[00:00:01.450] - 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 stories story in 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, kia Mojo.
[00:00:29.930] - PMO Joe
Welcome everyone to Project Management Office Hours. We're the number one live project management radio show in the United States, broadcasting to you from the Phoenix Business RadioX Studios in Tempe, Arizona. I'm your host, PMO Joe, and for the next hour or so, we're going to be talking project management with our special guest. Before we jump in, of course, I always start with some announcements and want to take a moment to thank the PMI Phoenix chapter. They hosted me earlier this week for an evening discussion on the language of project management. It's always great to be able to get out and interact with the community and share experiences. So thank you again to Shane and all the folks over at the chapter who participated and attended. And a reminder, I'll be speaking at the PMI Alamo chapter in a couple of weeks on September 28 I believe it is, in San Antonio. First time live in person with a chapter since all of the pandemic stuff. So I really appreciate the chapter for inviting me to come out there and speak with their community. We'll be talking about project management maturity within organizations and I think that's going to be a fun and informative discussion.
[00:01:45.970] - PMO Joe
Also, I've mentioned in the past couple of times that we have The PMO Leader Annual Conference coming up on October 18. Highly recommend that everybody attends that conference. We're going to be starting at 10:00 A.m. In Perth, Australia, and that will be live for 17 consecutive hours after we launch in Australia. We have over 30 speakers from six continents, including Lee Lambert, Ruth Pierce, Bill Dow, Amireh Amirmazahari, Carston Ley, Yasmina Khelifi and obviously so many more great speakers who are going to be presenting. We're really excited to be able to put on this conference. First of all, it's free for everybody to attend. Thank you to our fantastic sponsors that we have supporting the event, KeyedIn, Planisware and BPM Vision are sponsoring for us. So again, it's free to attend. The link is on the bottom of the screen here for you to be able to join. Or you can just go out to the PMO Leader Community www.thepmoleader.com and you'll see on our home page there's a link to be able to register for that as well. Also, a reminder to everybody, you get a PDU for these shows. It has to be a self reported PDU.
[00:03:05.510] - PMO Joe
This is showing number 111, so there's a lot of great content to be able to go back and listen to to be able to see where to get your PDUs from. I just renewed my cycle and good for another few years. So I went through the process of being able to do myself reported, plus the different training and educational items that I participated over the past couple of years reminded everybody that we are live. Let us know where you're joining from. We're on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook and Internet Radio. So this is not a recorded session. What you see is what you get. This is what's really happening right now. And with that, I'd like to introduce our special guests that we have joining us today, Mate Siberra. Welcome mate. How are you today?
[00:03:50.870] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Hey Joe. Thank you for having me on. Good morning. Or good afternoon, depending on where you are. Thank you for having me here.
[00:03:59.530] - PMO Joe
Oh, it's my pleasure. And if you can just introduce yourself. When people introduce me, if I always feel it's awkward because it's a scripted introduction, it's crazy. So I always like to have the guests introduce themselves. That way you can personalize it, tell us who you are and a little bit about you.
[00:04:17.450] - Mayte Mata Sivera
So I might be I'm originally from Spain. I moved to the United States about seven years ago or so. It's very interesting journey. I'm a PMO Director in a beauty company. That's all. I do a lot of volunteer stuff. I am a mom of two kids. One has four years old and one has one year old. And since I have the kids, it really changed how I view things, projects, family and all that was a really change of mindset and how I work and how I do things.
[00:04:53.700] - PMO Joe
Well, thank you so much for joining us. And we connected for The PMO Leader. We'll talk about that a little bit in the future. But you're one of our ambassador leaders for the Americas region, so thank you for your support of the community and it's been instrumental in helping us to get where we are today.
[00:05:11.750] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Yeah, I really cannot wait to join the event. I believe that I never seen an event that crossed three different time zones. And with the level of engagement and the high level of keynotes and speakers that we will have, it's amazing to be part of the community. And also I challenge all the people and I try to engage them during the event, at least for a few hours because I believe that I never seen something like that. Have you ever attended to a conference that crossed three different time zones? That's amazing.
[00:05:43.620] - PMO Joe
I'm going to try to stay awake for the whole event. We're going to see how it goes. So 10:00am in Perth, Australia will be 07:00pm on the 17th. It should be the day before here in Phoenix. So since it's still my evening, I'm going to tune in live for the stuff happening out of the Asia Pacific region. And we'll see how I feel if I stick around for the EMEA region, which comes after that, and then of course, the Americas to wrap it up as we finish. It's kind of like New Year's Eve, right? Follow the time zones across the world. We're going to be doing something very similar and super excited for that.
[00:06:19.040] - Mayte Mata Sivera
That's very cool. I don't believe that I will be awake for all the events. However, I will try to stick around for the America session. Maybe a little of Europe. I'm familiar with some of the presenters for the different regions, and I really can't wait to see all of them. It will be very cool.
[00:06:36.560] - PMO Joe
Yeah, definitely going to be a fun event. So you had mentioned originally from Spain. So how do you get here? What goes into the decision making process to pick up and move and start over in a new country?
[00:06:50.450] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Yeah, that was a big challenge. I was working with a lot of projects around France and with French speakers, so I realized that I was in a meeting and my English level was very low. And if I really wanted to succeed and if you really want to learn a language, I thought that the best idea is to move to that country. So we get the opportunity to move to the United States with the idea of one sabbatical year, visit national parks, enjoy life, learn English, and guess what? In three weeks, we had a job opportunity. So we were in Denver, we moved to Utah, and since then, it's seven years already here in Utah. So the thing is that for sure that that happened to you. How many times do you need a plan and you need to be so from one subject to a year and an expression? It with all the things that we wanted to visit, we finished working at traditional life here.
[00:07:52.190] - PMO Joe
Yeah, that's fantastic. I can't imagine myself or my family, we say, hey, let's go to Spain for vacation and let's go see all the sites. And then while we're there, we say, you know what, let's just stay. Let's live here. That would be so hectic right. I mean, as a project manager, you probably want to be so organized. But in that situation, was it really chaotic? How did you kind of keep everything in order?
[00:08:17.270] - Mayte Mata Sivera
I don't know, maybe having an agile mindset. Although the project plan was a waterfall kind of thing, because we had all pre planned it. We choose the state based on income and how much was a house pricing or cost of living. And after you need to move all around. We drive from Denver, Colorado to Here, Utah. We stay one month in a hotel. We cannot find a house because to rent a house, to have a bank account, you need that address. It was a really learning experience to do that.
[00:08:57.170] - PMO Joe
So if anybody's out there thinking of moving to the US. From Europe. Monte is a great source to be able to say, hey, how did it work for you guys?
[00:09:06.130] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Yeah, it's challenging. And it's challenging if you don't come with a company that sponsors you because you need to do it all by yourself. Housing, working, driver license, small things that you don't think about it are very tough.
[00:09:24.780] - PMO Joe
And thank you for those. Some folks join us from El Salvador and across the US. So thank you all for joining in. Certainly appreciate that. So help me understand this too, because you're obviously in a new country going back to when you moved, right? You're in a new country, but you picked up and you left everything else behind. So how do you get comfortable in this new space? As you said, your English wasn't yet very well spoken. You didn't have a bank account, you didn't have a home. How do you get to that point where you become established over here especially? You said you had the job in three weeks. How do you do that job if English yet isn't your primary language? How did you progress to get from a point of being a visitor into now being somebody who's comfortable being here?
[00:10:12.920] - Mayte Mata Sivera
So for the job was easy. My head hunter that was giving me some job opportunities and psyches in Europe had an opportunity here in Utah. So that was not a big part. The big part was the feeling of belonging. Belonging to a community that don't have the same culture, that doesn't have the same kind of food, that you don't have in the supermarket in the same spot, the same things as silly example, where do you have the ex here in the United States for the people.
[00:10:44.010] - PMO Joe
That is not here, usually, like the dairy section, right? Cheeses and milks and eggs all kind.
[00:10:50.770] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Of connected inside of a fridge. In Spain, we have it outside. So you can wander hours in an American supermarket looking for eggs. And it's like, where are the eggs here? So something like that of silly can change all your view on how you do and perceive things. So what really helped me to start feeling this feeling of belonging was volunteer. What I did and what I tried to do every time that I moved to different countries or different regions in Spain is trying to find a volunteer opportunity, something that fits with me, that help me to network, that help me to understand the culture of the place that I am living. So that's always something that I try to do where I can help, but I can give back something to the community and get this strategy piece or mindset like what I will win when I volunteer. I want to increase my neighbor, I want to learn more about Utah, I want to learn more about my public library or my neighborhood. So I try to always in my horrible and schedule agenda, trying to save a little of time to volunteer. So in this case when I arrived to Utah, I started volunteering for TEDx Alex City, a very diverse organization with amazing people.
[00:12:15.420] - Mayte Mata Sivera
And I also started volunteering for the PMI chapter. So like that I start knowing people, knowing professionals, network with professionals here in Utah from different sectors and different places.
[00:12:27.810] - PMO Joe
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because you may not have the connections to be able to build through your neighbors or other professional areas. So go volunteer there. You immediately can learn, but you can also can contribute. So it's bi directional in TEDx. Salt Lake City or Salt Lake? I think everyone's familiar with Ted, right? The Ted Talk and all that stuff. How is it different for a localized group like TEDx Salt Lake compared to just the Big Ted? Right? How different is that?
[00:12:59.870] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Big Ted gives us the rules how to have a good event. We needed to have a license. So our license was Becky at that time. And she was amazing. She was an amazing leader that organized all the event and coordinate different volunteers to make sure that the event happens. Each local event is kind of different. So maybe you have one in Arizona that I would like to chat with you if you have it and try to explore with them and visit the event. In our case, what we wanted to do is to promote local people. So one of the first ones that we had in the last years was we only wanted speakers that are local, that are bright, that are bold, and that brings amazing ideas to the community or that try to solve some problems or challenges that we have here in Utah.
[00:13:49.140] - PMO Joe
That makes sense.
[00:13:49.720] - Mayte Mata Sivera
And Bigded has super highlighted speakers like the Pub and these kind of people. So each chapter do something different. So go ahead and your local PM the next event, for sure there will be one in Arizona or at the college or something like that and try to see how they are doing things. In our case, we stick to two local people.
[00:14:13.370] - PMO Joe
I think maybe Grand Canyon University here has a Ted organization, but I'm not sure about elsewhere in Arizona. But I'm curious now. I'm going to go find out. And of course we're a project management show, right. So you had mentioned that you volunteer with PMI chapter. Is there two chapters in Utah? I've spoken at one of them. I can't remember which one it is. If there's two there.
[00:14:39.250] - Mayte Mata Sivera
I'm not sure if there are two. I'm volunteering at the north of Utah chapter. I don't know if sometimes they have one for the south part of Utah. And this is the one that I am volunteering. I'm the new VP of programs. So potentially we will need to have a conversation if you want to join one of our sessions because now I am planning all the end of 2022 and early 2023 speakers for our Lance and Learning session. So that's an amazing opportunity that finally I get a board position. But it's more than seven years that I did more things for them. And the first one was challenging my speaker skills because one thing is speaking in Spanish and another one is to do it in English. So they give me the opportunity to present in one of their big comforts. So that was very good that they trust me for that.
[00:15:29.550] - PMO Joe
And when did you get everyone thinks about volunteering, maybe the board positions, but to your point, right, you did several years of just volunteering for the chapter. What do you get out of that personally, to be able to give back into our industry? How did that help you?
[00:15:44.490] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Feedback. Feedback is very important for me. Feedback is helping me to grow. So I remember one of the first presentations that I get when they send you back this Excel file with all their ratings. The ratings were good. The presentation were good, the slides were good. My accent was very strong. So I took a deep breath and I said, wow, how I am going to deal with that? I had the opportunity to chat with different coaches from TEDx Alex City. And really, this accent is part of me. I'm not going to get rid of this accent. What I can do is to use words that are easy to understand for other people. Or what I can do is to try to speak slowly, to help other people to understand me and create a kind of a relationship like you. When you ask me in another meeting that we have together, what did you say? And don't feel offended for that and try to give a better explanation of that. So that feedback really helped me to grow. I also participate in the newsletters writing articles. For me, it's super easy to review grammar and to write articles in Spanish or French, but English, that was a deal breaker.
[00:17:03.840] - Mayte Mata Sivera
So getting feedback, how these articles were reserved for the community, helped me to grow as a project manager because I was creating content for PMO leaders and for project managers, but also help me. It's like you when you volunteer or when you write something, that kind of feedback for sure is helping you, isn't it, though?
[00:17:25.340] - PMO Joe
Yes, absolutely. We always try to make sure that we're getting feedback on the content. Or after a session, you want to be able to hear back from the members that you were speaking with to see was this beneficial, was it useful? Was there something that we could have done differently or better? Of course, to me, that feedback is the essential part of why we communicate. Because if we're not reaching the audience in a way that they can receive what we're saying, then we have to change, right? We can't ask the audience to change. We have to change the way we're doing it.
[00:17:56.720] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Yeah. And what about feedback? Have you ever get this for sure not about the accent, at least in English, because, wow, you do it great, but in other languages or have you ever recited that feedback in one of your presentations or articles that people complain and how did you deal with that?
[00:18:18.660] - PMO Joe
Yeah, it certainly we haven't because you're never going to be able to make everybody happy because if you have a diverse audience out there, somebody is just not going to agree with you or think that what you did wasn't proper. So for me, I try to be open to it. I don't get offended by it. I always try to say, what can I learn from every show that we do, every article that we write, every speaking session we have, and take that into consideration. If I get 99 pieces of good feedback and one piece of bad feedback or critique, maybe is another way to say it. One, it's valid because that person felt it, believed it, and was strong enough about it to give it to you. So what do we need to alter within our group? If it was maybe cultural related? Hey, you didn't understand what we're dealing with here locally. You gave a national presentation instead of something that's local. So I've received that early in my career, and now in every session, I try to make sure that I'm finding out something about that area and I bring that into the discussion to make sure that they know that I care.
[00:19:23.800] - PMO Joe
I took enough time to learn about their community to make sure that it's important. So I certainly have received it early in my career. I'd become angry and offended by it. How could they think that about me? But now as I have gotten a little bit more wise and older and more gray hair in my beard, now I welcome it. I want to know everybody that's not happy just as much as I want to know who was happy.
[00:19:49.790] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Yeah, I remember that I was in a PMI conference and I made one of our conference group and she told me why you are not speaking here. And I told her I had very bad feedback in my last presentation about my accent, and I'm kind of scared. And he was the one that really challenged me and said, hey, try it. You need to do it. Look for help or ask if you have some friends that are speaking Coach or how you can improve that. But don't feel offended for this feedback. Learn from it. And that really helped me a lot. This kind of conference, like the PMO conference that you have, the one that we are doing now, or big PMI or a small chapter conference, it's a great source to network and ask other experts how I can improve, if that's my goal and I want to be here, how I can do better. Yeah.
[00:20:45.060] - PMO Joe
And I think there's another piece that sometimes people don't think about, like with an accent. What comes with that accent isn't just the sounds that you're making. It's the history and all the experiences that you had in the region that's different than where I come from that I can learn from. So I may have to concentrate a little bit more if I'm trying to listen to an accent that may not be familiar to me. But I want to know what was it like in your region? What were the challenges that you had? What was your life like? What is your culture like? To me, I gravitate towards people who have a different accent than me because I know that's a learning opportunity. So when I work with people like you, or we had one person on here from El Salvador, right. And I know I'm going to get a different cultural experience, and that's more rich for me.
[00:21:30.250] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Yeah, that's very interesting, and I really appreciate all the people that do that or stop me. I'm very passionate in my presentations. If someone you are in one of my conference, you will see that I look like a Speedy Gonzalez. It's all about the speed. And I really try to extend myself to make it easy to the people and transmit this passion that I have about project management and program management.
[00:21:58.310] - PMO Joe
So being from another country, I think it makes sense to ask, how is project management different here in the States compared to projects that you might have been running while you're in Spain or any other country?
[00:22:10.000] - Mayte Mata Sivera
I believe that are the same. All the projects have the same challenge with budget, with the schedule and all of that. But it changes people. And how do you manage people in different cultures? Something that happened to me, and it's kind of a funny story. My first project here in Utah, I was used to launch projects in manufacturing plants that we stopped we completely stopped working or the lines during the weekend. And we have the technology people and other leaders coming to work during the weekend to ramp up production or ramp up whatever project, and we do that on Sundays. So I arrived here to Utah. I didn't know about the culture here, and I said, okay, so the perfect plan. I came with my old plans from Europe. We stopped manufacturing Friday. We do that Saturday and Sunday. All hands on deck. We are going to work and we are going to make it. You cannot imagine the face of the people in my office. I have more than 35 stakeholders in a room, from the plan director to the line worker looking at me like, Sunday. That's not someone took me apart. Show me a little about the culture, what's going on here in Utah, why we need to respect different people and we adapt the plan.
[00:23:35.210] - Mayte Mata Sivera
So that's the thing. And you mentioned to that before, when you are going to another state or another culture. You need to learn first how these people think, what these people believe, how they work in order to be successful in your projects. I always say the same. It's not projects or programs, the fees from people, if you learn about the people, if you engage that group of people or your stakeholders, the project is easy to be successful. Always challenge, schedule, budget, that's the same in all cases. But what it works in one culture, but actually it will not work in another.
[00:24:09.590] - PMO Joe
Which makes sense. And obviously I think about that from the perspective of different states here in the US. Even within different here in Arizona, within different parts of Arizona, we get some cultural differences we have to be aware of. And you mentioned a little bit of in Spain how you would do that job on the weekend and it was just everybody did it that way. What are some of the other, maybe European or certainly Spanish or different encounters that you had run into projects or even PMI chapter differences, anything? Because what happens is what I find as isolated as we are in the United States thinking hey, we're this great country, we miss out on some of the historical perspective that other countries in Europe and around the world have that's more deep and rich than we have here. So we're not inquisitive to know what it's like there, right? And I think we can learn from people in those experiences. So this is where I'm trying to tap into what are some other things that you can bring to us from your experiences in Europe.
[00:25:13.190] - Mayte Mata Sivera
As I mentioned before, Joe, I really believe that it's to know where you are going and try to adapt to them. For example, another funny experience that I had in France, my first meetings, people look at me like I was a monster or something like that and it was like what's going on here? So creating some kind of trust relationship with some of the stakeholders help you. And I asked why people don't come to me when they have an issue. And they told me that I scared the people. And my surprise was like why I am scared the people? They told me you talk too loud and you move on to your hands, it looks like you are always angry. And I was like, really? That's how I talk in Spain, as I mentioned before, super fast, a lot of movements. So what I learned from that is that it's not only your voice tone or your presence, it's also your hands movement. When you work in Asia, you don't point with a finger when you say go from here or from there, you put all your hand. So whatever a small cultural difference related boystone hand gestures you can learn before going to another market or another country to make an implementation that would be very helpful for you.
[00:26:40.010] - PMO Joe
That's great. And I would never would think about that, especially the Asia part of the way you point, because just common nature for us to be able to point the way we do, and that may.
[00:26:48.760] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Not with a finger. Yeah, that's very disrespectful. Also, if you are traveling with your manager, your manager will in some countries, your manager always should speak before you and give you the tone to speak. While in Europe, or at least in Spain, all of us talk at the same time and try to figure it out at the same time. It doesn't matter where you sit on the table or what is your title or who is your manager in some cultures, for example, that it's very important that you sit in some places on the table and your manager will speak before you.
[00:27:25.910] - PMO Joe
Interesting. I mean, this is great. I love this sort of insight. And again, when we have the PMO leader, we're a global community, and we talked to people from around the world, and again, the conference will be presenting from around the world. But we had one volunteer from Iran who I was chatting with, and we were talking about how projects work, and she had pointed out that they can't do procurement the way we do because there are several economic holds on how they can purchase different goods within their company or within their country. And for us, we would never think about that. Right. It's just you can go buy whatever you need to buy whenever you want it. But in other countries around the world, procurement is just different. And being aware of that, I think is important for us to recognize that while we speak a universal project management language, there are unique qualities to our region and our cultures that we have to be aware of. So certainly, thank you for sharing some of those experiences that you've had. I think that's insightful and beneficial for all of us.
[00:28:28.980] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Yeah, I recommend you if you need to manage a project in another country, try to look for the local chapter or try to network before traveling there with other project managers. And the PMO leader community is a good place to start networking. And, for example, now I made a lot of friends from other countries, and for sure I will ask them, hey, I have a business travel in India. How I should dress, it's not the same. How I dress here in the United States, how I should dress potentially in a formal meeting in India or Southeast Asia or whatever other region. So let's take that opportunity job. Both of us are engaging and are meeting a lot of new people around the world. So if we need to travel there, why not to ping them and ask for advice?
[00:29:19.700] - PMO Joe
I like the idea. I think we should travel there. Let's make that. We talked about coming out of the pandemic. I mentioned my first in person session coming. Up in a couple of years. You're now a PMO director, so you're working within an organization. Being remote versus being in the office. How have you dealt with that and how has that changed the way you do project management?
[00:29:46.530] - Mayte Mata Sivera
At the beginning, it was very challenging. I have to recognize that. It was very challenging for me. Not for the tools, because our company gave us the tools, but how we engage the people. Projects are people. We need to build this trust. We need to keep daily contact sometimes with some people that need more support or has more communications needs than others. So for me, it was very challenging to find this sweet spot between don't bother too much the people, but knowing that they are okay, they don't need me. So that period of validation was hard. Now I'm really happy to work from home. And basically because I have a long commute, I tried to go to the office, but I realized that I am more productive at home because I don't have distractions. However, what it works for me potentially doesn't work for another team member. So I really like these companies that are following a hybrid approach and allow the managers to chat with the employees and find the sweetest spot or the best solution between employees and people. So are you working from home? Do you get bored at home? Because that's something that I heard a lot, how you don't get bored to be in your office, in the basement or in the kitchen, that I have still team members that work in the kitchen.
[00:31:06.720] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Did you deal with that, Joe?
[00:31:09.030] - PMO Joe
Yeah, I certainly I think all of us do because you're not around people, right? So you're not getting that excitement. So for me, I try within every 2 hours to get up and go outside to change what I see so that it's a different view. And of course, while you're outside, you're going to hear different sounds and your pets are out there barking at different things. Or you may see delivery people that are bringing packages or your neighbors and their children walking around. So for me, one of the tips I've done is to purposely and intentionally get up and move so that I'm not just stuck sitting at my desk. Because there's no point, there's no distractions, no one's coming to speak to me yet I'm not engaged. So I have to put into my schedule the ability to go do that. And now that's become normal. That's now my new normal. So if I had to work into an office again, I think it'd be a little bit strange to try to integrate back into an office setting. How about you? What are you doing for that?
[00:32:03.330] - Mayte Mata Sivera
What I did too, because it's almost more than two years already. Oh my gosh, time flies. What I did is every six months I changed my office. So if now I have the table looking at the window in the next six months, I change the table like that. I don't get bored to be always in the same place. And like you, I set an alarm. And when I have work that is more reading emails or supporting people. Sometimes I take some calls working around the backyard, other times I answer some emails from the living room. But my number one rule is I'm at home but I am working. I'm not doing house work like this. Washes for laundry during my schedule for work. That's something that it was clear from the beginning in my family once I finished work. Yes, I'm a mom, I make dinner, I make lunches. So what I do, I prepare my snacks on beforehand, I prepare my lunch on beforehand. And I work. I work here, I work on the deck, I work in the backyard. And when I need to focus, I really close the door, put the camera for some important meetings like BP levels or higher like that, I'm focusing, concentrated and they don't hurt the Amazon driver or the ice cream truck walking around.
[00:33:28.710] - PMO Joe
The other thing, I do that at first I didn't get the desk this way, but I have an uplift desk, so it raises. So I'll take time during the day where I'm sitting and then standing and just that small thing. I never really thought about it before until you were talking about it. It changes my perspective on being in that office. It gives me a different view, it makes me think differently. So I think that's another way to keep it kind of changing for me where I don't get bored.
[00:33:56.010] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Yeah, I have one of those too. But think about that. We are privileged to have one of those. Certainly not all the people in our company or other friends that I have can afford one of those. So my recommendation for the people that cannot afford this kind of desk is always you can grab your laptop or you can move your office on how it looks like in order to have this feeling of I am not 8 hours, 9 hours sitting in the same position or try to get a yoga ball in flatter one. That also helps to change. Sometimes you are sitting in a chair, sometimes you sit in a ball and that's a more affordable option. Or moving the desk from the wall to the window, then sometimes the standing up desk. So that's something that as a project manager, Joe, we need to think about it. Who I have in my team, can they afford one of those? Or should we challenge the company to provide the tools that they need to keep working remote?
[00:34:58.720] - PMO Joe
Yeah, certainly. And that's an interesting discussion we have never explored on the show is when several companies have downsized their buildings or sold their buildings and our complete remote staff, so they have quite a large savings and real estate costs that they may have. Do they then support their employees at home with different equipment to be able to make that environment be more suitable for them and more comfortable for them to be able to work in? Interesting question. I'm going to see if we can dig into that a little deeper and see what we can find out.
[00:35:29.760] - Mayte Mata Sivera
I have a few example of friends that when they send them home, there were offices that were on lease. And lease are expensive. If they were able to close the contract with the landlord, they directly told the employees, grab whatever you need because we are not coming back. So they grab tables, they grab chairs, they grab computers, stand up desk or whatever they needed. Other companies, by the other hand, what they did is give a student, it means we are not coming back to the office. Here there are $1,000 and you need to have an office that works for you. I remember long time ago when I was in IBM, that was oh my gosh, 1520 years ago. I don't remember long, long time ago. They were exploring savings to having people rotating and working one day from home. So that was pretty pandemic. There were already companies that were seeing some kind of benefit to having people there. What they did is if you sign up for the least to work one day from home, they pay for your internet service for the full month. So that was very cool because they give me the opportunity to be at home and wait for Amazon delivery.
[00:36:43.030] - Mayte Mata Sivera
There was no Amazon delivery on at that time, but some kind of deliveries or the technician for the laundry machine and stuff like that and being at home and having time to focus. And they also support the internet. And that was years ago. So I assume that most of the companies are doing something like that.
[00:37:03.660] - PMO Joe
Yeah. How about when the day ends? Obviously you're still in the same house that you were in. How do you shut work off? Or do you not? Obviously your focus becomes your family and dinner, as you mentioned. But if you're just sitting around with your family and you've got your phone handy and there's an email from work, do you shut work down? Do you respond to that? How is your I have two tips.
[00:37:27.460] - Mayte Mata Sivera
One is very easy to manage is I change clothes. I wear a little of makeup, not a lot, but I clean my face and I take out this clothes. I changed my clothes and we're more comfortable. Not a blouse like now, more a t shirt thing. And that helped me. The other thing is something that I am managing since I am in Europe and it's not very common here, at least in the company that I am working now. I have two cell phones. I have my personal cell phone and I have my work phone. My team members and all the people know when it's 430 p. M. The warfare goes to a drawer and I don't check it until maybe 930 that the kids are on bed just in case. Because being a global company, we always need to deal with some questions from Southeast Asia or late in the night or Europe early in the morning, those kinds of things. So what I do, I have this bracket or gap in my agenda that they know that if there is something really urgent, my manager and only two more people have my personal phone, that they know that they can they can call me there.
[00:38:43.460] - PMO Joe
That's a great idea. I have two phones or one I've got one phone. I have way too much e mail coming in and phone calls on one phone. But when iPhones came out, right, I'm old enough to remember back before iPhones and there were pagers and blackberries and different things like that. It was standard to have a company phone or a company black bear in your own. But then organizations shifted to you can actually have your company information on your personal phone. So now I haven't had two phones for a long time. It's been a while.
[00:39:21.040] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Yeah, maybe it was that shift. And there are some companies and a lot of friends and other project managers ask me, why do you have two phones? Some companies pay for your personal bill. Other companies allow you to have two phones. That depends. A lot of the company and each of us needs to analyze what it works. For me yeah, for me, really, to disconnect, I need to have my work on in another room or in a drawer or something like that.
[00:39:51.220] - PMO Joe
Yeah. You had mentioned early on when you were doing your introduction that you're now a PMO director, but obviously you've advanced in your career, starting out as project manager. But what's your career path look like? What's that progression? You don't just wake up one day and you're a PMO director. How do you travel that path to get to where you are now?
[00:40:15.030] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Yeah, so that's interesting story. I have a master's degree in chemical engineering, and I was finishing my test and I got a call from IBM and they offered me the opportunity to work for them. And they pay for a masters in Sip. The ones that don't know SAP is a big ERP and masters are, at least in Europe, are kind of expensive to be a business analyst of that tool. So I said, wow, that's technology. We are moving to a technology direction. And I had some self doubts and I said, let's try it. It means it was a try. It was a big company, non related, with my six years of pain to get my master's degree in college. But I tried it and I tried it, and I really like it. I fall in love of SAP technology world, and being a business analyst for that I was doing VA work. And someday there was a challenge that we didn't have a project manager. So I took the role. I was an unofficial project manager, so I started doing project management. And after three years being an official project manager, I get the certification, I get my PMP.
[00:41:37.570] - Mayte Mata Sivera
I started more from managing projects. I was looking, what is my next step, what I want to do next? So there are people that went from program and portfolio management when I did, after 1516 years leading technology projects, I had the opportunity to lead a non technology project that was more global. And instead of moving forward dealing with programs and technology, I said, I want to learn more about that. So some careers are not linear like mine. In my case, I moved to product development, voting products, product development. I learned about that. I learned from a strategic and how to deal with strategic, high critical projects in the company. And from there I get my role as a PMO director. I had knowledge from different ways of manage projects, different kind of teams, different kinds of projects. So that's what helped me to grow as a PMO director.
[00:42:40.210] - PMO Joe
Do you think has been the biggest challenge for you, making that leap from delivering on a project and now being responsible for the portfolio of projects and the team of project managers? A lot of people who listen, the majority of people in our industry are project managers. There's always going to be a one to many relationship director to their team. So what's been the biggest challenge for you that others can hear about and say, hey, maybe I can work on something to prepare me for what's going to come as a director in the future?
[00:43:11.610] - Mayte Mata Sivera
It's the mindset to doing something, to leading people to do it. So that happens to be the same. When I was in technology, it was very easy for me to be a BA and put my hands in the system. When you are a project manager, you don't have access to the system and you need to respect other people's decisions and you need to empower them to take the correct decisions. So something similar, when you are a PMO director or a program or portfolio manager, how do you empower the people to do the coverage of? And sometimes you are not the owner of the project. You are not the project manager of the program or portfolio. And that directly impacts you. So creating a trust relationship and trying to change the mindset from dealer to a leader is not kind of easy. Yeah.
[00:44:04.650] - PMO Joe
And I would imagine maybe a couple of lessons learned along the way as you were making that transition of how to interact with other company leaders, because now your conversations are, at the leadership level, more strategic in nature as opposed to a tactical point. Did you have any training leading up to that or did you learn more from just the experience itself.
[00:44:29.190] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Both of them and also volunteer help me. So I'm going to fit a milestone. It will be five years in the same company and the first two, three years every time that I cross my path with someone that was BP of above and my desk was in the 6th floor. I took the stairs because I couldn't handle. Someone asked me how are you doing? How is your project going? And I took the stairs six floors. That's easy to say but not easy to do it. So what I did is start challenging myself and try to network and try to catch up with people at TEDx event that helped me to practice my elevator page. How do you deal with these kind of people? How you adapt your communication style from a warehouse manager from a line worker to a VP. Sometimes you cannot experiment that kind of things at work. So I took some volunteers opportunities to experiment that learn about how I am doing and improve it. Now I am not taking the elevator and sometimes I'm in the same room that they are. So experiment improved. Sometimes we'll fail. I still freeze sometimes when the CEO asks me something, it's like but I still try to challenge myself and practice.
[00:46:00.290] - Mayte Mata Sivera
These kind of conversations help me. And sometimes practicing outside work is easier than doing this kind of people testing in your day to day activities and.
[00:46:12.160] - PMO Joe
And you had mentioned trying to improve yourself and certifications earlier we had talked about and as a PMO director, we think more traditional project management. But how is agile played into your team and how you deliver your work?
[00:46:30.630] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Don't ask me that question. You know me and you know that this drama agile versus waterfall. Our PMOs, I truly believe that need to serve our strategy department and we need to be the liaison between strategy and strategy delivery and we need to ensure that we deliver the projects. If we have teams and we have our technology teams that are 100% agile, we need to understand them and we need to adapt our programs and portfolios to them. And if you are working in cross functional developments where you have people that it's agile and people that the way to manage the projects are more traditional, you need to find the spot where all the people work together to deliver the project. Yeah, we need to have an agile mindset. But having a cabin or a board full of sticky notes doesn't work for other people.
[00:47:25.690] - PMO Joe
Yes, I had posted a message out on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago about how did they build the Great Pyramids without waterfall or agile.
[00:47:33.990] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Remember that post I told you that looks like an article? How that post finished? It means did you have a lot of engagement? Yes, sir.
[00:47:41.810] - PMO Joe
I think we're closing in on like $9,000 on that right now because there are some people who are so passionate about one or the other. Yes, there's some that didn't really understand that I was saying that kind of tongue in cheek as a comment, more to spur discussion. And then there were others who got it right and they were telling me a joke back. But that's the point. We get so caught up in these labels that our industry, our profession has been around for only about 50 years as a formal profession. So how did people do all this stuff before PMI existed, before the Agile Manifesto happened, before Rice wrote the paper on waterfall, although it wasn't directly about waterfall. So how did we do all this before then? People have been delivering projects since man has been around and we get caught up into one or the other. I am in your boat, just as you said. I believe what you're saying. It's about delivering the work that solves the strategic challenge that we're confronted. But who cares which way we do that?
[00:48:49.100] - Mayte Mata Sivera
That's my thing. And related to the pyramids, I believe people and trust and someone that leads the team to do that in a proper way and each time had the proper way. Because I believe that my parents didn't manage their teams as we are doing right now. Now we are more empathy than maybe years ago with our people and our teams.
[00:49:16.180] - PMO Joe
Yeah. I also posted out there about the Great Wall of China. It took 2300 years to build the Great Wall of China. How big do you think that project plan would have been? Right? Microsoft project wouldn't have been able to hold all the lines of that plan.
[00:49:29.240] - Mayte Mata Sivera
No, there are no system around that can handle that. Have you ever been there?
[00:49:33.480] - PMO Joe
I have not.
[00:49:34.720] - Mayte Mata Sivera
I'd love to. I recommend you to go, but don't go to the touristy park. Go to one of the places that are not full of touristy people. And for sure you will have some project manager or someone that you know from this upcoming conference that you can pin and say, hey, bring me to some nice place that we can work around only a handful of people.
[00:49:57.460] - PMO Joe
Yeah, that would be an amazing experience. But that's what we have to. And I'm not trying to discount Agile or Waterfall or Kanban or any of the other systems. I think they're important to understand them, but they're not as important as the outcome. We're trying to achieve great.
[00:50:14.870] - Mayte Mata Sivera
And it's the same if you I lead projects in manufacturing plants and we were lean, lean manufacturing, and it worked for them. But if you're working in a project that you need to coordinate manufacturing, production, technology, regulatory, legal, each team has different needs. And we always talk about communication needs. Each person has a communication needs, and that's in all papers, all books, and a lot of webinars about communication needs. But also different teams, maybe different frameworks or different methodologies to ensure that they deliver properly. What the strategy team or the management is asking for.
[00:50:54.210] - PMO Joe
That's a good point of that's why I really like the new Pinball that came out because it talks about the principles of project management more than not really the process groups. The knowledge areas within project management because it's the shift to understanding concepts and principles of outcomes and how we're trying to achieve that that I think will elevate our profession to get us better because we'll get out of this debate. Agile versus waterfall. Who cares about that debate? Did you achieve what you were trying to achieve? That's what counts.
[00:51:25.630] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Yeah, that's what counts. And last month I get scale certification and a product owner certification and I posted in my link, hey, I have this but people reach me out in private message you're a PMO director, why you are getting a certification? It's like I need to talk the same language, I need to have all of that in my toolkit. That makes me better, that makes me a better leader, that makes me a better PMO director if I understand and follow the tools that others are having.
[00:51:58.470] - PMO Joe
Angel, you'll have a different set of tools to be able to use on your projects to ensure that your organization is getting the best delivery possible. Great. Understanding all those techniques, that's our goal. Well, listen, I say this every show and I'll say it again today, we're almost up with time, right, these conversations? Yes, they go by so fast. So I certainly want to thank you for coming on the show today and sharing your story. Is there anything that we didn't get to that you want to mention or how can people get in touch with you? What's the best way for stable people.
[00:52:34.740] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Can find me in LinkedIn. I'll also be in Vegas in the next PMI conference or you come in.
[00:52:41.320] - PMO Joe
Joe, I will be there. I'm looking forward to meeting all these people. Over the past few years I haven't been able to meet in person.
[00:52:47.580] - Mayte Mata Sivera
That's very cool. We had a lot of conversations via Zoom and other tools and I'm so happy to finally see you face to face. So I will be there. Linden is my preferred tool for people that want to network and establish. I always ask the same how I can help you? So if someone needs to learn more about volunteer or career development, they are more welcome to be me.
[00:53:13.230] - PMO Joe
And also if you're interested in supporting directly as a volunteer the PMO leader community, right. We are always looking for different ambassadors or volunteers within the Americas region where you're currently the leader. I think we've got an upcoming change but you're going to stay plugged in as someone helping the community. So certainly reach out and connect with you about that as well.
[00:53:37.260] - Mayte Mata Sivera
Yeah, and join the community the upcoming conference because I don't know if other people will stay awake like you, Joe, but at least if they can join a few sessions. I truly believe that this coming conference will be a big hit.
[00:53:54.340] - PMO Joe
Absolutely. And we're going to record all the sessions. They'll be available for members, right. If you're not a member of the community and you miss a session where you have to become a member first to see the recorded sessions, but it's a free membership, right? So it doesn't cost anything to attend live and it doesn't cost anything to become a member. So certainly encourage everybody to get out and join the PMO Leader community. Yeah, well, thank you, mate. I appreciate your time today. I appreciate all the volunteer work you've done for our community. I appreciate you sharing your story to let others know that it's okay to be courageous and go for change and see how that can turn out. And it can turn out really well, as it has for you, certainly. Thank you to all of our listeners as well. Right? Without listeners, we don't have a show. Be sure to visit Project Management Office Hours website, which is out on the PMO Squad community. Look up on the menu and see Office Hours out there. We have all of our old shows, so all 110 previous shows are listed out there on the website.
[00:54:56.490] - PMO Joe
Also, your favorite podcast platform carries all of our shows as well. Remember that each show can give you up to about one PTU's worth of self reported credit that you can get for your recertification and go out and see all of our upcoming shows. Right, so as we have shows listed throughout the rest of the year, we have folks listed out there, including a show coming up with PMI and some other partners on the citizen developer program that they have out there. So that's going to be an interesting show. Also, the PMO Global Alliance Healthcare Strategy Group is going to be on and we're going to learn about their initiatives that they're working on at the global level through PMO Global Alliance to work within the healthcare space and see what we can pick up from them. A reminder, we're live now, but all of these shows are recorded. So if you missed today's show, certainly go out to your favorite podcast platform and listen to it there, or go out to the PMO Squad website to catch it there. That's also a thank you to our sponsors, the PMO Squad and the PMO Leader.
[00:56:00.580] - PMO Joe
The PMO Squad as a premier consulting firm here in the United States serving all of your needs, they try to make solutions simple and help you deliver projects better. That's it for now. Office Hours are closed until next time. I'm PMO Joe, and you've been listening to Project Management office hours.
[00:56:20.250] - Announcer
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