The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - In Hardship there Is Opportunity - Let's Get After It 2021! | PPP #63

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

Sharing my thanks, some show data, how I leveraged opportunity in the middle of hardship in 2020, and my $.02 on how we can all make progress in 2021. Godspeed, Kevin

If you want to hear people's stories from all walks of life, if you want to learn from their process that helped them through good times or strife, if you want to make progress in your home, at work, or other areas of your life, you've come to the right podcast, and I'll be your host. My name is Kevin Pinnell, and guiding teams through tough times is what I've done most. Thank you for listening. If this is your first visit, I'll try not to disappoint. If you're a returning subscriber, well, let's get to the point. Let's get started with this episode of the People Process Progress Podcast in 3, 2, 1. Welcome to episode 63. We made it through 2020. Let's get after it 2021. I'm just going to share some numbers and what we did and how you helped make this show a success in my eyes as we encroach on 13,000 downloads and reaching people across the globe and sharing stories and templates and hardships and discussions. hoping validate this medium for me, for the thoughts that I share, for the guests' stories that I shared. We're going to keep it going in 2021, and there's more to come. I already have guests lined up, some really exciting folks that I think you all really enjoy, some more of my two

cents, the foundational five things. But let's talk about this show and break it down and give you some behind the curtain scoop and a little doting on myself and those that helped me get here. This podcast stream has a total of 111 episodes. So I used to have a show called the Between the Slides podcast. My first thing I focused on internet command system stuff, public safety, that's what I knew, transitioning kind of into the project management field and then grew from there, got into doing interviews. And so I had 48 episodes of that show. There's been 62 episodes of this People Process Progress podcast. And so since my relaunch in January of this year, we're at almost 13,000 downloads. My goal as a brand new podcaster was 10,000. With the first Between the Slides, I had almost seven.

In a little over a year and a half, in just this year, which isn't quite done yet, the full calendar year for me from start, we beat that. So thank you so much. That's just a target. So who's listening to the show? Well, 64 countries have hit click or auto-downloaded or some variation of that. And again, thanks to Blueberry Statistics, Blueberry's the host, BLUBRRY of my podcast. They're great. 64 countries in the top three countries that listen to the show, the United States.

So go America. I am American. France and Germany. So thank you to our European friends there. And there's other countries as well. And I'll share more of that breakdown than I do every now and then. But that's the top three. In the United States, Virginia, my home state and where I live, California, and then Texas are the top three states, which is pretty cool, right? We're in 45 out of the 50 US states. So I got to

got to work a little harder and get some more good content for the folks in those other five states. Be cool to have every state have a listen, right? And what about in the United States? What U.S. metro areas? And these breakdowns, again, from Blueberry Stats, awesome. Roanoke-Lynchburg, which is where I am, which is where I relaunched, so geographically. Richmond-Virginia-Petersburg area, which is where I came from, which is where I have a lot of roots. And then Los Angeles, right, where I have no roots, where I've never even been. So again, podcasts reach everywhere. And if you let people tell stories, if you provide good content, if you have a good conversation, I think this is just a medium that we can all use to get better. And it's made me better. And again, thank you all very much.

And so another part of my data breakdown with my podcast, because it's good to know, right, data-driven solutions, is what category. So it's called people process progress. So I went through each of my episodes and categorized them into people process progress, go figure, about even on the breakdown of the downloads across those kind of categories. And here's how I group those. So a people episode is any guest interview, that's pretty obvious, or anything that I self-reflected on or focused on how we as people could do better,

including myself, I put in the people category. Process is pretty straightforward. How to, right? Incident management team, system stuff, project manager stuff, or other things, things that, you know, articles I read or podcasts I listened to that I translated, say, hey, here's how we could use these things. And then progress, personal and professional improvement, anything that focused on it,

whether it was me, a person I interviewed, one of those my two cents sessions would seem to be popular. So again, thanks for listening to my two cents, everybody. But that's how I broke these down. And so we had about 35 episodes focused on people. And again, that's those interviews and self-reflection kind of things. 46 focused on process. So that was the highest. That's about 11 more than the people. And that's, again, how to do things, step by step, those kind of things.

And for progress, about 30. So the lowest there, but focused, again, on how we can personally and professionally improve ourselves. And I try to always look at myself that way. And I think that's a good way to go through it, particularly this year, right? This year was tough, but it was an opportunity. There were many opportunities through hardships, through the push in medical innovation, vaccine innovation, through the spotlight on racism, through the spotlight also on politics and the media, pandering, just so many different things, right? But for us personally, how could we have made ourselves healthier this year? How can we do that in the next few months? Because we're going to be home for a while, home gyms, home pushups, all that kind of stuff I've talked about here.

That's what we should look at, I think. Not just, oh my God, I'm glad the year's over. Frankly, I took advantage of this year from the standpoint of we are home. We have internet. Let's share knowledge and make each other better. So how did I do that? So through some of these shows and directly through LinkedIn, which again, reach out to me, Kevin Pannell on LinkedIn, P-A-N-N-E-L-L. Email me, peopleprocessprogress at gmail.com.

Happy to share resources. So I shared resources, templates, planning tools from my old public health and public safety time with folks via LinkedIn from all across the world. I helped where I work in COVID surge planning and technology deployment and a few other things and shared with other folks, how do we do project management in the public safety or the emergency management world where it's not quite translated, which I think is just a great crossover, right? It's where I came from into proper project management. And again, people process and progress.

If you can focus on those things, if you can, sure, there's some specific techniques in there, but that's huge. And again, those foundational five things, right? Let's know our leader's intent. Let's get those objectives. Let's create that organizational structure. Let's coordinate resources. And let's communicate, leader's intent. Let's get those objectives. Let's create that organizational structure. Let's coordinate resources, and let's communicate, communicate, communicate. That translates between emergency management, project management, incident management, whatever kind of management, whatever kind of place you are. That's huge.

I was also super fortunate that other folks decided that my two cents and my background and my thought was worth their time, particularly Craig Rowe of the People With a Passion. I was on episode 31, Passion for Process, we called it, where he and I touched base. He's in Australia. We found each other through the internet, said, yep, let's have a chat. Look forward to catching up with Craig. He's now focusing on something called Odd Swoosh. I hope I didn't screw that up, Craig.

Basketball, he's a basketball coach as well. But that was a great discussion. Folks from around the world, which is always a challenge, synchronizing times and things, but it was a great discussion, I think. So check out People with a Passion. He has many other good episodes as well, both video and audio. So he's on the podcast platforms and on YouTube. But again, Craig Rowe, People with a Passion. I was fortunate to talk to James Gearing, someone that I look up to in the podcast space who started and, you know, is a fire medic from the UK and in America for a while now. And who tells people stories. He's had people that I admire like Tim Kennedy and Jocko Willink and many, many other people, ordinary folks, right, with extraordinary stories. And I was on episode 316 with him, us talking.

You know, we recorded it a few months before, kind of big surge stuff. So I look forward to catching back up with James and setting up some time with him, particularly to talk about his book, One More Light. And if you haven't read it by James Gearing, check out Amazon, One More Light, James Gearing. It's a fantastic book, especially if you've been in the arena, right? And we've talked about this from Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt's Man in the Arena. If you've been in public arena, right? We've talked about this from Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt's man in the arena. If you've been in public safety or even the military, if you've run calls, if you've seen hardships, his book will speak to you. It'll be just like you're sitting there

talking with your pals or reliving memories, some good, some bad, but it's well worth a listen. So check out One More Light from James Gearing. Check out Behind the Shield podcast. It's fantastic. Selfishly check 316 because I'm on it. And I think we had a good chat and got along well. And then I was fortunate to talk to the guy in charge of Blueberry who hosts my podcast, Todd Cochran with Podcast Insider on episode 197. Talking about, you know, what's this people process progress all about? Where the name come from?

What do you do? And he was a Navy guy, an aviator. I was a Navy corpsman. So that was a cool experience. And then I got to be featured in EMS one where early on I had been remote working for about a year, a little over a year, maybe when we all got kind of locked down the first time. So I had some tips for folks who weren't used to staying home and working and teleworking and getting up and getting dressed and getting after it in the morning to get the blood pumping and all that kind of stuff. And that was helpful. And got to share with a company called iMethods some best practices of what we did, where I work, how to deploy smartphones and

devices for inpatient use to support things to cut down on PPE use and communication. And it was just a really, really cool opportunity and a few other things. And so by saying that, one, I am proud of that work I did, but what I want us all to think about is how can we do that now? How can we do it next year? How can we leverage this seemingly horrible situation, which the death and the sickness and all that is horrible? It certainly is. So how do we chip away at making it better for everybody else?

I think that's really important. So how did we do this year? We started off a little slow, spiked up. Highest month was July with a couple thousand listens, which is amazing to me. And we're averaging between nine, about 900 or so listens a month, which is awesome, which again is all from you all. I want to make better content to have more stuff that you all want to listen to, more people that you want to hear from. And I am accessible, as I say, peopleprocessprogress.com. All my contact information is there. But thank you so much for helping me get through this year, for helping this show grow, for telling me that what I'm putting out there, what the stories that the people I talk to are sharing is worth the time.

And I commit to doing even more and better next year. And I hope we can all do that both in our personal and professional lives. And over this holiday season, whatever you celebrate, for me it's Christmas and New Year's. Do what you're comfortable with safety-wise, right? Wash your hands 100%. Get some rest. Unplug from whatever job it is you have.

If you don't have a job, maybe it's an opportunity for you to get some mental rest as you're searching for one. Look at your health. We know from COVID underlying comorbidities of obesity and smoking and some of the conditions that can be helped from better fitness and health are things maybe we could focus on. We all have to do it together, though, and we can't be pointing the fingers at who did what and all that kind of things. There's certainly, I'm a huge fan, as I've said here, of after action reports and being objective and being honest.

For us in America, coming together this next year and the next few months in particular is key so that we can all make progress. We're all people. We may look different, believe different things. There's a process to us evolving as humans, particularly in America, for us getting to where we are. And that process has been hard, but we are all going to make progress together. Thank you all so much. Stay safe out there. Wash those hands 100% and Godspeed.