Episode 142 – Looking Forward to Perfect Projects

The Podcast by project managers for project managers. Hear how to approach complex modern projects by spending less time discussing the past and more time focused on the future. Eddie Obeng says we should: “take the learning back to the work place” by analyzing our past performance, and rapidly applying what we’ve learned to deliver perfect projects. Listen in for practical advice about facing your fears, organizational culture, and dealing with the challenges of change management. 



Table of Contents



01:25 … Meet Eddie02:00 … QUBE – Learning and Transformation04:30 … QUBE for the Project Manager07:05 … Qubots08:00 … Delivering Projects by Looking Ahead11:06 … How do We Intentionally Mess up Projects?13:39 … Choosing the Right Project leader15:18 … Four Things We Mess up18:09 … Organization’s Culture Affecting a Project21:36 … Subconsciously Sabotaging Our Projects23:08 … Sabotaging Projects by Remaining Silent24:28 … Reporting Your Doubts and Fears27:58 … Change Management32:31 … Get in Touch with Eddie33:42 … Closing



EDDIE OBENG: I’m asking you to look forward through the windscreen as opposed to the habit of let’s make a guess of what’s through the windscreen, and drive and manage, coordinate through the rearview mirror.  Completely different mindset.



WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m your host, Wendy Grounds, and joining me is Bill Yates.  Just a quick note.  If you’re looking to acquire PDUs, Professional Development Units, towards your recertifications, you can still claim those PDUs for all our podcast episodes.  Just listen up at the end of the show for information on how you can do that.



So today we have a really interesting guest.  This is Professor Eddie Obeng.  Professor Obeng was born in Ghana but has lived most of his life in the U.K.  He’s a world-class educator and has a passion for helping project managers.



BILL YATES:  Yeah.  I’m going to give a quick preview of some of my favorite pieces of the conversation we’re going to have.  Eddie talks about recognizing the project environment and then choosing the best leadership approach based on one of four types of projects.  I think people are going to find that very useful and helpful.  Another thing, very practical advice that Eddie gives is facing your fear.  We talk about that, pretty straightforward.  And the teaser there is it’s okay if we don’t have all the answers in the moment.  I think that’ll be quite helpful to those listeners who are like me.



Meet Eddie



WENDY GROUNDS:  Hi, Eddie.  Welcome.  We’re looking forward to talking with you today.



EDDIE OBENG:  Hello.  Delighted to be here.



WENDY GROUNDS:  I want to know who is Eddie Obeng.  Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?



EDDIE OBENG:  Just to give you some background, I teach.  I’m an educator.  I teach businesses, I help them transform, I do this based on material that I research myself.  And I built a virtual business school with a different way to teach people to deal with the complexity of the world.  And I’m also an entrepreneur because I took that business school, and I’ve made it digital, and I’ve got lots of people in the team and so on.  So that’s probably me.  I’ve written books, couple of bestsellers and stuff.



QUBE – Learning and Transformation



BILL YATES:  So tell us more about QUBE.  It’s Q-U-B-E.  Now, tell us more about this other environment.



EDDIE OBENG:  Yeah, so QUBE is my shortcut to learning and transformation.  From the point of view of the person who is experiencing QUBE, literally everything you need to be able to do, which you’re struggling to do right now.  So for example we are on Skype, but you’re scribbling your different bits of paper.  Maybe if we’re in the same room we could write on a whiteboard.  And it would stay there, and you could come back later, and if we had lots of room, people could have offices to move around in.  And when I’m teaching you.