Focus on what truly matters while maintaining balance and reducing stress to start your year leading impactful teams. This episode is packed with practical advice for building resilient teams, preventing burnout, and aligning efforts with meaningful goals. James Louttit shares his journey from managing intense stress to adopting approaches that reduce strain, foster balance, and maximize value. Hear about strategies for setting boundaries, tackling “HiPPo” influences, and maintaining focus on high-value, low-effort tasks.
Chapters
00:00 … Intro
02:25 … James’ Story
06:12 … The Goal of Leading Impactful Teams
09:25 … Ask for Help
11:18 … The “Lenses” that Impact Project Stress
12:11 … Prioritization
14:02 … Value and Effort
16:09 … The HIPPo
22:01 … Kevin and Kyle
22:44 … Outcomes vs. Outputs, and Butternuts
29:02 … Keep an Eye on Team Stress
31:25 … The “Busy Badge”
32:32 … When You “Pick a Prickly Pear”
35:18 … Motivation, Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose
38:44 … A Distraction Audit
42:58 … Connect with James
44:09 … Closing
Intro
JAMES LOUTTIT: …understanding and working with the team and being really clear what the goals are and why we’re working on things and where we’re trying to get to and encouraging and allowing people to challenge and come up with new ideas and be creative, that allows you to have much better projects that have better outcomes.
WENDY GROUNDS: Happy New Year! And we have been running for nine years.
BILL YATES: Oh.
WENDY GROUNDS: So, we’re excited that we’re still going, and that you, our listeners, are still part of the show. So welcome to a brand-new episode of Manage This. I’m Wendy Grounds, and here in the studio with me is Bill Yates.
We have been thinking about New Year’s resolutions. I’m not very good at New Year’s resolutions. I tend not to bother. I just don’t go there. But I don’t know if any of you are thinking about how to be less stressed. In 2025, I don’t want to be stressed, and I think that’s a good resolution to look at.
BILL YATES: That’s a great goal.
WENDY GROUNDS: Our guest, James Louttit, is a passionate advocate for impactful project management. And he talks about how to be less stressed as project managers because it really deeply impacted his life when he was working under very high stressful conditions. He realized that project management is not just about effort, but also about creating real impact. He has an impressive track record that includes roles like PM Competency Lead at the Bank of Ireland and Chief Information Officer at CPL. He’s led numerous successful projects. And he emphasizes practical human-centric approaches that change the way we think about a project and the people we work with.
In 2023, James launched Impactful Project Management, which has been helping hundreds of people become more effective at managing their projects. He also won the 2023 Project Management Professional of the Year Award from the PMI Institute in Ireland, and his new book is called “Leading Impactful Teams.”
BILL YATES: This is a great book. I can’t wait to get into it with James. I think we’re going to talk about a number of things, including value and effort and hippos.
WENDY GROUNDS: And hippos and butternuts.
BILL YATES: Butternuts and bananas.
WENDY GROUNDS: Yes.
BILL YATES: He does.
WENDY GROUNDS: So, let’s kick off the year with some insights that can transform, not just our projects, but our lives. Hi, James. Welcome to Manage This.
JAMES LOUTTIT: So happy to be here, Wendy. Thanks ever so much for having me.
James’ Story
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah, we’re looking forward to this conversation. I think it’s a great way to head off our New Year, talking about how to be less stressed. And you have so much experience in this. You have quite a story. You shared in your book “Leading Impactful Teams” how you had a very stressful work environment, and it led to a significant health issue for you. What were some of the warning signs that you found that you were just heading towards way too much stress?
JAMES LOUTTIT: Yeah, it’s one of those things. And now I speak about it a lot, and I find it resonates with a lot of different people who are feeling this kind of overwhelm, this feeling there’s just too many things to do and not enough time to do them in. We’ve all got the same amount of time. And for those of us, you know, intelligent, creative, hardworking people, there’s an infinite amount of work. You can always, especially as a project manager, when you’re thinking about the outcomes of your project, there’s always something you can do to drive it forward and make it move better and do something better. Coach someone or teach something or have that conversation with a stakeholder. So, if you don’t put boundaries on it, it really can be a big challenge. I don’t know how much of the story you want, Wendy.
WENDY GROUNDS: Go ahead.
JAMES LOUTTIT: But I’ll tell you a little bit.
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: I’ll give you some of that. So, I was running a big project for probably a program, you’d call it, for a bank back in 2016. It was one of those ones with, like, 1500 requirements, you know, massive complex organization. And you take a legislation, and you apply it to them. There’s no kind of rhyme or reason to what the legislation’s asking. And trying to manage all that alongside, at the same time, I was kind of head of the competency for this thing. I was the client data protection lead for that thing. And then we had three young kids at home, as well.
BILL YATES: Under the age of five. You’ve got to add that, too. I remember reading that and going, poof.
JAMES LOUTTIT: That’s it, yeah.
BILL YATES: My head just blew up.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Exactly.
BILL YATES: Three kids under the age of five.
JAMES LOUTTIT: So, you’re trying to get sleep, you know, trying to manage it, and trying to give my wife a break, all of that kind of stuff. And then over the course of a week, I just got this worse and worse headache. And I describe it in a bit more detail in the book. But by the end of the week, I walked up to my boss at one of these kind of big team management meetings. In front of all the partners in the consulting firm that I work for, I said, “Kyle, I need to spend the next 20 minutes talking about my mental health. And if you don’t let me, I’m going to resign immediately. And I’m going to tell everybody that it’s because you wouldn’t let me talk about my mental health.”
BILL YATES: That is brave, very brave.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Both barrels. And the poor guy, like he didn’t really know me that well, like he was my boss’s boss. He was just running the meeting. And to his eternal credit, he said, “James, go for it, like, do what you need to do. I trust you.” And so, then I stood up in front of a room full of partners in the consulting firm I work for. And that all came out. I kind of unloaded all of this stress and everything that was coming out of me.
It turns out what was interesting there was that the corporate machine kicked in, and people came and helped me, and the pressure came off very quickly. But it turned out that the stress and the pressure that I was feeling, although it was very much related to the work that I was dealing with and the size and scale of the problems I was trying to face, I also by that stage was extremely sick with meningitis, and I didn’t realize it.
The next morning I ended up having what they call a “psychotic episode,” where I ran around the local village shouting weird things. And I was rushed off to hospital. It turned out that the two things were related, that the serious medical condition had been brought on by this kind of overwhelming stress. And I probably should have been in hospital a week before. And I think the warning signs you asked, Wendy, were kind of just that taking too much on, right, trying to solve everything, and not necessarily trusting and building the capability of my team to be able to do that well enough.
The Goal of Leading Impactful Teams
BILL YATES: That’s powerful. And that experience led you to write this book.
JAMES LOUTTIT: That’s it.
BILL YATES: Tell us more about that, and what’s the goal? What is your goal with this book?
JAMES LOUTTIT: So, it was really interesting. After that experience, I went and renegotiate my role. And I got a brilliant job; right? I became the head of project management competency for the bank. I think everyone was a bit embarrassed about the fact that it had happened.
And there was a big discussion about how can we make sure that this kind of thing doesn’t happen again? So, then I got this gig where I could go and learn everything and teach everything. So, I went and did my PMP, I did my scaled agile framework, scrum master. But I also learned loads of stuff about design thinking and facilitation and psychology and how to motivate people and all the really interesting stuff that those of us in project management get into. And I started having these very experienced people coming to me and asking for advice and to talk through the problems and the challenges that they were dealing with.
And so, it was amazing. I got to do these reps over and over again of all the most interesting problems on projects. And a few years later then I was lucky enough to be invited to apply to be Chief Information Officer of a big company here in Ireland. I didn’t know how to be Chief Information Officer, so I read three books on how to do that before the interview. And nailed it. And I got the job; right?
So, all of a sudden, I’ve gone from coaching and guiding people to, hang on a second, I’m on the hook now, with this overwhelmed team of people who need to understand stuff and get better at it. But they’re great people, but they just don’t know necessarily how to manage the work. I was like, hang on a second, I’ve been coaching this stuff for the last two or three years. I can do this now. So, we started just building in these tiny little changes. I didn’t do a big agile transformation or make a big fuss about everything. Just started building in what I thought would be useful little changes along the way. And over time that became kind of like an agile transformation. And we started doing a mix of scrum and kanban and things like that.
But actually, as the organization saw it, it looked like just a really effective IT team, working really well to prioritize things. And my management style became what I now call “coach and delegate.” Coach, coach, coach, coach, delegate. Aha. Coach, coach, delegate, coach, coach, coach. And then you can delegate more. And the more you coach, the better your team get. Over time I went from being that massively overwhelmed, like, very busy CIO, having a team of people who were doing all the work for me. And I went down to a four-day week. That was cool; right?
So, then I’m sitting there on a Monday, and the kids are in school on a Monday morning, and I wasn’t going to open my emails, that was for sure. So that’s when I started coming up with this idea, hang on a second, I could get back into what I really enjoyed doing in my previous role, which is helping to explain this stuff to people. And I went and found this amazing artist, Tais (Krymova). Started drawing these cartoons and building these ideas and started writing these stories. Then over time I thought, hang on a second, there’s a big gap in the market for this, I think, practical delivery project management leadership approaches. And I finished up with CPL in 2022, summer of 2022, got my head down, wrote a book, and then started this business then in the beginning of 2023.
And now I do something similar to what you guys do; right? I help those teams to become more effective. And it’s very practical, very simple-to-use ideas and techniques that I think is what’s so effective.
Ask for Help
BILL YATES: Well, hats off to you. Just even at this point in the story, I think a teachable moment for me is I was reading your story and seeing how this all started. Okay, I’m physically ill, and also, I’m emotionally just shot. You know, I’m stressed out at work. It took so much courage for you to express that. You know, it kind of hit a boiling point for you. You probably look back on, man, I wish I had done this earlier; you know? But it took tremendous courage. So, I think for all of us it’s a great takeaway for me to go, okay, there are times I need to raise my hand. I need to lift that flag and say, whoa, time out. I need help. We need help. So, well done with that.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Yeah. And I think that’s something I’ve learned probably since then is that most impressive people ask for help when they need it.
BILL YATES: Ha ha ha ha, yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: It’s actually more impressive to ask for help than it is to just struggle along and not do very well.
BILL YATES: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Right? Because you can articulate it much more clearly. And the organization is there to help. Like, they’ve got the same goals as you, hopefully.
BILL YATES: That’s true.
JAMES LOUTTIT: And therefore, you should be able to get the help that you need and make a difference. And I’ve seen it over and over again. And certainly, on my teams now that I work with and the ones when I was running them, I would encourage that idea, like ask for help, show me what the problem is. I probably can help, or I can get you the help you need, and we’ll all have a better outcome.
BILL YATES: Yeah, that’s good.
JAMES LOUTTIT: So, it’s a bit of a mindset shift.
BILL YATES: It’s funny, James. To me, it’s a bit like delegation. It’s like there are two reasons that I don’t ask for help, and I don’t delegate soon enough. I want to control things, or I don’t want to show weakness or a lack of knowledge. So, you know, sometimes I hesitate to ask for help because it may show weakness, or I hesitate to delegate something because I want to control that. And both, you know, kind of point back to it’s a weakness in me that I need to face.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Yeah. And that’s it, that confidence to ask for help or to delegate and still own the outcomes is really something that I think a lot of people could take away.
The “Lenses” that Impact Project Stress
WENDY GROUNDS: Now, in Chapter 2, you talk about the lenses through which project managers view their project. These are things that can really become stresses for project managers. I’ll just list them: scope, prioritization, time, cost, quality, risks, team, and stakeholders. Can you briefly give us a summary of how all of those things can impact the stress of project management? The main one is prioritization.
JAMES LOUTTIT: So, I came up with this construct because I wanted to simplify project management. I wanted to write this book with stories and cartoons that anybody could pick up and engage with, whatever their background, right, whether they’re deep expert in project management or whether they’re just, like, trying to manage a bit of work for themselves. And so, I’ve learned a lot about project management over the years, and I knew there were these kinds of consistent themes that keep coming up. I literally went through all the other books and everything else, and I kind of wrote these headings down.
Prioritization
And most of those lenses – so scope, time, cost, quality, team, stakeholder, risk – would be pretty standard; right? They’re not things that people are surprised to hear when you talk about project management, but the one that is, is that big one, prioritization. And I think the emphasis there over and over again is how do you choose what you don’t do? One of the agile principles is maximize the work that you don’t do.
Like just find the work that’s not going to be valuable and get rid of it. And I think for me, that’s fundamentally one of the biggest skills and certainly one of the best ways to deal with stress is to get that out there in a good discussion and choose what you’re working on and what you’re not working on for you and your team. And I think that’s a great way of thinking about stress reduction.
BILL YATES: I agree. It’s in life and certainly in projects. There’s always more to be done. And I feel like, as leaders, one of the most influential impacts we can have on our team is helping them rank and prioritize their work. If we can communicate to our team members, hey, I know there are like 10 tasks that are assigned to you right now that need to be done in the next two weeks, but let’s look at those realistically. What are the top three? Which ones really need to get done? What’s on the critical path, or what’s going to impact the next milestone or the next delivery that we’re doing? Let’s focus on those.
And you know what, if we get all 10 done, wow, that’s amazing. But let’s get these three done, and then we’ll reassess. That to me, as a team member, when I’ve had a leader do that for me, it just helps me. You know, you can get overwhelmed, and your brain just starts to spin out of control. You’re thinking about item number nine, item number seven, and wondering, how am I going to get this done? Or how do I even know how to solve that problem yet? I really need to be focused on one; or one, two, and three. And I need somebody to help me kind of focus on the stuff that’s most important today, and then we’ll reassess.
Value and Effort
JAMES LOUTTIT: That’s it. And for me, like when you’re doing prioritization, there’s a few ways to do it; right? You can go to the CEO and just ask them to prioritize everything. But they’re pretty busy, and that’s quite hard; right? Or the next level down or wherever it is. But for me actually, and what I teach through the training course and through the book, is this idea that actually you need a couple of ways of thinking about prioritization. You need a couple of numbers, really; right? Which is value and effort.
BILL YATES: Yup, right.
JAMES LOUTTIT: So how do you understand the value of the thing you’re working on, and how do you understand the effort of the thing you’re working on? And if you don’t have both of those, if you’re just working off value – or most organizations don’t even put a number on value, which is kind of scary.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Right? They’re just working off gut feel, if somebody says that’s important, and you end up with this bucket of must. You guys must know MoSCoW prioritization.
BILL YATES: Yup. Right.
JAMES LOUTTIT: So, must, should, could.
BILL YATES: So, then everything’s the most important, yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Yeah. And everything just is must; right? And all of a sudden you just – you haven’t prioritized anything.
BILL YATES: Correct.
JAMES LOUTTIT: You’ve just got a bucket of must.
BILL YATES: Right.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Right? And for me, what I teach is very, very simple. If you took one thing from the book or one thing from the training course is that you need to prioritize with a list; right? Number one, number two, number three, number four, number five, no equals. No equals. The second you have equals, everything breaks; right?
BILL YATES: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Because all of a sudden somebody can say, well, that’s just as important as that. So therefore, that’s advocating responsibility for making a decision.
BILL YATES: Right.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Then how do you estimate the value? Well, I go through a couple of examples in the book, but you tie it back to the business value. And actually, I would advocate that you put a number on it. And then how do you estimate the effort? Well, something like Planning Poker or having a good conversation with your team. And once you have both of those things, you can use them to really prioritize your list. And you can do that. The great thing about this as a technique is it works at C-level; right? It works at board level in an organization. That’s how they should be deciding on projects.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: But it also works all the way down through every single level of the organization down to one person deciding what they do this week. And that core, and I describe it as “pawpaws and prickly pears” in the book, is so powerful. And it allows that CEO to speak to that junior member of the team.
The HIPPo
BILL YATES: That’s great. There’s a topic that I think is kind of related. And I want to go ahead and jump into it now. I just like your way of using the HiPPo phrase. And when we’re talking about prioritizing and defining our requirements, I think this is something that project managers need to hear. With HiPPo, you talk about the highest paid person in the room. So, let’s say we’re trying to define and rank our requirements. Many times, as project leaders, we walk into the meeting, and we’re not thinking about the impact that that HiPPo can have. So, describe the HiPPo, the negative influence that they could have, and then describe some approaches to overcome the HiPPo.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Yeah, yeah. So, the HiPPo is such an important thing. And having been at C-level in a big organization…
BILL YATES: You’ve been a HiPPo.
JAMES LOUTTIT: …speaking to other people, I’ve been a HiPPo; right?
BILL YATES: Yes.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Sorry. I’ve been a HiPP. It’s actually – the HiPP is the person.
WENDY GROUNDS: It’s the HiPP, yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Your opinion is the HiPPo.
BILL YATES: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: So, you’re not actually calling anyone a HiPPo; right?
BILL YATES: Yes.
JAMES LOUTTIT: So, the idea is, people come to me, they say, James, how do I get my team to come up with ideas? You know, I think I’ve got good people, but they just never come to me with ideas. The answer is shut up. Let them speak, and give them space to do that. But people find that very, very hard because the reason they’re senior, the reason they’re highly paid is because they’ve been there and done it. They’ve got some experience. They do know what they’re talking about. So, the skill for those people is to find a way of dealing with that. What happens in the brains of a lot of people when they’re sitting in a room, if you ask the team, “Guys, what could go wrong on the project?” Right? Let’s do risk identification.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: What could go wrong on the project? And they’re going to sit there and go, well, [mumbling]. They’ll be thinking of all the ideas. But somebody, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be the highest paid person, but somebody influential, very often somebody experienced or more senior, will come in with their idea, and all of a sudden, all the other ideas will get shut down. They won’t – they’ll just stay inside people’s brains, and they’ll never be aired because all of a sudden, we just start talking about that one thing. And it might be a good thing. Might not be a good thing, but it might be. And all of a sudden just talked about that one thing. And I think that’s really dangerous. It’s really clear, so many meetings go off down that road, and you lose this opportunity to listen really well to people.
So, what I came up with, because I was doing a lot of design thinking-type training and learning about that world and facilitation techniques, and I’m trying to deal with this problem. So how do you actually get ideas from people? In the book, I describe what I call the “SAVE” technique, silent writing, affinity clustering, voting, and then execute. And the reason that’s so powerful is because it takes the HiPPo out of the equation. So, all you do is you ask that question.
So, let’s say you’re in a room with your team; right? You’ve got five or seven people in the room. And you say, “Guys, what might go wrong on this project?” And then you shut up; right? You write that up on the board, you give everyone a stack of Post-it notes and a pen, and you say “Silent writing.” And you literally don’t allow them to talk. No copying. It’s exam conditions.
And you go around, and I actually do this on the training because I actually vigilate. And I make a joke about, you know, Austin Powers with a bag of shh, shh, shh, shh. Right?
BILL YATES: That’s good.
JAMES LOUTTIT: And there’s a thing – and Dr. Evil I think is [crosstalk]; right?
BILL YATES: Yes.
JAMES LOUTTIT: And I go around, and what happens is this weird thing; right? For the first time in a year, often, people start thinking, hang on a second, what might actually go wrong on this project? Because all of a sudden, I’ve now got a deliverable. I’ve got to write some Post-it notes. Yeah. And they look off in the sky, and they look off out the window, and they start thinking about all the things that actually they think might go wrong. And once they’re written down, they’re on a Post-it note, they’re safe.
BILL YATES: Exactly.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Can’t go anywhere.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Right? They’re physically in the room. And then all you have to do is gather them up using a technique like affinity clustering, get them onto the board, decide which ones are right, which ones are wrong, you know, prioritize them. And you can use the vote, just voting for prioritization if you don’t want to do value and effort for it. Then you’ve done this most amazing thing; right? You’ve got everyone’s ideas, you’ve clustered them, you’ve understood the outliers, you’ve prioritized them. Then you can go and take that amazing prioritized list – I love prioritized lists – and execute it. And all of a sudden you know what the biggest risk is as according to the team that are on the project. And you could deal with that one.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: And the second and the third. And they get different priorities. And you’ve turned the HiPPo.
BILL YATES: Yeah, that’s so good. And you give such practical advice on this topic, too. You say, you know, as a leader, if you can recognize the HiPP and have a – let’s say her name is Lisa, and maybe it’s just because of the influence that she has.
And, you know, she’s been with the company for 22 years. She’s been through similar projects. Everybody has tons of respect for Lisa. But you don’t want to have what she says shut everybody down. So, you just pull her aside and have a conversation with her before the meeting and let her know because then she’s going to get it; you know? And she’ll, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I want to hear from George. I want to hear from Teresa. Absolutely. She’ll be on board with that. So that’s just another very practical step that you give so that she understands, you know, the influence that she has on the group.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Yeah, I found that there’s this kind of reputation that a lot of senior people have for not being particularly, you know, emotionally intelligent or empathetic. I don’t find that at all.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: I actually find most people, if you give them time and space, particularly at senior levels, they are extremely empathetic. That’s how they got there; right? They do understand people and how to interact with them. But very often they just don’t have time to do this thing. And if you just pick up, you know, take a copy of the book or just a HiPPo and just go and say, look, I heard about this thing on a podcast; right? It’s really important we get the ideas from the team. Would you mind if we just try this thing? It’s going to take us 10 minutes at the beginning of a meeting, and we might get some ideas. And your ideas will come in. You can still write the Post-it notes.
BILL YATES: Sure.
JAMES LOUTTIT: You can even decide which ones the most important ones are, if that’s how we need to go at the end. That’s okay, as well. But at least you’re getting the ideas and the creativity out there. And it empowers the team.
BILL YATES: Yes.
JAMES LOUTTIT: And they also learn a lot from doing that.
BILL YATES: Yup.
Kevin and Kyle
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Outcomes vs. Outputs, and Butternuts
WENDY GROUNDS: This was something I found such fun to read about in the book was the butternut story. You have a quote. Let me start with that. “Impactful project managers tend to think in terms of the project’s outcomes rather than its outputs.” Can you talk a little bit about that, how we tend to be so focused on that, on outcomes? And what happened with the butternuts?
JAMES LOUTTIT: Yeah. So, this is an interesting one; right? So, for me, like there’s two types of quality; right? There’s the quality of the outputs. So, this is your PMI stuff. This is your PMP. You know, how well have we got a PID? How many documents have we got written down? All of that sort of governance. Do we have the work governance in place, which is important; right? And then there’s the quality of the outcome, which is, did we actually do the thing that the company needed. or that the people needed? Right? And you can often have these projects where the outputs are amazing. Wonderful. But the outcome is awful; right? You’ve done loads and loads and loads of things, and you haven’t actually got a very good outcome. And one of my friends calls this kind of project management “apparatchik project management.”
So, the idea, you imagine like in Soviet Russia, you’ve got these people who are following the process because, if you don’t follow the process, you know, things could go very, very badly wrong for you personally. Right? And a lot of people are doing that because, you know, they have to fill in the document. The methodology says we have to have this document, so I fill in the document. But they don’t necessarily understand why they’re doing it.
And sometimes that document is never read by anybody else, and all you’ve done is work, and there’s no outcome at all. Whereas for me, understanding and working with the team and being really clear what the goals are and why we’re working on things and where we’re trying to get to and encouraging and allowing people to challenge and come up with new ideas and be creative, that allows you to have much better projects that have better outcomes. So, you want the butternut squash story?
BILL YATES: Oh, yeah.
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah.
BILL YATES: Mm-hmm.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Okay. So, this was a fun one; right? This is back when I was developer; right? So, this was back over in, over in England. I’m in Dublin now. And we were working for a big supermarket chain. It was a consultancy company, but we were working for a big supermarket chain. And we were doing all of the, you know, buy one, get one free and those kinds of promotional things on the website. And it was about a six- or eight-month project, long enough project, long nights, big effort. The complexity in this world is really huge, actually, when you get into it. And we put the thing live. We did all the things we thought we’d done, you know, we put the thing live. We went and had a big party, all that stuff. Right? And it was great. It was a success.
And then about three or four days later my boss at the time, Matt, came, and he was like, “Guys, did you do anything weird in the supply chain?” Right? No, no, we were doing stuff on the front end of the website with the – the promotions. He’s like, “Would you mind just going and checking? Because there’s this weird thing that’s happening; right?” And we said, what’s going on? He said, well, all of the bananas for the Southeast region of England are going to the High Wycombe store, and all of the butternut squash for the Midlands is going to Walsall. And we were like, no, well, that’s got nothing to do with us. That’s the supply chain. Sounds like a supply chain issue.
Anyway, we went and had a look in the code, couldn’t find anything. And then my mate came back from his holiday, and we told him what was going on. And he said, “Oh, yeah, I think I might know what’s happened.” What had happened was he’d decided, to make the promotions work better, he’d decided to change them all from kilograms to grams. So, he’d multiplied, you know, a kilogram of broccoli was now a thousand grams of broccoli; right? And a kilogram of butternut squash was a thousand grams of butternut squash; right? Great. So, it makes sense. You should be able to do promotions. But he’d taken that all the way through, and he’d realized it wasn’t going to work. So, he’d backed almost all of it out.
BILL YATES: Almost.
JAMES LOUTTIT: But there was one, but there was one little bit of it, which was like an override into the supply chain. And this was back in the early days of, like, online grocery.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: And there was this little override that somebody else years ago had put in. They’re like, if we sell loads and loads online, then you know, the store’s going to need loads more. So, we’ll kick into the supply chain, and then the stuff will go through the supply chain off to the store. And his bug was that he’d multiplied that by a thousand; right?
So, someone who ordered a kilogram of butternut squash online for their, you know, it was enough for like a nice Sunday lunch, a thousand kilograms went into the supply chain, right, and off to a warehouse somewhere. And some warehouse, some poor warehouse assistant was kind of loading up this lorry going, they want a lot of butternut squash in Walsall this week. What’s going on there? And it made the front pages of the newspapers; right?
So, there was this store manager in one area with like just piles and piles of bananas. And they were, like, just giving them out to everybody. Take some bananas. I’ve got too many bananas. I don’t know what to do with them. They’re all going off. And it was funny; right? So, it was definitely, it was definitely ours. And we could have caught it with testing, which is kind of the point in the book.
But the funny thing was that a few weeks later they had the Retail Week Awards, and our client partner was sitting there next to the CEO of the supermarket chain. They had this kind of black-tie dinner, like everybody’s kind of posh, that kind of thing; right?
And they had the starters, and the waiters came out and passed out all the starters, but my boss’s boss didn’t get one. And he was looking around going, what’s going on? Like, you know, I didn’t get one, like everyone else got one. And the CEO was sitting next to him, giggling away to himself. All of a sudden there was this big fanfare [mimicking fanfare]. And in came these two waiters with the world’s most enormous bowl of butternut squash soup, plopped it down there in front of my manager, or sorry, the partner. And everyone had a good laugh about it.
There’s a few things to learn from that. But one of the things is that relationships matter; right? The fact that they could then joke about it, because the thing cost a lot of money.
BILL YATES: That’s true.
JAMES LOUTTIT: You know, it’s not good news to be sending all the bananas to one place.
BILL YATES: Mm-hmm.
JAMES LOUTTIT: But whatever happened, whatever deal was done, and I’m sure there was a deal done, I’m sure we took some of the cost in the end, then the relationship is what pushed it through. And we ended up staying on that client for a long, long time, did lots and lots of great work with them. So, there’s a few things you can learn from that story, but it’s good fun, as well.
WENDY GROUNDS: It’s a good story. Yeah, it’s a lot of fun.
BILL YATES: That’s a great story. And just the look on the guy’s face when he thought about that piece of code. I’ve experienced that before back in the day. I’m like, oh, no. Oh, man.
Keep an Eye on Team Stress
WENDY GROUNDS: So, project managers’ most powerful resource is their team. How can a project manager, they’re looking at their team, they want to utilize them well, but they want to make sure everyone’s aligned with the project goals, but also that nobody is feeling overwhelmed. You know, not only are we responsible for our own stress, but we’re responsible for the people on our teams, as well. What advice can you give for a project manager leading a team just to keep an eye out on the stress, but making sure people are all aligned on the goals, as well?
JAMES LOUTTIT: Yeah. So, we might come on to motivation in a bit in terms of Dan Pink’s model, which I really think is useful. But for me, listening to your team and building that kind of empowered feeling that they can share things and they can ask for help and they can show you what’s going on is really crucial. I like that prioritization approach that we talked about. I like that in my one-to-ones with people. So, I come to them, and I say, okay, what’s the list? How long is that going to take? How long is that going to take? And how much space do you have? And don’t forget, we’re out for the team meal on Tuesday. You know, let’s have a look at all the things that are going on. And then you work through that list.
And I think managing that makes a huge difference to the success of teams. But equally, there’s a question about the sort of human element of the interaction, and particularly when we’re all remote nowadays, or a lot of us are, spending a lot of time away from each other. We don’t see as much of each other as we used to.
And I came across this lovely video, and I think it was from the BBC. There was like a little mental health video. I’m not sure if I actually do cover it in the book, but there’s a bit there where you have a conversation with people, like, how are you doing? Busy. Oh, me too, I’m busy. Yeah. And there’s this, “Well done us. Aren’t we busy? Didn’t we do great?” Right? Yay, we’re being busy, as if somehow busyness is like a good thing to have done.
And for me, the tip I picked up in this little video, which I think is really useful, is ask again. Right? Ask that second time. Yeah, but how you really doing? And just that second question is a really powerful way of kind of opening the conversation to have a human conversation with someone. And then all of a sudden, you’re like, yeah, I’m not, not so great, actually. You know, this is going on at home, or I’ve got three young kids, or whatever the thing is. I’m struggling with something. And all of a sudden, you’ve kind of broken out of that, that little ritual that we all do about being busy into a human conversation. And I think that’s a really useful thing that we can all kind of keep at the back of our mind.
The “Busy Badge”
BILL YATES: That’s so good. We had a conversation with Laura Barnard, and she talked about this, too. She actually, I think it was an article she wrote on CIO.com.
WENDY GROUNDS: Right.
BILL YATES: And I’m just going to read a quote because she’s like you, James. She does not like the busy badge at all. Laura’s quote was, “Simply being busy doesn’t mean a project is successful in delivering business value.” Yet many teams proudly wear busy badges, leaving executives wondering why results aren’t materializing. Busy doesn’t equal productive. In fact, busy gets in the way of being productive. And to your point, it’s a quick, trite response. There’s no depth to it. We flip it out sometimes, and it takes the smart leader to go, okay, hey, what are you busy on? What are you most worried about? Or how do you feel about, you know, the deadline we have on Friday? Tell me more about that. Or do you have three kids at home that are under the age of five?
JAMES LOUTTIT: Yeah, that’s it.
BILL YATES: I get your busyness now. You know, so it’s a quick response that doesn’t bring a lot of value. We have to chip through that and find out what’s really going on.
When You “Pick a Prickly Pear”
JAMES LOUTTIT: Yeah. And that’s where, again, that prioritization thing over and over again comes back to it. So, when I was in that hospital bed back in 2016, my brother’s kind of cool. Like he’s got a big beard and long hair, and he plays the guitar, and he makes harps for a living. Right? And he sent me this amazing video of him playing “The Bare Necessities,” you know, from “The Jungle Book.” For his young son; right? It’s a lovely video.
And I was looking at it just the other day. And his son’s like eight months old, same age as my son Thomas at the time. They’re giggling away at this thing. And there’s a line in that song where Baloo the bear, he says, “If you pick a pawpaw or a prickly pear, if you pick a raw paw, well, next time beware. Don’t pick the prickly pear with a paw. When you pick a pear, try to use a claw. But you don’t need to use a claw when you pick a pair of the big pawpaw.”
And that for me is the essence of value and effort prioritization; right? So, a pawpaw is like a big juicy yummy thing. It’s actually a papaya; right? It’s a lovely thing with loads of value in it. And if you’re working on that, you’re going to get loads of value. It’s going to be quite easy. It’s there when you eat it. And a prickly pear is what it says on the tin; right? Smaller. There’s less value in it. It’s really hard to eat, and it’s covered in spikes. And the question I ask when I’m training people is what prickly pears are you picking? Right? If you’re working on those high-effort, low-value things, right, what are they? What claws can you use? So, can you use something like ChatGPT or, you know, AI escalation, delegation, using different things to solve those prickly pears?
But you don’t need to use a claw if you pick a pair of the big pawpaw. If you’re working on the highest value, lowest effort things available to your organization, you’re going to have all the resources you need because you’re working on very high-value stuff. And you’ll be able to apply the resources that are there to unlock that value. And for me, that’s why that conversation becomes so powerful with so many stakeholders because it allows you to have that conversation that says, hang on a second, your thing isn’t something we should be doing in the context of all these other things that are there that are higher value and lower effort.
BILL YATES: I can see the power in having my team understand throughout the project, we’re going to have conversations about two different traits, you know, value and effort, value and effort, and continuing to think through those two lenses, those two questions when we look at prioritization. Yeah, that’s a powerful construct.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Yeah. Yeah. And then you teach people how to estimate value. I use Planning Poker, so I’ve actually got my own merch, my own Planning Poker cards, to teach people how to estimate effort. And then you just keep having a conversation over and over again. And this is nothing more really than scrum. Right? It’s just agile backlog prioritization. Maybe with some slightly better understanding of value and effort than most people go to. But it’s quite easy to implement.
Motivation, Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose
WENDY GROUNDS: Earlier on, you mentioned Daniel Pink’s model of motivation, autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Can you give us a little bit more about that and your recommendations for leading teams with this mindset?
JAMES LOUTTIT: Yeah. So, I read the book “Drive,” oh, I’d say probably 10 or 15 years ago now. I don’t know how old it is, but like I came across it quite early. And it’s a brilliant book. And what it is, is it simplified motivation down for me. What Dan Pink says is that there’s three things that if you’re missing any of these three things, it’s extremely demotivating.
So, the first thing is autonomy. Do you have some control? Not necessarily full control, but are you able to influence the things that you’re doing on a daily basis? If you’re sitting there just being told, do this, then do that, then do that, it’s really demotivating; right? It’s not great. And especially if you can see something that’s a better way of doing it, and nobody’s listening to you. That’s brutal.
The second thing is mastery. And I feel this in terms of on the training course I use balloon animals to teach growth mindset. I teach people how to make a balloon dog. And then I prove to them that they didn’t know how to do it, and they can now; right? I think nowadays we can learn stuff so quickly. YouTube videos, you know, ChatGPT, you can learn very, very quickly a lot of these things. And again, if you’re not getting better each day at stuff – it doesn’t have to be bigger stuff. It can be other stuff, as well. But just getting better every day is very motivating, and not getting better is quite demotivating.
And then the final one, which some organizations have in spades and some organizations really struggle with, is purpose. Why are we doing what we’re doing? And if you can’t articulate that to your team, or worse, if you don’t know yourself, then a reasonable question to ask is back to Simon Sinek. Start with why, go and ask why, why are we doing this? And that’s really powerful. So, the reason that’s a really good model is, first of all, it resonates with me. I really believe it’s directionally correct in terms of how we’re all motivated. But it’s also really easy to remember and useful.
So, when I go into a one-to-one with a team member, I just have to remember three words: autonomy, mastery, purpose. And I just think, how can I give them a bit more autonomy? How can I help them get better at stuff? And are they really clear on why we’re doing those things? Then that creates this amazing behavior where you start to coach and build and delegate your team, and build their capability and responsibility for things. And you listen to them well. And all of a sudden you find that from being far too overwhelmed yourself, you’ve gone down to a four-day week, and you’re writing a book.
BILL YATES: That’s right. Yeah. That is powerful. I remember, same as you, I can’t remember when I first read “Drive.” But it’s such a powerful book. And those three tenets really, you drive them home perfectly, yeah. What a great way to have a conversation with a team member. Yeah, yeah. Thinking through those three.
JAMES LOUTTIT: So, if you’re doing one-to-ones with your team, and you can just have those two things in your back of your head, the prioritized list of what they’re working on with value and effort and then autonomy, mastery, purpose as in terms of motivating those guys, you’ve got a fabulous agenda for a one-to-one with your team. You’ve also got a fabulous agenda for a one-to-one with your boss. And all of a sudden you can show, and you can start to get more autonomy, mastery, and purpose. And guess what? Get promoted and maybe hit CIO before you’re 40.
A Distraction Audit
BILL YATES: Yeah. One of the things that you describe in the book is a distraction audit. And describe what that is and the impact it can have on a team.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Yes. I was using – one of my favorite techniques is a thing called Lean Coffee, which is a great technique which I describe in the book. I was using it to have a conversation with the team and find out what they were struggling with. And what came right to the top was these distractions, oh, people keep on interrupting me. And I said, well, okay. So, I kind of had a sense of this, and we all get this; right. Notifications there. There’s a WhatsApp. There’s a Teams or Slack messages, an email that comes in, phone call, someone drops by your desk. All these distractions are coming at us all day long.
And what I said to the guys is like, hang on a second; okay? So, I gave them each a little pad of paper. And I said, I want every time you get distracted from what you’re supposed to be working on, write it down. Just write it down.
BILL YATES: Yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: And then when we’ve gathered some data on this stuff, we can actually then come back together and see how we can deal with it. And so, two or three days later, it didn’t take very long, but they came back to me and each of them had this little list of the stuff that they’d found out. And it was loads of it was each other. Loads of it was one guy pinging someone else asking him a question. And what’s really interesting is you don’t necessarily think of the consequences on someone else when you reach out to them.
BILL YATES: Yes, right.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Right? So, you think, and particularly me, and I was part of the problem; right? So, I’m a CIO. And I’m sitting there, I’m on Teams, and I need to ask someone on my team a question. Bing, I’m going to ask them a question. I’m not necessarily saying that needs to be answered now. I’m just saying there’s my question; right? So, I’m asking it now. I don’t mind if it doesn’t come back for another few days. That’s fine. But I haven’t made that clear in my message to them. So, we started to have this conversation, and then we started to change a few just very simple behaviors. So, I set an expectation in terms of when responses were going to come.
Like, so for me, if you need me immediately, call me on the phone, and I will try and answer it. Right? If you need me, as soon as I can get back to you, when I’m between meetings, send me a message; right? And I’ll have a look at my phone between meetings, and I’ll say okay, and I’ll probably call you back. If you want me next time I sit down at my desk, it’s probably something like a Team’s message. Bing. Okay.
And I’ll have a look at those first before I get into my emails. And then if it’s kind of a 24-hour thing, that’s where my email is kind of like, I’ll try and get back to you within the next 24 hours. So just by setting the expectation that there’s a different level of timeframe over these different communication methods, that helped quite a lot.
The other thing that I found really useful was this kind of like bing, bing, bing between two people. And I said, well, write some of that stuff down, just write it down on a list. I started doing this thing, and I have done this for years actually, which is quite an impressive thing to do, is you just have a list for your next one-to-one with your boss. And Lorna was my boss, so I used to have the Lorna list. And I’d write down, whatever I thought was something that I needed to speak to Lorna about, I’d just write it down on my list. I wouldn’t tell her about it. I wouldn’t do anything apart from write it on the list.
And then just before the one-to-one, I tidy up the list. Oh, that’s sorted. Don’t need that. Oh, there’s another one to add here. Tidy up the list, and I go into my one-to-one. And I was highly prepared for that conversation. And I looked really impressive; right? Because I had the list of all the things, and I really looked like I was on my brief.
And then I started getting my team to do the same thing. And then not just with me, but with each other, as well. Then you might find that there’s two people who need to do a lot of that back and forth. Well, sit them next to each other and give them an hour. And they can work together for an hour instead of sitting miles apart and pinging each other and interrupting each other. Simple changes to your work environment that make such a big difference to the level of distraction and noise and pressure that we all feel.
BILL YATES: Yeah, that’s so good. I have a team, as you’re describing that, James, I’ve got a team member. We meet weekly, and she’s so good at keeping that running list and, like you say, sorting it as we get closer to our meeting date. If there’s something that’s urgent, then, you know, we’ll meet ahead of time. We’ll meet spur of the moment. But there are things that she’ll look at and go, “I can save that until our regular meeting.” You know, we’ve hit a really good balance there.
That’s a powerful thing. Yeah, that audit is a great idea. It makes me think of “Deep Work,” the book by Cal Newport. If we’re going to achieve deep work and really provide value to our teams, then we have to have uninterrupted time. We have to have dedicated time. So doing a distraction audit is a very worthwhile exercise to go through. Thanks for walking us through that.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Yeah.
Connect with James
WENDY GROUNDS: James, if our audience wants to find out more, where’s the best way they can connect with you?
JAMES LOUTTIT: So, I’m on LinkedIn. That’s probably my main social media. I do have a TikTok channel, if you want to have a look at some of my career tips and things like that. The book is out. I actually just recorded the audio version of the book. It’s going to be on Audible soon, and Spotify, and all those other places. So, we’ll get a link into the notes for the show.
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: But yeah, reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’ve got a website, ImpactfulPM.com, and it’ll be great to hear what people think.
WENDY GROUNDS: Perfect.
BILL YATES: Excellent.
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah, we’ll put all the links into the transcript so people can find them easily.
BILL YATES: This is so powerful. This is advice that comes from years of experience, and I’ve got to say personal sacrifice. Right from the beginning of the book, we get a sense of the urgency and the importance that this has to you because you’ve had to face burnout. You’ve had to face incredible stress. And we’re all the beneficiaries, so thank you. Thank you. Great book. Excellent tips.
JAMES LOUTTIT: I mean, I’ve learned from some amazing people over the years, as well. So, you know, I didn’t make most of this stuff up, like, I just learned it from great people.
BILL YATES: Well, we appreciate your candor and honesty in it. Thank you.
WENDY GROUNDS: Yeah.
JAMES LOUTTIT: Thank you ever so much. It’s been a lot of fun.
Closing
WENDY GROUNDS: That’s it for us here on Manage This. Thank you for joining us. You can visit us at Velociteach.com, where you can subscribe to this podcast and see a complete transcript of the show.
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