1816 – Empowering Organizations for Independent Success with Clint Padgett

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0:58with us right now clint padgett clint you are the ceo and president at project success your website is project success.com clint you're also the host of the podcast the conversation with clinton m padgett helping teams triumph through commitment and conversation and finally clint i gotta point this out you're a fellow navy vet so you have some commendations behind you on the wall. So thank you so much for your service and really excited to learn about the impact of what you do today. Well, thanks for having me on, Josh. And same to you. Thanks for your service as well. So Navy to Navy, I always love that shit, mate.

1:35So what I do is we have a company called Project Success and we actually teach classes in project management. And then mostly what we do is help our clients, mentor our clients and help them execute that process in their organizations to be more successful in executing and delivering on projects deadlines. clients. Yeah. And so how do you do that? I mean, what does it tell me more about like how you engage with your clients? So a company will hire us. They'll come through our class. Their team will come to the class. We teach them in a couple of days how to do project work. What's the best way to work with teams?

2:04And then the practical applications of critical path methodology, being able to do all the math and figuring out how long your project will take. What's the driving activities, which ones aren't, how to work with your team to be successful in a matrix organization, which most people are. And then following that, a lot of companies will say, listen, we really love this process, but it's going to be hard for us to adopt it. Can you come help us? And so we actually have consultants who go out and work with those clients in those client sites to help put our process in place on their projects with their terminology, their unique set of challenges, all that kind of stuff.

2:37And we work on all kinds of projects across the globe. One of the ones that I'm personally involved with and quite often are the Olympic projects for Coca-Cola. So we plan all the summer and winter Olympics for Coke. And you can probably see some Coke paraphernalia back there in the background. That's Coke book. We do all the FIFA World Cup planning for them as well. So anytime there's a major activation of a worldwide sporting event, we help them execute those events. Yeah. So if we think about projects, things that just need to get done that we're working on, you know, internally, we have a few things that we're getting done right now.

3:06Where do you commonly see breakdowns in getting things done within organizations? I think one of my favorite quotes by George Bernard Shaw is, the single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place. And that, I think, is one of the probably the most problematic things. I have two that I can talk about, and that's one of them, is that I think I've communicated. To me, it was clear, but my assumption, which ends up being incorrect, is that you received the message the way in which I attended it. But if you think about when you were a kid, if you ever played the game telephone where one kid has a secret, whispers a secret to the second kid, whispers it down the line.

3:44And by the time it gets to the fourth or fifth kid, the secret is completely mangled, right? It's not remotely close to what the first kid said. And that actually happens and plays out in the business world as well, where as a leader, the leader says what they think is a very clear statement of what they want. And yet as a team member on that team, I hear that through my own biases, the way that I define words, the way maybe even the kind of day I'm having, right? Is it a good day? Is it a bad day? And, you know, my attitude may affect the way I hear something, interpret something. And then I take my interpretation of your message and then I tell Bob and Bob gets it through his filters and his biases.

4:20And he tells Sue who takes it through her filters and her biases. And just like in the game telephone as a kid, now my business message got mangled as it progressed through the organization. So what we recommend and what we talk about in our methodology really is have conversations. When you have a conversation, each individual person can ask clarifying questions about, hey, when you say turn left, did you mean like left right now at this driveway, the next intersection, the next stoplight? What do you mean? Where do I turn left? And by asking these clarifying questions and actually having a dialogue and a conversation, your message travels to the organization the way in which it was intended.

4:56So that's probably one of the most, one of the key things I think that makes projects go off the rails. And the other one, I think, is at the beginning of a project, especially if it's a long project, if you have a six month or a year long timeline or two years, like we do on some of the worldwide sporting events, then what ends up happening is there's a sense of, I have plenty of time. This is not my only project. I've got five other projects, plus my day job that I got hired to because project work is a side gig, as we all know. and I'm going to get to it, but my attention right now is really devoted to the other four or five projects that I'm already working on, which I've got things due for them next week and the next week and the next week.

5:32So my focus is there. And right now your project is two years in the future. It's this gray nebulous thing that I'm going to get to. And we call that the uninformed optimism phase of projects where you're going to get to it. And the problem is when there's no plan, the first six weeks or eight weeks of the project, nothing happens. And so now you're 12-month project is 11 months, which really puts you behind the eight balls. It's called shift the worry curve and worry earlier. I feel my anxiety rising as you're describing that situation. For sure. You know, and also too, I wanted to point something out because you'd mentioned this on your social and I thought it was apropos is, you know, we've got different personality types in our organization.

6:12Obviously, you know, I would absolutely align with kind of more of the visionary, big picture type of thinking, you know, and I've got great, extremely talented members of my team that are more detail oriented. And that's very intentional that they are hired because they are more detail oriented. But sometimes there are gaps that exist, you know, when you've got that. I don't know if I should say sometimes. It's often or common. Can you maybe share some insights on how visionaries can communicate better or at least meet our more detail-oriented people closer to the middle? Yeah, I think that's one of the roles a good project manager can play is to be that translator between the big picture strategic thinkers.

7:05As an engineer, I'll talk bad about engineers because I am one, but I'll also maybe throw a curveball at the strategic thinkers. And they tend to, in my mind, they're big fluffy white clouds and all that kind of stuff. But you need somebody who can do that translation. Because the way I talk about project work is if we're selling products and engineering is out there building products that marketing can't find a market for, can't find a customer for, we're not going to be successful. If, on the other hand, marketing is out there pitching a product that engineering can't build, then we're not going to be successful.

7:35So we have to do what you're talking about, which is put each other on the same plane to have a conversation about the project. And we do that mostly about forcing people into the room, because what will happen is when I teach classes, I notice I observe this all the time, there might be 45 or 50 people in the room and all the engineers sit together. And they're quite happy to sit together because they all know each other. They all think Dilbert is hilarious. They all have the shared bond of having taken differential equations in college and survived. Right. And they get each other. And then all the IT people sit together and they don't mind sitting close to the engineers because they're also kind of technical.

8:10but then both there's like this big divide. And then over here on the other side of the room, I have all the marketing people. And if I play devil's advocate, now I'll throw some stereotypes here, but I think there's a grain of truth in these stereotypes. As an engineer, I look over the marketing people and I say, you know, you guys talk about strategy and big fluffy white clouds. And what do you actually do? You talk about it. You have a lot of meetings, usually over really nice lunches, I noticed. But at the end of the day, when you go home, what have you done? When When I go home as an engineer, you know, you can see the thing that I designed and touched.

8:42You can see it, feel it, play with it. You can use the code that I've written. You can see it, right? I got something done today. What did you do? And the marketing person says, wow, Clint, I had no idea that you had such a low opinion of the value that I bring to the team. So let me help you out. You engineers are so far down in the weeds. If you didn't have somebody like me giving you some direction, you'd run into the wall or fall off the cliff. You need me to give you that direction. And so, and that's the reality of the situation is get them in the room to have the conversation of what is it marketing wants?

9:14What can engineering deliver? Have that dialogue and don't make each other the bad guy and the evil one. And what can we actually deliver? And let's agree to that and move forward. And then that's what we find is where you level set is really just to force people to have the conversation they don't really want to have. Yeah. So tomorrow, as of when we're recording this right now, we actually have an hour long, kind of leadership session where I've got some big plans and some big ideas for the year. We're kind of just kind of getting started in the execution of that. Obviously, it can never happen fast enough for someone like me.

9:51And so I'm coming in with some urgency here. And you've already shared some great tips. But if I know that I'm going to be showing up to a meeting, are there some things that, and again, you've already shared some great ideas here, but Are there some things that I can prep myself for so that I can be a better visionary for my team? Maybe it's the way I present things or if I've got a list of desires, just how I can communicate that in a way that's not going to evoke a lot of panic or stress or from someone's like, oh boy, here we go. I think that two things come to mind. One is why are we doing it?

10:33If you enable people to understand the why, that's better than just go do the what. Because if you tell me, Clint, I want you to walk down that left-hand trail. I'll walk, but I don't know why I'm doing it. But if you say, Clint, the goal is to get to the top of that hill, then, and I think you should take the left-hand trail. I may say, you know what, the left-hand trail is actually blocked. We should go to the right. It looks longer on paper, but it's actually quicker to get there. If I understand your goal, then I can help you achieve your goal rather than just pick up this rock. That's not very helpful, right?

11:02So I think that's one of the biggest things you can do. And the second one is visionaries, I think, have maybe a bad rap in that as a technical person, I may think they never listen to me. They want what they want, and they're not willing to hear the truth about it can't be done. And there's always some yin and yang and some push and pull. I get that. As a visionary, you're going to push the boundaries. I guess what I would say is be willing to listen to what can't be done without breaking the laws of physics. We can think outside of the box, but if one of the tasks needs to be get the DeLorean, invent the flux capacitor and go back in time, it's not going to work, right?

11:36So I think your job as a visionary is to push the boundaries. And our job on the lower and technical side maybe is to say, that's great. We'd love to do that. But right now, that capacity, that doesn't exist. Here's what we could do. Is there any way to make this fit what your goal is and get to the same place? Yeah. That's pretty solid. Share a bit more about how project success fits in with an organization and like what engagement looks like. So it's for us, it's pretty simple. It's probably a really bad business model, except we've done it for 40 years successfully. And that is we work ourselves out of a job.

12:12So we come in, we teach the process. And then, as I said, we work with you side by side to implement that at your in your environment with your unique challenges. and we can be there for as short as one week to get you guys rolling. And then you're out the door. We can be there for the first project and do the updates every week or every two weeks. Or some of our clients keep us around for the full 40 years of business, because they say, this is a skill set we don't have, nor do we want. And you guys are really good at your job. And what would take us three days to do, you guys can knock out in four hours.

12:44So let's just have you come in and do it. And then we, but some of our clients really appreciate the fact that the one that comes to mind is we were there for three years and we went with it for two. Each project was 14 months long and they wanted us to stick around for two projects. One to show them how it was done and then one to hold their hand while they did it. But in the end, at the end of three years, we rolled off and now there's fully, it's a Fortune 500 company and they're fully successful doing it on their own. And I had the engagement manager tell me that one of the things I found most impressive was you said you work yourself out of a job and you did.

13:16And we appreciated that. You weren't the typical consultant who gets your hooks in and stays forever. And I mean, that's not who we are. We're a small company. We can't really we don't want to put 30 people on your site forever. So but that's how you operate. We just come in. We teach the process, help you execute it in your environment. And then we can leave whenever you're ready. Yeah. Your website, projectsuccess.com. And by the way, also the podcast, which our friends can search. It's called The Conversation with Clinton M. Padgett. So for our friend that's been listening to our conversation, where do they go from here?

13:49Like, first off, who specifically should absolutely be reaching out? Usually it's the product managers, the people who, it's the people who, if their project fails or is late, probably lose their job, certainly lose sleep, but maybe lose their job. Those are the people. If you just want to check the box that says we're doing project management, probably not the one for you because there's a lot of people out there that will do it cheaper and not as good. You get what you pay for, but it's usually the product managers, the head of the departments, the C-suite. Those are the ones who usually call us in and say, we want you guys to come in for an engagement and help us with this on a project or a series of projects.

14:25That's usually who we work with. Individual project managers can go to our website and take our training classes. We teach open classes where anybody can come once a month somewhere in the country. And individual project managers can do that. But usually the engagement managers are the higher level C-suite or product manager level. Yeah. And I want to just mention this too. You've written books. Do you want to share just a little bit about your library that you've contributed to? Two of them over my shoulder here. Basically, the first one was called the Project Success Method. It was released back in 2007 on Wally Publishing.

15:01And that one really kind of talks through the nuts and bolts of technically, how do you plan and control projects? How do you agree on the scope of the project? What is the task? What is the duration? Who should come to the planning meetings? How do you run a control session? Really the technical, tactical stuff. And then over my career, I started to realize that the harder piece of project management is the people side. To be successful in projects, you need two things. You need the process to be solid and you need the people that are doing the work to be committed and engaged and accountable.

15:35And so the second book is really more around, it's called How Teams Triumph, and it came out a couple of years ago on Forbes Books. And that one is really more about how do I, and I put myself in an engineer's shoes. And so I'm an engineer with social skills, which doesn't, there's not a lot of us, right? I always joke that I found the 20 of them in the world and they all work for me today. But, and so my apologies to anybody who's got offended by that statement. but I'm an engineer so I could talk bad about us and typically if I put myself in the stereotypical engineer shoes they don't want to come to meetings they want to go off and design the perfect widget they find meetings be a waste of time they don't really like to collaborate with other people especially the ones that are non-engineers who don't get me who don't think the way I think and I said you know to be successful in the projects you need to work together in a collaborative way or you're not going to be successful unless you're a team of one.

16:22And so their second book was really more dedicated around how do I teach that person who maybe doesn't have that natural born gene to be an extrovert? How do I teach them to be successful in projects? And that's what the second book is about. So both around projects, one on the technical side, one more on the people side. Yep. Both are on Amazon. Both are also available at projectsuccess.com. Clint Padgett, CEO, President of Project Success. It's been great having you. Thanks, Josh. It's been a wonder. Thank you very much.

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