The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Be the Man (or Woman) in the Arena - A Reflection on President Roosevelt's 1910 Speech | PPP #46

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

Sharing the iconic speech delivered by President Theodore Roosevelt in April 1910 and its application to modern Project Managers.

Welcome to the People Process Progress Podcast, where we understand that people are our most important asset. We emphasize and share examples of the importance of shared process so that we can move ourselves, our teams, and our organizations toward progress. I'm the host of the show, Kevin Pinnell. To learn more about me and the show, go to peopleprocessprogress.com. But for now, let's get on with another great episode of the People, Process, Progress podcast in 3, 2, 1. It is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly. Who errs. Who comes short again and again. Hey everybody, daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know

victory nor defeat. Hey everybody, thanks so much for coming to episode 46 of the People Process Progress podcast. This one is Be the Man or Woman in the Arena and it is based off of one, The Man in the Arena, which I just read from Theodore Roosevelt who wrote that and delivered that speech in April 1910. I've referenced this before on the show, but today what I want to do is break this down in terms of ourselves as leaders, as project managers, and folks out there doing. So I'm going to go kind of passage by passage and break down Roosevelt's words this. If you've listened to the show here

before, one, thank you so much for coming back. If you're new, welcome. Look forward to getting your listenership and hope I can deliver some value for you. And so you know that if, if you go back, there's three versions of if by Rudyard Kipling that I have done and for project managers, for America, for planning section chiefs, and that is framed on my wall. I love that work. The man in the arena is the other one I have framed on my wall in my office, in my podcast studio. And so what I want to do today is, this speaks to me so much. I'm a 46-year-old white belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. So talking about just going in there and be proud that you're trying. Sometimes you win, sometimes you get your butt kicked and that's part of it. And for folks that don't know, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu,

the best kind of explanation, it's grappling art, right? To me, it's a mix of kind of wrestling and judo and there's better explanations, just Google it. But essentially you're grappling wrestling against other people who are trying to choke you and break your limbs. And so a good challenge, but exhausting, completely exhausting. If you've ever been in a conflict, you understand whether you're standing up fighting, wrestling, whatever, you use all your muscles, all your adrenaline, it's just something. So this man in the arena, not just for that aspect, but for as a project manager, right? It speaks to me some as challenges that we face as project managers or leaders or planning section chiefs that we have, particularly

gathering lessons learned of being someone that is asked to go into the arena of a space where you may not know anyone or you may know some people, but your challenge is get in there and work with folks and get them moving forward. So what I want to do in this episode is break down some of the passages here and what I think we as project managers can benefit from those from Roosevelt's great speech. So looking at this from the aspect of we as project managers on the fly, not just at the end of projects,

gathering lessons learned, the first opening, so it's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. You know, for us as project managers, if we're with a team and we're first getting to know and we're gathering lessons learned, we ourselves, like I've mentioned here before, you know, not a foreign concept. We got to do that without our own ego and without our own silos. We got to help people be transparent without dogpiling on someone that may not have made

the best choice or may have made a mistake, but instead turn that into recognize it, build them up, and let's move on and let's have a respectful conversation. But we still got to be open, right? So we have to find a practical way to go along and gather this stuff. We gather our strengths and our improvements and what went right, what went wrong. I think the terminology, what's a strength that we have already that we can build on and emulate across teams or across programs? What are improvements that we need to make? Just those words make a big difference too. So consider starting with the improvements too and end with the strengths. So

you end with those positives, right? People don't end with, man, I really got beat on in that lessons learned or that discussion or that meeting. And I think that's just a good way to recognize people are going to stumble just like Roosevelt says, but we're doing deeds and we're trying to do them better and better. In the next section here where the credit belongs to the man or woman, add that in there, right? Who's actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood and strives valiantly, errs and comes up short again and again. Man, as project managers, we got to hold our teams together and it's not going to be perfect. We're going to be, you know, forming and storming and norming and going back and forth and that's just going to happen. But, you know, it's really up to us to

make sure our teams stay together. So think about if our analysts put in long hours of writing code and our engineers figure out something will or won't fit, but we're striving valiantly, we're working, but we come up short, that's maybe on us when we're gathering these lessons learned to take the hits for did we facilitate their success and the translation from one of our teammates to the other? If we didn't, if we didn't recognize it enough, is that something we should take on? And I would say yes, right?

Because we should have that ultimate vision of the high-level stuff and then an awareness, at least, of the tactical stuff. And our teams are our responsibility during the project, and especially as we close to gathering lessons learned. But again, we're going to gather these lessons learned completely along the way. So again, as our different resources and different teammates on the team, keep looking out for those areas of disconnect or communication loops that we can close, because that's huge. And you know, it is going to happen, you know, we're going to air,

we're going to come up short, no project is perfect. You know, plans are useless, planning is everything. So as we, whether you're doing iterative approaches, like agile, or kind of a waterfall, agile, agile thing, either way, you need to adjust as we keep going and keep your team working together and improving. Our next section here is talking about, you know, who spends himself or herself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So if we're coordinating resources well, we can reduce some variation, we can provide data-driven solutions across our organizations. These are all high achievements, right? Just like in the quote, and it's huge, and we should, you know, call our teammates out for

that, give them props for that. That's great work. You know, and ways to do that when you're giving your status update, whether it's at the end, you know, closing, or you're kind of monitoring and doing this is, you know, so-and-so led the effort to, or she provided training to X number of user, he found a more efficient way, right? There's always ways to lift our teammates up who are doing well, who have high achievements. And they're simple statements, you know, to highlight the good works of our teams in regards, you know, to failing or daring, right? As Roosevelt said, we're going to share in those failures, you know, to provide background and why the risk was taken

or why it was missed. But at least we tried, right? At least we thought about something down a direction in the project. At least we worked together. And as project managers, you know, did we help our teams look at the risk? Did we accept it? Did we drive on? Did we make the mistake and learn from it? Or are we dwelling on it? And I would say don't, right? You know, we still need to go with what's good right now instead of what's perfect in some instances. So, you know, dare greatly. And when people, you know, hit high achievement, give them props for it. And when we fail, we fail together and we're going to talk about it. We're going to move on. And closing out the man in the arena or man or woman in the arena for this, you know, so his or her place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat. You know, this,

I think, is, you know, at the end of a significant project in particular, or maybe a key phase, we will have gone through victory and defeat and ups and downs and, you know, all the good and bad yin and yang kind of words we want to think of and emotions. And that's all right. Because for folks on the outside looking in, there's going to be a lot of finger pointing, a lot of questioning. But for folks that were in the project, we were in it together. We got to facilitate conversation and keep things real and had some difficult discussions that we needed to have or even arguments. There's value from fresh

perspectives excuse me from the outside for sure you know those souls who maybe didn't know victory defeat or weren't in the arena but for those not intimately involved you know um it's easy to assume like what should have been done but we as the project managers need to step in and provide context right so if the outside questions come in and it becomes, you know, as if, oh, there's a huge gap or we didn't do something here or we missed it, say, you know, maybe we did, but this was our strategy. Or sometimes just straight up things were missed. But again, as project managers, we're going to step in, take the hit, recognize inefficiencies, see what we can do. But really, you know, again, reiterate that our people were in the thick of it. That's a good, you know, we were there at the time and the decision we made is this

because of these factors and balance out what we're going to get from those, you know, folks that have been outside the project. So again, your team is going to know victory. It's going to know defeat at times. It's going to go back and forth, and that's totally fine. As Roosevelt reminds us, at least it was a worthwhile venture to get in the arena. And as project managers, we have stepped into this arena of project and then program management and work streams and all these things.

It is a worthwhile journey to do that with and closely for ourselves and with our project teams and for our organizations. So dare, be the man or woman in the arena as the project manager who's going to get in there and do whatever you need to do. Think outside the box, close communication loops. Wish you all the best. Thank you so much for listening, for connecting. Just like we said in the opening here, peopleprocessprogress.com.

You can connect with me many different ways there. We actually have shirts and stuff now. So if you want a cool t-shirt, no egos, no silos shirt, a People Process Progress sticker, check that all out. There's links on the peopleprocessprogress.com website. Thanks so much. Godspeed to all of you. Stay safe.

And for sure, wash those hands.