Announcer
Do you wonder if others are dealing with the same project management challenges as you not sure where to turn for guidance and leadership? Office hours are in session as we discuss project management and PMOs with global leaders hearing their story and learning their secrets to success. Our goal is to empower you and help you elevate your PMO and project management career to new heights. Welcome back to Project Management Office Hours with your host, PMO Joe.
PMO Joe
Welcome everyone to Project Management Office Hours. We're the number one live project management radio show in the US, broadcasting to you from the Phoenix Business Radio Studios in Tempe, Arizona. Your host, PMO Joe. And for the next hour or so, we'll be talking project management and agile and anxiety and a whole bunch of different topics with our special guest. Of course, we're coming to you at a special time this week is we have Fatima Buci joining us from Australia. So rather than asking her to be up in the middle of the night, we accommodate, of course, and try to make this a more hospitable time for her.
PMO Joe
Before we get into the show with Fatima, I just want to mention the PMO Leader community site has been creating such useful content. We are now into a rhythm. We're now producing every 15th of the month, The Great Practices Podcast, which is a fantastic episode hosted by John and Chris as they talk to PMO leaders around the world and get from them a great practice that they've picked up over the years and they're willing to share that with all of you. We have the spotlight on Thriving Services Webinar series.
PMO Joe
They just had their first episode in September featuring the PMO Squat, which was nice to be in the spotlight, and the next show could be coming up on October 20. That will be a monthly show as well. So on the first of each month or around that time, you'll get a new spotlight on a service related company and also the certifications around the world. If you're wondering about the Alphabet soup of project management related certifications, our host, Michael O'Connor, interviews people from one of the Project Management Association.
PMO Joe
Last month he talked with Rebecca Fox from the Association for Project Management or APM, as you may know them, and you can catch all of those episodes. Plus some new shows, such as The Book Club, which we're going to be coming out soon, and you can visit all of that on the PMO Leader website at www. Dot. The PMO Leader dot. Com. Also want to thank our sponsors, the PMO Squad, the Premier PMO consulting firm in the United States. You can check out their website to learn about the purpose driven PMO and ask yourself, Where are you in your Project management journey.
PMO Joe
They can help you work your way and navigate through all the pitfalls that you can face along that journey. Finally, a reminder. All of these shows are recorded and we release them as a podcast. You can catch all the past episodes on Apple Podcast Spotify or I Heart Radio or Project Management office hours dot com. Go out there and check out all those great episodes. Speaking of past episodes, Fatima Buci is a repeat guest for us, and she's joining us live. Thank you, Fatima, for joining us once again.
PMO Joe
Look forward to chat today.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Sounds good. I'm sure have. We promised that we would do a second episode because we had so much to talk about. So I figured that we might as well do it. That's good timing. And thanks for making it a good time for me this morning.
PMO Joe
Absolutely. For those maybe who didn't catch the first episode or aren't familiar with you, can you just do a brief intro and share a little bit with the listeners? A little bit of your story?
Fatimah Abbouchi
Yeah, sure. I fell into project management about 18 years ago, and I've been ever since I've worked in over 25 companies across 16 countries and 16 industries globally. I've worked across all games of project management right through from strategy to deliver execution and quite heavily in the PMO and governance space. Over the last six years, I've spent pretty much the last six years figuring out the divide between the governance needed and governance needed for an agile environment because obviously agile is growing so much more in the last I think personally in the last ten years, and it has in the last 20 or 30 years.
Fatimah Abbouchi
So there's a big disconnect. There's a lot of companies that have gone down different paths. I'm sure we'll talk about that. So I've basically been helping to work out how we group those gaps. And then more recently, I've set up a not for profit the mental health space, which is a space that I'm very, very passionate about and also some new workshops that hopefully will be bringing to market very soon as a result of some of the great work that the team's done during walk down, which has been a bit of a quiet time for us, and it's just been a good opportunity to see things move from there.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Yeah. So all things projects and PMOs, it's my bread and butter, and I really do enjoy doing that as well as recent work with the FEMA Leader as well, which has been a really good new opportunity and partnership for this year as well.
PMO Joe
Yeah. I was about to mention and full disclosure for our audience. Fatima and I have gotten to know each other pretty well over the past, I guess, six plus months, and we have formed a partnership so that the PMO Leader is now a joint venture between the two of us, where we're collaborating to make sure that we bring an agnostic global community together, that we're not tied to a specific methodology or framework, but we're tied to the industry. We're tied to getting better. So the PMO Leader has become the go to global hub for information sharing, networking and services.
PMO Joe
If you're a PMO Leader or in a PMO, certainly go out there and check it out and excited about some of the new features that will be rolling out in the months to come. So let's jump into something that you had mentioned. We had talked about it a little bit on the last show, but to be honest, I didn't really know you back then as well as I do now. And when we start talking about mental health and anxiety, it starts to almost become an uncomfortable conversation, right?
PMO Joe
Because it's not part of maybe the norms of society. And now that I've gotten to know you a little bit more and you've established Return of the Panda, I feel more comfortable talking about it with you and help everybody understand a little bit about what your mission is and what you're working to accomplish with Return of the Panda.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Thanks, Joe. And you're right. It was very early days, but a lot of work has been done today just for background for those that may not know or have heard me speak before. I've been suffering from an anxiety disorder, probably since my on pretty much from all my adulthood. It's been quite a long time, actually, since I fell into the world of anxiety, not knowing what it was prior to that scary night that I had, where I've had a full blown panic attack and injecting hospital, I've spent probably the last 15 plus years trying to crawl back from the overwhelming Ness anxiety as it debilitates people.
Fatimah Abbouchi
And obviously it affects people in different ways. And I understand that completely. My anxiety is a bit of a general general anxiety. And one of the things that I realized over the years is there's a lot of hard work and learning that I was fortunate to be part of, whether it's through having conversations with psychologists, whether it's through reading books that I might have found, whether it's through simple techniques, things that I've personally been taken and apply to my own life and has helped me. And since then I've also helped others in my family as well.
Fatimah Abbouchi
A number of people in my family have anxiety or depression or both. And so I've been really fortunate to be able to share those learnings. And the idea of return to the Panda was really after so many years suffering from anxiety. I remember talking to my husband one day and every time I would get really overwhelmed and anxious, I would cry bags under my eyes and make up smudged everywhere. And one day he said to me, look the pandas back, and I just realized, Hang on a minute, that sort of language there.
Fatimah Abbouchi
It's just so universal. It's so simple to understand. And I spent so many years trying to help people understand what is anxiety. So I set up Return as a Pandas, our first not for profit. We're still sort of building it up and getting out of for public status here, but it's ultimately aimed at inspiring and educating and informing suffering that they're not alone. I feel for them because I've been where they are, and I'm hoping by inspiring and sharing my story and providing practical support that it will help provide some reassurance and comfort whenever they need it.
Fatimah Abbouchi
I want to embrace some west encouragement and support to help in the stigma associated with anxiety and amongst that bring you products and services and tips and techniques and materials and all sorts of things that can help people in a really practical way to supplement all of theory that's out there on mental health. And so return of the handle is my new baby, my new business baby. And I'm really proud of it. And I only just start getting started.
PMO Joe
But I'm looking forward to sharing more with everyone and one of the I don't know if it's good news or bad news. I guess one of the side effects of hosting a show where I talked to the world twice per month live is people get to know a little bit about me more than just the professional and everyone knows. My oldest son went to Navy boot camp this year to get into the Navy. And while he was in boot camp, he started suffering from anxiety. He had symptoms prior to going into boot camp, but nothing like he was experiencing in boot camp.
PMO Joe
And you and I chatted about this and you had given me some kind of tips to be able to chat through with him. Unfortunately, you can't really chat to them directly. So you write a letter with some ideas and it gets there two weeks later, and by the time they respond back, they're beyond it. But anxiety impacted him so much. But people don't know. I don't think we've gotten this part of the story. He had a fall out of boot camp. He didn't make it right.
PMO Joe
He asked to be let go, and it wasn't from physical capabilities. It wasn't from desire was he couldn't handle the anxiety of it. And now that he's home, a lot of that is subsided and he's getting back into his normal rhythm of things. But it impacts all of us, even if it's not us. Right. And I think that's part of your messaging, right. As you talked about your family, how many of us out there are impacted, either ourselves or family members or friends that deal with these symptoms and we don't know how to work with them and how to help them through all that.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Yeah. And thank you for sharing your story as well. It is something that it took me quite a long time to want to speak up about it, because for a long time, timing the corporate ladder and doing all this work, I always believed and was proven wrong that if I speak up about my mental health, that I would be not promoted. Questions my people would question my ability. They wouldn't want to work with me. But it came to a point to me where I just got it became a point in time where I just got so concerned that we were sort of hiding mental health under the covers and a lot of times, particularly what I've seen in corporate.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Very much so I think covers actually opened the door for a wider conversation on mental health, which is amazing if one positive has come from it. And to me it was like I got to a point in my career. I said, you know what? If people don't want to work with me or don't want to eat with me or want to judge my work based on the fact that I have a mental health condition, then that's their decision. And I then took a public stand by joining Australia's largest not for profit, a mental health organization called Beyond Blue, who is one of the most recognizable in the country, if not the most recognizable, and started volunteers speaking for them.
Fatimah Abbouchi
And then what I realized just to your point, just making some simple examples and stories of things that happened to me. I will call one day being in a in a presentation with a large corporate group talking about mental health. And then someone came up to me after the session and said, I can't believe that what you just said that happens to me. I didn't know that was anxiety. I thought I was crazy if something was wrong with me and they went out and seek help.
Fatimah Abbouchi
And another gentleman, same similar story. One year when I was speaking, talking and explain the symptoms and signs of anxiety. Then a year later, when I went back to that same organization, he said to me that he helped using some of the tips and some of the free resources that were also provided at the time to help his wife overcome her challenges in the bulimia and anorexia space. So it's just so powerful when you just have to give a little example. And I think us as leaders, particularly in CEOs, about businesses.
Fatimah Abbouchi
The more we share and are open to being okay with the fact that we all have our own mental health challenge in some way, the more it will normalize it and help other people in organizations to be a bit more empathetic and sympathetic to that. Yeah, it's great to know that little tips like that can make all the difference no matter how small they are.
PMO Joe
And I think maybe it's the times we live in. But Simone Biles, during the Olympics, of course, was dealing with some anxiety issues that really in the States here brought it front and center. But when we're at work, if a coworker has a broken leg and they come in with a cast on their leg, we want to hold the door for them. We want to help them get to their seat. We'll go run and get them a coffee here. We want to take extra steps to care for them.
PMO Joe
But we can't see anxiety the same way. Right. So that's not real, right? You don't really have something. You're just saying that you're just using it to pull sympathy card. How do we get to a point where acceptance becomes normal, that you don't have to see it to know that it's there. Yeah.
Fatimah Abbouchi
100%. It's really interesting. I call it the invisible illness because it is so invisible. And your example, there is absolutely. So I use that analogy in a lot of presentations, and it helps streamlines the understanding of what we're talking about is literally an illness that's one of, you know, mental health in general is one of the biggest, if not the biggest. I think globally in terms of up there in terms of conditions that we need to be concerned about, and the rates associated with that are just increasing and have increased significantly in the last couple of years.
Fatimah Abbouchi
I think for me, it's also it's also about understanding that everybody's mental health is different. So I have anxiety. And Thankfully, I haven't gone through any depression. But people in my family have. So my anxiety might be about certain things. So, for example, Joe, you've worked with me now, you know, busy running companies have got a team of ten. I'm working with T. One teacher clients. We're running a multi million dollar projects of work for companies and helping them. That doesn't give me anxiety. I'm okay with that.
Fatimah Abbouchi
But if you said to me, for me, there's a lot of anxiety on the health side, even though I'm a healthy person. But for other people, it might be something else altogether. They might have an obsessive compulsive disorder or for others, they might suffer from another type of anxiety. So we're all different. And I think that assuming that people who have a particular out mental health condition is the same, and because they get through it, you're going to get through it. And it's not like that.
Fatimah Abbouchi
So I really feel like we just need to start talking more about it and really, simply at the very minimum, making it okay to say, I just need a little break and allows people to do that, whether it's because they've got a full blown anxiety disorder or whether they're just getting some challenges that particular day. And I think we have to make that okay. So people can look after themselves because the men took health and their physical health is more important than anything else.
PMO Joe
Yeah. And I bet there are some people out there listening right now saying enough about this already. It's a project management show. Why are we talking about anxiety? I'm at the health and project management, but I go back to discussions we've had with Ruth Pierce and Carol Oster Wheel and Dr. Berber Trout Line and Josh for Mire and Stephen Foamer and many others where we've talked about projects or people, and if you as a PMO leader or a project manager, don't understand the people on your team that you're working with and the way they're influenced, then you're not going to be maximizing your potential or your team's potential.
PMO Joe
And really, this is certainly it's beyond project management, of course. But it's also so important to project management if we truly are going to be leaders of teams that we have to be able to understand how to work with each of our teammates individually and the challenges that they may be dealing with, whether it's mental, physical or professional, how do you connect those the professional world of Amo and the nonprofit world of Return of the Panda and your personal experiences? Do they ever overlap and intermingle and to people say, Listen, you're a project management person.
PMO Joe
Go back in the corner and don't preach to me about mental health. What do you know about that?
Fatimah Abbouchi
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like it for me. They're completely interrelated in every sense of the word. Part of the reason why we also set up Return of the Panda is I do get asked from time to time by clients to to help with that sort of the fat side of things. And, you know, helping up this culture in an organization, people assume that culture is one thing or another. There's a whole realm of things that relates to that. And sometimes it is that people have challenged and struggling.
Fatimah Abbouchi
I've seen so many teams in the last couple of years, specifically, that how absolutely drowning in work. They are overwhelmed. They are struggling beyond beyond measure. And then some managers are overloading more work. But instead of stopping to ask them, hang on, how can we make it more simple when we think about PMO and project management and creating efficiencies and removing ways and eliminating Duplication, that's at the core of everything that I like to do. So for me when I go into an organization, I don't think about just what can I do to achieve goals that I'm trying to achieve?
Fatimah Abbouchi
I think, how can I make life easier for this stuff? How can I make it easier for the people that have to deliver this web? Where can we remove ways in Duplication? The more that you alleviate those things, it's going to help give space for people to focus on their own physical and mental health. But often companies don't realize that there is more underlying issues that they're not seeing. So one of the things that I think companies have been doing a lot better with is they've improved their employee system programs, which I think is great because it means trained professionals by no means am I a mental health professional?
Fatimah Abbouchi
I've only got experiences to talk about, but in these organizations, they're bringing in counselors and trained psychologists, psychiatrist to actually work with people. And I think for us as managers and individuals at the very minimum, if I can see some signs, if I can see someone struggling, sometimes I've had people open up to me about very serious physical conditions that they've had as a consultant to hear that it's my duty to make sure that they are that person feel safe. And if that's maybe asking them to go to a particular place, whether it's the employee assistant program or maybe referring them to mental health hotline, whatever it might be, it's just being aware of that.
Fatimah Abbouchi
And I think that's too completely intertwined. And I think you can't focus on just the business side of it without thinking about people's mental health, because like I said, it's people at the end of the day.
PMO Joe
Yeah. Thank you for all of that description. And how can we start digging into the PMO type stuff here in a second? But how can people learn more about the nonprofit and get involved if they like a big place to start is go to www.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Return of the Panda. Org and on our website you'll find ways to contact me more information. We've also got a resources page with help find things that have been useful for me, whether it's a checklist to check your mental health et cetera and put us for rather reputable sources. And also if you register on our website, you'll be notified of a product that I'll be launching to help those that are suffering like me that I use that I think can really make a difference. So if you want to get in touch with me, WW dot return of the Panda.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Org best place to start or violin in as well.
PMO Joe
Awesome. And I wanted to make sure that this was our first topic on the show today because it's the most important topic on the show today. You know, we're in the project management community, but first and foremost, we're people at the PMO squad. We don't talk about work life balance. We talk about life work balance. We have it wrong, right? It's reversed. It's supposed to be life before work. And too often people talk about creating a work life balance. And I think it's important on topics as special and as significant as anxiety and mental health that we put it where it belongs and it is more important than project management all day long.
PMO Joe
And it needs to be talked about that way without you.
Fatimah Abbouchi
If you're not have mentally or physically healthy, you're not good to anyone, not in your own business or anything. So you got to prioritize it and make time. It's not finding time. It can make time for it.
PMO Joe
Absolutely. Alright, so let's shift gears and work towards our PMO and project management space. We the PMO Leader posted a question on their LinkedIn page yesterday asking a question to the community about what type of training are you planning for you or your team. And the choices were agile leadership, PMO or project management. And I still go out there and vote. Everybody right. Go out to the PMO Leader LinkedIn page and vote. But I was surprised by the early returns, right? When people think project management or PMOs, rather, they think project management, program portfolio or project management office.
PMO Joe
But the voting on the pole is showing that the number one training they're getting is an agile. So how is this all happening? Fatima, how are we getting agile and the PMO coming together as something where it seemingly used to be two separate worlds are now merging into one.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Yeah, absolutely. It's actually really interesting. I did see and I did vote as well. I didn't vote a job, a better leadership, but it was interesting because I don't know if the actual statistics on it, but the rise in Agile in organizations. I'm working with a lot of large corporate businesses in the last, particularly in the last five or six years. The amount of agile types of training, whether it's bringing in specific methodologies that have an agile flavor, whether it's mindset training, whatever it might be, is growing a lot of a larger organizations globally.
Fatimah Abbouchi
But referencing is the Australian landscape have gone down the path of Agile ways of working, which to them basically means bringing in for most students, it's a hybrid version of an agile framework or overall bringing in particular methodology, whether is from or safe or whatever it might be. And what that's meaning? What's happening? And I started seeing this about six years ago before I set up Agile Management office, which is really interesting how it's developed. They're training the traditional project team. So project managers and their corresponding delivery teams, what ends up happening is over the last five or six years, people in PMO, whatever you call your PMO in your organization, I'm just going to say governance, right.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Those groups of people, as usual in the white paper, I talked about this. They don't really get much training. They don't really get much budget for training. The don't really get much authority for a lot of things unless you're at the enterprise level. And so they're going, oh, okay. Everyone over here is now doing some sort of new methodology and new practices and new mindset techniques, all relating to the flavor of the agile umbrella. Big a agile, small agile, and they're not keeping up. So PMOs are not keeping up.
Fatimah Abbouchi
So what PMOs are now doing to supplement that is we're gonna go get that training. We're gonna go get that particular training. We're gonna learn scrum. We're gonna be training all of the different methods that I exist out there and starting to try to bridge the gap that way. The challenge is those train majority of them. From what I've seen for a long time, I didn't have a big emphasis on governance and the associated elements that are really truly relevant for POS and so I think there's still a bit of a gap.
Fatimah Abbouchi
And that's the gap that I'm currently seeing where people are trying to get that. But it's not answering all of the questions that they need to solve the problems they have at the moment.
PMO Joe
And I think the dynamic you discuss, right is again, you had mentioned earlier, something good. They came out of covet. Another thing that's come good out of covet, I believe, is workers have become empowered to say, even if you want us to come in the office, I don't want to anymore. We're going to work from home. And what's happening to PMO is, I think, is workers saying, I don't want to do it your way, the traditional way anymore. We need to be more agile to serve our customers.
PMO Joe
I think the marketplace is telling us that we have to be more agile doesn't mean we have to give up what is still necessary. But it certainly means maybe what is old is no longer right. And there must be a new way to be working.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Yeah, 100%. It's the same here with people having choice now. I think I don't know about your market, but the market here is so much demand now for people, for Star, a lot of people I don't think are moving as much, especially because there's still some uncertainty. There's a lot of demand. So candidates has a lot more choice. They have a lot more options. And so it's a lot harder for clients. So they have to sort of accept and be supportive of the way that people want to work these days.
Fatimah Abbouchi
And I think the way that people want to work is not just them as individuals, but as teams. How do we work? And we need to find ways to bridge the gap between what delivery does and the way that we need to still govern. People assume that in an agile environment, there's no governance and control. That's complete rubbish. The reason for you think about it. A bank is not going to turn off governance and controls just because we want to let the tinsel here and be autonomous.
Fatimah Abbouchi
There's a disconnect between what we invest is just going to happen really happens. And I'm seeing that first hand in a number of organizations, large organizations that have gone down that path. So I think we definitely need to be more flexible. We definitely need to change the way we work. Pmos need to change the way they work. What worked ten years ago is not going to work for the next ten years. And I've been trying to talk about that for six years. And now I I've sort of been saying to people, we need to focus on capability.
Fatimah Abbouchi
It's not about me as a PMO manager at you as a PMO manager or who you're hiring. It needs to be about the capability that we want to bring in and how we bridge that gap between the agile environment and the non agile environment. Is this still a big divide?
PMO Joe
Yeah. I had done a personal poll out on LinkedIn a couple of weeks back asking, Where are you getting your training from? Is it in person or online and are you paying it for it yourself or is your company paying for it? I think Pre COVID a great majority of the training was in person, paid by companies.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Yeah.
PMO Joe
The poll results were a complete opposite of the training being received today is online, and of that, two thirds of it is being paid by the individual themselves and not the company. And I think this goes back to if I'm working from home, where am I going to go get my training in person? I have to get it online. And if I'm online and I'm not around a team, I'm not asking my boss for what's the training budget. I'm just going to go get the course. I'm going to take it.
PMO Joe
And if it's affordable, I'm not going to worry about it. It's again. The capabilities are shifting. The work environment is shifting, forcing us to be able to work differently. And I think the PMO the I'm going to have a staff meeting where every PM is going to come in and they're going to talk about the status of their project, and we're going to build a giant dashboard. I can't do that anymore because we're all in a remote setting. So we're being forced to have a different set of capabilities to be able to deliver value back to our organizations differently.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Yeah. I think it's really interesting because you're right. With things being remote, that's definitely force the shift, and it probably accelerated it people. So a lot of organizations didn't even have technology that they were using to do virtual meetings and things like that. They've had to elevate that and do a lot of projects to get some of that off the ground as well. I think for me it's about focusing on how do we increase overall collaboration and productivity. From that perspective, we're working remotely, and we probably will for a little while.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Yeah. But still, it doesn't mean you don't have collaboration or productivity. We need to increase productivity more. So, in fact, because you get less time with people and everyone's working different hours. It's for me capabilities about incremental focus on the specific needs of the organization, that team, that delivery function. At that point in time, it's about reducing risk, reducing duplication. It's helping the PMO to help delivery team stop pushing back on them because we know that that happens a lot as well. It's about being flexible.
Fatimah Abbouchi
It's about I basically say it's about putting agility into governance, not putting governance into agile. And to me that's at the heart of it. And he minds me to figure out how to do that. I feel like we have been practicing that for the last six years of business and really gotten to a point where it now makes sense. And so next year, the first workshop around Agile and the PMO will kick off to cover a lot of the learnings that we've had that we've bumped a later because it's just so much that we've got to cram in into it to surely share those learnings and insights.
PMO Joe
You read my mind because I was going to ask about the workshop. You had mentioned them at the beginning during your intro, and that seemed like a perfect time to ask it. And you mentioned it. So with some of the details, what can people expect from that workshop?
Fatimah Abbouchi
So at the moment, the one that one is happening right now that we're doing virtually is about project management for non project managers, and that's really to help all of the peripheral functions that work with projects, understand projects, better, HR, finance, etc. And it's something that we're running online and virtually, and it's a series. So it's over a period of weeks and it can be flexible. The agile in the PMO one is about helping POS that are ready to make a change and are looking to find ways to bridge the gaps and the approach and using the AMA methods, the approach on how to do that.
Fatimah Abbouchi
So it's not going to dictate. You must do this and you must do that. It's more about what's the journey that you need to take to help bring your PMO on that agile. I'm gonna say agile train, but I don't want to confuse it with the release train, but bring it on that agile journey and help bring the business and bring the delivery teams on board that journey. And there's multiple modules. So we have probably about I think it's about six to eight modules at the moment, and it will cover everything from let's just start off with what is our agile and what is out there that relates our Gil, whether it's the methodologies that people use when they're thinking about it, the mindset side and all of the activities and behaviors across the different capabilities of PMI.
Fatimah Abbouchi
So it's really very long and yeah, I think it's not going to be for everyone. I think some people that are not really willing to change the way that they've done something for 20 years probably won't like it. But if you're ready to be innovative and think about new things, I think it'll be really great.
PMO Joe
Yeah. I always enjoy going into clients and just ask, why do you do it that way? And the answer is, well, that's the way we've always done it. And it's like, well, I think now is the perfect time to stop doing it the way you've always done it, right. I mean, obviously things are different. It can't be the same from 20, 1510 years ago. It's a new world. It's a new business. It's new customers. Everything else has evolved.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Why hasn't your process 100% even the PMOs themselves. I mean, what I did 15 years ago or in the first PMO? Yeah, there's obviously insight on lessons line that I've taken along. But the PMO that I'm helping an organization at the moment, what I'm doing for them. They are one of the first questions I got asked by one of the managers. So what kind of PMO are you putting in place for us? And I said, I don't know that yet. This one's day, one, I don't come in knowing because then I'm ignoring their environment, their culture, their process, their current situation.
Fatimah Abbouchi
What stage are they up to? We've got an evil coming out that we'll talk about this a little bit more. But what stage are they up to? Have they ever heard of a PMO before, or am I coming in? And this is completely NetEnt being foreign to them, or are they someone like a really large organization has had so many, some great ones and maybe some Mosso. Great. So you've got to understand that before you can really make an assessment on what you're going to do and any PMO that comes in and says, right, this is why I'm going to do.
Fatimah Abbouchi
After a couple of days, I would say that they're probably going to get it wrong and not bring in that flexibility and agility that's needed for the new world.
PMO Joe
Pmo in a Box is a nice slogan, right. But it's really impossible to do that. Right. There aren't two POS that are exactly the same. How can we have a product that's fit for everyone?
Fatimah Abbouchi
Yeah, I agree with you. And I think that probably one period of time, even for PMO in a box. Using that analogy was something that made sense. I mean, obviously that was my naivety. And I definitely now have it, you know, in so many places, I'm going, wow, this is so different. Industry, different country, different. So the way that the way that sort of I've been going about it now is, as I said, about capabilities. It's about bridging the companies gaps using capabilities, and it's about helping them to identify what they need, what capability do they need and then giving the framework to actually roll out based on developing cocreating a roadmap with them, and then you start putting things in place.
Fatimah Abbouchi
You don't just come in and start putting things in place because like we've learned from Agile. If you don't have a clear upfront product owner, that is clear or clarity on what they want to achieve, or you don't have clarity on what you're building. You're going to get into a lot of trouble. And obviously we know that some project Management 101, but we should use that in PMOs as well. And often I don't think we do.
PMO Joe
I'm going to throw an oddball topic off at here. Now. You had published, I don't know, maybe a few months back that you were starting up swimming lessons. Yeah. How did that at one point. I know you were posting updates. I didn't see the conclusion. You may have already published this and maybe I'm late to the party, but how did it progress? How did it go for you?
Fatimah Abbouchi
So I'll tell you that at the end it's on ours because we have such strict lockdown laws that they are not allowed to continue with them. But if I take you to start, the reason I started swimming lessons is as I nearly drowned in high school, you know, Olympic swim uh I think it was Olympic size swimming pool and the was completely terrified about it. Ever since then, we never could afford summing lessons growing up. So that was something that we never did. But during the journey I've tried many times in my adult life to do soon reasons and I've never been able to get there.
Fatimah Abbouchi
But more recently I realize it was a mindset shift when I realized it was the mindset that was holding me back, the fear, the anxiety and the mindset I was able to actually get really good. And I think I've improve to a point with you throw me in the deep end. I probably could survive. Unlike in high school, I nearly drunk.
PMO Joe
Yeah, I can't remember the reference, but I saw something recently. There was a young girl who was getting swimming lessons and they had progressed to the point where she was going to have to swim underwater and she was fighting it right, telling her parents, I can't go, that's it. I'm done not going to do it. So the mom said, alright, that's fine. I understand we're around Halloween time. Let's do some bobbing for apples and they got a big tub, filled it up in water, put the apples in there and she was going down.
PMO Joe
She was grabbing the apples with her face and come out and mom said, you did it. She said, what he goes, yeah, I got an Apple. I said, no, you put your face in the water because there's no different than being able to swim under water. And the only difference was the mindset shift. It went from something enjoyable versus something she was dreading. And I think that you spoke to the mindset shift. I want everybody to understand that how powerful the mind can be, right as a barrier, but also as something that can motivate and drive us as well.
Fatimah Abbouchi
And our employees in the workplace and the people you need to get on the bus so that you can make the change that you know your project or PMO is making for the organization. It's the mindset. So I love that story. I can resonate with it quite well. But you have to also be aware that the mindset you have to go now. I understand. And it took me a long time, most of my life, my life to have that connecting sort of point. But with going back to the anxiety side of things and the way the biggest path overcoming that significantly for me was around education.
Fatimah Abbouchi
So understanding. It like we would any other topic you want to learn about, but also the mindset and the belief that you can get that or you can achieve more. So 100% all about mindset.
PMO Joe
Well, hopefully as your country gets closer to opening up and you get back to swimming lessons, I want to know how it wraps up red. I want to find out how it goes.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Well, so you don't hear from me, you'll know, probably around. Look, I promise I'm still fearful of the beach, so I probably won't go to that extent. I like swimming pools. I'll stick to the sun pool.
PMO Joe
But I'll keep you post as the show every time I think of beach in Australia, I think of Steve Urban and his family and everything. The guy who is least afraid of it, and he ended up obviously having a tragic accident. So yeah, stay away from the beach if you're not comfortable there. Right?
Fatimah Abbouchi
Definitely. No, no.
PMO Joe
So the PMO leader, right. We're partners in this. We're trying to promote and create a global community. What can you share with listeners as to why it's something that they should be interested in and go check out and where they can get value about it.
Fatimah Abbouchi
I think the thing that I'll probably start with is the fact that it's been about six years that I've been in business and I've not really ever considered partnering with anyone or anything because not that there's not good ideas out there. But when you partner, you're going to you want to actually believe in what it is that you're actually partnering with and you want to know that you can add value. And I think what I really like about the Pro Leader nine is the membership free, and this may sound like a selfish, but it's completely not.
Fatimah Abbouchi
But the fact that right now the thing I love is we've got a book club that will tell you about what people are reading that is going to help you. I think mine feed reaches on which is exciting or the white people, too. You know, you've got a podcast series with different people. You've got the thing I'm looking forward to is having somewhere which tells you all the certifications from all the different providers as a place to being. We're just selling this provider. We're selling this method or we're selling this book or.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Well, it's not like Joe, you and just we're selling our workshops and our methods and that's it. No, no. Every methodology that exists is welcome to be part of it. So I kind of see it as like a central hub of information for people. And to me, that's exciting because I feel like I feel like and I try to be an educator, learning lessons and then sharing those for people even don't make those mistakes or maybe teach me something from something I've learned. So I think the PMO leader brings all of that together.
Fatimah Abbouchi
And I think the part of it that's really powerful is PMOs now more than ever are being called upon, which is very different a few years ago to be leaders. And so how do we do that? And that's what I think we're trying to help people see. And it's so multicultural. We've got how many ambassadors do we have at the moment?
PMO Joe
I think we're over 40 ambassadors. You probably should know that number, but that's a good guess.
Fatimah Abbouchi
I think it's growing and it's global. So at the moment, thinking about some upcoming white pages and work, it's like, okay, what about questions about something that's happening in the African region? Okay. I'll talk to Billy or something that's going on in Spain. We will call Leonardo or something that's going on. So just having that global perspective on lots of things, whether it's workshops, books, you know, good blogs to read and the community, it's just so exciting to me. And so that's why I was really keen to be part of it.
Fatimah Abbouchi
And I feel like I can funnel my PMO energy because that's only one part of projects and governance and strategy that I do into this because it's so exciting. So I love it. I actually love being part of it.
PMO Joe
And that a leader officially launched in April 2. So it's still pretty new. We're closing in on 700 members, which is amazing from over. I think it's now close to 70 countries. Membership is free. We have our own podcast, we have multiple webinar series. We've got technology vendors that are supporting the community financially. Again, it's free, so it's a resource, easily accessible for everybody. It's really great to be able to see the community come together and rally around the industry, right? Not around. Hey, why does your certification cost so much?
PMO Joe
We don't have a certification, right? We're not selling that. It's just an opportunity to again get knowledge, share and exchange information, get learning, and to be able to get services if I want them. It's amazing how that can be responded and having a pulse on what's going on in regions and countries.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Which I think is exciting because, I mean, I'd love to travel to every country in the world and find out what exists, if anything on PMI project management, but I can't I don't have that opportunity, right? I take a really long time. So having that, I think, is so great. And I think the thing that also really society. If you think about the work that we've done in the last six to twelve months or from when you originally had the idea to where we are now, we've got little squad in all of these different regions and doing we've got a book cup squad.
Fatimah Abbouchi
So we're actually building it in an agile way. We've got a iterative planners of releases and the things that we're trying to develop. We're getting feedback and releasing and getting feedback and releasing a we're doing a lot of those things. So we're applying Jiminee, we're applying a job small agile. And I think for a PMO community to do that is just one step closer to them.
PMO Joe
Really understanding that delivery space better and being a lot more valuable for organizations where maybe they are not so much another item that I received recently that to help me know that it's being successful is we've had three separate PMI chapters reach out to us, asking to partner with us because they don't have services for PMO leaders within their chapters, because PMI really focuses on the individual.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Yeah.
PMO Joe
And they're not from the US. They're not from Australia, there's one from the Middle East, there's one from Europe, and there's another one in Asia. And until we have those partnership or collaborative agreement signed, I don't want to mention anything, but that is, though, we're refreshing to know that there's people reaching out to us now, not just to become a member, but saying, how can our chapter collaborate with you as an organization to be able to benefit our membership? And that is what's really empowering to me to be able to see the reaction within the industry.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Yeah. I think that's yeah, it's incredible. And it's such a short period of time. I would like to circle back on to the the leadership side of this. And I think something that might be really interesting is I feel like I don't know about you. You probably impede my longer than I have. But, you know, my experience at the beginning of the sort of my experience 18 years ago, I was really bad, like there wasn't much going on. It was very light touch it then accelerated. And I saw quite quite a growth to it then probably.
Fatimah Abbouchi
I'd say in the last maybe six to nine years, I would say that there was saying to be a shift away from PMO's, and I saw PMOs being shut down in droves. I saw people going, we don't need them. We're about to do agile. We don't need them. We don't need them. And then I would say in the last three years, I'm seeing such a prominence of if you just look on job boards, famous job boards, how many jobs there are one globally. It is absolutely mind will win.
Fatimah Abbouchi
I think at one point maybe last year, maybe it was a couple of years ago. Sorry, I counted there were so many I couldn't believe globally. I think it might have been 650 globally, I think on LinkedIn. I checked. Maybe it was a couple of years ago. So I'm seeing like a significant rise now in demand for PM in. But if we don't get the PMO agile mindset, that big, right. Pos are going to probably get themselves on stuck. And we don't want that. So I think we need to think about things from a capability perspective, not about I'm a pro manager that does this this way.
Fatimah Abbouchi
And I mean, yes, the skills of rape. But we have to see the ship not feel like we ownership, but I wanted to see what's your thoughts from your view of that.
PMO Joe
Yeah, we've seen. I think organizations start to come around with it, and they didn't. There's a disconnect between the PMO and executive leadership. An executive leadership started saying, I need somebody to help me deliver strategy. And the discussion started coming out about SROs and strategy realization office. And a lot of PMO leaders raised their hand and said, hey, that's called the PMO. You just didn't know we existed. And then a lot of executives said, hey, we're investing in this PMO, but what we need is value. We need to make sure that if we budgeted $2 million for projects next year, that we're supposed to give us a return on investment of 20 million, that we're getting the value from those projects.
PMO Joe
So let's create a value management office. And the PMO raised her hand and said, hey, we already exist. We're over here. You just didn't know it. I think what's happened is in this more dynamic, transparent, open digital world we live in. Executives are asking for what we delivered all along, and that awareness for the need has given rise to PMO to have access that they didn't have previously. The leadership. The challenge now for PMOs is that they have to have leaders who are able to have discussions at that level.
PMO Joe
And too often it's PM is being promoted to PMO leaders who are never educated on how to become leaders. So the next great challenge, I think you're right. There's a greater awareness and exposure for PMOs to have visibility and impact the challenge. Now, will we rise to the occasion and be able to deliver if we can, then I think we'll see even another stage in the evolution of PMOs, where we go from functional to enterprise as accepted. And then if we fail, unfortunately, we're going to be stuck kind of in this never ending cycle of swap out PM, swap out PMO leader, make them functional, decentralized, centralized kind of that evolution that all organizations go through.
PMO Joe
Yeah, I agree with you. It is definitely. And that's in the States, in Australia. So we're getting book ending the globe here, right, that we're seeing that all around the world right now.
Fatimah Abbouchi
It's like the revolving door of PMO. So six years ago was working in an organization, and I was trying to explain to them we've got to change the way we're working the big, big, big organization, one of our largest. And they just went weren't listening. And I was saying, these are the reasons why to give you an example in one organization in the last ten years in my career, I went into set up a PMO, but I was the fourth PMO manager in two years, the recruitment costs, the onboarding cost to the cost of time that was wasted by all these teams that had to keep learning new things from new PMO people.
Fatimah Abbouchi
And so when I got in there and they were like, cost another one, it was really frustrating for them. So going to your point around the valuation offers near or and all of that, I don't I don't care what people want to call at the end of the day. Like I said, it's the remnants of what PMO is the Buddha, or at least the good PMOs. There are obviously some that need to uplift, but if an organization looks at it from a capability perspective, the way they look at their business architecture and the strategy for their organization, we need human resource, capability, finance, capability.
Fatimah Abbouchi
We need all of these things. And we think about what capabilities do we need that's going to support projects. Then it's about the capability and not about the revolve indoor of PMOs. I call it capability in a box, and that's what I'm basically doing with clients now. So it's not about me or this PMO major about PMO, manger. It's about what capabilities you need to drive your business forward. And I think, like I said, you can call it whatever, whatever you want. But unless you're doing that at the executive level and the C level, executives are paying attention to it, you're just there's so much waste going on down here, and they're so high up here, they probably don't even see it.
Fatimah Abbouchi
And I reckon they're wasting so much money. I mean, I've seen them wasting so much money. So I think they need to shift the thinking top down, not just thinking about bits and pieces of the puzzle, but the whole end went, yeah.
PMO Joe
Shout out to the PMO Global Alliance, who puts on the PMO Global Awards every year. This will be my third year judging that competition. And I can say the finalist this year not to diminish any of the prior winners, but the finalists this year have exceeded any of the others I've seen. And they're in a wider variety of industries and size companies. But there's one thing they all have in common. The ones who made it to the finals didn't get there overnight that they've been on a journey, right?
PMO Joe
They've had to evolve and mature over time. And I think that one of the other pieces where PMOs have had some failures over time is organizations haven't been accepting of the journey. They want results quickly. They want to be able to see the impact quickly, and they want to be able to see that their investment is making a quick return. Every one of the four finalists have a very detailed, long history of slow progression, but giant impact at the end of the day, and my hats off to all them.
PMO Joe
November 11, we'll find out who the winners are or who the winner is. Of the PMO of the year from that competition, just a plug for our show. I'm trying to get the PMO leaders for each of those four organizations to come on the show, to be able to talk through them and talk through that experience for them to help understand. I mean, there's one from El Salvador. Oh, wow.
Fatimah Abbouchi
What happens from Lolido?
PMO Joe
Yeah, we're here the United States, we can't get out of the first round, and there's a company in El Salvador that is just crushing it. Man. They just have an amazing PMO. He's already agreed to come on the show their PMO leader, so I can't wait to talk to him and share their story again. I don't know who's going to win. All four of them were fantastic. But I was so impressed by what they did just because of my expectations were so low, right? From an organization which is probably more reflection on me than them.
PMO Joe
But I was just like, this is fantastic. It's a little teaser for shows coming up later this year. And then next year that we're going to be talking to some of the finalists and those word competitions.
Fatimah Abbouchi
And let's not forget that you have gone from being in top 15 to top eight four PMO influences of the year as well, which is exciting. So Congratulations on that.
PMO Joe
Thank you. But if we're going to do that, don't forget you were one of the final three last year, right. So I think we both are making an impact, which is great. And Congratulations to Bill Do and Lora Bernard and Marisa Silva and Philip Poser for being finalists this year. All deserving and I'm interested is the only one I don't like is Philip was in the top three last year, so he gets to go a repeat performance. He has an edge over the other ones, I think.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Yeah, exactly. And you know what really? I did judging the year before I couldn't this year, but I agree with you in terms of quality and seeing that versatility of what people are doing is amazing. And I think that the interesting sort of element of it all is, well, one that there is an award space for our field that is growing in popularity, for sure. And the fact that there are some organizations that may not be successful in getting to a particular round come back. And the progression between years is I think we were mentioning it is so great and 100% agree with you with the progression, not just for these award finalist, but just in, you know, in day to day, your going to a company and they go, okay, we want you.
Fatimah Abbouchi
I had one company who asked us to build a talk, the templates and talking. Yeah, we did that. But nothing changed. They actually probably went backwards as a result. And we said, you probably not going to get you down. You want her? I know. Just do the toolkits and templates, and someone else is going to come in and manage and set up the PMO and wasn't successful. It actually was really hard because been building those in isolation of customers, it's always going to be a recipe for disaster.
Fatimah Abbouchi
So again, if we looked at what capabilities they want and incrementally introduce that, that would have been better. But yeah, it's so great seeing progression. And I think you're right. It's a long journey, just like anything else in an organization when you're setting up anything new. So hopefully there's a bit more of that. But I'm looking forward to seeing who wins.
PMO Joe
Yeah. I always talk to our clients about I ask, do you have children? And I say yes, and I say, okay, do you have any teens? And I say yes. And I said, do you want them to be adults? Say yes. And I said, you want them to mature faster than they're capable of. Right. And it's the same with organizations, right? You can't just wish that you were more mature. It takes time. Maturity is an evolution. It doesn't happen because you want it. It actually takes time.
Fatimah Abbouchi
100%. I love this conversation because everything we're saying is completely in sync. I feel because obviously we've had that the last six months working together and obviously no leader and what we're trying to do there. But just that analogy there. I'm gonna love it first lost one. I say I don't have teenage kids, but I just love that. But I think the journey thing as well is is the journey is so we can stick. That's why that's like you go around the world in 24 hours because it's a magic thing that lets you do that.
Fatimah Abbouchi
Nothing's gonna stick in terms of memories and experiences and things you touch and feel and see and people you meet. If you do that in 365 days, you will stick. And so that's why I think people are really people that don't understand PMO are trying to drive it. And I think sometimes that's because of where it reports into. And sometimes I think the wrong person is probably put into the role. Like you said, they're not better given enough support or they don't have the right background.
Fatimah Abbouchi
And there's an assumption that they'll get it done and then it fails. And then the company's back at three one. So it's like let's think about it in capability. Let's stop thinking about it, about the individuals themselves. They're they're part of the solution.
PMO Joe
So lots of great lessons and discussions today, what capabilities to drive our performance and PMOs and use the capabilities as opposed to relying on people to be able to muscle their way through things, being able to talk about the PMO leader in our industry and what's going on. And most importantly, again, becoming comfortable with mental health and anxiety and going out to visit the Return of the Panda website to learn more about how you can learn, increase our awareness and then also participate if need be as well.
PMO Joe
So thanks Fatima, for joining us. Once again, another fantastic discussion that the time goes by too quickly and we could have kept going. I'm sure. What's any parting shots or how can people get in touch with you? Any last things to share with the audience?
Fatimah Abbouchi
Yeah, probably. Just if you're not following me on LinkedIn, just I'm sure that the name is going to be in the post, but please do so because I share a lot of free content quite regularly, inspiring posts or thoughts or ebooks checklists, etc. Whatever it might be. But if you check with me on LinkedIn and your organization wants to know about the workshops that we've got coming up and actually personalizing them to your industry and your organization specifically and done in a really agile web, I'd be happy to chat with them as well.
Fatimah Abbouchi
And obviously the return of the Panda. Org website to stay tuned on or tapping in that space. But yeah, we always run out of time, but you and I talk all the time anyway, we just don't record it, so maybe we will do a bit more continuing conversation, I'm sure in the coming weeks.
PMO Joe
Absolutely. Thank you, Fatima. Thank you. Of course, to all of our listeners and be sure to go out to Project Management Office Hours dot. Com. We just updated our website, so if you go out there and get an error, clear your cache and go back out and try it again because we did a redirect, so you might have lost the site that way, but make sure you go out there. You get to see all of our past shows. I think we're up to 90 episodes now four years, 40 million plays and downloads, and we've got some great guests coming up as well.
PMO Joe
Ricardo Vargas will be joining us next. We're going to be talking about the Citizen Developer program with Sam Sibley and Matt Hubbard that PMI is put together. Chris Ronio from Trana is going to come on and talk about Playbooks and give us more information about that. And then we're going to be talking to the PMO of the Year finalists and talking, but some of them to get them organized for the end of the year and into next year. So lots of great guests coming up, lots of great discussions.
PMO Joe
Also a reminder that we are live, but we do record. So go on out and subscribe to Project Management Office hours on your favorite podcast platform such as Apple Podcast, I Heart Radio, Google Play, Spotify, Spreaker, etcetera. Of course. Thank you to our sponsors, the PMO Squad in the PMO Leader. Be sure to go out and visit their sites to learn more about the services that you can get and all of the great membership, free membership opportunities and content on the PMO Leader site. That's it for now.
PMO Joe
Office hours are closed until next time on PMO Joe. And you've been listening to Project Management Office Hours.
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