ERP049 - The Accidental Project Manager with Rachel Gertz

Welcome to Evolved Radio where we explore the evolution of business and technology. On the podcast today, I'm speaking with Rachel Gertz about project management. Rachel is a return guest to the podcast. We previously talked about the role of the project manager in episode 9. She also joined me on episode 19 to talk about some futuristic topics like AI and medicine. Today we dive deeper on project management, especially people that often find themselves as what we refer to as an accidental project manager. We share some tips about dealing with people, how to run project meetings and a huge career opportunities that there are in project management. So, if you have found yourself as an accidental PM, you're looking to improve your PM skills, or you have been thinking that maybe a PM role is a great career option for you. You want to check out this episode. If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast from. Also, be sure to check out the web page evolvedmt.com/podcast for show notes, links to my guests and to check out previous episodes. Now, let's get started. Hey Rachel, welcome to the podcast. Hey Todd, how's it going? Great. You've been a guest a couple of times on the podcast. So, welcome back for your third time. For those that haven't heard your previous interviews, uh definitely I'll link to those in the show notes. Um and you can check those out, but if you could, just uh give us an introduction to yourself and we'll kick things off from there. Sure. So I'm Rachel Gertz. I run a company called Louder than 10. And we train digital producers, project managers and leads, and the whole concept is to make them think like mini COOs. Our goal is to kind of elevate the discipline of project management, make the invisible visible, and really re- re-establish some of those power spaces that folks need to take up a little bit more of. Awesome. So, we're going to be continuing uh and maybe some more specifics on the project management conversation. Uh this is obviously a big component of a lot of businesses, pretty much anything that you do in delivery in an organization should look like a project. So project management is becoming a lot more prevalent in organizations. And I think one of the things that we find, certainly in in my area of the business, and I think that you see some of this as well, is that people don't really plan to be project managers. They we we I think I got this term from you originally, the accidental PM. Uh so you want to talk a bit about sort of your observations. And we can riff on that as well about people just sort of falling into this role and and what that means for for sort of how they get trained and uh the areas that they may need some support in. Yeah, absolutely. So, um, PM is invisible, right? And a lot of the invisibility uh makes it seen as kind of not a legitimate or real job to a lot of folks. I don't think it's anything uh done on purpose, but it just kind of um ends up rolling out on a project. You need to be able to make uh have progress in the project, move things forward. And so this is this connective tissue that we call project management that ends up happening. So, what ends up really uh transpiring is, you know, folks who are maybe a little more organized or they have really good initiative or good leadership qualities or they just happen to, you know, say, well, no one else is doing it, so I'm going to do it. They end up falling into this role of being accountable to the project. Uh whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, that is all dependent upon their relationship with the team and with the deliverables they're actually working on. Right. So what are the things uh that the people that that sort of find themselves in this role, um what are some some of the things that they should be focusing on? What are sort of maybe some top three tips that you would suggest to people? If you find yourself in a PM role, what should you start to look for or what should you start to do? So the first thing that we want to teach our our apprentices is how to be a lovable hard ass. Uh we think that like a great PM is really all about setting clear boundaries and making sure that people know the answers to these three questions. So, where are we? Where are we going? And are we okay, right? If you can answer those three questions, it really sets everyone else's minds at ease. So, if you, you know, say you're someone new to the role and you're wondering, well, how can I be more of a lovable hard ass where people are going to respect me. And I'm still going to have what we call referent power and not, you know, coercive power. This is where you could start using things like script, right? Where you're just uh maybe leaning into some uh ways of thinking about resetting boundaries like, you know what, that's a great idea. Let's go back to the team and make sure that we're, you know, listening to the goals of the project, right? Before making a decision, before yielding to scope changes or uh pressure from clients. What did you call that? Referent power? I've not heard that expression before. Yeah, so uh uh there's this neat little pyramid of power. There's like five different types. So there's coercive power, reward power, legitimate power, referent power, and expert power. So at the bottom, coercive power is is is really about like taking taking power and demanding respect and, you know, appreciation. In that middle area of uh referent power, this is where we find like really solid PMs. And this is these are folks who actually you just you like them. You just really think that they're looking out for you, they've got your back, you feel supported. Uh they're they're terrific at managing and then if you go up to the expert power level, which is what they call level five leadership. That's really where we get into, you know, solid, almost CEO-like uh behavior where you can you can uh you can get an entire crowd of people to just follow what you what you need them to do. So there's these sort of levels and I think a referent power is like the minimum amount of power that you would want to have in order to be a really solid project manager. Hmm, okay. Yeah, because in uh the work that I do, I I talk about the three role the three powers of of leadership being uh role power, expertise power, and relationship power. So I think those sort of fit within the same the same box, right? That role power should be used very little. It's uh I define it as uh I'm your boss, I can fire you, so do what I say. And sometimes it needs to be employed, but it's not what you should be using a lot, right? So probably similar in in the PM fashion that you need to get people to come along with you. You can't just sort of keep cracking the whip and pushing them uphill with you. Yeah, I think that a lot of people have this idea of what project management is about and they tend to think of individuals as, you know, bossy sort of task jockeys is like, did you do that thing yet? And I think that's a a misnomer because the the best project managers that I've ever seen, especially um, you know, working on complex infrastructure projects or digital software projects, they are just good at clearing barriers out of the way, right? Moving them out of the way and being like, hey, what do you need to be successful here? So, that I think that segues well into the other piece I wanted to talk about is um I I openly tell people I'm often horrified by what I see when I audit people's project management meetings. And it really is just a a low maturity round table of a person sitting at there at the top of the the the conference table going around the the room very slowly from person to person saying, hey, can you update me on this project that you're assigned to? And it's pretty obvious they have no clue what has happened, what's transpired over the course of the week. And everyone kind of has to sit there and endure these long update meetings. That I feel like probably should have happened in email or one-on-ones. Uh so, um I certainly have my thoughts on what this could and should look like. I'd love your input on uh what you feel is a great uh project management meeting? Is it a group thing? What happens on a one-on-one basis versus the group? What are your thoughts on that? Oh, well, first of all, I agree with you. That sounds terrible. I would not want to be a part of one of those meetings. Um I think a lot of the the idea of like a progress or status meeting, we forget like the setup. So it's it's like if you could distill all the different types of meetings that you want to have, right? A progress update is all about not just knowing where you were, because yeah, that's great, but what are you going to do about it, right? Like you said, where are we headed in this in this uh project? What do we need to be successful? And really using uh a chance to kind of focus on not so much what you're doing and what another person is doing in that status meeting, but the gap where you two intersect, right? And using that as a chance to just connect and be like, oh, hey, there is a gap here, then take it offline. Like go go talk about it so you're not actually blocking the rest of the the people that are in that meeting and making a long drawn out conversation. What do you think? Well, yeah, I think always being future focused is what I recommend because people tend to get trapped in discussing why something didn't happen. Right? So most project meetings I find are this didn't get done and let me tell you this 20-minute story about all these issues that I had last week. Which to me is like great, uh but it's not helpful about what we're actually trying to progress. Like what's next is always what I tell people around productivity is focusing on the future. Because you can't fix what happened. You need to focus on, okay, project's off track. What are we doing uh in order to get it back on track? Yeah, I would totally agree with you on that. I think um, you know, I can see a lot of people looking inward to say, here's the reason that I things went off the rails. It's not my fault. There was a lot of situations that were happening. I got blocked. And really, all that is is just a like looking at a trust trust mechanism or a lack of trust in that conversation, right? So if you feel like you have to be defensive, then you're not really focusing on the project itself, you're focusing on the the relationships and worrying about your own ability to be accountable. So, I think like you've have you read the book uh five dysfunctions of a team? Absolutely. Patrick Lencioni, yeah. Beautiful, right? Like it's all about moving up this pyramid of trust and making sure that everybody knows what to expect and how to have a better conversation. It's not about me or you, it's about we and it's about like how do we get the work done together. So I love it. So with that, like the are there the PM meetings, um the project meeting, is there an agenda that should be followed that that kind of helps keep this on track and follow sort of a a certain format that you would recommend? Well, so again, if this is strictly just uh like say like a daily stand-up. It's like what were you working on, what are you going to work on? Do you have any blockers? And, you know, is there anyone you need to talk to? Uh those are some pretty standard questions to follow. If if this is more of like an investigative meeting where you're trying to actually solve a problem together, then it's a totally different meeting format, right? So you want to kind of adjust and accommodate based on the type of meeting you want to have. So if you are trying to solve a problem, it's not a bad idea to walk in with what you think would be an agenda. But don't focus on that being the um single source of truth. A lot of people get stuck on, we didn't stick to the agenda items. Sometimes that's because you have other problems that need to be solved. And what what might be a better way to do it is to actually open the meeting up at the beginning and say, before we get started, is there anything that anybody wants to make sure that we discuss today? And do a little bit of conversation around the human side to make sure that you're checking in with how are people feeling today. Um if you're not addressing that human part, it will come out in other ways in in that meeting and it will derail you. It's a good good way to build trust. Right. So, I guess like uh on the status updates. Because as I said, the the meetings that I see uh in in uh the the the groups that I work with, a lot of it is usually like a a once a week meeting where you just go around the table and update all of the relevant parties on the 12 different projects that are in flight. Uh um it would would your suggestion be that that should be one-on-one meetings with those people and then send a summary email or is there a better format for that that type of meeting? Like what what would be your sense of that sort of uh like just 500 foot view around the discussion of it? Yeah. I would I mean I'd be looking at like, so why are we having this meeting, right? So if if it's individuals and each of them is running 12 different projects and each one's going to go through each that is totally a waste of time. Like in my opinion, what you would want to be doing is you'd want to be looking at having project related updates. So you'd want to know like if you have a single dedicated team or a cross-functional team, what where are those folks getting blocked and what can you do to unblock them? If you're just looking at getting like scope or budget or schedule, you can usually go around and and actually draw that information out through a fairly short meeting. But again, just sitting everyone in the room for every single project they're working on, I could just see that as really slowing you down. Um I'm curious to hear what you think. Yeah, I agree. what and also ends up happening is that everyone's working on their laptop doing something else while someone else is providing an update. So again, like why are we having this meeting? It just you know, we'll gather everyone in the room and I'll talk to each of you individually one by one while everyone else does some work. So yeah, I just I I don't find that that's that's effective. So, um you touched on something else that that I is really critical. Uh the the folks that I work with on on the IT side of the house. Uh the um especially in sort of the the SMB and the mid-market groups, they don't tend to have dedicated resources. They tend to borrow staff from other departments. So the support group, you know, the tier twos, the tier threes, the slightly more technical experienced guys are and gals are also the people that will be pulled from their desk and be sent on site or pulled to the other side of the room and work on projects for half the time. And this becomes really taxing both for the people doing that work because they end up with split brain on I'm supposed to be doing support, I'm responsible for a bunch of support tickets, but I also have this project that I'm supposed to be working on. And it feels less time sensitive than sort of the fires that are burning from a support perspective. So a big uh area of focus for project managers is resource management, given that that sort of uh difficulty that I described. Any thoughts for people that are that are facing that issue, which is many? Yeah, no kidding. Um so in this situation, you said that uh many folks kind of wear dual hats, right? So they're both implementing and managing, is that right? Yeah, well that's that's a I think a separate issue. The um the the the PMs are often uh responsible for delivery as well. So it's not a dedicated PM. But also the resources that are deployed on projects are also doing support and project implementation. Wow. So everyone's wearing multiple hats. Absolutely. Okay, so there's lots to unpack. So let's start with the first uh part of this. So when you're doing both uh like we would maybe call it like maintenance or, you know, recurring uh support tickets, things like that, plus your actual project work. Um a few of our apprentices in our in our program, they've actually uh developed this really neat thing called ghost busting. And I'm not sure if we talked about it previously, Todd, but it's basically where you can uh rotate off and have one person be the support person go to, you know, in a regular cadence. So maybe you book out your Thursday afternoons and that's when you can triage and prioritize everything that needs to happen over that week. Most things are usually not so urgent that you need to drop everything, right? But you can kind of build that time into the schedule and then it helps to alleviate some of that getting pulled off of projects problem. Now, that's just strictly from, you know, the balance of how you would schedule. In terms of reality, I mean, that's a lot of um looking at a systems approach to resourcing. So when I say systems approach, what I'm thinking about is you can kind of scale teams and projects in a way that allows you to um, you know, focus halftime or even say, I wouldn't recommend any more than like a third of your capacity toward any given project at any given time. Even if you're running say like for let's just say for example, you're running six projects, maybe you do something where you you prioritize the three the first week and then you prioritize the second three the second week. So it there's a it's called the Tic Tok model, but it's basically just allocating and dedicating your focus and blocking out time for those projects where you're you and your teammates are all working on the same things at the same time. Is that Yeah, I think it sounds similar. And and granted like the the work that you're that you typically do is more around the software side of the house, a digital project management. And and uh the the work that I see a lot more often is infrastructure and you know, more uh uh traditional IT stuff. Uh so there there's sort of a slight difference in I guess they actually have a fairly big difference in in implementation styles. Um but it sounds similar. What I typically recommend is is uh start blocking time at least in four-hour chunks to dedicate towards the project. So it it allows you to sort of focus some time and know that, well, I'm not going to be sort of burdened by something unless like something's truly on fire, then come get me, but otherwise this morning from 8:00 till 12:00, I'm going to focus on this project. So it helps alleviate the stress of like uh task switching within sort of a 30-minute period between three different things. Like you you're not going to get enough uh forward momentum. And I think this also brings in what I suggest around time management and productivity is you never find time to do anything, you have to make time to do things, right? So especially with those non-urgent project-based priorities, you have to look at your calendar and say, okay, on Thursday, I'm going to spend time doing this because if you just say, well, I'll get to it when I'm not busy, good luck. That's just not going to happen, right? So really being future focused and and figuring out the time that you can spend against that, I think that's that's generally what you're suggesting, right? Yeah, it it does really require a lot of self-discipline, right? Because I mean, how many times can you look in your inbox and be like, well, I could respond to that email. In fact, we often say, I should respond to that email. But, you know, the reality is most of the work that we do is not urgent and a lot of the work we do is not important. So we have to really look at focusing on our top three to five priorities per day. And like you said, building that time to focus on them. And so that does mean uh some ruthless prioritization. You have to let go of things that are less important. You also need to be able to tell others on your team when things are less important because the impact's lower. Ah, so, I you're you're good at the the the scripting part of this and the especially the human interaction, I know is a big part of what you guys focus on. I imagine you must have some scripts or at least some some suggestions on if someone approaches you with non-urgent matters, exactly in that description. Uh how do you push back gently uh in that? Because I know a lot of people struggle with that, right? Yeah, so I think a lot of it is just testing the alignment, right? So so somebody might approach you at your desk and say, you know, hey Todd, I had this uh, you know, urgent task. I really need you to come over and take a look at this. Can you can you help me through it? And so, first of all, if you if you land in that reactive situation, you'd be like, um saying back to the other person, you know what? Uh I really appreciate that you stopped in. Um I have several priorities that are really important for me right now and this is this is how they're going to be impacted. Is this something that we could come back to a little bit later? Can we schedule some time? You know, book an office hour and actually have a study office hour in your day for those kinds of interruptions. Because I think the flyby uh requests are the ones that are just the most damaging, right? They they really hurt. So using scripts like that, you know, um if you have executives doing it, just looking at uh all right, so it looks like we have a couple options for paths we can go down. We have option A, we have option B. If we go down option A, here's what I'd recommend doing and why. And if you pick option B, this is what's going to be the impact. What do you want to choose here and how do you think it's going to impact the urgency of what we need to do next? So those kinds of uh things where you get to turn the option back to the other individual and empower them to make the decision, but you're informing them, hey, this is how it's going to shake out if we do this. Yeah, I think that's really important not saying no, but just sort of shifting back like, yes, I'm happy to help you. Here are some times that we can do that. And if I do this, then these are the things that I need to deprioritize. Are you okay with that? Exactly. Yeah. I I think that's a a big risk a lot of people, especially managers don't really have a great sense of is is uh the tyranny of now. What I suggest is when you ask someone to do something and you're their boss, especially, they tend to think of, well, they asked me to do this, so I need to do it right now. And the boss has no intention of saying like drop everything and do this. They're just saying, hey, can you do this for me? Like put it on your plate somewhere and keep track of it. Let me know when you get to it. But that that urgency of uh the tyranny of now, people are like, oh, they told me to do this. Okay, I need to go drop everything and and start working on this. It's not always the case, right? Yeah, I mean when you come right back to it, it's that same power dynamic. If someone can fire you or if someone can make pay your paycheck, they have the ability to influence what you think is important. That's a natural power structure, power dynamic, right? So a lot of this uh a lot of the stuff we talk about is just on um really understanding what our true power is as a a project lead, right? We're looking at taking up more space and asserting ourselves in that domain because we actually do know what is urgent and what is important. And if we don't, it's our job to ask to get alignment with everybody on that project to make sure that we're not in disagreement about what needs to come first and what what can be put off till later. That's a maybe an interesting uh topic as well is um people that are not sort of naturally um we'll say assertive, you know, some may may say bossy. Um if they're they're not comfortable with uh those strong conversations with people and getting that alignment. Like if there's there's always some natural resistance, could be prioritization, it could be that someone doesn't necessarily believe in the priority of the project or they just feel the other work that they have to do is more important somehow. Uh what are some ways that a non-dominant type of of person in this role can can sort of exercise their power and uh look for some alignment with a team that is not naturally aligning with them? That's a really great question. So for folks who might be a little bit um reserved or not wanting to be direct and have a direct conversation, often it's good to actually do a little scenario planning. So think through in your head, here's a number of ways that this situation could play out. So if someone's coming up to you and asking you to do work, you know you have other things to do, plan through, okay, so if I did this work, what would happen to my entire project uh progress for the week? Um if I don't do the work, how could I maybe respond? Sometimes I actually recommend for folks to write things down or say them out loud to themselves or to to others if they trust them. Because it just gives you a chance sometimes just saying the words out loud on your tongue, it actually reframes um what you realize you have the power to say. Um and getting comfortable with those words, right? And actually pushing back. So, um if you can even just do that a few times and start practicing, it will actually make those conversations easier. The scripts help, but in addition, um sometimes taking the person aside, getting offsite, doing something of like more of like a coffee or just a chat and just kind of explaining where you're at. So it's not a defensive thing. Just like, here's what's going on, here's what I've got in front of me. Um I would love to figure out a way where we could prioritize things together. So, do you have some ideas and then maybe you come to the table with a few of your own? I think eases the pressure of feeling like it's a confrontation. Mhm. Yeah. Um some other uh scenarios that I think would be relevant to get your input on is uh is um maybe some environments that are a bit lower on the maturity of their development of their project methodology. And maybe they're just saying, okay, we need to do project X and here's, you know, the outcome that we're looking for. Can you guys go get that done? And there's no real planning, there's not a there's maybe like the statement of work is just there as a, you know, pay X amount, get this deliverable, but there's no real detailed planning that happens in the background. Uh what would you suggest to people that are maybe caught in that situation where, you know, they they they see the ideal need for having more detailed planning. But it just doesn't seem to be a part of the methodology of the company. How can you advocate for that from within? Oh, that's great. Um so, I think one of the biggest things to think about there is when you look at something and it it feels like it's too big to even define. So you couldn't even look at it and say, I could finish this in X amount of time. It's definitely something that needs to be broken down. So that's like a gut instinct you can kind of use to know. Did we do enough scoping? Did we break things down enough to do an estimate? Um in terms of how to build that into the process, it sounds like what we're talking about now is really organizational change. And that can be a very tough thing if if an organization is A not aware that it needs to change or B isn't always open to change. But, um what I love about organizational change, um is this idea that everything can happen in these tiny tiny movements. So if you had one project that you really wanted to advocate for, you could say as someone who's either in a project lead position, like a project manager or you're actually just doing technical implementation, I have this idea and I want to run with it. It's going to help us by doing X, Y, Z, right? It's going to improve our flow. Can we try it on this project? I'd like to go ahead and try it. And so you're not so much asking for permission as you are uh wanting to do an experiment. And when you do the experiment, the whole thing is setting the expectation, it might not go well, but it might go really well. And the first time we do it is always going to be up in the air, but I want to try it because I think that it could actually help us in the long run. And then documenting what did you do and how did you do it and how did it actually impact the project? Did it make it easier? Getting people to kind of speak to the retro, you know, speak up and talk about uh how this thing impacted them. Yeah, that's a a really good point. I think um it's not something that people often uh sort of uh give themselves enough credit for is their ability to influence things by doing. Uh you know, you can you can kind of say like, I'd like to try this on this project. Even if someone says no, you can try it off the side of your desk and and just say like, okay, this is what we found. I found this useful. These were the outputs that it resulted in, and then that gives you more ammo to advocate for things. Where I find people get really stuck with recognizing the need for change, then advocating for that change, and if it doesn't resonate with with whoever they think needs to be the authoritative person in that. It just dies in the vine and they just continue to say, we should do this, we should do this, we should do this. And everyone's like, stop talking about it. Like I I don't care. I don't see why this is necessary. Whereas if you actually did something, demonstrated some work and some effort and some results, then people will go, hey, that looks good. Why don't we do that? Right? I I think that's a very subtle shift that I don't think a lot of people give themselves enough authority around, right? Yeah, I think that there's this level of buy-in, right? So, I mean, we I don't know, in in that sort of middle management layer, many people expect to be to have to prove, you know, a reason for doing things. And what I'm noticing is people who try to come in and have everything all buttoned up and be like, it's going to work perfectly and I'm going to execute on it this way. on my own and everyone's going to want to come along with me. They're missing that vital component of actually asking for support, right? Going to their teammates and saying, hey, this is something that I think could help all of us. I really think we could talk it through and make it make it work. I need your help. I need that support from you so that we can push this through together because a one-person operation is a lot harder to manage, right? When you're when you need the buy in of your entire team. Mhm. Right. So let's shift uh a little bit towards the uh the you guys have several training solutions in in place. Um there they're ranging from I think like over a like nine months uh of active training as as a PM, which is amazing. Like you guys call it the the apprenticeship program. Uh and now you're you're launching more of a uh a smaller scale solution. I would I would view it as like a a jump start uh course on on project management. And you guys call it uh I think it's super high, right? Super high. Yeah, so yeah, so Super high is a partnership that we have with a creative design organization. So they they have a platform where you can learn courses. And so we have a course that runs through them and it's kind of like more on the foundational side and it's a learn at your own pace. Right. Then we have a middle track that is more interactive and it's uh it's definitely more about uh getting that real-time feedback and actually applying it to your real work. Yeah. So what would be the types of learning? Like what if if someone were to to take the the super high course for example, um as a as a jump start. What what what are sort of the the the training material that they would receive, the the like what what do they get as a result of that training? Yeah, so with the super high uh course, specifically what they're going to be learning is the relationship of uh how the in this case digital project life cycle works, but how it's going to impact their own role. So a lot of people say, oh, I'm not a digital PM, I I don't have, you know, I'm not even working on that type of technical project. The reality is a lot of what we're doing, no matter what hat we wear, is digital, right? You're interfacing with technology, you're often moving tasks through a project management system that are, you know, not written down on paper. So all of these components kind of add up to this concept of creating uh tangible things from intangible things. So you're going to take away the idea of, you know, how can I have better conversations with my stakeholders? that are going to yield results. So when I get this push back, when I feel like scope uh is going to change on me and there's no change request even happening, what do I need in order to be able to get those things? You're going to learn, you know, the ins and outs of capacity planning and resourcing, which, you know, we talked about is can often be a pain point. And just some systems for um implementing those that are actually going to smooth out your uh forecasting. So you can look over the next three months and know when you can start new projects. Which again is super valuable. Yeah, forecasting is a big one. We didn't touch on that. that we'll maybe pause there for a second. Um how much of forecasting requires a tool? Because I I feel this feels a lot more tangible, a lot more applicable if you have a tool that does some level of forecasting. Uh and is or does it does it always require that or is there some sort of uh fudge method you can use as well? Right. I mean, I always say anything you can do in a tool, you can always do analog, right? But you want to usually start analog to get the the idea of the system and then you can use uh a tool for the higher fidelity approach. So the tool helps you kind of, you know, calculate things a lot faster and know visually where you're sitting in terms of when projects can start because you can see where the last one's finished. So visually it helps you and it helps you to track, you know, if you are dealing with revenue and expenses and project costs, things like that, it definitely makes it easier and there's a lot of tools out there that do it. But if you need to start simply, yes, you could use a pivot table and spreadsheet. Right, okay. And I guess generally, like people that are either uh have found themselves as the accidental PM as we call it, uh or that they they see this as sort of um as it is, a high growth industry, right? Like you guys are seeing explosive growth around this role going forward because as you said, so much more about the work life is digital and requires project management for the delivery of pretty much anything. So this is a a huge, huge growth space and a huge opportunity for people to really jump in and and learn as much as they can and it you can learn quickly and become a very, very competent uh DPM. And and build up a career in this. You want to expand on sort of the options that you see for people that either want to build up their career. Or see this as an option to sort of start to to slide into as well. Yeah, absolutely. So I think um there's a several different options that you can kind of take and grow from here. So uh digital project management, it augments any skill set or role or title you already have. So it's very valuable for um, you know, kind of complementing uh say if you are a designer, developer or some sort of engineer, you're going to have better a better ability to drive your projects forward and deliver them. Um if you wanted to go more into say a leadership track or a business track, digital project management, um it it kind of speaks to all the qualities that say the World Economic Forum is looking for hiring in all positions. So, but I think it's like by 2025, there's a list of the 10 skills that you would need to be able to have for any kind of job. And digital project management, it meets all of those requirements. Like one is even cognitive flexibility, right? Like thinking about problems and solutions in different ways and not just coming at it from the same perspective every time. So I I find that no matter what area you want to go in, whether you're an artist, whether, you know, you are uh in the trades, like it is something so valuable. It's going to basically enable you to work on any type of work that you want. Yeah, it's so true. Like it just the the the application of the skills that are necessary to be successful in this role are understanding constraints, uh removing issues and roadblocks, working with people, influencing people, understanding budgets, producing an outcome. Like all of that are like everything about that is applicable to all areas of business. So it's a great sort of like mini MBA about how to get things done essentially, right? Yeah, it's super useful. And you know, Todd, I remember on our last conversation talking about the future and like how things are going to get really weird. And I think that to that point, um digital project management is also going to enable us to kind of deal with the chaos, the impending chaos of whatever is going to get thrown at us, right? We have all kinds of systems changing and all kinds of fluctuations and things happening in our global economic system. So this is enables us to really be as lean and and agile as we can in terms of adaptability. And being ready for anything. Yeah. Yeah, we got into some uh some fun stuff. We the the first conversation we were on project management drifted very much into tech and futurism. So we felt we had to come back and revisit futurism as its own exclusive uh topic and podcast. So if you if anyone has not heard those, feel free to jump back and check them out. Yeah. We could probably have a whole other conversation now and we would still have our minds blown because all the stuff that we talked about then is probably already like, it's no big deal. Now we're doing this. Yeah, it's it's last year. It's already happened. What's next? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Always a blast to have you on, Rachel. So thanks for uh helping us out with uh some systems and some ideas around the the project management space. And if uh anyone has any interest or need for the training services that you guys offer, there'll be links to the show in the show notes as well to check that out. Uh anything that you would ask of the audience or um uh any links that you would ask them to follow and check out more of what Louder than 10 is doing? Yeah, so I think the biggest thing for a takeaway here is that you have more power than you think you do. If you're in a position where you're wearing multiple hats and running projects and you folks feel like, you know, you need more support, there is so many helpful communities out there. And you need to know that you don't have to do this thing on your own. I think that's the toughest part is just feeling like, oh, I fell into this, there's nothing out there. Come find me. We can I can put you in touch with a lot of great people who've got your back. Um secondly, if you are looking to formalize and just kind of understand the system of digital project management, the training that we offer is going to enable you to walk away understanding the big and the little and knowing how to put those two pieces together. That is something where a lot of project managers don't actually get access to the big picture. They don't know how a company runs from a, you know, a financial perspective or how their their project being a little bit uh over on scope impacts profitability. This is something that you need to understand if you want to be a terrific project manager. That's the case, we can help you there too. Awesome. Once again, appreciate it, Rachel. All the best. Thanks, Todd.