Project Managers' Coffee Chat with Tim & Merv

In this episode, hosts Merv Jersak and Tim Jerome conclude the fourth season by reflecting on the significant themes discussed throughout the season, focusing on the human aspects of project management. They revisit the importance of leadership, communication, emotional intelligence, adaptability, and resilience in achieving exceptional project results. Drawing from personal experiences and industry standards, the hosts emphasize learning to lead with empathy, cultural awareness, and ethical governance. They also highlight the necessity of practical skills like problem solving, negotiation, and networking within the realm of project leadership.
Main Take-Aways
Season 4 is a wrap with this episode, #120. Your hosts, Tim Jerome and Merv Jersak:
reflect on the leadership focus of the season
summarize the leadership skills that were covered in greater detail throughout the season
encourage you to listen to the various episodes and apply their learnings to your own experience to see where you may improve your own leadership skills
Show Notes
Today's Project Managers Coffee Chat: 24 Weeks to a More Successful Project Leadership Experience
00:27 Reflecting on the leadership focus of Season 4 and how we determined the subject matter for the 24 weeks of episodes. Season 4 discussed the important project leadership traits (indeed leadership traits in general) that go beyond just process and technology – the human factors that are absolutely necessary to enhance your skills as a highly competent leader.
04:17 A look back at Season 4, beginning with this week's summation of enhancing these human factors expounded upon during the season through self-directed learning and focusing on providing value:
06:48     … the foundational skills of leadership with a deeper dive into leaders and teams, leaders and stakeholders, leaders and management
10:11     … collaboration within your teams and with your stakeholders
10:53     … communication, plus more focused discussions on both oral and written communication skills
12:05     … cultural awareness
12:50     … discipline, time management, and prioritization
13:56     … emotional intelligence with a focus on self-regulation and self-awareness
15:14     … adaptability, flexibility, and resilience
16:40     … problem solving and critical thinking
17:21     … creativity and innovation
18:04     … negotiation and influence, creating relationships
18:45     … networking, with a much-ignored offshoot of learning to "work the room"
20:06     … ethics and morals, followed by governance and compliance
21:10     … uncommon common sense
22:16 Encouragement to you the listener to review the topics of this 24-week season to help you become a more solid, more informed leader and more solid human being in all aspects of your life.
22:58 Tim and Merv conclude this episode and this season by reflecting on what they personally most enjoyed about their discussions.

In this episode, hosts Merv Jersak and Tim Jerome discuss the pursuit of value when delivering results for your customers. They consider the importance of aligning project goals with meaningful business impacts and the personal needs of team members and stakeholders. Through topics like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, stakeholder satisfaction, and overcoming challenges such as resistance to change and sustaining commitment, the hosts share practical tips and strategies for project managers to ensure successful project delivery that resonates functionally and is pleasing to your end-users. The episode underscores the significance of early communication, requirements gathering, and continuous improvement in realizing long-term project success.
Main Take-Aways
Project leaders have an incentive to deliver value to their stakeholders. Some thoughts on the pursuit of value:
providing meaningful business impact
understanding organizational needs
personal needs fulfillment
aligning project value with organizational values and business objectives
delivering customer-centric solutions
long-term sustainability
continuous improvement
measuring value delivered
challenges to implementing value and mitigating those challenges
sustaining team member commitment to delivering value
Show Notes
Today's Project Managers Coffee Chat: Leaders Pursue Value
00:27 Pursuing value in project delivery means providing meaningful business impact, understanding and meeting organizational needs.
01:51 Pursuing value also helps fulfill the personal needs of team members and stakeholders.
03:29 Aligning project values with organizational values, taking into account not just functional values but also emotional values of the team and stakeholder community.
04:12 As professionals, you have the obligation to guide your customers in achieving the best value from the product you are delivering, to align results with business objectives.
07:22 Taking a customer-centric, human-centered design approach often results in satisfied customers, end-users.
08:54 Pursuing value in long-term sustainability of the delivered product benefits your customers. Designs with continuous improvement in mind add to this value.
11:04 Measuring whether you have provided value can be determined from post-project assessments, customer response, return-on-investment analysis, and comparing what was delivered to what was requested.
12:56 Challenges in implementing value include resistance from individuals within the organization, change (disruptive to the status quo), ambiguity in goal setting and translating executive objectives to the project team, inadequate communication, misaligned results when compared to organizational values.
15:19 Participating in the up-front analysis to gather organizational needs and understand objectives can help mitigate challenges to delivering value over the life of the project.
17:33 Sustaining commitment in longer duration projects helps deliver value through ongoing reminders of the project objectives.

In this episode, hosts Merv Jersak and Tim Jerome dive deep into the concept of value in project management. They discuss what value means, how it differs from benefits, and why it's crucial for project success. They address the importance of value-based goals, tangible business results, and the human-centered approach to design. They also explore the challenges of aligning stakeholder expectations with project outcomes and the methodologies to measure and validate value delivered. Join them for insights on how to enhance project delivery by focusing on the human aspects and ensuring that projects meet both functional and emotional needs.
Main Take-Aways
Everything you do to develop the human aspects of your project leadership skills is designed to deliver value to your customers:
defining value
focusing on value-based goals
considering the benefits of enhancing project value
delivering tangible results
human-centered design
identifying value
measuring value
building value considerations into your projects
Show Notes
Today's Project Managers Coffee Chat: Leaders Create Value
00:27 Season 4 of the Project Managers' Coffee Chat is focused on developing the strong human factors that will make you a more effective leader. And it all boils down to creating value for our end-user community,
00:58 Defining value as it pertains to project management.
02:01 The PMBOK emphasizes value creation.
02:31 Focusing on value-based goals and tangible results.
04:24 Benefits of enhancing project value: better decision making, motivated teams, shared goals, improved bottom line, etc.
06:30 Delivering tangible benefits in addition to the required functionality.
08:56 Designing systems from a human perspective (human-centered design) is critical to adding value.
09:52 How to identify value – by listening and understanding user needs.
13:41 How to validate that you have delivered value – "as measured by …".
16:40 Building value considerations into every aspect of the project, beginning with the tasks on the project plan.
17:57 Value is a human component of what we do as project leaders, as well as a direct goal of how we manage projects.

Hosts Merv Jersak and Tim Jerome explore the importance of self-learning and self-directed learning for project managers. Emphasizing the learnable nature of learning itself, they discuss cultivating a learning mindset, the benefits of adaptability, and how making and reflecting on mistakes contributes to growth. The conversation touches on strategies such as practice, active reading, effective notetaking, and time management. They highlight the value of curiosity, motivation, and setting up a conducive learning environment, along with the significance of emotional intelligence and self-awareness. The episode concludes with a discussion on creating guardrails and recognizing the importance of learning from failure to provide value to oneself, teams, and customers.
Main Take-Aways
The benefits of self-learning:
to keep up with the changes
to understand that mistakes are not bad
to apply emotional intelligence
to use your natural curiosity and motivation
to increase your self-confidence
How to learn how to learn:
put your learning into practice immediately
apply learning strategies
consolidate new learnings into a journal
cultivate a growth mindset
follow your natural curiosity
learn to self-reflect
apply lessons learned
learn to contribute to and share ideas in group situations
learn from your mistakes
focus on what you don't understand
develop strong learning habits
embrace your failures
establish guardrails
analyze failures and mistakes and identify areas for change and growth
don't berate yourself for failures or mistakes
Show Notes
Today's Project Managers Coffee Chat: Why Self-Learning is Important
00:27 Introducing the importance of learning and cultivating a learning mindset. Learning to learn is learnable! Yet so often we are taught to learn through memorization which is less effective.
01:33 The benefits of learning how to learn:
02:21     … to keep up with the fast pace of your changing world
02:45     … to understand that making mistakes is not a bad thing; it helps you learn
03:55     … to apply your emotional intelligence to spur on learning
04:21     … to use your natural curiosity and motivation to aid in self-learning
05:38     … to increase your self-confidence
06:06 Ideas you can implement to help you learn how to learn:
06:24     … put your learning into practice immediately
07:34     … apply learning strategies such as active reading, note-taking, time management, organization
08:18     … consolidate new learnings into a journal
08:47     … cultivate a growth mindset
09:18     … follow your natural curiosity
10:04     … learn to self-reflect to determine how you best learn
10:46     … consider lessons learned (and learn from them!)
11:28     … learn to contribute to and share ideas in group situations
12:08     … learn from your mistakes
13:07     … focus your studies on what you don't understand
14:01     … develop strong learning habits that work for you (e.g., dedicated time and place, quiet time, Pomodoro technique, etc.)
16:01     … embrace your failures as learning opportunities
16:28     … establish guardrails to guide your actions
17:46     … analyze failures and mistakes and identify areas for change and growth
18:40     … don't berate yourself for failures or mistakes

In this episode, hosts Merv Jersak and Tim Jerome explore the importance of learning in the realm of project management. They emphasize the pivotal role of self-directed learning in improving project delivery, not just for project managers but for leaders across various fields. Drawing from personal experiences and industry insights, they discuss the concept of 'learning to learn' and its impact on careers, teams, and customer satisfaction. The hosts also dive into the challenges that hinder effective learning, such as work pressures and unsupportive organizational cultures, and suggest practical strategies for overcoming these barriers. This episode kicks off a reflective week aimed at equipping listeners with valuable tools and techniques to enhance their project management practices.
Main Take-Aways
The entire Season 4 focuses on the human factors that enhance your ability to lead. Self-learning or learning to learn is important in developing these people-related skills:
why you should never stop learning
defining what we mean by self-directed learning
leaders are not born; leaders know how to learn
having a sense of curiosity
modalities for learning
barriers to learning
Show Notes
Today's Project Managers Coffee Chat: Self-Learning for Project Success
00:28 Reflecting on the Season 4 journey of podcast episodes focused on leadership topics for the project leader and for leadership in general.
01:48 Learning to learn – the core concept.
02:32 The importance of self-directed learning – why you should never stop learning.
03:41 Defining self-directed learning to put the next several episodes in context.
04:53 Leaders are not born. You can learn to be an excellent leader, and some of that comes with your ability of learning to learn.
05:52 Curiosity is critical to your ability to learn to learn. Curiosity leads to effort and focus.
09:09 Individuals learn through a variety of learning modalities (e.g., auditory, visual, kinesthetic, etc.).
10:59 Strategizing self-learning using the what, why, how, tools, and stories (i.e., reviewing the many episodes of this podcast's Season 4).
12:20 Some barriers to learning and learning to overcome these barriers:
12:33     … project pressures and time constraints
12:57     … communication – and the noise in our heads that prevents you from completely learning
15:18     … organizational culture that doesn't support learning
16:47     … lack of mentorship and limited feedback
17:05     … lack of motivation
17:39     … lack of self-awareness