S1 E19 Project Management
Episode Audio
Eric Girard shares what he’s been learning about project management.
Connect with Eric on LinkedIn.
Transcript:
The following transcript was auto-generated and may contain typos or spelling errors.
Amy Petricek
Welcome to the share what you learned Podcast. I'm Amy Petricek, a learning enthusiast and the host of the show, to share what you learned podcast is designed for learning professionals to share something they're learning in the field of instructional design. Today, I'm talking to Eric Gerard about project management. Eric, welcome to the show.
Eric Girard
Thank you. Hello,
Amy Petricek
let's take a little bit of time to learn who is Eric Gerard, tell us who are you.
Eric Girard
I'm a learning enthusiast who's been in the field for 30 years, I started out actually before I was a professional, I started out teaching kids how to paddle canoes and swim and stuff like that in the boy scouts parlayed that into a bachelor's degree and then a master's degree in learning and development. And I spent most of my career in Silicon Valley where I worked for places like Apple Applied Materials, Nutanix, Symantec. So some big heavy hitters in the Silicon Valley.
Amy Petricek
I feel like learning and development in general, most people are newer to the fields that have someone who's been around for 30 years and really seen the life cycle and the growth and evolution that's happened in the field, I'm sure you have so much wisdom and perspective.
Eric Girard
Well, they say that wisdom is a matter of surviving your mistakes. So I am therefore very well,
Amy Petricek
we should also give a little shout out as well, because you have this company, which I think is relevant as well to the conversation. So tell us a little bit about your company. Yeah, so
EG
Eric Girard
Girard training solutions is all about management development. So we I have a real heart for new managers. So gerar Training Solutions helps new managers and technical companies transform from high performing individual contributors to great people, managers. And it's all about just helping people get gain those skills as soon as possible either before they actually get promoted, or right after they get promoted. So they don't make the mistakes that new managers often make where they wind up micromanaging their team or mismanaging people. And then they start to cause churn and turnover. As a
Amy Petricek
result of that my understanding is that you like have some specific, I'll call them targets, he might have a more elegant way of saying it, but targets or attributes that you help these managers kind of acquire and learn as they're looking to make those jumps.
Eric Girard
Yeah, so for example, we're really big into disc in the company. And so we really love helping people understand themselves and underhand understand others in order to make their team more productive. We do bespoke training for Management Development. So we'll go into a company and do a needs analysis and create management development for that company for those managers rather than just pulling things off the shelf. And then, of course, we've got project management for managers who have to manage projects, as well as do their day job helping them understand well, you know, how do I how do I get work done without getting bogged down in the details of super formal project management. And then we do things like facilitation skills for non facilitators, folks who are not professional trainers, but are still subject matter experts, and have to be able to convey information and transfer information, we help them understand how to do that in a way that's effective.
Amy Petricek
I did a disservice to this podcast, because I didn't even say at the top of the episode, what we were going to be talking about, and I feel like you just cued it up perfectly, which is we're going to talk about project management, which data is one of the components that he was just diving into talking about. So I'm gonna jump in Eric, let's talk about the role of project management and learning and development. It's a really important topic in the industry. I know you talked about like getting really kind of nuanced in project management think it's a thing we're all talking about in the industry. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on why is project management important to the learning and development field.
Eric Girard
I think like anything in learning and development time is money. As an instructional designer, for example, you know, this, you're being paid to efficiently come up with a learning solution for a client who then needs to turn that around as soon as possible in order to educate a group of people to change their behavior in order to make that company stronger somehow. And the longer it takes you to create that solution, the more money that company loses, or the less money that company gains, right. So if we can manage our projects effectively, and get our instructional design projects turned around quickly and right the first time, then we're going to delight our customers, because we're going to give them a great product the first time quickly, they can implement it quickly, and then change their company in some meaningful way. So it does it the way I look at it. It's all about changing behavior, but not just for the sake of changing behavior, but changing behavior in order to improve a company somehow so it can do some good in the world.
Amy Petricek
So this podcast specifically targets instructional designers. So let's get in the weeds a little bit. What do you think is important for instructional designers to know about project management?
Eric Girard
Well, Let me start by saying what I don't think an instructional designer needs to know about project management. I don't think that an instructional designer needs to be certified by the Project Management Institute in the PIM Bach, from page one to page 500. I think that that's overkill. I think I think that that formal project management certification is a wonderful thing, and that there's a time and a place for it. But for somebody whose primary job is something else, like your primary job is instructional design, then knowing just enough project management, understanding just enough about the tools and and issues and techniques to keep a project on track and keep communication on track, so that you can get your primary job done more efficiently and with less stress. That's what that's what's important for instructional designers to know is just the basics, just enough,
Amy Petricek
what would you say are some elements that are just enough? I like that you're differentiating that the certification isn't the route for everyone. When you say just enough, like my brain is wondering or thinking like that? Are you referencing project management tools? Are you referencing project management processes? Like are there specific things that come to mind when you talk about the just enough?
Eric Girard
Yeah, so to me, just enough means understanding basic processes in order to get a project done effectively. So in fact, in Project Management Essentials, which is the course that we're talking about, I don't even discuss particular tools, except to surface them and say, Oh, by the way, you have options, but the options go everywhere from pencil and paper, or post its and Sharpies all the way up to if you wish, you can use Smartsheet, you can use Microsoft Project, you can use applications such as those. But I don't get into teaching people how to use an app, you go with what brung you, if you're totally comfortable with Excel, and you'd like working in Excel to manage things keep doing that don't change. If you're a very visual person, and you've got a whiteboard in your home office, and you like to sketch things out in your whiteboard. Good do that, if you'd like jam boards, and jam boards make you happy. Good. That's, that's what I'm about is that letting people use the tools are comfortable with with just adapting processes in order to track their projects and keep them on on track.
Amy Petricek
I mentor a lot of instructional designers that are transitioning or pivoting into the field. And I actually just recently posted on LinkedIn about this, but one of the questions I get a lot is What software's do I need to showcase in my portfolio to get a job and instructional design? That's a really common question I get. And I like where you're taking this, because it's in some regard answering that question of like, is there a specific software I need to learn? No, there's not always a specific software you need to learn. I think in some instances, that makes sense. But some instances it doesn't. And this would be one of those, because in one company, they might use Trello. And another they might use Asana. And so you'll learn the tool, if you can use one tool, you can figure out the other tool, it's more so knowing the process that you want to approach when using that tool. So I really like that you're differentiating that.
Eric Girard
So you can you can learn a tool, you can you can go to LinkedIn learning and you can learn Asana if that's if that's what your company wants you to use, or Trello, or what have you. But I'm not going to say in order to be good at project management, you must use Trello, where you must use Microsoft Project. That's that's not my approach, what I think you need to understand is some basics need to understand how to make a good comprehensive task list, and how to build a work breakdown structure out of that task list. You need to understand how to create a network diagram and using that network diagram to track your critical path. And then crashing that or fast tracking that critical path so you can make the project shorter. And then maybe even most important among all of that, aside from the technical skills is the soft skills. How do you communicate with people in a way that works for them, so that they're feeding you information about how the project is going, and you're directing them, and keeping them moving forward, without causing friction. I was
Amy Petricek
even talking to a friend recently about the importance of getting in the weeds with some of those tasks or subtasks within a project because I think a lot of times when our managers like hey, how much time do you spend on this project or what entail and if your project management plan whatever is pretty skim, then it looks like it didn't take you very much to do the project. But when you get in the weeds of like these are all of the things we did in this it's really a better representation of the actual work you're doing and paint a better picture to your manager of what it took to get to that end product.
Eric Girard
A good project plan can be shown to documents like look this is this is how much work went into this and and documenting a project plus using a tool like toggle to track your time so that you can you can accurately show the difference between forecasts and actual time is really helpful.
Amy Petricek
I could also imagine that being crucial If you were a freelance instructional designer to be able to have clarity around those timelines so that you can accurately price a project? Oh,
Eric Girard
absolutely. To me to me toggle track is indispensable. I'm, I'm using the free version of the tool. And I if they ever asked me to pay for it, I would pay for No, no problem because it's, it's so so easy to track what I'm doing and how long it took. And then to be able to organize that and dump that data into a spreadsheet to determine where am I spending my time? How much am I am I actually earning per hour? And is this is this high value activity or not?
Amy Petricek
I love it. I haven't you said it's called toggle key. Oh, GG L. Okay. I actually haven't heard of that one. So that's when I'll, I'll explore and check out.
Eric Girard
Yeah, so I use toggle track. And there's it's a family of products. I think they've even got a project management
Amy Petricek
app. Well, piggybacking off of that we've we've thrown out a bunch of different project management tools, resources available throughout Asana, Trello. Target like we've just we've been named dropping over here. I would love to hear what tools you have found to be helpful in project management. And also under the caveat that one tool isn't the answer uniformly, maybe that's the correct tense of that word. But are there some resources that you might call out that you would highlight that you would say if this whole project management thing is new to you, or if project management tools are new to you, these are some starting points.
Eric Girard
Yeah, you know what I would honestly stick with a basic spreadsheet app, whether it's Google Sheets, or Excel, for example, I would stick with that to use that to create your your task, list your breakdown structure, if you're into Gantt charts, if you'd like seeing visually how long something will take, you can just simply fill in columns and rows and fill in cells to and color those to show Okay, here we go. Here's a, here's a timeline that shows me this, this activity is going to take two weeks saying and I can see that and where it overlaps and where there are dependencies and so on. But I would start with just a basic spreadsheet app and adjust and adapt as needed. It's not
Amy Petricek
worth learning something specific. It's about learning the process. And I think that's what I really appreciate you're saying is like, use what's in front of you excels in front of most people. So use that and just start flexing the muscle of the process of project management?
Eric Girard
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you if you Google project management templates for Excel, you'll get overwhelmed with results, there's so so many out there and you can find one that's simple enough, that will will make your life easier. And if you don't like any of them make your own.
Amy Petricek
I've done something similar when you were referencing, even just like the Gantt chart, and the visual display, in Excel, a good handful of years ago, before I got introduced to some of the fancier and project management tools. But I use that and it worked wonders for the need we had. And because we didn't have the budget to do or utilize all these other tools, it worked great.
Eric Girard
I think for me, just getting stuff written down and documented is really important. It's it's not so much about using you know, the very best, the flashiest or the most expensive tool, it's about just writing it down. And having the discipline to keep coming back to that tool and tracking what's going on. How's it going. And so rather than getting worked up, like I remember when I worked at Apple, we used Omni plan. And it was a massive, massive project plan that we were all responsible for updating weekly, and it was overwhelming. It was a huge, and I would have to get in and adjust my piece of that plan. But to look at it. And when you would pull it out in the macro view, it was overwhelming. And it was distracting. It took me an hour a week to update my piece of that plan. If somebody had just said, Look, give me a spreadsheet that shows me how long how it's going and what percentage complete? And do you anticipate any issues? I could have communicated that in 15 minutes. But instead it took me an additional 45 Because I had to wade through this complicated tool.
Amy Petricek
you've referenced this throughout, but you have rolled out a cool project management course. Is it fair to call it course it is it's a three hour course. Okay, can you share a bit about that a little bit more in depth, and then Who might that be a good resource for which I think you've covered some of this, but I'd love to just hear it.
Eric Girard
So the course is called Project Management Essentials. I used to call it the basics of small project management but I got some feedback from someone that that really undervalued what the course is about. So Project Management Essentials is what is what it is now. And the course goals are these by the end of the program participants will be able to describe the characteristics of a small project that is three months or less in duration. three or fewer people working on it and may or may not have any budget probably doesn't have a budget so we're not building bridges with this program You can create a plan for a small project, including a small project definition document, a task list and a schedule, you can manage and control the project, including monitoring project progress, and managing project communication and key relationships. And then you can close it out. So there's actually that one of the hallmarks of a project is it actually has an end date, and it ends. And you should mark that ending, you know, you should, you know, have a final closeout, meeting, capture lessons, lessons learned. And then after the business of the lessons learned, meaning, have a party, do something to celebrate the fact that you completed and you're done, and you'll do better next time.
Amy Petricek
We don't do that enough. Do we celebrate our celebrate our wins? No,
Eric Girard
no. And it doesn't. It doesn't have to cost a lot like a lot of people think, Oh, I have to celebrate, I have to have a budget. I have to take the people out I have to do something. No, I handwritten thank you note goes a long way. You know, dear Amy, I really appreciate all the work you did on our last instructional design project. Your contributions made a huge difference. Thank you so much, sincerely, Eric, just that cost nothing. That costs nothing and and but it is individualized and sincere from the heart and makes your project team feels so much better. That they'll want to work with you again.
Amy Petricek
I'm backtracking a little bit. But in terms of like what you shared about the actual course, I just kept thinking, wow, this is really comprehensive and is the full package. So I'm excited maybe for listeners who are hearing this for the first time and wanting to dive in have fun. Eric's a good time. And I'm sure this course is going to be a good time as well. And you get you know, celebrate at the end like you said,
Eric Girard
absolutely. Yeah, so I'm gonna run it for ATD in February. So it's, it's on the ATD Puget Sound homepage and you can sign up there.
Amy Petricek
Well, I will include that link in the show notes so people can sign up. Well, let's go ahead and transition to the Rapid Round the questions I get to ask all of my guests. So I'm going to start off with the first one Eric, which is open ended and you get to finish it and it is learning is
Eric Girard
fun learning. I love learning i I'm all I'm really passionate about it. I love to learn. And I love to teach and I love to see the light bulbs go off over people's heads. So when I'm not teaching or when I'm not doing when I'm not at my desk working lately, I've been reading a lot of books by Bill Bryson. He's a fantastic author. He can he can write about the history of soap and you'd be interested in it. He's He's a fantastic writer. And right now I'm reading a book of his called one summer 1927. He's writing about the summer of 1927 when Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic by himself when Babe Ruth was at the top of his game, just all these things that were happening in the 20s. And it's just it's fantastic. I've read books by him about the history of English, the history of American English, he wrote a book sort of a travelogue about his attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail. So much fun. And every page, I'm reading this book on my phone and every page, I'm having to look up words, he's forcing me to expand my vocabulary and I love that to me, that's, that's a good, that's a good time.
Amy Petricek
When you're mustering up the courage to learn something new. What song do you put on? It really depends. If not a particular song. It could be a genre, too.
Eric Girard
You know, I've been listening to a lot of electronica lately, and just letting Pandora kind of meander and pick stuff out for me. And then I'll say, Oh, who's that artist? Oh, that spunk shine. Okay, I like spunk shine, play more of that.
Amy Petricek
I feel like Pandora has been undervalued in the last handful of years. Like somehow Spotify has been highlighted more, I don't know. But I there's something good about Pandora that it just what you said that it you can just kind of start it someplace and it guides you the rest of the way. And you get to our get introduced to new musicians along the way. I love that.
Eric Girard
Yeah. And it's it's teachable as well so that you can thumb up or thumb down songs that you like, and it will it will play more or less of that kind of thing.
Amy Petricek
You're asked to do a brand new task with a skill set you do not yet have Where do you turn LinkedIn learning. And last one, Eric, without learning,
Eric Girard
I'd be bored. I'd be bored. And I think that the world would be very sad place. I think we all need to keep learning and pay close attention especially to with what's going on right now politically, socially, medically.
Amy Petricek
Eric, what's the best way for my listeners to be in contact with you after the show? You can
Eric Girard
email me at Eric at Gerard training solutions.com. So we'd love to get an email from folks who want to follow up,
Amy Petricek
Be sure to check out the show notes and sign up for that ATD session coming up in February. USSA February 9. Thanks so much, Eric for sharing all about project management with us today. I also want to give a shout-out to you my listeners for learning with us. Until next time, stay open, receptive and kind.