The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Five Steps to Extreme Ownership for Project Managers | S4Ep14

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

In this audio from my video, I share lessons learned from the book Extreme Ownership written by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin and from my completion of the Echelon Front course Extreme Ownership Framework and how Project Managers can apply them when leading teams.Find a course and sign up at https://academy.echelonfront.com/

Please silence your cell phones, hold all sidebar conversations to a minimum, and let's get started with the People Process Progress Podcast. Three, two, one. Hey everybody, welcome to Five Steps to Extreme Ownership for Project Managers. I'm sharing lessons that I learned from reading the book Extreme Ownership by Leif Babbitt and Jocko Willink, and from a course I took, the Extreme Ownership Framework from the Echelon Front Online Leadership Academy. So here are those resources I just mentioned. You can go to academy.echelonfront.com, and they have courses, both free and paid courses,

and I highly recommend that you get in there. And then find that Extreme Ownership book wherever you buy books. Of course, Amazon's popular. No affiliation. I had the first dish. There are some great lessons learned for leaders of all levels, brand new, experienced, or even team members. So what I'm going to share are five takeaways that I have from the course and some official things from the course. And I'm also going to share five practical outputs and benefits that I saw as both a program management leader and a project management leader. So the first thing is we're going to identify and explain, right? And so one,

we have to clearly know what is the problem, right? And I added clearly there because we identify the problem, but we don't want to dance around it. We don't want to sugarcoat it. We don't want to be subjective with our opinions. We want to objectively say we're behind schedule and here's why, right? We don't have to dance around it at all. We also, part of that ownership that we're taking, right? We're getting there is the reason why is I, and then you as the project manager, remember you facilitate the whole process. You bring the team together, you coordinate communication. It's a pretty critical thing. And this is where it's going to start to get hard. It's simple but not easy and that's a term you'll hear the Echelon Front instructors say and Leif and Jaco and it really is simple to say, here's why I let the team down or

I didn't do this or I should have let them know, etc., etc. And we'll get into some of those phrases and that's a simple thing when you hear it, but it's much harder to actually do that. So then we have to explain what does that mean? Now, this is the objectivity and the openness, transparency that we need to have with our project stakeholders, right? What is the negative impact? It's going to take longer. It's going to cost more. It's going to make our scope wider or smaller. The quality might go up or down. It's less safe. It's more safe. There could be other factors. Those are the big project ones,

right? And so that's when we have to really make it clear, what is that negative impact? How did I cause it, right? I could have coordinated this better. Again, we're getting an uncomfortableness that I'm gonna talk about later. And then how am I gonna help the team get better, right? I apologize if the team is this way, this is where we are.

And it's just facts at this point, right? And there's gonna be emotions. People it's just facts at this point, right? And there's going to be emotions. People are going to be upset for some reason, whether it costs more money or, you know, the scope isn't what was in the statement of work. Whatever it is, it's going to happen. But just stick to the facts, right? That's what I found most helpful. And that's a great part of this education that you'll learn as well.

So this is the ownership, right? You're the project manager. And I've heard and had discussions. And I even as I as I transitioned from public safety and emergency management into project management proper, if you will, had to get this point right and did then and do more so now that it's on me. Right. But it's not about me. And again, another great echelon front statement is it's it's on me, but it's not all about me. But as the project manager, I hold myself to the standard, hold team members to the standard that you do own every aspect of it until you don't, right? So taking that ownership, I didn't explain clearly, et cetera. I didn't give you the tools, right? And you can think you did. And there's another great quote that I've heard is as clear as you've communicated something, you haven't, right? And so not everybody understands things correctly. Not everybody listens the same way, but it's on us to take that ownership as

project managers to make sure that we try and fill that gap as much as possible. Do we have to guide the team, right? To come up, we're going to guide them to come up with it, which is coaching, right? Or we're going to help give them answers, which is consulting, which I've talked about here as well on the podcast, on the People Process Progress podcast. And there's a big difference in those, right? So if I'm going to coach somebody, I'm going to help them find the solution by just prompting them with good questions. Like given the circumstances, do you and the team feel like you can or can't do something? If I'm going to coach them, I'm going to say, based on my experience, I recommend you head in this direction, or I'm provide the team with this maybe you have to jump in a

little bit more because you're getting resistance to the help people are open to it they're lost sometimes you have to step back into your project manager role if you're a leader or helping the team really dive into something and sometimes you do have to me or be a more proactive leader and get more in the weeds but you have to gauge it is Is my coaching working? Meaning I'm asking good questions and they're coming up with stuff. If it's not, go, okay, based on what I've done,

here's what I found. And then sometimes you just gotta get in there and say, look, we need to do this. Some people get locked up, right? And then we have to go do it. So we have looked at what is the problem objectively, right? We have defined what that problem is. We are taking ownership of every aspect of this as project managers.

We are guiding the team to solutions, either through good questions or direct input. And then we're going to go do it. Then we're going to solve this problem, right? And it really, if you look at these five things, it really is that straightforward. It's the doing that's really hard, right? And the conversations you have to have and the relationships you have to build. And again, in the course, the framework course

and in the book, Relationships Are Everything, I always say relationships over outcomes over process, right? Because without relationships, your outcomes aren't gonna be good and you're certainly not gonna work a good process together. So what did I find in practically implementing these things, right? Putting these into action as a project manager. Well, I found it's very hard at first. We all know who did or didn't do the work. We all know what was or wasn't listened to, and we know we went

over it and et cetera, but that's where we have to just say, okay, we're all where we are. I'm the leader of this team. People look to project managers to lead projects, which is great, but you have to be comfortable taking that on as a project manager as well and know that you can't just say, well, that's not in my wheelhouse or I don't own that. You own everything and make sure that it happens, right? The second thing is you'll see pretty quick results, right? When you start taking ownership and empowering your team and not letting them take the heat and really taking on how could I have done better? How can I provide clarity?

How can I help the team? And it's I, what, what could I have done better? How could I have helped you more? You will, you will get some, some equity out of that from your team pretty quickly. And that's good in a great way. You'll empower them to make decisions, right? So if you're coaching them often, which we should most of the time, is you will empower them and not make them feel like, oh, they're going to see our project's not perfect and I'm going to get in trouble or I can't report the truth of it because I'm worried about

automatic escalation from somebody else and they'll get in our business. Whatever it is, you need to empower your folks and Let them know, look, no project is perfect. So FYI for everybody watching, whether you're new or been around project management for a while, none, and they never will be. And that's okay. But what we do need to do is have answers. And what I wanna empower my teams to do

is to come up with those answers as often as they can. And then we'll build trust, right? If they trust that I'm not gonna throw them under the bus, that I'm gonna empower them, that I'm not going to throw them under the bus, that I'm going to empower them, that I'm going to take ownership when they hit snags. And then I'm also going to, you know, help them, you know, in the highlights when they are doing well, that builds a huge amount of trust

and you engage them in their career and their day-to-day. And of course, in the output of this project and taking ownership has changed my game, both when I was a public safety special event planner, responder and working out in jujitsu and certainly in leading program and project management. And it will change yours as well for the better, for sure. Here's a bonus tip. You need to practice normal face.

And this is something that Jocko talks about on his podcast, where him and his kids, they would use toilet paper rolls or rather paper towel rolls and get hit, but you can't smile. You can't laugh. And I practice and I've shared this with folks. Folks are like, wow, you're so serious when all this stuff's going on and not necessarily serious, just kind of, you know, I'm listening, I'm observing and it's hard because I'm an emotional guy, but practicing normal face, meaning when it's going down and you have to take the hit and folks are asking questions and you're letting them know how you could do better, what I could have done, you know, please help me get better, all this kind of stuff. When you're getting feedback, you have to practice normal face and not look super pissed

off or sad or all that. That doesn't mean be emotionless, but it's very helpful if you're the leader, if you're the project manager of a project and you're taking this ownership and it's not going well, or even if it is, you know, particularly if it's not going well, that you're not showing your cards, right? You're not red faced and mad and rolling your eyes and all that kind of stuff. It's very helpful to be calm and be that stable component of the team that everybody else needs.

So thank you all for checking out this video. I hope it's very helpful. Go to Echelon Front Academy, Google it, go to the academy.echelonfront.com, buy extreme ownership, read it, read it a couple of times, start practicing that for sure in reality. And as project managers, remember, the hope the folks have when we start a project is that it will go well, we'll be on time, we'll be on money. The plans we're going to make together and for us taking ownership of making sure those plans come together, whether you're a vendor or you work for the organization that hired the vendor, whoever, that's going to guide how we do this. And then the actions we take, particularly action as a project manager of taking ownership, is going to ignite us to be successful and put out the best product, change the workflow, whatever project you're working on and you're helping your team get to.

So thank you everybody for checking out this video. Please go to peopleprocessprogress.com for more. Stay safe and Godspeed.