The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Sharing Insights from July 2020 Episodes | PPP #43

Episode Date: July 30, 2020

I summarize key points from 'People, Process, Progress' episodes 37 through 42. Thank you all for listening, sharing, and subscribing.

Please silence your cell phones, hold all sidebar conversations to a minimum, and we will get started with this episode of the People Process Progress Podcast in 3, 2, 1. Thank you, listeners, for the record-breaking month that we are having here at the People Process Progress Podcast. Because of you all, the listens, downloads, participation, feedback, it's been a great month so far. This is the July wrap-up show. So I'm going to provide a brief on the past episodes. And these are episodes 37 through 42 in the month of July. And so I'll just kind of give you a brief. Please, if you haven't listened, go check those out. And again, thank you all for reaching out to me either on LinkedIn

or email peopleprocessprogress at gmail.com, peopleprocessprogress.com, the website. All the episodes are available there as well or wherever you listen to podcasts. So thanks again. Let's get into how we started July. We kicked off July here on the show with another adaptation of one of my favorite written works, Rid Your Kiplings If, right? And so I adapted that.

I adapted that on earlier episodes to project managers, to planning section chiefs, and now did it for America. I think it's got a lot of relevant statements in If, you know, as far as being a man, and it's just a great work. And so I adapted that. Please check it out.

It was the first time I've done an episode set with kind of background music, and I got some new dramatic music we're mixing in here. And if you know, certain episodes, so please give that a listen. It's very short. But I think very relevant today just as much as it was in the beginning of July as it is now almost into August. So thanks again, maybe go check that out. Oh, hey, you're back. Thanks for coming back. So in episode 38, it was a very short one. I was in Tybee Island, Georgia, which I recommend. Beautiful place, visiting friends with family, and just had

thoughts as we're getting hammered by the media and the left and the right and the center and whoever that wants us to think whatever they want, feel however they want us to feel, vote for who we want to, and it's just too much. And so episode 38 is called Write Your Own Narrative. It's a brief my two cents. I highly believe in that. we need to fact check things, right? Someone can be an expert in one thing, but that doesn't mean they don't have political influence on either side. And so I think just, you know, we need to do what the right thing is to do for humans, for Americans, and then weigh that with real science, real news, cross-check news, things like that. And so please check out episode 38. It's a super short one. And I'd love to hear y'all's feedback on it, on how you're writing your own narrative.

So again, reach out to me. Also, you can follow this podcast on Instagram at PPP underscore POD, triple P underscore pod. So episode 39, I was fortunate on the road trip home to listen to Ellen Coleman, who was on the Masters of Scale podcast, which is a great show. So highly recommend that. And Ellen Coleman was the CEO of DuPont for a long time, and now is the CEO of Carbon. And so what she describes is her four crisis principles. And that's what we get walked through in that episode of Masters of Scale. So look up Ellen Coleman Masters of Scale, check that out, then come back to the episode 39 of this show,

and learn how I kind of parallel that to those foundational four that we've talked about, right, those objectives, organization, resources and communicate at all levels. And so Ellen Coleman's four principles, I'm going to go back and forth here real quick, give you a summary. Her first one's focus on what you can control to me, that's established smart objectives. Hers is create your own trajectory, me, create the organization that you need, right? That's going to set you up to go in the direction that is working. Be in constant communication is her number three. Mine happens to be resources. So really the fourth of the foundational four is communicate at all levels. That goes hand in hand. I think the resources could go with your own trajectory, right? Because if you don't have people and stuff and facilities, you can't really go in a direction. And one really

influence that this episode had on me is that Ellen Coleman's fourth crisis principle was to instill pride in your mission. So for me, I've morphed and did practice in this in a later episode of these foundational five. So first being a we've talked about leaders intent in here, we've talked about, you know, the getting leadership buy in. And so to kick off before we get these objectives is really a lot like all hazards incident management and a lot like project approval as you get leadership buy in. So to me, it's set leaders intent, or set your, you know, what's the mission or what's the why of this to start off before you get to your objective. So made a bit of an adjustment there. And then in the next episode of the podcast, I actually applied those to starting a podcast, but please go listen to episode 39. You'll learn some of, again, Ellen Coleman's principles, who's great from a high level leader with great

experience. And then my take on it for all of us that are applying these, those foundational four. So please go check out episode 39, Ellen Coleman's Four Crisis Principles and that foundational four. Hey, thanks for checking out that episode 39. Let's talk about episode 40. So episode 40 is foundational five tips to starting a podcast, right? So evolving from learning from others, like we always do. And so for me, I don't have a super long tenure, but I know podcasting is very popular. There's a lot of traffic I've seen on LinkedIn or Reddit or other places of people asking questions. I want to start a podcast about this subject. That's what Shabduk. And I said, you know what, let's always try and pay it forward, right? So I'm the person in this scenario. I'm

going to share some of my process and then help others make progress, hopefully. And so a quick rundown of my foundational five for podcasting is if anyone's interested in podcasting, or maybe, you know, like me kind of a journeyman new kind of person, almost a couple years in, the first thing I think is you have to determine your podcast mission and your why, like, why do you want to do this? Why do you want to talk? The second thing is to create those objectives for your podcast, and perhaps for each show. So like when I put together a show and it's just me, I'm actually looking at objectives just like I am now from that show or bullets or things like that and not to be totally scripted. But, you know, you get in a conversation, whether it's by yourself with this microphone or with a guest, and you may not stay on point 100% so that the notes really help. And so having these objectives, you know, as notes are super helpful. The third foundation, organize the show, right? So you need to, you know, decide, is it you? Is it you and a co-host?

Are you going to have guests? Whatever's going to happen, it could fluctuate. Like I've had guests or I've gone by myself and, you know, popularity varies, but the interest in being able to talk to other people is really cool. Fifth of those foundational five as part of that episode 40 of the foundational five for starting a podcast is to gather resources, right? You got to have stuff to record sound to edit it, all those things that episode includes all those tips. And the fifth thing is to communicate with your audience. So all the social media contacts that I've shared those kind of things, you got to set those accounts up, get them ready to be able to communicate, you know, across Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and there's there's other stuff there. So please go check out that episode five,

especially if you're interested, interested in podcasting, or if you have some feedback for me about podcasting, and maybe I missed something, would love to hear it. Well, now that I'm still podcasting, following those foundational five tips for starting it from episode 40 of the people process progress podcast. Episode 41 I focused on is called the Clifton strengths and importance of self-assurance for project managers. So that's from a book called strengths finder 2.0 from Gallup and Tim Rath and Don Clifton, who was a psychologist who looked at,

you know, people's strengths and doing assessments. My wife had this book, so I took a look at it, read through it. I chose self-assurance thinking of what's traits for me. I'm going to, I still haven't taken that assessment yet, but I'm going to in the future. It's I think about 50 bucks online. So I went through and what are good

CliftonStrengths for what I think is something that's critical, especially for project managers, for self-assured project managers. And I think there should be a level of self-assurance for project managers. So in that episode, I go over how the book breaks these down and it provides these 10 actions based on the CliftonStrength that you're assessed with. So I go through the CliftonStrength action that Don Clifton developed and Tom Rath outlines in that Strength Finders 2.0. Please go check that book out. Check out the online assessment. You can look up Clifton Strengths. It's all one word, C-L-I-F-T-O-N, Strengths. And what they do is talk about strength action. So if you know you're self-assured, here's 10 ways you can take advantage of this knowing your traits. And I then match those with, as a project manager,

here's things you can consider based on these strengths. It also, which is super helpful, provides three suggestions for working with people like you, right? So if you're a self-assured project manager, self-assured person, how can you work well with a person that's like you and not really butt heads? So really good things. I think that's a really helpful episode from the standpoint, particularly for project managers, if you're maybe lacking a little bit of confidence or you're not super self-assured, just things to consider in ways that you could maybe build that up. Or if you are self-assured, how can you leverage that knowledge

without coming off as cocky or arrogant? And that's the thin line, right? No egos, no silos, which is one of the things I mentioned in there is huge. You can't have an ego thinking you know everything. You can't be in your own silo because you don't want to hear from people. So again, episode 41, CliftonStrengths and Importance of Self-Assurance for Project Managers. Please check that out. Thank you again for considering it. And we'll move on to the next one. The last full episode of the month of July 2020 is People Process Progress episode 42, Crisis Ready, Crisis Confident with Andrew Allitt, who is the CEO of DataBulb by Imagineering Labs. Andrew and I had a really good discussion and we share a lot of similarities. We're both volunteer firefighters,

then he was a career firefighter. We were both in emergency management, used project management to do work now. And then Andrew, during this crisis, saw the need for additional data-driven crisis management, risk management. And so he started Data Bulb in the midst of the coronavirus. So pretty brave there, pretty good discussion. Listen to that one. I think he's got some really good feedback on how we can stay crisis ready and crisis confident. Look forward to getting your feedback about that episode and all these episodes I mentioned in the month of July. Want to just say thanks again for everyone that's reached out that I've

connected with on, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, the email messenger, Instagram, that's that started to follow the show. And again, I just,

I think it's critically important as we're all getting lambasted by someone's opinion, this news media outlet that's slanted this way, the other ones that way, really focus and pay attention to the information that's being pushed on you that you're being given. I saw a graphic that happened to be, it was actually on LinkedIn, of these face masks, right? And there's four scenarios and it showed some kind of percentage of, you know, transmission. You guys,. You guys or you all have probably seen it. The difference is the bottom one showed like 0%.

Everyone, both people have masks on and they're six feet apart. But the other four weren't six feet apart and it was just a difference in mass. So again, what's wrong with that? To me, what's wrong with it is if you're going to show some sort of data and some neat looking infographic, do the same thing, right? Have everyone six feet apart, then show the difference. And this isn't a mass debate. It's just a matter of presenting your data, which I think is key. And there's all sorts of stuff flying around. So, you know, good luck to all of us sifting through this, trying to find real sources and really talking

to one another. And again, I'm so thankful for you all listening to me talk on this medium. We are going to have to, whether it's issues of race, police reform, government reform, right? Because it's not just the police. It's the leaders that are leading them all need some work, and we all got to work together with it. So thank you all so much. Please stay safe. Of course, wash your hands and Godspeed.