Hello, and welcome to the APM Podcast. APM is the childhood body for the project profession. I'm Emma Devita, editor of Project Journal and your host. 2024 is drawing to a close, and with a new year just around the corner, here at the APM Podcast, we're in a reflective mood. In this episode, we're going to look back at what we've learned from the 25 episodes we've published this year.
We've covered everything from managing radioactive waste to making documentaries for the BBC, but would have been the standout lessons. The fastest moving story of the past 12 months has been artificial intelligence. As we heard in our last episode, AI has gone from future trend to daily reality in the blink of an eye for many project professionals. If you're not already using AI, there's a good chance you will be by the end of 2025.
We urge you to check out our AI special to make sure you're up to speed. But while the pace of change remained a challenge in 2024, many of our podcast guests reminded us that the fundamental principles of great project management remain constant. If anything, as the world becomes more complex, the need for disciplined project management becomes greater. We've heard many stories on this podcast of organisations that are reaping the benefits of a professionalised project function.
Take the National Trust for instance, which was the subject of a three-part series we've put out in the spring. We're going to hear more from the Trust, as well as other inspirational teams and project leaders across the course of this episode as we revisit our favourite moments of 2024. So grab yourself a mince pie and listen on. In 2024 we published our first ever episodes recorded on site
at various project locations. Taking our mics into the field and seeing projects up close gave us an amazing insight into the hard work and dedication of APM members and partners across the country. In January I drove out to Gloucestershire to visit Dereham Park, a 17th century house and garden near Bath, which recently underwent a £3.2 million
transformation. The Baroque Star House had fallen into disrepair before passing into the National Trust's hands in the 1960s, and in late 2015 the project to restore the house to its original beauty got the green light On site at Dereham. After a tour across the house's creaking floorboards and a stop at the Cosy Tea Room, I met the trust's head of strategic planning projects and programme management, Mike Hudson, who told me about the advantages
that the increased professionalisation of project management had brought to the charity. Well, I mean, I wanted to ask you about, you know, what's advantages or benefits How has the increased professionalisation of project management within National Trust that she. Brought. We are now a project management organisation and we weren't when
we started this. So people really appreciate the value that project management brings and the value that really excellent project managers can, can bring. And even the, even the language. So even when we first started, you know, we talked about business cases and gates and risk management and sponsors. And it was, it's like a new language for people that didn't really get it. And now it's, it's a common language that's common outside of project managers and outside of the profession.
It's just a common language in the organisation, which I think has made a kind of a real difference. Where is National Trust now and what are your ambitions for the future in terms of professionalising it? I would say it's probably halfway between the middle and the kind of world class end. So we we've certainly not got
there yet. Again, one of the kind of very conscious piece, pieces of internal branding that I did was the team I run we refer to as the Centre of excellence for planning projects and programmes. We deliberately chose that that wording not because it's a destination we've reached, but it's, it's a kind of journey that we're on. Why would we aspire to do that? Well, we're Europe's largest conservation charity. We've got more members than the people living in Norway.
So we've got, we've got nearly, you know, we've got nearly 6,000,000 members and we should be the best at what we do. So we should be the best at delivering those sorts of projects because we're entrusted with these charitable funds and the scale that we are, the impact we can have. Why wouldn't we aspire for that? It's not good enough to kind of put up with second best in my view. So that's, that's what I that's what I kind of push us forward
for. Another on site trip in the summer took me to a totally different project Environment. Westcott in Buckinghamshire is the home of Namo Space, where I met a team who work on propulsion systems for space rocket engines and thrusters. The airfield site seemed eerily quiet compared to the bustle of Deer and Park, but once inside, I found the team exceeded the same energy and passion for projects that I encountered at sites across the country. On the desk is a. Red.
Button a big. Red button? Yeah, it does exactly what you expect. Emergency sort, Normal abort. You can hit it now. It's not going to do anything if you hit it now. Can I? Yeah, absolutely. In the following clip, Programme Manager Lucy Stock tells me about the biggest project management lessons she has learnt over her career in the space sector.
You know, one thing which I've learnt over years of project management, which I think is probably the key is understanding where to dive into the deep end, into the detail and where you can not manage things so closely. So with really big projects, there's different streams of work going on that interact in different ways. And I think it's being really sensible about the bits that need to be micromanaged on a day by day, hourly basis.
You know, it's, it's, it's super critical, super complicated and really getting into the weeds of those areas. But you obviously, you obviously can't do that everywhere. So it's understanding, depending on the stage of the project life cycle and the type of project and the different streams of work within it, which bits to really get into the weeds of and which bits you don't. Need to how do you make a
decision like that? So for me, having a really strong risk management process, so at the beginning of a programme really delving into the high risk areas, what's going to be the biggest issues that we're likely to see. Obviously there's always those Black Swan events that you, it's difficult to predict, but having a really strong risk analysis at the beginning to try and understand where you might see issues and if you do see issues, what their impact's going to be.
You might have an issue in one particular stream of work, but actually it's not on the critical path or it can be resolved easily. Standard products, you know, it's, it's not going to be an issue, but there might be another area that's super critical on the timeline.
And it's a new development. And so it's really looking at the project of the whole and try and breaking it up into into chunks and understanding which bits you're really going to have to spend your time focusing on. OK, and I guess that breaking up is key at the beginning as well, putting things into clear work streams so that you can manage that as well as visiting some amazing places this year. I've also done plenty of virtual interviews with inspirational people both inside and outside
the project profession. The one who stands out most is Ross Atkins, who featured on our 100th episode, a milestone we celebrated earlier in 2024. After over four years of the APM podcast, Ross will be a familiar face to you as a senior journalist and presenter on the BBC News Channel.
His official job title at the Beeb is News Analysis Editor and Ross has made a name for himself through his Explainer video series, where he takes some of the world's most complex issues and breaks them down in a digestible and accessible way. Communicating complex issues clearly and concisely to different audiences is also a vital skill for project professionals, and Ross shares some top tips from his book The Art of Explanation on how to communicate with clarity and
confidence. When I'm thinking about all of the different people I might need to communicate with on one idea or another, I always stop and think, what would this person like to know from me? Let's see it from their side. What are the questions or the doubts or the pieces of information that they would like from me? And if I can provide them with that, not a guarantee that they're going to consume what Ioffer them, it's not a guarantee they're going to agree with me.
But I am giving myself a good chance of giving them a lot of information that feels relevant to them. And so I've worked on big projects over the years in different forms. I always try and think, even if I'm dealing with 10/15/20 different people with different interests in the project stopping and thinking, what do each of those individuals want to know from me? What would it be helpful for them to know?
And if I can then answer those questions, there's a good chance that they're going to feel what I'm offering is relevant. And if they feel it's relevant, they're much more likely to engage with it. Have you got any advice? Or top tips and verbally delivering information and also dealing with difficult comments or. Feedback or questions that people.
Ask. Well, I think in the case of if you're going into a meeting, whatever the circumstance where you're likely to be asked questions that could be challenging or difficult to answer. I mean, that's something that all of us experience in the workplace, not in a bad way. It's just quite correct that in lots of circumstances our ideas and our plans are challenged and discussed. That's completely normal.
The thing that I try and do, and you learn this from doing interviews in the news, is it's good to try and anticipate what you think you're going to be asked. So if I'm, if I'm being interviewed myself, such as in this situation, I'll definitely stop and think in advance what are the questions I'm likely to be asked. And in fact, when I was preparing for this book to come out, I wrote down all the different questions I thought that could come up in media interviews and then work through
how I'd like to answer them. So you can anticipate some of the things that would that might, that might come up. Regular readers of Project will be familiar with Suzanne Madsen's column where she answers burning questions from the Project community, often on issues related to leadership. Suzanne is also an award-winning author, with her books The Power of Project Leadership and How to Do the Inner Work coming highly
recommended. She joined me on the APM podcast earlier this year to discuss secrets to leadership success. In the following clip, she explains why a heroic approach to leadership is a trap that project professionals should avoid. I think it is this piece about the relation and leading through others and not being this hero project manager, if we're talking more project specific, who feels that I have to fly in and save everything and get
everything done. And if nobody's stepping up, then I will step up. And, you know, I put my Cape on and I just sort it all out and my, my managers and clients will love me. And they do because we all want a, a, a hero to come and sort it all out. But that's, that's, that's a pitfall, right? We need to shift out of that gear of the fixing and doing into empowering others. How can I create other leaders?
How can I coach? So it's, I think it's the same things as we just talked about before, but instead of telling, I need to really take that tiny step back and create the space for others. And that comes through having the conversation, it comes through asking more questions. How can we do this? How can you do that? What support do you need from me? It's it's a gradual process of me stepping back and allowing others to step up and step forward. Which I'm assuming is a more sustainable.
Approach to leadership anyway so you've always got people who. Who are not scared to make decisions or have some autonomy about what they're doing, some ability to go ahead and and fix. Stuff so that. Sounds sensible to me. Is that actually in the real world? Is that quite, quite a common approach? Or are things still relatively hierarchical? Or is there still much? Of this kind of hero.
Leadership style going. On. I see quite a lot of it and I think there are some reasons for it. It's because we're always up against the deadline. There is more and more change. There is people are moving at such pace, there is such high demand on people. I think even I just unbeliev it's, it's hard to imagine there can even be more pressure on people now than there were 5-10 years ago, but I think that is
the case. Our final highlight comes from Timon Deyong, who was the keynote speaker at the APM conference back in June. Timon is the founder of a think tank specialising in future human behaviour and societal change and the implications for leadership and business strategy. His clients include Morgan Stanley, Vodafone, IKEA and Nike. Timon is a fascinating speaker who manages to inject a sense of humour as he tackles some of the most alarming problems affecting
society today. These are the big picture issues that project leaders need to know about to say at the top of their game. Here he is talking about the Poly crisis, which defines the uncertain times we're living through. It's very important to realise that it's something some managers, leaders have had some form of crisis management course. So just quite a bit of knowledge I see in many organisations about how do people respond to a crisis situation.
But the Poly crisis is something different. So it's it's good for people to realise this is a different situation. People feel differently, they behave differently, they do their decision making differently. If you don't understand that, you're going to be frustrated. Things will go slower than you think. If you look at a normal crisis.
So thinking back, for example, the 1st wave of COVID or when the Ukraine war just broke out, you see that the whole society is going into the same emotion, shock, horror. Then they go into action mode and we're all going to collaborate and we're disappointed that it's not going fast enough. So we're going through the same emotions, which is actually easy because we're all shocked. We're all going to action mode and applaud the keyword. So that is everyone is moving through this.
This is, it's called the disaster response cycle for society. That's easy. The whole team will be in shock. What we see now is that people on one hand are like, hey, we're still here. Yeah, we're doing this podcast right now when we'll be at the conference. Like, great, we're having such a good time. But then you open your news app, you do some doom scrolling as we go, that these days you think, oh, my God, you know, the world is doomed. It's the end of the world, as we know.
But then you have a great call again or a cup of coffee. You think that's great? We're still here and people hop from, hey, we're still here. We're doing the podcast. We're future focused professionals towards this is the end of the world. They look at this climate news and 80% of all fish in rivers, which I just read this morning has disappeared the past 40 years. I think it was. And I think, OK, I mean, there will be no life in our rivers anymore in another 20 years.
What's the point? So people are all over the place with their emotions. And it might be that if you are a leader of a team, one of the things you have to do is find out where my people, what do they need? Someone needs a little bit of encouragement because they're not feeling well or you know, their energy is low.
You know, I might you give them these directions or I'm encouraging them this way, but 10 minutes later, an hour later, the next day, they might feel different and the other way around. So one thing this needs from from from project managers where they have people involved in the project, which is virtually all projects. But if you're managing people, your empathy skills, your EQ skills should be a lot higher than in, let's say the good old days before COVID, before the Poly crisis.
You need to be constantly tuning in with the people around you. Where are you and what do you need? And you should be flexible in say, all right, you need no encouragement today, but tomorrow you feel bad. I, I need to adapt and, and work with you in a different way. And this is asking a lot of managers and and that they're in
the Poly crisis well. That concludes our wrap up of five things we learned in 2024. There were many more we could have picked and we're also interested to hear yours. How did your approach to project management evolve in 2024? What new skills and insights did you pick up and how are you preparing for 2025? Let us. Know in the. Comments if you're a Spotify user or e-mail us at APM Podcast at thinkpublishing.co.uk.
We'll be back in the new year with many more episodes, including a celebration of five years since the launch of the APM Podcast. In the meantime, we hope you're able to enjoy some much needed rest and reflection time over the festive period. See you on the other side. This podcast has been brought to you by APM, the chartered body for the project profession. For more information on APM, visit apm.org.uk.