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edigitaltranscription.comVELOCITEACH

EVENT: PODCAST

SERIES: MANAGE THIS

EPISODE: 077

DATE: TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 2019

MODERATOR: NICK WALKER

EXPERT: BILL YATES

GUEST: RICH MALTZMAN

SOURCE: EPISODE 77 EDITED.MP3

LENGTH: 41 MINUTES

Table of Contents01:24 … Meet Rich03:58 … Bad Meeting Victims07:21 … Research08:44 … Large and in Charge11:28 … Sponsor Involvement15:59 … Pre-Meeting Steps18:56 … Kick-Off Meeting Time Line20:35 … Risk Register25:32 … Meeting Goblins32:46 … Virtual Meetings35:15 … Naysayers37:40 … Final Remarks

RICH MALTZMAN: I think you need to just step back and say, “I’m

a project manager. I’m going to project manage this meeting.”

Seriously, a lot of the same skills that you are applying to your

project, you just need to step back and realize that this is a

project itself.

VELOCITEACH / PODCAST / MANAGE THIS / EPISODE 077

NICK WALKER: Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project

managers for project managers. Every two weeks we meet to

discuss the things that matter to you as a professional project

manager. We’re here for you, to encourage you, to give you some

ideas you can use, and to help you get to your best and

maintain it.

I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me is the one who is

instrumental in helping us be at our best, Bill Yates. And Bill,

before we get to our guest, we should remind our listeners where

our other partner in crime is right now, Andy Crowe.

BILL YATES: Yeah, Andy Crowe is not in the room. He is in the

water. He is on a boat. He is...

NICK WALKER: Not in the water.

BILL YATES: Yeah, that’s true. Good point, yeah. Hopefully

he’s on top of the water in his sailing vessel. So we don’t know

exactly where he is, but he’s not here. If people want to

remember, we actually had an episode dedicated to that where we

talked with Andy and Karen, Episode 74, for all the details.

NICK WALKER: And of course we’ll be checking back in with Andy

from time to time and probably even talk with him on one of our

future podcasts.

Meet Rich

2


But right now we’ve got a great guest with us today. Rich

Maltzman, PMP, recently retired from a 40-year career in the

telecom industry, the last 30 years focusing on project

management. He’s currently a senior lecturer at Boston

University, developing and teaching classes in project

management, and qualitative and quantitative decision-making.

Rich is the cofounder of EarthPM, LLC, a company devoted to

integrating sustainability thinking into the project management

world. He has authored or coauthored several books, including

“Green Project Management,” which won PMI’s Cleland Award for

Literature; “Project Workflow Management: A Business Process

Approach”; and “Bridging the PM Competency Gap.” His latest book

is titled “How to Facilitate Productive Project Planning

Meetings.” And that’s much of what we want to focus on today.

Rich, thank you for being with us here on Manage This.

RICH MALTZMAN: It’s great to be here.

NICK WALKER: Before we get into the subject of what makes

successful planning meetings, let’s find out a little bit more

about you. Now, you spent 40 years in the telecom industry. How

did that prepare you for your work today?

RICH MALTZMAN: Well, being in industry gets you familiar with

all of the kinds of situations. And I should back up and explain

that only 30 years of that was in project management.

NICK WALKER: Only.

3


BILL YATES: Oh, okay.

RICH MALTZMAN: So a good portion of it was in engineering, and

some was in project management. But all of that experience

involves meeting with a vast amount of people and a wide variety

of different people. So I’d say that that experience prepared me

for, amongst other things, being able to talk, I hope somewhat

intelligently, about how meetings can be improved.

NICK WALKER: And you’re a lecturer at Boston University. How

did that come about?

RICH MALTZMAN: Well, if you look at my background, even way, way

back in the beginning of my career, which ashamedly goes back to

the ‘70s, I was doing training back at that time. And I found I

really liked that part of the job. So even back in the ‘80s I

was doing some teaching at local community colleges. And I found

that that was exceedingly rewarding, just seeing light bulbs go

off over people’s head to say, hey, I get this. I understand it.

Thanks for explaining that. That’s one of the better feelings

you can get in a work environment, at least in my opinion. So I

started doing that on the side. And most recently I’ve made it a

full-time position.

Bad Meeting Victims

BILL YATES: Rich, you and I have known each other for a while.

4


RICH MALTZMAN: Yes.

BILL YATES: And that has been my impression from day one is

you’re passionate about teaching, mentoring, coaching, leading

people. And so we appreciate this time with you. And I’m going

to go ahead and tell you, I really enjoyed this book, the book

that we’re talking about. We’re going to hit on some of the

notes from it. But I’ve got to tell you, you got me right from

the start when you and Jim talked about the problem. And I, when

I was reading about kind of what led you to want to write this

book, you guys talked about the problems. The problem is we have

all been victims to awful meetings.

RICH MALTZMAN: Yes.

BILL YATES: And I was cracking up at some of the stats that you

were throwing out about bad meetings. Personally, you say you’ve

been in quite a few bad meetings yourself? How many do you think

you’ve been in?

RICH MALTZMAN: I’ve counted. It’s 623. Counting this one, 624.

No, no.

BILL YATES: Oh, no. Oh, that hurt.

NICK WALKER: Nice one.

5


RICH MALTZMAN: It’s a lot. I don’t know the number. And of

course what’s the definition of “bad”? I mean, I’d say the

better word is “disappointing” – two words, “disappointing” and

“unrewarding.” So you walk out of a meeting with that feeling

like, let’s say you’re just an attendee. You walk out of that

meeting with the feeling, why did I just spend an hour in that

room? Or it’s even worse if you’re leading the meeting; you

wonder did people get it. Are people walking away tasked? Do

they know, okay, I’m excited about what I have to do, and I know

what I have to do?

And I would say let’s put it in percentage terms. I’m going to

say about 30 percent of the time, at least, I remember walking

away from meetings going, you know, was that a really good use of

my time and everyone else’s time? And think about the number of

people in the room, 15-20 people in the room, each getting a

reasonable salary, at least they’re certainly getting paid. And

all that time, is it really being best used? You wonder.

BILL YATES: Yeah, that’s so true. And just stepping back and

looking at some of the statistics that you guys share in the

book, in the U.S., 25 million meetings per day in the United

States, in corporate America. And of those, like 15 percent of

the collective time of the organization is being spent in those

meetings. Yet when you ask managers how effective are the

meetings, they come back and say, I think about two thirds are

failures. We failed to walk out with a clear action plan.

People weren’t clear. We didn’t have the right people in the

6


room. So many of these things that you guys talk about. So,

yeah, I appreciate a book that takes a common problem and looks

for solutions.

RICH MALTZMAN: Right, right. So I’m glad, I mean, as project

managers we know you want to start with a clear problem

statement, a rationale for doing the project. In that case, the

book is the project, and the rationale for writing the book is,

hey, there’s room for improvement here. And it’s kind of ironic

because we’re at the eye of the storm. As project managers, we

live and die by meetings.

BILL YATES: Yes.

RICH MALTZMAN: And yet we don’t apply our own project management

principles to the planning of meetings. So we kind of said,

let’s refocus ourselves as PMs and put our own intelligence on a

meeting plan.

BILL YATES: Right.

Research

NICK WALKER: And Rich, you wrote this book, not just from your

own perspective, but you did a little bit of research with others

who have been through some tales of woe.

7


RICH MALTZMAN: Yes, both Jim Stewart, my coauthor and myself

have fairly large networks of people. We’ve both intentionally

been very active on LinkedIn to build networks. And by the way,

I coach project managers to do that. It’s just a very, very good

practice. So we leaned on those networks and talked to people

who we know, folks who have also been in industry for a long

time, in a variety of industries, and asked them.

But we also leaned on; I guess you could say, “Standard bearers”

in this field of meetings. We talked to facilitators. We talked

to people who have written books as facilitators, just in

general, not project management, because we realize we don’t want

to make this so niche-focused that it’s only for PMs. So we

talked to psychologists. We talked to people who’ve written

guidebooks on how to facilitate, and we got their opinions, too.

And as you mentioned, we grabbed a lot of war stories from these

folks, you know, awful, absolutely awful meetings that they’ve

been to. And we have a small chapter dedicated to that piece, as

well.

BILL YATES: Oh, that’s fun, too. It’s such a fun read, the

Appendix, where some of these stories are shared. It’s like you

save some of the best, some of the funniest stuff till the end.

RICH MALTZMAN: Yes.

Large and in Charge

8


BILL YATES: I mean, there’s humor throughout the book, but those

stories were great. One thing I appreciate about the book is

it’s not just, okay, here’s how to have an effective meeting. I

mean, that’s, yeah, that’s kind of a – you could say that at a

high level. But you guys get very specific and tactical. You

talk about the importance of a kickoff meeting and a planning

session, specifically a two-day. You know, you prescribe a two-

day planning session, a planning meeting.

And it’s, again, I’m going to use the word “tactical.” You have

very specific items to carry out and to do. And I like, I can’t

remember if it’s your emphasis or Jim’s on the notion of this is

where the project manager really needs to step in and be large

and in charge. So she or he needs to kind of show authority from

the beginning, so large and in charge. We use that here at

Velociteach. What do you guys mean by that?

RICH MALTZMAN: Well, what we mean is that attitude is

contagious. And just even last evening, when I talked about this

at Boston University, I actually have been in a meeting where an

individual would get up in front of the group and, in a very

monotone voice will say, “Okay, we’re here to do this meeting

that’s about this project.” And, you know, it comes across very

clearly that they don’t seem to care. You need to be almost a

caricature of yourself, exaggerate your vision and the purpose of

the project, the importance of how it connects to the mission and

vision of the company. And you have to be optimistic and upbeat.

It has to seem possible. And I lean on Stephen Covey, begin with

9


the end in mind. You have to have a vision. Even a conceptual

drawing, of course, depends on the kind of project on which

you’re working. You know have an image of what it is that you

expect.

And let me go back to my academic background, my current academic

background. Some of the best presentations in my courses, which

are all project-based, are the ones where the students start off;

let’s say they’re developing an app. They start off with

screenshots from what look like a real app on a smartphone.

That’s the first thing you’re presented with as the sponsor or

the audience. And I have the students make the classroom

magically into an audience, into the sponsor as an audience.

They will show them, here’s what this looks like. And that’s

beginning with the end in mind. So large and in charge means, not

necessarily that you’re physically large, but that you take on a

presence, a large presence as a, for lack of a better word, a

cheerleader for the meeting.

Sponsor Involvement

BILL YATES: Yeah. And Rich, one of the things that, as I

thought about that and saw and was reading what you guys had to

say about that, I see that consistent in the steps that you guys

put forward as leading to successful kickoff planning session

meetings, having that sponsor there at the beginning and

throughout, and then wrapping up at the end. And I really like

that. That resonates with me. Again, we’ve talked about that

10


before. We even teach to that in some of the project management

fundamentals-type courses that we have.

One of the sources that I like to cite to that end is a book by

Hiatt and Creasey. It’s “Change Management: The People Side of

Change.” And there they talk about the importance of executive

sponsorship. And there’s no time more important than the

beginning of the project, the kickoff. And they researched 300

companies. In their book they talked about the number one

success factor cited for implementing change through projects is

visible and active executive sponsorship.

RICH MALTZMAN: That’s right.

BILL YATES: So I agree with you guys wholeheartedly on that

point is you’ve thought back with your career. Have you ever had

to kind of sell the sponsor on being in the room, convince them

of that importance for this meeting?

RICH MALTZMAN: Absolutely. In fact, the basis for these two-day

planning meetings comes from a strange – probably not that

strange, actually – coincidence in that both Jim and I in

different industries have been involved in these customer project

kickoff meetings that have this very similar format. And both

Jim and I found that they were successful. And yes, in this case

the sponsor was kind of a cosponsor of the senior leadership of

our company, in this case a telecom equipment manufacturer and

the customer of that network system.

11


So, for example, at the time, this goes back to the old days,

companies like Pacific Bell would be the customers of what was at

the time AT&T Network Systems. And I’m going back to

brontosaurus and tyrannosaurus times. But when we would have

these kickoff meetings, we would invite Pacific Bill to be

present at the beginning, explaining why this network was so

important for them. We’re going to be putting in the equivalent

of a cable network system. We’re going to start to compete with

cable companies, which was shocking at the time, you know,

telephone companies competing with cable companies. Now they are

cable companies.

BILL YATES: Right.

RICH MALTZMAN: But in those days, to energize testers,

installers, designers, all the contributors to a telecom network,

there was nothing better than to have a person from Pacific Bell

standing in front of them saying I am your customer. This is

critical for us. You guys need to have this turned up on time,

and here’s why. And to me that’s even better than an executive

sponsor because now it’s coming from outside.

BILL YATES: Yeah. You know, Rich, the large and in charge –

it’s funny, Nick, when I think of that, I mean, that just

resonates with me. I think of wrestling or, you know, some

massive figure.

NICK WALKER: It can be like that, I’m sure.

12


BILL YATES: Yeah. But there are times when project managers are

very comfortable in the technical space, and they’re fine talking

with the team once things get rolling. But getting that momentum

going with this first meeting is not always a natural thing. So

to your point, Rich, it’s almost a caricature of who I am or who

a project manager normally is.

RICH MALTZMAN: Yeah.

BILL YATES: And it’s so helpful when I’ve got that, the person,

you know, if I have a sponsor standing next to me, and she’s well

respected in the organization; or, heck, she signs the checks;

you know? People look at that and go, okay, all right. Well, if

Tina is giving – if she’s kind of anointing Bill as the leader of

this initiative, it must be important. I guess I’ll listen to

Bill after all.

RICH MALTZMAN: Exactly. It goes to that whole idea of influence

without authority.

BILL YATES: Absolutely.

RICH MALTZMAN: As a project manager, you’re often not the

largest and in chargest in the room.

BILL YATES: Right.

13


RICH MALTZMAN: From a hierarchical standpoint. So you need

something, some source of authority. And having the person who

signs the checks saying “Bill is running this project,” well,

that’s one source of authority, and of course having a customer

reiterate that doesn’t hurt. So, yeah, those two-day meeting

tactical outlines are a part of the book. It’s not the only part

of the book. But we do get down to brass tacks in a couple of

these chapters.

Pre-Meeting Steps

NICK WALKER: So Rich let me ask you this. What do you actually

need to put in place, what do you need to do, what steps do you

need to take before this meeting?

RICH MALTZMAN: I think you need to just step back and say, “I’m

a project manager. I’m going to project manage this meeting.”

Seriously, a lot of the same skills that you are applying to your

project, you just need to step back and realize that this is a

project itself. The meeting itself is a time-limited endeavor

that’s unique, and you need to put the same principles you’re

applying to the project into the planning of the meeting,

including logistics like what building is this in?

BILL YATES: Yeah.

RICH MALTZMAN: And have I clearly communicated what the location

and the logistics for the meeting, and even the purpose. In one

14


of our war stories, someone indicated that they forgot to clearly

state that this was a project planning meeting. So they invited

everyone to this – they just called it a “kickoff.” And people

didn’t know what they’d be doing at the meeting. You should have

at least an outline or a preliminary agenda and, in maybe size 14

at least font, you know, “This is a project planning meeting with

the following expected outcomes.”

BILL YATES: Rich, I think you shared, I don’t remember if it was

a personal story or a colleague you reached out to, where it’s

important to emphasize, not just the right location and

conference room, but the right city.

RICH MALTZMAN: Yes.

NICK WALKER: Oh, my.

BILL YATES: Is there a story there?

RICH MALTZMAN: Oh, yes. I had an engineer go to Minneapolis

instead of Indianapolis.

NICK WALKER: Oh.

BILL YATES: Oh, no.

RICH MALTZMAN: He just went to an “apolis” city. I guess he

could have gone to Annapolis. This actually happened. And if

15


you know the geography of the United States, there’s Bloomington,

Minnesota and Bloomington, Indiana. And the meeting was in

Bloomington. And he associated it with Bloomington, Indiana.

The meeting was supposed to be in Bloomington, Minnesota. And we

got a call – I still remember it. “I’m at a rental car agency in

Bloomington, and they’re telling me there’s no hotel like the one

you’re talking about here. Am I in the wrong place?” And we’re

like, yes.

NICK WALKER: Oh, no.

BILL YATES: Yeah, you are.

NICK WALKER: Oh, my goodness.

RICH MALTZMAN: Now, that was mostly a mistake on his part. But

that’s a real example. I think it’s pretty clear in this case

that you just needed to be very obvious about the state and

location and so forth. But that’s, although it really happened,

it’s kind of an outlier.

BILL YATES: Oh, yeah, that’s a great story. There are so many

useful takeaways from the book. And one of them is – I’m holding

the sheet now. It’s page 54. There’s a Planning Meeting

Readiness Checklist. And Rich, this is really helpful. There’s

15 or so bullet items here, kind of a checklist. Project

managers love checklists.

16


RICH MALTZMAN: Oh, yes.

BILL YATES: So in that there’s – it’s a great checklist. To

your point, it hits on logistics. It hits on some of the, you

know, have I sent out the proper agenda? Have I let people know

this is a kickoff meeting, and we’re going to do some

serious planning?

RICH MALTZMAN: Yes.

Kickoff Meeting Timeline

BILL YATES: There’s a lot in there. Here’s one of the pieces

that, when I looked at it, I was thinking, okay, this actually

has a lot of prework involved because, as you walk into this

meeting, the assumption is the project charter is signed. Okay,

yeah, that makes sense. It’s an official project. But there’s

also a scope statement in place. So that implies a pretty deep

understanding of scope. So there’s been some form of meeting

with the customer, with the sponsor, ahead of time to

understand that.

RICH MALTZMAN: Yes.

BILL YATES: So help me understand, if we’re talking about a

project that’s going to go for a year, how deep into the project

will we have this kickoff planning meeting?

17


RICH MALTZMAN: It would still be fairly early in the project.

And of course I have to give you the answer that it depends.

BILL YATES: Sure, absolutely.

RICH MALTZMAN: Is this a two-month development of an app, or is

this a $1 billion network deployment for a telecom or IT company,

or a medical device or a pharmaceutical introduction? All of

these things would be different. But we’re talking about the

first 10 percent of the timeline of the project. The kickoff

needs to be, as you correctly identified, there has to be enough

solid information about the project so that it makes sense for

people to perhaps fly in from different parts of the world to be

together, or to be in a large virtual meeting. But the project

should be chartered. The project manager should be identified.

And that means you are somewhat into the timeline. And I’m just

guessing that it’s generally about 10 percent into the overall

timeline.

BILL YATES: Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

Risk Register

NICK WALKER: I’ve got a question for you, Rich. There’s

probably some listeners here who might be pushing back a little

bit, saying, now, wait a minute, I don’t want to overplan here,

you know, because this is going to – we’re going to lose our

18


creativity. We’re going to lose our spontaneity, our out-of-the-

box thinking.

RICH MALTZMAN: Right.

NICK WALKER: What would you say to people who maybe are a little

worried about that in terms of planning for this meeting?

RICH MALTZMAN: Well, I’ll give you an example. One of the

things we recommend is that you have a pre-filled out or started

WBS, just started. And you have a risk register with a couple of

items filled in. And maybe – this is from my teaching background

and dealing with students. But we really all are students. Yes,

there’s a risk that, if you have such a constrained format, you

might block some input. I think you just need to buy into that

fact and say, look, I started this, but I want any idea, even if

it doesn’t fit into the format of this WBS. You’ve got some

risks identified here. It’s just to show you the format of what

we mean by a risk. That’s the only purpose of this, and what the

characteristics we want to record are about the risks we’ll

identify.

But the fact that I’ve identified a labor strike doesn’t mean you

should only think about labor issues. We want you to think

broadly and deeply. And so your concern is valid. Your fear or

the listener’s fear of overplanning should be taken into account.

I know that Agile thinking is very popular right now, and we even

dedicate some space in the book to Agile planning meetings. But

19


I would push back on the pushback and say that you should be able

to manage and draw out, elicit creativity as a good large-and-in-

charge project manager, even if you do have some structure, for

example a risk register with the first couple of risks filled in.

I think you still can and should be able to draw out all kinds of

wild ideas in this meeting. And that’s really what you’re after

here.

Think about this for a moment, a pet peeve of mine: stakeholder

and risk identification. If you fail to do those two things at

the beginning of a project, guess what? You have risks that you

never even thought of show up. You have stakeholders who you

didn’t even consider were stakeholders suddenly showing up

halfway through and blocking. Or you’ve missed out on an

opportunity of a stakeholder who now you suddenly discover could

have saved you very early.

BILL YATES: Rich, you just triggered a thought in my mind, which

is, I mean, it’s so important to invite the right people to this

meeting, even if they only come for a portion of it. If it’s a

two-day meeting, I may have somebody from customer service that I

want to come in for an hour and explain to our team that’s

developing an app, let’s say this is the impact that the app may

have on us. Let me share my perspective from customer service,

and the kind of calls and chats and whatever that we receive.

How are we going to handle that with the app? Here’s our

perspective. So I don’t need them there the whole time, but I

need them for part.

20


You’ve got, you know, I know it’s natural to be running a meeting

like this, and then suddenly somebody brings something up. And

I’m like, oh, wow, we need to have somebody from that department

in the room, or somebody from that customer area in the room.

What do you do? Do you hit the pause button? You just plan

another meeting? What advice do you have for that?

RICH MALTZMAN: Well, it’s going to depend on the specific

situation. But I would say I tend to be pretty liberal in that

area. In other words, if it’s apparent that hearing the voice of

a customer service person right now is important, I would like to

get that person on the video or on the phone as soon as possible.

I also think it’s – we now have the advantage, and we’re seeing

it together right now, of video conferencing and recording. So

if you were to bring that person in for that one hour to talk

about this, even if you – and of course with their permission –

you record that one hour and then play that back when they’re not

available, but the other people who need to hear that can be in

the room. Nothing wrong with piecing together the meeting and

responding to it in that way.

But that’s a very good point. And in the real world you can read

all the books you want. I think our book is fairly good, but you

can read any best practice book, and still some unexpected

thing’s going to happen. And one of the key habits of a project

manager is being able to bob and weave and react in real time to

both threats and opportunities. You gave a great example of a

positive risk. Someone happens to be walking by the meeting room

21


who’s a customer service person who really could contribute. You

hadn’t thought of that until now. Wow, they could contribute?

Invite them in. Record that. Make it available as an artifact

for later in the meeting or as a follow-up.

Meeting Goblins

BILL YATES: That’s good. Rich, one of the things that Nick and

I were laughing about as we were preparing for our conversation

with you is for some of the people that have been invited into

the meeting, which may be a little difficult to manage. So Nick,

what are we talking about there?

NICK WALKER: You refer to them as “meeting goblins.” What do

you mean by that?

RICH MALTZMAN: So everyone has a reptilian brain.

BILL YATES: Yes.

RICH MALTZMAN: Especially reptiles. And including reptiles. So

we all have some of this in us. But there are some people who

seem to have this more prevalent in their meeting behavior. So

we do have a section near the beginning of the book where we talk

about meeting goblins. And this comes from our joint

consciousness, myself and Jim’s. And we decided to give them

names. And later on, after the book, we actually gave them

little figurine images.

22


BILL YATES: Oh, nice.

RICH MALTZMAN: Yeah, I can provide that as a follow-up if you

really want to get scared.

NICK WALKER: You can have a whole line of action figures.

RICH MALTZMAN: Yes, yes.

BILL YATES: I’m afraid one of them’s going to look like me.

RICH MALTZMAN: That’s right. Merchandising, as Mel Brooks said

in “Spaceballs.” So, for example, we have Flo, the Flo goblin.

So Flo is the person who arrives late or is constantly getting up

to do something outside the meeting, and it’s disruptive in terms

of the overall flow of the meetings. Meetings almost have

personalities, just like these goblins. And if you have someone

who’s constantly disrupting, leaving early, coming late, changing

topic, although that’s actually a different goblin, you need to

make sure that’s corrected.

And we have some specific tips in the book. For example, if

someone is habitually late, then maybe start the meeting at an

odd time, 3:17. Make your meeting start time a little bit odd.

It’s interesting how that can actually affect it. I’ve done

that. People will say, “What the heck? Why does your meeting

start at 3:17?” Because you remembered it.

23


BILL YATES: Right.

NICK WALKER: Uh-huh.

RICH MALTZMAN: And pull Flo aside and say, you know, I

appreciate you. You’re a great contributor to the meeting. But

meetings have to have, you know, you wouldn’t call her out as

Flo. But you’d say, “Meetings do have a kind of a flow that we

need to keep. And we would really appreciate it if you show up

on time. In fact, we’d ask that you come a little bit early.”

So each of these goblins have their own personality and their own

traits. And we’ve seen all of these: people who take you off on

tangents; people who tend to act almost as a bully.

So one of the goblins that’s one of my favorites is Charlie the

Chatty Goblin. Charlie’s the person who is having side

conversations, many side conversations with anyone around him

who’ll listen. And for this I actually took a tip from my

daughter, who is an English teacher in middle school in the

Washington, D.C. area. And one of the things that she’s told me

is just walk over to the person. And do it slowly and subtly,

and stand near them. They’ll stop.

And it’s a little less disruptive and, in one way, a little less

rude; in one way, a little more aggressive and assertive. And it

gets them to stop. And they’ll learn that, if they continue to

talk, that you’ll just be located near them frequently. She’s

used this in her classroom. I’ve used this in my graduate school

24


classroom. And these are more of the age of the people we’ll

deal with, people who are 25 or so. But it works kind of across

the board. And that’s an example of what we have in our goblin

section.

BILL YATES: Yeah. I found this to be very practical and very

helpful. One that resonated with me was the naysayer, that’s

always negative. And you guys...

RICH MALTZMAN: Mm-hmm, Nancy. Nancy the Naysayer.

BILL YATES: Yeah, Nancy the Naysayer. And it could be Ned, you

know, it could be male or female.

RICH MALTZMAN: Oh, all of them could be...

BILL YATES: Oh, yeah.

RICH MALTZMAN: All of them could have any characteristic that

you could name.

BILL YATES: But I recall we had a client, back when I was

working in software for utilities, we had a client who would

call. And we’re providing, you know, we’re doing hundreds and

hundreds of calculations, dozens of reports. And if there was

one number that was wrong, this guy would call. And his first

words would be “Everything is broken.” And, you know, it was

like, oh, my, you know, the first time we heard that, we’re

25


panicking. We’re like, you know, sound the alarms. Everything’s

broken. And it’s just one number’s off; you know. Okay, this is

not the end of the world. You see the impact that a naysayer can

have in the room.

There was one other one that I thought of, Rich, for your Volume

II on this, or your next printing. You can add the multitasker.

So, you know, sometimes my meetings get – I feel like there’s one

person that I have to repeat for because they’re over

there multitasking.

NICK WALKER: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

RICH MALTZMAN: Yes, yes.

BILL YATES: I’ve been doing a training session before, on the

software that I mentioned before. And my colleague was leading

from the front of the room, and I was kind of walking around,

making sure everybody was keeping up. One guy’s pulling his

wallet out and reaching for a credit card. I’m thinking, what do

we have in our system that would require that? Well, he’s

shopping online. He’s buying tickets to a concert.

NICK WALKER: Oh, no, no.

RICH MALTZMAN: Oh, absolutely.

BILL YATES: He was multitasking.

26


RICH MALTZMAN: So this is one of those things that I have seen.

I’ve seen it in meetings. I’ve seen it in classrooms. The real

solution to this – and this is actually kind of interesting, and

it’s certainly not on any script that we’ve written, but I think

it’s worthwhile mentioning. Ground rules; right? Establishing

ground rules. And what I found really psychologically

interesting here is that people, and I’ll give students as an

example, when you ask them, would you like to have a rule that

says you should not have a tablet, smartphone, or laptop active

during class, now, this is the person who’s using it. They’ll

say, “Yes, please take it away from me.”

We surveyed hundreds of students at Boston University in our

project management classes because we were seeing this. I’d walk

through the room, and I would see that their screens are not in

fact on PMI’s website. They’re selecting down jackets or shoes

on Amazon.com. Unabashedly. And so when we asked the students,

would you be in favor of a ground rule that says if you need to

use a laptop for translation – because we have a lot of

international students – or for note-taking, that’s fine. We’re

going to seat you toward the front of the room. If not, we want

the laptop closed and your smartphones off. We’ll give you

plenty of breaks, right? You set the ground rules and the

expectations so they’re not saying, oh, I can’t wait to order

this jacket or dress or shoe. And you tell them, look, we’ll

only be having periods of an hour to an hour and 15 minutes, and

then we’ll be having breaks. And then you can run out and order

your product.

27


But the interesting thing was 90 percent plus of the students,

and these include the ones who are using the laptops, and I know

them by name, they would say, yes, I agree with this. Please.

My own laptop was distracting me. My neighbor’s laptop was

distracting me. In fact, my neighbor would be online, and that

would remind me, yeah, I need a new jacket. And seriously, they

were actually almost begging us to take these away, just almost

like an addict would say, yeah, get this out. Get this fattening

food away from me.

Virtual Meetings

BILL YATES: Rich, one of the things that I’ve got to mention

while we’re having this conversation, one of the things I really

appreciated in the book, and honestly I kind of laughed at it

when I realized the connection, you’ve got a section in the book

focused on facilitating a virtual meeting. And the part that was

humorous to me was, hey, small world. You’ve got Wayne. You’re

getting some advice from Wayne and sharing that in that chapter.

Wayne was our guest on Episode 64 as he talked about virtual

meetings.

RICH MALTZMAN: Yes.

BILL YATES: Talk a little bit about your relationship with Wayne

and how you twisted his arm to get him to collaborate with you.

28


RICH MALTZMAN: It didn’t take much of a twist. So I’ve known

Wayne Turmel for a long time. I’ve been a fan, it started when I

was a fan of his show, I don’t know if you recall this, called

“The Cranky Middle Manager.” Did you know he had a show?

BILL YATES: No, I didn’t realize that. That’s great.

RICH MALTZMAN: It was awesome. It was one of the first times I

got into podcasting. Terrific show, great sense of humor, a lot

of history, you know, interesting trivia and history, if you’re

into that stuff. He would talk about Attila the Hun and

Charlemagne and all this stuff. And he was great at that. And

he’s moved into the world of coaching with his colleague Kevin

Eikenberry, coaching people as to how to run meetings. And

they’ve become expert at planning and running any kind of virtual

meeting or training. They have a brand new book out, too. His

chapter in our book on virtual meetings is drawn from the book

called “The Long-Distance Manager.” It’s a great book. I don’t

know if that’s – I assume that might be what you talked about.

BILL YATES: Right, yeah, that was our conversation.

RICH MALTZMAN: Yes.

BILL YATES: One of his quotes, Rich, was – and I’m quoting Wayne

here. “Meetings pretty much suck. Making them virtual just adds

a bit to the general suckiness.”

29


RICH MALTZMAN: This is Wayne. That’s Wayne.

BILL YATES: Yeah, this is Wayne. And I appreciate the way that

you guys take that because you know, to your point, we’re having

this meeting. We want to have the right people in the room.

Some of them may be joining us virtually. It could be a partner.

It could be someone that’s located outside of the city that we’re

in, whatever. So it’s something to consider; and it’s something

that, again, that project manager needs to project manage.

RICH MALTZMAN: Yes.

BILL YATES: They need to really think that through.

RICH MALTZMAN: Exactly. Think about the time zones. Think

about the Internet connectivity. It’s not so easy, for example,

in China to arrange a virtual meeting because certain sites are

blocked, and you have to consider that. You can’t tell someone

in China, for example, to go Google something because Google’s

not acceptable.

Naysayers

I want to go back to the goblins for a second because there is

one piece in here that I can’t help sharing. When you talked

about the naysayer, you reminded me. So the negative person, the

person who’s saying, oh, we’ll never get this done. Oh, this

project’s going to fail. I mean, that’s a real poison in your

30


meeting. That gets into everyone’s bloodstream, and you really

need to avoid that. And Wayne, bringing up Wayne brings up

comedy and humor, and that reminds me of this piece of humor.

One of the things you can say publicly in a meeting like that is,

“You know, Nancy, pessimists are always eventually right. Rome

eventually fell. The dinosaurs went extinct. But you know both

of them had a pretty good run.”

And, you know, that kind of shuts up Nancy because we’re not

talking about the end of time. We’re talking about having a

successful project, making our customers successful, being able

to walk away from this and work on another project. We’re not

talking about hate and war and death all the time. And in this

case you’re really trying to focus them on the fact that, you

know, we can have a pretty good run.

NICK WALKER: What happens when you have Nancy the Naysayer or

Murray the Multitasker, you know, take over?

RICH MALTZMAN: Yes.

NICK WALKER: What’s the result of that?

RICH MALTZMAN: I’d say that the result of that is a derailed

meeting. It’s different between Murray and Nancy. Nancy’s issue

will be that people are just going to walk away saying we’ll

never get this done. Their motivation will be low. Murray the

Multitasker is just a little bit less insidious because all he’s

31


doing is interrupting the meeting and maybe showing that it’s

okay to not pay attention. So by all means not good. But I

think Nancy’s a little more dangerous of those two. In all of

the cases, though, you need to take a direct approach. This goes

back to Bill, large and in charge.

BILL YATES: Right.

RICH MALTZMAN: You need to be a caricature of yourself. And if

you tend to be a little bit introverted, this is not the time for

Introverted Ike, to name another goblin. As a project manager,

you need to step outside your normal bounds and talk to these

goblins, whether it’s one on one afterwards, you know, you need

to use your judgment, whether it’s right there in front of

everyone. Sometimes that’s necessary.

Final Remarks

NICK WALKER: Rich, before we let you go, we want to know how,

first of all, we can get the book.

BILL YATES: Yeah.

RICH MALTZMAN: Well, there’s an agent named Nancy – no.

BILL YATES: Standing by, taking orders.

32


RICH MALTZMAN: The book is available in several forms, formats,

on Amazon. We really liked our publisher here. I’ve got to put

in a pitch for Maven House. Maven House Press was the publisher.

Jim Pennypacker, who was a big contributor to PMI, helped us with

this. I’d like to also thank Dr. Harold Kerzner for writing the

forward for us. And of course Wayne and other contributors that

we thank in the book. So it’s available on Amazon. It’s

available on Kindle and Barnes & Noble and so forth. It’s

paperback. It’s affordable because it’s a paperback, which is

good. Other books that I’ve coauthored have been hardcover, and

a little bit less accessible, and I’d say considered academic

because they’re hardcover. This is a little more of a guide, and

I think it should be something that you’d be happy to have on

your desk.

NICK WALKER: And obviously you offer a lot of expertise. How

can people get in touch with you to get more information

from you?

RICH MALTZMAN: Sure. We are establishing a website, Jim and I.

But for now I’d just give you my email address. So that’s just

exclaim, E-X-C-L-A-I-M, exclaim, like “I exclaim, ‘What a great

meeting.’” [email protected] is probably the best way to get

to me.

NICK WALKER: Well, Rich thanks so much again for taking the time

to be with us today. Great discussion.

33


RICH MALTZMAN: Thank you. It’s a privilege and an honor to be

here. I’ve known you guys for a while, and it’s great to be in a

virtual room with you.

NICK WALKER: One more thing, Rich. We’ve got a present for you.

RICH MALTZMAN: A present.

NICK WALKER: This is the Manage This coffee mug. And we’re

going to send this to you. And I understand that you love that

Kona blend.

RICH MALTZMAN: Full? It’ll be full like that?

NICK WALKER: Yeah. I spilled my water, for the listeners there.

Now there’s water all over the table. But you can fill it with

something much more potent, probably.

RICH MALTZMAN: Kona coffee.

BILL YATES: There you go.

NICK WALKER: All right.

RICH MALTZMAN: Thank you very much. I appreciate that. I’ll

treasure it.

34

edigitaltranscription.com • 02/12/2019 • edigitaltranscription.mobi


NICK WALKER: A reminder to our listeners. We know you’re always

looking for those credits to renew your project management

certifications. And if you need some Professional Development

Units, we can supply them. In fact, you’ve already earned some

PDUs just for listening to this podcast. To claim them, go to

Velociteach.com and choose Manage This Podcast from the top of

the page. Click the button that says Claim PDUs and click

through the steps.

That’s it for us here on Manage This. We hope you’ll tune back

in on April 2nd for our next podcast. In the meantime, we’d love

to have you visit us at Velociteach.com/managethis to subscribe

to this podcast, to see a transcript of the show, or to contact

us. And tweet us at @manage_this if you have any questions about

our podcasts or about project management certifications.

Well, that’s all for this episode. Thanks for joining us. Until

next time, keep calm and Manage This.

35

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