Ep 51 - Corporate Project Survival Guide: Strategy, Relationships, and Resilience

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Ep 51 - Corporate Project Survival Guide: Strategy, Relationships, and Resilience Podcast and Video Transcript

[Disclaimer: This transcription was written by AI using a tool called Descript, and has not been edited for content.]

Dave Dougherty: [00:00:00] All right. Hello and welcome to episode 51 of Enterprise Minds.

Challenges of Corporate Projects

Dave Dougherty: Today we're gonna talk about something that seems very simple, but man alive as soon as you start trying to do it. There's 20,000 approaches and 40,000 opinions and too many people that you're gonna have to rely on, and how do you get 'em to do what you want 'em to do in order to get a corporate project done in that kind of work environment, right?

So how do we get a project done in the. World of corporate America. I know I have my own opinions, but Alex I think you had a really good cue for, for your idea around this. And then since Ruthie is allergic to [00:01:00] self-promotion, I'll do it for her. She just did the adobe. Summit and present it on a similar topic, if not the same topic.

I'll let her talk about it. Because it deserves to be talked about. It's Adobe Summit Ruthie. Anyway I also had feedback from somebody earlier that they were trying to fall asleep listening to our podcast, but we were too interesting to fall asleep, so they had to shut us off so that. In the world of podcasting, I think is a compliment, especially with the the world of business podcasting.

Glad we made that mark. Yeah. Please. On

Ruthi Corcoran: your commute, not a bit.

Dave Dougherty: Exactly, exactly. So on that funny note, Alex, your initial thoughts on surviving projects in the corporate environment.

Alex Pokorny: Yeah.

Key Strategies for Project Success

Alex Pokorny: I think it's, it's surprisingly [00:02:00] difficult to get a project done because you are, let's say this is a project that you're starting, you're gonna interact with a bunch of different people in teams to make it happen.

Right. How do you get that to happen? And I think one of the main things that people always miss is painting a vision and getting people to buy into that. Yeah. And allowing them to connect the dots in their own way and not being too literal about it. I, I think that's a great way to basically get others to agree with you and to decide to put effort towards you, because this is the thing that I think so many people miss, is that I've got a great idea, I wanna do it.

Other people must be excited about it because it's the right thing to do. That's, that's not true. They've got other things to be excited about and the thing that you're mainly trying to do, and I think it's basically three things. One.

Building Relationships and Champions

Alex Pokorny: You wanna really identify and get good relationships with the smart people.

And what I mean by that is there are certain people out there in the organization who are, can make things [00:03:00] happen. And they are the ones, a lot of techie people kind of fall under this category, but it's like if something goes wrong, they're the one that can make the change. Mm-hmm. That's the kind of person you need on your side.

So basic relationship building of just. Talk to them, figure something out about them. Personal fact, something like that. You're good. Right? But pull them along with the project too, because. I mean to the point that they want to be, maybe they don't wanna be in person, you know, depending on the individual, maybe it's just they want to know.

So number one, smart people, number two, champions, mini champions, which is basically someone else who is emotionally tied to your project and it's completion because your initial enthusiasm great, but that's gonna die. Eventually over time because it's, you're asking for people to do work and change, right?

And that has resistance. And they might say no to you, but they'll say yes to somebody else. So you need to find those other people who are kind of excited. Maybe it's a pet project they think is gonna happen because of your project. You know, some kind of tie that they're, they're gonna take [00:04:00] pride in your thing working, which means they're gonna go outta their way and put effort towards making it happen.

Like initial enthusiasm dies down and then like fruition, like the second one. It's real hard to get to. Mm-hmm. And the third one is the goal with everybody else, aren't the smart people or the mini champions, everybody else is get rid of the slow resistance. And by that I mean if they look at their inbox and there's five unread emails, you need them to go to yours first and do the thing right away instead of No, I'll just go to these other ones and then I'll flag it for later.

Which is why your project suddenly slows to a crawl and dies and you're like, why can't this get done? Why? Why? Why am I waiting so long? We're missing deadlines and all the rest of this stuff. It's because they don't care.

Dave Dougherty: Yeah.

Alex Pokorny: So that's why I think it was like the three things, like you got a big project, great.

Think about the project first [00:05:00] of how it's actually going to happen, not just. Here's the details of what the project is, but who's gonna be involved? How are we actually gonna make this happen?

Dave Dougherty: There is, yeah. The, the, there is a little bit of a mini kind of SWOT analysis that needs to happen. Oh yeah. Yeah.

I guess for me, now that I hear you listing those things out, I, I don't appreciate how much of that has been internalized. You know, I.

Ruthi Corcoran: Oh, just agree with that sentiment fully. There's a lot of these that I innately do, maybe not even innate I've learned to do over time. Mm-hmm. Through many projects. And it's good to know that these are part of what can make you successful, so that you can start identifying where you have gaps or where you haven't necessarily learned to do something well enough.

Dave Dougherty: [00:06:00] Well, and also understanding, yeah, like. Who are the people that you absolutely need to have on your side, like mission critical, right? Mm-hmm. And then everybody else isn't kind of a nice to have. And the surprising thing for me, and I guess I've always been surprised by this too, is on the onset of something, like, if you find out that somebody's doing something cool and there's a way for you to leverage that and maybe expand the scope of, of what they're doing, like.

The amount of times I've had people hesitate because they're afraid that you're gonna steal their idea and take credit for it. Yeah, yeah. You know, so I've tripled down on making sure that anytime I bring up the pilot project or the the project I am. Praising them, or I'm saying we're leveraging so and so's methodology that they did before and trying it out on our [00:07:00] situation, you know, to make sure that this, the love gets spread around.

Instead of just, yeah, I'm the smartest person in the room. Nah. Nah, I'm good at what I do, but I, I don't need to set the reputation or the expectation that I know what's going on all the time. No,

Managing Egos and Collaboration

Alex Pokorny: no, that's a really good point because that is, that kind of gets down to some of the core of this, which is egos.

Dave Dougherty: Mm-hmm.

Alex Pokorny: It's you managing your own for one. And not trying to be like, I know everything person, because nobody does. And you're, you're gonna make a lot of mistakes very publicly if you can play that. And a lot of enemies. A lot of enemies. A lot of enemies. A lot of people are just gonna be resistant to you just based on the way that you're acting.

Like there's some of that alone. But the other thing is managing the egos are basically in the, kind of the pride of those around you as well. Like to your point of those who are sensitive to their pride being damaged or their, you know, credibility or reputation or the. Opportunity loss. You know that might be there, but you're instead [00:08:00] making sure and instilling that this is safe, this is going to help you.

This is gonna be positive for you. That's just the thing we're working on. Like there's some like layers in there of being like, now if you're taking my methodology and you're doing it, I'm now emotionally tied to the success of your project, so I wanna make sure that I don't look like an idiot because of you.

Like, there's like pieces there, like just like you're gonna be like so much more involved. Mm-hmm. And you like, you want them to say, have success, and then now you can have more success 'cause of their success. Like, you know, there's other like little pieces kind of playing too.

Dave Dougherty: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Importance of Vision and Communication

Ruthi Corcoran: I really like the way you started this, Alex, about painting a vision and letting other, letting the, the people who are potentially going to be involved, who are gonna want to be involved in the process, connect the dots in their own way. I think that is super critical especially on big projects that are gonna be [00:09:00] cross-functional in nature.

If you've got an idea for a project that you can do in your own realm and doesn't really involve a lot of people, yeah, just, just, you might wanna be able to paint a vision so other people know what you're doing and you can do it however the heck you want. But especially on these projects that involve lots and lots of people, it's, here's where we're going, here's why we're going there.

Maybe there's even a date if, if that's imperative just to keep everybody sort of swimming in the same direction. But then that point about letting them connect the dots in their own way that not only allows them to feel like, oh, I have, feel a sense of empowerment. It allows them to have a stake in it because they get to decide the way that they engage in the project or the way they get it done.

And bonus points, they're gonna see things you don't see. And so defining ahead, here's how we're gonna do that, potentially pushes out the ideas that you wouldn't have thought about that could make your project more successful. Mm-hmm. The other quick call that I, I just wrote [00:10:00] down in my notes as you were talking through, is.

On identifying the smart people. I wanna maybe take the emphasis on this off of the smart because, and more onto the other part of it, which is the people who make things happen. There's gonna be smart tech focused people who you need because they know how the systems work or they, they know the thing that you, that they know the right hammer.

For that particular nail, right? Those are important people, but there's also the people who just keep things moving. We all know, we all know folks in an organization who, you talk to them and you say, I've got this problem. Who do I need to talk to? Or How do I get this going? And they're like, they can point you in the right direction and they can send five emails to help you get past whatever hurdle it is.

So I think there's, there's something about, the people who make things happen. The last thing that stood out to me was on this idea of champions. Many champions, just people who are emotionally involved and attached. And one of the things I think about on especially large enterprise projects is those are often, you know, [00:11:00] stakeholders, whether they're directly involved or indirectly involved in.

A huge part of it's communication, making sure you have regular communication. You'll see any change management plan is gonna have, we're gonna have these touch points and these five different communications channels. We're going to use our, our Yammer, our vivo engage, whatever it is. We're gonna have emails three times a week.

We're gonna have meetings. I would always say, I think oftentimes we underestimate the value of one-on-one communication with our core stakeholders. Continuous reaching out, talking to them, making sure that they're hearing from you, but also that their own voice is heard in the process. And I always use that as a, a way to help move projects forward.

To your point about getting rid of the slow resistance, that's one really easy way. Don't send 'em an email, talk to 'em in person or via chat. It's, it's hard to ignore the most recent request if you just talk to the person directly.

Dave Dougherty: It, it is funny, there's, I [00:12:00] had a recent experience where, you know, I was in a newer role.

I'm figuring out who the cast of characters are and like, who do I need to talk to to be successful in the role. A lot like, you know, what we talked about in the, the previous episode of, you know. Find, find out and go get it done. But there're continued to be feedback on this one particular individual.

Like, all right, you, they can be a little rough to, to work with and you know, watch out for this one. And I'm like, you know, 'cause if one person says that, it's like, well, whatever, you should probably just call 'em on a bad day or. You know your interpretation of that. But if you know enough people say that, then it's like, all right, well I'm gonna come prepared to this meeting.

I'm still gonna have the conversation. And as I'm going through the meeting, I'm like, wait, you're not a jerk. You're just from Boston. I. Like, I want that on a mug. Yeah.[00:13:00]

Like it's just the different, you know, culture clashes of, you know, the, the east coaster being more direct. What do you know? Of course that's gonna happen, you know? But it, it all came from a good place. Like I could tell he was coming from a good place of like, Hey, my travel schedule's really heavy. I can't, like, I can't dedicate a bunch of time to this because I gotta go do you know X, Y, and Z?

That's more core to my job than, you know, what your project is. I mean, I appreciate that feedback. That's fine. We'll get done what we can get done when we can, and I'll try to find other solutions to. You know, not bother you as much, but I might need your input every once in a while, you know, when we can make it happen.

So there's that kind of stuff too where figuring out smaller details, more personal details about people have gone a really long way for me where like, you know, take five minutes in the beginning of the meeting. Find out if [00:14:00] they're a Yankees fan, find out if they're a Premier League fan. Know a little bit about that.

Like, you know just, yeah, what, what makes them uniquely human? And then talk about it like the amount of goodwill that I've gotten with my guitar background for people who are coming out of the woodwork. Yeah, I have all mine too, but I blur my background 'cause I don't want anybody to, you know. I see that I'm, I might be playing during meetings or something.

It's like, nah, own it, you know? You know. But like small gestures like that I think have gone a really long way and allowed me to be successful. And I'm finding a lot of people you know, are complaining that they can't get stuff done. And I'm looking and I'm like, well, you just show up and you're like, all right, here's what I need from you.

It's like, well, come on. Like, don't make it about you. Right? Like the telemarketing example from the o the, the other episode ago where like, telemarketing is annoying because it's about what the company wants, not what you [00:15:00] want as the individual, right? Like it's just gonna be a lot harder to, to get buy-in if it's blatantly self-serving.

Handling Large-Scale Projects

Ruthi Corcoran: Another facet of this topic of getting things done in or getting projects done within a enterprise, small enterprise, large enterprise is the, the scope and the scale of the project, they're gonna operate quite differently in the. The implications for your projects are gonna be quite differently or different.

So there's, we've all been in situations in which we're kind of in a niche. We're off sort of over here. We've got an idea for a project and we can just run with it. Mm-hmm. And those sometimes are the most fun projects. 'cause you just make it happen. You do it, you, you inadvertently make a bunch of people's lives better or their, their work easier, et cetera, et cetera.

And you can mostly just. Do your project and in the end say, this is what I did. And people go, oh sweet, thanks. Like, that's awesome, right? There's those types of [00:16:00] projects. And then there's the projects that involve, you know, maybe one team, a couple of teams, and you've got a few connection communication layers between those, those types and.

But for those you, the vision, having sort of a, a queer direction all of a sudden become more important because you've gotta organize across people. And then you've got the very large projects that are across lots of different teams with many different stakeholders, and those become the really challenging ones.

The vision that always comes to mind with these. And we've used this analogy. Yeah. Amongst ourselves in the past, perhaps even on this podcast of, think of an armada of ships in an ocean. Mm-hmm. If you're working on a large project where you're doing something new, you have a, a destination, you are turning not just your own ship and guiding it through the choppy waters and all the storms and such, you have an entire cluster of ships that are all moving and you're trying to get them all to move.

Together. Now compare those two little pictures in our mind. One is the [00:17:00] giant armata trying to move how much slower it is, how, how wide of a turn radius it has versus the one-off project that can sort of zip in and out of all those little ships. And I always find that useful when I'm working on large projects to think that way.

Because it, it helps ground of, okay, this, there are going to be parts of these larger projects that are challenging because scale changes the nature of how we work together. It changes what we have to do. You have to think about that change management piece because I. As Alex mentioned earlier change is, change is hard, but it's hard in a way you don't notice, right?

It's not hard in the way that you just push through it and you make people change. Like it's hard in the sense of it's a whole bunch of little drags on the boat turning that you have to navigate across. So that's, that's something that I always find as an important part of the size of the project, and this is where we get into territory of finding executive or director level sponsorship on projects [00:18:00] is what's going to help along with that vision.

I. Keep everybody moving in a similar direction. And I think sometimes the value of that is a bit underestimated because it's so commonly applied. Oh, you gotta have an executive sponsor in your project. Well, the reason it matters is because it's one of the things that PRI provides an incentive for everybody to move.

Mm-hmm.

Dave Dougherty: Yeah, the, the size of projects is interesting 'cause I know for me, one thing that I, I did recently had to do with AI and I got it a pilot to the point where I. The corporate team were throwing the rule book and all the red tape at me like, you have to stop, you have to get it as part of the roadmap.

You have to do this, that da, da, da. And I went, Yee Uhuh not doing that. I'm not putting up with like, I don't care enough to do four months of politicking on this project. So like I called [00:19:00] a guy and just said. Can we, you know, you're, you hand coded a tool within the organization. Can you just make this a part of the tool?

I. Since it's pulling from all the data sources I am anyway with this pilot project, he's like, oh yeah, that's 20 minutes. I'm like, beautiful.

So it was, you know, to Alex's point, finding the people who get stuff done, who are in, in a position to do things that they may not have time to think of the unique, you know, use case or whatever but could easily get it done if you make it interesting enough, right. And Oh, go ahead. No, go ahead.

Alex Pokorny: I'm done.

I'm rambling.

Identifying Risks and Mitigation

Alex Pokorny: I was just gonna say, think of your SWOT analysis. Let's take the conversation a little differently of the risk. How would you recognize when a project isn't going well, and then what you need to do in response? So I'll throw one out [00:20:00] of. If you're doing a project pretty solo where you've done a lot of work and then you're just kind of demoing it to other people who now have to do more work,

Dave Dougherty: right?

Alex Pokorny: They're not gonna be real excited about that. You didn't really pull them along the way. You didn't really build a project with them, so they don't have the pride in seeing it to fruition. Instead, it's your pride in seeing it to fruition. They're not emotionally tied to the project, you just ask them to do more work.

Mm-hmm. The other piece about that is. If it's totally aligned with their role, great. And they'll probably say, fine. Sure, yeah, we should do that. But the moment that their boss or leadership getting to Ruthie's point of having executive sponsorship or higher up leadership sponsor, the moment their boss says, here's the new priority, they'll turn around and look at you and say, well gotta do this instead.

Yep. And your project dies like it's now, it's done. Like your project is that fragile.

Navigating Project Uncertainty

Alex Pokorny: In a vacuum of like indecision. Yours [00:21:00] might work for a while, but then the moment that there's a threat to it, it can crumble as well. So my thought with that one is maybe there's two things. One is do a little bit and then maybe hold some back.

Engaging Team Members Effectively

Alex Pokorny: You might have the idea for the next step, but ask them to be involved. And then if conversation is slow, you can prompt them with this kind of next idea and kind of see where it goes. But you gotta stay quiet and let them and, and listen and let them talk and then kind of have them get excited and interested in the project.

Now they're getting tied into it. They've spent time and effort on it that, you know, intangible. I have now spent half an hour of my life on your project. I'm now interested in your project. I. Right. Like that, that's the little bit, that might be enough just to get at that first part started. And the second part about the, the threat.

Handling Project Resistance

Alex Pokorny: If you're noticing that they're kind of just doing it because you're asking and it, it seems aligned, so they're going along with you, that's not a great sign. [00:22:00] If it's a real small project, maybe it's something, but that resistance is there. Mm-hmm. So then it would be. Getting it in front of their boss, possibly during time with them.

So it's public and saying, presenting the idea, is this a good idea? The moment the boss says Yes, things are gonna move faster. So little ways to get some approval

Dave Dougherty: as well. So here's a question for you. How. Emotionally upset. Do you get when one of your projects has

Alex Pokorny: to die?

Dealing with Project Failures

Alex Pokorny: I really try not to tie my ego to my work.

I've done that in the past and that just, that's never a good idea.

Dave Dougherty: No.

Alex Pokorny: I try to think of things as iterative learning with pilots and that everything is an iterative learning with a pilot. So if this project fails, okay, what's the second next project that might pivot that I can turn it into that will then succeed?

Like that's a whole level

Dave Dougherty: of thinking that I don't [00:23:00] know that 90% of people are doing.

Alex Pokorny: I mean, it's not necessarily them consciously doing that until that moment happens, but if something fails and something dies, I'm not gonna just stop and be like, oh, I guess I'm just gonna sit here and. Not do any work now or not do anything anymore.

It's like, no, no, no, I've come up with a new idea, come up with a new thing, and then kind of keep going with the, the idea of like, okay, I've now learned that priorities have changed, A reorg happened, A new boss came in job responsibilities changed. We acquired a company. I mean, like stuff like that happens all the time within a space of a quarter and you're not gonna be aware of honestly 90% of it, and it's just gonna happen.

And your project. Might be a quarter long and now it's heavily affected by that or stopped by that. Mm-hmm. So don't have the only iron in the fire being one, like try to do some other stuff too.

Dave Dougherty: Well, and that's the other thing too.

Setting Realistic Project Timelines

Dave Dougherty: Never make a project more than a year [00:24:00] If you're at the 18 month mark.

That's not, that's just not gonna happen. It's just not, oh,

Alex Pokorny: it's so hard to keep people motivated. It's such a drag to work on the same project for phase three, phase four, phase five, like. No, have a goal and kill it. It's the same thing.

Effective Meeting Strategies

Alex Pokorny: I, I actually do this with meetings and my agenda. I've got an agenda.

Here's a couple points, and then I say, my goal, my goal is this, and my goal typically is like, if we could make a list of five things, that's great. My goal is two. And when we hit two, the meeting's done. People love it because it's like, oh, you actually have a purpose and you're actually moved to your purpose and then you let us leave.

It's amazing how much people care. Care didn't fill us

Ruthi Corcoran: hostage in the meeting here. You got

Alex Pokorny: seven minutes. Congratulations. People are surprisingly happy with seven minutes. Totally worth it.

Ruthi Corcoran: That's a. Just a nice little tidbit, Alex. A, a way in which you can cap the meeting of like having a clear purpose, right?

Because sometimes we say, oh, we could have ended early, but there was nothing that gave us that [00:25:00] definitive stopping point, right? I'm gonna rewind a little bit and answer Dave's question. Yeah. And then also talk a little bit about projects dying.

Coping with Project Changes

Ruthi Corcoran: So the I will say that I do struggle from time to time with projects being killed or somehow dying or new information comes in.

It's like I had this idea, this vision, and now that vision got totally overturned, like. I struggle with that. Sure. I do. Right. Especially when it's like, oh, I've worked with people. We've had this idea, like you get, you build a comradery when you're creating new projects or you're coming up with, oh, here's where we're going.

And so it does, I I would say, yeah, sometimes that'll happen and it'll take me like a day or so to go, okay, what is the new information? How have things changed? Okay. Then how do I need to think differently? Or what do I need to. Shift my actions to, to accommodate, but it's not always an easy process.

The project dying thing though, I just chuckled because I remember working on a couple web projects in the past and I was like, well, this is going to, you know, this might take a [00:26:00] little bit, like, I don't think that some of these timelines are, are feasible. And the response to me was, no, you must reach these timelines or.

The organization will shift, shift, leadership will change, and the project will not exist anymore. So I think that is sort of a, maybe that's more of an issue with especially large enterprises. I'm not entirely sure, but definitely something I've encountered before, which is you have a, almost a built-in deadline on your projects.

Mm-hmm. Simply because to your point a lot can happen in a quarter to make what the, the thing you were working on. Maybe it's still relevant, but it's no longer the top priority in it's out.

Dave Dougherty: Well, and that's an interesting point too. 'cause if you look at the average tenure of A-A-C-M-O, right? I mean, it's astonishingly short, right?

I mean, let's just, let's be generous and say 24 months. The first six months is getting up to speed on what was happening and what the new role in. Responsibilities are right. Then [00:27:00] there's 12 months of actually doing stuff, and then there's six months of the person looking for the next CMO role. While they're keeping things going, and still trying to hit what they said they were gonna do when they, when they took their job.

Right. And then they're out. Because the CMO role is, is so short, so you have that like 12 month, maybe 15 month window to align whatever you are doing to their priorities. Before the new director or the new CMO or the new SVP or however your org does it right to actually support. Those, you know, performance indicators and whatever else, and, you know have the politics for it, and then you have to be onto your new one.

And I do think that that's that is a problem with the larger groups. But I know some, some friends that are in some [00:28:00] smaller companies that they're, they're getting rid of the CMOs and then they're not backfilling 'em, so then they're just like thrust into. You know, being now on this leadership level because they're the ones that remain.

You know, so

Ruthi Corcoran: we should do an episode on that. By the way, what happens when you're, the remainder,

Dave Dougherty: they're promoted by tenure.

Ruthi Corcoran: Yes, yes. Because you, you have new obligations that you might not have signed up for, that you didn't even realize until, until the, the vacuum opened up and then all of a sudden it's on your plate.

Mm-hmm.

Alex Pokorny: With

Dave Dougherty: less

Alex Pokorny: people. Mm-hmm.

Leadership and Vision

Alex Pokorny: And speaking back to Ruthie, you mentioned it, I mentioned it and Dave, you did it before, is vision. Mm-hmm. And I think, and Dave, I'm gonna ask you the same thing about projects dying, because I'm curious in your words, but so far we've got two. And my response is actually pretty similar to that is my focus was the vision.

If the [00:29:00] project dies, I don't take it so personally 'cause I'm tied probably more. To the vision that I am the individual project. So then I think of a different project or different way to still kind of hit that same vision that I'm still kind of emotionally tied to. And quite frankly, if that that gets crushed, yeah, I'm gonna be emotionally hurt.

I mean like there's, there is definitely some like passion behind it 'cause it seems like the right direction, the next thing that we should be doing. But still try and stay open enough to be like, you know, things are gonna pivot, things are gonna shift.

So

Dave Dougherty: Dave I think because of, because of the music background and, and I think because of my personality too I. In terms of projects, and I guess I'm a bit of a sociopath. I don't care if they live or die, like, because I will find a new one. I will like, I will just keep on keeping on find

Alex Pokorny: new victims.

Dave Dougherty: Yeah. Like this analogy's gonna go

Alex Pokorny: dark. [00:30:00]

Dave Dougherty: Yeah. Say what you will about the mafia, but

no. The, the thing with being the musician or the writer or, you know, having those experiences in the beginning of my career I think coupled with the agency experience early on too, is just like a creative project is to capture a moment in time. And if you were to complete that project at any other moment in time, it wouldn't be the same thing.

And having that kind of. Understanding of that has allowed me to let go of a lot, I think when it comes to the normal working world, right, where it's just, okay, you know, here's the group of people I get to jam with for this period of time. We're gonna do some cool things and then when. [00:31:00] Somebody moves on, great.

We're gonna find a new drummer or a new analytics person or a new whatever. And the vibe of the band will be different, but we'll still be able to do some cool things. It'll just be different, right? So I guess my, my approach is a little more zen, which would be much more positive than the sociopathic spin I took initially.

But anyway, what was your second question before I get in trouble?

Alex Pokorny: If I remember? Oh, the vision, the vision piece was kind of the other piece of like. Like how, how strongly do you kind of subscribe to the idea of like an overall kind of goal that you have at work and the projects are just kind of underneath of it? Or do you see kind of each one separate?

Dave Dougherty: I used to, I used to be more, I. Tied to here's the North Star, here's what I'm doing. Like for me [00:32:00] personally, that's very important. That's why I spend a ton of time at the end of the year and the beginning of the year, figuring out what it is I want to do for the next year. Like, it's not like, you know new Year's, new Year's resolutions, but it's the, what are my priorities for this year, right.

And. I think if your organization is good at market planning, that can go a long way to be like, here's what we're gonna do over the next 12 months. Here's the opportunity we've identified. We're gonna go chase after that. And I appreciate that. I think if I'm tied to one business, one, whatever, it's.

Hard for me because then everything becomes a little bit more important. But at least with my last few roles, I've had to service five or six different businesses or different go to market models. So like if I got [00:33:00] bored with one, I could just switch to another one and then go down that rabbit hole and then switch to the other one, which for me is really good.

But I understand for other people could be very stressful. But I do think it's important for leadership to have a vision because if you don't have the vision, you can't be inspiring. And if you're not inspiring as a leader, you're not actually leading, you're a manager, right? Because managing is what you currently have and making sure that that's optimized leadership is actually bringing people with you and, and towards something new, in my mind at least.

Yeah, I'll end there.

Ruthi Corcoran: I love a vision. Love a vision, and it's all to your question about individual projects versus all tying together. I am very keen on the all tying together aspect of it. In part because there ought to be, I think a why [00:34:00] behind the things you're doing. And if you just have a bunch of projects that aren't sort of tying back that suggests there's not sort of an underlying, here's the reason why we're doing these things.

Even if it's a loosey goosey kinda reason. At least there's gotta be a, here's why this is something that is worth my time. I think, you know, getting. Just remembering that the time we spent at work is still part time of our life. Like, so to some degree it does matter a little bit what we're working on and what we're not.

Maybe that's another podcast discussion about, you know, how much are we just working to pay the bills and to do the things that we actually wanna do, versus how much are we getting out of the things that we're doing every day? For me personally, having a bit of a why behind why I'm doing the things I do gives, it gives me a better sense of here's why I'm spending my, my days doing what I do.

But I, I tend to be much more I tend to have a [00:35:00] vision for what I'm doing, how it fits in with what the rest of the teams around me are doing and what we're trying to ultimately do as an organization. I find that particularly helpful, especially when it comes to, and here's the thing we're doing next sort of being that helpful sort of guardrail to say.

You know, this is where we're going and why we're going there. And keeping it non-prescriptive in terms of exactly how or what it looks like also allows room for new ideas to come in. To your point, Dave, about leadership versus management, completely echo that of, you know, managing is making sure everybody's got their HR paperwork right.

Leaning is making sure that when they submit that HR packet. Paperwork. It's because they've thought about, here's how what I'm doing this year fits in with what the larger team is trying to accomplish and what the company as a whole is trying to accomplish.

Dave Dougherty: Please click through all of your compliance things prior to the deadline.[00:36:00]

It's literally something I have to do after this.

Actually, Ruthie, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pin an idea here.

Understanding Organizational Decisions

Dave Dougherty: As you were talking, I was thinking about how when I was younger, I got much more frustrated with projects and with the organizations and why are they making the decisions that they are and can't they see that this is such an obvious choice from, you know, but then it's like, wait a second, I, this is from a marketing lens, specifically from a digital marketing lens, not factoring in supply chains or.

You know, the whole ecosystem that has to go into the larger decisions. And the idea that I want, may wanna explore later with you guys would be, as I've gone through my career and learned more about [00:37:00] the finance side of things, I, I may not like the decisions, but I understand them better, right? I don't think finance and accounting should have the power that they do.

But that's a, that's definitely another episode.

Ruthi Corcoran: And I think this is, this is where having. Clear visions, and maybe I'll give an example of vision and like how you might think about this in just a moment, but having clear visions from the top all the way down allows to bridge some of the gaps that you talked about, Dave, right?

Because if you look up and you go, why the heck are they making the decisions they are? That to me is a symptom of lack of transparency. You don't have a clear idea of here's what the top is trying to do as a company is old. This is how the next layer ladders up and what they're trying to accomplish in order to make that thing happen.

And then so on and so forth down the line, which then ties in, oh, finance is trying to do this thing because this is how [00:38:00] they're reaching that, that larger.

Dave Dougherty: Vision.

Framework for Achieving Goals

Ruthi Corcoran: So the framework that I'll share that I found very useful in sort of going through this visioning exercise, right? Because vision is sort of a fluffy word.

It's it can mean a lot of things. To put it a little bit more practically, I use the ghost framework, GOST. So you have a goal, which is, here's where we're going, right? This is like we wanna. We wanna get to Mars, say, and then you have objectives. So those are time specific and measurable. So these are key things that you know, that you are reaching towards that goal because that goal might actually be out of your reach.

Maybe that goal is something that's aspirational, but the objectives are things that you say, these are things that we know are gonna do that are gonna get us closer to that ultimate goal. So reaching space flight. Right, getting to the mood. Those are things that'll get by X date. Those are things that are gonna get you closer to that Mars idea.

Then under that, you have strategy. So here's the [00:39:00] approaches we're gonna take towards getting to those objectives, and then finally down to tactics, which is here's the specific action items we're gonna take within each of those strategies that are gonna later up to those objectives that are gonna get us to where we're going.

So that's a way in which we can take those sort of visions of here's where we're going and bring it all the way down to, here's what I'm gonna do next. And those, those objective strategies and tactics might be slightly different across an organization. But having that sort of shared goal and then having everybody think through how they're gonna support that is a such a valuable tool, especially as we talk about large projects, because it allows people to align their incentives and get to the end result.

Dave Dougherty: Mm-hmm. There was an interesting idea in one of my, classes for my MBA that I come back to every once in a while. And this might seem like it's coming out of left field, but my brain associated it with what you said. It was a persuasion class and the sales guy [00:40:00] came in and he talked about how he used the Discovery insights, colors coding to align with his clients so that he knew how to speak to somebody.

When he was going to talk to them. So if he knew they were really red, he would be really direct to the point like, Hey, I don't wanna waste a lot of your time, but I have this new opportunity. We have these new products. I thought of you, so I figured I'd share it. And if you're not interested, great. But here's the information.

Thanks. That's the end of the phone call, right? Like 30 seconds I thought of you. Gimme a call. That's it. But if it's, you know, if they're really blue and they're analytical, then hey, we have this new thing. Here's a research paper on it and how it might fit into your situation. You know, if you want me to set up a quick call, walk you through what we have answer any questions you might have about it, let me know.

You know, and then green's, the more emotional yellow's, the, [00:41:00] including everybody. So then it's gonna be more of a, like webinar so that there's, you know, other people involved so that, you know, there's the whole trope and, and whatever else. So tying those tactics to what you're doing and knowing who your audience audiences can go a long way as well to being persuasive and, and successful.

So, yeah. Anyway, anyway, before I continue to go ramble and, and get onto other things.

Dave Dougherty: I think we can call this a successful episode. Thank you for making it this far. Thank you for listening. Like, share, subscribe. Please let us know any feedback. We love hearing what you like, what you don't like.

And then episode ideas, right for like Ruthie's friend with the the episode idea from the, the last one. Yeah, we did. So keep him coming. Let us know. Survive the next week until we talk to you two [00:42:00] weeks from now. In the next episode of Enterprising Minds.