Waarom projectmanagement ieders verantwoordelijkheid wordt

Galen Low: When you hear the words becoming the project manager, most people's minds jump to early career opportunities. You know, the recent grad who accidentally falls into a project management role, or the junior sales associate that keeps getting asked to own internal process improvements. But what sometimes gets overlooked is that more and more senior level professionals are being asked to lead projects as well, especially as AI continues to drive sweeping transformation at all levels of most organizations.

And the problem with that is that this group is arguably more liable to be swayed by outdated myths and misconceptions about what project management is and miss the forest for the trees completely. That's why I've invited the person who has literally written the book on becoming the project manager so that we can lay out the brass tacks of how established professionals can use any chance to lead a project as an opportunity to propel their career forward, whether project management remains part of their role or not.

Hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to the Digital Project Manager Podcast—the show that helps delivery leaders work smarter, deliver smoother, and lead their teams with confidence in the age of AI. I'm Galen, and every week we dive into real-world strategies, emerging trends, proven frameworks, and the occasional war story from the project front lines.

Whether you're steering massive transformation projects, wrangling AI workflows, or just trying to keep the chaos under control, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Okay. Today we're talking about the journey of becoming a project manager in 2026, and why some of the textbook ways of learning the craft aren't really cutting it in today's work context.

Specifically, we're going to be diving into the common misconceptions and stereotypes that every accidental PM needs to leave at the door when they get that first opportunity to lead a project. We're gonna be distilling what really makes a project have an impact above and beyond formal processes, and I'm gonna be testing a theory that becoming the project manager is soon to be a rite of passage for many professionals, not just folks with project manager in their title.

With me today is Stuart Taylor, founder of Influential PMO, and author of the new book, Becoming the Project Manager. Stuart has spent years helping organizations improve delivery capability and helping professionals navigate the messy reality of leading projects in modern workplaces. His work focuses not just on project mechanics, but on the leadership, communication, influence, and decision-making skills that separate accidental coordinators from truly effective project leaders.

Stuart, thanks so much for joining me today.

Stuart Taylor: No, thank you for having me. I've been looking forward to this.

Galen Low: I've been looking forward to this as well. Your book and your name have been all over my feed. People are raving about it. People are, you know, saying all the good things about an accessible book. And just when, you know, everyone thought, "Well, the last thing we need is probably another book on project management," it seems like this is really taking.

So I'm keen to extract some of those insights. And honestly, this is something that I really wanna nerd out on because, you know, I was literally tossed into project management at the beginning of my career, and I'm still someone who delivers projects as a member of my leadership team. So I think this is a really important topic to be talking about from a couple different lenses.

A, I wanna talk about it obviously from folks who are entering a career as a project manager, but I'm also gonna add a little bit of an inflection for folks who are already deep into their careers, you know, really well-situated in a role, but are suddenly realizing that they need project management skills to take their initiatives forward, to grow in their role, and to succeed overall.

So I hope we get to nerd out and share stories. I know we can probably zig and zag. Firstly, I'd just like to hear about your first day on the job after becoming the project manager, and what you would do differently or maybe the same if you were to get a do-over in 2026.

Stuart Taylor: It's really difficult for me to answer because when did I first become a project manager?

Was it the first time somebody gave me a project and didn't tell me it was a project, and I managed it? Or was it the first time that I joined a project team and was- Ah ... delivering part of a work stream? That could've been a project. Or was it the first time that I actually had project manager as part of the job title and I knew going in, I'm project manager?

Th- there are so many variations of this, and that's probably an experience that people in your audience can relate to. Where they found themselves managing a project and sometimes haven't even been told, "This is what you're doing." And in the case where the first time it came along, and it was, "We need you to go and do this," it was to set up an office for an organization, and I went and did that.

That's a project, isn't it?

Galen Low: Yes, absolutely.

Stuart Taylor: Organizing your own wedding or moving house, these are projects as well, you know, but this is the first time somebody was paying me to do a project. They weren't calling me a project manager, though. And I went, and I created an outline of what we would now call a plan.

I did not contemplate risks really other than very minor things, such as what if things don't arrive on time, and I certainly didn't have any kind of proactive measures to deal with it. There were all of those kind of implications, and there was none of the governance, no support or anything like that.

Managing a project without realizing I'm managing a project. Then there's the time when I'm actually in an organization, and this gets covered in my book, Becoming the Project Manager, where it's my first proper project environment where I am delivering a project, but it's part of a, a larger work stream towards a program.

And I was the only person in the team who'd done any kind of formal training on project management by then because by that point, I'd made the gap. I'd realized there was a success there, and I, I wanted to build on it. And I expanded my knowledge, learned about Prince2, which is the UK qualification for project management.

It's not the only one anymore, but it was at the time. It's very similar to PMP in how it's regarded. That opened the door for me to get into this organization. I was managing a project, and very soon I realized that what I took as being the absolute best way to go about doing a project, this very strict formal process, which is scalable, it's, to be fair, it's scalable, there were gaps in it, and I was failing by falling into the gaps, gaps like communication, influence, leadership.

Those sorts of things just hadn't been established yet. I hadn't developed those skills yet. And then the story in the book is how I progress from that point, moving forwards, struggling severely at times, sometimes getting it right. You know, it's not an entire book of failures. It's a story of gradual progression with setbacks until I meet a turning point in the form of a mentor who the book's dedicated to because- Nice

without him, we would not be having this conversation today. And that was a turning point then in my career where I started to progress more steadily towards a sense of calm authority, which represented the end state of my journey in becoming the project manager.

Galen Low: Ooh, I like that. That's all really juicy stuff to unpack.

I think you're right, because the start of a, someone's sort of project management journey doesn't begin with them being a formally authorized project manager with a charter doing all the PRINCE2 stuff the PMI way by the textbook. It's often a little bit messier than that. And I really love the idea that what helped you turn the corner was those leadership skills and a mentor.

I wanna come back to that, actually. I just wanted to hit you with a bit of a spicy question to set the scene, and maybe I'll take a running start at it as well, because it ties into a lot of the things that you've been talking about. In my circles, we've been talking a lot about informal and accidental project managers, exactly as you say, right?

Folks that have been asked to lead projects without having had any formal training in project management, and just being expected to figure it out. And on one hand, this has probably been happening for some time. It's how I got in. It's how you got in as well. I'm sure it's been happening since the dawn of projects being a thing.

But also, on the other hand, some people are saying that it's happening more and more, and some are also saying that there are fewer and fewer titled project management roles in the workforce. So my big question is this: Is project management on its way to becoming a side-of-desk skill set rather than a dedicated role in our AI-imbued future of work?

And if so, what will be different about the way professionals learn project management compared to how we learned it?

Stuart Taylor: In a way, I hope so. I hope that it does because project management offers so many useful transferable skills. So any person who works in any kind of an organization, any kind of corporate entity or government agency or any kind of organization who learns project management skills is going to learn a set of useful life skills, corporate skills, and they are so transferable.

Even if the part where you're managing a project disappears at some point on your career path, the lessons in engaging with people through the whole organization, learning to anticipate what could go wrong, and not being surprised when it does. Learning how to do horrible things like project financials and track costs, deal with suppliers, organize RFIs and such, all of these are useful, transferable skills.

So even if you find yourself being given a project and you're not a project manager, but you're told, "Try to fit this in and do this as well," try to learn how to do it properly. You don't have to go all the way in, and it doesn't mean departure from your career. The book ends at the point where I move from being a project manager into becoming a PMO, which is gonna be the sequel book.

And I've spent so much time in the last just over a decade now helping people who never expected to see project management appear on their CV. I've helped lawyers to deliver projects. I've helped designers. I've helped underwriters. I, I've helped all sorts of people. Anybody can do it, and the big challenge that they face initially is they get given this project, and they get told, "Well, this is just a small project," which is the most deceptive thing anybody can ever tell you.

It's the most dangerous thing anybody could tell you. If you hear those words coming from a boss, you need to be a little bit worried. But I've helped them to navigate things like corporate governance, where they've gotta do things like status reporting, and they don't understand why they gotta do a status report, and it's just a box-ticking exercise.

And they don't realize that when they're making a half-hearted effort, they're projecting that upwards to the most important decision-makers in your organization, and you are telling them something about yourself that you really shouldn't be telling them. So all of this is really important, and I try to get this across to the people who are in that position.

You need to take this seriously. Learn how to do this properly. It won't take you very long, and even if it is, as they say, just a short project to do on, on the epic desk, and you're gonna get to the end of it soon, fine. But at least learn to do it right and embrace it fully. And it will be rewarding. So I hope people in that situation do take that skill set, but I still believe there'll be a dedicated project manager role somewhere out there, because there are some changes that require dedication, that require people to be absolutely 100% just a project manager.

That's where the mentor came in for me. He was the first person who was a dedicated project manager first. Everyone else I've dealt with before had done project management as part of their job, and he was the first dedicated one who could go into any environment and deliver any kind of a project, and that was a huge turning point for me.

So if you're in a position where you're a new project manager or maybe an undefined project manager-

Galen Low: I like that ...

Stuart Taylor: go and buy my book.

Galen Low: There you go.

Stuart Taylor: Or find an experienced project manager in your organization. Go and find an organization department called a PMO, or a change function, or anything like that, and find out where those people sit.

Go and make friends with them, and learn how they do their jobs properly, because that's the fastest way. That's the fastest way. Buddy up with somebody like that, and then you're on their radar as well, and you can be a very helpful stakeholder to them in the future as well.

Galen Low: I love that. I wanted to come back to your POV, which I thought was really helpful, is that sort of, the word that popped into my head was visibility, right?

Where you, you take on this project, maybe it hasn't been described to you as a project. Maybe it, it's been described to you as a simple project. Either way, you're gonna get exposed to parts of the business and the business mechanics, and you're gonna be able to see across departments. Maybe normally you would just be working in, you know, your team, your department, your silo, but oftentimes these projects, you know, bring together these, not to say ragtag, but c- you know, sometimes ragtag cross-functional teams, cross-departmental teams.

You're gonna learn things about the business. You're gonna learn really fast why that status report is actually important. And you're gonna have visibility, but also you're gonna get visibility. And in other words, people are looking at you because this project presumably matters if they're dedicating resources to it.

And as much as you could be like, "Well, you know, nobody's really given me the tools. I'll just make it up as I go, and it's just a simple project. Should be fine," I like that take of actually, maybe it's an opportunity to learn to do it right, not just from people who have been making it up as they go along, but actually from people who have made it their art form, have made it their craft, have made it their specialty, so that at least you're learning that, doing your project well, and reaping the rewards from it, because it's good PR when a project goes well.

It's potentially bad PR when a project doesn't go well, no matter how big or small.

Stuart Taylor: Absolutely. And your reputation can hang on these things, so really do take it seriously. And another angle to consider as well, there's a role called the project sponsor. I know half your audience is, you know, yawning now 'cause I'm telling them something they already know.

But this is a very important person, it's usually a very senior person in your organization. And the part that a lot of people seem to overlook is this isn't a, some sort of a servant-master relationship. You are their agent in the organization, delivering the change on their behalf that they don't have the, either the time or the project management skills, or maybe the interest to go and do themselves.

You are their agent, so you're their representative in the organization, and that means you could be the last person who's coming through the door, and you could be the CEO's agent in the organization. What you want isn't what you want, it's what the CEO has ordered via you. You're their voice in the organization.

You have to take this seriously. And that's for established project managers as well. Don't overlook that.

Galen Low: I love that. It's a very empowering approach to it. Because I think a lot of folks enter under the assumption that, yeah, they're just like the lackey. They're doing these things, there's a list of things to accomplish, and it's basically like being sent to go get groceries, you know?

Whereas every project in some way, shape, or form is probably an opportunity to be that agent, to be seen as that agent, to perform as that agent, and to actually benefit, whether or not you continue to manage projects, to show that you have what it takes to be that, you know, the left and right hand of the organization in terms of strategic execution, even if it is actually a small project.

Which actually, I wonder if I can return to that, because, you know, I think coming back to what you had said about, you know, your start, and your multiple starts in as a project manager until finally you're, you know, the project manager, formally trained, formally titled. But when that does happen in the early days, that first time something drops into your inbox and it was, "Could you just do this simple thing?"

What is something that people should do, and maybe even should not do, when they get that email that is being described as a small, simple project, or maybe it doesn't even have the word project? How do they identify, yes, this is an opportunity to do project stuff, and what can they say or do to make sure that it's not an oversimplification of something that's actually much more complex, and still approach it in a way that appreciates that complexity?

Stuart Taylor: Yeah, sure. The first thing that an established dedicated project manager should do when they see that is ask themselves why, if it's such a small, simple project, do they need a dedicated professional project manager- Yes ... to work on it?

Galen Low: Valid.

Stuart Taylor: That's the trap.

Galen Low: That's the trap.

Stuart Taylor: The next part is, as I say, take it seriously, and by taking it seriously, I mean do the right things, do the fundamentals.

For example, understand what complete looks like. Don't just have a vague idea or a, a passing sentence at the water cooler. Capture this thing, write it down, get it signed off. When people say that these things are simple and small, they try to hurry you through the process too quickly. You don't need to stop for requirements.

Everybody knows what they want.

Galen Low: It's not true.

Stuart Taylor: People's brains are not wired up exactly the same as each other. Two people can see the same thing and come away with an entirely different story about what happened. The same applies for requirements and understanding of what success in your project truly looks like.

So if somebody comes to you with a small task, and it may be a project, maybe it isn't, and here's the part where it's a useful transferable skill, always nail down exactly what it is that success looks like and exactly what those requirements are.

Galen Low: I love that, and I think you're right. I've experienced that so many times of, you know, just rush it through.

This is simple. No need to pause. But if I'm picking up what you're putting down, the most important thing you can do is pause and make sure there actually is alignment around requirements, around what success looks like because if everyone's just assuming they're all on the same page, none of that is necessarily gonna go well at all.

May as well get that locked down in the beginning.

Stuart Taylor: Yeah, and it's the basics. It really is just the basics, and it'll seem blindingly obvious, but I, I challenge your audience to think about the times when, against their better judgment, they've been hurried through that and they've been pushed past that by powerful voices and powerful people in the organization who you didn't really feel capable of saying no to.

Still, challenge it because in the end, if things go wrong, if there's a misalignment... Give you an example I worked with a project manager who had just moved over into the project manager role. It was a short-term project to do a, it was a res- response to a customer complaint system where they would get an SMS message back to say, "Yes, yeah, we, we've received your complaint."

That was the project. That's how it was described. Didn't capture requirements, didn't sign it off with everybody. Got it to the point where it was almost complete and they were doing final testing when somebody in the steer co then mentioned, "And what happens when the customer replies back to that?" It's like, oh, not one-way SMS, two-way SMS.

Everyone just assumed suddenly that was always the standard, that was always what was expected. And I can't begin to tell you the level of panic and stress that caused that project manager.

Galen Low: Yeah, I, I couldn't even imagine, because in some ways it's, well, that wasn't in scope. On the other hand, scope wasn't clearly defined at the beginning.

You know, there's some logic to it as well, right? You're talking to that steer co member and you're like, "Oh, you're right," because sometimes people do reply. And is that the experience that we're trying to build? What is the outcome that we're looking for? Not just to stave off the people and, you know, confirm that their complaint has been received, but open a line of communication.

Stuart Taylor: Well, then it went even further. Some were thinking, yes, what if they reply? Others were actively hoping they would. Give them a set of responses that, that you can send back, "Yes, I'm satisfied. No, I'm not." Things like that. And nobody had said that out loud until the final two weeks of the project.

Galen Low: It's such a relatable story.

You know, coming back to how you got your start and, you know, I think some of these things for you and I, be the challenger, you know, make sure you pause, they can be really intimidating for somebody who is new to an organization, new to a certain role, or maybe just early in their career. But I'd argue that sort of challenger mindset is something that I think we've settled into as project managers, right?

We're like, "Oh yeah, okay, I've got this." But on day one, if you're like really freaking out about trying to have a stance on something, trying to push back a little bit, what's the sort of smartest way someone can learn to do that on the fly or prepare to do that when it's a really uncomfortable thing for them?

Stuart Taylor: Well, that is difficult. It's always difficult to do that with your loved ones and with your family, and it's difficult to do that with somebody who has legitimately let you down, like the plumber who leaves you with a dripping radiator. You know, it's difficult to have that kind of a conversation to be, in a way, not confrontational, but to make a stand and push to do the right thing.

I guess really what I would always encourage people to think about in that situation is actually take a deep breath for a moment, slow things down a little bit. You don't have to jump in straight away whilst you're in a state of anxiety. If you notice your voice cracking as you're having that conversation, you might just be a little bit too stressed right then, and you might need to just say to them, "I have some concerns about this, but let's revisit this."

And give yourself a d- a bit of a breathing space for you to at least collect your ideas if that's an option. But ultimately, you need to think about what the end state is supposed to be like, and the end state with a plumber who's left you with a dripping radiator is not to have a puddle underneath your radiator.

So everything you do to get to that state is acceptable. That's legitimate. It's a legitimate argument. Plumber should not leave it that way. Your boss should not ask you to do something that's unethical, say, or illegal, and I've had that situation in the past. I've been asked to create... It's a very sensitive topic now looking back, but it was to create a database that would've potentially captured people's information without them knowing it.

Galen Low: Hmm.

Stuart Taylor: And the law in the UK had been changed one year before then to say you couldn't really do that, or at least it made it very, very clear you couldn't do that. And I had to have that conversation, and I did it respectfully, and I said, "Look, I think there's an element of this that you're not aware of, and it's a part that could land you personally in an awful lot of trouble.

This is not an option that's available to us." And I had to have that explanation as... And this was a conversation, it's not even in my book. It's, it would be so, so early. It's one of those conversations that I'd honestly, I'd actually forgotten until you just brought up this scenario. So there you go, the lost chapters.

I'll have to write them.

Galen Low: Second edition, you can start planning it now.

Stuart Taylor: But you do have to sometimes make a stand to do that. But the other part is take your ego out of the equation. This isn't about you being right or wrong. It's actually about the, getting the right outcome, and if you keep having the right outcome in mind, usually you'll be guided towards the right thing, even if it's an inconvenience to you or even it's troublesome to you.

So long as you're working towards the right outcome, then usually people are reasonable enough to understand that. If they're not, it's an ev- it's a bit of a cop-out answer for me to say, but that tells you an awful lot about the organization you're in and whether you might want to consider being there.

Galen Low: Right. Yeah. Well, there's the next thing to navigate, but what I really love about that, even the deep breath bit, you had said it's not confrontational, and I see people get that wrong a lot, right? Where they're like, "Okay, I'm the bulldog project manager, you know? Day one, my job is to just say no to everything and put people in their place."

And it's, no, it's not really that. It's not an ego. It's not command. It is- Pausing enough to, you know, make your emotional approach not confrontational, and then having a conversation about the outcomes. And I think that's... I wish I had been told that on day one, to be like, "Listen, it's about getting the best outcome.

That's the goal. You're gonna have to have conversations that are uncomfortable. It's not about ego. It's not about confronting someone. It's not a fight. It's a discussion to navigate through to the best result based on what the goals are." And I think that is a really strong sort of approach for anyone at any level, I guess I should say, because I've seen senior managers do this as well.

They're like, "Oh, I guess I have to," you know, to your earlier point, "be the lackey who does these task lists and, you know, do the project, and I have no authority. But also, if somebody doesn't follow the plan or steps out of line or if I think something's wrong, I gotta go yell at them and, you know, be this strong force of command and control."

You know, it doesn't work.

Stuart Taylor: And I'll tell you a couple of other slightly uncomfortable things around that when it comes to asserting yourself. Firstly, I don't know if people are always aware of this, but a lot of people tend to dip into aggression in order to be assertive. You don't always have to. You can be calmly assertive.

You don't have to access that, because the danger of accessing aggression to do is firstly, it makes you a very difficult person to work with in the long term, but also there's the risk that you could easily run out of control and into anger. And then if you lose control of yourself, then you lose control of everything.

And people have a memory. They remember things like this. So be conscious of the fact that, am I having to tap aggression to have an assertive conversation? And secondly, and it's related to that, the ways that we assert ourselves, the way that we hold our ground, the way that we argue, we tend to learn so much of that from our parents or any of our upbringing or the people we're around in our formative years.

So maybe sometimes have a look at yourself and see, am I turning into my dad? Am I turning into my mom? And this is where having help from mentors is really useful, especially if you get to work alongside of them as well. Have a role model at work and see how they handle these kind of situations, and you'll grow through that way.

I say something like now, was it you, you're the sum of the seven people you spend the most time with, something like that, or you're the average of them. Your behavior will adapt to what the other seven people are like. Right. Right. Surround yourself with calmly assertive people, and you'll be calmly assertive too.

Galen Low: I think that's a really good guidance around finding a mentor. And I know I'm a little off topic here, but I think it's such an important thing. I mean, I did open with this idea of, well, what, what should be different about how people learn project management? I think we've covered a lot here. Like, it's not just, you know, memorize a textbook.

Not everything's gonna go exactly the way, you know, your PRINCE2 textbook tells you things are gonna go. It's definitely, you know, going to be an area where you need to understand the goals and align people. But that whole notion of finding a mentor, A, it's arguably quick, not quick the journey, but quick to start.

You have someone there in your corner advising you, you know, day over day as you navigate. But I also like that idea that, like, selecting someone should fall into that equation of those seven people who are close to you to, like, rebalance the scales or someone you admire, you know, someone that you aspire to be.

And, you know, I do think that sort of, yeah, demonstrated calm assertiveness is a great thing to look for because I learned it by seeing it, you know? I don't think I could read a book, you know? Uh, well, I, I'm thinking Cesar Millan for some reason, right? So I read the Cesar Millan book, Train a Dog Using Calm Assertiveness.

I don't think that's how I work professionally, but it was the people that I saw in my life, in my career that were able to do it. I respected that a lot because of exactly what you say. I was raised in a way, you know, my dad was more prone to being angry and yelling, and at a certain point in my life, I was like, "I don't really wanna be that," but I didn't have anything else to latch onto.

And I like the idea that a mentor serves as that as well, not just transmitting knowledge from their experience from their brain to your brain, but actually, you know, demonstrating behavior that you can model. I think that's really interesting.

Stuart Taylor: Yeah. It's something that's worth investing your time into and being selective.

And if you can't find a, a mentor, find a role model, and that will go some of the way towards helping you. It's such a difficult topic, though. The amount of times when, you know, you feel emotional and you say and do things and you think afterwards, "Oh my goodness, that was just like a parent, one of the parents, and I shouldn't really be bringing my parents to work with me."

But the reason you get into that kind of state usually, and the reason you become emotional in those situations, can often be because we've got too much of our personal self connected to whatever is being engaged with, whatever's being discussed, what- whatever's being threatened. So if you... Well, that doesn't mean you're not doing well.

It doesn't mean you're failing as a person. It doesn't mean any of that. Take your ego out of this and be... You know, you see these people who get too connected to the work, and they make it part of themselves, and the work is their precious child, and it can never be. Someone can come and take that away from you any day.

Some sponsor can just turn off the tap and say, "There's no more money for it. Sorry. It's gone." And I've been in those situations. I've seen that happen. I've seen that happen, and hundreds of people have been rolled off the company. You know, it's happening frequently at the moment. Don't allow your ego to be so connected to the work.

If the work isn't going well, that's not a reflection on you necessarily. Be honest with yourself if there's something you can do to improve on, and if there's ways that you can be a better project manager as a result, or even just a better corporate citizen. But there's no reason to get upset and angry and defensive just because things start to go wrong.

Galen Low: That's fair. It's funny because it comes back to the thing you said earlier, which is, like, part of it is things are gonna change, and that shouldn't be a surprise. That's, like, the project manager mindset. You know, risk exists, and you have to pay attention to it. It's like that's kind of part of the project manager mindset.

You know, it does come down sometimes to ego as well, right? To be like, okay, things outside of your control. Is your performance based on all the things or, you know, is it only the things that you can control and influence? And also, you know, what are you doing to react to the environment around you?

Stuart Taylor: Yeah.

And a lot of those situations that happen as well, they can be unfair. There's a lot of unfairness that comes into this profession where, you know, somebody else somewhere in the organization will let you down, or they'll make a wrong decision, and somehow you end up carrying the blame for that. Again, you gotta learn to separate your ego from that and see this is just a manifestation of organizational politics taking place, and sometimes fairness doesn't work as it should there.

Just be ready for that. The first lesson that my mentor gave to me, I do mention this, and this becomes a recurring thing in the book, is that if you go out knowing it's going to rain, you don't mind so much when you get wet.

Galen Low: Also bring an umbrella.

Stuart Taylor: But you sometimes have to accept that you're gonna get rained on, and in project management, there's a, a lot of days where it rains.

Yeah,

Galen Low: fair enough. Maybe it's a good point to flip it around because we've been talking a bit about, you know, engaging with sponsors, stakeholder communication, pushing back, and that side of things, but the other thing you mentioned around these leadership skills, and I'm assuming to lead the team through uncertainty, through some of the tumult, through some of the things that, you know, are changing or not going to plan, what is one piece of advice you'd give to somebody starting to be leading a project team that they don't really have formal authority over, that they might be tempted to just be like, "I'm the project manager.

I will command and control you. You do my bidding." What should they do instead?

Stuart Taylor: I had exactly that same situation, and, and I inherited a team, and they were good performers, but they also had the rest of their jobs to be doing as well. They weren't dedicated to the project. And what I found was they were getting so far, they were good, and if pressed, they would hand over something that was of good quality.

But too much of the time, I was having to make up the difference, and I was having to take their slide right up to the next level, take their communication, their outputs, in some cases, policies and procedures, and having to review, find errors, make corrections where necessary, sometimes with time pressures, and it wasn't sustainable.

At the time, I did question myself as to, I knew something wasn't right, and- Something had to change, but I couldn't really put my finger on what it was until the mentor came in and I saw his way of working, which was to be absolutely action-focused. Some-- the habit he had, and I refer to it as tap, tap, tap.

We're sitting in meetings, and he comes in, he's tap, tap, tap on his laptop computer, tap, tap, tap. Every action somebody-- every time somebody says something like, "Yeah, we need to do that," he'd jump in straight away. "Who's doing that, and when are they doing that by?" Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Captured every briefing so there were no vague promises floating around, no misunderstandings around these things.

And then he'd repeat it back e- either at the end of the session or after the session. He'd, he'd share the notes and say, "Have I captured everything correctly here? These are all the actions." And you're used to going into meetings capturing two or three big-ticket meeting actions, and he'd be coming out with like 20 or 30.

And you'd, you'd have your daily stick against five or six of them, and you'd think, "Oh." "Did I say that?" And he's like, "I did say that, and that does have to be done." And then he'd hold you to account on that. So an obsessive drive towards being action and decision-focused, especially in meetings. Don't go to a meeting without there being any actions to consider or decisions to be made.

And if you do go to these meetings, capture every detail that you possibly can from it as well. A lot easier these days with all the AI tools that we've got and the ability to record and transcribe and all that kind of thing, and even do reasoned thinking afterwards as well and analysis on that. You can even get those AIs to analyze your performance in the meetings and let you know how you could do better.

So utilize all of that, but be action and decision-focused at all times, obsessively so. And eventually, what'll happen is that'll just become normal, and you'll have these massive action logs, but they'll be getting completed quickly because you'll be chasing them up on a regular basis as well, even senior people.

And here's a tip for dealing with senior people who take on actions, even if it's people in the C-suite. You might be tempted to just go tiptoeing around the topic with them, and when you chase them up and say, "Oh, hello. No, you might recall we had this meeting, and you might have said that you were gonna do this."

No, no, no, no, no, no. Here's the action you picked up on this date. Can you give me an update please on whether it's completed? That's all it takes. They're too busy to go filtering through all that nonsense. They don't have the bandwidth to deal with that. They'll be annoyed with your long prose- ... than with a very simple, to-the-point message.

Trust me on that. No more tiptoeing. Be direct. Polite- The direct

Galen Low: I like that. Coming back to the tap, tap, tap, what I really like about it versus an AI note taker is that it's a real-time commitment that turns talk into, you said the word decisions, right? Like, people in meetings, and part of the reason why people loathe meetings, I think, is because sometimes it's just talk, and people talk to bounce ideas around, but it doesn't move anything forward by talking.

Can tell it can convert to a decision, but if you're waiting until after the meeting to do that, then you don't have that sort of accountability in the room to be like, "Okay, wait, hold on. Who's gonna own that? You? Okay, great. Now I'm just gonna jot that down." And then that's like part of the not contractual obligation, but the agreement, right?

A decision has been made that this individual is gonna own that piece or those five pieces, and it's mechanical, but decisions are progress, right? That's how we progress. Otherwise, you, we could talk for hours, and then nothing will happen afterwards. So I really, I really like that, and I think that's a great skill for folks who g- again, right, these misconceptions.

If someone was under that misconception that they have been appointed to be the project leader, but all that means is taking notes, and thank God there's an AI note taker, I'll just sit back and do nothing, won't work.

Stuart Taylor: You still need to be fully engaged, even if you are just pressing that point about when will you do it by, so the note taker knows, you know, who's doing it.

Be very, very, very specific, and then, you know, let people know, "I will be chasing you up for updates on this," and you know. The other thing people do sometimes is when they commit to something, they have an optimism bias, and they think, "Well, on the best possible day, I might be able to get this big piece of work done on, mm, if I have all of Friday with no interruptions."

Galen Low: Right.

Stuart Taylor: Have you ever had a Friday with no interruptions? So remind people who are making these commitments, it's not putting you in a position where you're trying to cage people, but you are trying to put some guiderails there. You're trying to put, have some control there. So ask them to be realistic, and if you think they're being overly optimistic, and if they've habitually been overly optimistic, maybe have that conversation with them and say, "Look, I'm not gonna be mad at you if you s- if you think I wanna hear you say it's gonna take one week, and actually it's gonna take two.

I'd rather hear it's gonna take two."

Galen Low: Yeah. "

Stuart Taylor: And I'll work with you to make sure you have no distractions on Friday."

Galen Low: Yeah, there you go. I, I will give you that Friday with no distractions. No, I like it. I wanted to come back to something because, you know, at the beginning we were talking about, okay, well learn it the right way, right?

It's like even if you're given a supposedly simple project or a small project or maybe it's not even called a project, you know, do it right. We talked a little bit about PRINCE2. I wonder though, you know, if there are any misconceptions or obstacles that might be created by someone who is too fixated on learning by the book.

What are the misconceptions around the formal process that sometimes don't fly and are, are the first things that you have to drop when you realize your project actually doesn't follow all of the standards, doesn't, you know, go exactly textbook perfect? The ways of working are a little bit messier and sloppier and dynamic.

What are the things that you see people enter the role and be like, "But I thought I was supposed to do this, this, and this, but it's just, it's not working, and everyone's not doing what I say." And you're like, "Actually, don't worry about that."

Stuart Taylor: The earlier part of the book is all about me making that- discovery where firstly I assume this is how all projects are going to be managed and all projects are going to be delivered.

And the point of the book is to teach me how to deliver projects, not to be a complete person, not to be a manager, not to be a good member of a corporation, and not good at doing all the other kind of work that goes along with that. It's very focused. So expecting everyone else to just automatically be going along with it, especially if they've had no training themselves on it, you know, it's not gonna work, and that's what I, I learned in those early chapters where I was overly reliant on the process.

And you see this sometimes where, and you see it a lot in PMOs, when you have a PMO who's never delivered a project, so they know that the rules are this, and they have blind obedience to it. The rules are this, and it's, okay, they'll repeat that. They'll regurgitate that to everybody, but they don't understand the spirit of the rules.

They don't understand why that rule is there. They don't understand how to defend it. So when some very stressed out project manager who's been pushed to their limits for the whole project suddenly snaps back at you, "Why the hell should I do it your way when it's pointless, and people don't look at it, and they don't look at this piece of the work, and they don't care?"

And they've got no way to push back against that because they never sat there and thought it through, why do we really do this? And, and this blind adherence to the process is one of the greatest dangers a PMO in particular could ever have because you're constantly gonna be called on to defend these things.

And as a, somebody who's maybe delivered a project, you'll at least have some lived experience, and you'll understand, well, in my case, that really helped me. Like, why did I need a stakeholder profile? Well, it really helped me to try to focus in on who these people are. Is it a tick boxing exercise so I can get through a stage gate?

It's that as well.

Galen Low: Sometimes. Yeah.

Stuart Taylor: Maybe to some PMO who's never had to do this before, but for me, this is really insightful. This tells me everything I need to know about these people and informs how I'm gonna interact with them. So you have to see it that way. You have to understand the, the true reason and the benefit for every part of what you're doing.

So just being adherent to the rules that you've learned isn't sufficient. Secondly I got a little bit pompous maybe, a tad arrogant that, and I, I just thought, "Well, I know best practice, and I will invoke the words 'This is best practice' every time somebody comes along and says, 'Well, why should I do it your way?'

'So, 'cause it's best practice.'" Like they're magic words, like abracadabra. It's gonna make this person completely change their mind. And yeah, it has the opposite effect. Mm-hmm. It, it will entrench them, and those words of power to you are meaningless to them, and you need to learn better arguments. And there's two chapters in the book where one where I'm actually showing a project manager how to do project planning better, and it really blows her mind because it helps her to express her plan so much better than it was previously, which was a little bit of a mess.

And she says, "Everyone should do it this way." For sure. So the following chapter is me trying to get everyone to do it that way. It does not go well.

Galen Low: I like that because it's so true that projects look so tidy in a textbook, and in real life they're very messy. And then I love that sort of, well, it's best practicing, which is basically saying because I told you to do it that way, which of course doesn't land like you say, and then realizing again, coming back to that, you know, working, collaborating with people and humans, like everything is a bit of a negotiation.

And, uh, like you said, you do need to persuade people to do a thing, and you need to be willing to entertain somebody else's idea that actually might be a really good one, and that's what I found at the time, and I'm like a, you know, PMBOK fifth edition guy, right? So like at the time I was like, "I don't really have a tool for that.

How do I then go and know what I can change and what I, you know, and what I can't change to, to not impact the rest of the project?" Now, you know, there's more dialogue about tailoring, you know, methodologies and, you know, doing things in a more flexible way. But at the time it was just like it didn't compute, and I was like, "Well, that does sound reasonable, but it's not, as you say, best practice," right?

Like, how is this gonna go?

Stuart Taylor: Yeah, it's true. And the thing is, sometimes you'll learn there are two different ways to achieve the goal that you want, and you'll end up merging them perhaps, or you'll do one more than the other, and that'll mean you're compromising on something. But if you understand the why and the mechanics of those things, at least you'll know what you're giving up when you make that choice.

You'll know what gaps you're leaving, and maybe you'll even find ways to compensate for them. There was a, I don't know, a little bit of a buzzword a, a few years ago about having elasticity in your project delivery method where you can... essentially you're more flexible and more able to do different types of projects and in different ways, and that's considered to be a, a benefit to your organization.

It's true. It is true. But again, having that elasticity without understanding why and why things are important and what they're truly trying to do, rather than just it's a different roadmap entirely, that's really important. You, you miss the point if you don't invest a little bit of thought in that. And flying through a textbook isn't gonna give you that necessarily.

It might do. Uh, there's some very good textbooks out there. But I'd suggest that you need some reflective time as well to really absorb what you're taking in and not just cram for the exam. You know, just try to understand it.

Galen Low: Try to understand the why. I like that. And again, another sort of vote for a mentor as well, where you actually could have a sounding board for some of these things to better understand why.

You said something that really resonated with me that I think is important. You said in the context of a PMO who's never run a project, they, it might not occur to them how these things go, how messy they are, how much we need to flex and negotiate, and it's not so tidy. I think that is actually something that almost everybody should gain an appreciation of.

And to your earlier point, maybe not just by leading projects, maybe just by being part of them and, you know, seeing how they are actually not tidy and not perfect. But I've got this theory I wanted to test with you. This theory that sooner or later, everyone is going to be asked to lead a project. And, you know, my evidence is anecdotal, and I'm sure you could argue that maybe everyone has led a project in some way, shape, or form.

But I'm also looking at all this change in the marketplace in response to things like AI, to macroeconomics, to geopolitics, and it seems like projects are that growth lever that are helping businesses and organizations keep pace with all this change. And my theory is that projects are gonna grow in number, they're gonna increase in complexity, and they're gonna be staffed by a wide variety of cross-functional talent, you know, subject matter experts, who are all gonna be armed with technology right now, namely AI, that helps them work fast.

It's gonna make the communication more complicated. It's gonna make the stakes much higher. And my question to you is, is perhaps this notion of accidentally or informally becoming the project manager starting to be actually less of an accident and more of a rite of passage for all professionals going forward?

Stuart Taylor: Well, it wouldn't hurt them. As I said earlier, this is a very, very useful transferable skill, and they'll have a much greater chance of succeeding in all of those endeavors by having useful project management skills. People look at the world at the moment and, and it's hard to feel optimistic, you know, unless you happen to be running an AI startup.

Everyone else, you're seeing there's, say, geopolitical instability, there's national instability, questions of self and identity. There's AI and all these things I had a manager who, sadly he's not with us anymore, he unfortunately passed away a few years ago. And I didn't know him particularly well, but on one occasion we went for brunch and he gave me this perspective.

I, I don't know where he picked it up from, but I- I'll remember him for the rest of my life for this, which was you get distracted by all these things coming at you so fast, so fast. And it's like you look at the headlines of the news every day, and you'll feel a certain negative way usually. But take a step back.

What was the headline for the month? Take a bigger step back. What's the headline for the year? If there's one headline every year, is it saying that things are getting better or is it things are getting worse? And if things are getting worse, is it entirely worse or is it that are there opportunities in there as well?

Is there something good in there? And keep taking that distant view. And at the time, that really lifted my spirits. We were just coming out of COVID actually when I had that brunch with him. That one stayed with me. So try to take that step back view. And when you are feeling a little bit distracted by all of those external factors, just keep doing that.

And I ... Even if this year has been a bad year, the whole decade most likely hasn't, the whole century hasn't. So take a, a bit of a step back. Okay, we might be in a dip. Things will improve

Galen Low: I like that sort of zooming out perspective, and honestly, I think it ties into the idea that, yes, if you are given the opportunity to lead a project at any point in your career, you're going to learn things about leadership, about business, about people.

But also just there, I think it's also true that you'll learn some resiliency skills. Maybe not a master of resilience, but definitely when you're describing that, I'm like, that's also how projects go, right? You know, like day by day it feels like a slog. There's some terrible moments. When you zoom out, you're like, okay, well, there was this terrible section, but we started off on the right foot.

We'll probably end on the, on the right foot. Zoom out even further and you're like, what are we doing here, actually? We're, like, improving lives. Even if it's that, you know, auto email responder for a complaint in a, a customer support portal, that's improving someone's life. You know? Realizing that they didn't just check a ticket into a, a black hole never to be seen again.

It's establishing this dialogue and then, you know, even the sort of misunderstanding of scope was actually building better relationships with customers. And you keep zooming out, zooming out, zooming out, and you're like, actually, yeah, we're like progressing. We're making progress through projects. That's me as my with my project management lens.

Projects are changing the world, but genuinely I do think that's true, and I think that's a really good perspective to look at it from and to actually embrace an opportunity if given the chance to lead a project. Even if you are a VP and you're leading your first project, all of these things still apply, right?

It's like pause, align, you know, push back where there are opportunities to push back. Think about what the outcome is, advocate for that, negotiate with your team, support your team, make sure that they're realistic so that we can achieve these goals. And yeah, some days are gonna be better than others, but you're gonna learn so much along the way, and maybe don't do it alone.

Maybe find a mentor.

Stuart Taylor: Speaking of resilience, by the way, here's a, a major job interview tip. If ever you find yourself in a job interview for a PMO role, and the very first question in the interview is, "Can you tell me about a time you've had to be resilient?" Maybe just take that as a hint as to what kind of environment you're heading into.

Galen Low: Which is fair. You know? It's, yeah, it's not easy work, but it's rewarding. I think that's fair.

Stuart Taylor: Sometimes.

Galen Low: Sometimes. Yeah, and to your point, sometimes it's totally toxic, and just watch out for the red flags. Okay.

Stuart Taylor: Sometimes you need to step back. You need to zoom out more than a year.

Galen Low: Yeah. Zoom out beyond your current employer.

So I wonder if we can round out just by talking about the future. You had mentioned something to me in the green room that you're gonna be making a bit of a shift in your life and in your PM career. Can you tell us about what you're planning to do next now that the book is out, other than moving on to the sequel, and maybe why you're making that change?

Stuart Taylor: Yeah. I'm currently planning to leave the United Kingdom to move to the UAE, either to Abu Dhabi or to most likely Dubai. This was something I was planning since the end of last year, and I now have a visa and residency for UAE, so I can just stroll through their airport now without even talking to anybody because the AI cameras will detect me and will recognize me as a, a good resident, and I'm allowed in.

Galen Low: Literally stroll in.

Stuart Taylor: It's a different world out there, honestly. It's something else. But my goal there is to set up a, a PMO and assurance consultancy service over there, helping organizations to, firstly to prioritize the kind of work that they need to really be doing in their project space, and then to protecting it with effective assurance.

So yeah, it's big.

Galen Low: Yeah.

Stuart Taylor: It's big risk, and ob- obviously the events of the last two or three months with the, the Iran war has had an impact on that. But What can I say? When it comes to GR politics, I, I've come to realize recently I am the worst at predicting geopolitics. I was talking to somebody the other day about this.

I get them all wrong. Honestly, I, I believed in the weapons of mass destruction story- ... of Iraq. I really thought we needed to intervene in Libya. I thought we needed to intervene in Syria. I never thought that Russia was gonna go into Ukraine again. And, you know, I, I thought, "Well, no, Iran, the whole thing'll be over in a week."

So I'm not gonna make any predictions on this. This is not my area of expertise, clearly. Perhaps I judge things on what they should be rather than what they shouldn't be. I don't know, but I'm not very good at predicting that. But as things currently stand, I have been to Dubai during the conflict, and they seem to be getting on with life as normal, with the exception of every now and again having an alert and sometimes seeing something flying through the sky very fast above them.

I'm optimistic for the region and, you know, one of the biggest drivers for me is safety for my children and, you know, their prospects as well. And from a project perspective, what is really enticing about the area, and this is perhaps the biggest draw for me, almost every project I've been involved with, I'll say certainly for the last decade, has been focused on efficiency, and can we squeeze another penny out of this pound, you know?

And over there, the focus is on growth and expansion, and let's go and do this crazy thing, and, well, you know. They built a city on spectacle over there. Right. Now they're thinking about trying to integrate the whole city 'cause at the moment they've got all these traffic problems, and because I, I think they didn't expect it to be so successful so fast.

So they're trying to build communities fast enough to keep up. They're, they're now s- decided they're gonna build a new airport there that's gonna ... The, the airport on its own, when it's opened, is going to employ 400,000 people.

Galen Low: Wow.

Stuart Taylor: I know. That's a city in its own right, isn't it?

Galen Low: Right.

Stuart Taylor: It's the ambition and the drive over there.

And when I've been there and I've met the people who are there, project professionals, I met some people from a really nice project community over there as well, and just entrepreneurs, people who are just trying to make a success. Such a positive attitude to the point that it's infectious. And then as I said before, surround yourself with people that you want to be like, and you'll be more like that.

So- Optimism, growth, adventure. At this point in my life, maybe, you know, I'm looking forward to that next adventure. There you

Galen Low: go. So

Stuart Taylor: hopefully that'll be a successful one. And it, yes, it will be a project even though nobody said it was.

Galen Low: There you go. There you go. I mean, you know, that's evidence to me that if you have the opportunity to start being a project manager and you get really good at it, eventually you get to pick the projects, and it doesn't have to be the, you know, maybe boring, soul-sucking operational efficiency transformations.

It, you know, there's projects out there creating net new things, driving innovation, and improving lives, and that is something that folks anywhere in their career who become a project manager or who start leading projects can get themselves stuck into as well.

Stuart Taylor: Yeah. I mean, don't me wrong, with efficiency-based projects, there's still something to get excited about and there's still things to be interested in, but it's...

What's been missing from my career so far, maybe the book itself might contribute a little bit towards filling this gap for me, is the ongoing legacy project. I applied to be a part of the London Olympics project team, but I was- Cool ... too early in my career at the time. I didn't even get a reply, let alone a rejection.

And I really felt that I missed out on that because that had a, quite a legacy in London. And, you know, rather than just go chasing Olympics around the world applying, the next thing that came along was the creation of a new bank, and that project ended up being canceled. That was the one where, the, where I mentioned earlier where somebody just said, "No, it's too difficult.

We're walking away," and then everybody got let go. So I want that kind of a legacy project, and until then, it's gonna have to be the books. The books are gonna have to be my legacy or my YouTube channel, but especially the books.

Galen Low: There you go. I like that sort of drive to make a difference, and honestly, the optimism, too, of just finding silver lining in every opportunity until you find the ones that you're really passionate about.

Stuart Taylor: Yeah, absolutely, and I'd say that's an important mindset for anybody in our profession because you'll get the bad days, but, but they're, they're gonna come along. You can count on it. There's a technique called... I, I don't know if you've heard about this, the cookie jar technique.

Galen Low: I haven't.

Stuart Taylor: So whenever something good happens and whenever somebody gives you a compliment or says, "Well done on that piece of work," or you have, in all of our relationships, we have multiple transactions, hundreds of them every day, and when they go well, when you get that positive one, make a note of it somewhere.

Keep track of it somewhere. Because when that miserable day comes along, you can then reach into the cookie jar and you can take one of those.

Galen Low: I see.

Stuart Taylor: And it's not some bizarre affirmation you're making into the mirror to, telling yourself that you, you are a good person. It's somebody else has shared that.

There's a, a success that you can point and say, "Yeah, and you know what? I'm having a bad day on this at the moment, but look what I accomplished before, which I'd completely forgot about until I just pull..." Fill the cookie jar.

Galen Low: I like that. There you go. Stuart, thank you so much for spending the time with me today.

For folks who wanna learn more about you, your book, your YouTube channel, where can they go?

Stuart Taylor: Okay. Amazon for the book, Becoming the Project Manager. I've got a YouTube channel, which is now called Stuart Taylor Project Management. And i- if you're thinking about working with me in London or Dubai, go to influentialpmo.com.

And I'm on LinkedIn all the time.

Galen Low: Yeah, of course. Yeah, there you go. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, again, congrats on the book. It's been topping a lot of lists of best-selling project management books. Good luck to you in Dubai, and thank you for sharing your insights.

Stuart Taylor: Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure to talk to you.

Galen Low: All right, folks. That's it for today's episode of The Digital Project Manager Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you want even more tactical insights, case studies, and playbooks, create a free account with us at thedigitalprojectmanager.com.

Until next time, thanks for listening.