Welcome to the IPM podcast. APM is the charted body for the project profession. Hi, I'm Emma divita, the editor project apm's quarterly journal in this our project innovators season of podcasts. I'm speaking to project professionals who are leading projects in a negative way is a time where many of us are hoping the world of work and projects can be reset in a better way for a post covid World. In this episode, we'll be meeting Joe Stanford.
Head of corporate portfolio office At arm's length body health education England to talk about how she's going about leading the collaborative development of the project profession in the NHS. It's no mean feat. Not only is she trying to knit together a network of an estimated 10,000 project managers across 250 NHS organizations but she needs to identify who is doing the
project work in the first place. It's a tall mountain to climb but the Ultimate Prize is not only to further professionalize project management with the NHS. And have it better recognize within the organization and accorded a proper identity, but to create a collaborative network of support. Best practice and a culture of taking project management training and accreditation. Seriously, Joe is a true
innovator. And there are many lessons others can learn from her about how to raise the status of project management within organizations, formalizing and professionalizing it and creating a strong network of supported peers. I spoke to Joan mid-December and we pick up the conversation when she tells you a bit about the program. She's leading. Hi Jay, thanks for finding the time to talk to us. How are you? I'm great. Thank you. I'm really happy to chat.
Great. Well, I know we've picked up it close to your heart. Could you explain a little bit about the task? You set yourself and the context in which you're working? Yeah. So having sort of worked in other professions that worked in the Arts, the private sector, and sort of central government before coming into the NHS. I was really surprised to find
that. Um there was no coordinated project profession in the NHS and no organization responsible for the 10,000 plus project Workforce, and their development and training. And that to me seemed like a really risky State given that the how huge the NHS is and how complex, and how constantly evolving the system is.
And so, you know, in my role, as head of project, profession for health education England, I contributed to the development of the project profession for the Civil Service, as part of the heads of profession Steering group, and that was made up of head to profession from Department of Health and Social care and the other arms like bodies. However, the Civil Service Frameworks don't apply in the NHS. It's a wholly. Separate, ident entity from government.
So in order for us to implement a similar professional framework, we need to adapt it for for the NHS. And so, I volunteered to lead that work with the other arm's length bodies and starting is sort of 2016. I started leading on the NHS project profession program.
The program itself has sort of nine work streams and that's including Operational model, and framework, the competency and capability framework Learning and Development for the profession, including for apprenticeship programs, online and Regional communities of practice. And there's a really key element around, Workforce data and Analysis, and part of that is about improving equality and diversity in the profession like many parts of well, public
sector, and private. At sector the balance of equality. And diversity is not good in the more senior or strategic roles and we want to really change that and we want to really open up opportunities for everybody to really make the most of their talent. And so as part, as well as that talent management, and then things like events and conferences, and that then forms a whole sort of Ecosystem for the profession, then in the NHS. Why is this so close to your heart?
Why does it matter so much to be doing this at heee? I think there's two key. Things one is, I fundamentally believe in the human rights to health and that that should be available and open to everybody and it, you know, irrespective of wealth or status or ethnicity or gender. I think it should be something that is a fundamental human,
right? And therefore, for me and having a real All kind of sense of purpose for my life and something that I think adds value for the time that I'm here, I want to leave a legacy that leave something leaves the world, a bit better than when I came into it. And for me, keeping the NHS sustainable future Generations, that seems a very worthy cause to put my time and effort into. And why would you consider what you're doing to be inevitable?
Because I certainly do That is very kind of you to say. So, I think I have to have to admit that anything that I've done has been through my learning from others who are really leading the way in Innovation. So, I've been really inspired by some some really amazing figures out there. So I think that some of the insights for me, were from people like Eddie. Oh bang. Who runs the pentacle virtual
business school? So creating that virtual world of cube, where you kind of work and collaborate in a kind of 3D World in a really engaging meaningful way. We've been working in that way, for the last three or four years and that really helps to deliver transformation in a collaborative way from anywhere. And that's that, that's a fantastic Insight but also learning from him about the future and that the world is changing faster than we are learning in. Adapting to it and being mindful
of that. It's about how do we keep learning and evolving and keeping up with new developments. So that's a key element. One of my project Heroes is Steven, Carver who is, you know, brilliant not just at the technicalities of project management but also when projects go wrong and he's a fantastic Storyteller. And, you know, the profession needs charismatic figures like him to really bring home.
Values in the profession ads. You know he he lectures on the project leadership program at Cranfield, one of one of my close kind of Inspirations has been dr. Tom watch horn, who was The Innovation lead for national service? Has Scotland in the NHS and she is well as a facilitator and tutor in Cube. Also delivers Innovation, using things like Lego serious play. And she's helping us to deliver a five-day hackathon.
Using Lego series play at project Community Festival that we're running apprenticeship week in February and that's going to be tackling real current and HS issues. And so that's really fantastic. Practical problem-solving stuff that helps really transform how we deal with issues. And then for me there's something really fundamental about understanding yourself and understanding leadership.
And so for me having a really fantastic and effective team is about how I work as a manager and a leader and so so the work of Dan pink around motivating, teams hand, Daniel goleman around emotional intelligence and a lot of the work around applied Euro. Science for Effective change. I think those are all really fundamental things that project managers and leaders should have in their toolkit. And it's all of those kind of elements, combined learning from
others. Learning from the great work that's been going on in lots of different areas, pulling that together and tackling what is effectively a very big and complex challenge in the NHS where this hasn't been done before. And so that's that all of those people. And those, those people have led the way in their different fields have really helped inspire me to give me the confidence to try and make that
change happen in the NHS. If you got any advice for project leaders who are inspired by the work of others and who need to turn that inspiration and to form of experimentation, which could be daunting. There's always a risk. I think it won't work or you won't have the outcome, you intended. It sounds as though you're taking those risks and a happy to experiment. So is there any advice you could pass on about how Do that. I think there's a couple key things around.
That one is about building in time to experiment. So I have a team of nine that work. Very closely with me in the portfolio office day-to-day and as well. As some additional, folks we come together and we have a to our learning development session every week where we experimentation, we we come together. We bring new challenges, new ways of working. And that's a safe space to do that, testing and experimenting and learning and then we refine it. We find what works for us.
And also we then look at applying that to other teams and other programs. So spreading that learning and one of the great things about working in Cube is that we can work in there as a team, testing things out and experimenting and then pass that on by working with other teams in that space. Well, the other thing that's fundamental to it, is building a culture that is a learning culture, that is a coaching culture, that's about openness and honesty.
And that is about testing and experimentation. And therefore, if you knew, if you build a team who work in that way then you know, anything you try is okay and you just, you just take the learning from It. And you look to see how you can apply that in a way, that makes a difference. In order to do this, people have to accept that failures. Okay. So how hard is it for you to convince your colleagues that it's okay to make mistakes? It's okay to experiment.
I think the thing is, you know, it's kind of doing away with the word failure because you know I don't think it necessarily helps the cause and the thing about experimenting is that you're not necessarily Implementing something in a big sweeping way that could potentially go wrong. The point about experimenting is you're doing it in a in a small and safe way that tests out what works and what doesn't and you know Thomas Edison very famously. Sort of said it's not that I
failed. It's just that I found 10,000 ways that don't work and them and it's the same thing about engendering a, an idea of curiosity. And testing and refining. And if you try something out and it didn't do what you expected to do. You take the learning from that and go, oh, that was interesting. You know what can we do to do
that differently. So it really is a mindset thing and and and when you when you look at it that way, you know, sometimes it's not that you don't make mistakes because sometimes you say things that come out the right way or you do something that has unintended consequences things, you hadn't planned for and I think Something like that happens. You just holding hands up accounts. Go say I'm really sorry. That's not what I thought was
going to happen there. You know, and you you kind of explain what you wanted to do and you're open and honest about it. And, you know, people are from, you know, very accepting and forgiving of things like that. And I think if you've got honesty and integrity and the best interests of people that heart, I think, you know, people are very forgiving. If something doesn't always turn out quite as Planned, how far along your program? Are you Joe? And what if you manage to
achieve so far? So, it's a big program obviously. And so, we've sort of chunked it up, and the program has three key phases over five years and we're in the middle of phase two. At the moment, we have excluded 2020 from the time frame. You know, that it had a significant impact on Engagement and progress this year due to a lot of our key stakeholders, rib being redeployed to tackle, the covid-19 challenge at.
So you know, we've sort of put a little bit on hold but in simply in Phase 1 what we did there was do an awful lot of research background, you know experimenting looking at design testing things out and particularly going out. And finding what everybody else has done out there. What works, what doesn't, how did it go?
What can we take from? You know what you did and and then sort of building a kind of framework for the program and then some key components were around the development of the community platform. And that was fundamental because that then gave us a way to connect communicate and engage with people across, you know, the whole NHS landscape.
So having that we can then share things with that we can get people involved in testing out elements and we can kind of connect and update people and what's happening the other kind of Key Products. We develop from the the sort of first phase was we developed some core skills, online learning modules and this was around teaching people, the basics of project management change management benefits
management. And also we did a module for sros with these are the people who are in some kind of project management. Rolling already or for anyone who's interested in finding out more. These are for everyone on the basis that whilst there's probably about 10,000 people in the NHS whose full-time day job, it is to do program project management.
Everybody dabbles in it. And a lot of people in certainly, in other professions and in other roles are either doing change involved in change and projects or they're leading them without necessarily having had the training.
To do it effectively. So for me, one of the fundamental challenges was, how do we skill up everybody to have a basic competence so that they know what they can and, you know, can't do in relation to project management and have a basic understanding of it. So for me, it's a bit like first aid training. So you want everybody to train to be trained up to be a first aider. But you know you only want to select number of people to be trained to be clinically you know, expert in the Field.
So, the thing about having people trained as first aid, as they then know what's outside their scope of practice and know when to pass it on to a professional, and that's what we're looking to do for the NHS, is to build the skills. We launched those five online learning modules in October last year, so just over to about 14 months. Now, they've been out there and they have been, there's been just over 5,200 different, you know, people accessing them and
learning from them. And what kind of range of people you getting, you getting Medics all sorts? Yeah, absolutely. We I've been asked to do some some training sessions with some Public Health fellows and some some GP fellows. And again it's about giving them a basic understanding and some kind of core skills for them to apply it to the kind of small local changes that they do themselves. So that's one element of it is. It's not just about professionals.
It's about project management is called skills for everybody. So really part of what you're doing is creating A much more formal identity for project managers and letting people understand what project management actually is and what it is not absolutely. And I think that's that's a really key element because until we get everybody understanding why it's important that at above a certain level of risk and complexity, it needs a more complex and experienced kit.
Skill set it. It continues to be risky. So that's a lot of perhaps enthusiastic amateurs. That could have fairly catastrophic impact on the system, but not necessarily aware that they're doing that because they're not aware of the consequential impact of the change. They're putting in place, so raising that awareness and raising that up. Understanding of you know to what extent you are then effectively, licensed to be competent to manage.
Change is important to then say, well actually I now know that this needs to be picked up by somebody who's got no more professional skills and experience, you've done a lot for ready. What's left to do? I mean 2020 has been a massive hiccup to say the least, but if things can move towards a greater semblance of normality, perhaps or 2021. Was top of your list to achieve, we have a festival, a week-long festival during the apprenticeships week that dates to the 12th of February.
And at that Festival, we are going to be launching the NHS project and change capability framework. And so that's the competencies. The roles the skills and experience that everybody will need and 2mm to launch that. Across the the NHS alongside that we are launching for apprenticeship programs. A level for project data analyst program level for associate project manager at level 6, BSC and project management and the level 7 systems, thinking
practitioner MSC. And so, as part of that, it's going to be 500 people. Hopefully, from across the NHS. We've got some really great and fun things. Playing and some really great and inspirational speakers. Part of the point of the festival is really about building the culture and the behaviors and the environment.
That says, actually if we work collectively together, if we work openly and honestly if we support each other and coach network and train and share, then together, we will be so much stronger as well as supporting the system and The environment we work in in the NHS to be both evolving and sustainable. It's interesting. You say that because I know there is perhaps a culture of competition between the NHS is 250 organizations.
As that be one of the challenges you faced. it has, I think it's It's a tricky situation because this is reflective of a sort of political ideology, which is necessarily in the best interests of patients and health outcomes. And therefore, what it's created, as a very disconnected system with competition between organizations but also very disconnected. Group of people. The one thing we found quite shocking, was how disconnected people were even within the regions from their counterparts?
Hearts in other organizations. And it's taking those quite a long time, to really build that Network up to connect people together. We one of the one of the developments we've got is around Regional networks, and I think the thing about getting past the organizational barriers is, we bring people together in terms of what they have in common and what we have in common is that we are project professionals.
We are here Because of a sense of Greater purpose, because we're here to to improve the health and well-being outcomes for the population of this country and and that's above politics and organizational boundaries. And I think if we can focus on that, and focus on the support and development of the profession and individuals within the profession, then, you know, we don't need to worry about those infrastructural constraints. So I think that's, that's a real element of the challenges that
we've worked around. His is starting with, you know, kotter's Coalition of the Willing. We've got people together who also equally passionate and, you know, to see it as a compelling Vision. Getting them to work with us, getting them to share that enthusiasm and you know, excitement with people within their networks and pulling pulling everybody together, you know, and this is all been done by volunteers.
So it's all in addition to the day job which to be honest is quite full on anyway, but actually it's having that shared purpose that passion and commitment to something that we genuinely believe adds real value in the long run. Obviously, you know, that you got the usual constraints around, you know, funding and resourcing and lack of sort of system ownership for it. But actually pulling together like-minded, people who really want to make a difference.
You know, nobody comes into the really the NHS or the public sector for an easy life. It's it's hard working. It's challenging. But actually, you know, for most of us it's because we have, you know, a compelling need to have purpose in our lives and to make a difference. What have been the other main challenges you faced.
Another one I imagine is trying to explain What project management means to those above you to senior leaders within an organization, has that been a challenge and how have you overcome that? It has been a challenge If we're honest. I think like any sector there are there is the core business of the sector which is usually kind of not project management. So in health, it's you know,
clinicians. It's kind of medical people working and leading the sector who don't necessarily have knowledge and Kills around project management. And so getting influence at a senior level getting Champions and ambassadors. And, you know, sponsors for it has been tricky, because there is no natural home for it. Unlike the unlike government, which has the infrastructure projects Authority, there is no function within the NHS that is responsible for project management, for oversight of it
all. The development of the workforce and, and their capability. And that's one of the things that we've been looking to to do is to actually get a kind of Hosting organisation and a senior sponsor.
So one of the things that we did actually when we were performing as a group, we had a workshop that brought everybody from across the regions together and we spent two days doing a Lego serious play, build of the vision for the profession and also what the challenges were, and also the opportunities.
And actually one of the opportunities was Finding ambassador's of, you know, to, to support the profession, who were senior people in their own professional whether that's medical or financial or HR mod, but who were sympathetic and understanding and getting them to tell the story. For us, getting them to share that with their peers with their counterparts. And that's that's a way to engage people that we've found has has really helped to.
I think get the message across in a way that is heard and respected. It's enough of that really, to shouting about the benefits that good prefer project management can bring, there's two elements to it that are really important. One is about understanding the consequences. Of not doing project management effectively, and that's not just
about following the processes. And again, we have this perception that project management is all about filling, in forms, or writing Gantt, charts, and writing reports. And in a way that's like, saying, well, all the nurse does is filling a patient's record and go, but the record is really, just a summary of the activity you've done, which is
the core part of your role. And that's a Outputting that change in place and I think that's the bit that is perhaps a bit invisible to people is that a project manager is a doing roll. It's about engaging, it's about working. It's about getting your stakeholders involved. It's about setting up, you know, sort of products and testing them and getting input and refining that and then at the end of it, you will provide an
update on how that's going. So some of it's about increasing An awareness of the dynamic, nature of project management and and the people-centered nature of it, which it is in this sector. And what we can do as project managers and professionals to to raise awareness of the activities of project management and the skills of project
management. And for me that's through things like coaching and facilitation and mentoring one of the Things I've done with my team is apart from actually setting the team up in a way that everybody's role reflects their natural abilities and also their areas of Interest. So I wrote the team's rolls around them as individuals rather than try to fit them into a role. And the great thing about that is, if you fit a roll around, somebody's abilities and interests, they We'll just get
on and do amazing things. If you set them a per person and outcome to achieve and they're interested and you know it you know you know greater doing it and you give them the training and the skills they need they will do fantastic things.
And then what you can do is you can use that skills and knowledge to do things like facilitating and training with project teams doing coaching with project managers providing a sort of an objective peer review or Challenge and that helps I think build some of the Either might be lacking. What other advice would you give to project managers and organizations who are Keen to formalize professionalize and win project management? The recognition it deserves.
So I think that's probably three key things that I would you know, suggest the first one is go out there and see who does it really? Well, go and ask them about it. Go and give. No go and borrow all the stuff that they do, you know, find out how they did it.
Learn the lessons from from, Them and I've been really privileged to have some some really great people, give me you know advice and support and information about that how they've done things and and some of that's about doing outside of your comfort zone and outside of your your sector. So where's Robinson at sellafield, who runs the project will has run the project Academy there for many years and done an absolutely fantastic job of building the profession.
You know he and his colleagues have been incredibly generous. Rest in providing their advice around things like apprenticeship programs. And and it's things like that. That that about learning from others, don't reinvent the wheel, learn what good looks like go and, you know, find out how it works. And then going, you know, borrow
some of that stuff. The second thing then, is around getting that senior leadership engagement, it is really fundamental, and if you don't Have a voice at the table, it's finding a sympathetic ear that does have a voice at the table and finding those ambassador's and champions who can influence
their peers for you. The third thing then is around building that Coalition of the Willing get together a group of like-minded, passionate enthusiastic people who believe in what you're trying to do and then you support them, you if they need some training development if they need some advice and guidance you know it's a I think we're getting back to a sharing and bartering kind of culture rather than these sort of biggest donor contracts because a lot of what
we're doing is Round Mutual support and benefit. So if you want people to help you to develop an embedded, what can you offer them in return? Have you got any advice around? How to ask people to volunteer their time and their energy when they've already got a full-on job to do and you're asking them to do something extra volunteers are self-selecting. You can't really just kind of go out and ask them and I think it's a bit of a scattergun approach.
You don't necessarily know who's out there. What we did was we did a whole whole series of webinars and we invited everybody that was in our community and in our Network. So, and as a starting point that ones that are interested will come along. You share, what you're doing? Your passion and enthusiasm for it. What is it? You're trying to achieve, what are you trying to deliver? And then you ask them, you know who's interested in helping out, who would be prepared to volunteer?
Who would be interested in helping with this bit of that bit and be specific about it? You know, it's not a kind of can't launch to get people's time for everything, but people usually pretty interested in one particular element or another. And therefore, you know, tap That and use that knowledge and experience. But also same time, say what can
I offer you in return? One of the things that's been really Quite startling for me recently is we've done a bunch of webinars which was about raising awareness of the profession as a pipeline for people to come into it and even just within my own organization, there's about 3,000 people working in health education, England, we put on a webinar,
introduction to the profession. Come along and find out more about it. If you want to learn about careers and and how to progress in project management, we had over 100 people turn up. And and the thing about it was we knew almost none of them. They weren't people who were already working in programs and projects in actually, but they wanted to, they were interested the passion, how do we get in?
How do we, how do we learn? How do we get a job in it and there was so much untapped potential in that group of people, it was fabulous. And of course when we started to talk about the festival and looking at Roots into the profession and how can we support people to to get that experience in order to The knowledge to get their first role. When we sort of said, you know, we're running these events. Would anybody be willing to help out? We had all sorts of people.
Volunteer, if you don't ask, you don't get any, don't find out who's interested. Yeah. Any other days and dates don't take it. Personally, I think the when you try and put changing place and and again some of this is about, I think the Neuroscience of change which is changes frightening and it's Is it requires physical mental effort, you know, a lot of our energy is taken up by the brain. And when we try and put change into place, that is actually exhausting.
It burns energy be mindful of the fact that when you're trying to do this you're going to meet an awful lot of resistance. It's not about you it's about individuals potentially feeling out of their comfort zone. Feeling a bit threatened feeling that they are somehow out of That with what's going on and when that happens people tend to retreat and it can be very defensive or you know they will you know when you'll get a an offense is a good defense and they'll cry and push back.
I think the thing about it then is looking at how you can make it, as least threatening as possible, make it as comfortable as possible, how you can reduce the, the kind of sense of anxiety that people. I'll feel where they feel like they're they're they're out of their comfort zone and in an area that they're they don't understand. And so that can be that can be very personal.
I can be a one-to-one and I think there's the something about not just the the actual change, you want to put in place, but how do you set the environment to enable that
change? And one of the things about the kind of Applied Neuroscience learning, I've been doing recently is about how Create and develop a growth mindset and a learning mindset that opens up the kind of audience to be curious and interested in the change as opposed to threatened by it. So that's why I think understanding emotional psychology and understanding Neuroscience is really fundamental for program project managers, because if you can tap into that understanding, then
you can shape Up. How you engage with people in a way that is more likely to achieve the outcomes you want to and and reduce the resistance and the barriers that that you'll get from people what a brilliant way to end a conversation packed with so much advice. It's been brilliant, talking to you Joe. Thank you so much for sparing, the time to talk to us. Thank you. It is, you know, my passion and my favorite subject at the moment. So I'm always happy to talk about it.
Thanks very much Emma. Thanks again to Joe for joining us and to you for listening to this fourth episode of apm's project Innovative series. Don't forget to look out for more episodes in this series or to rate and review us wherever you. Get your podcasts, you'll find are some Spotify, Apple podcasts, Google podcasts and more. This podcast has been brought to you by APM the childhood body for the project profession. For more information on a p.m. visit, a p.m. Dot org.uk.