Foundations of Productivity: Projects, Processes, & People

Livvy: Welcome back, everyone, to Make Others Successful. If you've been listening for a while now, we are in episode 41, which is crazy. And today, we're gonna talk about a topic that actually stemmed from Emma's YouTube video, managing projects. But we got a lot of questions about what about managing processes. And before we get too far, I don't know if we've already stated, but Emma is no longer here at Bulb Digital.

Mitch: She has recorded her last podcast with us, decided to pursue another opportunity. And, yeah, we're actually I'm gonna record a little memo to go in the last the the the podcast you probably listened to. So maybe this isn't news, but, we are carrying this on. We are, hoping to help everyone who is, interested in this topic. And, we'll miss her, but, hopefully, she's listening.

And I think she's listening. She can fact check us and make sure to to include her comments, and we'll come back to

Livvy: them Yeah. Future.

Mike: She did ask to maybe guest star Yeah. On a future episode. She said

Livvy: she would.

Mitch: Maybe we'll see her back.

Livvy: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I think we should start off with we've defined kind of what people are looking for when they talk about process and project management, but I think we need to define them separately. So when you think of process management, does someone wanna talk about the definition of that and maybe an example that we've seen or example that we use that is process management and not project management?

Mitch: Can we pause for one second and do intros? I realized someone might be listening for the first time, and, they, yeah, they might be interested to know a little bit about who we are before we go too much further. Matt, you wanna start?

Matt: Yeah. So, so are we doing, like, a full intro or,

Mike: like, a What what intro level?

Mitch: Matt, you. You you tell the people what what you want them to know about you.

Matt: K.

Mitch: What do you what do you do? Do you like long walks on the beach and hot hot tub? Do you like pina coladas?

Matt: We just say

Mitch: And getting caught in the rain?

Matt: A mic. Yeah. So, I'm Matt Russell. I, lead the communication collaboration, team here at Bald Digital.

Mitch: What about the pina coladas?

Matt: I've never had a pina coladas in

Livvy: my life. Really? Never. We will change

Mitch: that. That's Matt Dressel for y'all. Mike.

Mike: I'm Mike Bodell. I lead the business apps and automation, side of the house here at Bold Digital, and I'm a hobby beekeeper, but that's a topic for another podcast.

Livvy: Mhmm. Love that. I'm Libby Feldman. I'm the marketing coordinator here at Bold, and I can't think of any fun facts about myself right

Mitch: now.

Livvy: Maybe you should come up with one.

Mitch: I don't know. People might not recognize you because you cut your hair.

Livvy: Oh, yeah. Since the last podcast, but I was wearing this sweater in the last podcast. Yeah. So it's me.

Mitch: So that's everybody else. I'm Mitch. Been around, and, yeah, I help with a lot of our marketing and operations and and projects around here. And I, at one point in my life, was a black belt in karate. That's my fun fact.

Matt: And Mike used to be able to dunk.

Mike: Yep. When I was in high school, I could just go on

Matt: the basketball.

Mitch: Rails. I regret every day. Nobody believes it. Let me get us back on track.

Livvy: So thank you for that. So going back to the managing processes versus managing projects, that sounds really technical, but it's actually vital when you think about it from a team perspective. And when I say team, I don't mean Microsoft Teams. I mean, like, team as a whole. Mhmm.

So with that, why do you think I'm gonna ask Mitch first, actually.

Mitch: Okay.

Livvy: People confuse process management and project management, or they're very intertwined a lot of the time.

Mitch: At the core, I think it's because they boil down into tasks. Like, it it it it relates to someone doing something and taking an action on something and managing all those tasks in a way that you can accomplish something feels those two things, project management, process management, feel similar in that aspect. And so when you look at, doing this process or this project, it's easy to look for a tool that manages tasks where you can group them and assign them and get them on someone's plate and make sure they get done. So that, at its core, I think they're the same. Yeah.

I think that I think that answers your question.

Livvy: Yeah. Do you all find, especially when working with customers, that people, use those terms interchangeably or vice versa, and then you realize halfway through, you're like, oh, wait. They actually don't know what process management is or they're confusing.

Matt: PSO most people who are using or doing stuff that we talk with, they just talk about, I wanna manage my tasks, or they come with a tool like, I'm frustrated with Planner. I wanted to understand how to do this with a specific tool. A lot of times, they haven't stepped back and said, hey. Like, what am I actually trying to do? What type of work am I try working with?

How do I want to manage that work? Because they're just trying to get the work done. They're just trying to make something happen with, the what they've got going on. They don't the term isn't, and and the actual words doesn't doesn't necessarily mean anything to them. They don't really care so much, so they use whatever term they're familiar with.

Right.

Mitch: I feel we were just talking about, you know, how do we frame this? How do we package it up to people? And we were trying to figure out why that project management video sort of took off and how do we feel about talking about process management. And I thought in my gut, this thing isn't gonna take off. Like, no one's looking for process management tips or whatever.

It's project management is sort of the thing. It's it's it's what people relate to this, this act and, very, particular source of frustration, when it comes to using tools to do that. So I'm excited to to dig in today.

Livvy: Okay. So we've mentioned process management, and we mentioned project management. I do think it's important to define the two separately and share how they're different from one another in real world workplace examples. So let's start with process management.

Mitch: Process management. So What is process management?

Mike: Process management is something that you're typically typically gonna repeat over and over and over again. Maybe you have a like, we do a quarterly retro. Right? Every quarter, we do a retro, and so that has a process to it. We repeat it all the time.

We don't set those things up as individual projects or even run it as a big long project. Right? It's just stuff that we do. It's part of, like, the everyday life. So think of process in terms of it's a thing that just continues to happen.

So it could be onboarding. Right? It's a continual thing that's going on all the time depending on your organization or review process. Like, all those types of things, are typically processes that you might need to

Mitch: You bring up onboarding within the the distinction between, like, the retro doesn't have necessarily a start and end date or it's just a recurring thing versus onboarding. It does have a start date, but you kind of know what has to happen. And so you It's

Mike: all road on repeat. Right? You you yep. And, one of the one of the ways that you might treat process management differently is you have a template for what those tasks look like every single time.

Mitch: Right.

Mike: Right? And they're always the same. And so you wanna be able to, like, roll into that quickly, efficiently, and make that easy to set that up for every time you're gonna run through that. Whereas a project, every project is somewhat unique, and you might have, like, a template to work from, but then there's gonna be 90% of the stuff that you do inside that project is gonna be wholly different or take longer, shorter, depending on the project.

Livvy: I have a question about when you refer to process management. It's a lot of internal, company examples that you brought up when I think of project? I think of internal and external.

Matt: Yes. So it's, it can be both. So with with process management, you know, we're gonna use examples that aren't always directly relatable to digital in the moment, just because it can oftentimes be a little bit more, relatable to people. But, you know, there's a process for changing your oil. Right?

Livvy: Right.

Matt: And if I'm changing the oil for a customer, I'm gonna be following the same process, the same checklist that I do every time, and I'm gonna get the organization is going to get efficiencies by doing it the same way every time and making sure that someone else can come in and do that same process because we're going to do 50 of these a day or we're going to do, you know, whatever that might be. Right. And the more that you do a day, the more important it is that it's really managed a certain different way. Right? So process, it's really what's key about it is that it's repetitive and that it it it it gains efficiencies, and you're gonna instead of being outcome based, like, you're gonna negotiate an outcome, there's an expected outcome.

Someone is is starting up front with, like, a predetermined start on this date and do these things and an outcome happens.

Livvy: Right.

Mike: And project management is gonna be, like, you might say, oh, it's external and it's bespoke to the customer, but I actually think it's more bespoke to the circumstance

Livvy: Right. Or to

Mike: the outcome that you're trying to produce, internal or external. Right? It's a it's a thing that's happening right now or at a certain time in history to create a certain outcome. And then when it's over, it's over.

Livvy: Yeah. Is there anything that we touched a lot on project management while talking about process management. Is there anything else that really differentiates a project from a process?

Matt: Yeah. I mean, projects are I like to talk about them as the timelines and the budgets are negotiated. Right? You don't start off and pick a a thing off the shelf and go, this is what I'm gonna do, and I have a known outcome. You say, here's the outcomes I want.

When when do you have time to start? When is it gonna be complete? We're we're talking about it. It has highly variable tasks.

Livvy: Mhmm.

Matt: Right? One project to another project, wildly different tasks. Right. Oftentimes, they're somewhat creative in nature. Oftentimes, they're very, very, nuanced or strategic.

Right? And efficiencies aren't as important. Right?

Mitch: Right.

Matt: You know, doing this one project as efficient as possible isn't as important as having the right outcomes that are agreed upon at the beginning of the project.

Mike: Right. Yeah. That's a good distinction.

Livvy: Now I know we just talked we're talking about process and project, but there is a third part to this, which is people work. Do you wanna explain a little bit about that?

Matt: Yeah. So, when you think about the work that you do and what people are coming to us asking, they talk about this this as Mitch Mitch mentioned tasks. They say, hey. I want I got these tasks. Right?

Well, these tasks and this work that you're doing, people think about it pretty naturally in the project mindset. They can easily go to the process mindset, but there's really a third type that, people are working with oftentimes, and it's work related to people. Right?

Livvy: Right.

Matt: What we might mean by that is it's not, you know, how to do annual reviews and how to do that's not what we mean, or, you know, how to properly reward somebody or or, you know, give them

Mitch: Oh, the HR stuff.

Matt: That's not what we mean. No. What we do mean is there is work that you do that is about the other work. So this would be things like so, again, it's it's similar to to process management and, like, it's continuing. It's it's, like, happening all the time, all the time, all the time.

It's not, like, temporary. It starts at the beginning and and has an end kind of thing. But it's more things like the project management team meets on every month and talks about what's going on. Right? Mhmm.

We, as an organization, we have channels and communications for us to talk about the various job functions that we all portray. So these things are often organized by job role or managerial structure or, you know, or other, people based structures, and the work is more communication and collaboration and, like, it's work that's about the work. It's meta work, if you will. So it's about, like, for example, if we have a small team that is doing, you know, a specific part on projects, for example. So that team needs to collaborate on their work and organize their work and understand who's a backup for who on a specific project.

Yes. It's sort of related to a project, but it's not the project. You wouldn't have that that conversation necessarily directly in front of all of the other people on the project. You have that conversation with the people who are doing that job role in that job function.

Mike: Your project management people, analogy, just put something in my head. And, like, the project managers might meet, let's say, on a monthly basis to work on a process.

Matt: Mhmm.

Mike: Yep. And the process they're working on is how do we set up projects

Matt: Better. More efficiently.

Mike: More efficiently. And so they work on that process. And then, by the way, now you have a process Yep. That you repeat

Matt: Which is for

Mike: every project that comes in the door. Right? Yep. And it

Matt: but that's and so that's, like,

Mike: there's a hierarchical way that they relate, and I think that's that's pretty interesting.

Livvy: Yep. Yeah.

Matt: And the reason that's all of this is really important to really understand

Livvy: Right.

Matt: Is because the digital tools that you might use vary wildly in their ability to facilitate the types of work that these are. These things are unique. They work a little bit different. They function a little bit different. The types of things you're trying to accomplish are a little bit different, and so you should use tools that are best suited to accomplish those tasks.

Mitch: Let's for the the the Microsoft fans in the house or someone who knows kinda about the tools, let's give quick examples. So project management, think planner or project process management, think maybe loop, maybe Power Automate, Power Apps,

Matt: stuff like that.

Mitch: Share yep. And then people management. People work is think, Teams or SharePoint and tools like that where people collaborate on these things. We're gonna talk about how some of those have blurry lines and and and overlap a little bit in a little bit, but, maybe that helps clarify the segments that we're we're talking about.

Livvy: Yeah. Okay. Now that we kind of got the base, the foundation set, I do wanna go into about how these kind of all work together, how they mend. And I kind of wanna start with, you know, with project management and process management, which one do you address first?

Matt: Depends on what you're doing. If you're an organization like us, project management is far more important than process management for most of our work that we do. Project management is the key to our work and being successful for our customers. Most of the work we do is bespoke to the customer, custom to the customer. We're not trying to do the same thing over and over again.

Right? However, we have processes within that, sales process, PO process, financial process, which are also really critical. Right? But they're they're they're very different. Some organizations will only have processes.

Livvy: Right.

Matt: I sell a product. That's all I sell. Right? I don't really have a lot of projects except for maybe we need we have a project to launch a new product or we have a project to

Mitch: Renovate the office.

Matt: Yeah. Renovate the office. Right? Some organizations will be more like ours. Most organizations will have lots of stuff in between.

Right? Yeah. Like, most organizations will need both of these things at some level. Mhmm. All organizations have to have the people one.

The people one is actually the most important one. Yeah. Because if you do well at managing the work that people do and and how people, like, work and how they collaborate, you're gonna find those other things are a lot easier to deal with.

Mitch: And you almost can't do process management until you have a process. You have something that you want to optimize.

Livvy: Yep. Right.

Mitch: Like because that's where you see the benefit of it. And then project management is kind of, like, think I need to figure something out, and so I want a project around

Matt: We know we want this outcome, but we don't know how we're gonna get there.

Mitch: Exactly. Right.

Livvy: Yeah. I wanna go back to what you said about how the people part of it is the most important, and I would say that's probably the part that's overlooked most of the time, at least former places where I've worked, what I've seen. What is the biggest problem you see when people don't really think about that? They're just focused on the process, so they're just focused on the projects. What are the consequences?

Matt: What we see is that people focus on the work output, and the work output most oftentimes is associated to a process or a project.

Livvy: Mhmm.

Matt: And so then they think the solution is to solve those problems. The reality is when you think about think about, you know, we have problems keeping track of what's going on in our projects. Right? Like, we have a visibility problem. Well, yes, you could build a bunch of tools and structure and say everybody needs to log their hours and specific stuff, and we have specific tasks.

And you can't do any work if it's not a task that's in a thing or it's on the like, all that stuff. And or, you can have build better connections between your people and offer ways that they can communicate more effectively so that they can get their work done better. Because, ultimately, at the end of the day, they're the ones that manage their day. They're the ones that manage what they do in a lot of ways, and, oftentimes, what they need is better visibility in what into what is the best thing for them to work on. Right?

If you're enabling someone to work to communicate well with a team or with with the organization and that communication is happening effectively, some of these other things may not be as important to you anymore, because the real reason that that's a problem is because people aren't being effective at communicating between themselves within the job role within, you know, what's going on. And so, you know, that's not to say that people don't need project management tools. We use project management tools all the time.

Livvy: Right.

Matt: This doesn't mean that people don't need process management tools. We have a whole process management tool for blogs and for Right. YouTube videos and for financial stuff and, like, we like, yes. You need them. Right?

But we also send zero email. We also do almost all our communication in public channels. We also right? Like, we do those things to start with, and so then we've been able to add the things that are really gonna provide value to our organization, not start with that as the most important thing, and try to figure out this communication thing later on.

Mitch: Yeah. If I had a nickel for every time someone comes to me with, I have a project problem or a process problem and, really, it's communication problem or a people problem. Yeah. I'd be I'd have a couple nickels. Yep.

And it reminds me of, like, when, Mike, you you had someone ask about building an app. I think we might have used this example in the the past where you ask, okay. How are you gonna roll this out when when you're ready to launch it? And it's like you send an email or the there was just no thought given to that. And

Mike: Violence. Yeah.

Mitch: And so everything sort of we had a whole podcast about this. Communication is the best place to start, and that closely relates to this people work. Yeah.

Mike: I think there's an there's an underlying assumption and trade off there that something like if you're hiring people that you can generally trust and you equip them properly to do the things that you just talked about, then you don't have to spend as much money on the control.

Matt: Yeah. Right? And the truth of the matter is most people may mistake not being able to trust someone with they just don't have the information. Like, you're not able to effectively communicate with them about what they need. They would have made a better choice, but they didn't see the five emails that were in some other spot that they should have known about.

Like, at and that's not their fault. Like, there's nothing they could do about that.

Livvy: They just don't have access.

Matt: They didn't have access.

Mitch: Yeah. Question. Sorry. Yeah. When you think about this and and think about equipping people, and I think there's some maybe industries where this has developed into less of a priority, and people look at the workplace as like a revolving door where they are just a cog in a wheel.

Think, like, McDonald's spent tons of money on figuring out their process and Yeah. What exactly should they do. Should they care more about people? Or that's a that's a bad question to ask. Should they care more about the people work than they are, or do they benefit from the process optimization?

Mike: This is

Matt: a great this is a great question. It's a it's the reason why not it's never one size fits all. McDonald's in particular is a problem because these people don't have the same type of access to technology. They don't sit at a computer all the time. I would approach a problem that they're having radically different than I would a lot of other organizations.

It's the same thing when you have organizations in a manufacturing setting, where you have people who are on the floor, working on the floor, and then you've got office office staff or engineering staff that's out, separately, it's a radically different environment. Right? You need to address those appropriately. Right? Just because they spend all this money on this process doesn't mean that they can't, shouldn't, whatever, or don't care about the rest of it.

The rest of it, there's not a good digital solution for. Right? Like, how do you how do you communicate with people who aren't at a computer watching their email or looking at their teams or looking at whatever all the time? And the answer is radically different than what you would answer that question when you're dealing with traditional, I'm at my computer all day long doing those other things.

Mitch: Is it harder to articulate the value of investing that in that as well?

Matt: I don't know that it's harder to because I think if you told McDonald's they could drop their turnover rate by 20%

Mitch: Yeah.

Matt: By doing a certain thing, they would spend a lot of money to do it. Right? Sure. Because they spend a lot of money in training, a lot of money in that stuff.

Mike: Like, the the McDonald's scenario is very much the process is producing a product. Just like our our process for setting up projects, the product is the project. Right. And that's the product, and they care about quality. Otherwise, people are like, hey.

I want my money back. Give me a new hamburger.

Matt: Yep.

Mike: And so if you could say, well, you won't have the quality issues anymore because your people will get the process right every time.

Matt: Could. I think in their in their model, it's just really it's a hard problem to solve.

Mitch: Yeah.

Matt: Right? It's very, very, very difficult problem to solve with technology. Right? I think they do solve it, and they have solved it with people, with training people, inquiring management, and other people that are communicating differently, but they're also in a small like, they're a small microcosm. Right?

I think your to your initial question, which is seeing the value, that's probably the biggest thing we see. We spent a lot of time on communication communication. That was one of our you know, we built a guidebook. We did these things because we believe that that is the foundation for all of this. Maybe we didn't do the right things.

Maybe people weren't it didn't resonate with people. I don't know. That never took off. Like, we didn't get hundreds of people asking us about that content. Project management, we do right now.

Process management, we do now. There's lots of people coming to us with that. That would imply that it's not as valuable or people don't see it as valuable. I think that for a lot of people, it is difficult to understand and quantify what that would be. It's easy to say, if I could manage my project, get to be able to do two more projects a month than I currently can do, you can calculate that in your mind and go, that means this much.

Right? So that's part of the problem.

Mitch: I wonder if some of it comes out as intangibles too, where, like, imagine having like, being in a McDonald's and then closing your eyes and opening them up them up in a Chick fil A and, like, picking up on the the senses that you you you sense differently in those places because, I like, they have different perspectives on how they they take care of their people and and how important those things are. But I'm Not sponsored,

Matt: by the way,

Mitch: on anybody. I am I am assuming a whole lot, but, I know that

Matt: But but you are right. It is it is a difference in in perspective and and focus. It's also a difference in, in trusting that your what you're going to do with this is going to build value across the organization and across the business. Yeah. And I think a lot of people struggle with that when you talk about technology and when you talk about people people who are traditionally not customer facing.

Right? It's a different kind of an atmosphere because both the ones you talked about, everybody's customer facing pretty much. Right? Everybody might interact with the customer directly, at any moment in time, whereas, you know, traditionally, you've got a army of people back here doing their thing. It's, you know, it's their manager to figure out.

It's their whatever. And and in our opinion, it's not. There's a a overall directive and overall, perspective that permeates through an organization, and it comes from saying things like we talk in open we primarily talk in open channels. We don't send email. We like, these things and the way that you communicate across the board, the more you can change your behavior, the more everyone else will change their behavior, the more the organization will grow.

Livvy: Yeah. I think a big and I'm just speaking from personal experience. I've worked places where we've had, you know, four to five project managers on a single account. And, honestly, the hardest thing about getting the people part down is, a, no one wants to tackle it because it's too they feel like they have no power in it.

Matt: Mhmm.

Livvy: And that's, I think, the part that a lot of people do struggle with. It's where do I start? Who do I even bring this to? Is this a manager, an HR issue?

Matt: Yeah.

Livvy: I think the overwhelming kind of weight of it is why it doesn't get done.

Matt: Yeah. But this is risk we're risking getting talking too much about the people thing.

Livvy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fair.

Matt: But I do think it's I do think it's the foundation. Right? Like, if you can do that really, really well

Livvy: Yeah.

Matt: It's gonna make the other stuff a lot easier. That doesn't mean that you can't work on the projects and work on the process instead, and that's totally valuable as well.

Livvy: Right. Okay. So I do wanna get into, for time's sake, starting to dip your toes into managing each, whether that's project, process, people. Where would you recommend if someone was just listening to this, has never really thought about any of this? Where do you think people should start?

What is the first step?

Matt: I mean, the first step is to, I'd recognize which one you're dealing with. Right? Identify a problem. Identifying which one of these things the work you're really having the problem with. Mhmm.

Right? So if I'm a a manager of a team and I'm having a problem keeping all of my people on projects and and managing them, that's largely a people problem. And so you're gonna want to create a team, do stand ups in the team where people can post stuff, have a board where people can say, hey. I'm having an issue on this project. It's stopping me from doing this, and and what can I do?

Which is separate than perhaps what you might be doing in a project saying, you know, for a project, I'm working on this thing, whatever that might be. It's a little bit more meta. It's not about you're not trying to get into all the details of the tasks they're doing. You're really just trying to help organize this team better, make sure that we're aligned, make sure that we're we're we're on the right doing the right things in the moment. Right?

Mike: So I think what you just did was you reiterated that people part is foundational.

Livvy: Mhmm.

Mike: Yep. Right? And you may have said it without saying it, but people might be the most important thing. And there's an alignment there with the diagnosis that we've done for a lot of customers that have come to us, which is, oh, well, you have a communication problem. You ought to sort out first.

And so that's where we often tell people to start. But what I don't know. What is it? 75, 80 percent of the time? Yeah.

When somebody comes to us with that thing, it's like that's the thing.

Matt: There and it's not like it's not necessarily that that's the only thing because, like, you ask, like, where do they start? Once they identify if they identify a project side, right, which you can have both, like, oftentimes you do, like, great. Start thinking about how you manage projects more effectively. Right?

Livvy: Right.

Matt: Is Planner the way to go? Is Planner premium the way to go? Is the problem with project management or with your projects that you're not doing forecasting right? You're not forecasting how much work you have in the future, and now you're leaving people struggling to figure out how to get that work done. Is your problem, like, an actual problem with the product that you're selling as part of these projects?

Right? Mhmm. So, you know, we've had we have this conversation all the time. Are we charging the right for what we're able to do? Are we are we do we have the right people, to be able to accomplish the task?

Or do we have the right right makeup on these projects? Are people coming to meetings because they have no, like, because because we said that they're gonna be on the project, but they really aren't providing a lot of value? Like, there is all sorts of things you can do there, but starting to talk about the project problem and saying, oh, it's it's what what why do I need that? What do I need about that? Is really important.

A lot of people start from the perspective of the assumption that every project needs project management, and project management always looks like x, y, or z. I don't know that I would start that way. Right? If you're a huge firm that has lots of things, maybe that's true. Maybe you need portfolio management.

Maybe you need, you know, resource loading. Maybe you need all of the fancy tools that come with, you know, project MS project or or one of these enterprise portfolio management systems. In other cases, it's just, you know, you need to be working more with your delivery leads, project managers, whatever you want wanna call them, and helping them better manage these projects and better forecasting what's going on and and managing, what's going on with them. And then on the process side

Livvy: Yeah. That's gonna be my next question.

Matt: On the process side, like, let's say that you've decided it's a process thing. It's really about saying, okay. Is this process how much value am I gonna get from automating this process? Right?

Livvy: Right.

Matt: Starting to decide the level that you want. Because what a lot of people do is they get frustrated. They're like, well, I actually, I talked to somebody not that long ago, and they're using, they're using Planner to manage a bunch of incoming quests requests. It's they're using it kind of like a a ticketing system. Right?

And it's working for them, and it's completely free, and it is not ideal. They don't have all the reporting they want. They don't have all the whatever they need, but it's working.

Livvy: It works for them.

Matt: It works for them, and it would probably be a pretty disruptive and pretty expensive to go create something new. Because when you think about creating something new in that world, it's very easy for people to go, I want all the bells and whistles. I need if I'm making something custom, I better I want all of these things to work exactly on

Livvy: the wall. Go zero to a hundred. Yeah.

Matt: They go to zero to a hundred where where they could just create a SharePoint list probably, and they could probably manage what they're doing differently.

Mitch: Feel like you're giving Microsoft an out from making Planner better, and that is I am not.

Livvy: We can't do that.

Mitch: Planner better.

Matt: I need to planner will never be a process management tool.

Mike: Mitch Mitch is a planner fanboy.

Livvy: Yeah. You want it to be better.

Matt: Yeah. So depending on which one you're doing, I think there's a different starting point. But the first thing, figure out which what you're really what's where your problem really lies.

Livvy: Yeah. That's interesting about the process. I did not have that insight of, like, people going from if I can customize something. I just wanna know. People go people make the assumption that, you're just oh, yeah.

Matt: People go people make the assumption that, you know, if I can, why wouldn't you? And it's like, I don't know. Is it really worth it?

Livvy: Right.

Matt: Because if you create some special color for these meanings, you you have to train somebody on what those are because that came from your mind, not necessarily everyone else. Right. If you have a robust process that's coming out of a different system and you're just duplicating it digitally, that's a whole different conversation. Right?

Livvy: Right.

Matt: But if you're like, I need to capture this process, the the more crazy you go, the more work you're creating for yourself. Is it worth it? Yeah. How important is is this really?

Livvy: Yeah. And I think, you know, automation is what I think of when I think of process management, but there are plenty of things that we do at Bold Digital that aren't necessarily automated. They've just become this natural process that we have on our Internet. Or

Matt: Or in our loop pages. Like, we've got lots of loop pages with tasks, and this is how we run our agenda for this meeting. This is how we approach this problem. Like, there's lots of those things for us. And they're not automated, and they're not super fancy, and they're not they're super manual, but the process is valuable.

It is it provides tons of value.

Mitch: On the topic of not super fancy, is Excel a process management tool? No. Uh-oh. No?

Livvy: Sure. We're

Matt: not sure. Say it. Yes. Excel is not

Mike: I don't think so. I think tool. There's a lot of people and companies out there that are trying to solve all of these problems with Excel at the same time in one Excel workbook. Yuck.

Livvy: I hate

Mitch: it. Throwback to our Excel is a trap one, but I thought it was when we're looking at the suite of tools that you could maybe use, I didn't know if Excel fell anywhere on on any of those.

Matt: I mean, Excel is a great way to for to ancillary to, like, report or get out data so you can analyze some stuff, but it's not the primary. It's not gonna be the primary tool for

Mike: that stuff. For years, there was nothing else, and so people would build macros and VBA and all these, like, put buttons in there. You can still do that. Yeah. But it's a bad idea, man.

There are way better tools today.

Mitch: Yeah. On the topic of Excel and people trying to make it be all things to them, there is a reality that all three of we we made a Venn diagram for a presentation we did with a client where all three of these circles of processes, project, and people, they overlap. Yeah.

Mike: Was was Excel in that in

Mitch: the middle? Yeah. No. Excel was in the middle. Yes.

And I made it look intentionally messy because that is how it feels sometime. Can we talk about what we think about that?

Matt: That is the core reason that the the reason behind everyone's frustration. K. Because people don't recognize them as being different and they all kinda happen all at the same time. Right? You it's very easy to just assume that they're all the same, and they're really not.

It is the core problem. Right? We talked about it before that the project managers can be working on a process. Well, that process is to create projects. And so now you've got the same group of people doing three things that are all really and that one's obviously people work on

Mitch: that process.

Matt: I mean, it's it's like a it's like a, you know, an infinite circle. Right? The reality is these are all interconnected, but the style of work is dramatically different. If you think about what a project is, a project has a start and end date. None of the other ones really do.

Right? Like

Livvy: They're ongoing.

Matt: The they're just kind of, I get a request in, and I solve it. Or in the team's perspective, it's like or in the people perspective, it's really all about people which are gonna be around forever. Right? Organizations are made up of people.

Mitch: Show up tomorrow.

Matt: They're gonna show up tomorrow, and they're gonna have a role, and they're gonna do a thing. So these things are super interconnected, but you will be frustrated if you try to solve your process management problem in Planar. You will be frustrated if you try to, solve your project management process using something like listserv. You'll feel like you're reinventing the wheel. Right?

Mitch: And if you treat your people like a project,

Mike: it's a recipe for disaster.

Matt: Yeah. It's just not good. So it's really important to understand the distinction, but we recognize, and it's the reason why people have had this question is that there's a bunch of overlap, and there's a bunch of synergies and, and and not synergies like, you know, diverging, perspectives on this. So, it is it is definitely a challenge in that regard.

Mitch: Our task today was to just illustrate this, share our thoughts on it. Obviously, we're not saying this is the magic pill. Here's how to solve all your problems. But, hopefully, this at least makes you say, you're right. That is why I feel frustrated.

That's what I'm dealing with. I need to, at a minimum, decide which one of these things I am working on and maybe choose a particular tool or method to solve that Yep. As as a first step. And I'll I'll say we this is near and dear to our heart because we've been hearing it from our audience from a lot for a while that they want help with this stuff. We are busy trying to package something up that will help with all of these things and give that further.

K. Here's here's the the concept. Here's how to think about it. Here's an example of of that, and take that take it one step further. So I would say watch out for that.

We are are actively working on it.

Livvy: Yeah. Sign up for our newsletter.

Mitch: Yeah. Newsletter is probably a good place. And yeah. Bulb.digital/Newsletter?

Livvy: Newsletter. Yes.

Mitch: Yes. So best of luck to you all whether you're managing projects, processes, or people. Or all three?

Livvy: Yes. It's messy.

Mitch: Yes. Good luck. Hopefully, this helps. And thanks everyone for for chatting today. It's been been fun.

Matt: Yeah. Thank you.

Mitch: See you.

Matt: Cut for realsies.