PMO Strategies

PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills (Leadership) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today we are talking to Colin D. Ellis. Colin is an international award-winning project management speaker and author and helps organizations around the world to build delivery cultures that everyone actually wants to be a part of. Prior to building this phenomenal delivery cultures, Colin spent 30 years, as a permanent employee of other people's delivery cultures in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia, and most of them were well not so great. Sound familiar? He's written three best-selling project management books, including his latest one, The Project Book and speaks with energy, passion, humor and thank goodness, honesty. Remember what that was all about? About the challenges that organizations face in creating project leaders and the cultures required to deliver successfully every time. Born in Liverpool, UK, Colin now lives with his family in Melbourne, Australia, and what we're going to talk about today I think is incredibly important. Learn the best-kept secrets to creating a PMO that drives IMPACT. Join us for the PMO IMPACT Summit.Register for FreeLaura Barnard: Colin and I are going to talk today about EQ, emotional intelligence, and everything that goes with that. But from the perspective of you as a PMO leader and what you need to be thinking about, what EQ even means anyway and how it specifically applies to all of you that are in the role in driving change, helping to deliver organizational strategy and lead people with the PMO. Before we dive in, is there anything else you'd like to share with our audience today about you and all of your great experience? Colin D. Ellis: Yeah, I think the only thing that I would add, Laura, is that I've been working for myself for four years, but for the 20 years before that, I really started from absolute zero like most project managers. I did not have a clue. I was walked out of a tele-sales environment in a newspaper in Liverpool where I lived in England, and really crafted a career based on being a good human being, creating great teams, but then staying on top of the technical knowledge that I needed as well. I associate with, project managers, program managers, PMO managers. I was a senior executive in governments. I understand all government challenges, and it's just been a never ending moving kind of feast in the project management world at least for 20 years and no doubt that won't end any time soon. Laura: I like that. I like how you're talking about it as just you just tried to be a good human being. And I think that, I remember back when I built my first PMO back in 1999 and I had no idea what I was doing. I was plopped down in the middle of the .com craziness, the Y2K craziness and trying to just figure out how in the world to help this organization I was working in deliver all of these client projects, and everything was new. You couldn't just go to Google “how do I build a PMO?” and get 8 million results to about how to build a PMO. Google technically existed, but nobody really knew about it back in the late nineties and I didn't have access to books, I didn't have access to training. I didn't have access to all the brilliant thought leaders that I do today. It was really hard to figure it out and learn from mistakes and try and figure out the right way to do it. I am really glad to hear that you have that experience because I think that when you have to figure it out on your own, there's so much to be said for the way you actually internalize the lessons along the way. Colin: That's so true. I was the same, 56K modem in my bedroom using the net browser and kind of trying to come up with something when you just couldn't get... I was going to the library but the resources really weren't there. Really what we learned to do in those early days, Laura, and I'm not pining for the good old days,

PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills (Leadership) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today, I am just incredibly honored and grateful to be able to share this episode with you. I have Neen James, one of my personal heroes, I met Neen through my graduate program in public speaking called Heroic Public Speaking. It is just a game-changer and a life-changer for me, and I was privileged to be able to learn a lot about Neen and read her books, Folding Time and Attention Pays. I knew immediately that there was a lot that we as PMO leaders could really learn from how we make sure that we're paying attention and are getting attention for our PMO. In addition to being just a fabulous rockstar in my life, and just a game changer for me, she's been changing the lives of people for a very long time, has a really long background in project management specifically, which I think is super cool. But she's also been named one of the top 30 leadership speakers by Global Guru several years in a row because of her work with companies like Viacom, Comcast, and Abbott Pharmaceuticals, among so many others. You will definitely hear Neen's boundless energy and quick-witted personality as she offers powerful strategies for paying attention to what matters so you can get more done and create more significant moments at work and at home, which is so incredibly important. Laura Barnard: I asked if Neen would be willing to share with us some secrets, some best practices, to help us as PMO leaders really get the attention that we need in our PMOs and for our PMOs and for the work we're doing. And as you all know, I am a huge believer that we should not be selling the PMO. The goal is not to sell the PMO, because if you're doing it right, they are coming to you and begging for your help in achieving their goals. So, we really need to figure out, how do we do that? How do we get the attention we need for our PMO, from our sponsors, from our stakeholders, and instead of having people run the other direction when they see the PMO coming, they're chasing us down, begging for our support. Neen, as we dive in today, is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience about you and your background and experience? Learn the best-kept secrets to creating a PMO that drives IMPACT. Join us for the PMO IMPACT Summit.Register for FreeNeen James: I grew up in corporate business in Australia. I worked in retail, banking, telecommunications, and the oil industry. And let me tell you, there's not a lot of chicks in oil. And when I was really doing the most project management was when I was in oil and I had an all-male team. I love working with men, and when I was in banking, I had an all-male branch. I think attention, these days, Laura, gets a bad rap. We go, "Oh, she just wants attention." Social media has changed that. But the truth remains that attention, is about connection. As PMOs, we need to be able to connect with the people we serve in order for us to advance the projects that we are leading, the team that we're developing, the stakeholders that we're serving. I want people to look at attention differently. You see, I believe it is the intention that makes attention valuable. And what I learned especially early in my career is that I had to have the right intention behind my desire for attention. One particular strategy that I developed early in my career that I encourage every PMO to consider is you need to be your own publicist. Here's what I mean by that. Now, we know what a publicist does. Often we hear about them in the press, when someone does something wrong. A celebrity does something really bad and then in steps their publicist. But you can use publicity in a really powerful way. I believed early in my career that I had to be my own publicist. The way that that turned up was every Friday I would send my boss five bullet points. I would send my boss five things the team and I achieved that we...

PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen (Strategic and Business Management) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today we are talking with a fellow thought leader in the PMO and project management space, Peter Taylor. He is a PMO expert who has built and led five global PMOs across several industries and has been a strategic advisor to many other organizations on Change Management and project strategy. He's also the author of the number one bestselling project management book, The Lazy Project Manager along with many other books on project leadership, PMO development, project marketing. Peter has been described as perhaps the most entertaining and inspiring speaker in the project management world today. His mission is to teach as many people as possible and spread the word that it is achievable to work smarter and not harder and still gained success. Laura Barnard: Welcome Peter, before we dive into our topic today, which is going to be a lot more about business agility and the role of the PMO and kind of just start them thinking about a different way to help make an impact with the PMO. I want to talk about this lazy project manager concept and what that really means because it's super cool sounding, but it really is important to think about when you're thinking about where you're spending your time and energy. Peter Taylor: A gentleman I worked for in a number of companies, one day we were on a flight back from Italy, and called me lazy. I took it personally. I thought he liked me, he keeps employing me, why would he call me lazy? Turns out, It was a compliment from his point of view about the way I work. The effective way I work. At the same time, I was running a PMO with just over a hundred project managers. Half the group, broadly speaking, we're being reasonably successful. None of us were perfect. We could definitely improve, but reasonably successful. And on average they were working a typical working week. Then we know projects go up and down in demand at the time, but on average they're working a typical week. The other half were working in my mind, crazy hours. You know, they were telling me they are working 50, 60, 70 hour weeks more, um, and yet they were no more successful. So I did some research, if you like, into the way that they were each managing their time, what they can got involved in during the meetings, the decision-making process, et cetera. I kind of uncovered this idea that some project managers just get dragged into so much detail and I recognize that what I was when I first started out as a project manager. From that evolved a lazy project manager concepts. It's been a great brand. People say “I'm delighted to be known as the Lazy Project Manager.” Learn the best-kept secrets to creating a PMO that drives IMPACT. Join us for the PMO IMPACT Summit.Register for FreeLaura: I'm always talking to my students in my programs about finding ways to streamline and optimize and get rid of all the stuff, all the extra, all the things that are not necessary that ended up taking up a lot of our time and focus so that we can focus on the most important thing. I love the topic and the concept, and when I first heard of you a few years ago, I was just eager to dive in and listen to your podcast and learn more about you because I thought it was just so cool that you had hit the nail on the head with, it's about finding the fastest and easiest way to get something done. And so if that means being lazy, call me lazy too. If I think about that in my personal life, the people that I know that are lazy or make minimal effort, if they're still getting stuff done, then they're probably the secret geniuses of all of us. Peter: The caveat I talk about is productive ease...That's the key. It's being productively lazy not just normal lazy. Laura: We still have to be able to get stuff done. Right. So for all of you listening today,

PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen (Strategic and Business Management) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today, we are talking with one of my dearest friends, Mike Hannan. Mike and I have known each other for a very, very long time. He truly was a friend first, and then we found out how much we had in common with respect to helping organizations make a huge impact with PMO, project management, portfolio management. And both of us have a really strong passion in this space and have worked together on a lot of different projects, initiatives, workshops. Mike is one of the founding creators of Project Management for Change and the Project Management Day of Service. He is also one of the advisors for my company, PMO Strategies. I've known him much longer than I've even had the company. So he's been an integral part in shaping the direction of my company, and what I'm all about, and how I'm delivering an impact for my community of IMPACT drivers. Mike is a leading edge-thinker and renegade, which I can totally vouch for, who believes that we all must do more to unleash our boundless potential and solve increasingly complex global issues. He envisions a community-centric, expert-guided, power-to-the-edge solution to most of these issues, which is super cool. For leaders and managers, this means open-platform approaches to innovating and sharing the most effective management practices. For consultants and other experts, this means that we are, too often, part of the problem, and need to be and do a much better job channeling our expertise in a way that delivers much greater impact. Laura Barnard: Can you tell us about what you are presenting in the PMO IMPACT Summit? Learn the best-kept secrets to creating a PMO that drives IMPACT. Join us for the PMO IMPACT Summit.Register for FreeMike: My first presentation at the Summit is called Finding the North Star, A Universal Approach to Resolving the Methodology Wars. And the idea here is, the methodology... It's kind of like if you remember that old movie from the '80s, where there's a global thermonuclear war being launched by computers I think it's Matthew Broderick playing the lead role. And in the end, the computer played tic-tac-toe to a draw, a million times in a row, before learning that the only way to win is not to play. My point is don't play the methodology wars. There's a better objective-driven approach that I'll be sharing at the Impact Summit, and I'll give everyone a little bit of a taste here. If you agree with my objectives, and you can lead yourself there, maybe you can come up with your own methodology following that objective-driven framework. Laura: Yes. Yes, that's great. Regardless of whatever the methodology is, getting out of this “us and them” mindset, and “you're wrong because that's the only way I can be right,” kind of thinking, and moving past that to the more important conversation that we should be having, and what that conversation looks like. Can you talk a little bit about your perspective on what that conversation should look like and what we should be doing anyway? Mike: I think the best way to introduce it is, if you're familiar at all with one of the major methodology wars that have been fought over the last 10 or 15 years, and that's the whole Agile versus Waterfall debate.If you think about that for a moment, it's all about, "Oh, my solution is better." And it's like, "Well, solution to what?" And so, too often, again, we've become so enamored of our own solutions, we forget to really talk about the problem. And while the problem may well be manifest in a patterned way, over and over, in lots of different organizations, and I do see that as a consultant, right? The reality is, every organization does have it a bit different. And if you just go forward with, "Hey, here's how it works, go take the training and apply it verbatim," you just asked those people to put on a straitjacket.

PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills (Leadership) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today, we are talking to one of my favorite people in the entire world, Lee Lambert. Lee and I go way back to my early career as a board member of PMI chapters, around 2004. Lee is one of the founders of the PMP, and a PMI fellow, with over 50 years of experience. That's right, five zero years of experience. He has held executive level positions and provided management consulting support to companies such as IBM, Motorola, General Electric, Sprint, Roche, and a plethora of government agencies. As an instructor, he has addressed over 50 thousand students in 23 countries, and was named PMI's professional development provider of the year. Lee is back again this year, to be a part of the 2019 PMO IMPACT Summit. Lee's session is all about project portfolio management. He's going to thoroughly examine the methods of realizing the potential value of project portfolio management, and explain why that is the thread that holds management and projects together. He's going to dive deep into that in his session as a part of the Summit. Learn the best-kept secrets to creating a PMO that drives IMPACT. Join us for the PMO IMPACT Summit.Register for FreeLaura Barnard: Today Lee is going to talk a little bit about the whys and the big picture, and how people think about how they should be leveraging project portfolio management, what's available to them, and what opportunities we might be missing. Lee Lambert: That's correct. I really want to talk a little bit about the power of the process and then maybe what's available in the process. I'll use an example of a small company some of you are probably familiar with, IBM. Lee: When I had an opportunity to go work with IBM in 1993, this is when they were in ... They were struggling. They were projecting an eight billion dollar loss that year. That's when they brought in Lou Gerstner. Lou Gerstner had an interesting background, credit cards and tobacco, so how he was qualified for IBM, I learned later was because he thinks holistically. He came in and immediately put out a, well we'll call it an edict, that project management was going to be implemented and it's going to become the thread that held the entire organization together. What he found was that there were far too many projects being planned and scheduled and approved, far more than they had people to execute them, far more than they had the time to get through them. He eliminated hundreds, literally hundreds of projects, and to focus on those that were going to deliver the most value for the organization. It took about three years for people to realize he wasn't kidding, and really begin to focus. They established a center that we now refer to as a PMO, but they called it the Project Management Center of Excellence. They controlled the information development and training. At the end of three years, they had a very tightly integrated system. If they wanted to look at manpower loadings across time, if they wanted to look at where their costs were divided, where they were spending their money, all of that was available upon request. The value of the enterprise application is that if somebody decides that they need a certain kind of information to support their decisions, they can get it; it's there. It's in the system and it's available to get there. The standardized reports are dangerous, because you can end up with way more information than you need, information that doesn't really support the system that you're going to be using. IBM was the leader in this area. If you watched any of the stuff that Laura does, I met her when she was just a child. She was seven or eight years old. If you look at what she's doing with her organization, she's really highlighting what it is we've been trying to convince people of for years, is that the information to support the decisions is there.

PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills (Leadership) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today we are talking with Emma-Ruth Arnaz-Pemberton, a fellow of the Association for Project Management. She is an expert in PMO project, program, and portfolio management, with extensive experience in the change management industry, which, as you guys know by now, is near and dear to my heart. She has a particular focus and emphasis on collaboration and PMO conception and strategy, as well as method and capability development. My favorite things about Emma are that she organizes two flagship events for Wellingtone, the organization that she works for, which are the future PMO Conference, which is a fantastic conference done over in the UK. And she brought the Project Management Day of Service, my little baby, all the way over to the UK. They have had some fantastic and successful PMDoS events over there. But today, we're talking about a little bit, a little teaser of what Emma-Ruth is covering in the PMO IMPACT Summit. Emma is a part of our PMO Impact Summit and she's going to be speaking about the PMO hierarchy of needs and effective learning. Learn the best-kept secrets to creating a PMO that drives IMPACT. Join us for the PMO IMPACT Summit.Register for FreeLaura: I would love to start with, where we are today from a learning styles perspective, especially as it relates to our space, PMOs and project management? Where are we today and why are we talking about this now? What's shifting that's prompted this to be a really hot topic for you? Emma-Ruth: From a PMO perspective, I'm very people-focused, so I'm all about collaboration and development of people and capability. That's me on a professional level, but also on a very personal level. What I have found is that the world is changing and a lot of our systems, particularly learning systems don't really seem to be changing. There's a very well known concept around the different learning styles that everybody has. Some people are very visual. They prefer using pictures and images to learn. If any of you have kids, if you've seen them revise, you'll be able to see how they learn because some people draw, some people write, some people listen, and some people read. Some people are very oral, so it's all about the auditory stuff. So they prefer using sound and music. Some people learn are more verbal, use more linguistic skills both in speech and in writing. They're really looking for somebody to have a conversation. That's how they remember stuff. Other people are very physical. They're very much about using their body, their hands, their sense of touch. These are the people that if you're teaching them a system, they want to just get on and do it. They don't want to listen to you. They just want to be left to press the buttons. Even still, other people are more logical, more mathematical in nature. They tend to be quite analytical. They need to work through the logic, the reasoning. They need to understand the systems and the processes, whereas others are more social. They prefer to learn in groups as opposed to solitary people who prefer to learn on their own. That's been around for a really long time and lots of training and trainers, they adapt the way that they teach in order to hit as many of those as they can in a session. That's how I was taught to train. Make sure you do something for each one of those kinds of learning styles. It still works to a point. But nowadays we live in this chaotic world where everything's volatile. It's uncertain. It's complex and it's ambiguous. There's so much out there now that what we find is so much and so many people and particularly in our industry is kind of gone from quite niched to now everybody's a project manager. Project management is a life skill for all. The way that we learn typically is you go, you sit in a room, you get some presentation, you'll do some exercises,

PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen (Strategic and Business Management) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today we are talking about how we can best incorporate the best of project portfolio management into what the PMO does. Especially from a services and capability perspective. I am honored to have a guest with me that I consider a friend and a colleague and one of my favorite thought leaders in this space, Andy Jordan. Andy is the president of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Honduras based management consulting firm with fabulous views of the water every single day. I'm so jealous and he has that. Andy’s organization has a strong emphasis on organizational transformation, portfolio management, and PMO specifically. Andy was a part of the PMO IMPACT Summit last year and he was one of our highest rated speakers, so we brought him back to the Summit again this year. You can get all of the information on his upcoming presentation and more information about Andy at PMOIMPACTSummit.com. Learn the best-kept secrets to creating a PMO that drives IMPACT. Join us for the PMO IMPACT Summit.Register for FreeProject Portfolio Management and the Role of the PMOLaura: Andy, I would love to get your perspective on project portfolio management and the role of the PMO, and why it's important for us to be thinking differently about that role? Andy: I think there is a lot of good stuff that has been done with portfolio management and PMOs have been at the heart of that. But there is still a long way to go. Fundamentally a lot of organizations don't quite have the right grasp of what portfolio management should be, and I think PMOs can help solve some of those problems. Laura: Why don't we give some perspective here and talk a little bit about what do we mean when we're talking project portfolio management.? Let's go a hundred thousand foot view and then maybe we can talk a little bit about what's working, what's not working and the role of the PMO and all of that. Andy: Sometimes the easiest way to think of what project portfolio management is to think about what it isn't. It's not a roll up of projects and programs that you just so happen to be doing right now. The portfolio has to come first. The portfolio is the vehicle by which an organization executes on strategy. So if the executives say, “all right, this year we're going to increase our revenue by 5% we're going to reduce our costs by 10% we're going to increase customer satisfaction by three points,” whatever it might be. Those are the goals and objectives. The portfolio is the vehicle we use to actually deliver on that. We'll have projects that sit within that portfolio, but those projects can come and go. It's the portfolio that's key and we have to make sure that the portfolio delivers results. Delivers results is the key piece here. We're not interested in delivering projects. We do, but we're interested in delivering business outcomes as a result of those projects. We're interested in improving revenue, decreasing costs, increasing customer satisfaction. That's the measure of success for the portfolio. Laura: Yes. I'm so glad you said that because I feel like I am constantly talking about we've got to stop emphasizing so much the outputs we're creating and shift our focus to the outcomes we're driving. As PMO leaders, it is super important that we help facilitate that mindset shift in our organization. Often times, PMO leaders will get so caught up in the “how manys” and the “how much” versus the IMPACT they're making. When if we think more about the outcomes we're creating for the organization and driving towards those outcomes, we will be so much more aligned with where the organization is trying to go and where they're thinking. Andy: Absolutely. You know, if you're an investor in an organization, if you own shares in a company, do you care that they did 10 projects this year or a hundred or a thousand?

PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen (Strategic and Business Management) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today we have a special guest interview with Mark Price Perry, we are talking about nudging organizational change. For all the details (and you don't want to miss them) listen to the full epsiode on your favorite podcast player. Mark is the Catalyst and the Evangelist of the Business Driven PMO. What I love about Mark's perspective, is that he helps PMOs from a consumer or stakeholder of the PMO perspective as opposed to the PMO leader perspective. itself and that's why he can provide so much great insight and different perspective that I think we as PMO leaders need. You can see Mark’s full bio on the PMOIMPACTSummit.com site. Learn the best-kept secrets to creating a PMO that drives IMPACT. Join us for the PMO IMPACT Summit.Register for FreeNudging Organizational ChangeLaura: What I think really sticks with me from your podcast, your online videos, and sharing multiple stages with you is your mind-blowing topic around business agility, is there anything you'd like to share with our PMO audience about you and your experience? Mark: I’d like to talk about stakeholders and stakeholders in the context of a stakeholder perspective, for me, that's really a watershed moment that I had in that for 20 years, mostly with IBM, I had been involved in program offices and project management offices. Typically I was involved as a stakeholder or as one of the leadership team members served by the office and in the environment, I was in, they were typically frontline environments that were seeking to achieve specific business objectives. Those program offices and project management offices were set up and were instrumental in helping us achieve those specific business objectives. But the way we set those up, in my first 20 years of experience, they were always set up with a specific purpose in mind and a value of achieving that purpose with specific measurements from which the office would be held to account. It was a two-step process, step 1: the leadership team was asked to consider starting a project management office. In that, the leadership team asked why? What are we seeking to achieve? How do we codify that? Then based upon how much it's gonna cost to get this going as an investment,step 2: what's an assessment of the return and that becomes a business case for the project management office. People take a means to the ends view of project management and the PMO specifically. Regrettably, I think that's probably one of the key reasons why so many PMOs struggle in the initial set up. It's not that you don't need people, processes, and tools, but in the rush to get those things going, often times lost or not crafted in the first place was the leadership team's purpose in having the PMO, what they would commit to by way of investment, and the expected return, and then using that information to determine what you actually DO. It's just mind-blowing to me that business people, whether you call them project managers and whether they have a certification or not, would take the position to just advance the means of the ends and the ends to be achieved will find themselves. That started my reputation as maybe being a maverick. The reality is that I'm not a maverick, I'm just driven by business needs, I'm business-driven. That business-driven aspect spawned into the approach that I took and talking about the PMO, are you business-driven or are you driven by some other intention? I have seen some improvement in the last 20 years in that I do believe that on average PMOs are more business-driven today than I saw 20 years ago. Having said that, we're talking about instead of 75% being not business-driven is maybe 60%. There's still a ton of work to be done. Laura: People spend so much time on that setup and the people, process, templates, tools kind of thing without actually creating ...

PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen (Strategic and Business Management) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today you will find out how to be more clear and direct in your communication style, last week was step 6, the final step in the IMPACT PMO Mindset. This week, we are covering the "now what?" The, "what do I do once I get it? Once I have transformed my mindset, once I am thinking differently about my PMO and my role and the role of project management and the best ways to drive IMPACT in my organization. Now what do I do?" What does the plan after shifting your mindset and transforming the mindset of others look like? How do we go from knowing we need to make some shifts in how our PMO is operating and making the shifts in how it's functioning today? Where might we want to consider improving our IMPACT to the organization overall? On the other hand, if you're just getting started, how do you make sure that you're starting off right? That's what we're covering today. If you haven't listened to episode 000, the Introductory episode or 001, The PMO Reset, 002 Instill Focus, 003 Measure Outcomes, 004 Perform Relentlessly, 005 Adapt to Thrive, 006 Communicate with Purpose, 0r 007 Transform Mindset - then I highly recommended you go back and listen or read those from the first step through the series of six steps. My IMPACT PMO Leader mindset shifts are critical for PMO leaders. Working through the steps means that you have your oxygen mask securely fastened BEFORE helping others. If you went through the mindset series via podcast or blog, you’re probably brimming with many great ideas that you are excited to implement. Especially if you downloaded all of those worksheets that went with each of those episodes, you've already started taking notes and you've got your ideas. For this episode, we will look at a few different areas that you might want to consider when you're thinking about putting some of your new ideas into place. I put together a little cheat sheet for you of all of the steps that I'm going to go through today so that you've got something to write down, your thoughts, your ideas, and your action plan to make sure you actually take action on the new ideas that you have on the areas of opportunity that you're seeing. You can download cheat sheet of action steps below. Moving from Knowing to Doing Ideas are a fantastic starting point, but now the job is to put those ideas into a plan and take action. There’s a fantastic professional speaker that I have been honored and privileged to get to know as a part of the work I've been doing on my own professional speaking development career. I have worked in a program called Heroic Public Speaking, which is a fantastic program to grow your professional speaking skills. I refer to a lot of my lessons that I've learned through those programs in future episodes and this episode is no exception. One of the professional speakers and educators that we spent time with was a gentleman by the name of Ron Tite, he has a new book coming out called, Think Do Say. I've had the privilege of learning some of his teachings in this Think Do Say model in training that he's offered us through the Heroic Public Speaking programs. I'm going to borrow from Ron’s Think Do Say model as I help you with what you can do when you're putting your action plan in place for the PMO. Remember, this is how you can get your PMO to be more IMPACTt-focused and IMPACT-driven. Think If you take the Think Do Say framework, in the context of what we need to do as PMO leaders, first we need to think differently, as you did in the IMPACT PMO Leader Mindset Series. This is critical before we can take any actions or take the right actions or start bringing others with us through the change process, we have to shift our mindsets ourselves. Episodes 001-007, the IMPACT PMO Leader Mindset Series was all about Think, thinking differently.

PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen (Strategic and Business Management) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today you will find out how to be more clear and direct in your communication style, this is step 5 in the IMPACT PMO Mindset. If you haven't listened to episode 000, the Introductory episode or 001, The PMO Reset, 002 Instill Focus, 003 Measure Outcomes, 004 Perform Relentlessly, 005 Adapt to Thrive, or 006 Communicate with Purpose - definitely go back and listen to or read those first. Reviewing all the steps mean that you have your oxygen mask securely fastened BEFORE helping others transform their mindset. It Starts with YOU The last and maybe one of the most important pieces of an IMPACT PMO leader’s success is how we think about our role as leaders. The demands and expectations on PMO leaders continue to grow, but the shifts we need to make are not insurmountable. In fact, these new expectations are exactly what we have been waiting for. Haven’t we been asking for a “seat at the table” with the other executives driving organizational strategy delivery? Here’s our chance to not only earn that seat at the table, but be invited in because of our perspective, knowledge, information, and resources that the leadership of the organization need. The keys to mindset shifts start with us, the PMO Leaders. We must look at our role differently and understand the ways we can further the organization from a strategic perspective. Now is our chance and it starts within. We cannot start shifting the mindsets of those around us to this new way of thinking about PMOs and their value until we understand and transition our own thinking about our role. The final step in the IMPACT PMO Leader Mindset includes taking on new roles that prepare you to complete the transition. You will embrace the entrepreneurial approach to solving business problems. As an IMPACT PMO Leader, you become the Strategy Navigator by positioning your PMO as the nexus of information and IMPACT. You will proudly accept your fiduciary responsibility to the organization to achieve the highest possible return on investment. Your advice and guidance will position you as a Trusted Advisor to leadership. You will take the time to build a strong partnership with your PMO sponsor and cultivate strong capabilities in the sponsors on your projects. You will appreciate that it’s crucial to start the PMO correctly by laying a strong foundation of permanence and equality to other business units. You will work hard to bring people with you through the change process instead of spending countless hours fighting change resistance. And finally, you will appreciate being empowered to accelerate your own growth in your career and understand that your options are limitless once you shed the stigma of being powerless take charge of your future. 1. Embrace Entrepreneurial Thinking To achieve this IMPACT nirvana, you must shift the way you think about solving business problems and the way you operate within your teams into more of an entrepreneurial approach. You must look for opportunities to challenge, ask questions, try new ways to do things, and accelerate progress. The typical entrepreneurial leader is constantly asking, “How can we do better, faster, cheaper and get to those results more quickly?” without limiting beliefs about the way things should be done. PMO leaders need to understand that the PMO is not synonymous with a waterfall implementation methodology. The way you choose to implement projects, if your PMO does implement projects, should not be a defining factor in the PMO value proposition or brand. We need to stop limiting our thinking to project delivery and a specific implementation methodology. It’s killing the reputation of the PMO and is incredibly short-sighted when we look at all the possible ways a PMO can deliver IMPACT. The entrepreneurial PMO leader looks for ways to solve business problems differen...

PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills (Leadership) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today you will find out how to be more clear and direct in your communication style, this is step 5 in the IMPACT PMO Mindset. If you haven't listened to episode 000, the Introductory episode or 001, The PMO Reset, 002 Instill Focus, 003 Measure Outcomes, 004 Perform Relentlessly, or 005 Adapt to Thrive, whew - definitely go back and listen to or read those first. Doing so will set the framework for how we landed here, on mindset as the primary step and everything that you need before you can communicate effectively. Language is Key The key to communicating with purpose is ensuring that your communication is clear, direct, and drives actions and decisions. For any communication to be effective, we must start by ensuring we are speaking the same language. When you talk to people about the PMO and the IMPACT you’re trying to make with your PMO, make sure you are speaking the language of your stakeholders and using terms that they understand to avoid barriers to communication. Talk about outcomes, IMPACT, return on investment, and the deliverables they're looking for with their projects. We must want to speak the language of our audience. We cannot throw a lot of PM speak at stakeholders which will only cause their eyes to glaze over. Instead, speak in terms of the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) for the person we are talking to. They need to hear you talk about the “whys” of your PMO, not the “what’s” that won’t make much sense to them anyway. 1. Speak their language Communicating with purpose means you’ve got to stop talking project management at business leaders and stakeholders. When we start throwing around a lot of PM speak at our stakeholders their eyes glaze over and they feel that you don’t get them, and they don’t get you. Have you ever seen two people that speak different languages try to communicate or solve a problem? It’s extremely challenging and leaves both parties unsure if they are on the same page. When you start talking about the triple constraint, project management process, templates, etc. to the typical non-PM stakeholder, you run the risk that the two of you will not understand each other. You might be losing a critical opportunity to have an effective conversation about your PMO and how it's driving IMPACT because you're getting stuck in by a language barrier and they can't follow along. We need to use language that resonates with them and use terminology that they are familiar with. This means we should stay away from speaking about the mechanics of the processes we are using and instead talk to them about outcomes, IMPACT, and return on investment. The “why” you are doing the PMO in the first place and the “why” they care. Talk about their pain points and get specific on the way they will be able to function and feel when you’ve solved those business problems. We talk to them in their language so that we eliminate communication barriers and stay in sync with our stakeholders. 2. Tie PMO Deliverables to IMPACT Get stakeholders’ attention by connecting everything you are doing with the PMO to the outcomes they are looking to achieve. That means that you want to be able to tie all the services you're providing directly to an IMPACT that each service is having on the organization. We must build the brand and credibility of the PMO by ensuring that people understand the PMO in terms of how it’s delivering the organizational strategy and solving business problems quickly. Instead of saying that you are building metrics and dashboards, talk about the outcome you are creating, better transparency to drive educated and informed decision-making. Instead of saying that you are creating standards and process, talk about how you are creating greater predictability and reliability so that leaders can more effectively plan for IMPACT and business transformation.

PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills (Leadership) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! We are in the 4th step to revolutionizing your PMO leader mindset. If you haven't listened to episode 000, the Introductory episode or 001, The PMO Reset, or 001, The PMO Reset, or 002 talking all about instilling focus, 003 redefining what success looks like, or the previous 004 on how to perform relentlessly - then take a few minutes go back and review those first. Starting at the beginning show you the evolution that landed us here, and help you understand how adapting plays into securing your PMO's future. Survival of the fittest? What’s all this talk about PMO “survival skills” for PMO leaders? It’s time to shed this belief that the best you can hope for as a PMO leader is to simply survive. PMO leaders that are in constant survival mode can’t possibly have the mental space or peace of mind to drive high-IMPACT. If you are continually worrying about whether you will have a job in six months, how can you possibly perform at your best? I think this survival mindset that is being perpetuated in writings and teachings is setting PMO leaders up for failure from the start. We need to be looking for techniques that will help us thrive, grow, develop, and mature our PMOs. This means we need to stop getting ourselves into this position in the first place. IMPACT PMO Leaders avoid survival mode by being flexible, adaptive, and providing services and support that are exactly what their business leaders need when and how they need it. 1. Adapt Your Management Style To thrive, you will need to be able to adjust your management style, based not only on the needs of the individual but the significance of the change you are creating. Yes, we must manage everybody independently, because different people have different needs in terms of personality, reward, and accountability. We also need to manage them according to how familiar they are with the change we are trying to create and the IMPACT that change will have on the organization. For example, if you’re building a PMO for the first time in an organization, it’s never been done before, then people’s understanding of what to expect and how to engage is going to be low. This means that we will need to deeply consider the organizational change management components of doing something that’s never been done before. Meaning, how will we bring people with us through the change process so that they embrace this change fully and engage in driving toward the IMPACT we are all trying to create? You will have a different set of challenges if the PMO has been tried before many times and failed, but those challenges still require a strong focus on bringing people with you through the change process, doing change with them instead of to them. You’re likely to hit a lot of change resistance and a slow ability to absorb the changes that are being created by your PMO. Being able to flex your management style to meet your stakeholders where they are instead of where you want them to be is a key trait of an IMPACT PMO Leader. 2. Build Business Knowledge and Acumen To drive IMPACT, leaders with an IMPACT mindset learn the business knowledge necessary to speak intelligently about the organization they are supporting and build business knowledge in their teams. It’s critical that you and your teams can talk about why this change is important, in terms of business value and have a general sense of the work of the business so that they can see the value of the projects they are creating or services they are providing to that business unit. I do not believe you need to be an expert in the business. Your expertise is PMOs, but I do think it is important to have some business understanding for the organizations that you support. Isn’t it so much easier to have a conversation with someone that “gets” what you do? Be that person for the business if you want to thrive.

PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills (Leadership) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! We are on to the 3rd step in changing your mindset as a PMO leader. If you haven't listened to episode 000, the Introductory episode or 001, The PMO Reset, or 002 talking all about instilling focus, or even 003 redefining what success looks like - then definitely go back and listen to or read those first. Starting at the beginning will be the stepping stones to how we got here, and help you understand why we must work on mindset first. Today in episode 004, we are diving into step 3, performing relentlessly. This step in the process is crucial for building credibility with your PMO and leadership confidence in you as a PMO leader. IMPACT PMO Leaders understand that it’s not enough to stay busy, it’s not enough to show progress, we’ve got to Get. It. Done. consistently and reliably and have a relentless perseverance of IMPACT. Your goal is to drive a delivery focused mindset with your team, show that you understand that the work you are doing is for a greater purpose, ensure that you are keeping your commitments, minimize friction and barriers to IMPACT outcomes, and right-size your governance framework to drive the ideal state of IMPACT delivery. Let’s dig into the steps you can take to Perform Relentlessly. 1. Drive a Delivery-Focused Mindset When we create process or tools or get busy managing projects, we must make sure that we keep our eye on the prize. Your job as an IMPACT PMO Leader is to ensure that everyone on the team sees the forest, not just the trees. We don’t allow our teams to get caught up in checking boxes or mindlessly following steps in a process. We don’t allow our teams to simply go through the motions of delivering capabilities or services for the organization. We ensure that everyone on the team is tirelessly driving toward creation of IMPACT. This means that we need to allow our teams some flexibility and space to find creative ways to solve problems, use only the tools in the toolbox that are enabling project delivery and throughput, and ensure that we think about delivering IMPACT through every service we create or interaction we have with stakeholders. 2. Talk IMPACT to Everyone Performing relentlessly means that you are talking about the IMPACT you are making with everyone. When we are talking to people about the work we are doing, think about the language you use. Make sure you connect people to the outcomes you are creating instead of the steps you are taking to get there. Sometimes we will speak one language to our business stakeholders and then get right back to talking tools, process, and methodology when we go back to our team. Instead, make sure that are you are connecting the work that you are doing as a team directly to the IMPACT that work has on the overall organizational strategy. You will see performance increase if people are able to tie the work they are doing to the big picture of the organization. People want to see how they are part of the puzzle and how what they are doing matters. Show them just how much it matters. 3. Keep Commitments If you want to build credibility, then you must do what you say you are going to do. Every time. That means being thoughtful and purposeful about the commitments you make and create a relentless pursuit of IMPACT on those most important priorities. People are counting on you. They are judging you. They are trying to figure out if they can rely on you to deliver. Show them that they can. You want to set expectations and then deliver on exactly what you said you were going to deliver. To do this, you must spend time defining and planning out the capabilities you will deliver with your PMO and ensuring that you are planning for the inevitable changes and roadblocks that will hamper your progress. Be good at planning before you do. Remember when we talked about saying “yes” to everyone and then not being able t...

PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen (Strategic and Business Management) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today we are going to dive right into changing your mindset as a PMO leader. If you haven't listened to episode 000, the Introductory episode or 001, The PMO Reset, or even 002, Instill Focus, definitely go back and listen to or read those first. Doing so will set the framework for how we landed here, on mindset first and the important first step to shifting mindset. The second step in this super important mindset work is to Measure Outcomes. We are going to redefine what success looks like in your PMO. Thinking Differently About Value It’s time to redefine success for our PMO and projects. IMPACT PMO Leaders understand that measuring progress is not sufficient. We’ve got to know that we have achieved the intended outcomes in a way that is driving high-IMPACT. Today, so many PMO leaders define their success by the success of their projects, but that’s only part of the success story for a PMO and we may not even be telling that part quite right. There’s a difference between the success of your projects and the IMPACT the PMO is making overall, depending on the capabilities and services the PMO delivers. There’s also a huge disparity in how many PMO leaders are defining success even with our projects. Often, success is being defined by how much work is happening, how much money is being spent, or how much overall progress is being made. We confuse progress with outcomes and assume that just because we are busy, just because we are making progress, we are successful. That’s not the case. Progress does not equal IMPACT. We need to look at redefining success in terms of the IMPACT we are making with our PMO and the IMPACT we achieve with our projects. We also need to develop metrics unique to the PMO that track PMO progress and IMPACT, separate from project delivery. 1. Understand that EVM is not enough Ironically, Earned Value Management (EVM) doesn't measure value. EVM measures schedule performance and cost performance, but it doesn't really tell you anything about value and it certainly doesn't tell you anything about IMPACT. It doesn't measure actual outcomes and whether those were achieved. Therein lies the challenge. EVM alone cannot tell your business leaders if they are going to achieve high-IMPACT business outcomes for the work that was done, only if that work will be done according to what you expect/planned from a cost and schedule perspective. Here’s a simple example. Let’s say your project was to implement a new system. The reason (your project “Why”) the system is being implemented is to create a new revenue source for the organization. Your project team diligently delivers all the defined scope, according to the originally determined timeline, and even does all the work under budget. Once the system is live, everyone expects this big bang on that new revenue, but it doesn’t come. No one uses the system. It turns out that along the way, some key questions were missed that could have shifted that direction. Was the right due diligence done up front to determine if the market really needed this system? Did the project include the proper marketing and communications planning to introduce that new system to the market? When scope decisions were made, did the team go back to the business case to determine if these changes would affect the intended outcomes? The questions are countless, but the outcome is the same. The project did not realize the intended IMPACT. In the eyes of the business stakeholders, this project is a failure, even if your project team did “everything right” according to EVM. We have to close this gap between your perception of success and theirs. EVM is a great resource for measuring project performance and one that I encourage you to study and apply when and how it makes sense to do so, but that’s not all we need to be measuring.

PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen (Strategic and Business Management) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today we are going to dive right into changing your mindset as a PMO leader. If you haven't listened to episode 000, the Introductory episode or 001, The PMO Reset, definitely go back and listen to or read those first. Doing so will set the framework for how we landed here, on mindset first. The first step in shifting our mindset is to find focus. In this episode/post we are going to learn specific techniques to help you distill what is important and get laser focused to create the IMPACT you desire for your organization. Finding Focus If you are like me, you like to have about 50 things going on at once. After all, there’s always a little downtime on this project or that one, and that’s just enough time to squeeze in some work on this one over here…and that one over there…yeah, that’s the story of my life. BUT, here’s what I’ve always found to be true…when I slow down and focus on just one thing at a time, I can get more done in the long run. If you are being completely honest with yourself, you probably know this is true for you, as well. As much as we want to think we are multitaskers, what we are really doing is a lot of task switching and creating a lot of rework and lost productivity time in the process. So, here’s the techniques I learned to employ when I was a PMO leader inside organizations and this is secret #1 I share with my students and clients today. 1. Solve Business Problems When starting a PMO, most of what you read or learn in courses suggests that you start by building a charter and creating your vision and mission. Or, even worse, they tell you to figure out your PMO model or type. Then, it’s off to building and creating process, methodology, and templates. Sadly, this is missing the most important step and assumes that you already know what’s best for the organization. But in much of the literature and courses, there’s no defined process to ask that most important, yet very simple question. Successful PMO leaders understand that they don’t have all the answers. We have no business creating anything until we’ve determined what business problem we are solving. The most important step when starting or refreshing your PMO is ensuring you have answered the question, “Why is the PMO here and what business problem must be solved?” First things first. We must assess the organization for IMPACT opportunities to understand your PMO purpose. Before you create the list of services you will provide or start building templates and process, you need a mission, a greater purpose that you are fulfilling through the PMO construct. Your mission is not to manage projects. Your mission is not to create templates and tools. Your mission is to get to outcomes that positively IMPACT the organization you serve by driving overall greater throughput and higher return on investment (ROI). To do that, you need to be very clear on the business pain points, challenges, or new opportunities that your PMO will help solve. Get crystal clear on that before you do anything else. Even if you think you know what’s best for them, you are probably wrong. Don’t guess. You must not assume you know what’s best for the organization. Whether you’ve been there 1 month or 20 years, you still aren’t inside the heads of the business leaders that are creating the opportunity for the PMO. Ask them. Talk to them a lot! They will eventually tell you what you need to know, but you must be listening for it because sometimes it’s not obvious or on the surface. Sometimes, the real reasons the PMO has been started isn’t even for the reasons they’ve been telling everyone. So, we have got to be listening intently for the truth. That means you must stop telling, talking, selling, and convincing and just listen, observe, and pay attention to the subtleties.

PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen (Strategic and Business Management) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today we are going to explore the real reason that we create PMOs and how you might want to think a little bit differently about your PMO and your role as a PMO leader in helping to drive organizational strategy delivery. If you have not listened to episode 000, the Introductory episode, I highly recommend you go back and listen to that episode or read that post first. It sets the stage a little bit for what we're going to talk about in this here and going forward. It gives you a little bit of a perspective on my background and why I'm so passionate about helping you as a PMO leader achieve the highest possible return on investment for all of your efforts when it comes to building, running, accelerating, or even rescuing your PMO. Where are we today with PMOs? That is a big question to understand before we talk about where we want to take PMOs. Recently I was keynoting a conference and also speaking on a panel about PMOs and hosting a PMO workshop. I was sharing the stage with some of my favorite PMO thought leaders on this panel, you will definitely hear more from in upcoming posts and episodes. During the panel, we were asked some very interesting questions about where PMOs are today and where they're headed. Are we headed for more PMOs? Is the PMO concept dying? Do people really understand what the PMO does? And as we were having these great questions asked, I was really interested in hearing the perspectives of some of my colleagues that were there that literally have decades and decades of experience in the project management space and in PMOs. I mean we are easily over a hundred years of PMO and project management experience among the people that were on the panel. What was most interesting was thinking about how all of us come from very different perspectives and backgrounds. While our experiences have been different, we all had some really positive things to say about where we believe PMOs are going with the huge caveat that we must make a shift in the way we think about the PMO and the role that the PMO must play in helping to deliver on the strategy for your organization. Okay. Now let's pause on that for one second. I'm not saying that PMO needs to be strategic, but I do believe that the PMO has a critical role in helping the organization to deliver on strategic objectives. It could be that your PMO has a very functional or tactical place in the organization and you're just knocking stuff out and getting projects done and that's great. Alternatively, you could have a seat at the strategy table helping to define the strategy for the organization and anything in between. What your PMO does from a service perspective is very much dependent on the needs of the organization. That's why I truly believe that no two PMOs look exactly alike because your PMO should be focused on how you can make an IMPACT and deliver on what the business leaders actually need and are asking for. As we start digging into some of the data and statistics, some of it will sound a little depressing. Don't worry, I will talk to you about what we can do about what the data is telling us. I can clearly see the gap that I know a lot of PMOs have between what the business leaders want (A.K.A. your sponsor and stakeholders), and what they're asking for you to help them do (A.K.A. where many PMOs are focusing their energy). Okay, so let's dig into some of this data and then let's talk about what we should be doing about it. Now, for some of you, what I share with you is going to be really familiar. Some of the things we talk about, you're going to say, oh, I resonate with that remark. Others of you are going to say, you know what? I think I'm okay. I am not having this problem and if that's you I am thrilled. Definitely stick around because I want to feel your virtual head nodding as we go th...

PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen (Strategic and Business Management) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Well, hey there! Welcome to the PMO strategies Podcast. I am your host, Laura Barnard, and I am honored and grateful that you are allowing me to spend a little bit of your day with you. My mission is to help PMO leaders, and those wanting to leverage the power of project management, make a big IMPACT in this introductory episode, I'm going to give you a little background about me and my philosophy on PMOs. I'm going to talk to you about why this podcast is so important to me, and how I'm going to help you unleash your professional potential so that you can make a huge IMPACT with your PMO. Now, for those of you that are not PMO leaders, but work in a PMO, manage projects or programs, or just interested in learning, if a PMO can help you deliver on your organization strategy. Don't worry. I've got plenty for you too. You see many of the techniques that I will share with you over the coming episodes will apply to you too because it's all about figuring out the best way to leverage what we know and what we need to know to get it done. So, who am I? Very early in my career, I fell in love with big transformational change. I happened to be a part of developing the very first program to require graduate students to do their thesis and dissertations electronically published on the internet, back in the beginnings of the internet. There, I saw just how incredible big changes like that could be to helping people share their message and literally change the world. Fast forward to 1999 where I had my first chance to build a PMO. I was asked to help the organization oversee and manage the portfolio of e-commerce projects that we're all moving forward at a frenetic pace with new technologies, new mindsets and new ways of delivering value, it was at the height of the dotcom craziness, and it was a wild ride, but I loved every second of it! That was at the beginning of what we now call the internet. It was not as easy to find what you needed if you were building your first PMO Google was not yet mainstream. And even if it had been there wasn't much online you can find that would help you figure out how to build a run a PMO. You couldn't simply type, how to build a PMO into Google and get almost 8 million results like you can today. You couldn't simply go to Amazon and order a bunch of books on building and running a PMO. Back then, you could maybe find a course or a book at the library or even in the bookstores. But you were mostly on your own. I had to figure out the best way to build the right capabilities and services to help our organization deliver on our customer’s initiatives. You see, all of these companies were getting their first ever chance to get their products and services out to the world. How exciting was that?? I made some mistakes. I learned a lot of lessons and I started seeing some magic happen when we figured it out. Now fast forward to today, where there are so many options and so much information out there telling you all the things you should or shouldn't do with your PMO, and it can be quite overwhelming. Just as overwhelming as it can be when you don't have enough information, having been in your shoes in the role of PMI leader inside organizations, and now having spent about two and a half decades, helping people make a big IMPACT driving transformational change. I get what you're dealing with the challenges you face and want nothing more than to help you be successful. By sharing what I've learned what I know works and what will help you reduce the stress, the headaches, the frustration, the confusion, and overwhelm that can come when you are trying to set up, run, or even rescue a PMO. Over the coming episodes, you will see my belief system unfold. You will also learn a lot of real, practical, immediately applicable techniques that will help you make a big IMP...