The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - How to Keep Project Managers Engaged by Following Johann Hari's Principles from his Book Lost Connections | KEV Talks #7

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

This year I read Johann Hari's book Lost Connections. I provides invaluable insight into environmental and clinical causes of depression. As I've done in the past, I found value for myself but also for the Program and Project Management professions. So, I parallel Hari's disconnections to Programs and Projects and provide my $.02 on how I believe we can stay connected or reconnect with meaningful work.

You need your nausea. You need your pain. It is a message and we must listen to the message. All these depressed and anxious people all over the world, they're giving us a message. They are telling us something has gone wrong with the way we live. We need to stop trying to muffle or silence or pathologize that pain. Instead, we need to listen to it and honor it. It is only when we listen to our pain that we can follow it back to its source. And only there, when we can see its true causes, can we begin to overcome it. That is the conclusion called Homecoming to Johan Hari's Lost Connections book that I read this year. It's Lost Connections, Why You're Depressed, and How to Find Hope.

If you're having a hard time, if you're depressed, whether diagnosed that way or just feeling down, I highly recommend it because what he talks about are these nine areas where we have disconnection in our life. And they cover the gamut of physical, natural, brain chemistry, a whole bunch of different things. But then also, how do we reconnect and stories of how people did reconnect and some of their solutions. And what I want to talk about is I've done in the past on the People Process Progress podcast. And what I'm going to do in this one is Lost Connections, a project manager's guide, because not only in life can we get lost, can we be depressed, can we be burned out, but in work, right? And for project managers, as I've called them in the past, the Ronin, right, of the business world, we travel from mission to mission or

project to project or program to program. And sometimes that weighs a lot on you. And over the past couple of years, like for me, it has, and I'm sure it has for some of you, I've been isolated, right, alone, doing all these virtual meetings, etc. So I'm going to use the great disconnections that Johan Hari talks about in his book, but talk about them in the instance of one, I'll give the example from the book, a very brief one, and then the impact that could have as a project manager, right in the business world, and maybe what we can do about it, how we can get better, how can we, as we would say, with risks, mitigate them or accept them or avoid them or whatever we're going to do. But first, today's episode of KevTalks is sponsored by, well, you, the listener.

Thank you for clicking play and for tuning into the show. KevTalks is the show that provides compelling interviews and value-added perspectives on topics primarily in the healthcare, wellness, technology, and public safety spaces. So enjoy your commute. Do we still do that? Coffee or morning walk? And let's fly into the KevTalks podcast in three, two, one. Thank you, everybody, for coming back to the show. And if you want to read more about this episode and past episodes, go to kevtalkspod.com,

K-E-V-Talks-P-O-D.com. Thank you so much again. This is Lost Connection, a project manager's guide, right? So how does project management have to do with losing connections and depression? And well, you know what? Life happens even when you're managing projects or especially when you're managing projects, right? We deal with the dynamics of people and some of the stuff we'll talk about here. So I won't give away the secret sauce yet, but let's go through that. So like I mentioned, the framework for this is the nine disconnections that Johan Hari identifies. And again, in the book, Lost Connections, he talks about reconnecting,

how we can focus on things and get better. And it is more than just medication. It's more than just meditation. It's a combination of a whole bunch of things. And we're going to talk about that. So let's get into it. So the first disconnection that Johan Hari talks about is a disconnection from meaningful work. So if you've been in business, let alone, you know, project management, sometimes you're disconnected, right?

And so the example from the book that Johan uses is there's a guy, Joe, and he works in a paint store, right? And he hates his job, but he does it because it's stable because it helps him buy stuff, right? And he stays there. What he really wants to do is be a fishing guide. And, you know, Johan talks about talking to him and he suggests, hey, you should go do it. But Joe doesn't leave. He stays there. And sometimes that happens to us as project managers, right? We're, we stay where we are because it's stable. We have benefits. Who knows what else is going on and helps us have status and buy things. And that's kind of Joe's story as well. So one thing that I would say, and what I'm going to do is provide kind of A, B's and maybe A, B's and C's of maybe reconnection for project managers is as a project manager or a program manager or someone

that's leading teams and facilitating process and all that together, your work has to matter, it has to matter to you, right? Or you're not going to put your all into it, you're not going to care as much about it, you're going to get burned out. And frankly, you'll be depressed, right? You won't be happy, you'll be like, Oh, it's gonna be Monday instead of it's just it's another day. Right? So if your work doesn't matter, that leads me to B, which is really up to you. Are you going to stay where you are? Are you going to build on the skills that you have? Are you going to say, you know what, this gets me to my next step and whatever, and stay for a certain amount of time, a target amount of time, that's really up to you. But, you know, if your work

doesn't matter, then, you know, make a decision, get some experience, update your resume, look at the job market and make a change. Because when you're disconnected from meaningful work, as Johan Hari talks about in his book and Joe, you're not going to be happy. You're going to be more depressed and sad and have health problems, frankly, which I'll talk about a little bit later. And another good thing is that a way to reconnect, a way to mitigate this for all the leaders out there is that the leaders of companies or leaders of projects or you as a leader of projects need to share the why. Why does this matter? Right.

So I used to put gloves on and gowns and scrubs and actually have hands on patients or on the street with my boots and my uniform or, you know, on a fire engine. And that's a very direct impact. It's a very direct feedback loop on what I'm doing. Now I work in healthcare IT. And so yes, down the line, what I do helps patients, but it's very different, right? I can't see the patient get better right in front of me. I'm not there all the time. So I need to pause and reconnect myself sometimes when I say, man, what is this meeting? It's a long meeting. It's a lot of notes.

It's whatever. But really to say, okay, but we're getting this project done because it's going to make testing more efficient for these patients that need cancer treatment or something like that. And again, these are fake examples I'm just throwing out there, but that's what you have to do, right? And if you manufacture aerospace parts or you're a project manager there, realize that those parts may help make planes better than get somebody to be home with their grandparents when they're sick or our military to fly better and on and on, right? You can see the connections, but it has to matter.

And, you know, you have to make that connection sometimes or kind of remind yourself. But leaders really can and should give that why, right? Why does this matter? Why is it doing it? And we've all kind of heard speeches, right, where it's a written speech, and it's really well written, but it may not connect with us. So that's something to do even as a project team leader, where you may have people on your team saying, why does this matter? It doesn't matter, I show up. And so try and help paint that picture, give that leader's intent, right? And let them know what's happening. So to me, that's, that's kind of a mix of us, right? Reconnecting with our own work or deciding if we're connecting

with it or not. And if not, finding something else to do or being the leader or getting from our leader the why that can maybe help emphasize that and make it better and help us reconnect with meaningful work. The second disconnection that Johan talks about is disconnection from other people. Holy smokes, in the past two years, right, we've all been disconnected. It's been awful. Like it was awful for our kids. It was awful for adults. Now we have this kind of hybrid mashup kind of thing, depending on who you work for and where you are. Some people are in the office all the time. Some are never there. Some are in between. But I will say, and I'm speaking for myself, isolation is bad for you, right? When you're by yourself all the time,

even if you're an introvert, it's not good. Humans were meant to interact with other people. And I, you know, for sure was by my, I worked from home before COVID kicked off, we'll say, and everyone had to work from home. And it was kind of a novelty. It was kind of neat. And then we were apart for a long time and kind of isolated and I got my own cycle. And it's just not good for you, right? You have to make connections. You have to get out there and socialize. And I talked about this kind of in faith, how faith, whether it's religious or spiritual, or just believing in something bigger than you can also help because you go meet with groups, community groups, religious groups, whatever advocate groups, whatever kind of thing you want to do. But you connect with other people that believe the same thing.

And even if other people believe that you don't want to be around other people, which is funky, I'm sure there's a group like that. But one thing that Johan points out is, you know, they did a study and loneliness, they found people that are isolated, people that are by themselves a lot. Loneliness causes the same level of health problems as obesity, right? So if you're eating a bunch of cheeseburgers and not exercising and you're in bad health, being lonely is as bad for you as that. So that's where we have to take steps to not be so lonely. And how can we do that these days? Make connections, right? As project managers, as program managers, as leaders, coordinators, analysts, assistants, whatever. We need to make

connections with people. And yes, it's way easier to send things via email or message. It's a lot harder to pick up the phone these days, which is odd because I grew up for sure. I mean, I'm 48, but I grew up making phone calls all the time, but we need to do that. We need to do it on zoom with our pictures, with our, our, our, not just our pictures, but our live video where we can see each other. And if we can see each other in the office, right. Get together outside of work. One of the most beneficial things that I've ever done on projects is have an after hours, you know, meal or a lunch or something where you're spending time, you're breaking bread with people, whether it's people that are in your company,

people like vendors that you do on the project with that plays dividends, not just professionally to get things done on the project, but for yourselves as humans, right? It really builds a relationship and showing your face makes a big difference. I really believe in that. The third disconnection that Johan talks about is disconnection from meaningful values. And so I think we've all seen that these days with social media and just, we have everything. It's amazing. And not we as far as every person in the world, but a lot of people in the world have smartphones. A lot of people in the world can order things online and get them delivered. It's pretty amazing. However, people that are very materialistic have a higher depression rate, right? Because they're so focused on I need this, I need the

likes, I need the status. And I'm on social media often, right? I promote this show. I'm on there for myself. I do this workout video things. And I like a like. And how many views do I have? And I can tell when I'm too into it because I don't feel great. And so for project managers, one thing that I would say, and I learned this actually as an incident manager, as an emergency management person, responding to missing persons or floods or whatever, special events, even that we will always value people over process. So if you have this process in your mind as a project manager, whether it's waterfall or agile or whatever

methodology you prescribe to, or as you know, given to you by your leadership, if it's not working well, talk to your people and figure out what you can do that's a little bit different, right? The people will always be more valuable and more important than the process. So don't just say, well, the book says this, or we have to follow this. We have to do that. Now, are there times where you have to direct people that aren't, you know, working together? Yes. But that's different than just ignoring what people say that aren't happy, that aren't productive and not getting to the root of things. And so, you know, another kind of saying I'll say for that is that conversations with your team are way more important than status reports, right?

And so what I mean by that is talking to your people, figuring out what are the problems, what are their challenges, what are the barriers they have, do they need to escalate to get help? Are they not asking enough for enough help? Are they being overwhelmed? That's where if you're leading a project, if you're leading a program, we need to dig in a little bit and help people maybe discover their meaningful values that are disconnected if they're burnout or something, can you help but don't just get stuck on the fact that oh i need your status report you just talk about this and not talk about anything else right our as project managers and program managers our values include our people in fact people are number one right so just very important to think about value your people, value their feedback and their opinions and their knowledge over the process that you have and mold the process into what

fits with people. Because there's different personalities too, right? Different experience levels. So while yes, the overall framework of a process can work, it's designed. We're humans, right? The book doesn't tell us what to do and make us do it. We decide the parts of it we want to use. So the fourth thing for disconnection is disconnection from childhood trauma, right? So other than, you know, getting into, even though people have,

right, their past matters, their personal past, I'll say, So does past projects, right? So in one aspect of that, meaning lessons learned, right? So we need to do good lessons learned at the end of our projects. If you're the program manager for each of the projects for the overall program, what worked well, what didn't, what are we going to build on for other projects? What can we make templates? What do we want to avoid? Need to document it, save it, not pull any punches, right? This is where, especially in public safety, where I've seen after action reports and conferences where everybody sugarcoats everything and everything was great. People knowing full well that it was awful. So that doesn't help public safety responders. It certainly doesn't help project managers and program managers. So

let's capture those lessons learned for real, relatively unfiltered, right? The other great saying, and the example in this one from childhood trauma was in the book, Johan Hari talks about, I believe it was in Australia, that there was a study done and then some work done. So about obesity, right? And the thought was, hey, if we give people these tools and we give them diet and we give them supplements and they eat less, they'll lose weight. And yes, that worked, right? So the example was a young woman had gone from 400 pounds to like 132 pounds and I think just over or just under a year. Amazing weight loss, right? Was in good shape, doing well. And then shortly after started gaining weight and not long after was then back up to 400 pounds.

While the saying in the book, which, you know, is at the end of that story is obesity isn't the fire, it's the smoke. And the reason was because the folks that gained the weight back had been traumatized, either sexually assaulted or raped or abused. And their thought was that if they gain the weight, they're less attractive. And when they lose the weight, they're more attractive. So it made them more anxious and depressed that something might happen again. And so while not as significant as that, unless somebody has actual trauma in the project and program management world, maybe the disengagement from your team isn't the fire, it's the smoke. So when I talk about not only lessons learned, not what's the process we can do better,

the steps we can standardize, but what if our people were super miserable at the end of it or during it right find out the root cause of the past project leader they had um you know tempo of the project process that was forced on them whatever it is is find out where where's the fire right not just the smoke that they're disengaged that they are burned out and and not every team's like that right it's not shedding a negative light on all project teams but we need to get to the root cause of why did this not work so well? Because we don't want to do that again. We want to treat our people well. We want to treat the team well.

We want to be productive. And in this day and age, you know, we've got to be, again, productive. And depending on your business, you might have to depend on that to make money, right, if you're in a service industry. So childhood trauma is the disconnection here. What I would say that's kind of a, you know, a tough equivalent to make for that is past lessons learned matter and past kind of project and program, right? Bad experiences matter. And we need to find out why that happened and help avoid those in the future. The fifth cause of disconnection in the book that Johan Hari talks about in Lost Connections is disconnection from status and respect.

And so the example in the book is, I think it's called a troop of baboons, but essentially a group of baboons. And so when one loses status, they walk around like humans, their head down, their shoulders hunched, they? They're not confident. They get picked on more. And when I say like humans, I mean, humans that aren't confident look like that, right? hunched over looking down these days at your phone, not just the ground. And so that's not good. And so if we don't build folks up, and help them, you know, give them respect and build them up and build their confidence, then they're gonna walk around or be part of your meetings, maybe not confident

or they don't wanna give their opinion or give their feedback or use their expertise. Maybe they've been burnt and told like they're wrong or corrected so many times. And so the first thing that I thought of is that we get, capital G-E-T, to lead teams. We get to where it's a privilege. And just because you have whatever credential behind your name or whatever title doesn't mean that you're automatically have more

status or should automatically get more respect than your team. In fact, you should give it and then earn it, right? And your status just happens to be because of what experience you've done and things that you're there. So, you know, to me, the first thing I thought is that we get to lead the team. And where you see a practical kind of, I'll say, bad practice of where folks don't respect maybe people on their team is not just kind of the, hey, it's the fourth time that I've tried to get someone to respond where I messaged them and emailed them and called them and texted them. And there's just no respond, no action. Then it's time to, okay, let's escalate. I've talked about that. Escalation is not a four letter word, but there should be a lot of steps before that to get someone to respond or do the work or understand maybe what the work is, but automatically playing the game where you carbon copy somebody on an email, meaning their boss, right? Hey, I'm going to ask you, but I'm also going to copy your boss on every email that I send

so that you know I'm serious. Like it's a crap move, right? So that's not a good way to do something. When you get into kind of official notices and then official escalations like that's, you know, maybe you can get there, but doing that as a standard is just not good. It's not going to get you respect. It's not going to help somebody's status on the team. And then the other things that go with that is on calls, folks that say, I'll just escalate to so-and-so, which maybe happens

to be that person's boss or something at before they've even talked to maybe the team member, their teammate, right? That's not cool as well. Or should I just call so and so and they name drop, right? It's a it's a bullcrap thing that is all about not caring about your teammates status, nor giving them respect. And so that's areas that I've seen folks disconnect themselves. And unfortunately, their team members from status and respect. And we can really do that and build people and reconnect them by, again, you have subject matter experts that make up your project team. Let them give you the answers, right? That's the whole thing. We do our project management thing, our program management thing, and we outline the process and we can nudge here and there.

But the meat and potatoes of a plan comes from the people that really know what they're doing. And that's who we need to let build it and let them own it. And that will help raise their status and respect. Cause six from disconnection and lost connections book is disconnection from the natural world, right? And this talks about, you know, people don't get out in nature, not all people, but some folks. I'm so fortunate. I live in the mountains. I get outside all the time.

But I think to me in 2022 and soon, we need to bring back kind of the office 2.0, which these days seems to be the hybrid model. I'm in the office some days. I'm out of the office some days. And I think that's good. But I think overall overall humans need humans, right? And so both the human interaction, natural world, and literally don't work at your desk at lunch, get up and go outside, whether you're in the city, right? It's probably harder to do if you're surrounded by concrete and steel and all that kind of stuff, but you're still outside. Or if you

happen to be in an office park, right, where there's a trail, get up and go outside, get away from the desk, eating at your desk. Unless the machine you're working on to fix on the project or whatever is going to be used in surgery in half an hour to save someone's life, the project can wait while you disconnect your mind and give yourself a break and take care of you, which will inevitably then take care of everybody else around you because you'll be in a better mental state. You'll get that nature connections of sunshine or fresh air and just all the benefits that we as humans get from being outside. It's a critical thing to do as project managers, programmers, just as people, is to get up and go outside. And I've seen a lot of great examples of this walking groups at

lunch, things like that, but just keep it simple. Just, you know, maybe take five minutes every hour, who knows, but it makes a big deal, a big difference in your mental health and to really, you know, reconnect to that natural world. Cause seven for disconnection, um indicator or rather a contributor to depression is disconnection from hopeful or secure future. And the example that Johan cites in the book here is about the Crow Indian tribe. And there's a story of, I think it was an elder in the tribe and he was around when it was a story, I think from a cowboy and I forget how it's historically documented, but this Crow elder is telling the story of his people and, you know, how they used to hunt and live and just the life they lived and, you know, just all the great things about Native American or Native peoples. And then he gets up to the point where the Native folks of the Crow tribe had been kind of rounded up and put in reservations.

And then controls were wrapped around them. And then he says, and then nothing else happened after that. So in his mind, his hope for a secure future stopped. It was just done. So to me, I think that means, you know, in the program management, project management world, that when we're done with maybe a big project that was high profile, it made us look good. We did a great job on it. Not just, it didn't just make us look good. We worked our butt off, right? And we're done with it, that there can be a downfall. And we're like, man, what's, what's next? And then you get some small project and it just doesn't measure up. And that's tough,

right? But there's a future after you whiz bang project. And that could be either use that whiz bang project as a springboard to get a different job or just use it to keep your influence to help build where you are now and use all that experience toward the next project. But there can definitely be an emotional kind of falling that happens. Nowhere near like what happened to the crow or other native peoples. But in the program and project management world, there's kind of a downfall, kind of a depression, if you will, after a great project. And you're like, oh, that's done. And then you got to start all over again. And what I find to be really helpful to help me see a clear future, whether it's the next big whiz bang program I'm on or a smaller project

is I'm going to ask for, or I'm going to give clear's intent, right? I want to clearly know what is the task of this whole thing, what is the purpose of this whole thing, and what does the end state look like, right? That helps lay out that secure future for this program or for that project. Another tool in our toolbox as program and project managers is those key performance indicators or KPIs. What does good look like? What are we measuring to improve? Whether it's less time to do something or a higher

percentage of profit or whatever it is, but clearly define those, help set some hope that we can work towards and again, a future target in conjunction with the intent, the overall task, purpose, and end state of the leader's intent. So causes eight and nine of disconnection really are very specific to depression in this book. So it's kind of a stretch if you don't think I've already made it a stretch to connect these to program and project management. But eight and nine directly have to do with genes and brain changes. So I'm just going to talk about what he said in the book and then maybe kind of riff on what I do think about those, which I've thought about before I hit record. But an interesting fact is a lot of people think it's genetic. My family had depression, so I'm going to have it.

So this, well, what Johan Hari found is, and him with, again, he gets all this information from legit scientists and multiple studies and things but the anxiety is 30 to 40 percent inherited and depression is 37 percent inherited right so that's not the majority so what he talks about in the genes is you can be influenced sure but most most of how you turn out of what happens in your life is affected by what's around you. So the equivalent that I try to make with this, right, is you can certainly, let's say, get 30, 40 percent influence from those around you, from the brand new associate PM to the burnout person that's been there for a while. Right. That's been there however long.

And that can affect you somewhat. But most of how you manage a project is about you. It's about how you choose to be as a person each day when you show up on the Zoom call or in person in the office if you're in that hybrid or if you're fully in the office, whatever it is. So take feedback with a grain of salt and put it all together and think about what's the best mix. Is there some truth in what you hear from the burnout person? Yeah, probably. But there's also not, right? Is there some great fresh ideas from the brand new associate PM or brand new analyst? Yes, absolutely. But maybe they don't have the experience to know

how that would happen. So take all that together and understand that the genes you have as a program manager or project manager are influenced by the past for sure, but they don't make up all of it. You make up all of it every time you show up, every time you log on, every time you send an email or get ready to write one, right? So take control of your program and project manager genes and control the majority of it while considering perhaps the smaller influence of it. This other piece, brains, right? Brain changes. So what he talks about in here is, you know, the old, there was an old thing that was like, it's your brain, you can't change it, take these pills, it's old thing that was like, it's your brain. You can't change it.

Take these pills. It's a chemical imbalance. Well, that's not true. Just, I'm going to say that he said it in the book. It's been said by many other people. And it's, you know, it's refreshing and frustrating to hear that, right? Both as he talks about it, as I've talked about it, as folks I know have talked about that, it's just, it's not great.

So, you know, brains do change, but they're not stuck where they are. So whether it's after a traumatic event, whether it's a lifetime, as they say, of depression, your brain doesn't have to stay there. And that's that neuroplasticity. I've talked about that before in the podcast as well. And so in the context of the book, you know, purely focused on the depression piece, that neuroplasticity reconnecting with many of the things I've talked about helps reshape and improve, if you will, to the more positive your brain.

So I mentioned we can be influenced by our genes and it can change our maybe program manager, project manager past, but we can change. We're not stuck there. So that's how I think if you're disconnected in any of these areas, you can reconnect. I highly recommend this book, whether you have been depressed, whether you're diagnosed with it, whether you've just been down,

something bad's happened to you, you think, oh, this sucks. It's a really good book to give perspective on how influences all around us, disconnections, like I've mentioned, affect the way we think, affect physically our brain, but also how we can then actively affect our brain to make it better. I think we can do the same as program managers and project managers, where we are proactive in how we help folks make meaningful connections, how we help them see that their work matters, how we make connections with each other

as people, that we share the values of our organizations, that we have good conversations with them, that we document and try not to make the same mistakes of projects and programs past, that we show respect and give status to people on our team, that we frankly reconnect with the natural world, which means human to human, right? In the office and hybrid, seeing each other on the camera and getting up and getting away from your seat as often as you can, especially or at least at lunch, that we can provide a hopeful and secure future by letting folks know that we're going to learn from the past and providing clear leader's intent

and having pretty good outlined key performance indicators of what we're working towards, that yes, we can be influenced by those around us that are negative Nellies, whatever kind of term you want to say, or the new person that's, you know, really excited and then take all those together and, and make ourselves our own program manager on project manager. Thank you so much for being here on the KevTalks podcast. Um, I rescheduled some of the interviews that I've talked about coming up. So got some great stuff coming. I'm kind of a public safety focused series, talking about some key issues in public safety.

And it's kind of good to reconnect. That's how I started podcasting way back in 2018, which is not that long ago. But with the Between the Slides podcast, then I started to focus on people process progress with really process, of course, people being centric. And now I'm going to talk about things that I've been a part of most of my life and that really matter to me even more so. And again, that's, you know, healthcare technology, public safety, and overall wellness, mind, body, and spirit. So that public safety series, I think is going to be really helpful. Hopefully not just for me and who I'm talking to, but for you all the listener. Thank you for being a listener, for checking out kevtalkspod.com, for following me at Penel, P-A-N-E-L-L-K-G on Twitter and Instagram.

Remember, everybody, have a plan so you and your folks know what to do. Stay informed with facts, not just fear. And get involved so you can help make a difference in your life, your family's life, and those around you. For now, I've got to fly.