Clint Padgett on Driving Team Performance Excellence EP 491
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Coming up next on PassionStruck. It's never failed to amaze me how you can have a conversation with someone and do you think they're completely understanding what you're saying? And then they walk away with a completely different take on what it is you're saying, right? One of my favorite quotes is by George Bernard Shaw, which says, the single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the

power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become

PassionStruck.

We have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize into convenient playlists to give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. And these are so important because we now have almost 500 episodes to choose from. Just go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. In case you missed my interview from earlier in the week,

I welcomed Rachel Rogers, the CEO and founder of Hello7 and author of the groundbreaking book, We Should All Be Millionaires. Rachel has sparked a revolution in how we think about money and wealth. Now she's back with her highly anticipated companion guide, Million Dollar Action, your step-by-step guide to making wealth happen.

Rachel shares the core principles of her million dollar action plan, offering practical tools and transformative insights to help you achieve financial abundance. From daily rituals to envisioning a million dollar future, this episode is packed with actionable strategies. I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews. And if you love today's episode or that one with Rachel, we would so appreciate you giving it a five star review and sharing it with your friends and families. I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners. Before we dive into today's incredible episode,

I have some exciting news to share about my book, Passion Struck. For the first time ever, the e-book is being discounted from $14.99 down to just 99 cents, and you only have until August 18th to pick it up. I'm also thrilled to announce that Passion Struck is a finalist for the Global Book Awards.

It has already won the gold medal at the Nonfiction Book Awards and was named Best Nonfiction Book at the International Book Awards. You can purchase it at Amazon or wherever you purchase your books. Now, let's get into today's episode. We have a remarkable guest who's a true maestro in the world of project management and team dynamics, Clint Padgett.

the CEO and president of Project Success, is with us to share his wealth of knowledge and experience. Clint is also the acclaimed author of How Teams Triumph, Managing by Commitment, and the insightful host of the Conversation with Clinton and Patchett podcast, which is on the Forbes Podcast Network.

With a solid foundation in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech and an MBA from the Focqua School of Business at the Duke University and an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, Clint brings over 25 years of expertise to the table. He's been instrumental in helping some of the world's largest companies optimize their business outcomes, build resilient teams, and develop sustainable project success practices rooted in accountability and deep personal commitment.

In today's conversation, we will delve into Clint's unique strategies for fostering engaging workplace environments, especially with Gallup reporting 70 to 85% of employees are disengaged. We'll explore the secrets behind building resilient teams in the era of tech revolution and discuss the decades of Olympic excellence powered by project success. Clint will also shed light on when it's time to let

an unsuccessful project go and how to ditch micromanagement in favor of empowering teams with trust and accountability. Drawn from his extensive experience, Clint emphasizes that project management is not just about process, but also about people. His principles detailed in how teams try and focus on maximizing performance through enhanced communication, breaking down silos and providing a proven framework for project completion. Clint's insights are invaluable for

Anyone looking to ensure their projects and teams are set up for triumph. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. Introducing Instagram teen accounts, automatic protections for who can contact teens and the content they can see. Learn more at Instagram.com slash teen accounts.

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I am so excited today to welcome Clint Padgett to PassionStruck. Welcome, Clint. Thank you for having me, John. Happy to be here. And it's great to see you again. And thank you for having me on your great show as well. I truly appreciate the support. No, it was a great interview. I'm glad I was able to do it.

Clint, I like to start these things out by giving the audience some background on the guest. You grew up in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and I understand that your entrepreneurial spirit was in part shaped by helping your father run his small business. I was hoping you might be able to talk about that and how these experiences helped shape your approach to intentionality and teamwork later in your career.

So it's interesting. Sometimes one backs into a situation that one says they want to get out of, right? So I was born and raised in Orangeburg, which is a small town between Columbia and Charleston. And my dad was a serial entrepreneur who was always starting businesses. He was a visionary and not always the best in execution. So we did a lot of that. And I remember thinking as I was growing up, I don't like this whole entrepreneurial thing. I think I'd rather just punch a clock and get paid by the man if we have to worry about this.

But what ended up happening was the entrepreneurial bug did bite me and ended up pursuing that and being an entrepreneur myself. But I think what that did for me growing up in that situation, because my dad did have so many different businesses. It was gas stations. I was pumping gas when I was in second grade. I wasn't tall enough to check oil when I was pumping gas and washing windows and everything.

making change way before we had electronic cash registers, doing all that kind of stuff. We had a liquor store, a beer store, a pool hall, a construction company, you name it. And so what that did was that that introduced me to many different types of people from many different backgrounds. And my background was fairly poor growing up. So I, but I also got to hang out and meet people who's doctors and lawyers, kids, and

It just taught me that no matter what title you have in life, people matter. And whatever role you're in, whether that's washing the windows or removing caulk or being a surgeon, you have a role to play. And I found that I really enjoyed meeting people, hearing their backstory and learning who they were, learning what their background was. And then having that conversation with it helped me

understanding how people are and how they really matter. And that became the focal point of what I do now, which is project management per se, but I also focus on the people side of project management and how conversations are so important to us. Yeah, I want to dive into that whole concept of mattering, especially why our need to matter is so important in the work environment, because I think it has a lot to do why so many people feel unfulfilled and disengaged with what they're doing.

But I like hearing about people's backstories. And you and I are both Navy veterans. Thank you for your service. If my research is correct, you spent about six years on an aircraft carrier. That's what I remember from our discussion. Yes. And similar to the question. It was only six years, but it felt longer. Yeah.

Man, I have a funny story to tell you that I didn't remember the first time that we talked. I'm on the Saratoga on its farewell voyage and I get assigned to the admiral staff and I'm the representative from the National Security Agency who's working for the admiral.

And you can imagine the security clearances. Well, they can't find me a birthing on this ship. And as we're talking 5,000 people, it shouldn't be too difficult to probably birthing. So I go into the birthing that they assigned me. And when I open the door, cigarette smoke pours out of it, which you don't do on a ship. And I'm like, what the heck is going on? And as I walk in, I start hearing ASAP bass playing.

and see all these guys dancing around wearing barely any clothes and they were all officers on an exchange program from Tunisia. And I just, I'm like, I couldn't in any realm of possibility imagine that this was going to happen. And I ended up having to live with them for about two weeks and they

Never stopped playing Ace of Base and they never stopped asking me when we were going to get more shipments of Levi jeans in so they could buy them for their family members. Anyway, I digress. That's awesome. So for me, as we discussed, the Navy really has played a pivotal role, both in leadership and also teamwork. How did it help shape you as a young man?

I think for me, what was really interesting is growing up in that small town, never having left the state of South Carolina until I was 18 and joined the Navy. It was just eye-opening to go from knowing everybody's name, knowing everybody and their brother, literally and their brother and or their sister. My high school graduate class had 52 people in it. And so it was a very small school that I went to. I knew everybody and their brothers and sisters and family members there.

And then getting on a ship and leaving not only the state, but the country and going to a different place and realizing that how lucky we are in the way that we have it in the U.S. and in going to other countries and really understanding who they were as well. Because even then I had this mentality of people matter. And I remember vividly one of my shipmates, we were in France, and he was upset because the waiter wasn't speaking English. I'm like,

You do know you're in France, right? That's not their language. Maybe we should try to speak French. And so that was just one of the things that clued me in to the fact that other people think their country is the greatest in the world, too. And they should. That's where they're from. That's where they're born. That's what they should think. But then a lot of places think we're the greatest. That's why they keep trying to come here, right? So we're a great melting pot.

But I just found that going overseas and seeing the way that some people have to live their life and then realizing that even though I grew up poor, I still had four walls around me called a trailer, right? At some point in my life, that was still better than what they have, a cardboard box. So it just explained to my horizons, really showed me that A, I am growing up in the greatest country in the world. And B, there are others out there that have their own values and their own, but they're also their own drawbacks.

Yeah, I'm a strong believer that I think everyone at some point in their time who lives in America should have to travel overseas because when you see places like I've been in Tunisia, Morocco, India, et cetera, you completely see a different way of life and it makes you feel so gratified for everything that we have here that we take for granted. Absolutely. So getting out of the Navy, you decided that wasn't your calling and you

You ended up getting into Georgia Tech, where you pursued a degree in electrical engineering. How did that technical education start shaping your perspective on balancing technical skills with the interpersonal relationships that had forged so much of your beginning up until that point? So I think what's interesting is a little bit of the backstory in that I knew I wanted to be an electrical engineer from the time I can remember. So

I remember going right into the library and checking out books on robotics and lasers. And this was late 70s. So this was way before that was a popular thing. My high school senior year, I did a project using a laser to create a hologram. I made a phone call, which my parents did not kill me for because it cost so much money. But I called England and talked to the first doctor who did the retrofertilization. And I actually got him on the phone. And I'm a 17-year-old kid from the U.S., right? But I always knew I wanted to be in the last row of the year. That was the thing that really drew me.

And I go in the Navy and I'm an electrician's mate on the aircraft carrier. So I'm working on electrical equipment, not theoretic, not theory stuff, really practical application. And I remember working on machines and thinking, why in the world are they put this part that always fails in the back? This person clearly has never worked on one. They did the design. So then I got out and I like to joke that there's probably, uh,

No greater motivation to work, to go to college and to work in a shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia in December or January, which is actually what I did when I got out of the Navy. I went to work at a shipyard. And if you're not familiar with Norfolk, Virginia, it can be quite chilly in the winter. And the wind is coming off the water slicing right through you. I'm laying in the bilge of these boats running electrical cables. And I'm like, yeah, this is definitely not for me. There's got to be something better to do in my life than this. And so I was lucky enough to get into Georgia Tech and get that double E degree.

and then become a practicing electrical engineer. But early on in my career, I went to work at Coca-Cola and I got to start working on projects.

I really began to love it. Of course, I'm drawn to the technical side of things. I love two plus two. I always joke that there's a reason I became an engineer and not a literature major. And that's because I love looking in the back of the book and confirming the two plus two was indeed for the validation. And I don't like literature majors. I mean, I didn't want to be a literature major because I remember being scarred for life on the essay exam. And when I was in high school with the essay question, please describe the statistics of the color red and the great Gatsby.

And having not read the book at 16, I had no idea, right? So that just petrified me. So I like the technical aspect of things. And then working for a really long time on different projects, I found that everybody's happy to talk about process. Process is activity. A takes five days. B takes five days. C takes five days. Total 15 days. That's great.

But Joe, Jill, and Sue do activities at A, B, and C. And you have to work with them differently because they're motivated differently. They speak different technical languages. You have the salespeople who don't speak the same language as the engineers, the technical people, and the vice versa. And I found myself gravitating more and more towards people as the missing link here. People are the key. Microsoft Project will help you with process. It doesn't help you with people.

And so I just found myself gravitating more to that. And I found more and more in my classes that I teach in project management. I would get questions on how do you handle this person or that person? And that's what led to the second book that I wrote, which was really about the people side of managing projects. So I still appreciate the math. I love doing the math. I just did a class the last two days.

And I love chapter six because that's the chapter where we do all our math and I love it. But the hard questions really are about the people side of things and how do you handle situations with people? How do you handle bad team members? How do you engage them and get them to be on board? So I just found myself loving that side of things, even though I tell you a quick story. I was talking to somebody, one of those pictures many years ago for lunch. And we're trying to obviously sell them our services. And so I didn't choose myself and we're having lunch together.

And I'm on my soapbox about how people matter. And he stopped me. He said, wait a minute. I thought you were an engineer. I said, I am. He goes, what is all this touchy-feely people stuff? Until people don't do project work, then I'm going to have to be a touchy-feely people person because people do projects. And I can't be successful if they don't have what they need to be successful. So anyway.

Well, I think a great follow-on question to that is after you got that degree, similar to that story you just shared, you started to observe in your work that many projects were failing due to poor communication. How did this observation then lead you to go down this path for having a huge passion of providing clarity through what I see are intentional conversations that people have? It's never failed to amaze me how you can have a conversation with someone

And do you think they're completely understanding what you're saying? And then they walk away with a completely different take on what it is you're saying, right? One of my favorite quotes is by George Warren Shaw, which says, the single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

So when I was doing some research for the second book, I looked up the definition of communication and realized that it's not the same thing as a conversation. Communication can be a one-way dialogue, posting on Slack, posting on Jira, sending a Teams message, sending an email, leading a voicemail. Those are one-way communications. And what I found is beneficial is when you have a conversation. To put this into perspective, when you were a kid, if you ever played the game Telethon,

We telephone. If you don't know the game, I think sometimes it's called Chinese whispers. But if you don't know the game, basically somebody has a secret. They tell it to somebody else, the next kid in line, who then whispers it to the next kid in line. And it goes on down to five or six or seven people. And the fun of the game is that what the last person says is not remotely close to what the first person whispered. Which is fun, right? It's very funny. The fun we have is that same dynamic plays out in the business world.

Except now people's livelihoods are impacted. Raises are not gotten. Your job promotions aren't had because of the fact that message was misunderstood. And so what happens is I'm a leader. I think I've written the perfect email that clearly, succinctly says exactly what I want you to go do. I post it and then nobody asked me a question. So I assume you got it. And then I find out you went in the wrong direction according to what I wanted.

So to me, what helps solve that problem would have also solved the game telephone, which would have made it not as much fun, is if you ask clarifying questions. So now what happens is when the first person says something to the second person, the leader says, here's my message.

If the recipient of that message can look back and say, OK, can you help me understand what does it mean? How are you defining this term? Because sometimes we hear a message, we hear it through our filter, through our biases, the way we define terms. Right. We even hear it through the kind of data we're having.

How many times have you received a text message or an email and you just got fired up because you were mad that you sat on it overnight and realized, hey, they really mean it that way because you're just having a bad day. You heard it through that filter. And if I can have a conversation where I'm able to ask you clarifying questions, like when you say you want to turn left, do you mean like right now at the stop sign or at that major intersection up there? Where am I turning left? And by asking those clarifying questions, which I call a dialogue, having a dialogue,

I'm able to receive the message the way you intended it. And when I pass it on to the next person, they can ask clarifying questions. And that way the message gets through completely and doesn't get mangled along the way. Introducing Instagram teen accounts. Automatic protections for teens with built-in limits for who can contact them and the content they can see. Helping teens safely connect to the people and things that matter most. Plus, teens under 16 require parental approval to change safety settings.

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Thank you for sharing that. And I just wanted to share a couple other thoughts on this. I think the other thing we fail to take into account oftentimes, because so many businesses today are global, is the cultures and other parts of the world. And I got my first real introduction to this when I was working for a company called LendLace. And we were doing all these construction projects around the world.

And I remember being in China and we were talking to a group of people in Shanghai about this project that we were wanting to implement to change the way that we were doing safety around the construction projects. And I remember we were sitting there and during the entire meeting, all the Chinese executives who were there were all shaking their heads in approval. And what I felt...

to understand until later on was that when they were shaking their heads and nodding yes, it means that they understood what we were saying. It didn't mean that they were going to comply with anything that we had to say.

And that was a custom that I found not only there, but in other parts of Asia as well. And the second real wake-up call for me when I was at Lendlease is I was working for the chief information officer, this great guy named Jay Skibinski, and he wanted to do some of these radical changes to the way that the company had operated in the past. And so we were starting this large project and...

We had this meeting with all the different executives worldwide. It was an in-person session. He asked them to raise any objections they had. There were not very many, etc. And we came out of the meeting and he became a great mentor to me. And he said, John, one of the most important lessons I want to teach you is that people speak with their feet. And he goes over the next couple of weeks.

I don't want you to observe what they're saying out loud. I want you to start observing their actions about their commitment to doing the project. And he was absolutely right because we saw, although everyone was saying, yes, we need to do it, about 75% of the people who were saying yes were doing actions that were really in 180 degrees perspective.

voicing their disapprovement for wanting to do what this was going to enact. So I think those are important things that happen so often in the business world that people say they're on board and they're completely not.

I think that's good. I have a similar experience in Japan, which is a country that I absolutely adore and love. And one of the first projects that I was working on there, very exact thing that you're describing. I'm talking to somebody and nodding off. It seemed to be agreement. They keep saying, hi, which I'm assuming it means I'm 100% on board. I hear what you're saying. Totally agree. And then later somebody said, hi, means exactly what you said. I understand you're speaking words and I understand those words, but it doesn't mean I agree with you. Right.

And so that's just an eye-opening inspiration. The other one that I learned when I was there was they would say, that will be difficult, which is their way of saying, that ain't never going to happen. But they don't, they're not confrontational and they don't want to say no. So they just say, yeah.

That would be difficult. So you learn as you go through different cultures. One of my colleagues spent a couple of years in Mexico and he likes to tell the story of he was talking to one of his coworkers and the guy said, manana, which I believe the literal translation of manana is tomorrow. And so the next day it happened and still the work wasn't done. And the guy said, manana. And after a couple of weeks went by, somebody finally said, look, manana doesn't mean tomorrow. It just means not today. So he just lost the translation. Yeah.

Oh, no, I lived I was stationed in Spain as one of my first duty stations. And we were wanting to get this work done on this house that we had. And our landlord was Spanish. And every time we would ask him for something, it was manana. Well, manana meant we'll get it done in the next two months. But not today. But not today. You Americans worry about stuff too much. Exactly.

So one of the things I picked up in my research is that you really emphasize the importance of up close and personal conversations in order to break down silos and to foster cross-functional teamwork. How has this approach become a foundational element of your project management methodology?

So we work on some pretty large global projects. I've been fortunate enough in my career to work on those. I think I'm approaching about 30 worldwide sporting events for Coca-Cola. I've planned all of the Olympic summer and winter since 1994, starting with the '96 Olympic Games. We started planning about two years in advance. I've had all the people for World Cup since 1998. So these major global sporting events. Also some really large projects for Caterpillar and some other clients.

And what we found is even a project that takes two years and is geographically dispersed, the team members are literally all over the globe. If we can get people together face to face for just as little as three or four days, the bonds that we form over those three or four days allow us to run the next 22 months, 23 months remotely. And what I mean by that, to put it into perspective, there's a wonderful book by John Kassenbach. I think it's called Wisdom of Teens. Yeah, Wisdom of Teens.

And in that book, when I was reading it, what he talks about is how do you take a group of individuals in my world who've been assigned to a project and actually have them work as a cohesive team? And the finding really was you got to put a structure in place within which people begin to feel accountable to each other, not just to the boss, but to each other. So my experience with that in the way that I verbalize that based on my 30 years of doing this is,

I need to change you, John, from an email address into a living, breathing human being to a Jocula connection. Let's say that you and I worked together for six or seven years at the company. And all I know, all I just know you is John at activecorporation.com. And when I finish my task, I send it over to you and you do some things to it. Magic and the project finishes, company makes money, everybody's really happy. And so this particular time, of course, you're not the only project I'm working on. I'm working on five or six different projects.

And this week, it's Friday. It's 8 o'clock at night. I've already put in 60 hours this week. I'm tired and I haven't gotten to your task yet. And I don't really frankly feel bad because I did more than I did 60 hours this week. I did more than my first year. So I'm going to go have dinner with the kids and that's it. So Wednesday of next week, when I finally get around to doing your task, I finish it, send it off to you with a note. Hey, sorry, this is late. It was really bad week last week. All well, it's well.

and i emailed it to you and all i know is you did your magic the project got launched and the company made money everybody was happy but what i find is when we come face to face

I get to meet you. Hey, John, nice to meet you. Nice to put a name with a face. How are you? And we start talking. And over the breakfast or over a team lunch or a coffee break or over a team dinner, I get to learn who John Miles really is. I get to learn about your background in the Navy. I get to learn about you have three kids. I have three kids. Your kids do this and my kids do that. And I start to form a connection with you.

And then what happens is we go back into the planning session and I don't want to get too much technical jargon, but there's a set of activities that are important, all the critical path and that they're late, the project's late.

And I see that I'm on that as well as your task. And I say, well, John, something is wrong because I know for a fact that task I've been late with in the past and it didn't stop the project. And you say, well, Clint, you're right. But the connection is right. The problem is, he says, last time I remember vividly, you were three days late when you gave it to me. He says, and I had to work two weekends in a row to make up for that. And I'm going to tell you, I know Clint's five letters, but in my household, you were four letter word for those two weekends.

because I had to miss this big event in my kids' lives. I couldn't go to the soccer game. I couldn't go to the recital, all because I was trying to make up for you giving it to me late because I knew I couldn't afford to give it to the next person late. So now I start to feel bad. Nothing has changed. I'm still going to go back to my office. You're still going to be john.agleycorporation.com, except for the fact that now I have formed and established a bond with you. I hold myself accountable to make sure that I get my stuff done because I wouldn't want somebody else calling me to have this big event in my kid's life.

So what we find is having people come face to face, even for just as short as three days. And this is not replicable via Zoom, because as you pointed out, people work with their feet. Even on a Zoom call, even if I've got you online, which half the time I don't, I've just got your picture up.

But I can't really tell, I can see your face. I can't see, I can't actually see that you've got your arms crossed and you're mad about something. I can't see that you're, I see that you're looking down while you're taking notes, answering an email from your colleague, writing a PowerPoint for your boss. I can't really see all that. I can't see the body language and I miss all those non-verbal cues. So by having those conversations face-to-face, I have access to all of that information and

Not only that, but I also have the ability now to form that bond with you, that conversation you asked out. And now I begin to put, it's not just John, it's John with three kids. Like I have three kids and somebody important that I care about now deeply that I've formed some kind of a connection with.

I interviewed Dr. Sherry Turkle once for the podcast, and she's written six or seven books. She's a New York Times bestseller. I think the one that was Nicky Rattis' Reclaimed Conversations. She's a professor at MIT. She's a fantastic woman, clinical psychologist. She writes on empathy. And in one of the books that I was reading, there was a study done by some Japanese researchers. And what they saw, what they found was, I've always heard this, what guys are the windows to the soul.

And the research actually backs it up. What they found was when people are face to face and they make eye contact, there's some chemical reactions of bond that starts to form. And so when I was interviewing her, she was laughing. She said, Clint, to mimic that, I'm tricking you right now by making you think we're bonding because I'm looking at the camera. So it looks like I'm looking right at you. She goes, but unfortunately, you're down here. I can't see you at all. And so there are those things that happen face to face that I don't

It's an investment of two or three days, but it gives us the ability of executing long, difficult projects, even when we're spread across the world. We can do the rest of it remote as long as we form that basis upfront.

I've seen that play out so many times, especially when I was starting to do the work with Indian outsourcers or outsourcers in other countries. It meant so much to get that lead who you're going to have from that company to come and meet with you face to face so that you had that rapport, understood more about them. And when you had heated discussions, you always had

a common base that you both could go back to that would help to diffuse anything that might come up. So Clint, I want to talk about your book, How Teams Triumph: Managing by Commitment. And in it, one of the core things that you discuss is managing by commitment rather than micromanagement. How does this intentional approach to leadership foster trust and accountability within teams? So it's really, I'm glad you asked that question. So I think one of the interesting things for me is

When I work with a new team, you can see the trepidation on their face when they walk in the room, the project management. Just one more way for the man to keep me down, right? My boss is going to use this to micromanage what I'm doing. Tell me that May 10, 8, 10, I should be doing that. If May 10, 8, 25, I should be doing that. And they just want to run straight from the room. Another reason I think people don't like to do traditional project management is their whole life experience is that project management is punitive.

What's happened is that organization has used project management as a club to beat people over the head, which is not what to me a project should be about. To me, project management should be inclusive, should be collaborative, it should be helpful. And the way we do that is, so I'll tell a quick story. So basically, what ends up happening is somebody will tell me, I hate project management. So why do you hate it? Here's what they describe. Because what happens is the project manager sits off

To save me time, he says, he's going to go build a plan without me. Because he knows how it all goes together. I don't need to be bothered by that. So I can really do my work. He says, then the guy laughs and says, but the unfortunate piece is he doesn't know what I do. And apparently he used a random number generator for the duration because those are already remotely close to what it's going to take me to get it done. Then he publishes the schedule without my input and then complains to my boss and I'm not getting it done. Well, if that's how a project work is done, I'm going to rush from the room as well.

So the approach that we take, what we do is the team builds their plan for their project. I've worked on so many global events. There's probably nobody in the world that is more about how Coca-Cola plans and executes an Olympic event than I do. There's so many of them in my career. If not the number one, I'm probably in the top two or three. I also worked in Brazil on the FIFA World Cup. So I knew the people, the processes, the culture there.

So when that was 2014, they got the 2016 Olympic Summer Olympics. So I probably could have gone out by myself in a vacuum and built a pretty solid plan based on for the Rio 2016 Olympics, based on my understanding of what happened on the FIFA World Cup in Brazil, plus the understanding overall knowledge of Olympic planning. But that would never have worked because my name isn't attached to all the tasks.

That belongs to other people on the team. So the people can change, skill sets change, regulatory things can change. So what we find is even if you know a lot about the project as a project manager, you should involve a team and let the team build their plan for their project.

Because at the end of the day, most of the world today works in a matrix organization, which means I have no control over the people on my team. They don't report to me for their job, for their pay raises, for their job reviews. That's their functional manager. And they're dotted line in my project and five or six other projects. So not only do I not control the people on my team, I can't force them to do the work. I'm competing for their time with multiple other projects.

The only shot I've got to be successful in that scenario, which is how most of the world works, is if they hold themselves accountable. And the way that I find we hold ourselves accountable is if you remove all the obstacles that people can hide behind. That would include things like, so some of our rules of engagement would be

For you to be assigned to a task, you must be physically in the room or on the team's call and say, "That's my task and I own it." Because that's you taking, you're taking acceptance of that task and therefore you're taking accountability for it and ownership of it. And then you are the only person who can tell me the duration. You tell me how long you need because you're the only person who knows all the different ins and outs of the projects you're working on, personal life, whether you can work late on a weekend or not, whether you've got the kids this week or not.

Only you know that. I don't know that from the outside. Only you have that information. And then only you can tell me the things you need to do your work. So it's not just enough to say that's my task. It's going to take me two weeks. I also need to know, okay, what do you need from other people before this two weeks can start?

And by building our plans in a collaborative way and by having the individual tell me what activities belong to them, how long they need and what they need from other people, two things happen. First of all, they own that activity. They're going to start to hold themselves accountable to delivering that activity because that's when they promise it to me. And I find most people want to live up to what they say.

I'm sure we get some bad team members every now and then, but the majority of the people that I've dealt with in my 30 plus years doing this, people want to come to work and do a good job and go home at night feeling like they did a good job. So they wanted to do the work, they wanted to live up to what they had to say, what they promised you. The other thing that's magical about having people collaborate together and build these plans is they get a much deeper understanding of not only their piece of it, but how they fit into the overall plan.

And they begin to see that I didn't realize that this was late. It actually was going to affect five other people. Only one of them is going to push the project out. The other four people are also having an impact on there. I didn't realize that. I didn't understand. Or now I'm able to communicate to the people that I'm getting information from why this piece of information is so important. How do I use it? If that's causing a conflict, we can discuss about how I might get an earlier, early piece of information that I can work with.

So to me, those are really the keys is collaboration and having those these conversations why it's so important. I'm just going to ad lib here a little bit. One of my most interesting roles that I had as an executive was when I was at Lowe's, I took over three functions that you would seem would be separate, but actually were very interrelated. I was in charge of all data. So the chief data officer

integration, and testing of all the IT that we were doing. And when you start thinking about those functions, they cut across any single initiative that you want to accomplish

And one of the things that used to drive me crazy is the project managers would come in and they'd start slicing people up in 5% of their time, 10% of their time. We're going to put them two hours here, two hours here. And in reality, that just doesn't never works. That's not how people work.

focus on things is in that way. Have you run across that type of scenario and how do you deal with it and what do you recommend? So the way you're describing, I totally get. And there are really two philosophies, I think. One is what I call resource driven, which is what you were describing in that we're going to allocate this person for X percentage of their time and that person for Y percentage of their time.

And the challenge I think you have in project work with doing that is the number of staff hours required and the duration of the activity are quite different. The example that I like to give, no matter what world you live in, you probably understand this, is changing the oil in your car. If I go out on Monday morning and I spend one hour, 8 o'clock to 9 o'clock in the morning, and I take the oil plug out, take the oil filter out, and let all the oil drain, and I come back Friday afternoon at 4 o'clock and I spend one hour, I put the plug back in, I put a new filter on, fill it back up with oil.

The staff hours on that is two hours. So if I was billing my time back against projects, if I'm in IT, I'd be billing two hours. The problem with that is what that doesn't tell me is when can I drive my car?

It's not after two hours. It's at the end of day five. If I started Monday morning and finished Friday afternoon, that's five days. Five days it collapsed. And I can drive the car, pick up the kids, go to the grocery, go to get the dry cleaning. All of those things start at the end of day five, not after two hours. So two hours is important for resource balancing. For project work, Joe doesn't care it takes you two hours. Joe just wants to know, can I start my task on Thursday or Friday? Which is it?

And that's why the duration piece is so important. So we put that back on the team members who say, that's my task. The first question I ask them is how long is it going to take you based on your workload? So I don't want you to assume 100% availability because you probably aren't. So thinking about all the other projects you're working on, plus your day job, because almost nobody got hired in the company to do projects. They got hired for a function. And oh, by the way, project work is just not going to get stoned on. So taking all that into account, how long will this task take you?

And then if I want to look at resources and look at resource leveling, then I can also ask a second question, which is, what are the staff hours on this? And then I can look at resource plans. But I can manage complex projects without ever looking at the hours. It's really more about commitment and durations. Well, thank you for giving us that insight. And I wanted to go back to the Olympics, given that we've got the Olympics coming up here in the very near future.

When you think of some place like you were talking about Brazil for the Olympics, we're talking about Paris. Since you're probably knee deep in this right now, what are some of the things that go into planning for an Olympics that listeners might not even be thinking about that become complications that have to be overcome? Well, everyone is unique and different. So I will say that it's everyone has their own philosophy of legacy they want to leave.

whether you want to be the most sustainable one or the most user-friendly one or most accessible one. And I will say that over the years, it gets to be different. Maybe batter's not the right word, but it's different and unique on each one. And to be clear, I'm only doing one of the major sponsors of activation of these events. I'm not building facilities and things like that. I think if you're one of the major sponsors, if you're one of the

inside of the stadium then you're trying to get your brand across you're trying to make sure people are drinking your product and see your brand everywhere that's probably something people do realize but there's a lot that goes into it before that like how do we make sure that the product is cold because if you're doing it people walk up which is a little different than the olympics if you're a soccer fan let those people stay in the bowl halftime comes everybody leaves and wants to get like something to drink and come back down to sit down so you better have all your stuff pre-chilled

And that's on top of the marketing programs that go into place, the regulatory items you have to make sure are checked off. So it's actually funny because I think the way I describe it is like having a party at your house. It's just the only thing that's different is scale, right? If you're having a party at your house, you have to send out invitations, which we might call tickets. You have to get an RSVP list, how many products to go by. You've got to make sure your products are cold in advance so that the beer is not hot, trying to cool off for the last second. The wine is not hot, trying to cool off for the last second.

You've got, if I go to invite my boss, you know, so there's a political piece involved. Really, the only difference is your parties probably don't last 17 days like the Olympics do. If they do, please invite me. I would love to see one of these. And they probably don't have tens of thousands of people attend. Again, if you do, let me know. I'd love to come to one of those. But it's really, it's just scale. It's much like planning on a party you're having at your house, but it's just the scale is clearly much, much larger.

I've always thought watching these things from afar, it's so interesting how 18 months before the event is supposed to be held. They are so far behind on creating stadiums and other venues that they need to. And miraculously, I'm not sure how some of these countries pull it off, because to me, I guess they're throwing a lot of people and money at it.

Well, from the stadium perspective, I think it's, I've seen this happen in some countries. And again, that's not the part that I work on, but you think about project work as time costing quality. And so the way that they pull it off at the end is sacrificed quality and increased cost. So they will get it done. So the country might finish a hotel or stadium or whatever. And I don't think I'm telling any secrets here, but I remember being on one of the projects and

They were building the new soccer stadium. We got into it the week before to put our equipment in, only to discover that the concession stands were not big enough for all the equipment. So here we are one week before the event. We've got to erect temporary stands. We've got to get permission to run extension cords through the ceiling, plug into the back, all because they weren't sized properly.

But what is happening is, and again, this is from our client perspective, they don't have any control over that. It's just, we're going to move in, put our product in place, be ready to go whenever you tell us we can go. And so that was, those are the kind of challenges. So what happens is it costs extra money because we had to create temporary stands. And of course it adds a lot of stress to your life. It certainly does. That is for sure.

Clint, one of the things that is playing out right now on a global scale is Gallup is reporting that somewhere between seven to eight employees are disengaged and feel unfulfilled at work. What do you think are some of the things that are the root cause of this? And how does an intentional approach to leadership help to create more engaging work environments?

So it's actually a little disheartening to hear it's that high. I'm not surprised though. I'm a big face-to-face guy. So I probably landed on the side of the argument that people should be more in the office than away. But I could certainly see that coming out of the place where I got to work fully remote from home for multiple years and productivity was the same. Why am I having to come back into the office? So that may be leading to some of the unrest, if you will. So to me, it's, you got to strike that balance. And I think that's,

You don't have to be in the office every day. I think that's ship of sale. There's no reason to come into the office from 9:00 to 5:00 exactly every day. But I think there are times when face-to-face contact is helpful. So I think maybe that's every Tuesday and Wednesday if you go in the office. I don't know what that is for your organization, but there needs to be some amount of face time. Because what we've also found is when you're fully remote, you tend to be isolated.

And their Zoom calls don't take the place of actual conversations because I'm not going to be on a Zoom call with 25 people and be able to have a sidebar conversation with my colleague because that means everybody here is supposed to be just having the conversation with them. There are some things that happen that you really only get from the impromptu discussions that happen when you run into somebody at a coffee machine, right? So I think there is something that has to come into play. As far as other things, I think it's a matter of trying to understand where people are

If they are going to remain remote, then which I think is part is okay as well. I didn't take more ownership as a leader of that call to make sure because I see this happen all the time while I was in call and there'll be 10 people in the room and four people joining remotely. And of course, people in the room drive the conversation at the very end. You look over goes. So, Clay, what do you think? And I'm like, well, all the good ideas are gone because I couldn't chime in because I was muted on the call.

So now the intentional thing would be to look over and say, hey, let's start off with our remote participants and try to get their input first so that they actually feel like they're part of it. Because what we find is if you're fully remote, then you do tend to fall off and you do tend to feel isolated. So that could be something that's driving that as well. The other thing is just trying to understand who they are and where they are in their life. And it's more than just project work. And it's going to sound cavalier, but it's not to me. It should be sincere. It's

John, how are you doing? I mean, what's going on in your world? Just talk about your kids from it. And really try to get that engagement from them so they do feel like they are part of a company as opposed to this 1099 contractor out here buying my house with no support. Yeah, and I think that's going to become more paramount in the future because as you and I discussed in our episode, I really believe more and more people are going to become entrepreneurs.

individual entrepreneurs where they're serving multiple clients. And so they need to have that emotional investment to feel like they're part of the team. And that leads to my next question. What intentional practices can leaders implement to maximize that emotional investment of their teams in the projects? Because I think

That investment is part of the reason projects fail or not. You've got to get that culture of people invested in getting this thing out to fruition. So I think if I had to pick one single thing from a project perspective, at least, it would be that a leader has the ability to listen and to actually hear. So it's when I can work with the team and show you something, prove to you that it can't be done. And if your attitude is, I don't care what that says, it can happen.

then we're not going to be successful. Also, if you shoot the messenger, if I have bad news and you've created an environment in which the truth is not acceptable, then you shoot me because I got the message, then I'm going to learn my lesson and I'm just going to be quiet next time. I remember being early in my career and being, I was actually serving in this particular planning session. My boss was leading and then one of the guys was, a new guy was beside me who was with that company and

They were looking at the critical path and we take a break and he walks out and he's shaking his head and he says, I ain't never going to happen. And I said, well, why not? He says, well, they're missing. They're missing one of my tasks. And he says, and the one they do have, it does not have enough time on it. I said, oh, well, we should go back and tell him. He goes, oh, no. He says, there's no way I'm doing that. And I said, but why not? He says, because I've worked with Joe before. And I know for a fact, if I give that news to Joe, Joe's going to make my life miserable for the next six months.

He says, what I'm going to do, I'm just going to sit here quietly and in six months when my task is supposed to be done, I'll announce I need three more weeks or another month. And there's also a missing task. So there are two people clearly at fault. One is the guy should have stood up and just taken the beating he didn't deserve, but he should have just been vocal. But the leader is created in an environment where the truth is not acceptable. As a project manager, I know there's going to be bad news. If there's no bad news coming my way, then I know that one or two things is happening. The people are not doing any work.

or they're hiding it from me because there's bad news in every project. I often joke that we should call project management the theory of chaos because projects are chaotic by nature. And I'm okay with the fact that things don't go well. As long as you tell me

And if you know something, I don't, I'm not bothered by bad news. I'm bothered by bad news that you've known about for months. And you kept hoping the miracle would occur and you figure it all out so that nobody had to know. Because now when you finally tell me we've lost two or three months worth of time, we could have had to correct it. And now the only option I have left is usually pretty unpalatable. I'm doing something crazy like air free and concrete block to a construction site to solve a problem where, because you've removed my ability to solve, you give me a lot less time to fix the problem.

So one is, I think, just creating the environment where people are willing to be truthful, where the truth is actually welcomed and not just beat the messenger, but also be willing to ask hard questions. But in the end, listen to what they're saying. I had a project once, I won't name the client, but they wanted to be the first major network to go all HD on their project, on their sends, everything in high definition. And we're planning the project in April and the deadline they wanted was November of that year.

And we did the math and we did the plan. We realized at the end of three days, we could not give them an open week, but the team could make April happen. And so we went back to the customer, internal customer and say, I know you want November, but here, April is the best we can do. Here's why, show them all the steps.

And then they asked you really hard questions, but they were good questions. Well, what if we gave you more people? And the answer was, well, it's not a people problem. It's a technology problem. We are a new equipment we need to be able to go to high def from what we have today. And there's only so much of it. And we're late to the game. There are other people in front of us. And they said, oh, it's a money problem. Here's money. So you can buy somebody's place in line, which was ultimately not successful. They basically said, go to the back of the line where you belong.

But in the end, the customer, while not thrilled with the fact they weren't going to get November, agreed and understood, hey, April is the best we can do. The team is working hard. They're not shirking their responsibility. They thought about it. They really put a lot of effort into it. And I recognize that while it's not the answer that I wanted to hear, it is the correct answer, which is April. And let's go with April. And that was considered to be a successful project because the customer agreed to move the date to April.

because we did our due diligence. So I think for me, it's about creating the vital order of the truth that's acceptable, but then also listening to what you're told and not just saying, no, it could happen. Because the customer could have said all day long, it's November and hung up the phone and would we be able to deliver it in November? No, because if you can't make it work on paper, you can't make it work in real life because paper is easier. So if I can't get my schedule to show in November, I'm never going to make it happen in real life.

I think one of the most important jobs a project manager's got to do is have thick skin and be proactive in calling things out that they're going into a yellow status to bring people's attention to the issues and that they need to be solved. What drives me nuts was when I would be on these steering committees looking at these projects, you knew...

And after you've done hundreds of projects, the telltale signs that things aren't going the way they should. And yet the project is green and all of a sudden the whole thing is red and they're asking for money and more time. And to me, that is complete and utter project management 101 that that should never happen.

Yeah, I think for me, it's interesting, the green. So one of the questions I was asked, is that a mathematical answer? Did you get that mathematically? Or are you setting the color yourself? Because if you're setting the color yourself, I have a problem. I wanted to know, I want it to be coded so that if it's X number of days late, it's yellow, and it's Y number of days late, it's red. Otherwise, you can game the system. And I think the other thing that I see a lot of problems with in companies, they tend to, companies tend to overlaunch in general. They tend to overpromise, overlaunch projects.

And I always ask the question in my groups, so how many of you work in a multi-product environment? And almost everybody raised their hands. Okay. Of all the products that are currently on your plate, how many are considered top priority? And everybody lives because every single one is considered top priority, which the true statement I can make about that is that none of them are. They're all the same priority.

So one of the challenges that I see organizations have that they could certainly be better at and solve a lot of issues is truly prioritizing the projects and saying, this is our number one, this is our number two, this is our number three. So apply the resources needed in number one first and then go to number two. Because if you take the attitude, they're all top priority, they're all the same prior. Absolutely true. I'm going to just share another story from my time at Lowe's. I remember I...

was promoted to take on all software development for the company. And I started talking to some of the executives in the business to understand how people felt about the function. And I will never forget this discussion that I had with Scott Butterfield, who at the time was the head of corporate strategy. And he said, John, you guys are absolutely fantastic at delivering projects that by the time they're delivered are completely useless.

And this leads me to asking you one of the most difficult things, I think, whether you're a project manager or just in a company, is how to recognize when to let go of projects that are going to be unsuccessful. How do you recommend leaders be intentional about identifying and making these tough decisions? That's a good one. I think that what ends up happening is

As a team starts working on a project, we get invested, right? We got our blood, sweat, and tears. We've lost sleep at night on this project. We've worked much a week on this project. And so the last thing we want to hear is, hey, we shouldn't be doing this project anymore. And I've seen this happen many times. And the team would say, let's say the customer of this particular piece of equipment, one of the clients I work with is a semiconductor. And let's say the customer for that chill has changed their mind and is no longer an option for us. There'll be some people on the team who will say, well, let's just go ahead and finish it.

And just put it on the shelf so we can use it later. What they're really saying is, I don't want to feel like I wasted six months of my life. But that's not the right answer. Because if you look at it, why would I want to spend another four or five months finishing this project for which you know there's no customer now? Instead, because that's just throwing bad resources out for good. So let's just put that on the shelf, table it for now. And we can always pick it back up in the future if we find another customer and we'll start from there.

But it is hard. It is really hard to give up on a project that shouldn't be given up on. And so one of the things that we like to do is we have a document called a project charter. And in that charter, there's usually some kind of financial benefit to doing the project. What is the gain from this project?

And once your customer goes away, you can see the gain is now zero. And you can see the burn rate for the employees involved and what the cost of the project is. It becomes a very transparent mathematics exercise. It says, if we continue this project, we are losing X amount of dollars per month. Because in this team, we have five other projects, by the way, that are behind. I could really use these people on that project or those projects to make sure that they are successful.

And it's just, it's hard, but the math says we should do it. And so you have to try to, I think, soften the blow to the people who invested that time and just let them know, hey, this is not a waste of that. The first thing I'm going to say is I just wasted six months of my life. You know, we've gotten six months of really good work years. We've got some good electric property developed.

We're just going to put it on the shelf until we need it. And let's take these excellent talents you have and let's move them away to these other projects that are running behind so we can get those back on track so we can deliver those successfully and get the revenue that we need and the profit we need to move forward. So it's hard, but you have to do it. And Glenn, I have one last question for you. And a lot of what we've been talking about today is a little bit different than the typical lens that we have interviews for PassionStruck, which are more about individual growth.

So part of the ethos of being passion struck is making deliberate choices for constantly choosing growth and to pursuing becoming the best self that you can be. How does your concept of managing by commitment tie into the ethos of being passion struck? Oh, that's good. I think that for me at least, and maybe I'm just jaded, but I do think that conversations can be transformational.

And there's a couple of things. First of all, it removes, it actually bubbles to the forefront any issues that you and I might have. Maybe you're still irritated by the fact that I made you work two weekends or whatever that is, right? So I have the conversations, I'm meeting face-to-face, I do the things that I live in my life, my work. It tends to bubble us up through the time, but we can talk about it, resolve it, I can apologize, we can move on and be able to be successful going forward. And to me, that's also a growth learning is that, okay,

Even though I don't necessarily see the product, I probably am impacting other people. So how can I be more insightful about the impact that I am having? Have that conversation. Talk to the person that's waiting on me to finish my task. Understand who they are, where they are. And I might find out that you don't need it for another couple of weeks because you're waiting also on some other piece of information which takes the pressure off from you a little bit. So I think by having the conversations and maybe doing something you're comfortable with.

As an engineer, most of us are uncomfortable with conversation. We like being in our silos. None of that's being stereotypical, but I am an engineer, so I can talk bad about us because I are one. So we like silos. We like being around people just like ourselves. And you have to force yourself out of that comfort zone because project work, especially for my world, is teamwork. And teamwork requires we have conversations and we communicate with each other.

And I'll close with this. When I teach classes, I might teach a class of 60 people in project management. And invariably what happens is all the engineers come in and sit together.

And they're all diving and joking because they all speak the same language. They all speak the same technical language. They all have to take different ways in the college. And they wear that like a badge of honor. And they all think they get the same. They think the same jokes are funny. And then all the IT people sit together and they don't want to sit close to the engineers. So they're both technical in their bent. And invariably what happens is there'll be a few chairs right down the middle. It's almost like a dividing line that are empty. And then there'll be the sales and marketing team.

And it just struck me as so odd. Here are the two groups, and there's literally empty chairs in between because the dividing line, a buffer zone, if you will. And so I dug into it, and I like to tell the story now that I play devil's advocate when I'm teaching these classes. And I'll say, well, let me play the role of the engineer, and I'm going to be very extreme, so solving the problem. I'm taking it to an extreme to tell the story so nobody will get mad at me.

And everybody usually laughs and I say, so I'm the engineer and I'm looking at the marketing people going, man, but what do you do? As an engineer or if I'm a computer engineer, I'm designing code. When I'm done at the end of the day, you can see the widget that I've developed. You touch it, you can feel it. It's code. You can play with it, test it. It's tactile. It's visible. You can see it's tangible.

Now, you marketing guys, you have all these meetings. You have a lot, usually a lot. You have really good bunches. And you're always talking strategy and big fluffy white clouds and blah, blah, blah. You don't really get anything done. And then the marketing person would reply, well, wow, I had no idea you felt I added so little to the team. But let me help you understand that if you didn't have us giving you direction, you engineers are so far down in the weeds that you'd fall off the cliff and run into the wall. You need us giving you direction.

And the truth of the matter is, John, if you are a for-profit company and marketing is out there selling products, which each area can possibly make, or in your example, Melby Cove that nobody can use anymore, we're not going to make money. And if I'm developing products that marketing can't find an audience for, we're not going to make money. The only way we can make money is by pulling the people out of the clouds down a little bit, pulling the people in the weeds up a little bit.

forcing us out of our comfort zones to have this conversation about where can we meet in the middle? So you want that? I'm sure we can solve many of those, but currently that doesn't exist in the universe. It's physically impossible by the laws of physics. What we can do is that. Can you find a market for this? To have that conversation is

I think that's going to elevate us, make us grow as an individual. Maybe I'm still not comfortable with marketing talk completely, but they're not the enemy. And the engineer is not the enemy. We work for the same company. We all have to do the same thing, which is make the company successful and make money. And we do that by having these conversations. Well, thank you so much for that, Clint. And lastly, where can someone go to learn more about you and your company?

Well, you can look us up at projectsuccess.com. My books are on Amazon. You can also reach me on my website at clintonandpadgett.com. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It was such an honor to have you on Passion Struck.

thanks so much for having me john was great what an incredible interview that was with clint paget and i wanted to thank clint zilker media and forbes books for the honor and privilege of having them appear on today's show links to all things clint will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show videos are on youtube at our main channel at john r miles and our clips channel passion struck clips for

That includes short segments from each of these episodes that last about two to eight minutes. Please go subscribe and join over a quarter million other subscribers. If you want to catch daily doses of inspiration, then join me on all the social platforms at John R. Miles. If you want to expand your courage muscles, then sign up for our newsletter, Live Intentionally, which goes out weekly. And in it, I publish a courage challenge that's based on the content from the previous week's episode.

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MathMind, the simple path to loving math, debunks myths about math and highlights its beauty and creativity. Join us as we explore how math can enhance problem solving skills, create career opportunities, and engage us fully in the digital world. When children can't read, we get mad at the adults.

And when children can't solve math problems, we don't get mad at the adults. We just absolve the children of building a math mind. And we think adults pushing on it are being mean to the kids. Right. That's so weird. And I think we should have much higher expectations of the adult.

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