Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers!

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Today we are going to talk about an extremely important topic, people. We are also talking about how to build your PMO team the right way and save yourself tons of headaches. This episode was sparked by a really good conversation we had inside the IMPACT Engine System™ training and group coaching program where my students all being in different places in their PMO journey. Some are PMOs, have one, some have big teams, some are somewhere in the middle and most of them started as a PMO of one. We were talking about hiring and finding the right staff for your PMO and how you can go about doing that without it being an extremely exhausting and frustrating process. And the question came up, how do you find the right talent?

And what I shared with them is actually something that goes against what a lot of people do and think about when they’re building out their PMO team. So I’m going to share with you some of the secrets that I think truly made a big difference for me when I was inside organizations as a PMO leader. These strategies have continued to serve my consulting practice within PMO Strategies because we need to hire staff to help us build and run PMOs for organizations.

I’m constantly in hiring mode. In fact, when I speak on stages, especially in the DC area where my practice started and where most of my PMO career took place, I would jokingly say if your resume has been on the market in the last 15 years, I’ve seen it.

Building, transforming, rescuing, and running PMOs requires a constant focus on talent management. I constantly had resumes on my desk and I know I’ve seen thousands and thousands of resumes and conducted countless interviews.

In fact, since then I’ve built a course (its available inside our membership) on how to build a resume and update your LinkedIn profile specifically for PMO leaders and project managers because I really got frustrated with what I was seeing people do and how they were presenting and representing themselves in the resume and the interview process. Its called How to Build a High-IMPACT Resume. It’s been popular because it cuts through all of the noise and helps them streamline the resume-building process and know exactly what to focus on to ensure that their resume will stand out, especially when it’s landing on a busy PMO leader or executives desk among thousands of other resumes.

I found in the process is that there are definitely things to look for in the resume and in those early phone conversations, but you also have to spend time with the person face to face to see if they’re going to have what it takes to drive real change for you, and I’m going to share some of those secrets with you here today. Whether you’re looking for a jo,b, looking to hire, or even want to evaluate your existing talent, this episode is for you.

Experience Shouldn’t be Your Top Priority

The first thing I’m going to share with you is actually going to sound counterintuitive, but hang in with me here, you’ll see why. Sometimes experience can be a hindrance to progress with your PMO more than it can be a help. Here’s what I mean. In that coaching session we were having where this topic of talent and hiring came up, I was asked, should you hire a more experienced person to help you set up your PMO or should you hire somebody more junior?

The answer is it really depends, and here’s why: The students that are in my IMPACT Engine System™ training program are learning a very different way to approach building and running a PMO. In the PMO that they are each building in their different organizations is an IMPACT driven PMO. It’s the PMO that the executives are begging for. It’s the PMO that their stakeholders are loving. It’s the PMO that actually has no problem getting the talent and the resourcing needed and the investment to make a bigger IMPACT as they continue to grow and evolve. This training is very different than any other training that you’ll find out there because it’s based on what actually works from spending time building and running PMOs inside organizations.

The PMO approach they are learning is not based on theory, it’s not based on all the books in the courses that will tell you to create a whole bunch of templates and to put process in place. And it definitely doesn’t tell you to start with tools. It’s an entirely different way of thinking. It’s a shift in your mindset about the PMO and what it’s there to do. In order to build a PMO like this, you’ve got to unlearn a lot of the things that you learned either as a project manager or in PMOs that were maybe marginally successful.

So the best kind of talent for you in that situation is going to be talent that is open and interested in learning new ideas and embracing better ways to make projects have an IMPACT, not just have projects done. If you have no idea what I’m talking about here, go back and listen to the IMPACT PMO leader mindset series. In fact, you can start with episode zero and work your way up through the first eight episodes or so and you’ll totally get it.

We make a lot of mindset shifts and think very differently about the PMO and the value it can bring to your organization and it’s very much in alignment with things like theAgile Manifesto, which by the way, if you haven’t read it, I highly suggest you do. You’ll see that most of what’s in there is total common sense and it’s all based on getting to outcomes and putting outcomes over outputs. The IMPACT Engine System™ training program is an iterative approach to showing value and making an IMPACT and creating a return on investment for the PMO quickly. And a lot of people that have worked in PMOs have never done that before.

A lot of PMO staff people have been a part of PMOs that were all about templates and tools and process and checklists and administrative overhead and being thought of and treated as if they are administrative overhead because guess what, they’re performing administrative functions.

The kind of PMO that I teach and the kind of PMO that my students are building is an IMPACT Engine System™ driving IMPACT for the organization. So when they’re looking to hire talent and now you that you’ve listened to those episodes around what it means to be an IMPACT PMO leader know to look for different things and if you’re hiring talent that has tons of experience but it’s that typical people process tools first kind of experience, then there might not be a good fit for your PMO unless they have a growth mindset which is going to be super critical and we’ll talk about that in a moment.

But think about it. If you are completely turning the PMO model on its head, often thought of as waterfall, even though PMOs are not about a particular methodology, then you run the risk that they will bring those bad habits, those PMO habits that I think need to be broken into your PMO.

This means when you are looking for talent for your PMO, you’ve got to make sure that they are open to a new way of doing things. You have to be willing to make that shift from outputs focused, triple constraint focused project based, focused on outcomes, focus on return on investment focus, and helping to drive organizational strategy and get to a better strategic outcome. These new team members have got to be open to that mindset. They’ve got to be open to looking at new and creative ways to solve problems. They’ve got to be able to see that there is a better way to get something done and sometimes a template is not going to be the answer.

Sometimes adding more process is not the answer. Sometimes it’s better to remove steps from the process. Sometimes it’s better to find ways to streamline and to optimize and that’s the kind of things that people learn inside my program. So they’ve got to be able to hire people that are going to help with that as opposed to getting in the way of that progress.

In fact, as I shared this guidance, one of my students said that this was exactly her experience. She had people in her PMO that she had hired that were very stuck in their ways and wanted to provide more structure and more discipline and more and more, more to the PMO process and to the way the PMO was engaging with an organization and she explained to them that the way that they were going to run a PMO was going to be a lean, mean IMPACT driving machine. And they wanted no part of that. They wanted to do what they’d always done before, which frankly probably only got marginal results.

When you look at hiring talent, there are other characteristics that make up what I call superstars, the ones that are really going to help you make a difference in the organization. And many times those characteristics, those traits matters so much more than experience. And at the same time, if you do have somebody that’s had some really good experience and maybe it isn’t in things like a very formalized process, heavy PMO, maybe they have good experience in managing projects, but it just wasn’t called that or they were managing projects and they were getting really great outcomes, but they had a more agile focus or way of doing the work. Be open to that, look for that and look for ways that those interesting strengths can help you on your journey to creating a PMO that is driving huge IMPACT for your organization. The best talent for your PMO might not be in the most obvious places.

Certifications vs IMPACT

Keeping in mind we need to consider carefully how much experience someone has and if they have the kind of experience that’s going to help or hurt the progress of our IMPACT Engine System™. What are some other things that you may want to consider when that resume lands on your desk?

People have often heard me say a certification might get your resume on my desk, but what you can really do to drive IMPACT in the organization is what will ultimately grab my attention. Certifications are great and most of the resumes that landed on my desk had at least one certification on it, whether it’s PMP or a SCRUM certification or some other kind of continuing education certification or degree.

I noticed that people that are really into the profession are the kind of people that like to continue to grow and further their careers all have some type of designation or credential and that means something to me because not only does this show that they have a leaning toward their own career development improvement, but it allows your team to have a common language when they communicate.

This can save so much time in translating when you’re asking them to share information or help each other with a project. With that said, that only gets your resume in front of me. It doesn’t determine whether or not I would hire you in my book.

Having certifications are simply table stakes. They matter, but only so much. I can’t tell you the number of times that I would interview somebody that had, let’s say a PMP certification and then I would talk to them about what they could do to help us improve our risk management process in the organization and they couldn’t tell me a darn thing. In fact, my secret weapon, my secret question that I would always ask, feel free to steal it here because this is a good one. Ask them how they studied for the exam, whatever certification they got, ask them how they prepared for it.

Nine times out of 10 the person that told me, “well, I took a bootcamp and then I took the exam” are the ones that can’t even remember a darn thing about what they studied for, and I am a huge believer in certifications when they are used for good and not evil, meaning they’ve got to be used as a core foundation for your talent, for your knowledge, for your expertise that you then put to practice and build upon. I got my PMP certification in 2004 and now my company offers a very holistic PMP certification program and exam preparation process because I think it’s a great certification to have.

However, that certification only means something. If you then go apply what you’ve learned and can put what you’ve learned into practice and for goodness sakes, be able to talk about it. The PMP certification prep that we offer is based specifically on real world case study examples of how it would apply in your organization. Your challenge to learn something then figure out how would this apply in the real world because that’s what makes it stick.
When I would interview people and I would ask them, how did you study? And they would say, well, I took a bootcamp and then I studied for the exam, or then I just took the exam. Then I start to ask more questions. I dig in a little bit deeper. What did you do to study? What materials did you use? How did you study? What was your process? The people that could actually talk to me about it. The ones that I loved to continue a deeper conversation with and put on that yes pile for further consideration inside my PMOs were the ones that would say something like this, “Well, I took a course and then I went back and reviewed the materials and then I put time on my calendar to continue to learn more about this topic.”

Or they would say something like, “and then I would apply these techniques inside my organization, on my projects so that I could see how it really worked.” That’s the answer I want to hear to that question and when you get that answer, you’re on to something because what that means is that person is really more about achieving the outcomes, not just creating outputs.

It’s not about the letters after their name that a certification gives them. It’s about being able to have new tools in their toolbox. They’re going to help them accomplish so much more. I love that continuous learning and continuous growth mindset. And personally, now that I’m running a company, I continue to learn and grow and add certifications and invest deeply in my own continuous development and improvement through courses and coaching programs every year. I believe that everybody should be doing that.

In fact, I just got back from the PMI PMO Symposium where I was a speaker and as I was talking to PMO leaders and also inside sessions, there were some extremely important themes that came out of that four day symposium and one of them was continuous learning and continuous improvement and PMO leaders learning to embrace and take ownership for their own professional development.

In an upcoming episode in a few weeks, I’m going to share more about the themes and trends and what I think is coming as we approach the new year. But for now, just consider that this is the kind of person you want on your team. The kind of person that isn’t going to get stuck in their ways or look good on paper, but not actually be able to help you deliver and make an IMPACT in the organization.

What does Good PMO Talent Look Like

If it’s not just certifications, what does really good PMO talent look like? Okay, so they have their PMP or some other certification. They’ve got an Agile or SCRUM certification and they have experience managing projects and programs. In order to be competitive and the kind of person that I wanted to hire, they have to have really sharp communication skills and have the ability to influence anyone to do anything.

Likability

As silly as it sounds, they also have to be well likable. I’ve seen some of the sharpest minds lose an entire audience by not being able to reach them. On a personal level where the rubber really meets the road is on the soft skills side and it starts with communications and expectations management. Here’s an example. When I would hire or interview new talent to join my team, I always had one of my superstars helping me with the interview process, one of my right or left hand resources and they would help me evaluate the for talent and fit with the team and gaps they could fill, which we’ll talk more about in a minute, but in one of those interviews one of my superstars was asked by a candidate what is she like to work for and pointed to me and this superstar talent of mine said, “Oh, that’s easy. Just do what you said you’re going to do. Manage her expectations. She’s savvy and will know if you aren’t being straight with her. Be realistic. Ask for help when you need it, but set the bar where you think you can actually reach. Having the bar too low is just as bad as setting it too high.”

This is what the right talent knows about their boss and this is what the right talent knows about communications and expectations management because expectations management is above all else. A good project manager knows the best way to get the most out of their stakeholders and their sponsor and their boss. Because if you keep them engaged and informed on a regular basis and you’re constantly setting and managing their expectations, then that stakeholder is ready immediately when you need help.

Good talent needs the creative freedom to solve problems and manage the efforts the way they see fit. If you’re hovering over them because they’re not managing expectations and they’re not communicating with you and you can’t let go and you feel yourself micromanaging, it’s because you don’t have enough information or you don’t trust them, both of which are going to end up in a very difficult situation if you don’t fix it. So when you’re looking to hire, that’s one of the things you want to look for: Does this person know how to manage expectations and clearly and proactively communicate with their stakeholders so that they can keep everyone moving forward exactly the way they need to be moving?

Change Agents by Lifestyle Not Just Title

The next thing you want to look for and the kind of resources that I think are best for PMO are people that are change agents by lifestyle, not just by job title. I strongly believe that the PMO is and must be the change engine for an organization.

I’ve seen organizations where the change management function is, let’s say outsource to another part of the company. There’s either a change management team or it’s inside HR and there’s change managers assigned to you. I don’t believe that that’s an effective way to do it. Now, they can certainly provide coaching, but when you outsource change management or make it someone else’s responsibility to ensure that the changes that you’re implementing are adopted by the organization, you’re abdicating responsibility that belongs to you. If you’re going to Institute the change, if you’re going to create the change, then you’ve got to own it and see it through and I promise you we will have tons of episodes talking about change management, how to bring people through change, change resistance.

Think about the talent in your organization or the people that you’re wanting to hire. You want them to be change agents by nature because the kind of talent that can bring people through change are the ones that are familiar with change themselves. These are the kinds of people that can and do handle change well on an ongoing basis, and I’m not just talking about project change, but these are the kinds of people that are continually growing and evolving in their personal lives and know how to live change. They’re the ones that have some kind of regular self development going on or interests outside of work. And that gives them that well-rounded and continuous improvement mindset.

Who better to sit with your customers and help them live through a change? Then those that do so continuously. So what does that look like? Practically?

It can be super simple. Someone that is continuing to work on certifications, someone that takes additional courses. By the way, if your team comes to you and asks for funding to take a course, give it to them. They’re trying to continue to improve their skills so they can do a better job for you. Many companies are doing away with paying for training programs for their staff. The expectations are now that you come to the table with all the skills you need. So I realize that may not be an option for you, but if it is just as an aside, take care of your people with as much training as you can because it shows that they are really interested in continuous learning and continuous improvement and they’ll bring back those ideas and skills back to your team to help improve your team and it shows you care enough about them to invest in them.

So again, I realize that it’s not an option for everyone, but if you have that option, definitely take full advantage of it and support those people that are showing you. They do want to continue to improve and grow their skills. They also are doing this in their personal lives. They’re the kind of people that take up a class or learn a new hobby or a skill or you find them just regularly life.

Some of my best PMO talent were ones that were constantly learning something new on the weekends, exploring a new city, or really just pushing their boundaries. And it could have been something wild like skydiving or something simple like learning about new plants to add to their garden. The point is continuous learning and continuous improvement. And you can simply ask people a little bit about themselves.

When you’re in the interview process, ask them about their hobbies. Ask them about their interests, ask them about things that they’re doing in their personal life to continue to grow and improve. And if they immediately have an answer and their eyes light up, then you know it’s a way that they think and believe and function in their lives.

So change agents by lifestyle, not just job title will help you hold the hand of your stakeholders as you’re bringing them through the change process and make sure that you’re doing change with them instead of to them.

Empathy

Now, there’s another pattern that has emerged for me in the superstar talent, and it’s related to their ability to show empathy. This talent that you need for your PMO needs to be able to meet the customer, the client and the project team member where they are not where they’d like them to be. The right talent knows this and constantly puts themselves in the shoes of their stakeholders addressing their needs before those stakeholders even realize they have the need, the ability to get into someone’s head and understand what their motivators are and how you can leverage individual motivations toward common project goals is truly an art and the kind of talent you want on your team has the ability to do that.

One of my program managers that I worked with and frankly hired in multiple organizations, used to have something he referred to as the Jedi mind trick. He would bring his project team through a very long complicated project or multiple projects as part of the program and he did it in such a way that they really had no idea that what they were doing, what they were following was our formal project management process and at the end they would get the results they were looking for. They would get the outcomes they were trying to achieve and he would joke with them. I just pulled the biggest Jedi mind trick on all of you. None of you had any idea. You were a part of a very formalized and structured program management function here in our organization because I did this with you, not to you and I met you where you were and took you on that journey to help you see what you were doing, the importance of what you’re doing, how to do it, and why it was going to help you achieve your goals and what would make me laugh every time is that the team would just be thrilled.

They just loved him, adored him, and appreciated everything he was doing because he didn’t shove a bunch of project management speak at them. He talked about their pain points. He talked about the outcomes they wanted to achieve and he held their hand and took them on a journey to get there. That’s the kind of talent you want on your team.

This talent becomes a chameleon of sorts by remaining very flexible to the different demands of stakeholders. They are very aware because they know how to set expectations and because they have strong communication skills and because they know how to put themselves in the shoes of their stakeholders when they’re having conversations, they know their audience and they know who they need to be for each audience. They know that the executive wants to know the bottom line. They know the project team wants to know that they have someone watching their back.

They know the customer wants to know that they are going to get what was promised when it was promised and it’s going to deliver exactly what they need. All of this goes into how this kind of talent will interact with their stakeholders and who to be to whom and when. Because that PMO leader you wants to know that the stakeholders are all getting what they need and that the projects are going to get delivered and if they’re an IMPACT driver, PMO leader, they are also extremely concerned about how they’re showing that return on investment and ultimate IMPACT and moving the organization forward.

The good talent are the ones that have that inherent sense about what needs to get done and how to get it done in a way that keeps everyone happy and productive and speaking of happy and productive. Once you find that kind of talent, you’ve got to keep them and keep them happy.

One way to do that is to engage them in the process of continuing to build your organization. Let’s say that you’re a PMO of one and you bring in that first person that’s going to be your right hand, include them with you in the interview process of future talent that helps you ensure that the culture you’re building becomes a really strong culture based on the superstar talent that you already have. They will help you find new candidates and frankly good talent knows good talent when they see it and the fact that you’re including them in the process helps them feel valued and respected and appreciated as a part of your team and that ultimately builds the kind of culture that is Bulletproof and when they’re helping you with that hiring process.

Diversity at Every Level

Make sure that you guys are all looking at diversity and I’m talking about diversity on every level. You need diverse sets of skills in order to apply different types of talent to different situations in your organization. For example, when I set up a PMO inside an organization and had staff that were assigned to me that were brought in from different parts of the organization to help me build the PMO, the first thing I did was look at the strengths.

I looked at the strengths of the talent on the team and I said, okay, what are each of you good at? What do each of you like doing? By the way, that is the best way to assign talent based on what they really enjoy because then they’re going to give it 110% so I looked at what are they good at, what do they like doing, where do they have business knowledge that they can use to help bridge gaps with different parts of the organizations or for show that they have certain subject matter expertise as we’re working on different kinds of projects and then I assign people to work in those different areas of their strength.

For example, one person on my team was really good at building out the process, so that person did that. Another person on my team was really good at helping me think big picture about the strategy and how we would set up the PMO and how it would be organized and how it would serve. That person helped me with that. Another person was extremely strong at the relationships and shared their guidance with us as a team on the best way to build and manage those relationships. And everybody was brought into regular meetings to be a part of seeing the pieces that everybody was working on individually and provide input and feedback into the process. You see, it was not my PMO, it was a PMO that was there to serve the entire organization and we were the ones that were honored with the privilege of being able to create that PMO for the rest of the organization to serve their needs.

And we work together to do that. So in addition to the responsibilities of maybe running programs or projects, we also all had internal responsibilities to build out the PMO and define and implement the various services and capabilities we were building. But it all started with leverage people for their strengths and taking that person that was extremely good at defining process.

And not only did they define the processes that we would use for the PMO and for all of the projects for the organization, but when there was a project that was really super lacking in process, that was the right PMO staff person to go run that project and get it back on track. In fact, she was a great person at rescuing projects that were really kind of chaotic because she could provide some structure and some process to support them. Another project that required really strong relationship skills and was much more of a strategic initiative that belonged to another staff person that was really good at that.

You see where I’m going with this? You want to make sure that you’re aligning people based on their strengths and where their talents are and letting them do the work that serves them and the organization best. Now, another thing to consider is that when you have a really diverse set of talent, which you should have for all of the reasons identified, but also just because they’ve got to be able to fill the gaps in the blind spots that you have as a PMO leader, you’re going to need to manage them differently. You’re going to need to know how to meet them where they are and coach them and support them using a very flexible management style. The kind of resources you’re going to want on your team are the ones that need to be constantly challenged and engaged and most importantly, once you get that talent in place, and once you guys are all on the same page with what you’re trying to do, what you’re trying to create and how you’re going to serve your organization, and this is the most important point to remember.

Once you have them, get out of their way

The worst thing you can do with talent that is strong and independent and taking care of your PMO and your organization and your stakeholders is suffocate them. Nothing will drive good talent away faster than a micromanaging boss that doesn’t let them live up to their full potential.

So when you get that awesome talent and you’ve worked very hard to find people that are change agents that are empathetic, that can pull the Jedi mind trick on your stakeholders on a regular basis, that can help you continue to grow your PMO and even help you find more superstar talent for your team. Do everything you possibly can to take care of that talent and show them how much you appreciate them, respect them, and want to give them every opportunity to grow and contribute to the organization. You do that and you will have a PMO that is creating incredible IMPACT and building credibility on a daily basis through every interaction with the organization.

Remember, happy talent will take care of your customers. And if you don’t believe me, look at all the data out there for organizations like Southwest and Zappos that have really positive cultures and talent that loves working there. I use both of those companies. For example, and I can tell you I have been on countless Southwest flights and you can tell from the person that stocks the planes when they do their quick turnovers to the people at the desks to the people on the phones. When you call customer service to every single flight attendant, they are happy, they are kind and they take really good care of their people. In fact, I recently got in the mail some cards that I can give to any of the Southwest staff that are doing a good job to say thank you and it’s all a part of this really cool rewards program that they use to just have another way to show their staff that they’re grateful, that they’re doing a good job.

So think about little things like that that you could do in your organization to show your talent, your team, that you care about them, respect them and appreciate everything they do to help you make a huge IMPACT with the PMO. When you have the kind of talent that we’re talking about here, you can safely let go of the reins and trust them to get the job done so that you can take a step back, look at that bigger picture, work on those really important strategic relationships to continue to build your own credibility, develop your career, and make a bigger IMPACT in your organization. After all, isn’t that what we’re all looking for?