Leadership, AI & Project Success with Benjamin Rebeske | #LeadWithLegacy | Episode 26

What causes projects to stall?

According to Benjamin Rebeske, it is not usually budget, timelines, or resources.
It is a lack of conviction.

In Episode 26 of the Lead with Legacy™ Podcast, Amanda Chambers and K. Sloane Lott sit down with Benjamin Rebeske, CEO of Corbeau® Tech and founder of Project Success Academy®, to discuss project success, leadership, AI adoption, organizational transformation, and the future of work.

Drawing from nearly three decades of experience leading large-scale technology transformations, enterprise PMOs, and nine-figure programs, Ben shares practical insights on why projects fail, how leaders can create conviction within teams, and why every professional needs to begin developing AI skills now.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why projects fail despite having talented teams
• The role conviction plays in project success
• Leadership through influence and servant leadership
• The importance of allowing teams to learn and fail safely
• AI adoption and the future workforce
• Building organizational trust and transparency
• The story behind the Crow's Nest platform
• Leadership lessons from Mr. Rogers
• Developing people through technology and innovation
• Creating a culture of project success

This conversation is packed with practical leadership insights for project managers, executives, business owners, and professionals navigating today's rapidly changing workplace.

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Connect with Benjamin Rebeske:

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminrebeske/

Corbeau LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/corbeautech/

Corbeau Website:
https://corbeautech.com/

Corbeau YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@CorbeauTech

Project Success Academy Website:
https://projectsuccessacademy.com/

Project Success Academy YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@ProjectSuccess_Academy

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Lead with Legacy, the official podcast of IOL Global. Here we will explore leadership that outlives titles and trends. Through conversations with faith-based and marketplace leaders, we will discuss integrity, conviction, and purpose. To learn more about us, visit us at iOLglobal.com. Hello, and welcome to the Lead with Legacy Podcast. We're so glad to have you here. I am here with my director of operations, Sloan Lott, and Mr. Benjamin Rebeski. And for those who don't know him, I'm going to let him introduce himself in a minute and tell you who he is. So just shamelessly plugging everything, go and like and follow us and all those subscribe and all those things so that you can hear more about what we have going on and the people that we have on the show. We are literally everywhere, thanks to Sloan. Somewhere on YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, all the things. You can go to our website at iolglobal.com and you can click every link to get to every one of those to get on your favorite platform. Without further ado, Mr. Benjamin Rubeschi, what an honor to have you on with us today. So, Ben, tell us who you are, where are you from? What are you about? And tell us a little bit about Corbo Tech.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Thanks, uh Amanda Sloan. It's great to be here. I am an absolutely shameless advocate of IOL Global and what you represent. I think from the standpoint of great service, clear communication, strong partnership, and let's be honest, ethics in an age where sometimes people lose sight of what's important in relationships and trust and the greater mission. It's just such a delight to have a partner like you and your team, IOL Global, uh working with Corbeau, which I'll talk about has a very, very similar mission. As we enter into this well, you some say exciting age, some say terrifying age of an AI forward or technology forward economy, it's important more than ever to keep in mind the human side, the connection side, and the focus about why we have all this technology, right? Rather than just getting locked into you know some sort of mechanical, let's just do it for the sake of of doing it. So we'll talk a little bit about that and the importance of wellness and relationship, but I can't think of a stronger example of team up and reliable partnership than with the two of you and and your team. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

So a little bit about Ben.

SPEAKER_03 2:29

I've actually been in project and program management my entire career.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

First job out of school was with Microsoft. This is dating myself back into Windows 95, Windows 98 days doing help desk, and I worked my way up to a technical advisor and then war manager, and then eventually actually to a project manager. And that's when the journey began. And I fell in love with the concept of project management. I helped with the implementation of the Windows 2000 uh support team rollout. So help desk, knowledge base, phone staffing, uh support models, all of those things. And I had a lot of fun doing that, being a techie since I was a kid, building my own PCs, you know, the old 286 days, playing with Atari's and Commodores and all of those things. So I've just always enjoyed tech, and it felt like a perfect combination of puzzle solving and technology. And so the concept of my career has always been doing large-scale technology transformations and implementations, international, complex, big SAT, Oracle, Microsoft data centers, those kind of things. And the thing I love about projects is it's always something new, right? I just couldn't see myself being one of those just do the mechanical things. Ironically, now, of course, that's what AI is going to help us take care of in the future, is those mechanical things and open us up more to, I would think, a project success mindset, but project methodology mindset, but we're always thinking about our mission, our objectives, the value that we want to achieve. And so I think this mindset of project management is becoming more and more prevalent, and so Corvo is founded. And we have two areas of focus to help out the community. We've got our consulting firm, Corvo Tech, which is a technology forward, executive PMO, uh transformation and project management advisory team. And we actually have, we learned so much by delivering so many successful programs and PMOs that we found in the Project Success Academy. So we could bring those technologies, those approaches, those success stories to individual practitioners so that we could create people who are trying to bolster their careers in the marketplace, particularly in a time of great change. We're helping people navigate that. So excited to be here. Love talking, shop about it. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Yeah, no, we're super excited to have you here and truly so honored to do work with you guys. Um, it has been a great ride. I it's been really, really fun. We I was actually on a another show earlier this morning, and we were talking about how much I admire you and the way that you lead your team, and that we're all given such an opportunity to learn and grow and develop. And it's something that I truly admire about you. And I'm I've been waiting on this podcast for a long time. We had it scheduled. We had a reschedule, and and so I've been waiting to have this conversation with you. Um all right, so we're gonna fire off a few questions. I'll I'll start us out. You've said that it all started with failed projects. What patterns have kept showing up and what finally made you decide to do something about it?

SPEAKER_02 5:35

Yeah, I we'll talk a little bit about the the value behind projects. I've always just been that that kind of kid that love solving puzzles, right? So Lego sets and making things fit and you know, traditional puzzles, you know, on the table and all of those things. And I love those, you know, puzzle game type things, and I that just kind of carried into uh I think my vocation. Well, it's being a custodian, having the privilege to lead these transformation programs, these complex projects from beginning to end, because they're all motivated by somebody's vision, someone's dream, whether it be safety, even regulatory, you're building a bridge or it's far line, you're trying to find the next helpful cure for some obscure disease, or you're trying to solve supply chain issues to get water to underdeveloped townships or things like that. All of these are driven by projects. And so sometimes we forget that the team members who take on the mantle of ushering a project from beginning through that journey to that destination of realizing a value, a dream, an advancement, and evolution, that is a big responsibility when you take it very seriously. And I've been passionate about that since the very beginning because I see it as one solving a puzzle, how can I get from A to B? It's an adventure, right? Every time. And it and even if you do the same kind of project, it's different every time. So I I tend to enjoy that. But also the the feeling you get, of course, of being a servant leader and having an opportunity to work with real creative, smart, talented, experienced people. I've said this before and I and I continue to say this, but I love that I don't have to be the genius. I don't have to be the one that comes up with these projects. I just have to help you get there. And I just love that.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

So we have the opportunity to see you put that into action daily. And it's it's really amazing. And yeah, you're right. Every project is different, right? It's not all the same. Um and they all have different nuances, even if like we're trying to accomplish similar goals or whatever, the project itself is different, the team may be different. So we kind of have to work around that a little bit and and be adaptable to those things. Um, and then again be adaptable in this age of AI where we're transitioning into some other things and we have other opportunities to utilize tools that we didn't have before. And it's it's a lot of fun. We're we're having a lot of fun with it. It's really good. I'll let Sloane take it away for a little bit and let her talk, and we'll give her an opportunity to ask some questions that she has.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Absolutely. So I do want to comment on that. It seems like as a project manager, if you're gonna be a good one, right, there's a certain level of humility that you've got to have because it's not about us, right? It's the project. And like you say, I'm not coming up with the cure, I'm not developing the technology, I'm getting you to that place. And so you really have to have a lot of humility to that. I think if if you're not willing to be there in the background and lead, you know, by by serving, that's it's gonna make it tough. I don't I don't know. I think it would be really hard if you couldn't go with it from that standpoint. But I do want to talk about some of the bigger things that you've built. So you've built enterprise PMOs from the ground up and led nine-figure programs at that scale. What is the real reason projects stall? And why is it rarely the thing that organizations think it is?

SPEAKER_02 9:09

I think Sloan, um, and this gets back to the original pain question. You know, one of the things that breaks my heart as someone who takes being a custodian of the success of these projects so seriously is the cost of failure. I have nearly 30 years of failure, some of them quite quite painful. Wasting money, overruns, complete project cancellation, not because it was a smart business decision, but because we just could not achieve what was expected of us and all of those things. And it's heartbreaking, it's frustrating. You know, myself and many of my peers, we take that to heart, and that that can kind of eat you after a while, right? You're trying to make a difference, implement a new clinic for a hospital chain, right? Or establish new security uh for uh volunteer um organizations, help, you know, the ones like food banks and things like that. And when you stub your toe or you stall or you miss, you know, you you can kind of invest in that. And that became a driver for we've got there's got to be a better, faster, smarter, safer way to do these things. And so myself, some other seasoned program, project, and portfolio managers got together and we started to think about, you know, is there a way to scale this? So you asked about you know the $1 billion transformation programs, all the way down actually to even smaller ones. We started to realize that the common ingredient behind it, these failures, sure, one could attribute to your traditional elements that, oh, it was over budget, it was overscheduled, we were under-resourced. These are mechanically true, but what we finally realized was it's actually time to making informed decisions. Let's every project's a journey, so I'm gonna use the road trip analogy a lot during that call today, just because I think it's easy, we all understand it. If you're going on a road trip to grandma's for Christmas and your exit is coming up, and you delay turning on the blinker and merging over and getting on that exit, you're gonna miss the exit. And these big transformation programs, they have very capable steering committees, very capable team members, but there's such a disconnect in communication and awareness between the decision makers and the team members that by the time everyone's informed on budget impact, schedule impact, I need people to work this weekend, by the time that gets to a steering committee or the board or the shareholders, it's already been a month and regarding Mr. Edit. That's what's killing projects. It's time to inform decision making. It's empowering our leaders at every level, from the team, a scrum master all the way up to the CEO, every team member within their level of authority and influence needs to be able to make timely and informed decisions. Now, I'm not saying you're gonna make perfect decisions, and I'm not saying you're not gonna make mistakes, but not being able to steer the wheel, metaphorically speaking, I think is what causes people to kind of miss opportunities to take corrective action, or dare I dream, just stay on course, right? Or adjust proactively. Right? What if it was more like you know you take a road trip and you know there's construction ahead and you avoid the construction, right? So those metaphors kind of drive how we want to lead these massive transformation programs, is bring visibility up, um, and even have a sense of involvement or responsibility. Every project man uh project participant from the janitor to the CEO by having everyone in the road trip in the car, in the minivan, in the road trip, everyone can see what's going on outside the window. They all have a part in the journey, even if they're in the back watching the movie on an iPad, metaphorically speaking, everybody's in the car on the journey. We all have a stake in the outcome of the journey, and we can all participate in our our own different ways. So I think that's the that's the vision we're trying to bring forward is this sense of ownership, if you will, in all projects. I'm not talking about fancy tools, we're not even talking about AI yet. These these are all things that are going to help us on that road trip, so to speak. But we need to remember that we're all in the car for a reason and we're all going on a road trip to reach a destination for a very valuable, important reason. So I don't know if that answers your question, Swan, but I think it's all about getting everyone involved in the trip.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

You always have the best analogies. And if you don't know all the lingo or all the jargon and you're just wanting to get into this and you're wanting to explore what project management is, you need to be listening to Ben. You need to be listening, stuff following his stuff from Corbeau, seeing what PSA is doing. He he's helped me understand, so he can help anyone understand. So yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Yeah, always really good analogies, and I love that too. I think, I think we've talked about this on some other recordings that we've done as well, and I wanted to kind of step in on this. It's important, like you said, to give the team the opportunity and the autonomy to make these decisions. And also it's important that they know that it's okay sometimes that we're gonna fail because that's how we learn. And I know we've talked about that a bit on other stuff, but it I think that's important to say those leaders out there who are so afraid or so unwilling to let their teams fail are really failing their teams because that is how a lot of us learn. I know for me over the years, that is how I've been able to learn the best is sometimes when I make a mistake. Because I'm gonna tell you what, once I've called out on it, that's it, I'm not doing it again. So um, you know, and so I I learn intrinsically like that. Like if there's something that happens, I don't want to fail. I mean, that's not my goal, right? I don't go into it wanting to fail, but there have been times when I have or I've messed something up, and then now I know that, you know, not to do that again, or that didn't work well, or that wasn't a good process. Um, so I think when we're leading our teams, it's really, really important, like you said, to give them the opportunity to learn and to grow, but also the opportunity to fail.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

Totally agree with that. Um, as a CEO myself, I've gotten the greatest reward when you're willing to weather those short-term setbacks, knowing that it's gonna scale to greater success, reproducibility in the future. So I love that. And we can talk certainly about specific examples. I know we've teamed up with IWL Global on leveraging AI in the workspace, right? Yeah. And the early days were rough. We're still rough sometimes, right? But but seeing the quality uh, you know, the social media material, these events, um, clear communication, my calendar's better managed. Like there, I'm starting to see economies of scale, right? That it's like there was a dick, right? Where we invested in not just your team, but our team in Corbeau. And it I'm not gonna lie, man, it was like, geez, I could have just done this manually 10 times. But what we're setting the stage on is a gentec automations that have learned, been honed and tuned, and that frees everyone up to get back to uh, I would just say greater creativity, critical thinking, you're more room rather than working on mechanics. You're working on your creativity and what you're good at. Right? Yeah. It's been greater. It's been great.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

I was talking this morning too about that, that it gives the now. I feel like that I'm getting we're getting to a phase where we can get back to that creative point, like where we've learned not all, but a lot of the AI because of you and because of some other people that we're all kind of, you know, in collaboration with. And so we've been able to learn and had the freedom to learn and fail and pick up and do these things. And and like you said, there was a dip. And now I think that we're kind of sort of I I want to hope that we're getting on the other side of it now, in that we're now able to spend some of that time being more creative and and having some more creative outlets and doing some different things. Um, but I would say to the teams too, you need to be open to do those things. You need to be open to explore and to, you know, learn and grow and mess things up sometimes a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 17:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Not the whole company, but you need to know please, not the whole company, but to know that it's okay. It's a safe zone, right? It's okay that if we mess it up, you're we're not gonna yell at you, we're not gonna, you know. It's okay. That's how we learn. And so I think it's an all-encompassing part of the emotional intelligence of it all, the humanness of it all, that like it, these are tools, we're using them. We want you to use them, but we want you to learn how to use them and learn how to mess them up a little bit and and come back from it. So I'll shut up now. Sloan can have it back now.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

I think that's great. And I've seen Miss Demanda do that, and I've seen Mr. Ben do it with both of us. You know, we'll we'll get something together, and then Miss Amanda's like, what are you using to do that? And I'll tell her. She's like, No, no, no, spend an hour using this. If you don't come up with something that's ready to go, we're still training it, right? We're still doing that. So she's good about giving me the time to explore other things. She lets me fail. We fail, but we don't publish. That's we don't we don't publish the fails. You've got to give your team time. It's almost like parenting. She's gotten another child in the a grown-up child in the mix. All right. Whatever uh your tagline that I love is that projects stall without conviction. And that's bold. That that really is. But it is true. What does conviction have to do with project delivery?

SPEAKER_02 18:21

Thank you. So, yeah, I'm really big on conviction. Nearly 30 years of doing this, being an outstanding project manager alone is not good enough. So being good at the mechanics, and I'll go back to analogies. Let's uh let's say it's it's NBA final season, let's talk about basketball. I can be LeBron James and have outstanding ball men, uh, ball control, my shooting average is high, I have a lot of stamina. Okay, all of that's great mechanically. But without the team's investment in each other, conviction in the mission, well, why am I good? What am I going for? Is it the championship? Is it to win the next game? Is it to better my skills? So, what again, what's the mission behind the project, the value behind the project? And I think this is a common misunderstanding. It doesn't have to be the same thing for everybody. I like the basketball analogy in NBA Finals because there are folks up there in the nosebleeds that just wanted to take their kid to their first NBA game and get a t-shirt and an oversized popcorn tub-sized soda pop, right? And just have the experience of the screaming and yelling and the lights and the noise and and to really see how big these players are at you know seven feet tall, right? So some they have a stake in the game, right? They have a stake in what's going on and then after four quarters of play, if you're on the court, maybe the mission's a little different. If you're in the nosebleeds, it's a little different. If you're a janitor wiping up uh cleaning up sticky floors for safety, or if you're uh one of the intern kids that wipes up the sweat off the parquet floor, right, during time outs. Everybody has a stake in it.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

And I I share this story because when you're in the journey, you have conviction towards your mission.

SPEAKER_02 20:00

Right? What we tend to run into, and I I don't quote anyone for this after decades of doing the projects, particularly in technology. Oh, it's another day of me running test scripts. I don't want to write them, I don't want to run them, I don't want to document it, I've been doing it for 30 days, and I still got 94 days of this. I get it. How many hundreds of thousands of free throws did LeBron James have to practice? Where was the conviction behind why he was doing all the things he didn't want to do, but he had to do? And you're gonna have to find that for yourselves. Now I think there's a responsibility in leadership at all levels to help people find that conviction. Even if it's Amanda's counting on me, someone else is counting on me, the data team is counting on me, the testing team is counting on me, right? The RNs who need this new clinic are counting on me to get this done on time, right? Or patients, we we had to open a thoracic surgery unit. People waiting in line on a waiting list to get heart surgery. There's conviction. Mine may not personally be I need a heart transplant, but mine is I am serving my community. I gotta get this thing alive safely, correctly, right? And it's not just about deadlines, it's about achieving the mission. Back to the grandma's trip at Christmas, right? The mission isn't just getting there, it's getting there safely with the gifts, having fun with the family. We're on a road trip. People forget, yes, we're on a mission, but the mission is hey, it sounds cliche, it's every day on the journey. It's reminding yourself during the ugly times and the great times, oh, I gotta practice free throws. I gotta write test scripts. Oh, I gotta re redo the spreadsheet for the status report. Now, there are smarter, better ways to do all the things I'm talking about thanks to AI and technology improvements. But if you have conviction behind that, you'll find the creativity, you'll find the tools, you'll have the divergent creative thinking. You'll be able to go to your team members and your leadership and say, I have confidence in this, and you can make timely decisions that are going to help the whole team. We're gonna get They're safer, faster, in a better way. We're gonna learn while we go. So that's what I mean by conviction is really aligning to the the value that the project and the project journey is going to achieve, certainly at a macro level. But you gotta find that for yourself and within your team.

SPEAKER_03 22:17

And if you don't have the conviction, what does that do to your team members? They need you. There's an interrelationship there. We all have a responsibility to understand and to honor.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

So I think sometimes I get lost, and I don't blame people because sometimes it's just a job. Right? We're all human, I get it. You punch in, you punch out. What's the old adage? I don't live to work, I work to live. There's nothing wrong with that. But I remind all of us we're spending 20, 30, 40, 50 hours in this working environment, even if you're remote, with these with these people towards this mission. What can you find in it to reinvest and get value for yourself and still align to the value of a mission? I hope that makes sense. Did that cover it?

SPEAKER_00 23:05

It did, yes. Another great analogy. See?

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Easy analogy, Kate. That's it. Yeah. You do a really good job with that. And I agree. I think, you know, there's some there's some of us who have like that intrinsic, it's already there. Like what I don't know where some of that motivation comes from, but I think that um, you know, like I wanted to work when I was 15. Like I was so geared up, I was ready to go, you know, and then I was working three jobs and you know, and some of them I liked and some of them I didn't, you know, some of them is because I needed to pay rent, you know, when I was 20 years old and I was eating ramen noodles. But you do have to, even if that is the reason, right? If that's okay, stand on it and then build on it from there. But we have to, like you said, find that conviction of why are we why are we doing this job or this project, or you know, are we doing it for the right reasons? Uh what's our role in it? And and can our role, I think one question that we have to ask is like, this might be my role. Like, I don't know a lot about coding and stuff like that, but let's say that's your job and that's what you're doing. Look, my hat's off to you because I don't understand that job, right? And so I have to rely on you to be able to do that job and do it well. And for you to have the conviction to do it well, because I wouldn't know if you did it well or not until the whole thing collapses, you know? So if I have somebody in that position as a leader, I have to be able to rely on you that you do, in fact, have the conviction to do that job. And I I want to be able to do that. So I think we have to be honest about that at the front. Like I tell the ladies that work with me, I'm so blessed with them, but I tell them, like, if there's something you don't want to do or you're not good at it, or you don't feel good about, don't don't do it. Tell me that you don't want to do it. And that's not to say that there's not times that we have to do stuff regardless, right? It's kind of like growing up, we got to do the chores. We don't want to do the chores, we want to go hang out with our friends, but we still have to do the chores. Um, so there are things that are the quote unquote chores of our job that we have to do. But I believe that as leaders, we need to allow our teams to have the fun things too, to be able to quote unquote go out with their friends and have fun and learn and do things too. Um, and you guys are so great about that at Corvo and PSA. And you just really pump everybody up to be able to do the things that they're good at and and to tell them, hey, you know, you you're still like for me, I still have to do the calendar, which is not my favorite thing or my best thing. Um, but I also get to do fun things as well. So you guys really, really um embody what that means. And I love that too. All right, Slan, what you got for us?

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Talk about the Crow's Nest app. What is it? Yeah, who it's for? Who's it for? How did you build it? Tell tell us all about that.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Sure. So Crow's Nest was the brainchild of myself and a few other colleagues that frankly were just exhausted with project failure. These big ARPs, they bring us in as top performing consultants. A client would say, Hey, we're gonna implement SAP, whatever the transformation might be. Ben, can you tell us where the speed bumps are, what to look out for? You build out a schedule and you have a plan and you staff everybody and say, Oh, here comes the big data, the data mock run. Here comes the big data mock run, here's gonna set you back. It's gonna you're gonna need to have the environment set up, and sure enough, it doesn't matter how much experience we bring in and how many risks we log and how many mitigations we set up, we kept hitting the same speed bumps. Now you recall earlier in the call I talked about the importance of making timely decision making. I think we didn't quite understand why you could have all of this knowledge, all this talent, all this capability, and still miss milestones, still run into setbacks, even if you have mitigations and even if you had backup plans, all of these things, you would still miss things. Right? Now, there's a lot of mechanics behind various biases in estimations and resource constraints and things, visibility into what's going on across teams. Your team could be doing great, but you don't understand maybe there's delays in supply chain or environment patching, all kinds of things we didn't expect that'll come at us, whether you log them as risk too much. Certainly all of that is a contributing factor, but in the end, what we realized was the inability to make timely and effective decisions with the information we had. There was a lot of times where I would look back at the root video, I was like, man, I just gotten that overtime one weekend authorized. We wouldn't be two weeks behind now because we would have knocked out all the test scripts, the environment would have been built, yes, people would have had to invest a Saturday, but it'd be better than being two weeks behind, and now everybody's scrambling anyway. I even have a story, different conversation. One of my favorite projects in the whole world was getting together with my integration leads, my technology leads, and saying, Look, we have a court mandate for this system to go live by January 1st. We're coming up on Thanksgiving. This is an offer, not a mandate. If you guys are willing to work the Friday of Thanksgiving, Saturday, and the Sunday, you can get all your teams to buy all of them. I don't want anybody to do it because they don't want to. We could run a mock run, and if that mock run goes well, we can go live December 2nd instead of January 1st, and everybody gets a Christmas and a Diwali. It was a different calendar back then. You get a holiday. Every team member talked to their team members, they felt ready, went through the go go live readiness, they agreed. And we had a very successful Thanksgiving practice swim. And sure enough, we went live that December 2nd weekend right after that. And stabilization was spent in December instead of January, and we all had a holiday. That was one of my favorite stories, and I would tell it a thousand times, because it illustrates two things the ability to have rapid decision making and conviction. It took everyone on the testing team, the data team, the infrastructure team, the transformation and communications team, HR, payroll, administration, everyone had to agree and talk to their people and get all their people to agree. I'm gonna waste waste. I'm gonna invest my Thanksgiving weekend. That was a huge investment. And that entire group was all in. And what if that run had gone poorly? That would have been not a waste per se, but it wouldn't have brought them, you know, the early go line. So there was a risk there. So that's one of my favorite examples of uh conviction uh and project involvement.

SPEAKER_03 29:24

But it inspired the idea of how do we bring that to other people? Now where does Crows Nest tuning?

SPEAKER_02 29:32

Now that we understand that the key component to success certainly is conviction, and that's really up to each leader in their culture, but it's also being able to make informed and timely decisions. So we had the idea, let's create an app that's kind of like Waze or Google Mass. It's a road trip, right? Every project is trying to get from A to B. And there's gonna be setbacks and changes and stocks along the way, frontage roads and constructions and crashes and police and food stops and gas stops and all of those metaphorical things are gonna happen in these six-month, one-year, eighteen-month transformation programs. What if we could see all that? What if I could see annual budget recharges, spending deviations? What if I could see supply chain? What if I could see market price changes on supply chain? I could make informed decisions. We should pre-buy these materials because the price is about to go up. We should staff these people because we're seeing a slowdown in testing, so let's bring in some extra help. I could see that kind of thing ahead of time the same way that Waze or Google Maps says take the front of the route. Because it knows what's up there. So the idea, the dream was using AI technology to help you route your project from A to B across resourcing, financials, schedule, risk action issues, decisions, stakeholder management, communication clarity, and putting it into a mobile first application. So whether you're a janitor or an executive, while you're sipping your coffee in the morning, everybody who's in the car, the ones who's on that road trip, can see like ways exactly where you are. You can see that this week we need the data team to finish their mock run, their practice run of the data load, so that we can turn on the new test environment so testing can start on Monday. You don't have testing start on Monday. I got 30 people that I hired that are going to be billing time and they're gonna be waiting for their test environment. Whittling their thumbs. But now everybody sees that the same way you're at an NBA game, and we all see that giant scoreboard. Doesn't matter if you're a player on the on the floor or you're in the stands, everybody knows how much time is left, how many timeouts are left, how many fouls there are, how much uh what the score is. You get that kind of feeling, no matter what kind of stakeholder you are, in one mobile app, you know where you are in the journey, where you're headed, where you need to make decisions to take corrective action or to stay on track. So that was the dream, and that's how CrowsNest was born.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

Yeah, and it's very cool. Um, it's really, really interesting. And and you guys have it, or we have it, working in a couple different companies, and they're utilizing it. And so it's it's gone really, really well. Very interesting. If you're interested in in putting that into practice in your company, then you can shout out to us and and we'll get you hooked up with Ben and get you on a call because it's it's definitely very, very interesting, um, very forward thinking, and definitely incredibly helpful for your teams and your stakeholders. All right. Well, we want to be respectful of your time and of everybody else's as well. So on this podcast, um, we ask everybody the same two questions at the end. No one has answered the same yet. They've been really, really great. There is no right or wrong answer, it's just really from your heart. So I will um let Sloan ask the first question and then I'll finish us up.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

Name a leader who has greatly influenced you and tell us a little bit about why.

SPEAKER_03 32:59

Leader who has influenced me. Well, my leader was a leader who led by influence. Uh, and it's Mr. Rogers.

SPEAKER_02 33:12

It's not what you think it is, right? What I learned over time was certainly he's patient, certainly he's kind, and he's the icon of really connecting with people and genuinely caring about people. No one argues that. And certainly I would aspire to be so kind and empathetic to be an active listener. What what a privilege that would be. But I think as a leader, what I think inspired Vienne most would watch any and every episode. All he wants to do is understand you. And he pours his attention into small children, or a crayon factory, or how guitars are made. Watch him interview children, adults, men, women, uh international, local, multilingo, it doesn't matter. There is this childlike curiosity mixed with a an elder wisdom in the way he explores he seeks to understand. There is nothing about him that says, I want you to think this or go this way, because he doesn't need to. Because he'll sit with you and so patiently ask questions until you likely come to a conclusion that's even better than anything and he might have suggested who you yourself would have come to. Because he sits and he explores with people. And as a CEO and as a leader, I uh strive to trust that my leaders, my team members can let me explore with them. Even though I do have an agenda, you both know how fast I am like that. Let's do this, let's do this, that I want to continue to grow the muscle of leading with listening. And I do mean that, I mean listening from an understanding standpoint first. And this this can be challenging because I think what he set forth is the the premise that everyone, no matter where they are in life, who they are, what they know, what they don't know, they have something valuable to give to you. There's something they will give you that will give you that light bulb moment. Just look for the in any phone call you're in, in any text message salvo that you're going through, in any Teams meeting or Zoom meeting, I challenge you, because I do this, I'm guilty of this, roll your eyes at the one guy or gal who's just, oh, I want to go down to business, I know what I'm doing. I want I want you to take a breath, and this is hard for me too. What's the nugget? What's what's the light bulb moment they're giving to you? Because they do know something, they do have value, right? In what they can share, what they can contribute. So even if there's friction, find find the light. That would be what I took from Mr. Rogers. So he's one of my biggest.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

And I can remember watching it, and I didn't realize other people watched it because I thought it was just for me. He was so in shit, you know, and he would look at the camera and I'm like, he's talking to me and he's putting on his sweater, and this is so we can hang out. And I I was in first grade, and the teacher wheels the cart down the hallway, and she turns on an episode about a factory because we're learning about factories. And I remember thinking, You you guys get to watch this too? This isn't just for me, you know, and but it was so good and just the way that he did interact with them. But then my perception of this is for me, I'm special. And so it was it was really good. But yeah, I'm I was a little jealous when I found out Mr. Rogers was not just doing that show for one. I think that speaks to how successful he was in listening and really giving you all of his attention, even when you weren't there, because it was for all of us. But yeah, okay, that's a good answer. Thank you, Ben.

SPEAKER_01 36:49

You know, I'm like, not only so here, I'm gonna piggyback on that. Not only is it a fabulous answer, it's a fabulous answer from you because as soon as you said that, I'm like, oh Ben, it's like like that's how you are with us. And like immediately I was like, oh my gosh, because I did not expect that answer. And yeah, that you're I mean, you're really good at that. You're really good at like kind of prompting us through things and saying, learn through this and what if you did this and what if you did that? And yeah, like if there's not a better answer, I would have like, yeah, I love it. It's beautiful, really interesting.

SPEAKER_03 37:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Super huge fan of Mr. Rogers as well. So yeah. Well, when you think about the legacy that you're building, what do you hope that people will say about Benjamin Rebeski?

SPEAKER_02 37:33

Yeah, I I would I would like to be a custodian that helped people achieve their genius, their vision. And there's two ways I I like I would like to think I could help do that. Both of you know this because you worked with Corbell for a while. Right now we're a small company and that's absolutely fine. And we're working very hard to build alliances with people out there that have the same vision and mission we do. Technology is changing quickly. There are a lot of frightened, disaffected, frustrated, confused people out there. Like, I've been a project manager for 30 years. What do I do now? Am I am I getting replaced? Or anyone, a middle management, am I getting replaced? And while certainly that's always a risk, we want to be a part of the journey that transforms and the adoption of a new mindset around project delivery. Where it's not just being a project manager or project team participant, but creating a culture worldwide of project success practitioners. Now I don't need Corbeau to be the one to do that, but I already remember the one that helped find alliances, helped professionals stay in the game and conquer the game as capable, technology savvy, and that's not what you think it is. It's not writing code. Right? And I want you to think back when you got your driver's license and you learned how to drive a car. You can't live without it now. That's all AI is. It's a new kind of car. We're moving away from horse and buggy to a car now. You just have to get in the car, take the training, learn how to drive it in under the rules of ethics, safety, wellness, and awareness of others. Once we all agree on the rules of the road, I want people to be empowered to drive their car and get to their destinations. So I would like to be remembered as someone who helped sculpt the vehicle that meant less project failure globally. Right now we you know, in the past couple years we've seen stats that 60% of projects globally fail to meet their project objectives. Some IT projects fail so bad that I think it's 10% uh put the company out of business. What if all that waste could go away because we already have a drive? We all have conviction. What if projects for biotech and pharmaceuticals and engineering and safety and wellness and clothing and all these things are getting done correctly and safely more fast? Imagine the evolution of wellness, the opportunity of advancement for the good of who we can be as humans. And I'm excited to be a custodian of that and part of that journey. So I just want to be a participant and architect so big geniuses can get recognized because these projects are finishing successfully now. Instead of 70% of them failing or never even getting started, or we just don't have time to do them. Opportunity cost is gonna go down. I don't have to pick A or B because of this technology and these capable professionals. I can now do more. Not to wear myself out, but because all the operational automatic stuff is done and humans are more actualized. They're critical thinkers, they're creative, they they can look smarter, even combine projects or accelerate projects in a safe, ethical way. I want to be a part of that journey. Thank you for asking.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

I think you already are. I think you are way far into that journey. I think two reasons that come to mind immediately is that you do all of those things we were just talking about earlier in the conversation is you allow the team to explore and fail and have the time to learn and all those things, which are so important. And also because you are so technology forward, and we've talked about this in in other conversations that we've had, is you know, just utilizing the tools and learning which ones work for us and which don't. And I think that you're creating a legacy. I I kind of chuckle to myself because you say, Oh, well, Corbeau is a it's a small company. That Corbeau is a huge, massive network of people that we have that are brilliant, that have come together and continue to come together. But what I love about your legacy, Ben, and what you do is that you want, you have very much the same mindset as I do in this, is that all of us, you want us all to win. Winning for Amanda means that I'm gonna have to move on and do something else. That's okay. Or winning for, you know, Sloan means that Sloan is gonna go and open her own company or do her own thing, then let's support that and let's be a part of that. Um, and I think that's so important to cheer people on and you do that. So I've literally watched you do that time and time again, not because people don't want to, you know, be, you know, an employer or a contractor or Corbeau, but because, you know, something else is different or better or more suited to their, you know, what they like to do or what their journey is. And so cheering those people on and supporting them and helping them do that, that's success. That's a legacy. Because there's people that won't do that. They don't want everybody to win. And so I love that you are so willing from your heart, without any hesitation, to always be that way. It's very admirable. I'm so grateful for the partnership and and the work that we do together. Um, I think that we do have a lot of the same underlying missions and and ideals, and it's really been a lot of fun and really beautiful to work together. Our team loves working with your team, and we have a great time. It's a lot of fun. So um a lot of meetings, but it's okay. I'm forgiving of it.

SPEAKER_03 42:57

We are that's right.

SPEAKER_01 42:59

I tell Flan, I was like, you know, I used to like just be able to like stay in my pajamas. I can't do that anymore because I'm working with Corvos. I gotta get up and I gotta get dressed. But it's good, it's been good. I know, right? Yeah, no, it's been really great. I have learned so much from you too, and just um just walking through things and and trying new things. And I know Sloan feels the same, but we laugh um because we're we're trying new things and and things are come out funny. We made a made a picture of Ben as a firefighter one day. We're making a calendar, we're gonna sell it, it's gonna be our new venture.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

That's right. It did virtual corvo. Yeah, it's funny. I I was one of those kids, you know, so what do you want to be when you grow up? I always wanted to be a fireman, right? Well, I didn't realize that I'd be firefighting in my pro you know, metaphorically in all my projects.

SPEAKER_01 43:52

Right.

SPEAKER_02 43:52

But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

Yeah, you are a firefighter, just a little bit different.

SPEAKER_02 43:56

Well, you know, and so that's why, again, why tools like CrowsNet. In in the conviction concept, ease that back instead of being reactive. Imagine being a driver's seat with that navigator and being able to make decisions ahead of time instead of oh, I missed my exit. So many of these big projects are the firefighting, oh, I missed my exit experience, right?

SPEAKER_01 44:14

Yeah, that's true. It's true. And I think that will um once the buzzword resonate with um people. Um I try to I try to stay up on the buzzword. I'm getting kind of old now, so it's hard. That's why I have Sloan because she's way younger than me. So she like keeps me up to date on what'd you say the other day, crunchy? I don't even know what I'm like, what is she talking about? She's a crunchy mom. She is.

SPEAKER_03 44:34

Crunchy mom.

SPEAKER_01 44:36

No idea. And I just roll with it. She's younger than me, so I can I can just like yeah, just talk to my assistant about that. So thank you so much. So anybody who wants to learn about Corbeau, you can go to Corbotech.com. It there's also a link on IOL Global. So if you're a fan of ours and you're following us, you can go right there to our strategic partners. You can click on there and go to Corbo. Um, you can also go to Project Successacademy.com um and see what they're doing and what you can learn there, which you should. There's some great trainers, they're amazing. And they also um we host some webinars and stuff, some free webinars where you can learn a lot of cool stuff on there, which is really neat as well. And so I would say follow on LinkedIn, follow Ben, follow Corbo, follow Project Success Academy and see what they have going on because there's some really cool stuff. And I'm not just saying that because I'm involved in it. They really it's good stuff, and I wouldn't be involved in it if it wasn't cool. So Ben, it has been a blessing upon blessings to get to know you and to work with this team and and to be a part of what you guys are doing. And all of my team loves all of your team, and and we have a great time. And so thank you. Thank you for your time today. I know you're really, really busy, and so I appreciate you coming on. Um any last words?

SPEAKER_02 45:50

Any last, any final words?

SPEAKER_01 45:53

Final words of the podcast, not yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:55

So the the only final final words are I challenge you, no matter where you are in your career, whatever your profession, I challenge you to start playing around with AI tools in some way. And I don't mean, you know, chat GPT, ask it a question and gives you an answer. I mean chat compting. Okay, that's no different than talking to Alumsa and saying, What time is it? What's the temperature? What I'm talking about is playing around with something agentic. Find a way you start by Googling it if you want to do it the old way, but Google or AI, ChatGPT, and say, How can I get an agent that reads my inbox every morning and gives me a briefing of my emails that are in my inbox? Or how can I get it to read my calendar and tell me what's coming today? I challenge you to play with little assignments like that. And if every one of us starts to drive our car, right, you can get on the road. And the reason I'm sharing this, I'm not a peer-based leader. I am not at all. I think we talked about all I care about is you realizing your next self. Okay, because it maybe with Corbeau, it's on your own journey, it's for your company, it's for your family, but to do that, you have to do these uncomfortable things. So I'm challenging you to do that because we're no more than six months out, in my opinion. When HR managers, hiring managers aren't going to be asking, can you use Microsoft Office? Can you use Excel? They're gonna be asking, tell me about agentich AI. Not do you use ChatGPT, tell me what you've automated in the past. That's literally gonna be an interview question. Tell me how you've automated it. Did you use Cloud Cowork? Did you use Codex? Did you set something up on Copilot M365 Power Automate? You have to be able to answer this question to be in the modern workforce. It's not optional. It's a lot like saying, Do you have a driver's license? That question is coming. And I want all of us, I truly, truly do whether you get it through Project SuccessAcademy.com or you get it through any other partner or provider, or you just sit down with a study buddy at work at lunchtime while you're eating your sandwich together. I cannot tell you how important it is that you get in and experiment with creating an agent of any kind because it's going to be the new one. So that's yeah, that's my my my want, my desire for professionals out there to keep momentum and to keep their careers growing.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. I second that. I would say, you know, go and uh explore what there is on Project Success Academy, learn about this stuff. For the leaders out there, you need to have your teams being taught this information. Bring in some good, solid, um, reliable teams. You can reach out to us. We have trainers, we know trainers, and we can help you guys get in touch with the right people that are that are teaching your teams how to do this ethically and safe and well and and learning how to do it. And you would be so proud of me. I can't tell you what it is because we have to have that on a different podcast, but I'll tell you later. This week I used Claude uh in the most amazing way. You would be so proud of me. I finished a project yesterday and it is amazing. It came out really, really beautiful and amazing. And um, so you would be super proud of me. Matt would be super proud of me because I know uh you guys are big proponents of Claude right now. Um, and so yeah, I would say the same thing. Go and learn this stuff individually or leaders, allow your teams to go through these trainings and learn how to do this stuff. Sloan, you got anything before we close out?

SPEAKER_00 49:25

No, thank you, Ben, for your time. We appreciate you. We know you're so busy. And we just uh thank you for sitting down with us today and talking.

SPEAKER_02 49:33

So much fun. Thank you both. This was a true delight, and uh hopefully I'll get to do this again sometime.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

Absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks a bunch to you both.