How To Maintain The Strategic Vision At The Project Level

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Galen Low: Hey folks, thanks for tuning in. My name is Galen Low with the Digital Project Manager. We are a community of digital professionals on a mission to help each other get skilled, get confident, and get connected, so that we can amplify the value of project management in a digital world. If you want to hear more about that, head on over to thedigitalprojectmanager.com/membership.

Alright, today we're talking about the strategic purpose of projects and how to avoid that frustrating game of telephone where the project vision gets lost in translation somewhere between strategic planning and project delivery. 

With me today is Stephanie Best, Managing Director at Greannmhar, an operations consultancy focused on making work better for people by removing roadblocks to success.

Stephanie, thanks for being here in the studio with me today. 

Stephanie Best: Thank you so much, Galen. It's really great to be here with you today. Thanks for having me. 

Galen Low: I'm excited to dive into this because the game of telephone on a project vision, it's something that I hear from everybody, right? I hear from executives Oh, like people don't get it.

I hear from teams. They're like, why are we doing this project? I hear it on the delivery side. They're like projects done, but like life is still somehow the same. What happened? Somehow is like game of telephone, the vision the sort of purpose gets diluted along the way. And that can have major impacts to businesses and other organizations, trying to make a change in the world.

I wanted to ask you this because you are somebody who does work a lot with executives and operations teams and project teams. You've been a project manager in the past, a director of project management, operational lead, now you're consulting for the C-suite. 

In your experience doing all of this, what is the difference between a project where the project team truly grasps the strategic purpose of the project? And a project where the project team just delivers against the scope?

Stephanie Best: And what a great and important question too. And it has so much to do with the culture of an organization that influences the what and how we work.

When a project team performs strategically, what you're looking for is they're delivering outcomes that are not only impactful, but also scalable, meaning the outcomes can accommodate the demands of growth. So maybe that's an internal thing or maybe a long lasting product for your client, right? Fit for purpose and impactful and aligned with value and strategy.

They do this when they have an environment, which enables them to look beyond tasks and timelines. And the environment actively encourages people to make decisions that align with the broader goals of the company and consistently look for ways to create value. So they feel confident that they can speak up.

They feel like they can manage that they have access to these relationships, right? And so these teams are proactive and they're spotting potential issues early and proposing solutions. So effectively they're agile and they are willing to challenge the original scope, which is a pretty scary thing for most traditional project managers and most time crunch project managers or agency project managers as well, see it all. 

But they're invested in long-term success. So whenever you could extract from that to distill down to what makes sense to where you are in your project career to be strategic, right? And they're delivering not just to get scope, but they are high performing, they're creating value. So that's when a project team performs strategically.

And then symptoms of teams who are focused solely on hitting scope targets tend to operate in a more transactional mode, I find anyway. So they may not have the flexibility and freedom to think strategically, and they may be overworked or time crunched, right? They're just trying to say, okay, here are the client deliverables check.

They asked for this, we delivered this, right? So they may view changes as scope creep rather than value add opportunities to be flexible and accommodating. And that's not always the case, but they also limit their flexibility and responsiveness as needs evolve, and that can be for scope focus or environmental factors.

And while they may deliver on time and within budget, the final result often misses the scope target. We forget how much things change each and every day, and when we cannot stop to adapt the scope to align with new value drivers, the product often fails short in a traditional product setting, failing to connect with the organization's strategic goals, and leaving value on the table.

However, one way to avoid this, it's when an organization cannot change its crunch culture off the hop is adopting an agile approach or hybrid agile approach as much as possible and just, planting the seeds of, how we can work better and smarter and how it benefits the client and the company.

So, those are my two cents. 

Galen Low: It's really interesting. 

I want to dig in there. I want to dig into the Agile thing because like in some of my recent conversations with other folks in my community, Agile is such a loaded word now, right? Because it's an approach. It's got all these frameworks that are considered Agile sort of methodologies, and what have you.

But I think what's interesting is when you come back to what some might say are agile principles around whatever people over process and like having conversations. And what I found really interesting about your take on agile is this sort of iterating through a conversation so that a) the conversations are happening in the context of the vision, and b) decisions are being made in the context of the vision.

And what I found really interesting about it was like, there's this middle layer that's sometimes driven by fear, which creates one or the other. So it's I don't want you to make decisions and make suggestions about scope. I just need to deliver these things by whatever day. And maybe that's the project manager and maybe it's some other stakeholder within the mix saying no.

I don't want you to think outside the box. Please don't think outside the box. And then suddenly the conversations are, how can we get this done within a box? And decisions are based on how can we critical path our way within this box? And the conversation just shifts, right? The decisions shift, the empowerment shifts versus the other thing, which is probably really scary for people.

And I understand why, but to be like, cool, I'm going to share the vision with you and let's have conversations and make decisions about the vision, not about the execution. And yes, maybe that's going to end up in a lot of uncomfortable conversations about, we should be doing this if our goal is to do this.

And we're like whoa, we don't have budget for that. Or no, that's not part of this other thing that it plugs into. But at least the conversation is about that. And not about, should this take two days or four days? We're doing it anyways, because it says it here on the paper paper. 

Stephanie Best: Oh, mighty paper. Yeah. 

Galen Low: On the screen in the project management tool or whatever. But I love that sort of like the tie in the tie back into like agile, not Oh, please high performance, this is sprints and that's it. But agile is in, if we're empowering people to be high performing, what it means is empowering them to have the right conversations, to make decisions about what they know of the project's goals and purpose, and to ask questions, really.

So that the delivery is against the goals, not against a bunch of assumptions. Probably written down when we knew the least about the project. The start of the project, here's what we're going to do. We're going to do these 20 things. And then like day two, you're like, here's the 22 things we're going to do.

We've removed four and we added, six more because everything changes along the way. And we need to be having conversations and dialogue in order to keep it pointed where it's meant to be pointed. 

Stephanie Best: I think so. And I really loved what you said about that healthy layer of like tension, sometimes not healthy, there is a layer of tension or fear, when we're trying to negotiate, this is strategic, is this value adding, right?

And if we really want to speak up, but we don't really feel that, it's the right time think about the relevance, think about having those one on ones with your manager. If you manage a client relationship, ask them about how they're feeling about keeping the pulse on things changing within their market position and within their organization, right?

It doesn't have to be really time consuming strategy conversations. It's just about being curious and having the relationship. And that gives you so much more information, because your fingers on the pulse and then you can adapt, because, there's a lot of different mechanisms at work that you can be flexible with. So, yeah. 

Galen Low: What about work cultures where asking questions is weird? You're like, I'm going to ask, okay, but what is the purpose of this thing? And culturally the person on the receiving end is going to be like, why aren't you just doing the thing I told you to do? 

Stephanie Best: Yeah. Like it's really hierarchical, right?

Galen Low: Yeah. 

Stephanie Best: It's pretty strict and there's not a lot of flexibility. It's okay, yes, here are the outputs that we would like you to deliver and please deliver them and don't bother me with your questions, cause my vision of success as your leader is for you to do what I say. And so that's really tricky, and worked in large firms where it really is designed like that.

If you're a small nimble team, it's the opposite. But if you're any multinational large firm, you're expected to produce those outputs, right? And I'm using the word output instead of outcomes very intentionally. So I'd say, yes, show up, do the work and produce those outcomes. And then when you have the opportunity to present them or deliver them to your management or to the client, make sure that you're booking some time for a sidebar to say, Hey, I had some really important questions about all of this stuff.

I love the work that we're doing. I think it's very impactful and then insert questions about strategy or insert questions about just how can we add more value? Like I saw some opportunities for this and I want your perspective. So get people to give you the answers by feeding them the answers in a way.

Galen Low: Yes. Yeah. 

Stephanie Best: Make your boss look good and feel comfortable essentially. And if you're in a culture like that, you'd have to be able to manage that relationship strategically as well. 

Galen Low: I like that. How can I add more value framing and even tying it back to what you said initially, right?

Like what is the benefit of someone having these questions answered or having more context, it's probably going to lead into higher performance. And it will probably also lead to uncomfortable conversations or like more like debates. But I think when you can frame it as there's going to be an ROI on this, right?

We're going to be having those conversations and my work is going to be better. And again, it will be delivering outcomes, not just like an output. And that's like the case to be made. And yeah, maybe that pitch won't work for everybody in every work culture. But I think that's the framing.

Not, I'm not trying to be a nag and get in the way and ask questions and interrogate all these decisions that were made by your bosses and your boss's bosses, eight months ago. I just want to understand. I just want to understand because I will do better if I understand better.

Stephanie Best: If I'm more aligned with your vision. 

Galen Low: There you go, 

Stephanie Best: so all of those little things and temper your expectations because you can't change a huge multinational firm with a few of these strategically challenging questions, right? It takes years of effort and navigation and just slowly picking away at it. And then by then you'll probably become an entrepreneur.

Galen Low: Well, it's like tempering is the right sort of word there because I think sometimes people operate in extremes. They're like, I'm just going to put my head down and do my work. Or I'm going to wake up one day and I'm going to try and run the business now, please, because I think I can do more than just keep my head down and be like, there's somewhere in between and it's a journey, it's not like suddenly you're going to be calling all the shots.

You yourself have to be that person who's asking questions to understand, not to change course. 

Stephanie Best: Absolutely. 

Galen Low: But I wanted to come back to the alignment thing because you just see it everywhere, right? I mean, alignment is becoming a loaded word. It is still descriptive, but it's becoming loaded because we're like, Oh, we need to get aligned and then everything will be great.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But sometimes it's not the alignment necessarily. It's like that conveying a vision accurately and precisely across many people to drive alignment, right? Getting aligned isn't, it's easier said than done. And I think about things like strategic planning and how some of these things get mistranslated along the way.

And finally the project's wrapping up and they're like, Did we achieve the goal? And we're like, not really. In your opinion, why is it such a game of telephone trying to communicate the vision for an initiative from the executive office or from strategic planning to the program and project level?

Stephanie Best: Absolutely. Well, what an important and powerful question too. We're really uncovering like the big stuff today. It's so important to ask that question, and I think it's about, how the structure of an organization, is culture and how communication flows from organization too, so you can get curious about how it's designed and get to know it and then find your opportunities to elevate communication.

But why is it such a game of telephone and why is it so difficult to achieve alignment? I do have a thought for that. And I really do think that communicating a vision from the executive office to the program and project levels often feels like a game of telephone because we aren't great at translating vision into strategy into the various roles at each layer of the organization.

How do we take that and make something so broad and big picture and relevant to people who are really in the day to day in the thick of it, right? Who maybe are doing those micro tasks that roll up to vision, right? And are we assuring that they roll up to vision? So, at the executive level, a vision is usually framed in broad strategic terms, focusing on long term goals and high level impacts.

However, as that vision is translated throughout the organization, the focus often shifts towards deliverables, deadlines, and gets tied up in the weeds, like work about work. Should this meeting be an email? All of those little things, we get caught up in a bit of this bureaucracy and some operations, right?

So one way to overcome this as an organization is through value stream mapping and optimizing the system in a way that is aligned with strategy. So this is a very important strategic endeavor. So this empowers people to do their best work. So if you do your value stream mapping, you understand how you're delivering value from point A to point Z, within your firm, right?

And you can then align roles with that. But at the business unit level, if you're a manager and you're managing a business unit, I have found that like those RACI project management exercises help. You like the roles and responsibility chart index, like they help you provide people with strategic goals.

And they come up with KPIs related to the services, related to their business units, and it directly links each role to these key performance indicators that supports the broader objective. So you'll hear me talk about this probably like a broken record, but setting targets with timelines associated with strategic KPIs is game changing.

And the biggest challenge is culture. So can you do this in a way where people will be effective and efficient? So as an organization, you can think, okay, well, we would everyone to be value aligned because we want to succeed as a firm. So do your value stream mapping and really understand how to optimize everybody's role in the organization.

If you're a manager and you don't quite have the opportunity to look at the entire system, look at your systems within your business unit, right? And understand, okay, I have these strategic objectives from my leadership, and I'm going to distill them down to my team and give them key performance metrics.

That their roles are related to strategy and tie it all in together. 

Galen Low: In your world, who owns value stream mapping? Because it's funny, it's one of those things where I'm like, it gets talked about in textbooks and other sort of capsules of knowledge and you're like, okay, that sounds great. Like that's amazing.

Stephanie Best: Theoretically. 

Galen Low: It's a good idea in theory. Yeah. But how does it actually all happen? And I'm picturing like translating is I think the right word. You use the word translating because the folks in the executive office or the folks doing strategic planning might just be speaking a different language or like looking at everything through a different lens.

And if I'm picking up what you're putting down, it's like the value stream, the mapping can start there. But the folks like who are in the C-suite or the executives, like these leaders might not understand what happens at the ground level enough to do the full value stream map themselves. They've got to hand it off.

And then there's a layer of middle managers who need to understand what the strategic objectives are and translate that into, time sensitive KPIs. And then it needs to translate down, but like the whole sort of mapping, like who's the owner there? Who is Hey guys, we really need to make sure that this is getting mapped all the way through.

Stephanie Best: Yeah, it depends on your why. Why are you doing the value stream mapping? And who is your audience? Who is it relevant to? So is the entire firm suffering to make a profit? Or do you have a few broken processes that you need to optimize so that people have meaningful careers, right? So it depends on your why.

It's a really important question. But typically value stream mapping is really good for a medium to large size firm at the C-suite level. And hopefully your ops executives will be running with that, or you can hire someone like me to run the organization through an exercise like that as well.

But it is an exercise and it can take a few months to get through it. But who holds the keys really is on your why you're doing it and the scope and scale of it, right? So if you're doing it for your firm, it's definitely the C-suite. And I think typically it should always be the C-suite because they understand, okay, well, here are the big blocks, right, of value. 

What are the things that it has to go through in order to deliver value? And then cross check that with surveys and, management feedback, right? And really get people involved because you're right. If you don't have boots on the ground, like mailroom up, you won't understand the nuance of value being delivered through such a complicated organization.

Which is why there's different tools and techniques built into DAVSIC or value stream mapping techniques to get those perspectives in there within, a relevant scope. But yes, I think it depends on why, long story short. 

Galen Low: I really like that, like like having a sort of ambassador or custodian of the value stream mapping, someone, who knows what they're doing and can walk along at all levels of the organization.

And I wonder if we could take an example of an organization who probably isn't in a position to bring on someone like yourself to own this and they've got to distribute it across their team. Let's take the profitability one, because I think it is timely and relevant.

Like I think a lot of organizations are trying to do more with less, if you've got inflation and everything. So I'm picturing and keep me honest here. I'm like, I'm picturing, okay, we're doing strategic planning. Our margins are being eaten into. We're not as profitable as a business.

That's not helping us grow. It's not helping us treat our employees well. We can't like have the same perks or culture is suffering. We need to increase profit. Let's brainstorm, blah, blah, blah. They're like, okay, here's a project that will help increase our margins. We're all excited about it.

We're about to enter, Q1. Let's go. What does that handoff process look like in your world? Is it Hey, you now own the project manager or program leader or whatever. We are trying to increase our profit margin. And that's why we're doing this, whatever, call center chat bot thing.

It's not about replacing jobs. It's about, handling whatever call volume so that, our people aren't burning out so that we are not creating a culture of, try and get through a call, help your customer as quickly as possible in 30 seconds or less, please. How do you then take that and not have it at some point later down the road turn into, Oh my gosh, I am coding my own replacement right now.

I'm making a chat bot. I'm helping make this chat bot that will replace me. Obviously this is a money hungry business that just wants robots that don't require how spending accounts, Oh my gosh, this is terrible. Why am I helping with this? How did, how do you not let that game of telephone? 

Stephanie Best: I think you reconcile that.

Galen Low: Yes, exactly. Obviously with somebody who's along the way that, it would be somewhat easier, still difficult, but somewhat easier. But if it's just like a game of handing this off, like how do you make sure that the original sort of purpose, yes, increase your profit margins. But no, not because we want everyone to be a robot because humans are expensive.

Let's get rid of them. What are some of the things that like, folks along the way, maybe particularly project managers can do or say, or ask to maintain that vision?

Stephanie Best: Yeah, that's a really good question. And there's a lot of important layers to it too, like understanding, okay, we'll have done this value stream mapping exercise, and we understand now. Okay, here are our profit leaks, here are our bottlenecks, here are areas of redundancy, and the solution is perhaps an AI chat box, right?

So, we've got the right people in the right seats now, we know, okay, how these roles are tied to the value delivery stream, and now we want to implement some strategic projects. We've identified them, we've prioritized them, and now we want to implement them throughout the organization to achieve sustainable change.

So we understand, okay, well, here are the different areas across the value stream map. Here are the different projects related to value delivery. And then here are the different roles that roll up into delivering value in those components of the value stream or the organization. And so you can find project leaders or hire project leaders or promote project leaders within to deliver those projects, understanding the why.

So, listen, we want to alleviate a lot of the administrative burden by leveraging technology for the people in your department. This doesn't mean any cuts, but if we can focus on more value driving initiatives for Benny and Suzie here, then we can have a chat AI box, right?

So they don't spend all their time like navigating and fielding these redundant questions that really make their days feel very cumbersome and tedious, right? And it brings value to them. They can perform higher in other areas of driving client value once you get to a certain point in the conversation with that chat box, right?

Whether it's problem resolution or sale. So you have to understand why are we doing this and what's the relevance and what's the outcome that we expect, that we're planning to. And there's, it's always very complicated and people can shift and evolve throughout the entire process, yet that's how we can allocate these roles, of course, to project managers to deliver the change. And also make people feel like work isn't happening to them, that they are effectively coding this AI box, but really what's in it for them.

Did they get to have a say in the strategic planning process? Maybe not. But they really get to have a say in how this will allow them to focus on value driving activities. Yes, absolutely. Because this chat box is now a supplemental tool for their day to day as they help develop real relationships and develop real client value for the business.

I can understand very natural fears around technology, except maybe it's about mindset and shaping how we view it, right? Because it's not a perfect supplementation for the human experience. And more than ever, do we ever crave authenticity? We can feel AI in any piece of writing and our voices are becoming intermingled to an AI. Which kind of makes the creative copywriting realm a little bit more competitive because we're adapting very quickly to different voices and it's making the lines blurry, right?

Even for AI to it, identify it. But to your point, I think it's really just about getting strategic, understanding the purpose of these things and your value drivers. 

Galen Low: This may be an ignorant question, but my experience with value stream mapping has been like a sliver of that. It's like, how does this project work affect this other part of project work?

But it never like zooms out as far as the sort of strategic objectives. So I guess two questions. One, like in your world, is a value stream map a document that everyone has access to? Does it get referred to, or is it more kind of conceptual or reserved for certain eyeballs?

Stephanie Best: Can be both, two things can be true. It depends on your why. 

Yeah. So like with that little sliver of a value stream map, that's your why, in the context of project management, and you're understanding the value that you're delivering to the company and to customers through the different projects in your strategic portfolio. Then understand, okay, A to Z, what are we delivering here and what's the value here and what are the boxes that we need to tick?

And that can help inform a lot of scoping, that can help you understand a little bit about, your objectives and what you're going to deliver. So there is a purpose for that. And the nice thing about value stream mapping as you're very well identified is that it's scalable. It's a very relevant exercise, no matter the scope and complexity, you can adapt it.

And so I'm hoping that I can circle back to your original question was, what is the purpose of value stream mapping? Or could you reiterate it again for me? 

Galen Low: Well, just wondering if it's something that everyone has access to, right? We go through this exercise. Can it be like an information radiator? Can it sit on the wall and be like, remind people this is why we're doing it?

Or in your experience, is it more either, a) conceptual, there is no documents or, b) it's a document for the C-suite, but no one else sees it?

Stephanie Best: So when you're doing a value stream map, you can do your value stream map of a current state. And then audit it and assess it and tweak it into a future state design as well.

And I feel like the future state design is something that should be a very shareable document throughout the organization, but it depends on the organization's culture. If they are making some really huge changes to departments and people's roles, they want to implement change management practices that really gracefully support their people.

But sometimes, the smaller, more nimble organization these are the things we're working towards. We'd like your help in collaborating on how we can achieve it. So I'd say for a larger organization it's reserved for, the executive level and depending on the culture of more medium sized to small agencies, it's something that's broadly available saying this is our future state.

Here's our bigger goals, and here's how we're going to accomplish it. That's a really great thing to communicate to people. So it's just a very layered thing. 

Galen Low: I love that you mentioned some of the nuance. It's sometimes we are making difficult, sensitive changes to a business. And no, we don't want a poster in the cafeteria that says all that with all the details, but you know, it's nothing personal, it's like business decisions have to be made. 

I wanted to come back to that notion, like we were talking about slivers and you're mentioning about sort of the scalability of a sort of value stream map. I'm putting on my project manager hat here and going, okay, well, what if what if you're past me and you're like, I'm looking at only a sliver, I'm not seeing the full left hand side of this value stream map. 

What questions should I be asking as a project manager to understand how my project or program sort of fits within the bigger picture and like, how can I, as a project manager, manage up and maybe like position myself within the eyes of leadership that I am somebody who gets it and have, can ask meaningful questions and wants to soak in the bigger picture?

Stephanie Best: Oh, that's so important, and it's what a great question for aspiring leaders, people who know they're so capable of maneuvering their way to different levels of the organization.

And I think it comes down to understanding, okay, what are our strategic objectives as an organization? What is our 'why'? What is our mission, vision and purpose here? And getting really curious about, okay, so, I understand that based on our last conversation, we talked a lot about strategy within the organization and these are our pillars for success.

These are the things that we're working towards. And then I noticed with these different projects that we're taking on, we maybe started these projects before we redefined our pillars for success, or we're in the middle of strategic planning, or maybe we haven't cross checked them for alignment for a little while.

But I wanted to make sure that our current portfolio supports the strategic vision of the organization. And can you walk me through your perspective? Can you walk me through or coach me on making sure that these efforts here and here are driving the strategic vision of the organization. And if not, how can I support value alignment?

How can I support adjusting these so that things are on course? So you can be looking at an internal business project, or it could be looking at the types of clients that are suitable for your organization to hire or maybe let go of. To make sure that you're driving value, making sure that you're driving relevance and that you're paying attention to the important strategic things.

So I hope I answered your question effectively. 

Galen Low: No, I think so. What I love that the phrase cross check our alignment, even just being the person who understands that alignment is important and communicating that is of high value. We talked about it earlier, right? Sometimes the response you get is going to be like a cocked eyebrow or something like we want to have this conversation now, but I also think it's a really good skill as a project manager at any point in their career to, we have to run head on towards difficult conversations, uncomfortable conversations, right?

If the answer is, how is this any of your business? Shouldn't you be like making sure the team delivers on the deadline and being prepared for that and yeah, reframing the conversation, I guess, a bit to be around my role is to deliver value. I am in value stream delivery as my role. My role is not to like just herd cats and, take boxes.

My role is to understand what value is and make sure that we navigate in the most efficient way towards that. And I think that's it's good framing. I love the sort of Hey, I noticed this, and can you help me better understand this bit? You coming to the table with knowledge, not going, Hey, tell me the whole story from the dawn of time till now about why we're doing this project. Go. It's I've done my due diligence. 

Stephanie Best: Bosses can be intimidated by people asking what strategy, learning how to be strategic. So find a way to make it like a safe environment. Like a lot of the time, executives and managers need to make it a safe environment for their employees. 

But also in order to get what you want, you have to be able to manage those relationships effectively by setting the tone as well, and navigating those conversations and showing that you can handle their relationship. Because ultimately, people walk away with, Oh, Galen's really smart. He asked a lot of strategy questions, but they're going to walk away with Oh, how did Galen make me feel or how do I feel about our conversation afterward?

So your impact has influence and meaning to it, regardless of your position in the organization. And take full advantage of that. 

Galen Low: I love the focus on relationships and like what that means in terms of empathy as well. If we are trying to be authentic about this, and yeah, sure.

Maybe you are stressed and anxious about the fact that, maybe this project won't deliver on what we're trying to do. Like maybe there is that there, but if you're coming at it authentically and you're thinking about it empathetically as that person, just because they are somewhere else in the organizational structure, doesn't mean that I can just show up and put them on the spot and put pressure on them.

And they're going to give me the perfect answer. Otherwise I'm going to go tweet about it. Do we still tweet? Is it still call it tweet? I'm going to go tell everybody that no one knows what's going on. This project is chaos, but managing a relationship more than a sort of question of that's how you're to put it your way, maneuvering within sort of the dynamics of the organization.

Stephanie Best: I love that you've, again, summarize this so eloquently and I love your perspective. Like it, it really drives the point home and it is about relationships at the end of day. As a project manager, like you have to raise those red flags, when they come up, not everyone will see them right away and it's your part of your scope of your job description to say, Hey, there's something wrong here.

There's a risk here. Are we being strategic? And then if other people don't see that as part of your scope to question strategy alignment, then get those relationships and prime those conversations, and it doesn't have to happen all in once. Prime those conversations, get people, comfortable.

Yeah. It can take many weeks, to accomplish that, depending on the culture availability and types of people that you're dealing with.

Galen Low: Speaking of types of people that we're dealing with, and we've been talking about like culture and personalities, but also I wanted to come back to something you said earlier about the translation, right?

Like it needs to be translated along the way. That's part of the exercise in terms of value stream mapping is translating, translating, translating. And, I think in some cases, some of our listeners, some project managers don't feel like they have the knowledge or the language to actually ask the right questions.

And then you start seeing some of these job postings for project leadership roles that are looking for people with an MBA. And it stands to reason that a lot of people are sitting there thinking, okay, well, if all of this is true, do I as a project manager need to get an MBA and speak like executive ease?

What level of understanding does the executive office want project managers to have in terms of the business goals so that they can be, capable, but not necessarily at the level, right? Don't. Maybe to reframe the question, like how much strategic and executive knowledge and language does a project manager need to have to be successful at understanding the sort of value stream that they're part of?

Stephanie Best: I love that question. And it's really important too, because a lot of the time it's do I, or don't I need an MBA, to progress in like this field, right? And sometimes it's like a very solid requirement on the job posting, and sometimes people get promoted within without an MBA.

So it's time and place and exposure as well. Your network is your network. And sometimes people are, very qualified, but maybe can't build relationships. They have these MBAs, but they can't build relationships. So to answer your question, do PMs need to get an MBA to speak executive ease, or what is the expectation here?

What is the executive boss expectation of, a PM's understanding of business goals? And I think a very like lofty expectation for what I've seen with executives is that they're like, yeah, this should be perfectly aligned with strategy. But you know what? I don't think that being able to speak to executives depends on your, needs an MBA.

So it really does depend on your career positioning, your ability to, again, build those relationships. And also I'm going to say your sense of power distance and how effectively you prove your values. So I've hired and let go of people with MBAs. And while MBAs are really important, an MBA loan is not what makes a project manager worthy of promotion.

I think it's valuable and it provides really important business knowledge and it's very powerful as an executive to have an MBA. However, as a project manager, moving your way through the organization, I think there's opportunities to prove your value otherwise, if you do not have one.

And then generally speaking, the executive office needs to see that a project manager demonstrates their understanding of business goals through their ability to translate strategy into their deliverables every day. So if you would like to prove that you are effectively the experience equivalent of an MBA, that's how you do it.

So if your goal is to climb the ladder, build relationships and be equipped with knowledge about your craft and the company and demonstrate an impactful leadership style that builds trust and collaboration among team members, right? If you're going to get an MBA, make sure you're doing it for yourself and that it's your mission and your passion, because we do see trends in hiring where executives are a little bit more flexibility in their hiring practices based on what they require in role.

But there's a lot of value to it. And if you feel like the opportunities that are available to you only require an MBA and your network has confirmed this with you, then yeah, that makes sense. But what level of understanding does the executive office want project managers to have in terms of the business goals?

Is really just as much as willing. They're going to get curious about. So they need to expose themselves, ask the right questions, extract that information, beat those people experts. And then when an executive says, Hey, give me an update on all of these projects within your portfolio, which has happened to me countless times. 

It's your first date back from MatLeaf, bringing me up to speed. I was like, isn't this the other way around? Or, you've been there and you haven't gone to MatLeaf and you suddenly get caught off guard at a meeting at 2 PM in your calendar and exec is give me a total portfolio update.

Well, what they're expecting to see is, okay, what are the projects? What are they delivering? Why are they important? And do I have to worry about anything? 

Galen Low: I like the curiosity bit, right? And it is about learning enough to, maneuver within your organization, that might be different. There's even a translation that happens when you see a job posting that asking for an MBA, there's probably more questions to ask about that, whether it's through informational interviews or in the interview process about tell me more about that and why.

But yeah, I love it. Like the most literal example I had for me was and this is very literal, but like eBITDA was like the word that like kept getting thrown around when I was talking with the C-suite. I was like, I don't know what this means. And it took me like so long. I was so intimidated by it that it actually took me weeks to Google it and be like, Oh, it's just that?

Oh, that's silly. Like I should have either asked. Or I should have learned it so that next time I came to the conversation understanding it, and it was just, it was a jargon question more than it was a, am I a business person? It was like a, can I roll into a conversation that is jargony, that has concepts and perspectives that are more related to a role that I don't hold.

And then can I navigate the relationship and learn and just ask the right questions to show that I have accrued knowledge and can be useful beyond just delivering against a list of things. 

Stephanie Best: And what a good learning experience, like you got thrown into a spiral because of an acronym. I want to, like I studied at a Deloitte and they have a wall of acronyms.

And so I think it's very important that yeah, just be shameless about asking for clarity and saying what is even, by the way, what is even a, I figure out what it is, right. And they'd say, yeah, thank you very much. I understand that the words will probably make sense to me once you say them.

But like, when you say this, it's like, what is this brand new thing? 

Galen Low: Yeah, no, you're right. I guess like acronyms and jargon are everywhere. You do have to be saying this. Shameless about asking the question, if it's appropriate or finding out the answer on your own time so that, the next time you are armed, but yeah, that curiosity, the willingness to engage with stuff that's outside of your comfort zone, I think is a superpower.

Stephanie Best: It's a superpower. You're absolutely correct. 

Galen Low: Stephanie, thank you so much for spending the time with me today. I enjoyed this. I think we went a lot of places and yeah, I think you have some really good insights in terms of that value stream mapping. Like I might just change the title of this podcast actually, because I think it was just an absolute masterclass. So, thank you. 

Stephanie Best: Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm really honored to be here. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. 

Galen Low: All right folks, there you have it. As always, if you'd like to join the conversation with over a thousand like-minded project management champions, come join our collective. Head on over to thedigitalprojectmanager.com/membership to learn more. And if you like what you heard today, please subscribe and stay in touch on thedigitalprojectmanager.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.