Hello. Welcome to the APM podcast, brought to you by the chartered body for the project profession in 2022. OPM is celebrating its 50th Anniversary. So, throughout the year, the APM podcast has been meeting some of the movers and shakers who have shaped the project profession across the past few decades. This episode C's Professor, atom bomb, Addison a p.m. chief executive and conversation with the right honourable.
Justine Greening Justine served as an MP from 2005 to 2019 during her time in politics, she held positions, including Secretary of State, for Education, Minister for women and inequalities and Secretary of State for International Development. And this podcast Adam and Justine discuss, the definition of social Mobility status of apprenticeships and we're project management fits into the
leveling up agenda. Justin also shares her experiences as a co-founder of the social Mobility pledge Campaign, which encourages organizations to be a force for Good by putting social Mobility at the heart of their purpose. Okay, welcome to the APM podcast. I'm delighted to have dressed in green ink with me here today. So good morning. Justine morning. How are you Adam? I'm very well. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today and to talk about the very important themes of social
mobility and project success. Two of my favorite topics. I'm really delighted that we were able to talk to you about these important areas today and areas which I think are both share something in common which is I think they're often misunderstood or misrepresented out there in the The world. So I'm hoping that one of the things we can do today is to is to help people better understand both these things. So let's start by talking about social mobility and I'd really
be interested. If you can tell us a bit about what social Mobility actually is and why it's important, it's about breaking the link between where you start in life and your background and circumstances shaping where you end up. So it's about freeing up Talent, really an hour. Allowing people to kind of follow their path. Whatever their potential is, irrespective of their background and stuff. I'm really passionate about
social Mobility myself. I see myself as as a beneficiary of social Mobility, as a young person, I came from a fairly disadvantaged background in the northwest of England. And I like to think I've done okay for myself.
And I had lots of opportunities, if you like not necessarily handouts, but hand up, as I went through life, and various people are different They just help me and when I talk to people about that, sometimes they criticized the kind of social Mobility element of how I've done and they said, well, Adam, you were lucky. You were lucky that, you had those opportunities. Those people who helped you at that time, and they say, the problem with social Mobility is
it doesn't help. Everybody, only helps those who happen to have those opportunities. Would you say that's a fair criticism? No. And I think in a way it just underlines, that probably, for too long, we've got a bit hung up on the semantics of social mobility.
And I used to have these debates a little bit in Parliament with people on whether it was just about gifted and talented people, getting to the very top and the reality is, it's much more about saying this country needs to free up its Talent base. And yes, getting doing well in life. Shouldn't be about getting a look. He break. So now I'm talking about something that is much more, not just a social thing, but an economic challenge that we've
got to address. I mean, often my experience, having been on the other side of this and and being responsible for recruiting people, is a really diverse workforces is really important and actually gives you insights that you wouldn't ordinarily have so given it an advantage to have a diverse Workforce. Why wouldn't employers just do this? Anyway, why do they need to be convinced? Why do we need social Mobility campaigns? Is it some kind of misconception, existing, employers mines?
I don't know why. It doesn't happen anyway. Well, it's a really good point and it's it's something that I've thought a lot about. I mean, why do we have this as the status quo because it does damage our economy? And I think the answer is probably for the people who are getting opportunities. It's fine. And I also think it's Ali she can't see week, so Mobility. So if you go into a boardroom and maybe there's any one woman there, it's really obvious that there's an issue on gender.
Same on ethnicity. I think it's just been very hidden. I also think it's sort of how things have always been. So does that power of inertia? But I do think now and I also think maybe in the past you can say economically, it didn't matter as much as it does today. But if you're in the century today where it's all about a knowledge economy, it's all about Talent. The technology world is very much about creativity and lateral thinking and all of that, then it does become really
really important. So this issue of not getting the most out of your human capital. Infrastructure becomes really really important now and I think we need to see it alongside physical infrastructure as being crucial to get right? And and if we did get it right and you know, we had the education system working perfectly and employers, we're doing the right things with the job ever be done. Would we ever kind of get to a point where social Mobility is
not needed anymore? Because actually employers are doing the right things, everybody is getting the the breaks in life that they deserve. You know, those who work hard succeed and so on you get a lot closer towards that. There's never probably going to be perfect equality of opportunity. Everyone. I have a different view about What that really looks like in a sense in practice. But I think you can get a lot further towards improving the
education system. So gaps, don't open up quite so consistently during young a young person's life and I think you can also get employees to think differently about where they get their talent from and to, and to start measuring, socioeconomic background as well. So, I think you can actually get a very long way and, you know, whether it's that, Or whether it's creating different routes into opportunities, for example, technical education, and
apprenticeships. I just think there's actually quite a lot of stuff we can get on with relatively quickly and easily, that will probably make quite a big difference over the longer term in your time is education. Secretary obviously had an influence over their kind of national system and insight into the system that other people, you know, would never have. But did you feel that school
leavers? What, Often guided towards say University at the expense of apprenticeships and particularly now thinking about project management apprenticeships, but also the kind of bigger picture. I think we were in a situation where actually, there hasn't really been a good choice for
young people. So, I went to University and was the first person in my family to do that, but I really wanted to go to university, but I think if I'd had a slightly different way of learning or interest, I I don't believe that the vocational education routes open to people with good enough for one of the things that we really focused on when I was at the DFE was improving, those technical education route. So I think you've almost got two challenges.
One is making sure there's a choice for young people that's genuine and they're not having to somehow compromise on the quality of their education. If they want to go down and more vocational route, rather than a A more academic route.
I think the second thing though is then making sure they've got the right information to make a good decision because actually if you look across different socioeconomic backgrounds, there are some say siglemic, backgrounds, where virtually all the young people are going to add into, you know, University
education. So, I think if you're probably one of the most privileged backgrounds in in the UK, literally three quarters of Of those young people would head to University and, you know, whether it's that challenge of sequel, it can't possibly suit all of those young people or conversely for people growing up in communities more like mine, where, you know, not many people really went to University, those people not thinking about it carefully enough and not
thinking about going on to higher education, and further education, whether that's Technical vocational, I think there's a lot to be done on just helping young people. Work through those work through those choices. So they don't just end up almost doing the social Norm of what people like them normally do sure. And and, and so you talk there about whether vocational roots are good enough, I suppose and equipment and a genuine
alternative. Do you think we're there now, or do you think apprenticeships are a genuine alternative? Now, there's no doubt that apprenticeships are a genuine alternative in. And, and for some young people, there are really small alternative to getting a degree. Agree. Because they'll mean, if you already have a pretty good idea of what you want to do, where you want to work, then actually, you can obviously learn and earn at the same time and avoid having all of that student debt.
I think for someone like me, I hadn't really worked out. What I wanted to do. I was really Keen to study economics. Oh, I'd probably still do that all over again. I think the key challenge is we're not there yet on vocational education, by any means. So that Pathway of, for example, doing T levels needs, obviously huge amounts of work.
I think making sure the quality and the consistency of that quality across apprenticeships is really important and it's probably worth pointing out that billions of pounds of apprenticeship. Levi gets handed back at the moment treasury. So I think on the the broader level of getting the most out of that investment, that could be there to support more apprenticeships, we've got a
fair way. A to go on all of that but at least we're now in a version of Britain where I think there's a general acceptance that vocational and Technical education has to really improve and I don't expect that political debate to go away but I think it's a bit like The Wider social Mobility debate. It's much more about how you do it rather than whether you do it. And I think that in itself has been a big step forward for us all. Okay.
Thank you. Now, peep PWC did a bit of research for as a couple Years ago, Justine and it was looking at, kind of the size of the project profession, and the value that it adds the economy and it came up with a figure of 150 billion, gross value added. So it's obviously an enormous contributor to the economy. And therefore, in my mind, it must have an important role to play around social mobility.
And you know what? We hear from government all the time about leveling up so I suppose I'm interested to hear from you. What part should project and the project profession play in both of those areas. And And also, what is that connection between social mobility and leveling up? Are they the same thing that are
they different things. So, on the first thing, I think it's a really interesting question because what's coming out of all of the work I've been doing both while stores at the DFE and since more overtly working with businesses on driving leveling up is that fundamentally literally managing? That project is probably one of the biggest challenges because it's complex. And so actually, In many respects, delivering it is all
about project management. And being able to stay on track, mobilize people in the same direction have things done, when they need to be done. There's a lot of it, that is, there's a lot of it is about policy. And if you like that philosophy, but there's a massive part of this that is just very, very practical delivery on the
ground. And we've got what seems to be were talking on the morning that we're about to see who's going to win the leadership of the conservative party, because It's prime minister but you know let's trust is talked about delivery delivery delivery and for me that's where project
management comes into this. And certainly during my time in government, I felt that often the Civil Service put a huge store on policy development, but actually delivery and project management was not seen quite in the same light and I think it needs to be if we're going to deliver social mobility, and then your question about, About social mobility and leveling up. Well, I mean, that's what I was talking about on semantics really, when we were using, leveling up at the DFE in a
sense. I'd come up with that phrase for us because I felt people at the time didn't really know what a social Mobility meant and it felt a bit think tanky. And so although I was very, very familiar with it. And within academic circles that was a familiarity, I wanted to use a phrase that people could instinctively have a sense of what it would mean for them. And I think they did under
themes. We seen that, they have got an instinctive sense, probably of what leveling up means, but whether you Social Mobility leveling up equality of opportunity, it is all the same thing. It's about having a Level Playing Field when it comes to opportunity and what you need to do to make sure that happens. Okay? So it was really interesting that because you've delved into the area of project delivery within the kind of government machine.
If you like, do you think politicians and civil servants know enough about the project profession and the value it can add to their careers, not even remotely enough? No, it's Social, because you've got to bear in mind for our
democratic system. You know, it worked by having people elected and they are, as it were lay people, they probably got a special ISM in some kind of very they worked in before Parliament, but then they're put into running departments and so, you know, you can end up with a teacher running the face, you can end up with an accountant running the DFE, that's me but actually You know, often the challenges, you are literally running those departments.
And yet I was lucky in the sense that I had worked in some bigger larger organizations as a finance person. I guess if you're in finance or project management you've probably relatively numerator and you know what you're looking for in terms of how to check if things are on track and what management information you'd need. And I think there's a bit of a gap there. Definitely, for politicians on the not. Some bolts of their own skill set in order to be successful.
And then, I think what I was saying earlier was I guess within the Civil Service, the the sort of sexy part of civil service has been all the policy development when actually increasingly it really needs to shift to be much more who's great at delivering projects on the ground successfully because there's no point having the best policy in the world. If you can't deliver it, then it won't come to anything.
Well, quite and And I think it's really good now that, you know, we have the infrastructure and projects Authority, they're obviously I think a real Catalyst actually, I think they've been very successful in Shifting the, the dial on some of the area's you've just talked about, but as always with any kind of big system, there will be leaders and followers.
And my senses. There are some government departments who are Miles Ahead of the curve here and really flying the flag for project delivery and policy delivery I suppose. Yeah. I think that's, I think that's right. It's interesting because it's always tough innocence. Getting that project evaluation and it's plugging up risks and challenges because obviously, that means more work needs to be done in a very practical way but at the same time it's absolutely
valuable. If you're if you're a sexy state for flagging up to you where you need to focus your time, I mean if you're going to be successful you don't want to be focusing on things that are all going brilliantly. You need a system that focuses you in on things promptly when they're going off-track arguably. Before they've gone. Wrong. And that's what that project delivery were really focused on. I think one area where it could do much, much more is probably
education. So, I think the risk of all of that is also that it's done, but it's kind of done separate in a way to the politics, may be, it has to be, but if you could get that feedback loop working a bit more from an education and development perspective, I think for ministers, you know, that would probably be A really smart thing to do that would make it even more. Valuable sure.
We've got some, a p.m. members, of course, who will be in some of those departments, which are a bit behind the curve, if you like, but they're really passionate and they want to do a good job, but they're perhaps it in a fighting against the tide in the system. What advice would you give to them in terms of how they could help to shift the dial within
their own Department? I think, I think it's having the consistent approach across departments on On project development and delivery and, and speaking with one voice. So, for example, I think the government Finance organization across government, had increasingly, learn to work, collectively and did work. Collectively on what good look like, what? Good process look like, how to
develop business cases. And, you know, it might all sound a bit Bonkers. You know, of course, you'd expect government and civil service departments, to develop strong business cases. That isn't always the case. And as you said, Adams, some departments are better than
others. I would actually say the best is best business cases I had were, when I was at the department for International Development, maybe because there was so much scrutiny on every single penny of spend actually, that had led to the department. Really kicking the tires on absolutely everything before it was ever signed off by contrast when I went into education. You know, much less business case development per se. But a real need for it.
Because if you're going to compete, for example, with the department for transport on investment saying, pupil referral units and you want that investment and you're making the case, it should go into that rather than fixing more potholes. Then you do need a business case approach, that's really bolted down and it's what I always expected to see as a finance person.
I mean if you don't have that business case and this is what Really didn't in differed, you haven't really ever got that parameter that that kind of game plan against which to then compare progress and you know it's absolutely crucial. If you're going to have strong project management that the project itself is obviously suspect up. Well at the very, very beginning. Absolutely. And of course, people and personalities. You can't take them away from
projects. In fact, I think there's a lot of value but I can also insert some challenges as well. One of the things. Zai. See a lot and probably the general public. See a lot is what we might think of as pet projects, particularly from ministers, where they come in and they've got particular things that they want to achieve it. I mean, is there a challenge in government of trying to secure backing for the for the right projects rather than the pet
projects if you like yes. And and that comes down to just good evidence and consistent processes. So the challenge is probably also, the because that investment process is so driven by treasury, you end up with, you know, some moments in the year when our Chancellor might want, you know, an extra announcement on maths or something because that's what they want to do. And they might have a particular amount of money to be able to
invest in maths. And so your work, the danger is you end up with a strategy where you work Looking back from that rather than in that case saying, well what are we trying to accomplish on closing gaps and maths. How big is that Gap? What does that investment need?
And then that's the strategy. So you end up with sometimes back to front processes in a way that that really isn't helpful and then of course as you say Adam, you know people do get very wedded to their pet project, sometimes they can be extremely large pet project and And the risk is that means you don't look at it, clear-sighted lie. Luckily. In the way that the regular rotation and ministers across briefs me, there's always somebody fresh coming in to look at projects.
They be too often but there is a you know you've got to just be conscious of the risk and then and then try and make sure it doesn't dominate. You thinking I always felt good coming in with a new pet project. Hopefully this is well I've ever done. The Civil Civil Service have an important role to play here. I think in driving the consistency. But anyway, look, we've talked about social mobility and I'd like to talk about the social Mobility pledge because this is
something. I know you've given your personal backing to and you're really passionate about and I'll be employers listening to this leaders of organizations and corporates that we work with listening to this. You won't know a lot about, maybe the social Mobility pledge, maybe some of them involved, but I wonder if you could tell us a bit about what it is, why you decided to get
involved? So, what you would say to those corporates, who are thinking about getting more involved with making the pledge, so the social Mobility pledge was was a big push that I launched after I left government, I felt that there wasn't enough focus on the role that businesses can play in connecting people up with opportunity.
I think it's pretty obvious to me because that was my career, it had been in the private sector but I Really felt that we needed to drive more businesses to think more strategically about the impact their many, many opportunities can make. So that was the social Mobility pledge, and it was asking them to get into schools to talk about careers because I think, if you don't know about opportunities, it's very hard to
aim for them. I was asking them to open up their doors, particularly on things like work experience, because I think you might be interested in something, but if you can't try it out, Out. Then again it's really hard to
make good decisions. And also the reality is Adam that most people or many, many work experience opportunities are organized by brilliant parents for their kids, but if you're going to crack social Mobility, then you've got to have a much more consistent approach and that means having more work experience on offer. So that was the second part and
doing apprenticeships as well. And then the third part was Recruitment and it was saying having hopefully inspired young people on careers that they might have with your company. Having given them the chance to walk through the door ideally and really roll the sleeves up and experience what that looks like. Then you want to make sure that that step into your company doesn't have inadvertent barriers. That means your screening out people before they've even had the chance to shine.
So we've got on with all of that and at the core of it is this group of Really Innovative employers that we've called the purpose Coalition. And these are the ones that did all of that. And then basically were on the phone saying, right? What's next? And there was so much Innovation that came out of all the social Mobility pledge work, there's about 700 plus organizations part of it. Now that we just really wanted to find a way to share all of that.
So rather than lots of businesses, Reinventing the wheel on how to be more open and diverse individually we thought Thought the best thing would be to bring them together and that's the that's the purpose Coalition, but actually it's ended up not just being companies in the private sector. We've Ended up with universities who are part of it NHS. Trusts we've got councils, who are part of it.
So, actually, it's become a really fantastic ecosystem of very different Employers in a way all talking about what they're doing on social mobility and sharing their ideas. That sounds fantastic. And I know that it's something. That's a p.m. is looking harder to make sure we can make the pledge ourselves. And I would definitely encourage anybody listening to this to, to have a look at that. Is there a, is there a website that people should go to
traveler? Yeah, if you go on social Mobility pledge dot org, or if you go on purpose, Dash Coalition.com, then you can find out all about it. And, of course, I think, right now as a country was sort of head This cost of living Challenge and in a sense, it's the flip side of weak social Mobility. The people going to be on the front line of that cost of living challenge at the people for whom. Almost certainly getting opportunities, has been a lot harder for lots of different reasons.
So, I genuinely think that employers can play a massive role on, not just helping steer their their own employees, their customers, their communities, through the cost of living challenge. I also think Think if they're willing to say, right, let's look at our opportunities from a socio-economic perspective, I think they can have a huge impact on longer-term. Social mobility, and really breaking that cycle once and for all excellent.
And it's really what you were saying about work experience and parents. My parents were Foster carers and they arranged for me to because I want to be an accountant. Their range from me to do my work experience at Liverpool Social Services finance department at the financial year. Our end. It was an experience. Definitely. I will not forget, but that probably for another time and I just have one final question.
If, if I'm a Justine and that's about about equality and diversity, and particularly thinking about women who are considering a career in projects. And the reason I'm going to want to ask about this, is that the project profession traditionally has been seen as associated with construction infrastructure Telecom. Um's think, probably unfairly seen as associated with those professions because I think it's pan sector. It's genuinely every single sector.
But clearly, that means, the starting point means it is disproportionately male-dominated as a profession, and certainly a p.m. we want to do any everything we can to help address that. So, I'm just interested in your view on what more you think. A p.m. can do other, professional bodies can do, but also government itself with the power that it's got an influence, their to God. So I think it's a really important question. And what's been quite interesting.
Doing all the social Mobility work is that often the leaders that I've come across, who will probably running the most Innovative companies. There probably is an over representation of women. Compared to what you see, more widely say across the ftse, 100, Etc. So I do think there's there's something around the skill set required for outstanding project management. Whatever sector that in probably, absolutely is one that should be opened both genders obviously.
And how you shift it? I think is a combination. It's around. Definitely enabling everyone to find out what project management really means and really entails. And if you like the the broad, Spectrum of sectors. You can do it in and I think the second is Role Models, definitely, and I think the third is then, you know, companies, really perhaps tilting where they put their effort on Recruitment and all of that to really bear in mind. They absolutely want to make sure they they reach out to
women. It's not about as it were positive discrimination. Particularly it's really around saying actually You know, mixed teams of people, we know take better decisions and that is on every single level. So the better, the mix, you know, the not only better retention, better decisions better Recruitment and that
absolutely includes women. So I think that there's a link between being strong, all social mobility and socio-economic background and diverse on that and being an organization that can pull that through and these other areas of diversity, See that people are already working on. I think they all come together and I think you can learn across all of them. So it'll be interesting whether that's proven in the future. But my gut instinct is, is they
are all inextricably linked. But the gender piece is really, really important and especially at the moment, you know, you see some sectors, really finding it hard to recruit purely because they've been male-dominated and if you're any fishing in half the talent pool, then, yeah. You're Hocking have a problem, winning the war for talent. So all these things probably have never mattered more than they do now. I couldn't agree more trusting. Well, thank you very much for
coming on today p.m. podcast. I really appreciated that and I think I'll listen to really going to benefit from from from the wisdom that you shared and I hope they will all be encouraged to sign up to the social Mobility pledge. Certainly, as I say p.m., we'll be looking at that. My sense is that the project profession has a really important role to play in Social Mobility, but actually, I think what we're hearing today as well.
Is that social Mobility can add huge value to a Active project delivery as well. So I think it's a it's a win-win so Justine. Thank you very much. Thanks, Adam. And good luck with all of all of the work, I completely agree. It's crucial. If we're going to crack social Mobility, you have to improve project management. Thanks to Justin for taking time out to join Adam in conversation and to you for listening to this podcast. Don't forget that.
You can find out more about the social Mobility pledge at Social Mobility pledged org. If you have any comments feedback or suggestions contact us at a p.m. podcast at think publishing .co.uk, this podcast has been brought to you by APM the childhood body for the project profession. For more information visit to a p.m. dot-org but UK