The Jelly Woman Speaks: What Actually Gets Projects Over the Line

"It’s not about the tech, the plan, or the process. It’s about whether the people using it feel heard. That’s what sticks—or slides off the wall." – Vicky Higham

In this episode of the Pulse podcast, Vicky Higham shares her unique journey into project management, highlighting her early influences from the building trade and her diverse career across various industries. She discusses the importance of user engagement in project success and the role of mentorship in personal growth and offers valuable advice for contractors navigating the job market. Vicky emphasises the need for a people-centric approach in change management, especially in an era increasingly influenced by technology and AI.

Key Takeaways

✨ Project management skills can stem from early life experiences.
✨ Engaging users from the start is crucial for project success.
✨ People, processes, and then technology should be the order of focus.
✨ Mentorship can significantly impact career development.
✨ User adoption is often overlooked in system implementations.
✨ AI should be viewed as a tool, not a replacement for human skills.
✨ Understanding different cultures enhances project management effectiveness.
✨ Contractors should leverage their networks for job opportunities.
✨ Flexibility in job roles can lead to better outcomes.
✨ Personal growth often comes from stepping outside of comfort zones.

-
-
-
Think you might benefit from the BEST and BIGGEST Contractor community? We know you will. 😎 You can join us here: https://bit.ly/4jC5e24 🔥

Thanks for tuning into The Pulse Podcast. Remember, we're always looking for new voices and perspectives to enrich our discussions. Think you've got something to share? Fill out our guest application form here.

Catch new episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe to stay updated. 🔔

Until next time,
Mark and the team!

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01.752)
Vicki, hi, welcome to the Pulse podcast, the first episode of C series or season, depending upon whether you're American or not. So how are you?

I'm smashing all the better for speaking to you, of course.

Thank you very much. Well, it's been a long time since we last spoke. I we've kept in touch across the years and kind of get into how we kind of crossed each other's paths and how we, you what we've done together and stuff. I think it'd be really interesting for people. But what I really like to ask people when they first come on the podcast, Vicky, is kind of when I went to school, I didn't dream of being a project manager or...

Programme Director or all these other different highfaluting job titles that I ended up having. And I'm sure you didn't either. So why don't you start by telling us how you got into the profession, what the lead up to that was and how you first became kind of a project professional.

Yeah, well, back in, back in little old Wigan in the 70s, yeah, project managers and the like didn't, you know, cross my path. was air hostess, if you wanted to be glamorous, teacher, doctor, nurse, all those kinds of things. My family were background in the building trade. So I guess that part of my project management skills came from that. So my dad was a painter and decorator. Granddad was, one granddad was a brickie, the other one was a carpenter. So.

Speaker 2 (01:23.662)
I was always quite aware of a critical path, if you like, because my dad couldn't go in there and do the decorating until the bricks have been done, the first fix have been done, the plastering have been done, all the chippy stuff had done. But equally, there's other stuff that you could be getting on with. So in that way, I've always sort of grown up with that without knowing, I guess.

My career started in financial services, graduate trainee as a lot of people did. And that was in insurance first off and then into banking where I ran a number of contact centers in good old Chester and Manchester. And that's probably where we first sort of crossed paths without even knowing I think sometimes. And as a result of...

of being running contact centers and being aware of how people like to circumvent things and not maybe follow the prescribed processes. I fell into UAT, into testing, and people always ask me to come along and do testing. And I was like, but I would break it, or I would find a way around to doing it. And they were like, that's why we love you. So that's how I got into it. So, and then.

As a result of that I managed to get an opportunity to do system support so it was very much about the supporting the system, the administration rights, that kind of stuff. And then gradually over time I into project management, portfolio program management, spent a bit of time doing PMO or clipboard police as we were known back then and I know that there's a lot of stuff we've done since then to try and...

and make sure that the PMO are seen as value add rather than, you know, the police. And then sort of as I've evolved over time, I think my sweet spot is people and customer side of change. So a lot about customer experience, people experience, delivery, but making sure that you're there right from the start of the journey. And I'm sure we'll, we'll, you know, cover that there. So, so yeah, so it's.

Speaker 2 (03:33.966)
1990 I started my career once graduated, albeit you know the usual bars, shoe shops and all that jazz as customer services but I always think that's a good grounding for anybody as well as well to do that so yeah.

Fantastic, thanks for sharing that with us.

What I loved about that little story there was kind of the building trade analogy because kind of if in doubt, you you work on complex projects and, you know, multi-stakeholder environments and, know, complex corporate organizations. And if in doubt, take it back to first principles, basically, you know, how would you build your house? How would you build your extension? How would you renovate a room? How would you do your kitchen? When you break it back down, it's quite simple, but people like to kind of overcomplicate it and, you know, multiple stakeholders and all that.

So I always love a house building analogy, really, really useful. you've obviously done... Sorry, Piki, go on, interrupt me.

No, and said, and that is, like, sort of, for me, that's, like I said, first principles, and that's the one that people can always, or nine times out of ten, can resonate with.

Speaker 1 (04:41.142)
Yeah, definitely, definitely. So you've had such a wide variation of experience across your career. You talked about testing, talked about PMO, you talked about project management, change management, everything in between different industries and so on. So really kind of fascinating, of, know, smorgasbord of experience. Kind of what are some of the most impactful projects that you've worked on that you've really kind of, you know, I know that some projects I walk away from and the job is done.

but the feeling is not there. And then other projects I walk away from and it's filled my cup, so to speak. So what are the really impactful ones that you've worked on?

So, and like you said, worked across a lot of industries. So, man and boy in financial services for over 25 years. And then since I sort of went contracting and consultancy, I've covered so many different like sort of industries. I think...

Quite often, you're frustrated particularly on the regulatory stuff for financial services, but you do feel a bit of an achievement or a lot of achievement once you've actually sort of brought that to life. But I think for me, you know, the ones that really sort of float my boat are the ones that were your helping customers. So the last 12, 18 months, I've been working with a few clients in relation to the dreaded CRM, so customer relationship management tools. And I think

Quite often I've gone in there when they've already implemented it and they've said, we've implemented this, it's not made any difference or people haven't adopted it. So I've done two or three pieces of work about readoption of CRM and you go in there, you do a bit of lessons learned and you find out that the people haven't been part of that journey at the start of it. And that back in the 1850s, when I first started off on my project management journey, one of the best pieces of advice given to me was,

Speaker 2 (06:41.484)
people, then processes, then technology in that order. If you haven't got your people involved right from the get-go, even if it might be a small amount, you need to make sure that they are involved, they've got input, they feel like they're bought in, you've got your advocates, network, champions, whatever you want to call them, because at the end of the day, they're the people that will get you to be successful, because if they're telling their mates how great it is,

then everybody wants a piece of the action. they're telling them, they're not listening to us and it's going to be crap, sorry, poor, then, you we're going to, we're going to, you know, you're onto a loser there. So three clients in the last two years, I would say, I've gone back in there and we've gone back to first principles and said, right, okay, what is it that it's not doing for you? But more than...

But the senior stakeholders, what is it you're trying to drive here? What's your outcomes rather than, right, well, we just want to, you know, put a system in, right? Well, is it a better customer experience? What's your customer journey? What's your customer experience? What's your benchmark? All that kind of stuff. No, and the last three that I've done, you know, we've gone from 10, 20 % adoption to 95 % adoption, whereby the...

the senior managers are getting the right reports out there. They can see what activities they can see customer satisfaction. can see, know, uplifting sales. They can see performance levels. Generally the people are loving it because rather than, you know, having something done to them, they feel part of it and they feel really invested in it. And that's, think where you, you know, that's when you walk away and go, do you know what? I've left this in a much better place.

And quite often people are just frustrated and quite often people have been saying, I've been saying this for months and nobody's listened to me, why are they listening to you? And my feedback to them is they have listened to you, that's why I'm here.

Speaker 1 (08:46.326)
Yeah, yeah. It's so fascinating, isn't it? And I see organizations just like repeatedly, even the most mature organizations repeatedly making these mistakes around being system led with their thinking, know, chucking in our system because they think it's gonna, you know, the system alone is gonna derive the business benefit or benefits realization and not again taking it back to the why.

And if you're watching on video, and I know you're all over this, Vicky, but I just thought I'd put this up, because we've got our ABCDE way, is our kind of project and change management framework. And the very first part of it, the A stands for aim. And it's about writing down that why, why, why do you want to do this? What's it going to bring to the organization?

It's your outcomes, isn't it? Definitely. What do you want differently? And do you know what, Matt? I was at a conference earlier this week. And one of the things that was raised was about AI. And since then, you know, I was listening on the way home on the train to a news night because, that was all I could manage to get on the Wi-Fi on Avante. And they were talking about AI. then in the

you know, in the local, the recent news in the last couple of days, the government's looking at, you know, we can do AI because we're going to be able to be more effective, blah, blah, blah. And I worry, Mark, I worry that people think that AI is going to solve everything and they're not using it for what they want to drive, what outcomes that they want, you know, and I worry that senior stakeholders and budget decision makers are going to turn around and go, right, actually,

You know, we don't need 15 people to do this anymore. AI can do it all. And we've got three. AI is a tool. It's not, you know, and it's going to have some great impacts in terms of healthcare and that kind of stuff. But from a, you know, from a people processes, customers, technology, that kind of stuff, we need to be really, really careful on this. You know, we've seen so much where people are using chat GPT to write documents. For me.

Speaker 2 (11:03.432)
use it, it's a great tool, it's great for a start for 10, it gets you thinking. It is not the, you know, right, I can do a contract or I can, you know, write a paper or a proposal on this because, you know, that's where you lose your experience and added value. And I'm sure that in time AI will evolve and, know, it will learn how to do much more of that. But at the minute, we just need to be really, really careful.

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.

So we will meander off perhaps into the future in a little bit, but bringing it back to sort of the present, I thought it was really fascinating the way you said about the last two or three projects that you worked on have been around that kind of lack of user engagement and kind of user adoption of new products that have been put into organizations. And particularly in a time whereby a lot of kind of software or system implementation is more kind of software as a service based rather than it's been built using user requests.

Speaker 1 (12:17.279)
Why do you think is that organisations don't engage users early doors? Do you think it's because they just don't know that's what you do?

People will just come along for the ride anyway. Do they have other thoughts? Why do you think organizations make those mistakes?

So sources for courses, think. At the end of the day, I've gone into consultant speak there. Let's play buzzword bingo. It's different reasons with different organizations, right? So I've worked in the last three. One's been in the music industry. One's been in commercial waste removal.

and one has been in pharmaceuticals, right? So that's three completely different organizations and industries, right? All of them, without exception say, our people haven't got time to get involved in this because they've got so much and you know, they're all under pressure. They haven't got time to get involved in it. And it's like back in our days in HBOS, someone gave me a great piece of advice that says,

We always say we haven't got time to do it right, but we always seem to have time to do it twice. Yeah. And it's time pressure and it's cost and it's they're really busy doing other stuff. But when you go in there, right. you know, having done a bit of business analysts and process redesign and all that jazz, you look at it and it's. They have got time because they're moaning to their mates about.

Speaker 1 (13:35.468)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:59.598)
how busy they are and by the time, if you stopped them talking about how busy they are and say like, tell me why you're busy, tell me how I can help, then you're gonna, you you've got that opportunity. And it's the same with testing. It's like, oh, we can only add these two people to do the testing, but do they know that job? And testing is not just about validating the system. Testing is about that journey of getting your users enthused and excited and wanting to adopt this stuff and telling, like I say,

their colleagues and whoever, this thing's coming, it's gonna be great. Change delivery is sort of, like I said, my sweet spot. People ask me, come in and go, right, okay, right, so coms plan, right, how many newsletters are you gonna write? How many emails, what's your regularity of emails? Can you do a pack for the senior leadership to present? And it's like, that's one of the reasons where you've gone,

How many people in organizations, particularly Permistaff, get a myriad of emails every day that's like, here's an announcement on this and here's an announcement on that. And you go, right, I put them to my Friday morning meeting when it's a bit quieter and they never get round to it. That's publication one way communication. And you know that this is my soapbox, Mark, in terms of engagement. It's about people.

Not listening to your people or partly listening to them or sticking plasters, I would say.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. I think it's just so interesting how, you know, in an age whereby we've got, you know, the cost of kind of software.

Speaker 1 (15:46.638)
reducing down to such a low, low point and adoption of it is so easy versus the old days when you're kind of writing code from scratch that we're still not taking time to properly take people on the journey. Yeah, happening over and over. yeah, but keeps us in gainful employment, right, Vicky?

And you know what, another piece of advice, I'm going to do my top 10 sort of tips and advice and put it on LinkedIn. The other one was that when I was getting frustrated with, there was a team of us that were helping to deliver an initiative. And they said, look, if they were good, and if they knew what they were doing, we wouldn't be working.

Yeah, yeah. It's, know, everyone's got their specialism, haven't they? And change management seems to be one which is considered perhaps, you know, warm and fluffy, but it's actually the secret sauce that makes it all happen and the benefits get realized. you've mentioned, interestingly, and I was gonna come onto this next two or three sort of top tips that people from your past have kind of mentioned to you. And one of the things I always like to talk about with guests is kind of mentorship and growth.

And so you've obviously interacted with some fabulous people over your time and taking away some memorable sound bites and stuff. So from that kind of the mentor side, who along your journey, name check them or not, who along your journey did you look to to try and help you move forward and learn the next step? How did you go about getting a mentor? Was it formal or informal?

So, I think it's just, you listen and sometimes it's, people have said things to you and it's one of those things where...

Speaker 2 (17:38.304)
If you're not in the right frame of mind or you're not looking for that piece of information, you probably miss it. And it's one of those where, you know, I probably have had three or four people that have really sort of impacted me in terms of my career and development. you know, one in particular who is an old HBOSS program director, Martin Green, he's retired now.

and I'm sure a few people listening to this will go, I know Martini. He saw something in me, I think,

He encouraged my flair, enthusiasm, my creativity, but he also tried to not temper it, but channel it and make sure that it was used in the right way. And he made sure that I was on.

pieces of work where I could really add value. I know that there was one piece of work when we were in the Wealth and International Foot and Loise Banking Group and it was a green field division. it was basically anything that didn't fit into retail, commercial, insurance group sort of all got bundled into this. And so we were sort of creating this.

looking at how we could make it work. was lots of synergies there because Lloyd's NH boss had very similar businesses. And there was one piece of work which was around the financial compensation scheme after the crash whereby basically the government would underwrite a certain amount of money based on banking licenses. And we had an organization in Germany that actually came under the umbrella. And it was one of those things that

Speaker 2 (19:37.88)
just the project managers just couldn't get it right. Anyway, Martin called me into his office and said, hey, go over to Berlin and don't come back until it's fixed. And at that point I knew, he knew he could trust me with a quite technical regulatory project. And you know, I did a lot of regulatory stuff in a language I didn't understand with people I've never spoken to before. And he knew them very well.

And it was that level of trust that that person had in me, know, and part of it was, you know, how long's a piece of string? And he was like, it needs to be done. It will stop the bank from doing what we need to do if you don't sort it. And it's like, right, okay. So, you know, he's one, there's a couple of other people that probably can't name for a couple of reasons. But, you know, those people that,

take the time and see something in you. But equally, there's people that, like I say, I've worked with and I've just taken those little nuggets and thought, hmm, do you know what? Like people, processes, technology. I guess my biggest mentor is not with us anymore, is my dad. And his best piece of advice to me was things happen for a reason. And having gone through,

started work for a subsidiary of Bank of Scotland that then moved into Bank of Scotland that then moved into HBOS, that then moved into Lloyds Banking Group. And there was always synergies and redundancies as part of that. And my brother said, I don't know why you worry when these things happen because you always come out with a better job. You always come out with a more interesting job.

Speaker 2 (21:34.642)
goes back to what my dad instilled in me and my brother was, things happen for a reason. know, our bumping into each other after sort of crossing paths and coming to this, you know, that, you know, not karma, it's one of those things that at the end of the day, things happen for a reason.

I agree with that very strongly and I think I just want to dwell on it just for a second because what you know at this moment in the economic cycle I know that there's quite a few

people, consultants, contractors, you know, looking for work. think things have improved in the last couple of months from a few months before that. But I know a lot of people have been through sort of very, very challenging times and we all go through challenging times in our career and our personal life and everything. And I think when it's very easy, isn't it? When you get outside advice saying, you know, you'll be fine. And it's quite hard to accept at the time when you're kind of in the ship, basically in the thick of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think we have too many under 18s listening.

into this podcast, we're probably on safe ground. But yeah, think it's easy to kind of say, oh, you'll be all right. And maybe that is true, but I think as well, one of the things that I've definitely found is kind of having empathy for those people who are feeling that thing in the moment and can't see that it's gonna be better when in actual fact, if you step back, if you take that time to step back, you can see that it's gonna be better for someone. Doesn't necessarily make it,

better for that person in the moment. But you're right, if you consistently apply the right values, you will come out of the other side of it. So if you are in that situation at the moment, looking for work, feel like it's a never-ending kind of struggle up the hill. Just basically keep going is what you need to do.

Speaker 2 (23:24.108)
So I think there's a couple of pieces of advice that I've been sort of absorbed maybe over time is you can have whatever you want, but at a price. Yes. Right. Yeah. So, you know, nothing in this world is for free. And if you want to do this particular role, then these are the, these are the things that you will have to, you know, pay.

Yeah.

And then the other thing is, you know, what's the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again? But equally, you know, scientists have done the same thing over and over and over again, but eventually come out with a different outcome. So, you you're conflicted there in terms of insanity doing the same thing over and over again, or, you know, keep at it and you'll crack it. And it's that.

Yeah.

It's that sweet spot of those two of knowing or listening to advice of when you've when you flogging the dead off, I guess. know, and it has been incredibly tough. I've been really lucky that even in those down times where I haven't had a piece of work to do, I've had that financial cushion. So I've been OK.

Speaker 2 (24:52.35)
And I've kept myself busy doing other stuff, including voluntary work. Because at the end of the day, just keeping it rather than, you're telling what is a great piece of advice that somebody not too far away once gave me is don't be sitting in your underwear watching homes under the hammer. Get out there and do something. So, right. So.

And I think that, you you need to plan for those downtimes and think, right, if I've got this time down, what am going to do with that time? And another piece of advice was don't pay a gardener or a decorator or a builder. Don't avoid paying a decorator, a gardener a builder by taking time off and your day rate. Equate your day rate with what you would pay for them. But equally, if you're down,

and you're not doing stuff, take that opportunity to do something else, to do those jobs so that, know, you, gardening's one of my sort of pleasures and my sort of things to vent my spleen on and get my frustrations out. Other people think that gardening's the world's biggest pain in the neck. So do your gardening for the right reason, but equally, pay somebody to come in and do the weeding and stuff.

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:16.928)
when you're working, but if you're not working, do that instead and think about how the different sort of financial challenges that you've got. So that's a couple of pieces of advice that you've given me. There's a long way around of saying it, so well done.

Thank you very much, Vicky. I'd like to get into that because I think the majority of the audience are listening to this podcast because they are, vast majority contractors, a vast majority looking for of help tips, advice on how to kind of win consistent work. So I want to delve into the piece that we did together. But before I kind of segue off into that, just going back to the mentor topic, what I wanted to ask you is obviously now having had the experience that you've had and you

gained all those pieces that you have. Do you actively look for kind of mentees or do people approach you to be their mentor and how does that help you in your career as well?

Yeah, not nothing officially, but I'm more than happy to sort of if anybody wants to reach out and sort of have a chat and sort of, you know, talk through stuff and have that sort of more formal informal approach, I'd be delighted. Where I think that from my sort of help and development is I like to think that when I've gone into an organization, I've left where

I can see at least one person have taken some of the work that we've done together and done a step change in terms of what they're doing in terms of their own personal development and also within the organisation. So I like to leave places in a, sounds quite trite, in a better place than when I started. And I think as a result of that, I get a lot.

Speaker 2 (28:10.808)
quite a bit of repeat work when sometimes I think, know, I haven't got anything that's coming through the pipeline. Some of will ring up and go, have you got a couple of weeks that you could come in and do something for us? Or this person is really struggling on this. you come in and do the piece of work and work alongside them? And I think that's when I wake up in the morning and think, get in. I'm really sort of connected there.

Definitely, definitely. Well, it can't all just be about the money, right? It's got to kind of fill your emotional needs and your purpose needs. yeah, some of those things are some of the most fulfilling parts of this role. And certainly that's what I find anyway. I'm sure others will resonate with that. What I'd like to move on to next, Vicky, is kind of how the time where we kind of worked together a few years back, where I think I'm right in saying, but correct me if I'm wrong, but before 2019,

I our company path had interweaved a little bit, but I don't think we'd actually crossed paths and spoken. But in 2019, I put a little thing out on LinkedIn about some contractor training. Rather than me explain, I'd love you to recall how you came across that and what you thought about that as a potential opportunity.

Yeah, so I like to reference myself as your guinea pig for that. So I can't remember how it happened, but I know that you were based in the Northwest at the time, in sunny Flesher. And so we could have a couple of face to face meetings, which pre sort of COVID and teens and all that jazz was normally just telephone calls if it wasn't face to face. And it was a, you know,

I'm looking for a couple of people to see, I want to sort of run some ideas on, know, getting into contracting and sort of help some hints and tips. Got in touch and then it was a case of, right, okay, want to look at some informal stuff, some practical help, hints and tips, but also some sort of more formal training and classroom, you know, stuff. And I think that

Speaker 2 (30:28.344)
You know, the things that both sides of that really helped. I left the bank in 2015. I've done a bit of contracting. I've set my company up, you know, addicted to it. And it felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall with the agencies and just couldn't really get anything sort of concrete for more than, you know, was getting in front of

potential clients and it just fell at the last hurdle. So I think you looked at my CV, we went through all of that and I found that really helpful. Not just the structure, but, let's look at it, but also maybe have two or three flavors of your CV so that pull out specifics dependent on the type of role or industry that you're going into. And so we did quite a bit of that.

It was also about how to find out how to find your roles. So, you know, the jobs boards, yeah, probably 1 % of the time you'll get something on the job board, but they're still there. Use LinkedIn in the right way. Use your network. Develop, you your persona on LinkedIn. Make sure that you're posting that you're regular on there. And I think that if people check my LinkedIn,

It's still, you said you need some a bit quirky and a bit different. And I thought, careful what you ask for there, Mark. So my quirky individual is you'll see that my strap line includes an expert in knitting spaghetti and nailing jelly to a wall. And do you know what? It goes back to what one of the mentors, Martin Green, that we talked about earlier on, know, encourage that.

individualism and enthusiasm and expertise, but keep it professional. But the amount of people that go, you're the jelly woman, you know, and it's all about having that bit of difference about it. So I think that that was really good in terms of the practical tips and, you know, use your network, the agencies and a lot of.

Speaker 2 (32:51.342)
advice about how the agencies work as well and you know the fact that they're not necessarily ghosting you although I do think that we went through a time where the agencies were like right if you're not available right now you know I'm not interested in you and I think all of that kind of stuff that you talk about is really useful so I would absolutely encourage people to engage with you on that kind of stuff and then the

stuff that we did the trial run of the training course back in London and I remember going home and I was on the train and for some reason there was an issue with the aircon so people were sat there literally in their underpants and I'm thinking God, because it was sweating, blobs were literally...

no no shirt no nothing on it was absolutely roasting and i thought god all we need to do is and now they need to start blasting homes under the hammer through and for those of you that don't know that marks homes under the hammer that unique that's why you need to sign i sound like a sponsored by

Ha ha ha!

I think that, you know, it's that, the practical tips, it's also the look at what your whys are and why you're doing this and be flexible. Look at the financial purpose of it. Don't turn down a piece of work because you think you're worth more than that. Because, and I said, but am I underselling myself? And what about my next role when they look at that? And you said,

Speaker 2 (34:34.446)
Look, the difference is it's not like where a permanent role, they'll ask you what your salary is and give you an extra 5 % or 10 % or whatever. You know, your next client won't know what your last day rate is. But I think that the sweet spot there is to make sure that you do get the right rate and you do answer the right, not so that you don't blow yourself out of the water, but equally,

people don't think, if she's only asking for X number of pounds, she can't be that good. That's the thing. So yeah, so there's a whole load of stuff that we covered. And I say, thanks ever so much for all the top tips, the training, the CV stuff, how agencies work and what their mindset is. There's a whole load of stuff there. yeah, does that?

It does, yeah. mean, we've actually, yeah, we said that the 12 week.

Program is when we originally credit created this training course and took you know, the original cohort through through as a trial run and we had it as a 12-week program with two kind of face-to-face days to go through the practical learning and then a Supported 12 weeks of okay when we originally set it we called it perm to contract and it was targeted at people who were thinking about making the leap from being permanently employed to being a contract and the idea was Start the program 12 weeks later you're in contract and that the first four people

one all had contracts at the end of it which was extremely satisfying and that was in kind of like autumn 2019. They were just kind of ramping up to kind of turn this into a regular product and then good old Covid came along and that went on pause for a while. What we've actually done subsequently Vicky is we've made the entire kind of course available online and for free. We've not followed it through in terms of having kind of managed programs but that's something that we're thinking about re-

Speaker 1 (36:34.412)
relaunch, a couple of people have actually asked me about it and stuff. we might do something around that. I think it'd be really worthwhile for people.

Right, you know, being a change person for adoption stuff, would, you know, there's a blend. People learn in different ways. And yeah, get, you know, there's a lot of technology out there and a lot of tools that we can use.

But I would say the power is the voice and the face and the listening and that two-way engagement. Communication might be two-way, otherwise it's publication-wise. There's hints and tips you can get and you can go through the whole process and the online training. But for me,

nothing is more powerful than those sessions that we had. And like it was, we did the review of the CV, we did review of LinkedIn, we did the look at your approach for how you make sure that every day you set so much time to do X, Y, Z. Then there was the two face-to-face team sessions you can do them now. And I think it's that whole, it's the blend of that that was so powerful.

And maybe that's just me, maybe that's my learning style, I don't know. I would say, I would absolutely say, if you're looking at doing that again, go for it.

Speaker 1 (38:09.838)
I will think I'll take you up on that advice. I think, well, because I enjoy doing it as well. And what it is, is it's getting the right balance between the cost of delivery, because obviously, putting that level of time into it, you know, to make my time available to people, you know, there's a cost associated and so, so yeah, I would love to do that. I think, yeah, watch this space, I think is the answer to that question.

The value for the delegates is enormous.

Thank you, thank you for saying that. I really, really appreciate it. Okay, back to you then and the future I'd like to talk about. So you've obviously, you've been on the path that you've been on. You've had all that great experience, cross sector, cross role. What next? What are the unticked boxes for Vicky? What do you want to still achieve?

I want to work in more industries. So I've worked in the civil service. I led the international arrivals for Red Amber Green for track and trace, which was really interesting. And I went back to my roots of contact centers and I said to my sort of sponsor, look, it's sort of over 20 years since I, 25 years since I ran a contact center. It's just like riding a bike, just get on with it and crack off. It's like, then.

Speaker 2 (39:28.654)
But like I I want to work in different industries. I would love to go back to doing more international, global, cultural activity. know, working in Melbourne International, like I said, in the Lloyd's days, that was great. It was a lot less glamorous than people thought in terms of, know, Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore on the way back. you know, you'd be in Amsterdam or wherever the following week.

But I love working with all those different cultures. I love working with how different people operate. More recently, I worked with an organization where they were domiciled in Berlin and Amsterdam, both places I'd worked with previously, including don't come back till you've sorted the FSC nonsense out. And even, you know, those countries are so close to each other, yet they are so different in how they work.

And that's what I love. I love working and understanding and finding out, know, these people just aren't getting it. How can I work with them, you know, to get them to be more successful? So that for me is very much, at the moment, the landscape and opportunities, I think that we're going through a bit of a roller coaster. I know you said,

the last couple of months, things seem to have picked up. I don't know whether in the last two or three weeks where we're going to be, because I think that there's a lot of stuff coming out. Equally, announcements that the government have said, there's probably opportunity there now for the public sector to bring in private sector approach people. And when I've gone in there, that's why they like me to go in there, is because it's like, bring a different, you know,

mindset to things about how we can do it. So you know I'd love to go back into the private sector, the public sector as well but it's one of those things where

Speaker 2 (41:40.75)
I'm lost for words really. terms of, I'm just sort of taking a couple of weeks out just to sort of, this time of year is great for the garden. So that's my short-term focus. The other thing that I really love doing is working with two or three clients at the same time and a bit more fractional work. So I think for me, it's the fractional work. And it's also working with smaller clients that can't afford, you know, full-time contractors, consultants, permies.

to do the work that I need to do. So I am starting to look at how I can market myself more in that sort of space of, know, let me come in, do a couple of days a month with you. Let's look at planning out a journey for that. So there is a couple of people that I'm sort of talking to at the moment or talking with at the moment in terms of what I can do for them, which are not insignificant size organizations, but

but don't need that full time change project resource. And I think that for me is my sweet spot is, know, going in there, helping them to spin up what they need to do in terms of what their five year strategy is, what the roadmap is for that and how can I help them to deliver that. And that's where I'd like to do, I guess, is two or three clients at the same time, maybe some more global and cultural stuff.

maybe some different industries that I haven't worked in at the moment, but it's SIGS.

Tremendous. think one of the big takeaways for me about everything that you've shared with us today is in an age where kind of technology adoption is accelerating and AI is only going to get exponentially better and who knows where that revolution societally will take us and everything else. But those people skills, that people side of change, the change management side, that doesn't feel like...

Speaker 1 (43:40.846)
certainly in a mid or even a longer term time horizon, is going to be something that is going to be easily replaced. Maybe play this back in five years and see if that's still true, but it doesn't feel like something that's to be easily replaced by technology and tools. so, those skills in your tool belt, improving on those, perhaps not focusing 100 % of your...

career on mechanical project management or mechanical business analysis and more focusing on the people side, the emotional impacts, the whole change management curve that all those sides of skills is probably going to stand you in good stead. you concur with that Vicky?

Yeah, right. So going back to like sort of pre, you know, sort of my real career where, you know, worked in Freeman, Ardewillis, flogging shoes and shoe polish and working behind a bar and, you know, pulling pints and whatever. And then into sort of financial sales, people buy people first. Right. And that's your first principle. Right. And at the end of the day, you know, people want it goes back to the start of the

the conversation that we've had whereby, you know, unless you listen to people and unless you deliver what they want or help them to understand where you're going and why you're doing it, you might as well give up and go home. You know, the amount of times we've seen systems put in and then three years taken out because they haven't adopted it because they haven't engaged with the people. And that's, I guess, not passionately is that

You know, having done projects, portfolio, PMO, change, know, system support, all of that kind of stuff, the golden thread there is the people, you know, engage with them, understand what their challenges are. And, you know, also acknowledge that you haven't got all the answers to everything. Quite a lot of the time, you're there to help them.

Speaker 2 (45:49.026)
get what their answers are. It's the old, here we go back to buzzword bingo, give us your watch and I'll tell you the time. Quite often it's just you're playing it back to them in a different way or asking a few different questions. They're probably 80 % of the way there of what they're doing and why they're doing it. They just haven't been able to formulate it and do that sales pitch.

Yeah, wise words indeed. And I think that's how we'll wrap it up. A great, enjoyable conversation as always with you, Vic. I always enjoy catching up with you and speaking with you. Always got great, insights. And yeah, if people want to find you for your kind mentorship offer or your next fractional gig, where will they find you? Jelly woman?

Yeah, if you look out for me on LinkedIn, I'm sure that in the comments you'll put my LinkedIn.

I will indeed. it's Vicky Hyam, Victoria Hyam. And she's an expert at knitting spaghetti and nailing jelly to the wall, amongst other projective change management skills. So thank you very much for your time, Vicky. Thanks for sharing. Cheers, Vicky. Cheers.

Okay, great. Bye. Take care. Bye.