PROJECT MANAGEMENT ADVICE FOR YOUNG PROFESSIONALS

Keith “The Raleigh Llama” Gibbs This was supposed to be a presentation delivered at the annual REDACTED. It would have been a chance for me to get back to my roots. REDACTED (I refuse to spell out the acronym, as we are a brand to ourselves and clearly the best) is where my REDACTED journey started, under the Zen-like guidance of surfing super-architect REDACTED. Then

life got in the way, schedules collided and a runaway comet hurtled between Earth and Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction. Wait, no, sorry about that. Shouldn't be writing this while watching old Thundar the Barbarian cartoons. I had an episode queued up to get some rap lyric inspiration for an upcoming episode of REDACTED that I have been cast in. All I really have is, “I'm cool and logical like Mr. Spock. I'm fierce and powerful like Ookla the Mok.” Hmmm? Well, it's only cable.

Anyways, schedules did collide, and instead of suiting up and going to this event, I am in a van of parents hurtling at tortoise speed towards Space Camp in Huntsville, AL. Field trip chaperone. Attention deficit pre-teens, without cellular/Wi-Fi enabled devices and over-caffeinated small bladder adults hoping to learn as much as we can about an underfunded agency with a science-based mandate. Perfect training for me in my career of managing projects in FDA regulated industry. So, instead, I decided to write an article, dropping more knowledge than a one-armed encyclopedia juggler.

I was intending to write an article tying the Frank Baum classic, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” to Project Management. Partially it was because REDACTED, the coolest PM in three states (bonus quiz: guess which ones!) had come up with this great idea of helping Young Professionals see the true face of Project Management, by “pulling back the curtain”. Upon hearing his idea, and as a fan of supplying mixed metaphors, I immediately had this flash of (self-proclaimed) genius. Obviously we had to bring the Wizard into this, right? I mean, that's what pulling back the curtain is all about. Dispelling the myths. And we as Project Managers are clearly wizards. We

cast our voodoo spells dressed up as PM-Speak and distract you from what is really happening. Look over here at the Gantt chart ladies and gentlemen. Please don't look at the chaos that is really happening, barely contained, and hurtling towards a quasi-uncertain future. It was either this, or the prison drama Oz. Both have parallels, but I will stick with the more classical Oz reference. I was going to parallel the entire story. There was going to be Dorothy Gale (yeah, I know her last name) and the peaceful farm. There was going to be the storm, the chaos, the Wicked Sponsor and the Ruby Slip-on Safety Shoes. The Lollipop Guild was representing Union Labor. The yellow brick road(map). There would be allusions to smarts and hearts and courage (really wanted a trifecta of rhyming there. And FLYING MONKEYS! No real parallels there, I mean, yeah obviously there is a QA representative something or other to possibly be said. Of course, I would include some vague losing your way in the poppy field and a gonzo journalism throwback to Hunter S. Thompson. I would have jumped it around, off sequence, in a Tarantino-like fashion. All that mishegas would come to one very simple conclusion. The dog is the Project Manager. Not the Wizard. The Wizard was the verification team. The dog, sweet little “I bless the rains down in Africa” Toto, kept the project on track, guiding some, nipping at the heels of the team some, and protecting Dorothy (the project) from danger. It was to be glorious, fantastical and ISPE Award

Worthy. I would bow, hold out the microphone, drop it and ghost, like Swayze. And this is where it all went wrong. My mental train jumped the track. It started like this. In The Wizard of Oz, the original movie, when the scarecrow receives his

diploma, signifying that he now has a brain, he states, “The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side. Oh joy, rapture!” Say What? Holy mathematical mistake, Batman! Pythagoras’ theorem states that the sum of the squares of the two legs of a right-angled triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse. Even Toto would know that.

Toto. Dog. Dogs pee on trees. Pee Tree. Petri. Petri Dish. Dish.

dish: Informal information that is not generally known or available. “if he has the real dish I wish he'd tell us”

So I instead offer some thoughts on the P - rich mix that grows a great Project Manager. P0: The dish itself is “Problem Solving”. This skill surrounds all Project Managers. The mastery of the process, the path, the outcome of solving problems is the single most important arrow in the PM quiver. It is the battery that fuels all other success. Having this ability keeps the PM going, and going and going. It separates us from others into a different segment of resource categorization. All projects are just a string of problems to be solved, and if you want to be a PM, you need to know your do's and do knots of this string theory. P1: The media is “People”. Not the paparazzi shock jock doomsday cult of personality that infects our social consciousness. I mean the “growth” media that feeds a project and keeps it living. All projects are fueled, they are fed by, people. If you want to manage projects, you will need to manage people. Trust me when I say not everyone can do this. Right now, right this moment, I ask each of you to ask yourself one question. “Can I

(meaning you) effectively manage people”? If you think you can, continue down this path, and continue down this page. If you say no, or have ANY doubt, then do yourself the biggest favor you

can. Go do something else. You will be happier, you will be at peace, you will find success. Managing people has all the problems of all other possible professions, mixed in a blender, and poured into the petri dish as the project growth media. These problems are in the nutrient mix. Watch them grow. P2: “Possibilities vs. Probabilities”. What is possible is not always probable. You need to know the difference. I stopped believing in the impossible, but I do believe in the improbable. I have made a new career out of what I term project “Salvage and Restoration”, where I help identify those project risk points and run scenarios based on game theory to find our way back to the probable path to success. Projects have certain turning points that make success shift from probable to possible, from possible to improbable and then, if poorly managed or doomed from the start, from improbable to impossible. Learn to understand the nuance of this topic. Otherwise, you won't be able to understand what is growing in your dish. P3: “Plan, Practice, Perform”. Professional athletes practice. Professional musicians practice. Professional artists practice. Surgeons practice. Firefighter, police, soldiers. They all practice, meaning they train under real scenarios. They analyze their performance, and the tweak and retool until they can offer that performance as expert. And they recognize that without practice, they won't reach the pinnacle of their chosen fields. However, and it is just as true in other professions, in the project management field, and even more so in management of projects in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, there is no practice. We hide behind read and review

training, but that is not training. That is not practice. There is no expertise gained in reading, knowledge maybe, but not execution. And if on the job training was enough, then we wouldn't need all the controls and wasted oversight, cumbersome reports and unneeded checks and balances.

If you want the cello played, you call Shana Tucker. If you want soldiers, you call Hannibal Smith. Why? Because they plan, they practice and they perform. If you don't, you won't. Your project growth will die. P4: “Persuasions, Permissions, Placations, Priorities”. Priorities should be first. Simply, if you can't identify and deliver on priorities, you can't manage projects. Simple. Then come the “soft” skills. Establish a strong ethical foundation, then learn how to persuade people. Make solid case for your choices, get people onboard and guide them to be successful. Learn how to both ask for, and grant permission. Sometimes ask for forgiveness, but more often it is better to get buy-in from those further up the organization chart. Also, grant permissions to your direct reports, otherwise the typical project culture will prevent them from being proactive in their own scope-based decisions. And learn to placate the naysayers. Be able to (and I was so trying not to get back on the Oz thing) offer some oil to the sticky joint. People will get mad. People will turn evil. Keep focused. Keep strong. Keep open and honest. Be able to understand personal interaction. In a bioreactor, sometimes you need to encourage growth, you need to slow the roll, you need to inoculate. Sometimes make the mix happy, sometimes angry. You need to control your project growth. P5: “Practices, Policies, Procedures, Platforms, Partnerships”. We, in the regulated industries, work our magic under a lot of rules and regulations, and rightfully so. Good Manufacturing Practices are law, corporate policies highly vetted to meet that law and procedures guide us on how to

implement those policies at the site level. Platforms, whether technology based or best practice, help us implement those procedure to manufacture product. And none of it is accomplished alone. There are divisional partnerships, team partnerships, departmental partnerships, and many others. Some that you, as a project manager need to care about, and some you don't. But you should understand them.

That mix of P's can make you successful. Some are more important, and the importance of some varies based on project type, six, phase or state.

Remember, all problems can be solved, and that is the most important skill, a project manager can have. You need to develop a sixth sense of the way things will go. P6: Sixth Sense. The movie. He was a ghost all along. I promised to make this a thriller, so here we go. There is only one P that matters. And if you are working in the drug or medical device related industries, you should be able to guess what it is, and above all else, it is all that matters. It is the Patient.