[00:00:04.510] - Announcer
Do you wonder if others are dealing with the same Project Management challenges? And our goal is to empower you and help you elevate your PMO and Project Management career to new heights. Welcome back to Project Management Management Office Hours with your host, PMO Joe.
[00:00:22.950] - 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 Radioactios in Tempe, Arizona. I'm your host, PMO Joe. And for the next hour or so, we'll be talking Project Management. Interesting. I just watched that intro video and I looked so much younger and I didn't have glasses in those pictures. So I have definitely aged since we started this up. That's funny. This part of the show is usually I do some announcements or mention some events that are coming up. And today I want to do something slightly differently. Here in the United States. We recently had another racially motivated shooting, and this time in Buffalo, New York. I'm originally from New York myself, and one of the members of the PMO Squad is from Buffalo. And when he lived there, his family used to go to that food store where the shooting occurred. And here in America, our society has a challenge with calling out racism. And I think what we need to be able to do is call out the obvious, right? In this shooting, a white man drove several hours to a black neighborhood store and killed black people just because they were black.
[00:01:51.090] - PMO Joe
And that's just not okay. And we, the majority of the white people in this society here in America are going to be the people that change that right? It isn't on the minorities to change what's happening to them. And we have to be able to call out racism in order to be able to solve racism. And people are afraid to do that. So I just want to make a point today to be able to say, hey, this isn't right. We need to be able to fix this. We need to be able to change the way our society behaves. And it's not just with people of color. My wife is Jewish. My children are Jewish. And a couple of years ago in Pittsburgh, man entered a synagogue and killed people simply because they were Jewish. And this isn't new, right? It's a long history of events. We know, of course, World War II and all the atrocities that happened to the Jewish people from the Nazis. So as part of being a member of society, listen, we're not a political show. I'm not a political activist, but I'm a person that lives in society. And I'm part of society.
[00:02:56.030] - PMO Joe
And I have to deal with life every day. And our team members do and our families do. And if we're not open to having the discussions about this and to call out what it is, we're never going to get better. And we have to make sure that it's known that it's not acceptable to have racism and have antisemitism and have any discrimination within our society. So as the world deals with a war of atrocities, with Russia attacking Ukraine, and we get shootings in America and around the world because of color, because of religion, because of inequalities. For those of us who are in the majority, I think it's our voice that needs to stand up and say this is wrong. We need to be able to make the change happen in order to get the change we need. So that's what I want to talk about today, because that's so much more important than Project Management. Now. That's not going to be the topic of our show. That's not going to be what our guest is going to talk about. But these are my views, and this is what I think we have to be able to be comfortable talking about the uncomfortable.
[00:04:07.590] - PMO Joe
So to the guests that we've had on this show in the past who are vocal about this, Jesse Fewell came on and talked about this during his show, and Dana Brownlee and Alana Hill talked about this frequently out on social media. I salute you for your courage to keep this topic in the spotlight. Unfortunately, it's still in the spotlight. And as long as it is, I think we all need to have the courage to be able to talk about that. So I'm here to say it's not right, and I'm here to support finding solutions, to make sure that this stops and doesn't keep happening. So that's enough about that topic. And let's get into Project Management topics that we want to talk about. First, I want to say this is episode 103, and as everybody knows, you can claim PDUs from listening to these shows. So if you want to get 103 PDUs, head out to the Project Management Office Hours website. Listen to the shows. Don't do it just because you need PMOs. Do it because there's great content from Project Management leaders from around the world that you're going to be able to get some great insights from.
[00:05:20.530] - PMO Joe
So I strongly encourage you to do that. If you're joining us live, thank you, of course, for joining us from around the world. Please drop in the comments. Let us know where you're joining us from. And if you have questions for Ricardo or I certainly we'd love to be able to hear those as well. We are live streaming on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. So it's great to have you joining us. And also want to say thank you to our sponsors, the PMO Squad and the PMO Leader. You can go out and visit those websites to be able to learn more about those organizations. And with that, I am super excited today to have joining us live from Spain, Ricardo Sastre Martin. Welcome, Ricardo. Thank you for joining us.
[00:06:07.710] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
Thank you. Thank you, Joe. First, just let me say I'm very sorry to hear again about shootings like this one coming from Buffalo this time. And I joined your wish that hopefully we'll get a change soon and overcome the situation. And the change is achieved through projects as well. In project management, we can contribute to this, not just giving insights of the message that we have to change, but as well as project managers, we are driving the change in the project. So in some ways related, as we can see later talking about the period economy. Thank you very much for hosting me today in this great show. And thanks for this initiative of having this show where we can learn from our colleagues around the world and get inspired with the stories that we hear from them. So thank you for building this community.
[00:07:09.030] - PMO Joe
It's my pleasure. It's certainly great. And of course, we have you joining us from Spain and fantastic last show was Louise. Worsley from South America, sorry, South Africa. And we've had guests from all over the world. It's fantastic to be able to bring everybody together.
[00:07:27.390] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
Yeah.
[00:07:28.130] - PMO Joe
Ricardo, if you could take a moment just to introduce yourself to everybody who's listening, if they aren't familiar with you already, who are you and kind of what's your background and your story?
[00:07:39.750] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
Sure. Well, I have different summaries of my story. I'm going to start with the short one. Basically, the short one is I'm always in a continuous learning process with the goal of contributing to make a positive impact on the world through the Excellence via Project program and portfolio management. So that's the short sentence I use. For example, in the magazine, I'm working every month a bit long. In summary is that I've been in the profession for 16 years, and I've been very lucky because I've been working in multinational companies like Ericsson, Telefónica and now Microsoft. And that has given me the opportunity to work in more than 40 countries around the world, in four continents, in Europe, in Africa, Asia, and north and South America. And thanks to the previous management, I've been able to get insights and learn from people all around the world. So I'm really glad I'm going a bit further with my story and how I started in the profession. My whole career is 20 years, and I've been always working in projects. So I started working in projects, doing tax in the projects. In fact, I started as a developer.
[00:09:08.230] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
Then I moved to different kind of projects in development, leading teams. And then there was a moment where I was already working for Ericsson, where I was already holding an MBA in business school here in Spain. So then I saw that, well, I think I can contribute more to the company if I'm in a project management position than in a technical role. So I decided to apply to a position in the PMO direction. And I was lucky that I got my first opportunity. So I'm always glad to the person that gave me the fresh opportunity so I really glad about that person who the was manager of the PMO that kind of direction because you always need a fresh opportunity, It doesn't matter if you have the skills and the background, if you don't get the opportunity, you can throw the value that you can provide So I'm really grateful for that opportunity I got apart from thinking that I could contribute more to the organization as well I will say that at that time I thought well, this is a lot of progress in my career because in the past, in the past I talked in the year 2006 So basically going into a previous management role was like being promoted because as titles say, you are a manager now, things have changed a lot in the current times but at that time you were like the boss of the project at least so as well, I have to admit I decided to move because I thought I could be a manager and that was my motivation at that time door friends So after a couple of years working for the PMO in Ericsson in Spain, I got an opportunity for moving to work
[00:11:08.630] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
to Jamaica as an expert for leaving the delivery organization for the biggest customer of Ericsson in the Caribbean and Central America it was diesel and it was much in a kind of PMO because there were other roles like architects and integrators but there were primariers under in Jamaica there was a point in the year 2010 that changed my mind a little bit I remember that I was coming back from Christmas holidays from Spain, It was the 10 January 20 10th I was working at the office Alexander and sadly I was feeling like something is happening and I don't feel right, I don't know what's going on and then suddenly so many people are screaming around me and leaving the building, It was like what's happening? So I didn't know what was happening but I decided to leave the building as well I follow the people and then after a while we discovered that the reason was that there was an aircraft in Haiti, the famous aircraft in the year 2010, So our customer, they were having operations in Haiti, everything was completely destroyed and there we got Amission It was like the first time I saw emission in my job and the mission was to recover the conjugations because people may think that when there is an aircraft there are things that are more urgent but the reality is in situation for crisis, the communications are key because if you don't have communications you cannot work on the recovery projects of the country so to have communications is vital and it was like a mission, it was like we have to go there, we have to fly there and recover the communication so we can contribute to the recovery of the country to recover from
[00:13:07.020] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
the terrible disaster. It was the first time I saw something like, I have a mission in my job, apart from delivering my project or leaving my PMO there in Jamaica. So then I moved back to Ericsson after this period again to the PMO. Then I moved to Telefónica, multinational telco company that gave me the opportunity to work with many other countries. And here I got the opportunity to build a PMO from scratch. So in fact, it was a challenge because when I joined the organization, nobody knew what was a PMO. So that's even worse, nobody knew what was a product manager. So I arrived there and people was asking themselves, but why is it here? What is a product manager? And that was because it was a product development organization. So it was an organization that was composed of developers and produced managers, marketing, UX, UI, Cedar. So people when they saw me, first thing was, okay, what is this guy here? He's going to be like for one or two months and he will leave or will be fired because we don't have any need for this PMO or employee management. But the situation at that time, the strategy in the organization was changing because it was a social network and then we were reconverting ourselves into a mobile network operator.
[00:14:41.680] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
So there was a complete change in the strategic organizational goals. And in that new strategic goals, it made completely sense to have a PMO employee manager in the team. So that was in the year 2014 and the last year in the 2021. I was talking with the team and we decided, okay, let's to the PMO Global Awards. That is one of the largest PMO Global awards in the world. We decided, okay, let's participate. We were appointed like the ones representing Spain. And after that we went into the previous League where we were, let's say, competing with other people from the wall. We won all the matches, as they say, because it's like a World Cup format. So we won all the matches. So we were the first in the League and we went to the Ko stages and we received semifinals where we were matched with the Ukrainian PMO. And there we lost. So we were one of the top four PMOs in Europe. After that, again, we can talk later on the purpose, but I decided to move to Microsoft. That is where I'm working on right now. And basically I'm leaving programs in the different sectors, mainly in the industry, with the goal of contributing through the use of our technology to the decarbonisation of the economy using cloud and artificial intelligence.
[00:16:28.450] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
That was one of the main motivations for moving to Microsoft, because that was like a new mission, a new purpose. Let's contribute with my work to reduce the emissions of CO2 that we have in the world. So it was like, this is a real opportunity to make a real impact in the world.
[00:16:48.550] - PMO Joe
Well, that's quite the history that you have. And that's one of the reasons why obviously we were so fortunate to have you as a guest because you do have such wide ranging experience. And one of my questions is maybe not even project management related. Just from your story is you're in Spain working for Ericsson and the opportunity comes up to go to Jamaica and work from there. I mean, that had to be a difficult decision. Right. And you're going to a country that doesn't speak Spanish, you're going into an island nation as opposed to a landlocked country. I mean, just very different culturally from what you had been used to. What gave you the courage to be able to make that decision, to go do that?
[00:17:31.450] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
Yeah. First I was young, that was the first.
[00:17:35.590] - PMO Joe
You weren't crazy, you were stupid there. Yeah.
[00:17:40.550] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
The second. I was involved in many projects by that time around the world, mainly in Europe, Middle East and Africa, but it was just for short periods of time. So based on that experience, I knew that it's something that contributes a lot to your personal life, not just for your personal career, but for your life to relocate and work and live in a different country. So when I got the opportunity, I said yes, I go. And I didn't even check anything about Jamaica in the Web, let's say. But yeah, all changes are difficult. So there is like one theory that when you go there, you have a hype. It's like, wow, everything is new, everything is great. Then you go down. It's like what I'm doing here, I want to go back home, then you feel uncomfortable. So it's a big change. It's a big change because the culture is very different. It's very different on the country. It's very different to Spain as well. But there was a thing that helped me a lot that was that even if the culture and everything is totally different as we were working in the same way that in Ericsson explained, because we were having the same ways of working in our PMOs, in erection, they are still doing it in that way.
[00:19:16.830] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
So that helped me a lot because when I arrived there just the first day, I was already fully operational because I have to work in the same way I was working in Spain, for sure. The people, the stakeholders, my colleagues, my team is different. But the way of working is the same. That's the way of working that is coming from the PMO. The photo having a global PMO that allows you to know how you have to work no matter if you are spending my car in South Africa, for example.
[00:19:48.510] - PMO Joe
Yeah. There's this language of project management that's universal. Right. So even when we speak different native tongue. Right. Native languages, we still understand Scope and WBS charters. Right. All of those items, the language of project management, we can share that across cultures, but you didn't start out as a project manager. And I'm kind of interested to get your perspective on this next question. Here is so many of our guests start out as developers and became project managers as they become PMO leaders. How do we as a profession start to bring people in at a younger age that are starting out as project managers? Right?
[00:20:39.550] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
Yeah.
[00:20:40.440] - PMO Joe
When you and I went to University, there weren't we probably didn't have University programs to become a project manager. Right. So we had to evolve into it. How do we get people to find our profession so that we have this influx of talent that's constantly learning and we're grooming the next generation of project managers. You led some PMOs, of course. So how do we get that to happen in our industry, or what's your thoughts on that? Do we need to do that?
[00:21:08.610] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
Yeah, we really need because I really believe in the power of projects, the power that projects can have in the world, positive or negative, if they are not well managed. This year I started to collaborate with three different business schools in three different Masters in different aspects of price management. In one talking about PMOs, we're about digital price management, another one about just management. Antonio said in his famous manifesto, manifesto, there is not or there were not enough education regarding previous management. That's something that I really think that we are closing the gap because now there are many more programs where people can join, an alert about previous management, something that was not possible in the past, like you say. So I didn't have an opportunity. I learned in the shop with the help of my mentors in my company. So one thing that we can do people like us that we have been for some time working in the profession is to give back to the profession, contributing to the education, to build education around project management as well. We have to try to transmit to the people the purpose of the profession because basically a couple of weeks back I met the promotion of people that are going to be studying one of the Masters.
[00:22:54.690] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
I'm engaged now that we are starting in Fat last week, the Master. So I met a couple of weeks ago and in the introduction meeting, I don't want to know your background, I don't want to know your age, whatever groaning experience, because that's something I can gather from the data that when you subscribe to the Master. So what I really want to know here in this session with you is which one is the proposed while you are deciding to join this Master. What I found out is that even if I said, please tell me, of course, your name as well, where are you from or where are you located? Because it's online and there are people from different countries around the world just to be aware of the future and the time from difference. But I said I only want to know about which one is your purple. And what I found out is that everybody started to talk about the background. So I'm not asking for your background, I want to know your purpose. So after insisting at the end, they were kind of saying the purpose, but the purpose for all of them was to get a job as product manager.
[00:24:09.960] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
But I was asking about why I think we have to try to deep into why are we doing things the way they told me that to get a job in product management is a why. But why do you want to work in this role just because there are not enough jobs here in Spain, or just because you heard that this is a profession with a lot of feature, or is there something behind this? And when I came back, I started with the same motivation. I decided to move to the role because I wanted to be a manager. But along the years, I'm trying to find out and refine my purpose. It's something I think we have to do to the people. So always try to have a purpose, because if you don't have a purpose, you cannot guide where are you going. So you cannot define your goals and you cannot define what are you going to do to achieve those goals. So at the end, you are kind of lost. So we all need to have a purpose mission in our life, not only in our career.
[00:25:19.100] - PMO Joe
Yeah. Speaking music to my ears. Our producer, Darryl is watching the show, of course, and he's shaking his head. Yes. Because he and I have talked about this so many times. And when Antonio was on our show, we had him as a guest a while back. He talked about purpose as well. The PMO Squad, my organization, our signature solution is the purpose driven PMO. Right. Why are we doing project management in the organization and help companies deliver to achieve that purpose? So I stand with you on that. And certainly the importance of education. Yesterday I was talking to my good friend Lucio and El Salvador, and he was going to be meeting with some universities to talk about how to incorporate educational systems within El Salvador to teach project management to advance that in the country that we're maybe a business prominent. So I'm with you on that. We did get a good question that came in here from Dale, who's joining us from the UK. And Dale asks for you, Ricardo. How do you balance your ongoing learning approach with your project delivery? It seems that it takes hours and days to close knowledge gaps.
[00:26:33.950] - PMO Joe
Do you specialize in target your learnings or just work or study twenty four seven and eat, sleep and breathe project management and also, of course, being a mentor on top of this. How do you balance all of this? Right. You run it in a company you teach it, you breathe it, you're a mentor. How does that happen?
[00:26:54.230] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
Yeah, that's a good question. For that you already need to know which one is your purpose. So you can define based on your purpose your priorities. What are you going to do to achieve this goals you have in your life? And the purpose has to be about your life, not your career. Because if you only define your purpose in your career it can happen that you can be 24/7 working and working and studying just for working for your job. And that's not real world life balance that we should have because we have to balance between the different aspects of our life. Of course depending on the people the balance will be different but that's why we need to know which one is our purpose in the life. So based on that we can define the priorities, on how to balance about talking about the professional part. This year when I started to work for Microsoft I discovered one concept I was not aware of it that is called growth mindset. It's something that is in our future in the company and it's really needed because at the end the pace of change in the world is so dramatic that if you are not learning continuously you are going to be out of the race because things are changing very fast right now so you have to keep learning.
[00:28:29.090] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
So based on that, here at Microsoft we have some time allocated in our daily work or weekly work for training because the company really believes in the need and the power of training and continuous learning. In fact we are a technological company so we are building artificial intelligence and something that is changing every day. It's innovation. So to work in a company like Microsoft helps me as well. They support me in what they call moodlight activities that contribute to other tax like education outside of my working hours, that support is really key and as well based on that, you have to find what you were asking in a question about the training. We can be learning many, many things so it's impossible to learn everything. Just all inside Microsoft there are so many products that just for learning about all I will need to be my whole life starting this product. So that's why you need to have your mission with one of your priorities and your initiative because you have to prioritize what kind of learning you need for achieving those goals. Because if not you can be learning many things that maybe are not aligned with needs that you have for reaching your goals or if you don't have your goals as well, you are going to be learning many things that at the end are not going to contribute to your career.
[00:30:11.890] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
So that's why it's very key to have a clear purpose and based on the purpose goals, based on the goals to define priorities, everything should be linked to that.
[00:30:22.590] - PMO Joe
Yeah. Great answer. And thank you, Dale, for the question. And to tie into your response yesterday, you must have been in my mind. We had our leadership meeting at the PMO Squad and I shared with them the growth mindset and how we as a company did to have that cultural component built into our organization as well. And then we believe in life work balance as opposed to work life balance. We prioritize life first. But when I started the PMO Squad about a decade ago, what I realized is I don't go to work anymore because I'm just doing who I am. And to your point, once you identify your purpose, there's no separation between work and personal anymore because you're just being your unique self, your natural self. So the balance of time is certainly life comes first, your family comes first, your health comes first. But when you are who you are doing what you need to do because of your purpose, you don't work anymore. Right. You're just following your purpose. And it's such a freeing feeling to have. So thank you for sharing your views and your perspective on that as well. And we have another guest joining us from Namibia.
[00:31:36.170] - PMO Joe
So thank you for joining from there as well. We'd love to see the international flair of the guests who are with us, but also the audience that's with us. So it's great to get different perspectives. You've mentioned a couple of times artificial intelligence in Microsoft and how that tied into your purpose as well. What's your thoughts on artificial intelligence and project management? I know I have my own. And every year at the beginning of the year people put out there, here's my guess for what's going to happen this year in project management. And every one of them says this is going to be the year that artificial intelligence makes a breakthrough. And I always reply back and say keep hoping it's not happening another time soon. What's your thoughts? I mean, you're in the middle of this, right? Working for a technology company now.
[00:32:25.910] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
Yeah. So currently I live in AI projects and programs, but that's not the same that leading projects or programs with AI. So it's different. So we are not using AI if we refer to AI to producing because as well, AI is like a hot topic and all everything seems to be AI. So yeah, AI is many things. But for doing a summary regarding the product management world, I usually do a differentiation between two different aspects. One is automation and another one is prediction. In automation I refer to bots or things that help you to do your daily tax, routine tax. And for that there are some things already that are being used with more or less success. But in fact there are some Microsoft products like the Power Automate where you can automate some tasks with the different products of the Microsoft Office and there are some boats as well that gives a conversation in order to avoid it, to go directly to us, to someone. So information I already said I don't think it's still mature. I don't think it's still providing the value that people think that can provide. But in regards to predison we are talking about, I would like to know how it's going to be, the final cost, the final schedule I'm going to have in my project.
[00:34:09.930] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
I haven't seen anything about that. I've been invited sometimes to shows, to demos where they were telling me my product is using AI for the portfolio management. You go to the demo and where is the AI? So there's no AI. I don't mean that there is no AI at all in the world, that there is not any product because for sure I don't know all the products and for sure there will be some already, but I have not seen them. And the fact that the most common use tool right now what I see with my customers as well is for the previous management is still the SL file. I think there is still a long way from the SL file to the AI. But the main block for the premise management in AI talking about prediction is the data because there's no data, there's no AI. That's a challenge we are facing in the project in order to provide results using AI because sometimes we find out that we don't have enough data for making the AI to work and provide value. And I'm talking about cases in industries with tons of data that you have to review and cleanse.
[00:35:44.810] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
There are many things to do to prepare the data, but even though there's data, sometimes it's not enough. But employee management, I'm not aware of any company having tons of risks issues stored in a normalized way that you can use for building an AI that is going to produce you with a result. Okay, based on your project, you are going to have this and these risks, you have to do this as needed. So I don't really know anyone having this kind of data and if we don't have data, we don't have AI. So about when is going AI to take over? There is a very famous Garner article study that it was saying 2030. I think we need to start storing data if we want to be by 2030 having AI tools that can provide prediction in the product management arena.
[00:36:53.590] - PMO Joe
What's interesting right, is you work for Microsoft as you said, and I'm certainly not asking for your Microsoft opinion on something because these are obviously your views on this. But you said the most common tool you see being used is still Excel. And when we think about Microsoft and the project management world, of course we think about Microsoft project, right? The scheduling tool or the online version of that as well. Why is it still Excel? Why are we still there. What's your assessment of why people haven't really gotten off of Excel yet?
[00:37:36.290] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
People have reluctant to change. Many people have been already for long time used to work with Estim and even if sometimes you tell them that the system does not work because you cannot lay the dependencies between different activities. You see here, I changed this tax and the others to move something basically like that. And the people still are reluctant to move. But in fact now with the Agile wall that we are moving into already for some years, in fact, in companies like mine, we are using a tool that is called as for DevOps that is more focused on Agile where you can put your backlog with your epic, your features, your tax and so on. So what I see that if we're going to jump from the cell to maybe tools like Azure DevOps or can be as well. Jilla Trello So since we are moving from SR file where you can manage the project to using Agile tools and sometimes even you are not following the agile way of working in most of the cases you don't have an Agile mindset. That is the main problem. That is like AI. Everybody is going to AI, agile for many years.
[00:39:04.270] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
Ai is like a fashion. I'm going to do Agile because it's the fashion people try. I'm doing a scrum I meet every day, I stand up, I'm doing a job that's not ideal. So I think we're missing the basics.
[00:39:20.510] - PMO Joe
Yeah, I guess. May 4, I did a session for Project Management Update. It was the great debate, Agile versus Waterfall. I was debating myself. So it wasn't much of a debate. I guess I was just elaborating on that. But the point of that Agile is it's a different way to work the mindset is the whole concept of where it came from. The Agile Manifesto. But people have taken this great idea and they found it on their use for it. Right. And now it's lower case Agile, maybe as opposed to upper case Agile. And tools are following suit. Hey, let's build Jira. Let's build DevOps tools to be able to align with that. But it doesn't eliminate the project manager. Right. You still have somebody leading that team to be able to go execute on that. I would imagine your work within Microsoft doesn't really matter what company you're working for, but the exposure you have to clients, you see different clients operating different ways in creating their own best practice. Right. Because within project management it's art, not science. What's your thoughts about there's the discipline of project management with the art of how to execute it and how to go about delivering that that works for your company.
[00:40:40.850] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
Yes, there are many different cases and the maturity of the customers of each of the companies that we have around the world. The maturity is very different. So some of them were very project oriented from the beginning like Ericsson, because at the end let's say that the way that the financial balance is from Ericsson is coming from is from the project. So if you don't manage for the projects you are going to write numbers because it's a company that is selling our services as well. But again, it's very related to the previous management. So company like Erica is very mature. But there are other companies where they have in the past a more product oriented approach. They were leaving the project, let's say with produce managers. And that's another topic for discussion, a very long one. But for me everything depends on the consistent. So it doesn't matter if you are building a product, developing a product, or you are building a bridge or whatever. So the main point is that on the project and the system you can choose from the toolbox we have, you can choose which one is the best tool for that project.
[00:42:08.870] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
It depends on many things and as well, many things we say no, we are developing software, it has to be Agile. But if in the other side you have a customer that has never worked with Agile, you cannot go there and tell them okay, we're going to do a software development and we have to do it. This Niftyign needs different steps that you have to go through with your customers in order to be able to have the maturity needed for working in that specific way. And everything should start from the mindset. So this should not be we are going to use this methodology because it's trendy. Now our mindset do you have a traffic mindset? What are we going to do in this project? What are we going to deliver? We deliver results, we focus on outcomes. So we have a very huge toolbox and we have to choose which one is the best. But depending on the maturity of the company, in some companies the toolbox is quite limited or even they don't have people that are trained on previous management. So it's like these casual previous managers that you go there and say who's the prey manager and is someone that is not related and does not have any education regarding price management.
[00:43:28.370] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
So what I think we have to do is to understand the situation of the customer, the maturity level and go through them and help them and see how to move forward and which one is the way to go step by step because the price management, there are so many methodologies now that you can be learning a new methodology every day and you don't have enough days in the year.
[00:43:56.070] - PMO Joe
You had mentioned Antonio Nito Rodriguez of course a couple of times and the Bright Line initiative with Ricardo Vargas and others as part of that came up with the project economy a few years back and we're part of that now, right. Operations has historically been the primary focus of companies but now change is so rapid, it's forcing us into changes throughout the world in creating the project economy. You've been a leader in this space for so long and you've made such tremendous impact. What's your thoughts on the project economy and how does that fit for us as an industry as we continue to move forward?
[00:44:38.490] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
Yeah, for the people that are not aware of the free economy. In a short summary, it's like that we believe that our life is a collection of projects. I see it every day, but it's not something new because now I was reading again The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People from Steve and Cobby that I read from time to time again to refresh the knowledge. And it was written in the if you go through it, it's not for a book, for prior managers, for our life. If you go through it, you see that the habits are like begin with the end of mine. So that's to have a purpose, put search firms prioritization is what we do in our PMOs. If you are dealing with a portfolio, you are prioritizing the projects, seek first understand and then to be understood that's communication, communication is like 80% of the time that we spend in our profession, in our work, synergize the holder management. So at the end when I'm reading this book, it's like it's not for prevarage, but this is what we do. So basically this applies to our lives at the end because this is a book for our life.
[00:46:02.450] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
It's not for our profession or our career, it's for our life. When you read it, you realize that we have been always in a project at the end. We are doing projects every day in our life. So basically what I like to do is to map it to the like we have in the organizational alignment in the project management arena that on the top you have your purpose. Based on the purpose you define the strategy. And based on the strategy, we have the goals, the portfolio, the promise on the project. I think our life is the same. We should have a purpose cascading down. We should define which one at the end of the project. We are going to be working in our lives every day. And I don't mean in our job, in our life. So I think this is a concept that was in fact created by Antonio where he was the chairman PMI. But this is something that has been always in our life for a long time. But now we are lasing it base now on this realization. We discover how powerful is the knowledge and the skills that we have as project managers.
[00:47:14.510] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
Because at the end you have to have skills that are needed for our life. You are communicating, negotiating. So you have to be selling stakeholder management, prioritization time management. So at the end, sometimes I think back about all things we do in our profession. I say, well, this is the profession that is the best for money in our life.
[00:47:40.690] - PMO Joe
Yeah. It's interesting when I attend an event of some kind and not a project management conference or event, just a business event. Right. Because I'm a business owner. So I attend a lot of events and people subconsciously or maybe consciously start saying, here's the projects we're working on. These are the projects we're active and project is just part of the flow of conversation. And I'll approach them afterwards and ask about those projects from a project management perspective. And they're not doing them in a project management perspective yet. They call them projects. It's part of world that we live in. Right. So I guess a question for you would be, how do we people like you and I, this is our purpose, right? This is our passion. This is what we do. How do we help others who are involved in projects on a daily basis and everything they do understand the importance and value that we can get, that when we learn the skills that we have, we can actually get value from that. How do we bring in the non project managers into this project economy? They're already part of it. They just don't know they're part of it yet.
[00:48:50.280] - PMO Joe
Right. How do we bring them to make that conscious?
[00:48:53.890] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
I think we'll have to first make them aware that we are living in a world that is surrounded by projects in some events. When I'm talking about this, I asked to the audience, any of you is not a Premier. From time to time, I see that the people that are saying that they are Premier is moving as well. I always see events that are related to project management. So I don't think it's the reality that is applicable to the whole population. But first we have to make them aware that we are surrounded by projects. And then if you have the skills for leaving projects at the end, it is something that is going to be useful for your life. So the skills you are going to get are not only good for your career, are going to be good for managing your life. We have to start all the same from the purpose. Because when I started the profession as leaders of the project, we have to communicate to the team the value, the height, vision, and the purpose. Why are we working on this? Why are we working so many hours per day on this project?
[00:50:13.710] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
So we are the ones that have to communicate that PC to the team. When I started, I did not have that psychiatry. In fact, I was so focused on the daily work and the issues that we are having day by day that sometimes I will say to myself, maybe I did not make the right choice moving to this road because I have fires every day. So it's like, well, I think I was wrong. But with the time when you have more experience as well, you listen from colleagues. You are a member of communities like this one you're building. You are really insightful ideas. And one insightful idea is that you have to be looking for the purpose and communicate the purpose to the team, because that's the way that you are going to be motivated as well. It's the way you are going to know what you have to do to achieve it.
[00:51:09.590] - PMO Joe
So I don't like to put people on the spot, but we've been talking about purpose a lot, but I don't think we've heard we've heard how important purpose is to you, but we haven't heard you share your purpose. What is your purpose today? How are you working to achieve that?
[00:51:29.730] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
My purpose since I joined an initiative that was created by Antonio when the copy started, it was called Grow. An Initiative for Positive impact is where I met Antonio and many others, great thought leaders from the world. I have changed in my mindset. I saw the power of the projects, of the community. So from there, I decided to review my portfolio and to review it and to try to extend it to the whole life, not just for the career, because as we were talking about the balance, yeah, world balance, world life balance. So if you are work life balance at the end, maybe you are putting all the purpose in your work and maybe you are not balancing with your life. So I decide to extend my purpose to something that is more open than the work. I still refining it, I have to say, but what I try to create a positive impact, I say in the world, but as well around me, in the way I not only work, it's not in the way I behave as well with the people that surround me. So I try to transmit new ideas, purpose, tell them about the importance is to have a mission.
[00:52:53.610] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
So I try to make a positive impact through my profession, with the projects and programs and teams that I live in, but as well with the people in our daily life, the importance of the life, as you say, sometimes we are too focused on the work, but if we don't have, let's say, a balance with our life, and that means with your family, with physical exercise, mental exercise as well. It's important at the end. If you are only focusing on your work, that's not the way. So I try to make a positive impact in the world through my daily life and my daily profession.
[00:53:35.710] - PMO Joe
I think that's fantastic. And certainly the leadership you've had within our industry and certainly within the organizations where you've worked, the success you had in the global awards, with your organization, I think I'm comfortable saying, hey, you're achieving your purpose, right? You're delivering on what you're trying to do. And as a member of our industry, thank you for that. I think we want to be able to salute people such as yourself and Antonio and others that are dedicating their purpose to help deliver on projects and help do good and say, yeah, right on, man. Let's have more of that. Right. We need more of that out there in our industry today. So thank you for that.
[00:54:19.090] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
Thanks to you as well. You are contributing a lot to creating a positive impact with all the activities you are doing, not only this, but the others that you are leading, creating community.
[00:54:31.810] - PMO Joe
Well, thank you so much for that. And certainly I'll put up here on screen thinking of community. Right. The PMO Leader Global Community is a free community for people in our industry to be able to go and network and share and exchange ideas. We don't have a certification model. We don't have a methodology. We're not pushing a certification. It's not about chasing the dollar of a community. It's about community. It's giving the people in our industry a voice to be able to share their experiences and do good to contribute to one another. So thank you for that. And time is up again. These shows go by so fast. It's fantastic to be able to share my guests with the audience in the world and have you share your story and your experience and your voice that you've had out there. So thank you, Ricardo, for joining us today. Before we leave, I would certainly ask is how can people get in touch with you? What's the best way for people to connect if they want to learn more about you or connect with you? I do have your LinkedIn profile here up on screen so people can connect with you there.
[00:55:39.590] - PMO Joe
But anything coming up you want to share? What's any information before we sign off that you have for us?
[00:55:47.890] - Ricardo Sastre Martin
Yeah, they are linked in. There is my data and my email address. So anyone interested in any of the topics we have been talking today or any other topics related to Brave Management, you are more than welcome to contact me.
[00:56:03.910] - PMO Joe
Fantastic. Well, certainly. Thank you again for joining us. I really appreciate it. I know it's the evening hours in Spain while it's the morning over here in Phoenix. Thank you. And of course, thank you to our listeners and everybody who joined us live. Be sure to go out and visit the PMO Squad website. And you can see Office Hours podcast listed out there. And you'll see all 103 episodes listed. Well, 102 of them. This one will be out there next week for you to be able to go check out all of those shows and see who our upcoming guests are. We have a great lineup coming up. Sanjeev Augustine, Melissa McDonald, who she's the smart PM smart sheet expert. Constantine Rebo and Robert Bris are joining from Germany, Mate Sivira, who's here in the States, but originally from Spain as well. Track. Via is going to be joining us again to talk about this as a developer program that PMI had. They were on with us last year. Dr. Robert Jocelyn will be joining Suzanne Dabenport, Keyden project management software provider, will be joining us coming up as well. And Maria Abdelina may or may not be joining us.
[00:57:15.700] - PMO Joe
Maria is one of the final four PMO leaders in the PMO global awards last year from Ukraine and she's obviously been impacted by the war that's going on in her country. So she may or may not be joining us as a guest, but we do have her originally scheduled before this war started. So hope remains that maybe she'll be able to join us at some point during the year. We are live, of course, as we've said multiple times, but a reminder that we do record the shows, be sure to subscribe to Project Management Office Hours, the podcast on Apple podcast. Iheartradio Spreaker Spotify whatever your podcast platform of choice may be. And of course, thank you to our sponsors, the PMO squad and the PMO leader and you can visit their websites to learn more about those organizations. So that's it for now, office Hours are closed. Until next time, PMO Joe and you've been listening to Project Management Office Hours.
[00:58:18.370] - Announcer
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