Introduction
In this webinar, Richard Tulley explores the most effective ways to advance in project management.
He covers the 70-20-10 learning model, which incorporates informal, formal, and combined learning methods for optimal results.
He guides both professional and personal growth and gives tips on how to accelerate your career development.
Three crucial pillars for career building are emphasised: enhancing behavioural skills, expanding experience, and continually acquiring and refining knowledge.
Ideal for those seeking to enhance their project management skills and broaden their understanding of the field.
Video
Watch the video below, download the presentation or audio, or read the full transcript of the webinar.
About Richard Tulley
Richard Tulley is a Client Engagement Director for Axiologik, a digital leadership consultancy specialising in delivering large-scale, highly complex digital transformation initiatives.
He contributed towards the delivery of complex IT and business transformations within Financial Services, Logistics, Manufacturing and Defence. He took leadership roles in the sales/bid phase and through the full delivery lifecycle with well-established organisations such as Hewlett Packard, EDS, BT Global Services, Serco, Capita and Sopra Steria.
Before joining Axilogik, Richard Tulley was Director of Programme & Project Management with Sopra Steria, developing their programme & project management practice, comprised of over 530 programme & project professionals.
Project management courses
To develop your project management career, taking project management courses will be beneficial.
A project management course can provide individuals with the skills, knowledge, and experience needed to succeed in a variety of roles and industries. Project management is a high-demand field, and many organisations look for project management professionals to lead their projects.
Knowledge Train offers various project management courses, depending on your level of expertise.
Instructor-led project management training
Self-paced online project management training
Transcript
Here’s the full transcript of the video.
00:00:00 Sevcan Yasa: So just to start off, I’m going to give a little bit of a background. I’m Sevcan and I’m the marketing executive for Knowledge Train.
00:00:09 Sevcan Yasa: We are in partnership with agileKRC, we do have Richard with us. So, thank you so much for joining Richard. Just before I head over to Richard, we are going to do the Q&A slightly different this time.
00:00:24 Sevcan Yasa: So, what we are going to do is Richard is going to go over some concepts and then we are going to have a quick Q&A.
00:00:31 Sevcan Yasa: So, if you do have any questions, please note them down in the chat section and Richard will go over them. We will have roughly 3 different Q&A and then one big one at the end.
00:00:44 Sevcan Yasa: So, whenever you think of a question or if you have any comments, you can always jot them down.
00:00:49 Sevcan Yasa: So, Richard, over to you.
00:00:53 Richard Tulley: Thank you Sevcan, that’s much appreciated. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining. Let me just move the slides on so that hopefully Sevcan we’re at the welcome introductions slide.
00:01:10 Sevcan Yasa: I’m sorry, what did you say, Richard?
00:01:12 Richard Tulley: So, I just wanted to double check that you’re seeing the welcome and introductions slide.
00:01:15 Sevcan Yasa: Yeah. Yeah, we can see it. Yeah. If anyone can’t see it, please let us know. But I can see it.
00:01:21 Richard Tulley: Excellent. Thank you. So very briefly in my current role which I’ve been in for the last of the six months, I’m working for the digital leadership consultancy so a fairly small specialist kind of organisation, but a lot of the subjects that we’re going to talk about this afternoon really came from five years I had with Sopra Steria, who are a large kind of IT services, digital consulting organisation and I had a role there of Director of programme project management and for the five years I was there and whilst there were many facets to the role.
00:01:57 Richard Tulley: My principal focus was on developing programme project managers, so I managed to work. Very fortunately for me, with some very clever colleagues in learning and development, and I learned a lot about the colour of the science and the approach towards developing people. We developed programme project managers from people aspiring to get into project management, graduates and apprentices starting their project management careers through to very experienced, very senior programme directors. So, I see on the poll we have a mixture, we have some people who are considering a career in project management, which is good, and we have some people who recently joined project management. We’ve got some colleagues on the call they’ve been in project management for two years or longer, and I hope that there’s something within this discussion this afternoon for everybody, and really the intent is to help you understand how the training and accreditation that you’re doing with Knowledge Train sits in the broader context of your own development, personal development and professional development. So, you can see we’re going to explore a number of topics during the course of this afternoon.
00:03:08 Richard Tulley: And as Sevcan said, what we’ll do is we’ll break it into sections so that we can reflect at the end of each section and take any immediate kind of questions that would help to, to clarify.
00:03:20 Richard Tulley: So that’s the outline for this afternoon and really to set the scene, you know what I’d like you to kind of consider is about training or learning as I would refer to it. Principally, it’s about building knowledge.
00:03:37 Richard Tulley: And there’s a quote there that I really like from Confucius, which talks about, as you can read, I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand and why that’s important and why that’s relevant for this afternoon is that when you, for example, go on a PRINCE2 course, where you go on a managing portfolios kind of course you’re getting knowledge which at that point in time is largely theoretical.
00:04:09 Richard Tulley: And it’s when you actually take that knowledge and you get to practically apply it in your workplace, that’s where you start to build competence and proficiency and expertise and it makes you more effective as a project manager because that knowledge is built into understanding it’s built into practical application, and it’s a little bit like an analogy where you know before you actually learn to drive.
00:04:32 Richard Tulley: You do quite a lot of theoretical knowledge around the highway code before you first start the engine and drive the car, and you do a little bit of time in the setting the car, understanding what the controls do and how it works, and over time that knowledge with the experience of driving in different conditions on different kinds of roads helps you become a proficient driver. And the same is true in any professional kind of field about learning how project management in this case works. What the disciplines are, what the tools are, what the techniques are, it’s increasing as you apply those, and you use those you learn how to refine them. You learn how to use them to the best advantage, and so we’re trying to put that learning into the context of your own personal professional development.
00:05:17 Richard Tulley: So, where I’d like to start from is something called the 70-20-10 model and this is academic research. That’s still very much at the forefront of learning and development best practise.
00:05:28 Richard Tulley: And what it really talks about is the kind of pie chart in the middle of their kind of illustration is that we best learn and develop as individuals through what we call a blended mix.
00:05:41 Richard Tulley: So, training or the learning that you might do through PRINCE2 for example, is a really important element but it’s part of that 10% that’s called formal learning.
00:05:54 Richard Tulley: And in effect, when we break these three forms of learning down, the formal learning is something you’ve been most familiar with, which is training and where you know where you go on a training course and the knowledge is relevant to the role. And it’s something that you have a development opportunity that it helps to support.
00:06:14 Richard Tulley: And when you’re learning something and you can actually contextualise it and understand what it means in a practical sense, then that formal learning is a really important and a really, really powerful part of your learning as a project manager.
00:06:29 Richard Tulley: Ultimately, where we look at the 70% and these percentages are illustrative rather than prescriptive, but broadly 70%, the vast majority of your learning and development will be in your workplace. It’ll be the time that you spend at work doing project management activity is kind of learning on the job a little bit, you know through experience, on occasion you’ll end up shadowing a colleague and you’ll sometimes just observe colleagues and take lessons from them in terms of how they operate and the kind of things they do.
00:07:06 Richard Tulley: You’ll get feedback in your workplace day by day. You’ll get to practise, repeat and refine, and you’ll understand how best to take that project management knowledge and build it into what you actually do on a day-to-day basis and become increasingly effective as a project manager.
00:07:23 Richard Tulley: And broadly, those are the two major sources of learning and development that people tend to focus on at work. But one of the themes this afternoon is actually when you take the formal learning and the interactive learning. So, training learning on the job, that’s 80% of your potential learning and development and what’s really important is this concept of social learning that we’re going to explore, which is broadly said. How you learn from other people, how you learn through interaction with other people and that takes many forms. Sometimes you may have a colleague at work. Who will coach you or mentor you or guide you and quite often it’s through a network and it might be a professional network, it might be a social network, but every kind of opportunity you have where you interact with others it’s a learning experience that’s really important as we’ll explore as you move forward through the conversation.
00:08:24 Richard Tulley: So, the 70-20-10 model talks to us about how we learn and develop. So, we learn through formal learning.
00:08:31 Richard Tulley: We learn through practical application of the job and working as a project manager and gaining experience in project management.
00:08:38 Richard Tulley: And then we learn through that social interaction. But what’s really important to consider as well is where we learn.
00:08:45 Richard Tulley: And in the majority of cases, that learning will be naturally occurring through the role that you do within the company that you work for.
00:08:54 Richard Tulley: So, 80% of your learning development will be in your workplace, but the 20% that kind of social learning as it were, that can well be achieved and part of what you do at work.
00:09:06 Richard Tulley: But equally, you can go beyond the workplace, and you could, for example, join a professional association such as the APM or the PMI.
00:09:17 Richard Tulley: You could join a mentoring programme, either as a mentor or as a mentee. You could join other social networks and all of which go towards helping you build and develop from that social learning. And in my experience, 20% comes mostly outside of your workplace and it’s the kind of thing that you can make choices about, and you can kind of prioritise based on where you think you are in your developments at any point in time.
00:09:49 Richard Tulley: But it’s something that I would encourage everyone to kind of think about and seek out because it adds an extra dimension to the development you get naturally in your workplace.
00:10:03 Richard Tulley: And so, I’m just going to stop and pause for the first time for any immediate questions just on those concepts of how we learn and develop and where we learn and develop.
00:10:16 Richard Tulley: Is there anything on the chat channel Sevcan?
00:10:21 Sevcan Yasa: So, a few people are typing, so let’s just give a few minutes.
00:10:27 Richard Tulley: That’s fine. We’re good for time.
00:10:28 Sevcan Yasa: Yeah.
00:10:32 Sevcan Yasa: We have one question. How would you advise to engage in that social learning?
00:10:38 Richard Tulley: So, I think there are a number of opportunities, and we’ll touch on some of those as we move forward. But very well, the subject closest to my heart I think is around mentoring.
00:10:50 Richard Tulley: And so, we’ll touch on mentoring as we go through this afternoon, but in the majority of cases and you know throughout our career, having a mentor is really important and really helpful to get a perspective and to help us kind of understand more about ourselves and about our development opportunities and about our potential.
00:11:11 Richard Tulley: So, I would definitely say mentoring is a great thing to look at and it’s a really fantastic way to develop through social learning. And I’d emphasise that as well as being mentored and as colleagues on the call who’ve got quite a lot of experience already in project management. There’s something really powerful that you being a mentor as well and in its own right being a mentor is developmental. There’s a lot of skills that we learn in that space, and I’ll touch on some of those as we move forward, but to answer the question and say the major area that I would encourage people to think about and explore is mentoring.
00:11:51 Sevcan Yasa: We have another question. Do you have any recommendations on networks for PM’s?
00:11:57 Richard Tulley: Yes. So, I’ve benefited a great deal through being a member of the Association for Project Management, the APM. Very similarly we’ve got the Project Management Institute, the PMI.
00:12:11 Richard Tulley: The difference really between the two is that the APM is a UK-based not-for-profit organisation.
00:12:19 Richard Tulley: And therefore, the networking opportunities, now we’re out of locked down include quite a lot of face-to-face opportunities.
00:12:28 Richard Tulley: For example, next week I’m doing a face-to-face event through the APM in Birmingham, specifically around mentoring and the APM launched a mentoring programme within Programme Project Management last year and there’s a lot of network events around through the APM, some of which are webinars and they take an hour and there’s all kinds of subjects get covered there. There’s project management type webinars around, risk around data, around change, around the project management disciplines.
00:13:01 Richard Tulley: But also there’s quite other webinars that explore more behavioural kind of sciences as well. So, there’s a really broad range of kind of learning and networking opportunities through being part of a professional society.
00:13:14 Richard Tulley: And I really would encourage people, particularly because it’s UK based. I would say the APM and through the engagement, I’ve had, I’ve learned a lot and had an opportunity to meet a lot of people and solve quite a lot of my professional challenges.
00:13:31 Sevcan Yasa: Thank you. Amelia has asked if we can send her the slides based on that comment, we will be sending everyone the slides as well as the recordings. It will either be tomorrow or the beginning of next week.
00:13:47 Sevcan Yasa: Just wanted to point that out. We have a final question.
00:13:53 Sevcan Yasa: If we only spend 10% on formal learning, why do companies place so much emphasis on specific programmes like PRINCE2?
00:14:01 Richard Tulley: So, I think firstly, in the world of project management, what’s really important is consistency of practise and therefore for people to go on a training course such as the APM PMQ or such as PRINCE2 there’s some really important foundational knowledge that you gain, which is really important to help you progress through project management career so a bit like the analogy of learning to drive. You could be taught to drive by, you know, a family member or a neighbour. Someone could teach you to drive, but a qualified driving instructor will give you all of that training and guidance and context that give you the best form of understanding that knowledge and knowing what the right practises are. So, for project management understanding the methods and the practise is really important in its own right.
00:14:54 Richard Tulley: And secondly, you know, going back to the Confucius quote, where you, where you have training on a subject that’s relevant to your role and it’s important to you, it’s really powerful when you can learn something one week and practically apply it the following week, then that formal learning whilst it’s 10% is incredibly effective and a really vital part of your development, so I think you know what some companies do that isn’t so effective in my experience is put people through training maybe they put people through agile project management training, but then they don’t give them a chance to manage agile projects, in which case you could just as well have read a book. So, I think the importance that come this place on training is absolutely justified. And it’s correct because you couldn’t really develop without the right degree of training.
00:15:47 Richard Tulley: I think though sometimes it’s an overused resource and going on a training course and not being able to apply the knowledge isn’t anywhere near as effective as you’re going on a training course and then going back into work and applying it in the workplace I hope that helps.
00:16:02 Sevcan Yasa: Yeah, we do have one comment. The driving instructor analogy was very relatable re: training. So that’s good. If no one has no more comments or questions, let’s move on. If you do have any questions, you can always jot them down we’ll go with them after.
00:16:21 Richard Tulley: OK. Thank you. So, what I’d like to talk about now is professional development and personal development and the phrases get used quite a lot, but sometimes we’re not clear about what it actually means and what the differences are and what the similarities are. So, I just wanted to break that down a little bit.
00:16:40 Richard Tulley: So, when we talk about professional development, principally we’re talking about your job, what you do day in, day out, week after week in your job and it’s rooted in your professional career and your workplace.
00:16:55 Richard Tulley: And the intent behind professional development is building in the role that you’ve got as a project manager is building competence, proficiency, effectiveness.
00:17:06 Richard Tulley: So professional development is about making you more comfortable in your work, more proficient in your work and more effective in your work. And you go through a cycle effectively where you’re building knowledge and you’re applying knowledge and you get to that circle where there’s knowledge and there’s experience. Increasingly the combination of the knowledge that you have and the experience that you gain over time makes you more increasingly effective as a project manager. And that really goes towards 70% of learning in the workplace and 10% of formal learning.
00:17:44 Richard Tulley: The kind of the thing to be aware of, though, the kind of watchword, I would say is that when you think about your work, you have an employer.
00:17:54 Richard Tulley: And the organisation kind of motivation principally behind professional development, is getting more out of you as an employee, as a colleague, as a project manager and so, it’s an investment, a bit like the training that goes to the question previously is really it’s about making you more proficient in your role and in your workplace.
00:18:17 Richard Tulley: On the other hand, when we start to think about personal development, this is very different. So, it’s really about your growth as a person and personal development as the name implies, it is all about you and we’re all much more than the role we do at work.
00:18:38 Richard Tulley: So, we have a life outside of work with family, with friends and so relationship kind of skills and communication skills, interpersonal skills, all that kind of thing is really at the heart of personal development and they’re all much more comfortable when we get to know people and we get to understand people and we get to understand people as individuals.
00:19:01 Richard Tulley: And so, it’s about behavioural skills more than technical skills, so personal development wouldn’t really include discipline such as risk management or planning and most importantly, is personal development is about understanding and unlocking our potential and everybody, however old they might be, however, experience they might be in any one particular kind of job, we all have an innate potential which is much more than we’ve yet become and so things like mentoring and coaching are designed specifically to help somebody understand their potential, understand what they can become, and so by and large going back to professional development usually in an organisation you’ll have an appraisal kind of performance management type of process where you’ll look at the year you’ve had, and you’ll set objectives for the next year.
00:20:00 Richard Tulley: So, it’s quite a narrow focus in terms of time and in terms of your growth as an individual, whereas when you think about personal development.
00:20:10 Richard Tulley: It doesn’t have an end limit of time you may be thinking about where you’d like to get to in 10 years’ time. You might be thinking generally about the kind of things you might want to be able to do in a number of years’ time, and therefore it helps you look beyond the workplace and it helps you look beyond just what’s coming up this year and it helps you start to link what you want to do and how you want to kind of grow as an individual into what you’re doing in the workplace and decisions you might make about changes in role, changes in the company that you work for, changes in the environment that you work in, and really what personal development is about is increasing your levels of self-awareness. Understanding yourself better, understanding your motivations. Understanding things that give you purpose and fulfilment and understanding how you build relationships and develop emotional intelligence so it’s much more kind of philosophical rather than scientific.
00:21:08 Richard Tulley: Whereas at work you tend to have a career structure, and if you do these things you get to the next level, which is great, and two things really need to go hand in hand. So, your professional development and personal development are kind of linked and you get the best kind of professional development you’re able to achieve your kind of career and professional kind of goals.
00:21:28 Richard Tulley: But in such a way, you’re still feeling purpose and fulfilment and you get the best out of that in terms of enjoyment in terms of comfort and security. And so ultimately, you know, I think the thing to bear in mind with personal development is it’s not always naturally occurring in the workplace, in a busy working environment, people will think about results. They’ll think about what they’ve got to do next week, next month, maybe as far as next year. And so really each of us has to kind of think about this and try and take actions ourselves to make sure that our personal development is given the same degree of kind of care and attention and focus as our professional development.
00:22:10 Richard Tulley: And just to try and give that a little bit of bit of shape there’s a kind of a Venn diagram type of scenario here where when you look at the top left and look at, you know what does professional development mean? The kind of things, naturally, that you would learn at work in a project management career, and these are just a few examples is you’ll learn teamwork, you’ll build knowledge through going on training courses. You’ll gain experience of working on projects and different kinds of projects. You’re probably given opportunities to work with people you consider as role models and people who you can shadow and learn from them.
00:22:47 Richard Tulley: You’ll build professional relationships, you’ll build professional networks, and your gain, insight and ethics is a big part of project management. So as an example, that box on the left is about the kind of development professionally you are typically getting in a workplace in a role such as project management. When you look at the right-hand box, they’re personal development.
00:23:09 Richard Tulley: This becomes much more about relationships and so you can see a blend, there’s professional relationships, there’s personal relationships, but it’s more being tuned into the kind of things that bring you purpose and fulfilment. It’s also about thinking about your own well-being, you know, and time fullness is increasingly important, and hopefully you’re feeling a sense of security. So, as you move perhaps from one professional role to the next, you have a promotion, you get more responsibility. That can be quite daunting.
00:23:42 Richard Tulley: And so, through personal development, we’re better able to deal with those kinds of changes and those kinds of pressures and in the middle what kind of binds this together is the kind of skills that you’ll build and the kind of techniques that you can use that really boost your professional and your personal development and more about relationships, they’re more about behaviours. They’re more about what you might call soft skills and so an ability to communicate is really important from both the professional and a personal perspective.
00:24:17 Richard Tulley: What we call active listening is massively important as a project manager. It gets increasingly important as you become more senior, and you have more accountability for projects and programmes.
00:24:29 Richard Tulley: Empathy and benefiting from, but also being able to coach and mentor it massively developmental. And so those examples in the middle of the page there, with the kind of the mauve kind of ring around it. Those are actually the most important facets of both professional and personal development.
00:24:51 Richard Tulley: So let me just move on from there and we’re just going to have another quick kind of recap. So, we covered previously the concepts of how people learn and develop.
00:25:07 Richard Tulley: We then moved on and explored the environments where people can learn and develop and what we’ve just covered really is trying to give you.
00:25:14 Richard Tulley: A clear understanding of what professional development looks like, what it means, what it contains.
00:25:20 Richard Tulley: And then try and compare that to personal development and bring that together into where the common ground is and where you might call the sweet spot is. So, Sevcan is that triggered any questions on the chat.
00:25:39 Sevcan Yasa: Not at the moment, if you do have any questions, please note them down. We’ll just give a few minutes just to see if anyone’s typing and then we’ll just move on.
00:25:49 Richard Tulley: OK, so what well, while people have a chance to, to type or to consider, I think the thought process has asked you to kind of keep in mind as we go through, it’s almost like a little check and balance that you can do in your own role in your own workplace or even when you’re thinking about how do I get into project management and the stuff we touch at the moment will go more to the heart of that, but you should be at any point in time able to reflect back and think I can see in the role I’m doing where my social learning comes in.
00:26:23 Richard Tulley: You’ll easily be able to see formal learnings you go on training courses. You’ll know when those are and what they did, and you’ll be able to reflect on how they helped you.
00:26:30 Richard Tulley: You’ll be able to get a sense of am I learning on the job? Am I learning in this role and a greater sense of how you might boost that through social learning and also the good thing to check and balance periodically is do I feel I’m developing both personally and professionally? I think the word growth is a great word to think about. So, when you think about your personal development over the last few years, do you feel you’re growing as a person’s a real kind of emotional sense that that most people can relate to quite easily. So, if you have any questions come in, Sevcan?
00:27:07 Sevcan Yasa: We have a comment from Greg, very motivating, thank you. I can see one person typing.
00:27:13 Richard Tulley: OK. Thank you, Greg.
00:27:26 Sevcan Yasa: Let’s move on. If you do have any questions, you can put them down in the chat.
00:27:33 Richard Tulley: OK, so what we’re going to do next is just think about development and the analogy, I always use is about development is a journey.
00:27:43 Richard Tulley: And it’s really important to kind of understand that because sometimes we put ourselves under pressure because we think we have to achieve certain things by a certain time scale. I have to be a programme manager by the time I’m 25 or I have to be a programme manager next four years, whatever that might be. And ultimately, that’s not always realistic. And ultimately what you think your target is doesn’t turn out to be the target that you aspire to.
00:28:09 Richard Tulley: And so, it’s a journey for a number of reasons you can see here, but some of the key elements are that a journey is all about planning and destination.
00:28:20 Richard Tulley: But the motivation for going on that journey, the purpose is really important. And so, when you think about setting goals, the most important question I think to ask is whilst understanding what the goal is really important, the best question is why? Why is that important to you?
00:28:41 Richard Tulley: What will it bring for you? What it bring for people around you? What will it change? And really exploring a goal, it builds a motion attachment, which is important because that’s your fuel in this journey. Understanding not just where you’re going, but why and why it’s important to you and the people around you is a fundamental thing that will take you on that journey in the most effective and the most efficient kind of way and so the fuel is your purpose, your motivations, and your desire to see that through. But journeys are unpredictable, life is unpredictable.
00:29:13 Richard Tulley: And therefore you know there used to be quite a big thing a few years ago when I was a little bit younger people talk about making five-year plans and if you think about, you know, how much the world has changed in the last five years, you could never predict that. And therefore, trying to plan in great detail a life journey, a professional journey over a course of five years, you have to be prepared for circumstances to change and also as you grow things that you might have felt were five years away might end up being two years away, much closer than you think.
00:29:47 Richard Tulley: So, development isn’t a quick fix developed to something you work at, it’s systematic. It’s ongoing and it’s almost like, you know, on your journey, if you’re driving from London up to Scotland, you’d stop at the services a couple of times to refresh, recalibrate your journey and your developments like that as well to be points in time where it’s really important to stop and reflect how far you’ve come. Take strength from how far you’ve come as well and recalibrate your goals and recalibrate your expectations because the more you learn, the more opportunity you open up.
00:30:20 Richard Tulley: And I and I use analogy you know as you walk forward in life as you go through personal development in particular, but personal professional development every decision you make opens new doors. It never closes the door behind you, in any material kind of way. But the more you learn, the more opportunities you open up and therefore a journey that you might perceive as five years, three years, whatever it might be today could turn out to be very different because the steps you take in the development that you achieve in that in that distance, but the journey you often require support and guidance.
00:30:54 Richard Tulley: So, on a journey up to Scotland, in the car sat nav would be a measure of support and guidance and my wife in the passenger seat would be a source of guidance of sorts.
00:31:06 Richard Tulley: But all of those factors it’s really important when you think about your development, and I’d encourage you to think about it as a journey for these reasons you know manage your expectations but realise that you know you take out what you put into a large extent. But the more that you achieve, the more you develop, the more opportunity you get and the more your goals will change because you’ll be capable of achieving more.
00:31:32 Richard Tulley: So, if you then talk about the foundations for your development, and so for colleagues on the call who are considering a career in project management, this is I think, a really important page for you, for colleagues already in a project management career this is a really important page for you as well, and what this really brings to life is that when we look at developing project managers, as I’ve done for a number of years with a number of clever people around.
00:32:02 Richard Tulley: There are three foundational elements which are kind of shown here, so there’s knowledge, there’s experience and there’s behavioural skills they are the three foundations and it kind of goes back a little bit to the driving analogy, where once you understand the mechanics of driving, the experience is all about the kind of road you’ve gone driving at night rather than during the day driving in snow at some point driving a motorway rather than on a town centre kind of road and so whilst these foundations are always important as you go through a project management career, the focus at the point in time changes. So, at the start of your career in project management, knowledge is the principal need and therefore going on project management training at the start of your career is really important because that’s almost like the highway code when you’re learning to drive.
00:32:58 Richard Tulley: Once you get to a level and probably as a yardstick, 2 years in project management the determining factor about how quickly and effectively you develop thereafter is about the breadth of experience that you get and breadth experience will mean different types of projects, different types of life cycles, different types of solutions, different types of environments, different types of people. So, breadth of experience and ultimately when you start thinking about programme management, portfolio management. Think about being a programme director, portfolio director, whatever those more senior roles will be, the reality is you’re actually doing less project management, and in reality, you’ve got a team of people who are managing teams of people and therefore those behavioural skills of communication, those behavioural skills have actually been able to engage with people and engaging with people is very different to communicating with people in the sense that it’s a very two way thing people need to hear the words that you say they need to understand it and they need to feel somehow kind of motivated by that and inspired by that, and also as you move through a career in kind of project and programme management, the more senior stakeholders you get engaged with the less detail they will share with you, the less detail they will want from you and therefore you have to interpret much more. You have to understand much more. You have to be able to translate higher level, more strategic kind of messages into practical actions that you can take down through the project team.
00:34:29 Richard Tulley: And so that’s the kind of journey that will go on where you’re thinking about a career in project management the great thing is when we talk about behavioural skills and the importance that we attach from those for personal development and how that really helps accelerate your professional development, the behavioural skills we’re talking about, you start to learn from the point you’re born.
00:34:50 Richard Tulley: So as soon as we start to kind of toddle as soon as we start to walk, as soon as we start to speak and engage with people albeit at school or in a sports team, those are the behavioural skills that really carry you forward professionally. It’s all about being able to make relationships, understand people, communicate with people, build rapport.
00:35:10 Richard Tulley: So, in the same way, I’d encourage you just to checkpoint and periodic as you go through your career. And I would say you know, every couple of months to be a good kind of yardstick to use.
00:35:20 Richard Tulley: Am I getting development in my workplace? Am I getting that formal learning that I need? Am I getting the benefit of social learning?
00:35:30 Richard Tulley: Am I developing both personally and professionally, and ask yourself, you know, point in time when you think about appraisals or you think about, you know, some changes you might make professionally, where am I? And so is my knowledge. Where am I in terms of my experience? Where am I in terms of my behavioural skills?
00:35:46 Richard Tulley: Because you will get to a point where when we talk about knowledge and training, you might be talking about leadership training rather than project management training, for example. So, I’m just going to pause on this page because this is probably the most critical one for everybody on the call, irrespective of where you are in your professional journey and also for colleagues who are think about studying career in project management.
00:36:10 Richard Tulley: You know, don’t think about you haven’t got project management experience necessarily because that recent research would say that one in eleven people in the UK workforce have had a role within projects, so being part of a project team, if you’re not a project manager is project experience.
00:36:28 Richard Tulley: You know, and knowledge so, you know, understanding PRINCE2 is really important. It helps you, you know, when you go in for an interview and employees are looking at you, they’ll make a differentiation, you know if they can see you’re making an investment in project management, you’re committed to project management to the extent you’ve been on a training course or you’ve read a, you know relevant kind of book and experience can be relative. You can relate experience you’ve had outside of project management into a project management role, particularly where it’s about organisation.
00:37:00 Richard Tulley: It’s about achieving master and just about planning a lot of the components of project management are things we do day in, day out in our personal lives.
00:37:08 Richard Tulley: But ultimately, for people in a project management career, I would say really focus on breadth of experience and behaviours and your knowledge gap will always exist, will always be an opportunity for training.
00:37:22 Richard Tulley: But you can think more carefully and make a better investment of your own time in training, in cognizance of trying to maintain these three foundational elements.
00:37:34 Richard Tulley: So, from there a very, very simple message and I think this is really important and quite often gets overlooked as we think about projects quite mechanically in terms of, we go through so the principle talked about phases. Yeah, the APM are talking about a life cycle, but ultimately the major reflection I have for my career and I will go back and do things quite differently. Understanding what I understand today, because I think when you come down to when you look at it through the lens of projects delivered by people with people for people then the word that clearly leaps out is that word people and we understand a lot more these days around individuals.
00:38:16 Richard Tulley: We understand about neurodiversity, as we understand about personality traits, and therefore without an ability to effectively understand yourself, and without an ability to understand and recognise the differences in other people and make those differences become the strengths of a diverse team. Then no amount of you know, having a really good risk log or having a very well constructed plan will make a project successful. People make projects successful, and people who engage and inspire fundamentally are the most effective project managers.
00:38:55 Richard Tulley: So having spoken about the foundations and just to recap on those, there’s also a concept of enablers and accelerators and this kind of ties into the context of social learning. It ties into the context of the importance of behavioural skills and so enablers through someone’s project management career training absolutely. So formal learning training is always going to be important, but it’s got to be the right training for the right reason at the right time.
00:39:23 Richard Tulley: But professional memberships, professional accreditation, so you can actually evidence, you know, a level of understanding a level of achievement that’s really important and the concepts of Continuing Professional Development CPD, you’ll hear that a lot if you haven’t already. And that really goes back to the journey analogy.
00:39:40 Richard Tulley: You know, development is ongoing. The more you develop, the more your opportunities develop further start to open up before you and the accelerators really go towards that behavioural skills kind of piece about the benefit you can get from being coached or mentored, the benefit you can get from being a coach or a mentor and networking in a number of different scenarios, every conversation you have with somebody is a learning opportunity.
00:40:06 Richard Tulley: You know, and really tapping into that is it’s just such a massive part and quite often it’s not widely recognised and not widely acted on.
00:40:15 Richard Tulley: And it, as I say, just ties back again we look at the accelerator and you look at the graphic in the bottom left-hand corner and think about behaviour skills and their significance.
00:40:24 Richard Tulley: Self-awareness, communication activist thing. You don’t have to wait till some point in your career to really focus on developing behavioural skills.
00:40:32 Richard Tulley: It’s not that you have to do one thing after the other, but knowledge followed by experience is a kind of a critical path through a project management career.
00:40:41 Richard Tulley: But every moment you spend investing in behavioural skills at any point in your career or before a career in project management will be a fantastic investment that you’ll reap the benefits from as you go through both personal and professional development.
00:40:57 Richard Tulley: So, moving forwards, this is the last kind of detailed slide in the discussion, So, five principles so the first thing is whilst there’s a lot of people at work and in mentoring kinds of programmes and friends of people outside the workplace, a lot of people who want to support you and want to help you and we’ll give you their time and their insight and their support, but really it is an ownership thing. It’s your journey, you have to take that ownership and you have to kind of do all you can to make it make it happen and carry on that journey.
00:41:30 Richard Tulley: But also, as we sit here today, talking about development, the natural temptation is to think about where you go from today into the future.
00:41:39 Richard Tulley: And I think a very underutilised kind of opportunity is one of reflection and if you were to think about from the moment that you were kind of born and you started to kind of walk and talk how far you have come on your journey, whatever age you’re at and whatever level you feel you’ve got to, you have covered off a lot of ground. You have met a lot of people; you’ve learned a lot of things; you’ve achieved a lot of things; you’ve influenced a lot of people and so going purely to a point of reflection is really important because we tend to overlook what we’ve achieved and you take confidence from reflection, but also you learn from it as well you go back and reflect on things that work well.
00:42:18 Richard Tulley: How do you do more of that? You go back and yeah, look at things we think actually benefit hindsight. I could have done that better. What are you doing next time?
00:42:26 Richard Tulley: And from there, you know that sense of purpose and you don’t need to have your goals written down, you know, on 17 pages in great detail, quite often development is a sense of direction.
00:42:38 Richard Tulley: And if every day you feel you’ve taken a step in the direction trying to get to, and if you think about, you’re going on a long hike, you can just about see the horizon as long as you take steps, you’re going towards the horizon you are developing.
00:42:51 Richard Tulley: It won’t be big, long jumps. It won’t be great stride. It’ll be incremental steps that all of a sudden breakthrough a barrier or give you that, that kind of opportunity, but you’ll need support and take it wherever it’s given take it gratefully. In the workplace, seek it out through role models, through mentors, through people in the network and it’s a journey, it’s ongoing. So have the stamina to keep focus and stick with it.
00:43:20 Richard Tulley: So that’s the end of the detailed discussion, quick recap of the subjects we’ve covered there on the left and the page we’ve just been through on the on the right.
00:43:30 Richard Tulley: So, Sevcan if there’s any specific questions on what we’ve just covered, happy to state those. Otherwise I’m all yours for Q&A.
00:43:39 Sevcan Yasa: Yeah, we do have a few questions.
00:43:43 Richard Tulley: OK.
00:43:44 Sevcan Yasa: Uh, can you say any more about gaining an increasing breadth of experience? I think I’m at this stage.
00:43:50 Richard Tulley: I can so I’m not sure what kind of field of project manager or what kind of industry sector, but my background in technology and so great example is you know I was in an environment where I was in an in-house kind of IT team. So, I wasn’t really learning a great deal about budgets, wasn’t really learning a great deal about contracts and commercial things.
00:44:15 Richard Tulley: So, I left, and I joined a consulting organisation, for example, because we wanted to get was not just about project management in the sense of plans and risk and milestones.
00:44:28 Richard Tulley: I wanted to understand project management in the context of a client engaged in the context of a contract in the context of a fixed price contract with a with a budget so increasing breadth of experience is different types of projects, different types of solutions, different types of methods, whether it’s agile, whether it’s APM, whether it’s PRINCE2 or something in-house, it’s all those different types of project scenarios that build an experience. You’ll always lean back on it as you go further through your career.
00:45:04 Sevcan Yasa: We have another question. Thank you for that Richard. What are your thoughts on the traditional waterfall approach PRINCE2 compared to more agile approaches and Scrum, Kanban etc.
00:45:15 Richard Tulley: Well, I think largely the industry at large and the world at large is moving towards greater agility and largely because of just such a rapid pace of innovation and change, however, where we talk about waterfall, there’s always a place for a waterfall kind of methodology. So, for example, if you think about project management around construction or project management where for example you’re going to design and build an aircraft. There’re certain things you can’t find out through trial and evaluation. Certain things that have to have that upfront design to be right.
00:45:58 Richard Tulley: But by large, the key element is picking the right method for the right project but generally the trend and you know what our clients demand more is increasing agility and I think we’ll all get as project managers more towards a balance of its agile and a more waterfall, more linear type approach will be more of an exception. But if you don’t choose the right method for the right project, the projects will fail.
00:46:29 Sevcan Yasa: Another question we have is you mentioned as you communicate with more senior teams, the less they want to be told or you are a fan of having an elevator pitch ready at all times just in case.
00:46:41 Richard Tulley: Yes. And I learned that the hard way I think that you know what, what happens is that you’re talking to people who are senior and they’re busy. They have a lot of things in their head and therefore, they don’t want to have 17 slides all the detail on, that might be appropriate in a project team meeting. And therefore, I think having a clear view in your own mind of how you would express the project if you were asked is really important. And also, I think it’s a natural consequence of, you know, when you appraise your project, you’ll have your own barometer about the kind of things you’re worried about and I think if you can map that to the kind of things that are important, you’ll not just have an ally to pitch. But you’ll have your focus on the right place, but absolutely I think when you talk about senior stakeholders, you need to prepare for those conversations or be prepared for them to happen to you absolutely.
00:47:35 Sevcan Yasa: We have a comment that resonates well as I feel confident in my knowledge and experience, but now.
00:47:43 Sevcan Yasa: Sorry I can’t see, it’s quite small, but I know I need to work on my behavioural soft skills. Do you have any comments?
00:47:52 Richard Tulley: Well, I would say that firstly, it’s a great thing to recognise the thought process then becomes, you know, what does that look like for you individually and how might you approach that? I’ve mentioned mentioning a few times and there are other ways that you could do this, but I would say that mentoring is a great way to explore that for a couple of reasons. One is by and large a mentor will be something outside of the direct line of management in your particular project, your particular company, and therefore they won’t have preconceptions, and therefore you also you won’t be inhibited by talk to them openly about the kind of change you’ve got on what you’d like to achieve and secondly, in a mentoring relationship, the focus is all about use. It goes back to this personal development piece and therefore it’ll help you kind of tap into what are the most important things for you, and practically what might that look like in terms of steps that you take towards developing those behavioural skills? Equally though, I would ask you to trust in the people around you at work and have those kinds of conversations and maybe in this instance, you know, talk to your line mate and so, I think, you know, in terms of my development, this is what I think is most important for me and this is why and yeah, can you help me? Can you get me some guidance? Can you get me support in these areas?
00:49:11 Sevcan Yasa: Thank you, Richard. We do have a few more questions. One question is building a career and project management, is it important to start early by picking an industry to focus on or would you advise to focus on getting the breadth of experience first?
00:49:28 Richard Tulley: It’s a difficult one, but by and large I would say that if you take some specialist examples where this doesn’t work, and I’ll say construction is one and probably engineering is another where you need to understand the specialty to be effective in project management.
00:49:47 Richard Tulley: Outside of that good solid project management and project experience equips you to adapt to different project environments. But I would say what’s important is that you try and find a working environment that interests you, because project management, if it’s not in something that motivates you in some way or fulfils you in some way, can be quite dull.
00:50:09 Richard Tulley: So, when you have an opportunity, I’ll try and think about the kind of environment that you’d like to be in and work through your project management in that kind of environment if you can, if you can’t, develop your project management experience gives you a range of options outside of the industry that you started.
00:50:28 Sevcan Yasa: Do you have any advice on managing those considerably more senior than you when they are the ones who need complete tasks?
00:50:38 Richard Tulley: Yes, very broad, very broad subject. I think the question we had previously about being prepared for those conversations is really important. And I think it’s as well it’s a positive thing to ask questions.
00:50:54 Richard Tulley: So, I think it’s a positive thing to ask them for their guidance or ask them for their experience or insights. But I think whenever you want to get out of the conversation, the preparation is really important because you’ll get a small, relatively small window for that discussion, but never be afraid to ask questions. I think it’s really important in any kind of environment.
00:51:16 Sevcan Yasa: Yeah. We have a question. They do believe it’s a hard question, so I’m just throwing it at you but.
00:51:22 Richard Tulley: OK.
00:51:24 Sevcan Yasa: I have completed a DSDM course certification. I would like to work in PM or a PM adjacent role. The problem is I have never worked in project management work in the role office that has no formal PM. It’s an unusual field of work and no PM socially. Any ideas where to start?
00:51:48 Richard Tulley: Well, I think from the understanding of going through the question, it’s incredibly difficult, if not virtually impossible to develop a project management career without being in a project management environment.
00:52:02 Richard Tulley: So, I think there’s always concepts of project management you can apply in a role, but DSDM is principally more aligned to sort of software development, software engineering, type of projects, not exclusively. But typically, it’s where it lends itself and so I think you know if your goal is to be project management in that kind of environment where you can apply the principles of DSDM you may need to look at a journey into a different organisation or a different environment.
00:52:35 Sevcan Yasa: Any good job boards to get an idea of other sectors that might pique my interest?
00:52:41 Richard Tulley: Well, I would say, you know my experience the safest and most reliable place to go and look at roles is LinkedIn. And I say that because you can look at opportunities there but also, you can research the company and I think it’s important that when you look at an organisation and making a change in hands work for new company as well as understanding the role, understanding the company and the culture a little bit and Linkedin’s great for that, you could take any kind of company, you could search them, go on to their page and you get a list of the people who work there and you can connect with a few of those people and look, look at what they’re posting and see how they feel about the organisation as well as just understand the organisation through their marketing and through their website. I think that you know the recruitment kind of world is so vast you’ll get good recruitment agencies, you’ll get less than good recruitment agencies.
00:53:35 Richard Tulley: But I think trying to get a sense of comes you like to work for exploring that through LinkedIn is great and making contact through LinkedIn the right people is great. Having a good LinkedIn profile, that’s things that people go and look at principally and a good practise. Just having a symmetry between your LinkedIn profile and your CV. But you know the roles I’ve had, we haven’t had to go out to external recruitment agencies to resource those, but you’ll find good and bad out there.
00:54:06 Richard Tulley: But I think Linkedin’s a great way to find out where the open roles are. Find out more about the companies and maybe make some contacts. You get to find out about the roles before they hit the job boards.
00:54:18 Sevcan Yasa: Do you need to be accredited PM before joining APM or PMI?
00:54:24 Richard Tulley: No. So with the APM, there’s a number of levels of membership and one of which is associates, which is where people have a limited or no existing experience of project management. There’s a full member where you know the application process is predicated on, you’ve got five years of project management, but you could even join as a student as well, but not for the APM you can join as an associate. You’ll get benefit of the networking kind of events and the webinars, and the learning resources and I strongly recommended. But there’s no formal entry criteria as such.
00:55:05 Sevcan Yasa: Greg, I believe Robin has actually gave you a comment.
00:55:09 Sevcan Yasa: So, thank you, Robin, actually for that. Does anyone have any more questions?
00:55:20 Sevcan Yasa: I believe. I’m so sorry. I really don’t know how to pronounce your name.
00:55:24 Sevcan Yasa: Saika also provided a comment for you, Greg.
00:55:34 Sevcan Yasa: I’ll just give a few more minutes if anyone has any more comments or questions.
00:55:39 Richard Tulley: OK. Let me just go to your last page Sevcan so.
00:55:47 Sevcan Yasa: Uh just to Richard, can you go back to the one before, please? Just a quick note. Knowledge Train and agileKRC has the following courses. A few people in the comments section did want information, so if you do want information on any of these courses, please let me know in the comments and I’ll be more than happy to send them over to you. Richard, can I go back to the last page please? Thank you.
00:56:14 Sevcan Yasa: And these are our informations, so how you can get in contact with us. But apart from that, you can always let us know in the comments.
00:56:32 Richard Tulley: I think I’d also say Sevcan for people on the call you can look me up on LinkedIn and if you’ve got any questions that you want to ask follow in this discussion. Please feel free to LinkedIn and make contact.
00:56:45 Sevcan Yasa: Yep, I will quickly find your LinkedIn profile, just while I quickly look it up. We have a question.
00:56:57 Sevcan Yasa: What course is best to take please AgilePM or PRINCE2 Agile?
00:57:02 Richard Tulley: I think if your interest is in agile specifically, DSDM is the one to go for and I say that because it focuses on the agile method and the agile kind of manifesto much more where PRINCE2 is trying to allow it into a PRINCE2 model. And I think the most commonly used in the wider world is more a pure kind of agile rather than an agile within a PRINCE framework. But that’s general guidance. I think you need to look at the role in the environment in question. But generally, I think DSDM is a great course to go on and I think it’s a great introduction to agile.
00:57:42 Sevcan Yasa: Thank you. I don’t think I missed any questions, but if I did miss out your question, please let me know.
00:57:49 Richard Tulley: Yeah. And I think you you’re going to kind of when you publish the materials, you could publish my LinkedIn profile on there.
00:57:57 Sevcan Yasa: Yeah, definitely.
00:58:04 Sevcan Yasa: Richard, a few people have actually thanked you for a very good session, just while we are on it. I do have a few questions.
00:58:16 Sevcan Yasa: Just to get the participants feedback, so if you can answer these five or six, I believe 6 simple questions. It won’t take a lot of your time, that would be great. Thanks, Richard.
00:58:35 Sevcan Yasa: Thank you, Richard, it’s been a great webinar. Thank you so much. Thanks for being brilliant. Very satisfied.
00:58:51 Sevcan Yasa: Thank you very much. We value the profesional. Oops, keeps going up. Going down.
00:58:56 Sevcan Yasa: We value the professional and personal development content.
00:59:03 Sevcan Yasa: Good session.
00:59:07 Sevcan Yasa: Sandra has actually commented. Can we have Richard as a mentor?
00:59:11 Richard Tulley: Well, I can definitely help with that, I can definitely help with that so, but I’d like to thank you all for taking part and participating made some great questions come through. So, I’ve really enjoyed the experience. Thank you Sevcan for giving me the opportunity.
00:59:28 Sevcan Yasa: I would also like to mention that on behalf of Richard, we will be donating to Leeds Hospital Charity.
00:59:38 Sevcan Yasa: So that is great. Obviously, Richard is the person that actually preferred.
00:59:45 Sevcan Yasa: So, thank you so much Richard for that.
00:59:47 Richard Tulley: No, no, thank you. This is all around MND, by the way. And then the guy you’ve probably seen quite a lot in the news, Rob Burrows and Kevin Sinfield. So, it local charity for my company and MND is definitely a very, very worthy charity. So, thank you for the donation, Sevcan. Thank you.
01:00:10 Sevcan Yasa: I don’t think we do have any more questions.
01:00:14 Sevcan Yasa: If you do, you can always put them down to comment.
01:00:21 Sevcan Yasa: We’ll just give you a few more minutes just in case people has a comment.
01:00:26 Sevcan Yasa: But if you don’t you can stay or you’re free to go.
01:01:08 Sevcan Yasa: We do have a question by David, how hard or how easy is it to become a project manager at 50 years old?
01:01:16 Richard Tulley: Well, such a good question, David. So, I’m 57 by the way. So, I feel I’m qualified to answer that.
01:01:23 Richard Tulley: So, I think you know whether you’re 30, whether you’re 50, it comes back to two principles. So, you know, one is, is your professional kind of background equipping you for a career in project management and secondly, I think it’s how you kind of engage with companies who are looking for project managers that is able to, to demonstrate a track record that’s relevant and demonstrate that commitment to becoming a project manager.
01:01:49 Richard Tulley: So yes, it’s a quick answer and how you do it would largely be the same kind of approach, whether you’re 20, 30, 40 or 50. It’s about being able to look at your motivations, why you want to be a project manager, and be able to express that when you talk to potential employers.
01:02:07 Richard Tulley: Be able to kind of position the experience you’ve got in life as well as professionally, and to equip you for a career in project management and demonstrate that desire and that motivation.
01:02:23 Sevcan Yasa: We do have two comments based on the age uh Tanya is saying not at all. I started this in my 50th year.
01:02:31 Richard Tulley: There you go.
01:02:32 Sevcan Yasa: And Isabella, I got a PM job at 49 due to experience in waste.
01:02:40 Richard Tulley: Well, there you go, two endorsements, absolutely.
01:02:57 Sevcan Yasa: I think we should start ending, some more typing.
01:03:11 Sevcan Yasa: Very good webinar. Thanks. Thank you everyone. Yeah, sorry.
01:03:16 Richard Tulley: I think you might know Teresa from LinkedIn.
01:03:20 Sevcan Yasa: I think one person did say that they sent you a message or they going to send you a message.
01:03:26 Richard Tulley: OK, very good.
01:03:35 Richard Tulley: Yeah, there’s asking where my dog is. He’s at home, he’s at home sleeping. If he’s not sleeping, he’s eating.
01:04:09 Sevcan Yasa: If anyone doesn’t have any more questions.
01:04:16 Richard Tulley: Yeah. Just saying one from Nicole. Yeah. Nicole, it would be good to catch up.
01:04:21 Richard Tulley: Nice to hear from you.
01:05:22 Sevcan Yasa: Hope you have a nice weekend. Thank you.
01:05:29 Sevcan Yasa: It doesn’t seem that we have any more questions.
01:05:46 Sevcan Yasa: Thank you so much, David.
01:06:13 Sevcan Yasa: I think I should start ending the webinar.
01:06:17 Sevcan Yasa: If you have any more comments. If you do have any questions, you can always e-mail Knowledge Train, or I will put my e-mail here as well.
01:06:39 Sevcan Yasa: So, thank you all for attending. Thank you, Richard for attending our and becoming a speaker. I really appreciate it.
01:06:47 Sevcan Yasa: I myself actually learned a lot as well, so thank you so much for that, yeah.
01:06:50 Richard Tulley: No, you’re welcome.
01:06:52 Sevcan Yasa: So, everyone, I hope you have a nice evening and a good weekend. Hope to see you in the next webinar.
01:06:59 Richard Tulley: Thank you all. Thank you Sevcan. Thank you very much appreciated.
