to do, do they? So yeah, that empowerment point is really, really useful.

So Benjamin, you've obviously had the great benefit of working all over the world and tell us a little bit more about that, how you've managed in those different cultural situations, the communication styles, how have you managed in that kind of global environment?

Benjamin Smith (07:10.965)
Really.

Benjamin Smith (07:15.208)
Ooh, let's start with the US. So, Brits and Germans watch American TV. So we know the accent, we can hear it, and we know what the words mean. Americans don't watch British TV. A big example is the film Trainspotting came into America with subtitles.

So they don't understand us unless we talk very slowly. It depends where you are. I if you're in the deep south, you may really have to talk very slowly. If you're in New York, you might be okay. But just to clarify, people understand what you're using the right terminology. Now, right is the objective term, but...

the right situation. For example, data protection in England, Dallin Schutze in Germany, Hipper in America. If you start talking about, if you don't have the right nomenclature, the right terminology, you can be completely misfiring over someone's head. And also, when people are going from European backgrounds, immigrating to America, Bulgaria, Germany, France, whatever, their native language isn't English. So it's really important to bottom out.

what you both mean. And that's also important in Japan too because...

Japanese decision-making is completely different to European or American decision-making. So they like to have a complete management agreement before you go into a meeting to say rubber stamp it. So in the UK or US, you might have a meeting to say, right, we will go in and decide X. In Japan, you would talk to all the underlings, then the let's level up, and the next one, and the next one. Your meeting is just a big rubber stamp. You have to get all the agreements beforehand. So it's about knowing

Benjamin Smith (08:52.416)
the environment you're going into and how to play the game and how to make sure that you fit into what's expected of those around you.

Mark Pratt (08:59.444)
That's fascinating. kind of obviously everybody's got their own natural style and that style evolves over time. Is there a particular environment that you think you've thrived in and have enjoyed working in more than others? Is there one that you would say was hard or slower, more challenging to deliver in across all those different cultural boundaries?

Benjamin Smith (09:22.802)
I think Japanese culture is a very curious one to play with because I've been in environment a few times in different contexts and it's very difficult to get people to make decisions when you have to understand the decision from their point of view.

I remember a politician from the UK, John Major saying that when he went to a summit, he wouldn't talk in the meeting. He'd go to each person individually and work out what their killer points were, what their absolute goes and no-goes were. And then he would be able to navigate in a meeting to say, to portray the overall decision in a way that everybody could nod. But if you mention a certain phrase or a certain topic, you zone somebody out. So it's about knowing what buttons to press, what buttons to not press, and what areas just to avoid tactically around.

and that for me is very difficult. Japanese culture, I found that making sure things got done, it was very tactical, very tactical to play a game. It was interesting.

Mark Pratt (10:21.416)
Cool.

That sounds absolutely fascinating. I'm sure anybody who's had the benefit of working in those environments would share that point of view. Okay, let's move on a little bit now, Benjamin, to what you came into this podcast with, which is, I'm just going to read it out verbatim here. To help fellow project pros run better projects by sharing insights on governance tooling and metrics.

So something I'm very passionate about as well. yeah, I'd love to hear more about those insights that you'd like to share.

Benjamin Smith (10:51.839)
Mmm.

Benjamin Smith (11:02.144)
My big question is what are you measuring? What's important? What are you trying to get done? A lot of projects measure the number of hours worked or they measure the number of story points you've bashed through and got done or they measure masternodes achieved.

My big passion is why are you doing this and what are you recording? So I'm a JIRA expert, I love JIRA, but JIRA's got its good points and bad points. It's as good as the people operating the machine cranking the handle. I joined a project for a major pharma company in Germany back in January, 2021. The project was running, they were using JIRA, but they weren't really using it to get any metrics to understand where they were going. To be able to really understand what they delivering in terms of value.

Mark Pratt (11:26.663)
you

Benjamin Smith (11:44.768)
it was impossible because you had all the stories, everyone wrote down a note as a user story and it just became so cluttered. And there so much work in progress that if you look at the scale agile framework, it's a big no-no to have everything in progress because when everything's a priority, nothing is a priority.

So I wrote a ways of working document for this client that basically said what we would do and what we wouldn't do. And for me it was just a labor of love. I did it over an evening one day. thought, right, this needs to get done. I'll write this somehow. It began as a couple of paragraphs and became four and a half pages of the glossary. And I trimmed it down a bit, but ultimately we lived by this for two and a half years. And they're still using it now and I'm still using versions of it. For me, it's important to understand

What do you want to achieve? If you want to achieve an outcome, work backwards from what you want day one of Go Live to actually feel like. If you're going for a big launch for a product, what are the key features to have on day one? Is it everything? Or is it a core subset that gives you value? Because that...

that core subset is what you should be focusing on and building from the first day of development to say, okay, when we go live, that's what we'll have on day one. I did a project where we were producing a pricing tool and we wanted to focus on certain countries and certain important brands for this client. We made sure they were front and center and we deflected anyone away from saying anything else. Now that journey for me has gotten to a point where a couple...

for months ago I invested in a product called Solved because this product is aimed at bridging the gap between contingent recruitment and just asking for a timesheet and saying, I've got 100 contractors, I'm getting a bill. So saying, I've got 100 people working, here are the milestones and I'm paying on the milestones being achieved. The reason why I think it's important is because...

Benjamin Smith (13:37.224)
A lot of clients start a big project and you are an expert in your subject. You're an SME. That's why you're leading a department or running a project from the business side. But you're not running a project every day. Normally you're on an ops team. So you're employing me or you to come in and tell you how to run a project. Now that needs to have outcomes. And so a lot of the time I see projects running that just roll on and on and on and they miss milestones and deadlines because they're not focused on

delivering important subjects. So as much as you're an expert in your subject, trust us to be the experts in getting you where you need to be, in short.

Mark Pratt (14:17.35)
Absolutely. You've covered so many interesting points down. I'd love to get into some of them in little bit more detail. Let's try and work back and see if we can remember all the way back to what you started saying. So let's talk about the product. Just give us the name of it. It's Solve, did you say it was called? Okay, where can we find that on the internet if we want to go and have a look?

Benjamin Smith (14:32.583)
solved.

www.solve.com, S-O-W-L-V-E-D.com.

Mark Pratt (14:41.157)
Okay, perfect. Be sure to go and have a little nosey at that, Benjamin. So it sounds like we've got a similar approach in our business and a promo piece for either of these two products is just to explore how, I guess, people are positioning the work they deliver, whether they're charging by their time or by their outcome or what.

I think, pop the box certainly in the UK with the IR35 legislation changes that have been occurring, I think this is one of the things, one of the shifts that we're kind of caught a little bit in the middle of right now because I think, suppose traditionally, certainly in the UK market anyway, not sure about other jurisdictions, but certainly in the UK market, are, I think we're mid-shifts from a place where people are exchanging their time for money, which is kind of like, you know, Victorian era thinking when we were still working with our

hands and not with our heads, through to outcome based thinking, which is where we're clearly defining the value that we'll bring and the outcomes that we'll achieve. And then being willing to put our money where our mouth is, so to speak, and get paid when the thing is delivered, not when I happen to have done five days this week or 30 days this month or whatever the measurement of time is. So I find that particularly fascinating. way that we do that, and I'd love to hear a little bit more about the soul and

We've defined three different types of outcome for our clients. One is basically our recruitment product which is just kind of a we call it contract control which is where the end client seeks to control the outcome of a temporary resource that is pure recruitment and certainly in the R35 legislation.

What we do there is for the client to determine the status, IR35 status of that particular project and then control the, obviously we're using reason, control the temporary resources as they require. And then we've got, which is more interesting, think more along the lines of what you're saying with the Solve product, we've got two variants of our Contract Outcome product.

Benjamin Smith (16:41.78)
Hmm.

Mark Pratt (16:56.308)
one of which is a time based product but we do define outcome there, I'll come onto that in a sec and also on deliverables I am fascinated to hear more about this sort of product so on the time and material side what we do is we say we define very clearly let's say you're being deployed as a senior project manager for example we define very very clearly what a quality outcome and what an expectation of a senior project manager is and then with our time sheet internal product that we've

developed. At the end of a given billing period we'll then ask the client and the contractor to basically rank their happiness out of five stars and you know a compensation is due should a certain star rating be achieved so we're measuring the quality is where the financial risk comes in and the unit of measure is time I suppose there. We've also got our deliverables product, sounds a little bit like your sold investment there, which is where we kind of define our deliverables

deliverables in kind of an online tool and then the client ticks off that the deliverables have been done and again rates them as against a star rating. So the units of measure in that particular engagement is the deliverable or the deliverables that have been delivered in that given period and the quality measure is still on the star rating. So again, there's financial risk there if quality and outcome isn't achieved. So that's how we solve for that similar situation. So tell us a little bit more about this solve

product than Benjamin and how that's solving that similar problem.

Benjamin Smith (18:30.186)
Solved was developed for UK government as a tool called professional managed services that was designed to allow a department to say, want to achieve the following things. And it ended up being a three tiered approach like Injira with an epic agent story and a sub task. The key thing is we integrate self billing time sheets as well as milestones. So you can call off time.

or you can build against milestones as a choice. Say I've got a team of five and I've got 10 milestones. I can split milestones between people. Say I've got a team of testers and developers. I can say, well, I've built it now, I'm testing it. And rework is an additional piece of work because it's new. If you are completing a piece of work, you can mark it as done. And then the client will say, yep, I agree, that's done.

they've got an option to add some text. We don't use stars, we use free text to say, I've got a concern or we want to do some more on this, can we hold on paying it? And then if it's agreed and completed, it can be paid. Now we've worked on this as the idea that...

Statement of work gives you a fairer outcome because you know that if you ask for 10 deliverables and you get all 10 done, there's an element of risk though on the contractor to say, I'm going to make sure I commit to delivering what I've agreed to do. And if it takes 10 days more, then that's on me. But the benefit is if I complete it faster, then I also get to bill you and say, well, are you happy? Now, often a piece of work will say, okay, well, I love this, it's agile, I've seen the product.

That's what everybody wanted, but now I've been talking to you, I've realized there's 10 more things you want. No problems to the client, please go back to the portal and we'll create a new statement of work and on you go. So it integrates the contractual piece. It integrates the time-sheeting system so it can replace a recruitment consultant's existing solution. And what we're saying to recruitment consultants is you can move from being...

Benjamin Smith (20:33.896)
just a body shop, giving people an hourly rate or a daily rate, to moving to becoming a real consultancy. And if you are in the business of scaling and looking to exit, you're looking, instead of a one-to-one ratio in a perm business where you're recruiting people, maybe a couple of times multiplier. If you're working in an agency as a...

as a recruiter doing contingent labor to a technology company now, your consultancy, maybe you're on a five to 10 times EBITDA multiplier when you sell. So it's a benefit for the consultant, it's a benefit for the recruiter, and a benefit for the company because everybody gets ultimately what they want at end of the day.

Mark Pratt (21:15.194)
Yeah, sounds like a really interesting solution. I'm itching to finish the podcast now so can go and have a look. let's carry on the conversation because it is really, really interesting. So, I mean, I am so, so bought into this concept and I think many, you know, a people be...

shouting down their headphones on their dog walk listening to this in agreement. And I remember thinking back 10, 15, 20 years ago, if only I got paid for my outcomes, not my days, I'd be in a lot more money. yeah, but I think the interesting thing is the practical barriers to acceptance that clients perceive or have.

Do you want to just give us your thoughts around that, Benjamin? Because all this seems so sensible and everybody would nod along in agreement. But then we've contracted with very, very large clients who love the concept of outcome-based working. But then either when it comes to the contractuals or the practice of the consultants deployed, we kind of...

Benjamin Smith (21:54.047)
Mmm.

Mark Pratt (22:18.29)
veer over time towards more sort of time-based and attendance-based attitudes rather than the outcome. So, yeah, tell me your experience of those sort of practical barriers that clients still have and why you think they're still in the way, I suppose.

Benjamin Smith (22:37.28)
That's a good question. I think sometimes the bigger consultancies who have their place and often do a great job, they have a model which is often quite inflexible. There's one that I'll not name that has a practice of bringing you a consultant that they'll give you for nine months and after nine months they'll take them away and put them somewhere else. So anything they've learned...

that that client can benefit from in the future is gone with that client and that consultant leaving you. There's ways of working that benefit those consultancies and there's always bumps and peaks and troughs of experience that go through. When you build your own team through a team like Project Partners, you end up with a group that you can rely on that sticks around and stays.

Mark Pratt (23:22.402)
Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Smith (23:23.496)
And that team, I've worked in teams that have been together for a couple of years, delivering and by the end, you're really, really good at what you do. And I've even worked with people again in the future and it's been the same. You click back in, you're there again. When you've got upheavals through a consultancy firm coming in, rotating staff around, then they might not want to commit.

Mark Pratt (23:35.435)
Yep.

Benjamin Smith (23:42.706)
to actually saying, we've gone for milestones just like your consultants are. Because if they can't hit the milestone, that for them is potentially an impact up their value chain to their partner level. And you may get resistance there. My question back would be, why are you using consultancies that charge so much money when actually you want an outcome, don't you? If you want the outcome, if there's a better way of getting the outcome.

Take a step out of your comfort zone and try working with people who will give you an outcome rather than giving you a brand name that may not be as reliable as you might think.

Mark Pratt (24:17.109)
Yeah, I guess some of that whole kind of insert your favorite large name consultant to hear, you no one ever got fired for hiring IBM sort of views. I think some of that still proliferates. I guess the other thing is, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this is, I think that whether it is true or not, but I think many clients perceive the kind of defining outcomes is hard.

Benjamin Smith (24:25.939)
Yeah.

Mark Pratt (24:44.313)
and to commit to those outcomes. I perceive that a lot of clients will be thinking well...

If I write down the specific outcome and then I want something different along the way, well, that's going to cost me a fortune or it's going to be a problem because I've committed to X. And actually, as you mentioned earlier, as time goes on, my knowledge increases, my eyes are open to more possibilities and I may want change controls, change requests, whatever flavor of waterfall agile use and however you manage that change process. And so I think there's perhaps some of that in there as well.

that perspective or have you had a different experience?

Benjamin Smith (25:28.552)
interesting. had a client recently that was formed from a lot of people leaving a big company going to a small company and they had been used to using big company systems where everything is integrated and you can press a button and it goes from one end to the other fairly seamlessly. But what this group weren't

cognizant of was all the people who had a 5 or 10 % influence on just shifting things in the right direction as it moved through their workflow. And when it came to building an MVP, it was great. The MVP was looking fantastic on week one, but the project ran on longer than we planned. And by the end, they were saying, well, we want more now, we want more. That's normal, guys, that's absolutely great. But don't lose sight of the fact that you've got an MVP that works for you now. It's really cool that you want more.

Mark Pratt (26:00.8)
Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Smith (26:20.306)
Now your initial MVP costs you this. Let's pay that one. Let's look at a road shop, a road map workshop even, to look at what you need next, learning what you've done. But don't have it today. Live with this for a month. Use the system. Get to know its foibles. Get to know its benefits. Maybe you want to keep it as it is. Maybe we do an analysis for you and what you would really want will cost you way more than the benefits you'll ever gain. But think about iteratively.

Mark Pratt (26:27.966)
Yep.

Benjamin Smith (26:48.776)
you will learn, you'll find out more, but if you really need the extra, lots of what you already have can be reused. You're not throwing it away, you're just adding to it. One of my clients built a pricing platform in Pega, and they had this solution that rolled out across 90 countries, and it was fantastic. You input the price manually every month, and it would synchronize the database, and eventually you'd have history of all your prices through time.

Then we realized you could download this data from a third party website and pay for a license. We hooked that in. And now, well, what's the solution for? Well, we've realized now that we can actually look at actually determining the actual net price of our product, taking all the discounts and working out how we can be more efficient. This company had 20 billion going through its systems. They went from being able to just track a price over two and a half years to realizing we can actually work out how to optimize our pricing and make even more money.

by actually lowering prices, raising prices by literally cents and dollars here and there, and it makes such a difference to their bottom line. It's natural to learn, but you shouldn't be afraid of it. You should embrace it.

Mark Pratt (27:54.996)
Yeah.

Mark Pratt (27:59.091)
Totally, particularly, I think everybody would agree that the pace of change is accelerating, not slowing down. so embracing being on the change express trade rather than being afraid of it, I think is a great mindset shift and one that think we could all embrace a little bit more. Just staying on the statement of work theme. think there's one other element I'd love to explore your experience and thoughts on.

Benjamin Smith (28:18.912)
You

Mark Pratt (28:27.27)
which is on the consultant side as well. I think lots of consultants who practice as one person companies, personal service companies, however you want to term those entities. And I think conceptually, most individuals listening to this podcast and certainly who I interact with in my network would love the idea of being able to exchange their sort of value for money. But I think,

think in practice when it comes down to well...

I treat my day rate like my salary and I need to get paid every month to cover my household expenses and so on. The thought of adding financial risk into it and if I don't deliver then I don't get paid is, I think, is something that people are apprehensive about. And then layer in that often these engagements are with large complex organisations where it's very hard to determine the single deliverable that the consultant is accountable or responsible for.

when they are dependent on others within that organisation, not always within their gift to hit the deadline. I think some of that brings barriers to potentially that way of working. Would you share that sentiment, or have you got a different opinion? What's your experience of that been?

Benjamin Smith (29:50.282)
two things to say on that topic. One is when you start a project, it's always better to put governance in at the beginning rather than trying to retrofit it halfway through at the end because you're always gonna get resistance. The same is true of requirements. If you define what you want at the beginning, yes, it will move, yes, it will change, but if I agree clearly what I'm gonna give you and you say, yes, that's great, we both know where we stand. Now, in Germany where I am, it's a little bit different.

So I do work in the UK, I work in Germany. But in Germany, the freelancer model, or the substandard Friber Ruffler model, means that I can be fractional by definition. That's just coming to the UK, but Germany's been fractional for as long as anyone can remember. Which means that clients expect me to do bits and bobs around the outside, but if they expect me to be on site for a week in Frankfurt, I will be there. I'll be there present just for them for that period of time. But if I want to work till 10 p.m., I'm free to do so.

But the client knows that they're going to pay for an outcome. I always...

Clarify up front, what do you need me to do for you? What's important? If we're delivering milestones, fantastic. But if you're, if we're just starting a project off, what does good look like for you? Let's talk about it as a human being, one to one. I say, right, you want stand-ups every day. You want a check-in phone call a couple of times a week to make sure you're comfortable. Temperature checks for your stakeholders. You want me on site once a month, no problem, we'll do that. Just communicate with people. Make sure you know where you stand. But set the guidelines out and

document what you want. A big learning from any project I think is that you need to clarify what the outcome should be. If they change, document it. Those are the things that I think are the most important. Yes, you get resistance. Yes, there's risk. But it's also a benefit because if you're a freelancer and you're building websites for people or you're running projects or you're delivering data dashboards in Tableau, if you can work faster.

Benjamin Smith (31:43.904)
Why not work faster? Why not go at a pace that's comfortable because you're excellent with what you do with Tain's experience? And then go and do another project afterwards and make double the money or a third more money or a quarter more money or just go and stop and walk the dog. You don't have to be sat at your desk for eight hours if your task takes you three.

Mark Pratt (32:04.687)
Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I think, yeah.

have zero disagreement with what you're saying there. think that's fantastic. Okay, so I do want to roll back to a little earlier as well on something you said, which is really interesting, which again, something we're really passionate about here at Project Partners, is in early doors in the project, kind of defining the why. Do you want to share with us how you go about doing that? What's the form and format of how you capture that why and how you would go about kind of

Benjamin Smith (32:10.72)
you

Mark Pratt (32:38.811)
coalescing around that vision.

Benjamin Smith (32:42.814)
I think even in this days of post-COVID, I get everybody in a room, whether that's in London, Tokyo, New York, whatever, and say, why are we here, folks? What do you want out of this? What does three years time look like? You've got a budget, consultants are sat over there, we're sat over here, we're all mingled in a room. What do we look like in three years time after this project's being done? And then just shut up and wait for the first person to speak, because ultimately, you roughly know what the outcomes will be, but...

Having a system defined is one thing. Having a look and feel and a perception of what the client really wants is quite another. Any tool can be turned to almost any purpose, but if you know that the focus is on...

employee engagement or you want employee satisfaction to increase, you'll make sure your self-service options in your ATAR solution are fantastic. If you want data-driven insights from your platform, you make sure that from day one, you start to make sure you understand what your data sources are. Are they available? Are they within GDPR? Can I get to them? Can I integrate them?

are their hostages being migrated away anytime soon. Find out what you need to get to the outcome. Find out what the important parts are for that group. And write it down, put it on a piece of paper, slap it on the wall and make sure that everyone understands that and everyone agrees with that. And if they don't, it until they do. Make sure that everyone's roughly in alignment. I think the theme of psychological safety is important as well. You have to stay in an environment where people can say, I'm not sure. Because if everyone's nodding and smiling,

The risk is that half of those people don't agree. But if you start off by saying on day one, look, it's okay to think this isn't right. It's okay to say I disagree. Say so now, say so whenever you like. Here's the way you can do it. Talk to me, talk to them. Here's an email address. Make it possible to disagree and raise concerns at any point. That way people buy in. They're more likely to be open and authentic with you.

Mark Pratt (34:42.235)
For the purposes of those listening on audio only who can't see, Benjamin and I, there was a few right smiles there as he kept going through some of that and some of those behaviours that you observe in some of those workshops. think it rings really true. What was really interesting about what you started off there Benjamin was, I guess my experience anyway is generally projects are in one of two states where kind of the group is either solution aware or

They're early on, life cycle wise, and they're problem aware.

So, solution aware would be, just to define those terms for those not aware, whereby a solution, a problem that identified, possibly, and a solution has been picked to solve that problem, and now the project is all about implementing that solution. Whereas potentially, you might be looking at a project whereby the problem is reasonably well understood, not perhaps been written down or articulated very well, and is truly a solution agnostic situation whereby, okay,

What solutions could we put in place to solve this problem? Have you ever come across situations and how have you dealt with them whereby a solution has been well defined but as you kind of peel back the layers you realize that the problem's not well understood. So how do we even know if the solution's gonna be the right one? Have you had to deal with that?

Benjamin Smith (36:03.44)
yeah, I was working for a power company that had had been told off by the regulator for not being in compliance with the TCF regulations, treating customers fairly. Their billing system was not working well. And they thought that just by migrating a few things, it would all go away and that they could move on. In the course of...

a merger and acquisition. They let go a core development team who were the people who wrote their custom application and they bundled this application into SAP. Unfortunately, it didn't really work. So the solution of press forward, get SAP installed, get it running, get it running, it's like.

It's not so much an installation, guys. It's more of an implementation. And it was all very much old school. If you install some software and it just runs, right? It's easy. And it was a case of, well, no, you need your billing system to function and deliver outcomes for your customers. The ultimate outcome wasn't the migration to SRP. It was reimplement the old solution, rehire the old team, pay them whatever they want, and get them back in.

and give them an outcome of please make it work folks. So the whole focus of the project changed. It was a complete re-plan. It was a very interesting year, but I spent working with them.

Ultimately it went live and that company got sold on again. But it was a case of what they planned to do wouldn't have worked. it took some very tense late meetings to agree that, this isn't going to work. And some brave choices were made and I celebrate that. It's good to admit that what you're doing isn't going to get you where you need to be and change direction.

Mark Pratt (37:48.664)
Absolutely and I think that is what quality project management is all about, validating all the way through the project life cycle that we're still going to achieve what we want to achieve. That is part of the purpose of the governance. I think one of the phrases that we use regularly at project partners is that most projects fail at the beginning and what we mean by that is because we've not defined it well enough, we've not defined our why early doors, we made the actual project failure might not manifest

until three or six or twelve months down the line but actually it failed right at the beginning because we didn't take the time to well define on why enough and for anyone who's interested I won't try and cover it now but we've got something we call the hypothesis framework which is about well articulating an idea for a project and some meat on the bones and the evidence that leads you to believe why the solution is the right one and all that good stuff I'll pop it in the in the show notes and anyone who's interested to go off and have a little look at that I think you'll find it interesting if that's

particular thing that is something that you think you might be keen on. Let's move on now Ben if we can to kind of your personal insights and everything.

Benjamin Smith (38:53.504)
Cool.

Mark Pratt (39:05.418)
as a contract, the freelancer, all those different states have their challenges. What's your sort of preference and why on that? Do you more enjoy kind of being part of a long-term team, permanently employed by an organization? Do you much prefer kind of the contract freelance side, going from gig to gig? Tell us about your preferences and how you most enjoy working and why.

Benjamin Smith (39:32.128)
I really enjoy freelancing. I fell into doing project recoveries after doing several end to end big projects, because I go in halfway through and help somebody get where they need to be. Like the project I mentioned about the power company. That led me into doing kick-offs for companies, getting them running for a project and then saying, well, I'm going to be here for three, six, nine months, get you running. Then I'll set you up success, put your governance in place, give you the right tooling for your outcomes.

and then step away and be available as and when to come back in and do coaching when you need me. Now with one company recently, the last few years, that led into a two and a half year engagement of me basically being full time for them. Other companies, it's been more a case of they know I'm gonna come in, kick it off for them, agree that it's a fixed time period for a phase and then I'll walk away. I'm currently looking around and thinking I wouldn't mind doing a few longer term end to end projects because I've had an end to end one in the last couple of years.

I don't really want to one about project recoveries, that can be a bit much. But yeah, I'm in the mood now for a long-term project because for me it's a case of I'm very settled here in Germany, I love the German environment, I'm learning to speak German, which is interesting, and for me it's a case of I'd like some longevity. But I think that as a contractor coming into the market, you should look at what you're good at.

If you're new, focus on the things that you can do today. Bear in mind that in the current market there's lots of people looking for work. If you can do 10 % of a job, probably not gonna be good enough as a freelancer. If it's something you know inside out, absolutely apply for it. Bear in mind, if you're applying to a recruiter, they're gonna get a lot of resumes through, a lot of CVs are gonna hit their desk. If you don't tickle the boxes today, you aren't gonna get considered. There are things that I could do that I'm not bothering to look at right now because they're

a little bit outside of my core competency framework. So if you're new, focusing on things you're really good at, if you're experienced, you may have a number of things you can go back to. Pick the one you enjoy doing the most or the one that's currently offering options.

Mark Pratt (41:40.172)
I think that advice is so solid, it's certainly a piece of advice that we've heard time and time again in the community and on the podcast articulated in all different ways. And I think some of the manifestations of that is where obviously as you have a longer career, you get more feathers in your cap, so to speak, and you have perhaps been a software developer and a business analyst and a project manager and a scrum master. But if you are everything,

then you are basically nothing. You need to niche down basically. There's riches in the niches as they say and you need to kind of position yourself as the absolute expert in that one thing. So I am the best scrum master in Germany in software engineering, in whatever. So people really know what you are the man or woman for. I think is a quality piece of advice. And then just, you touched a little bit on applications for roles.

Tell us, for the freelance contract roles that you've had, tell us generally how you've gone about securing that work. So have you gone through that application process, through job boards, LinkedIn, what have you? Have you nurtured a network? Do you have some other routes to market? Share with us how you kind of secure your next gigs.

Benjamin Smith (43:01.044)
think people buy from people, so I try and build networks with as many people as I can and offer advice. I'm very active on LinkedIn. I like and share lots of things. I try and do good where I can. If somebody really is having a hard time, share their posts. For recruiters.

I'm lucky enough to have worked in the trade. I've had clients who've been recruited, so I've done consulting for equipment companies. So I know a few people at various levels of the business. The key thing is they are people. They like to know what you can do. You are key to solving problems for them. If you've got a client who needs something and you've got a consultant in coming to step in, if they know concisely, like we said before, what you can do, they make it really clear for them, make it easy.

It works for them. When you apply, read the spec. I know it sounds so easy, but read the spec. If you're on LinkedIn, Indeed, wherever you are, look at what the key points are. If it's not a very good spec, it's harder. If it's I need somebody who's got French, German, and knows SRP, ECC, great. Well, put it in the first line of email, I speak French, German, and I've done X number of years of this product. Make it easy to solve their problems.

and be active, be proactive as well. If you see an advert on LinkedIn, connect with the person. If you've got a sales navigator, message them. If you've got premium, message them. Tell them, I'm grateful as well because, again, make it easy for people to know what you can do. They're getting a lot of applications right now that aren't very good. So if you are in the top 5 % and you are friendly about it, that to me puts you in the top 1 % straight away.

Mark Pratt (44:39.689)
see a TikTok style short of that little monologue coming out there Benjamin. I that's some real few top tips all in the space of a few seconds. I think the thing that resonated with me there about what you just said was about making it easy. know if you're you put yourself in the position of a recruitment consultant or an in-house recruiter or whoever is the gatekeeper to the position that you're after.

Right now supply is high and demand is lower. Difficult to quantify, that's certainly anecdotally, I think everybody would agree that's the position that we're in right now. Obviously times change, that's today's circumstances. If you've got a flooded inbox or piece of software that's got hundreds of applications, I know this because we put job ads out and we get hundreds of applications, exceedingly difficult to

to give everything at the time of day. There just aren't enough hours in the day to give everything its due diligence, which is why we've codified an automated part of our human processes in automation and AI. But that aside, I think making it easy for the recipient to understand your unique selling points, why you're the right person for the role. That's such a simple thing to say. And I think many people would probably be sitting there thinking, well, that's obvious, Benjamin.

that but I would ask you to just look again and do you did for the last role that you applied for did you really point out why in words of one syllable in know two sentences why you were the person that they needed to speak to and did you make it easy for them to contact you by supplying your phone number email address and inside like measurement front and center you know make it easy do do that extra few percent that the other candidates won't and increase your own chances

would be what I would say. I think that's some solid advice there. I'm also intrigued around the European market side of things.

Mark Pratt (46:49.662)
I don't have too much experience in that side of things. that open many more additional doors? Is there lot of work available from the location or the language side of things that opens up opportunities? there particular European or even further afield markets that you feel are better opportunities right now? Or do you see a similar situation kind of across all the geographies that you deal with?

Benjamin Smith (47:16.544)
The German market is particularly resilient. It goes in waves. The financial year runs from January to December. So right now it's a quiet period. People are looking to plan their projects, get their budgets straightened out for next year, now.

They'll kick things off January, February, and you'll see a lot more roles coming around in late January through February into March. It goes quiet again in July. Most of Europe takes August off entirely, and then you'll see a little blip again in September, a few roles coming up, and then quiet from, say, late October through to the end of the year. It is busier, I think, in Europe than in the UK. I'm seeing Ireland and Belgium being quite busy right now, language-wise.

Belgium usually wants French and or Dutch. Germany usually wants German to a certain level. I work with German clients. My German is okay, but you know.

as long as you make an effort to speak someone's language, they can understand, can work through a gap where you don't know the vocab to do something. I think if you want to work in European market, if you already speak a language, it really helps. If you can learn the language, even better. The one I would learn is German because Germany is about to have an election in the next three months, most likely, and that will mean a change of government and a different focus, and probably a pro-business focus. When you look at what's happening in the US,

with Trump, Europe may have to become more defensive and more self-sufficient. So it could be a good time to be working across borders. So if you can take a remote role in Europe, I would definitely advise looking into it.

Mark Pratt (48:58.888)
Yeah, that's really fascinating. I think that's another top tip, righter downer for people. think that often when people think about upskilling during their bench time, know, it's the project management certification or the development certification or getting deeper into a specific technology or what it might be. But just think of some of those other kind of ancillary skills that are going to give you the highest opportunity to secure the role, it a language or some other soft skill, know, those sorts of.

things might be really really interesting I think that's definitely something to look into. Thanks.

Hopefully now we don't the German market flooded and then they make it too too difficult for you to find your next role But yeah, I don't think we'll be causing that problem. So yeah, let's let's kind of finally move on to challenges so I really Enjoyed, know hearing some of the benefit of your experience of wisdom But you know, none of us have got it all all figured out and what what sort of challenges and are you facing into right now? What would you would you feel that?

you've got a gap in your knowledge or the situation or what have you, what are your biggest challenges do you think?

Benjamin Smith (50:13.312)
I find myself needing to challenge myself more in terms of learning new skills. I want to develop more awareness of architecture. I want to develop more of an awareness of business strategy. Those two things are completely different. But for me, it's a case of they join in the middle. Because if I can understand what's possible, what's theoretical, and what I can achieve today, I can better translate that to a business and say,

Right now, this is possible, maybe in three years time, you can go here. So when we're talking about Solved, we're looking at trying to get it to market in terms of taking it to recruiters, take it to consultancies, taking it across the world. For me, it's a case of looking at what we can do today and learning and trying to predict tomorrow, which is never an easy thing. But looking at the market, statement of work is going to be, I think, the way forward. So...

Ultimately, if I can perfect my German, that would make me feel very happy. And to be able to then go to a meeting and not have to switch to English would be lovely.

Mark Pratt (51:18.626)
Very good, very good. And just on that theme, the advancement of everything that's going on in the world, the technology and so on. Do you have a view on how involved have you got in kind of...

AI and the impact that you think it's going to have on your field. It's kind of obviously going to be a huge revolution in everything and people have a variety of opinions of how it might impact their role or their ways of working or the market or what have you. Do you have a view that you'd like to share on that?

Benjamin Smith (51:51.392)
Yeah, when I was at Genomics England in 2017, we were working machine learning to try and cure cancer, to look at what differences were between a healthy cell to a non-healthy cell to work out what causes cancer. So AI machine learning has been developing for some time. And look at what's there now. And I think people should be mindful that if you're in an industry that relies on

If you alter a human judgment, like project management, it's going to be an awful long time before a computer can, an AI really think like a PM and be as agile on one's feet as a PM or a lead could be or a scrum master could be. If you're doing something creative, if you're working in a field that's easily repeatable.

you should be concerned. Think back to the mills of the last couple of centuries. Once automation came in, home wall weaving went out the window. When you can automate something cheaply and simply with greater accuracy than a person can do it, that's the point to be concerned. I'm not sure we're there yet, but the question is, should we get there? Because unless you bring in universal basic income, you could make a lot of people...

out of work very quickly, creating a lot of social problems which the world right now probably isn't equipped to deal with.

Mark Pratt (53:12.41)
Indeed, how, know, fast forward 10 years, then how do you see kind of the 10 years older project manager operating in that kind of, you know, new technology environment? Pretty similar to today, massively augmented with little bots doing their bidding somewhere in between. How do you see that future project manager or scrum master?

Benjamin Smith (53:39.656)
I think they'll be geographically diverse, will be all over the world. They'll be less obvious. Will be a higher specialization in the roles we do, but also there will be lots of tools helping us achieve discrete tasks. But I think you'll be using that as a dashboard to pull information together to say, what's happening over here? What's happening over there? Pull that together, make a decision. And you'll be a fulcrum. You'll be the key point that makes everything pivot.

Mark Pratt (53:42.887)
Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Smith (54:06.932)
But I think that the risk is there'll be fewer people doing this work. They'll need to be higher skilled.

and the people skills, the soft skills that a machine cannot easily learn are going to become so much more important. Understanding people, stakeholder management, going back to the Japanese way of making decisions, talking to everybody, getting consensus, making sure that everyone understands where you're coming from and why we're making a decision, keeping people on the side is something a machine, I think, even in 10 years struggle to do.

Mark Pratt (54:37.574)
Yeah, I think thematically, that element of what do we believe that the machine won't be able to do and where should we evolve our own skills and thinking like that. The repetitive tasks, the mind-numbing tasks of going through lines on a spreadsheet or those sorts of things.

if that is your day job right now, yes, you definitely have a problem and you need to be looking at upskilling. But yeah, think thematically, as I've asked others that question, that is something that's come up time and time again, that people side, that human connection. And yeah, I think that's really wise words. Okay, the last question I always love to ask people on the podcast, Benjamin, is quite a broad one.

Which is, what have I not asked you that you'd love to talk about? Is there anything that you'd hoped I would have brought up or anything you'd love to share with the audience today?

Benjamin Smith (55:44.564)
Yeah, why are we matching clothes? Did you not get the memo?

Mark Pratt (55:46.993)
Well, a little insider podcast secret, I wear this jumper for every podcast so I could chop and change the intro and outro edits. So now I'm stuck with this jumper for the entire season. So maybe I'll get myself a new one for the next next season.

Benjamin Smith (56:06.474)
Awesome.

Mark Pratt (56:07.47)
Awesome. All right, Benjamin, I've massively enjoyed this conversation. think you've got some really good insights there for us and a few good writer downers. I'd encourage people to take what they can from this conversation and apply it to their own situation. very much appreciate your time, Benjamin. I'm sure we'll all be going off to check www.solve.com, was it? Or co-UK?

Benjamin Smith (56:35.104)
Yeah, self.com? Self.com.

Mark Pratt (56:36.803)
Solve.com after the podcast and seeing how it might be able to help us in our statement of work engagements. Thank you very much for your time and best of luck. Cheers, Ben.

Benjamin Smith (56:49.024)
Thanks.