Time Limit

“Diversity without inclusion is exclusion. So to ignore and to believe that there is no culture is excluding the opportunity to bring someone into a new culture or a living, breathing culture.”

As a project manager, you’re in a unique position to shape company culture. So how can you use that influence to build a diverse and inclusive workplace? It starts with the way you show up for and lead your team.

In this episode of Time Limit, Brett talks with Yvette Pegues—a DE&I executive and keynote speaker and the cofounder and CEO of Your Invisible Disability Group—about how to create an organizational culture that’s intentional about diversity and inclusion. 

Listen to their conversation to learn:

• What role project managers play in defining company culture
• How to foster a sense of belonging on your team and why it’s important
• Actionable ideas for breaking down barriers to inclusion in your organization
• How remote work affects workplace culture and inclusion
• Tactical tips for creating an inclusive team culture, even when everyone’s remote

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“Be more of the coach and less of the time-tracker.”

Creative project management isn’t always easy—especially if there’s friction between project managers and design teams. So how do you give creativity room to thrive while ensuring design projects deliver on time and budget?

In this episode of Time Limit, Brett talks with Greg Storey about how project managers and designers can leverage their unique skills to build strong partnerships with each other. Prior to his role as COO at LexBlog, Greg worked in design leadership at IBM and InVision and ran his own design agency. 

Whether you’re a project manager leading a design team or a designer managing creative projects on your own, listen to their conversation to learn:

• How the design role fits into the creative project management process
• PM skills that can help designers manage their projects better
• Why communication is such a critical part of creative project management
• How to work together to ensure design reviews go smoothly
• Tactics you can use to build buy-in and understanding with your design team
• Simple questions that will help you provide the right kind of support to designers

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“I want every one of our PMs, and our directors actually, to have the ability to jump on something—to give that extra 20% that’s needed for a given week without having to let other balls fall.”

Agency operations is all about the numbers and processes that drive success. But it’s hard to run a profitable business if your team’s overworked or your clients are unhappy.

That’s where project management comes in.

In this episode of Time Limit, Brett talks with Sparkbox VP Rob Harr—who heads up operations—about what it takes to make a digital agency profitable and how operations and project management work together to deliver project success.

Listen to their conversation to learn:

• What agency operations is and how it shapes organizational culture
• How to boost profitability and efficiency without losing sight of people
• Simple math you can use to manage common staffing challenges
• One huge way project managers help operations run more smoothly
• How to know if operations is the right next step in your project management career

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“I didn’t go to business school. I didn’t have a mentor guiding me. I had to kind of fall on my face a little bit. EOS introduced me to a simpler way to run a business.”

Starting your own business is a big step for any entrepreneur. But how do you know you’re ready to grow beyond a one-person operation and lead an actual team?

In this episode of Time Limit, Brett talks with Chris Dreyer, CEO of Rankings.io, about how he started a successful SEO agency and why the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) has been an important tool in his leadership belt. 

Listen to this episode to discover:

• When it’s time to hire your first employee
• Strategies for structuring your team and business for growth
• How to build employee trust and be an effective leader
• The key mindset most successful CEOs have in common
• The benefits of EOS, with tips on how to implement it in your company
• One time-saving trick you can use to prioritize work and find focus

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“I invite my team to listen in—to be part of those reactions when people look at our games—because it’s so important to have a shared understanding.”

When most folks think about project management, game design probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But every video game that’s developed needs a project manager at the helm to ensure the final experience is both functional and fun. 

In this episode of Time Limit, Brett chats with Tim Leinert of Mindforce Game Lab about his journey from traditional project manager to managing video game projects for a digital healthcare startup. Listen to their conversation to hear:

• Questions to consider when developing a video game project charter
• How to manage a game development team and still make time for strategic planning
• Simple tips for keeping communication and culture alive on your project team
• Where video game projects tend to get off track from the plan
• How to determine when a game design project is done
• Advice to become a video game project manager

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“There’s a very big difference between being busy—getting little meaningless things done—versus making real progress toward your goals.”

How do you motivate your team and increase productivity? 

It starts with stepping back from the to-do list and looking at what you want to accomplish as an organization, as a team, and—yes—even as individuals with lives outside the office. 

In this episode of Time Limit, Brett and TeamGantt cofounder Nathan Gilmore talk about how to take a big-picture approach to productivity so you and your team can thrive in every aspect of life. Listen to their conversation to learn:

• Simple strategies to increase productivity for yourself and you team
• Why having a plan is an easy way to improve team productivity
• The connection between goal-setting and team performance
• How moving to a 4-day workweek impacted productivity at TeamGantt
• How to recognize and handle productivity issues on your team
• One thing that may be getting in the way of your team’s productivity

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“Empathy as a verb is a choice—and how you choose to engage in empathy is going to change from person to person based on each individual’s desires and needs."

Empathy isn’t just critical to good communication. It’s the heart of effective leadership. Yet empathy often gets pushed aside in the attempt to project a “perfect” professional image. 

With many people working from home in a year that’s been anything but normal, it’s time to break down the walls. No matter where you work or what kind of projects you manage, being empathetic can help you build deeper trust and connection with customers and coworkers alike. 

Thankfully, empathy is a skill anyone can develop and improve. In this episode of Time Limit, Brett talks to empathy consultant Sharon Steed—CEO and founder of Communilogue—about empathy and communication in project management. Listen to their conversation to learn:

• What empathy is and why it’s important in the workplace
• Why practicing empathy at work leads to a more inclusive culture
• How to develop empathy as an individual and organization
• One question that can help you become a more empathetic project leader
• How to inspire empathy in your team and beyond
• How to improve empathy in your communication

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“We tend to think we can do things a lot faster than we really can. We also tend to think that the risks won't really be as bad and that the benefits will be really good."

Anyone who has ever estimated a project, or even a single task, knows that it’s tough work. Not only are you making guesses about time spent or pricing, you’re probably also making guesses about the scope of the project itself. One question uncovers another question, and a detail you needed to know. But are you on the right path to get what you need to create a truly realistic estimate? 

You might think you are, but the answer is probably no! Check out this episode of Time Limit, where Brett talks to Jacob Bodnar—the VP of Operations at Maestro—about biases in estimating, as well as in project management itself. They also discuss:

• The science of bias
• Project management bias
• The planning fallacy
• Optimism bias
• How to use your team as a check and balance when it comes to bias
• How to get to a place of understanding and deal with issues head on
• how to define a project and what you do/don’t know
• Where to find “unknowns”
• How to rule out the optimism; framing
• The language you should use in estimation

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“In order to be a remote project manager, you really have to boost your project management skills.”

Whether you’ve been managing projects remotely for a long time, or you were flung into it when Covid-19 forced you into it, you know that keeping details, tasks, people, and projects on track from afar can be a challenge. There are, of course, some tactics you can employ to make the job easier, but what it comes down to is that remote project management requires you to lean on your PM skills and intuition.

In this episode of Time Limit, Brett welcomes Ben Aston from thedigitalprojectmanager.com to talk about remote project management. It’s a wide-ranging conversation that covers:

• The basic requirements of remote project management
• How to manage remote meetings
• How to run retrospectives or post mortem meetings remotely
• How to connect with your team remotely
• How to show your value as a PM from afar

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“An important PM skill is to be able to facilitate conversations around business value in order to strategize and look at outcomes.”

Goals. We all have them. Or at least we should. In the world of project management, goals manifest in different ways. As project managers we are often mired in goals of all types: organizations, project, and even personal goals that help to guide us. 

But how are we setting and managing goals to get the most out of every aspect of our work? 

In this episode of Time Limit, Brett sits down with agile consultant Anita Sagar to discuss project goals and professional goals. The conversation focuses on the project management mindset around goals, and how to shift project metrics from outputs to outcomes, and how to tie those outcomes to your overall success and career trajectory. This information-filled conversation covers:

• How organizations set, document, and communicate project goals 
• The value of revisiting goals mid-project
• How to focus on goals vs. outputs
• Focusing on quality rather than quantity
• How to discuss outcomes and get more out of retrospectives
• How to quantify your skillset as a PM and advance your career
• The value of certifications

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