Project Management Advice for Young Professionals; an article that I never to around to submitting.

1. PROJECT MANAGEMENT ADVICE FOR YOUNG PROFESSIONALS
Keith “The Raleigh Llama” Gibbs
This was supposed to be a presentation delivered at the annual
REDACTED. It would have been a chance for me to get back to my roots.
REDACTED (I refuse to spell out the acronym, as we are a brand to
ourselves and clearly the best) is where my REDACTED journey started,
under the Zen-like guidance of surfing super-architect REDACTED. Then
life got in the way, schedules collided
and a runaway comet hurtled between
Earth and Moon, unleashing cosmic
destruction. Wait, no, sorry about that.
Shouldn't be writing this while watching
old Thundar the Barbarian cartoons. I
had an episode queued up to get some
rap lyric inspiration for an upcoming
episode of REDACTED that I have
been cast in. All I really have is, “I'm
cool and logical like Mr. Spock. I'm
fierce and powerful like Ookla the
Mok.” Hmmm? Well, it's only cable.
Anyways, schedules did collide, and instead of suiting up and going to this
event, I am in a van of parents hurtling at tortoise speed towards Space
Camp in Huntsville, AL. Field trip chaperone.
Attention deficit pre-teens, without cellular/Wi-Fi
enabled devices and over-caffeinated small
bladder adults hoping to learn as much as we
can about an underfunded agency with a
science-based mandate. Perfect training for me
in my career of managing projects in FDA
regulated industry. So, instead, I decided to
write an article, dropping more knowledge than
a one-armed encyclopedia juggler.

2. I was intending to write an article tying the
Frank Baum classic, “The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz” to Project Management.
Partially it was because REDACTED, the
coolest PM in three states (bonus quiz:
guess which ones!) had come up with this
great idea of helping Young Professionals
see the true face of Project Management,
by “pulling back the curtain”. Upon hearing
his idea, and as a fan of supplying mixed
metaphors, I immediately had this flash of
(self-proclaimed) genius. Obviously we had
to bring the Wizard into this, right? I mean,
that's what pulling back the curtain is all
about. Dispelling the myths. And we as
Project Managers are clearly wizards. We
cast our voodoo spells dressed up as PM-Speak and distract you from
what is really happening. Look over here at the Gantt chart ladies and
gentlemen. Please don't look at the chaos that is really happening, barely
contained, and hurtling towards a quasi-uncertain future. It was either this,
or the prison drama Oz. Both have parallels, but I will stick with the more
classical Oz reference.
I was going to parallel the entire story. There was going to be Dorothy Gale
(yeah, I know her last name) and the peaceful farm. There was going to be
the storm, the chaos, the Wicked Sponsor and the Ruby Slip-on Safety
Shoes. The Lollipop Guild was representing Union Labor. The yellow brick
road(map). There would be allusions to smarts and hearts and courage
(really wanted a trifecta of rhyming there. And FLYING MONKEYS! No real
parallels there, I mean, yeah obviously there is a QA representative
something or other to possibly be said. Of course, I would include some
vague losing your way in the poppy field and a gonzo journalism throwback
to Hunter S. Thompson. I would have jumped it around, off sequence, in a
Tarantino-like fashion. All that mishegas would come to one very simple
conclusion. The dog is the Project
Manager. Not the Wizard. The Wizard
was the verification team. The dog,
sweet little “I bless the rains down in
Africa” Toto, kept the project on track,
guiding some, nipping at the heels of the
team some, and protecting Dorothy (the
project) from danger. It was to be
glorious, fantastical and ISPE Award

3. Worthy. I would bow, hold out the microphone, drop it and ghost, like
Swayze. And this is where it all went wrong. My mental train jumped the
track. It started like this.
In The Wizard of Oz, the original movie, when the scarecrow receives his
diploma, signifying that he now has a brain, he
states, “The sum of the square roots of any
two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to
the square root of the remaining side. Oh joy,
rapture!” Say What? Holy mathematical
mistake, Batman! Pythagoras’ theorem states
that the sum of the squares of the two legs of
a right-angled triangle is equal to the square of
the hypotenuse. Even Toto would know that.
Toto. Dog. Dogs pee on trees. Pee Tree. Petri. Petri Dish. Dish.
dish:
Informal
information that is not generally known or available.
“if he has the real dish I wish he'd tell us”
So I instead offer some thoughts on the P - rich mix that grows a great
Project Manager.
P0: The dish itself is “Problem Solving”. This skill surrounds all Project
Managers. The mastery of the process, the path, the
outcome of solving problems is the single most
important arrow in the PM quiver. It is the battery that
fuels all other success. Having this ability keeps the
PM going, and going and going. It separates us from
others into a different segment of resource
categorization. All projects are just a string of
problems to be solved, and if you want to be a PM,
you need to know your do's and do knots of this
string theory.
P1: The media is “People”. Not the paparazzi shock jock doomsday cult of
personality that infects our social consciousness. I mean the “growth”
media that feeds a project and keeps it living. All projects are fueled, they
are fed by, people. If you want to manage projects, you will need to
manage people. Trust me when I say not everyone can do this. Right now,
right this moment, I ask each of you to ask yourself one question. “Can I

4. (meaning you) effectively manage
people”? If you think you can, continue
down this path, and continue down this
page. If you say no, or have ANY doubt,
then do yourself the biggest favor you
can. Go do something else. You will be happier, you will be at peace, you
will find success. Managing people has all the problems of all other
possible professions, mixed in a blender, and poured into the petri dish as
the project growth media. These problems are in the nutrient mix. Watch
them grow.
P2: “Possibilities vs. Probabilities”. What is possible is not always probable.
You need to know the difference. I stopped believing in the impossible, but
I do believe in the improbable. I have made a new career out of what I term
project “Salvage and Restoration”, where I
help identify those project risk points and run
scenarios based on game theory to find our
way back to the probable path to success.
Projects have certain turning points that
make success shift from probable to
possible, from possible to improbable and
then, if poorly managed or doomed from the
start, from improbable to impossible. Learn to
understand the nuance of this topic.
Otherwise, you won't be able to understand
what is growing in your dish.
P3: “Plan, Practice, Perform”. Professional athletes practice. Professional
musicians practice. Professional artists practice. Surgeons practice.
Firefighter, police, soldiers. They all practice, meaning they train under real
scenarios. They analyze their performance, and the tweak and retool until
they can offer that performance as expert. And they recognize that without
practice, they won't reach the pinnacle of their chosen fields. However, and
it is just as true in other professions, in the project management field, and
even more so in management of projects in the pharmaceutical and
biotech industries, there is no practice. We hide behind read and review
training, but that is not training. That is not
practice. There is no expertise gained in
reading, knowledge maybe, but not
execution. And if on the job training was
enough, then we wouldn't need all the
controls and wasted oversight, cumbersome
reports and unneeded checks and balances.

5. If you want the cello played, you call Shana Tucker. If you want soldiers,
you call Hannibal Smith. Why? Because they plan, they practice and they
perform. If you don't, you won't. Your project growth will die.
P4: “Persuasions, Permissions, Placations, Priorities”. Priorities should be
first. Simply, if you can't identify and deliver on priorities, you can't manage
projects. Simple. Then come the “soft” skills. Establish a strong ethical
foundation, then learn how to persuade people. Make solid case for your
choices, get people onboard and guide them to be successful. Learn how
to both ask for, and grant permission. Sometimes ask for forgiveness, but
more often it is better to get buy-in from those further up the organization
chart. Also, grant permissions to your direct reports, otherwise the typical
project culture will prevent them from being
proactive in their own scope-based decisions.
And learn to placate the naysayers. Be able to
(and I was so trying not to get back on
the Oz thing) offer some oil to the sticky
joint. People will get mad. People will
turn evil. Keep focused. Keep strong.
Keep open and honest. Be able to
understand personal interaction. In a
bioreactor, sometimes you need to
encourage growth, you need to slow the
roll, you need to inoculate. Sometimes
make the mix happy, sometimes angry.
You need to control your project growth.
P5: “Practices, Policies, Procedures, Platforms, Partnerships”. We, in the
regulated industries, work our magic under a lot of rules and regulations,
and rightfully so. Good Manufacturing Practices are law, corporate policies
highly vetted to meet that law and procedures guide us on how to
implement those policies at the site level. Platforms,
whether technology based or best practice, help us
implement those procedure to manufacture product.
And none of it is accomplished alone. There are
divisional partnerships, team partnerships,
departmental partnerships, and many others. Some
that you, as a project manager need to care about,
and some you don't. But you should understand
them.
That mix of P's can make you successful. Some are more important, and
the importance of some varies based on project type, six, phase or state.

6. Remember, all problems can be solved, and that is the most important
skill, a project manager can have. You need to develop a sixth sense of
the way things will go.
P6: Sixth Sense. The movie. He was a ghost all along.
I promised to make this a thriller, so here we go. There is only one P that
matters. And if you are working in the drug or medical device related
industries, you should be able to guess what it is, and above all else, it is
all that matters.
It is the Patient.