Welcome to the APM podcast. APM is the childhood body for the project profession. My name is Emma DaVita and I'm the editor of Project APM's quarterly journal and your host. In this podcast, I'm speaking to Donna Sinnick, Chief Delivery Officer at Babcock International, a defence, aerospace and security company, about her rise to the top of the profession and the valuable career and project management lessons she's learnt along the way.
Donna shares her advice on everything from creating simplicity in programmes and projects, being a woman in a male dominated environment and moving on from impostor syndrome. Listen on to hear her story. Welcome, Donna. Thanks so much for your time today and big congratulations. New job role, Chief Delivery Officer at Babcock International. Congratulations. Thank you very, very much.
But why don't we begin with you telling us a bit about what you do, so your kind of role and responsibilities and what kinds of projects and programmes you work on? So Babcock so I cover global Babcock. So we've got footprint in in many countries across across the world, quite a strong footprint within the defence of the UK. So my responsibilities when I first joined Babcock three years ago, it was to set up a global project management organisation.
We already had around 2000 project programme management professionals, but kind of no one pulling it all together and defining the single way for Babcock to move forwards. Gosh, that's that's a lot of people to be working without a kind of leader. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, Yeah, so, so, so they've all got individual business leaders. Obviously, as we, as we know, within project and programme management, they tend to go up
through their business lines. But really looking for the synergies and the frameworks and how we think about competencies and how we work across the organisation, kind of that free flow of people and movement. Once you get anywhere near that number of people, you get an awful lot of mobility and people, people want to be able to get across the breadth of of an organisation. So we just weren't capitalising
on it as much. So that was kind of what I came in to start and do and obviously either done something really well or really badly because it's expanded and I've now got quite a few other functions as well. So quite a quite a number of other functional groups including kind of procurement, supply chain, IT which is quite an interesting one, particularly from a project handling
perspective. Quality, which is always fascinating to kind of get into the real sort of products, the way that we run the business and also facilities management, which is again something completely different. But for me, I think the grounding in project management is what absolutely sets a foundation for everything.
So as long as you've got that, that ability to understand and question and pull apart what you're being told and what you understand and kind of ask hopefully intelligent questions, sometimes probably not so intelligent after the obvious questions, I think you can pretty much turn your hand to most things. Are you able to tell us a bit about the kinds of projects or programmes you're working on at the moment? So full range of projects and programmes. So I spend a lot of time.
So I sponsor one of our major programmes at a dockyard down on the South Coast. So it's spent get some fascinating insights. I'm able to really sponsor them because the project and programme management profession and the customer are getting much more sort of intelligent and understanding what a sponsor's really there for.
So that's fascinating because I get to work with the Royal Navy, with some ship staff, with obviously the Babcock personnel and a number of other professional industry organisations. So that's more around the programme sponsorship side of a major critical national endeavour and then move into. So sometimes on ships, sometimes on aircraft, sometimes in the the civil space. But yeah, it's, it's, but you could probably think of something and somewhere in the portfolio we'd cover it.
So Met Police training or the London Fire Brigade or some, you know, there's a whole range of, of projects and programmes and business areas that we, that we run and, and I'm in a fantastic place to be able to kind of get involved in all of them. What attracted you to Babcock when you first joined and what have you enjoyed doing look forward to when you get up in the morning? So I grew up in a military family. Both of my parents were in were
in the services. So it's kind of the way that I grew up in that way. I grew up moving around the world with them and sometimes not moving with them when I went off to off to boarding school for a little while just to towards the latter part of my school years. So I've spent my entire career, I'm merely working in the
defence business. So I spent 24 years working on military aircraft before I made the decision to come over to Babcock. But again, it's it's kind of all in the same, along the same vein. What is it about that world that you enjoy and that you've wanted to kind of forge your career in? I would describe it a little bit like project management. I think it's almost literally in my DNA. So what Why do you know? I grew up, I knew no different. I grew up moving about.
I grew up in a world where everyone was in service of, of the, of the country and my kind of same as project management. It's kind of in your DNA. It's just something that you that I found that just really falls naturally and I feel really privileged to be able to work in a defence organisation. So, yeah, so, so I'm not sure I ever chose to do it.
I think I just kind of continued on from I guess a lot of people do, don't they, they, you know, they follow in their, in the footsteps of their, of their parents and their family and, and mine is, is very different. So I never joined the services but I do work, you know, within, within the UK defence. How did you get into project management? Did you always wanted to be want to become a project manager? I hear very few people say they that's their dream.
That's kind of what I mean when I say I think it's part of your DNA. So I joined, I joined a company and do you know the moment I remember being asked to go into project management. I don't think project management was particularly big or sexy at all at the time. So it was probably it was 25 years plus ago.
If we if we start there. And I just remember having some challenges between the customer, the contract and the, and the production, the operations team and I just drew out a fairly basic flow of work that we needed to do and just trying to get pull everyone together and say this is the flow of the work we need to do. Does everyone agree? And suddenly I was the bee's knees of project management.
So it's that's kind of that's the first moment that I remember someone saying to me to almost do you want to move into project management? We don't. We've kind of got a few people who are project managers, but it is an area that we really want to grow. And so I obviously jumped to the chance because the ability to have a high level view of lots and lots of different complex projects, programmes, people. So I've always worked in a, in a
big engineering organisations. So the ability to kind of stay at surface level but understand what it is and how you pull it all together just always really interested me. And I think it's just just kind of growing from there. I wanted to ask you about the challenges that you face and the work that you do and that you obviously enjoy getting to grips with, and inevitably one of those things must be complexity. I think the whole point of project management is to
overcome the complexity. I'm a massive believer in simplification, so if I can't describe something in the simplest possible way for whoever I'm talking to to understand, it probably means I haven't quite unpicked it enough to be able to describe it. So I probably go the absolute opposite way to to other people where I look for the simplest possible version and the simplest way of understanding
something. Because I think you can really get under the skin of complex problems and stitch things together. Not not trying to do any discredit to complex situations, but just trying to say what is the simplest way that we can think about this? Because the simpler we can make things, the more people understand and therefore the more you can get behind the cause and the more you can get people kind of pointing in the
right direction. Which personally I think is the biggest challenge of project management is how do you get, you know, huge projects and programmes where we can be working on projects and programmes with, you know, thousands of people. How do you get them to understand in the simplest possible way? Sometimes it is by describing things in the simplest possible
way. So, so that's how I have always addressed things and tried to think about complex issues and complex programmes whilst respecting and really trying to unpick the specialisms. Because there's no doubt that there's huge complexities, but it doesn't mean that everyone in in the project or programme or the organisation has to understand them in in a level of detail.
So how do you pull it apart enough that people understand point in the right direction, but you still allow space for the specialist to really kind of drive their technical or their commercial or whatever, whatever specialism it is to allow them to drive forwards? Have you got any advice to anyone who might be listening who thinks you know what? I want to try and make the way I talk about projects to my team simpler? What have you picked up along the way? I think honesty and humility is
just really underrated. So to be able to say somewhat to somebody, I really respect your detailed subject matter knowledge, but actually that is your role and my role's different. My role is to be able to stitch and pull together an organisation or a project or programme so that we enable you and actually the level of conversation that we're having or the depth of the conversation or the acronyms that you're using.
We, I live in a heavy acronym world and you can get to the end of a presentation and think, if I were an outsider, I'm not sure I would have understood any of that. If we can just respect the position of each of the people in the team, but have them respect kind of what your role is, I think that's a massive learning point for for the project. That would be what I would say to all kind of project management professionals, respect the SME's. Don't try and be the SME.
You don't have to be the engineer or the commercial contract manager. You need all of those people, but you actually need simplification. You need to get under the skin event. So being able to say, quite honestly, thank you, but we need to raise this up a level because this is this is kind of your, your responsibility rather than mine. And I'm here to enable you. But that means I have to understand it and I have to be able to get that message across
to everybody. Are there any other challenges that you regularly face in your work that you think you've learned a lot about how to deal with well that you could pass some advice on? Maybe on the people's side of things, perhaps. I love getting into an organisation and finding those secret little ninjas that are in the organisation that are almost buried. And I think the ability to step back and recognise not everyone has to go up a classical kind of hierarchical step by step route.
Sometimes there are people for whatever reason who are buried in the organisation who are ready to be picked out and and kind of elevated really quickly. And I, I did that in one of one of the most complex programmes I've ever worked in and run. It was an aerospace defence contract with multiple customers right at the time where the 737 Max incidents were happening. And obviously, you know, horrendous outcome.
So we were dealing with a couple of organisations who were directly involved and directly related with that. So you've got an organisation who are already quite concerned and quite anxious and obviously dealing with things that none of us would ever want to deal with. But I, I picked up that programme when actually, and it's, it's one of my, I think now pivotal moments in my career. So my boss at the time had said to me, I'd really like you to
run this programme. And at the time I was running a portfolio, I was absolutely loving my job had multiple kind of Tier 1 aerospace customers and I kind of, and everyone who'd been in this programme had had not finished it very well and it kind of there, they'd had a really, really tough time. So I said, thank you for the opportunity, but I'm good, I'm going to stick here. So he asked me twice and I said no both times. And now I remember so clearly.
He sat down in my office. He said, I've asked you twice and now I'm telling you. And I thought, OK, right then that's what that's what's coming next. But it's it's probably one of my biggest lessons is sometimes opportunities come even if you don't see it as an opportunity. So I didn't want that role. I was in a fantastic world. I was loving my job. I was loving the team that I was working with all the way through the customer, the supply chain.
But I was this moment of no, we need you to go and do this. That I thought at that moment was pretty catastrophic, actually became one of my proudest moments and one of my pivotal moments. And to be honest, I wouldn't be at Babcock now if it wasn't for that because the level of confidence that it gave me, having said no and then and then moving into a role and rebuilding basically a completely fractured team, none of whom wanted to be in that
programme. Really, really tough relationships internally and with the customer and just being able to kind of find those superstars that are hidden in in that organisation, being able to pull them out, restructure and then drive the programme forwards with that kind of let's simplify it. Let's all be able to talk in this in a similar way. Let's be able to point in the same direction because fundamentally, what do we all want? We want this programme to end.
So let's drive it to the end. And it was just from a moment of saying thank you, but I really don't want that to, OK, that's the direction we're travelling in and, and grabbing hold of it and saying if this is the direction we're going, that's what we're going to do. Do you think that was the lesson in going beyond your comfort zone so someone knew you well enough to push you and say yes, you can do that?
100 percent, 100% and it all it was also a lesson in I think it was a lesson in saying no initially, to be honest, because I'm not sure at any point I had previously said thank you very much, but I'm I that programme doesn't feel right for me. I. Mean. That's a brave thing to do. That's a brave thing to say to your boss. No, I don't want you to do what you. Do but so yes, exactly. I think the point is you can say no, you don't have to take every
opportunity. But if it gets to a point where the business needs you to take a role or to go in a direction, my advice would be at that point, go for it because you never know. All of the reasons I didn't want to take that role. Actually, I now look back on and think, wow, they were either confidence building or pivotal moments in my career to the point where when, when that programme did end, which which took three years for us to take
that programme over the line. The number of people who still say today I really miss that programme, but what they miss is the team spirit of it because we were just able to turn and direct and really drive it all in the same way. Yes, I get that. It must have been quite. I mean, it must have been very daunting, but exciting as well.
So it was daunting, but it also also, I guess, I guess it was quite flattering if I'm just really honest, because you go right, OK, Someone has actually actively not not only asked me, but now told me that this role that I'm going to be doing, so they must have great confidence in my ability to do it.
So all of that kind of, I actually don't necessarily agree with imposter syndrome, but all of that kind of concern in your head, just you're able to switch off and say I wouldn't be doing this role if this person, this organisation didn't believe I could do it. I wanted to ask you about the style of leadership you have as a programme leader. Have you consciously cultivate the style of leadership, or have you just found yourself leading in a natural way for you? What? What?
What way would that be? I think probably more the latter because do you think you have to be honest to yourself? I remember quite early in my career, someone said you're not hard enough, you're not direct enough, You're not, you know, they would describe it as holding people to account. I think what they meant when I look back, it's kind of shouty and direct and everything that I'm not.
So, so I remember for about a month trying to be someone really different to who I am. And I got to the end of the month because it was really conscious. Right. OK, I'll take the advice. And I was, I was a project manager. I was managing around about 50 engineers at the time.
I'll take the advice. I'll think about how I show up every day, and I do remember being this kind of really direct, really almost forceful, loud person for about for a month, which was what I'd set myself to really test it. I got to the end of that month and I just thought, even if this is working, I am utterly miserable because it's not me.
And from that moment and it was quite an early career learning for me and and I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but for me personally, it didn't, it didn't work. So I've always found that just like if someone shouts at me, if someone kind of directs me and tells me, tells me what to do rather than kind of seeks opinion or I've no issue with being direct. But there's a different way in style. And I think certainly for project management, your job is to get the best out of people.
And you don't tend to get the best out of people if, if you are forceful direct, if you're always telling them what to do, there's only a certain number of people who like that style. So I've just, I think I've more naturally moved to what what's core to me, but I have tested it along the way and found that certainly other styles don't necessarily suit me. We're APM, the only chartered membership organisation for the
project profession. When you become an APM member, you'll receive the resources and support you need to make an impact, delivering better projects with better outcomes. Plus, you'll access exclusive training and benefits to support your ongoing career development. Find out how we can help you reach your potential by visiting apm.org.uk. Because when projects succeed, society benefits.
I wanted to ask you what have been the biggest lessons around the actual execution projects, so project management side of things that you've learned as you've climbed up the ladder that you wish you'd told a younger version of yourself? So I think the first would be trust the data, build the data,
trust the data. So I know so through lots of different psychometric profiles that I've had the pleasure of doing over the years, I know that in certain situations I, I can be pretty decisive, I can move very quickly, but in a, in a really, really difficult situation, I tend to move straight back to the centre and go into data. So as long as you're measuring and monitoring and appropriately and correctly it, it's, it's got no reason to lie, It's not lying
to you. So if something under the surface is telling you that there is an issue, there's a problem. You do need to dig into it. So I'd say trust the data and secondly, don't put it off. It is, it is not going to get any better by ignoring it or by putting it off. And sometimes that comes into the prioritisation. So we do an awful lot with rocks, pebbles, sand. So we fill our time with sand, which is kind of the day-to-day stuff that just has to be done.
But if you start with that, you've got no time left really to drive the rocks. The big strategic changes that you need to get into your programme, into your project, into your business. What's your next ambition for your career? Or do you have a dream job you're willing to share with us? Do I have a dream job? So I've maybe controversially, I've always just, I've never had a career plan as it were like within two years I want to be this, within five years I want to be that.
I think I've, I've always just believed if you work hard and you're kind of true to the core of you and you've got great sponsorship and allyship, then certainly what I've found is that opportunities come up and they might not, they might not appear to be opportunities. So I did 24 years at my last organisation and was probably no doubt classified as a lifer, but an opportunity came up to move and to move over to over to Babcock. And I think it, it's, that was
less of a choice at that moment. It was just in that moment in time, an opportunity came and kind of decide whether or not that's the right, the right chance to take for you. So picking up, I mean, person picking up IT and procurement and supply chain and some of the other kind of aspects and strings that I've now got within My Portfolio of delivery. And would they have been on a career plan for me?
No, but what's happened is it it kind of stabilise and and get do something really, really well and then more, more opportunities come along. So I think being kind of flexible and open to take them has been the way that I've kind of gone through my career as opposed to a quite a set direction of travel. So do I have the next stream
job? I generally like to think that my, my job at the moment, whatever it is, if I do it exceptionally well, if I really drive into it, then the next dream job will come up. So it's, it's quite a difficult one to answer without a really direct statement, but that that's how I found, that's how I found my career kind of progress. Is there anything else you wanted to mention before we finish?
Any bits of advice you pass on to maybe people just starting out in their careers in project management or anything else you wanted to raise? I think people starting out in their careers in project management, I think my biggest piece of advice would be maybe a little cautious here actually in my advice, don't be so fixated on moving quickly. Because actually what I don't think people want to do is move so quickly that they don't learn the lessons along the way.
Because you'll get to a certain level in your career where you can't backfill that knowledge and that and that level of experience. So certainly the way project controls are moving and the and the measures that we put in place around and around project controls really get under the skin of that and understand it truly before you, before you want to drive on and drive forwards. It's great picking up bigger programmes, but that grounding is so important. So that would probably be my
cautious but my advice. Listen, dykes. So it's such a pleasure listening, chatting with you and getting your advice and understanding a bit about how you've got to where you, you have. And you know, it's, it's really important when we get time with people at your level as well to understand the kind of challenges you face and how you've overcome them. And also it's evident to me how much you enjoy your work. So that's always lovely to hear. It just leads me to say big,
massive thank you for your time. It's been brilliant talking to you. And you thank you very much for your time. Thanks again to Donna for joining us and to you for listening to the APM Podcast. I hope you'll be able to take something useful from our conversation that will help you in your own career, whether it's finding a way to ditch the jargon or feeling like you can step into a room and own it anyway.
Don't forget to look out for more episodes or to rate and review it Wherever you get your podcasts. We'd welcome you to get in touch with your comments, feedback and suggestions by emailing us at apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk. This podcast has been brought to you by APM, the childhood body for the project profession. For more information on APM, visit apm.org.uk.