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This podcast offers business solutions to help listeners develop and implement action plans for lean process improvement and implement continuous improvement projects, cost reductions, product quality enhancements, and process effectiveness improvement. Listeners come from many industries in both manufacturing and office applications.
Dave Kippen 0:00
It's so simple and funny. How do you ask for permission first? That's not a term I'd ever heard before. You think you know what you need. Someone said, We've got to put a charter together. And you sit down and cross. When that person said, Hey, there's this gap that's come up, we think we're going to work on it. Tell me about what you think about this. They tell you a little bit about it. Hopefully they say, Yeah, this has been an issue. An issue. Hey, Do I have your permission to go work on that? Right? That thought had never crossed my mind before. You know, five years ago, yeah. And once they say, yeah, yeah, I think that'd be great. It really helps to buy in down the road. Oh yeah, for sure. You
Patrick Adams 0:51
when it comes to like let's imagine that we've completed the charter, and now we've kicked off the project, and we're on our way. What are the behaviors that we should see from an executive sponsor. It is it my responsibility as the project manager to actually, like, initiate those behaviors or kind of, like, pull them along, you know, like, what should the behaviors look like on the I think executive side? I guess
Dave Kippen 1:19
I think what good looks like comes from two different sides. Okay, and so one as the project owner, what kind of simple review and response system have you set up with the sponsors? So when I say review and response, think of daily management, even for a project, how do I not wait for a monthly review to get feedback from the sponsor for him or her to say you guys are off track? How do I do that? Bi weekly or weekly? There you go. Or three times a week, whatever the right cadence is, some of the best examples I've seen in my career so far have been multiple times a week check ins with those executives. Now, the higher the level, the harder it is to get time with them, sure, sure, but the closer you can get to that, more real time, just in time, one piece flow of feedback to your sponsor, the better off you.
Patrick Adams 2:16
Right, right. So what would be like? What would cause a project to not move forward or to not be successful? And what could executive How could executive leaders be valuable in helping that not happen?
Dave Kippen 2:36
Right? They go off track lots of ways. I don't want to sound like a broken record, but if you have that regular, consistent check in points, you're less likely to have a project go off track. Typically, where they do go off track. You know the key reasons are, again, misalignment, sure, or if you think about the problem solving cycle. PDCA, not enough, or the correct follow up. Doing the work up front is the easy part, getting a project up and running, right is the easy part, right? Is it delivering what you or what they think it's going to deliver? And how do we talk about that, right?
Patrick Adams 3:17
Right? Yeah, that's a good point. And if you're talking about it regularly, you should, and to your point, like those, those shorter cycles, so if it's twice a week, you should be able to catch lags or roadblocks and have those conversations, and then, you know, be, hopefully you you have a solution to how you're going to get through that roadblock and a problem. But if you don't having those regular discussions, is that opportunity to say, hey, I have a roadblock. If this is not removed, which is outside of my control, I can't do this right? Then I'm stalled. I'm stuck, right? You know? So can you help me with that? Those regular discussions? I've been in too many organizations where they don't have those regular discussions, and then they get to, like, the end of the month or the end of the quarter, and then the executives like, Okay, give me an update on this project. And they're kind of scrambling going on in circles like, because they don't have a good, a good report on movement towards completing that particular
Dave Kippen 4:17
project, right? You know, sometimes we need to eat our own dog food, as they say, if you're running a production process or a transactional process, you know, you're checking in on that regularly. We have hour by hour boards if you're in the manufacturing world, daily, you know, daily huddles a lot of times. If you're in the transactional world, to do exactly that, early escalations of issues, and I don't know why. Sometimes in the project management world, we don't have that same thinking,
Patrick Adams 4:47
Yeah, that's a, that's a really good point. I mean, it just goes back to and it doesn't have to be a long meeting, right? It's just a touch point where you're, you have a regular, scheduled cadence of meetings on this particular project where. Where you're pulling the team together and you're just doing a quick touch point on how things are, how things are progressing, and what help is needed.
Dave Kippen 5:06
Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, one of my better examples, I was working with one of our plants outside Cincinnati, and the Global Director of the flavors, bu was the executive sponsor, okay? And so as part of our namawashi, our pre work, yep. I said, How often can we check in? We're going to be on site every week for a while. What is fair? How much time do you think you can give us? And he said, Well, I'd love to do a startup check in when you get here Monday and close out, check in when, before you leave on Friday. Nice. I said, this is perfect, yeah, how much time can you give me? He said, 10 minutes. Beautiful. Yeah, you can convey escalations or wins in a really short amount of time, especially when you're working with those executives. They don't want a three page report, right? They want a red and a green. They want a one pager?
Patrick Adams 6:01
Yeah, on track or off track, on track, very simple. And what help do you need? Yep, right? Yeah, that's, that's, that's a really, really good point. You have to know your audience and speak their language, right? So understand who you're speaking to and what's important to them, and be sure that you're presenting that accordingly. As the project manager, it's your job to make sure that the systems are set up to support your project's completion and that it's moving along, and that you're able to achieve that. And then it's the executives responsibility to show up, listen and look for opportunities to help support again, whether that's removing roadblocks, but even just showing up, being there, listening, asking some questions, yeah, super valuable for a project team.
Dave Kippen 6:42
And so I mentioned there's, there's two ends that I try to tackle. One is, you know, review and response, daily management for projects. The other, I think a lot of times, those executives don't know how to build, build that in to their own day. So one version is me being proactive. How do we get them to be proactive? To come to you and ask, right? So if you have Leader Standard Work for an executive, that's great. When you're launching a project, say, Hey, can every week, can you put this on your Leader Standard Work to go ask somebody a question about the project? It doesn't matter what the question is, it gets some talking. That's right. Stuff comes up when you start talking, yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So leader, standard work, or even just a calendar, a note or an appointment once a week or twice a week. Go ask somebody that's
Patrick Adams 7:36
a good, good call out for sure. How do you how do you make sure that you don't become too over dependent on the executive sponsor or leadership to, like, to the point where, you know, I'm not moving forward to make decisions because I'm waiting on that next meeting with my executive sponsor to get approval to move ahead. How do we I guess I'm just looking for a balance of, like, how do we not get too far down the weeds of kind of, almost in the in the place of micromanaging, where an executive, you're relying on them to make all the decisions, right?
Dave Kippen 8:09
Yeah, yeah. Lots of, lots of thoughts. Short interval check ins we already covered, that that helps. I think knowing the relationship will help as well. Does that executive allow you to run experiments on your own? And so maybe this is a discussion you have to even pre charter, or during the charter, to say, here's our gap, here's the direction we're going. Are you okay if I play a little bit in here, and if they say, Yes, that's a green light to maybe not need as much approval, sure or feedback, and they, if they seem hesitant, I don't know, then, you know, as a project leader, I know maybe I need to decide what to run past the executive. Okay, so I think knowing that relationship, knowing their comfort level, right, with autonomy, is super helpful.
Patrick Adams 9:00
Yeah, yeah, it goes back to meeting them, where they are too, and understanding who your audience is, right? So what about on the other side of that? What if you have an Executive leader that's, like, fully removed, or they're, they're, maybe they're showing up to the meeting, or you're showing up to their office, but they're clearly not interested, and they're, you know, maybe they're not showing up to meetings, or they're canceling or whatever it might be. I mean, any advice to people on how to deal with that?
Dave Kippen 9:26
Yeah, yeah. I think at first you have to ask the question, do they trust that I'm doing the right thing, and is it okay that they've maybe taken a step back? It's probably more rare than the other right the other side, which is they're just not that engaged with what you're doing. And I'd go back to my question in the beginning, are you working on something that's important to that executive and to the business, right? Right? I would guess not, if they're really that removed. And so maybe that's a discussion. You know, hey, Patrick, we launched this initiative. Initiative. We got a lot of people working on it. It doesn't seem to have your attention. You know, tell me more about that. Is it not something that's strategic? Is it not something that we should be working on now? Or maybe they just don't understand it well enough to ask, right?
Patrick Adams 10:14
Right? Yeah. And that almost makes me think you have to understand, you know, your culture makes a big difference here too, because if you're living in a fear based culture where psychological safety doesn't exist and you're worried or scared about saying, I mean, that can be a tough conversation to have with an Executive leader, someone report to to say, Hey, I'm not, I'm not getting the involvement that I really need here. What's going on? Yeah. I mean, that's a tough
Dave Kippen 10:41
so it is, yeah, you
Patrick Adams 10:43
know, have to gage your culture there, right? I mean, I hate to say it, but there's probably some people listening that are like, there's no way I could have that conversation with my boss.
Dave Kippen 10:52
So think about other peers. You know, that leader, that executive, has peers that maybe have a different leadership style. Okay, could you talk to them? Sure about, hey, you know, I'm working on this for Patrick. Do you think this is important at your guys level? So, you know, maybe not directly at first, feel out some of those other leaders in the in the org.
Patrick Adams 11:14
That's a good that's a good call out, yeah, obviously, if, yeah, if you have trust with certain people that you can kind of bounce ideas and get some advice from but at the end of the day, you got to figure out how to get support on your project to move it forward. If you're not getting that, it needs to be addressed, either, you know, with that person or, I mean, you got to figure it out, because you need those you need that support. There's no reason why their names on that chart, right?
Dave Kippen 11:38
Yeah, yeah. And I would, I would encourage everybody you know, think about, how do you do more work on the front end? Sure, because by the by the time you're already thinking about, I don't have the buy in I need. You're in a hole. So how do you do that front end? Different than than washi, the tilling the soil before you plant. Yeah, those informal discussions, even before the charter. Wow. That time before the charter, I don't think we spend enough time thinking about
Patrick Adams 12:03
that's a really good point. There's a lot of leg or legwork. There's a lot of work that can be done ahead of time to set yourself up for success. So that's a that's a really good point. What would you say is the most important thing that like a pro, anyone that's listening right now that's been assigned a project. You know, it's the beginning of the year. I'm sure there's lots of brand new projects that are getting kicked off here. What would you say would be the the number one, most important thing that someone who is managing a project should consider in order to ensure that they're going to have project success, Completion, success.
Dave Kippen 12:41
I think building in those touch points with whomever, whether it's the executive sponsor or, you know, or the owner, deliberately building in the touch points and deliberately helping them build in proactive time in their day to make touch points with you. Okay, yeah, I just think any, any gap in communication, any gap in status updates, it's gonna, it's gonna sink a project, right?
Patrick Adams 13:08
Yeah, yeah. And, and to your point, like having that, those, those intentional touch points, but even being structured in those, even, like your initial touch point, you know, and think about this, like before you even are working on the charter. But what, how do I get that my executive sponsors buy in. So what does that first conversation need to look like? You know, as far as the project goes, How do I present this project in a way that makes it very valuable to that leader?
Dave Kippen 13:37
Yeah, and yeah, go ahead. I learned a great tool from Ed Blackman. I think, you know Ed, yeah, Edward family, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's so it's so simple and funny. How do you ask for permission first? That's, that's not a term I'd ever heard before. And this is part of that time before, before the charter, where you sit down with an executive, you think you know what you need. Someone said, We've got to put a charter together. And you sit down across when that person said, Hey, there's this gap that's come up. We think we're going to work on it. Tell me about what you think you know about this. They tell you a little bit about it. Hopefully they say, Yeah, this has been an issue. Hey, Do I have your permission to go work on that, right, right, which that thought had never crossed my mind before. You know, five years ago, yeah, yeah. And once they say, yeah, yeah, I think that'd be great. It really helps to buy in down the road,
Patrick Adams 14:31
oh yeah, for sure, without a doubt. And Edward would also his name was, she's were always at a restaurant or a bar or somewhere off site, a couple of drinks, you know, or whatever on the golf course, you know, just having more of an informed conversation ahead of time to really help yourself, get some framework around what you're going to be doing and what's the best way to approach this, right? Yeah, identifying problems you might encounter with support. Sure.
Dave Kippen 15:00
Yeah, that's exactly. And that was the approach we took at that plant that was talking about outside of Cincinnati. We did some that informal number washi with, with, with the VP, hey, what's going on? You know, what are the problems you need help with? And get them talking. And then, along with the do, can we help you with this? And they say, Yeah, who else do we go talk to? Who else would know about this, this problem. So, you know, the demo wash, it can kind of grow just by asking, all right, who else should we go talk to about this? Right?
Patrick Adams 15:29
Yeah, that's a really great point. Unfortunately, we got to come to a close here. We're trying to shorten up our podcast episodes a little bit. So this time went by really fast. Unfortunately, we could talk forever. But if anyone who's watching this has more questions, just about, you know, project management or executive support, or, you know, even the MLC we talked about, the Michigan consortium, if they have any questions, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you?
Dave Kippen 15:58
Yeah, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so just look me up there. Dave kippen, email is super easy. Dave kippen@yahoo.com, I'm old enough to still have a Yahoo email.
Patrick Adams 16:10
Yeah, those are the easiest ways. Okay, perfect. And we'll, we'll throw that in the show notes too. So if anyone's interested, they can go right to the show notes and grab your contact info and perfect, reach out to you that way. Dave, it's been great to have you on the show as always. Love touching base with you and connecting and looking forward to see you know how your career continues into the future.
Dave Kippen 16:31
Same you know, I've loved watching your path and your progression. I find joy in that. So thank you for that.
Patrick Adams 16:37
Yeah. All right. Take care. All right.