 Alright, should we get started? Can everybody hear me clearly back there? No. Not so much. This mic wasn't working well. Alright, I'm going to be stuck to the point today because that's much louder. There we go. Hold on, hold your ears. Sorry! Alright, thank you everybody for coming. I'm super excited to be here. Has anybody been to a DrupalCon before? Yes! I have been coming since 2011 and I've been waiting for a project management track for that long. So I am super happy to be here. And I'm going to start by telling you that I lied to everybody. We're not going to be doing ten lessons. We're only doing eight. If you want to find out about the other two, let's have a drink later tonight. But essentially, DrupalCon prints brochures and things like four weeks ago. Four. I didn't time myself until then and I have a lot to say. So we're going to cut that close. So if you're not mad and you don't want to leave, stay around. And if you want to tweet, go for it. I'm at Lynn Winter MN. I bet you can't guess what the MN stands for. That's right. I'm from Minnesota. A. I work at a company called Augustash. We build websites. And I've been managing projects, people and process in the web world, the TV world for 16 years. So that makes me basically old. But I'm okay with that. I'm also 100% German, which is highly required to be a good project manager. So if you're not, maybe go be DevOps or something like that. I think it's really important. My husband really is annoyed by it a lot. I also shoot sports on the side, which is totally normal thing to do as well. So that's kind of fun. I shoot sports at the Minnesota Wild. And I have two adorable children. That's right. They're really nice most of the time. And I want to tell you about one of them. My daughter, Isabelle, she, as a good little German daughter would do, was born on 7.8.09 at 4.32 in the afternoon. Right? I can control everything. And turns out I was actually born at 4.32 in the afternoon as well. I'm really loud. You have to get used to it. I think we're okay with that. So she grew up. She learned how to fish. I did not participate in that. She had a little brother, as you can guess. And she became a lot like me. She talks a lot. She organizes things. She's a little loud. And she started school. This year she's in first grade. She had a great preschool, a great kindergarten. It was awesome. Everybody loved her. She talked too much. Great spirit. They loved it. And then first grade happened and it didn't turn out so well. I went to one of those parent-teacher conferences where you sit for 15 minutes in like a cattle call and someone's sitting out the door listening to everything that's happening. It's really embarrassing when it doesn't go so well. So we sat down and I was like, all right, we've got this. Two years in a row. This is going to be great. And she said, you know what? If I had to grade her for first grade right now, zero to five, she'd be a two. And that means she would fail. And I said, shoot, okay, what's going on? Well, she's very social. And I started to apologize and felt really embarrassed for what I've put upon her. And she said, it's okay. We're going to work on it. The year is going to get better. And then four months passed and we went to the next teacher conference. So she did things. She kind of liked it, kind of didn't. It was fine. But I never heard from the teacher. So I was like, it's great. No problem, right? I sat down in my little tiny chair. Have anyone ever been to those little elementary schools? Like, I'm sitting there for 15 minutes with half my leg off the side. And she said, it's not good. And I said, okay, I haven't heard for her in four months. And she said, you know what? She's disrupted the entire class. Her work's not going well. And I think you should see a pediatrician. And I'm still really emotional about this. And I was really frustrated. And I said, do you think my kid has ADHD? And she said, I'm not a doctor. I think you should see a pediatrician. And I was super frustrated. And she's got ADHD someday, which I don't think she has right now. But that's fine. But where is this coming from? And I got really quiet. And I sat there, ticked off. And she said, what are you thinking? And I said, you know what? I think that's a really cheap card to play when two adults haven't talked to each other for four months to help this kid succeed. And I walked out of there because my 15 minutes was up, so I got to go. And I was pissed. I was really pissed. And I realized after the first pissness, that's not a word, but we're going to go with it, went away at the teacher. I realized I was mad at myself. Because you know who knew better? I did. I work with clients every single day for 16 years. I know better than that. She wasn't engaged. Nobody was talking. Work wasn't get done. It was classic. Classic case. Super easy. No problem. Which kind of led me to this talk. Things happen with clients that we see over and over and over again. And we go, ah, we knew better than that. Gosh, what happened? We're going to get together a list of eight. We're not going to tell anyone else. It's not 10 outside this room. Of ideas and lessons that I've learned that hopefully you've seen, or maybe you're new and you haven't seen, and you can kind of bypass these problems. So let's get started. The first lesson is clients pick you. And that's really important. They choose you. They select you from a group of people to work with you. Because they give you a bunch of money. Maybe 10,000, 20,000, 50,000, 100,000. I've worked on anything from 4,000 to three quarters of a million dollars. It doesn't matter. Tell me what you get for a website. It's a trust thing, right? They got to believe that you can do it. And if they don't, you're kind of screwed. I've never worked on a project ever where if you didn't have some sort of trust from the start, go well. Never. You might have watched it. It might have happened, but it's never gone well. Ever, ever, ever, ever. So, okay. What can I tell my sales team? Or maybe I do sales myself. Well, look out for these things. You know, if there's no competition, you know somebody Googles you up. They pick you up. Oh, let's work with you. I want to see three people they're talking to at minimum. If you build a house, you talk to three people. They need to choose between those people and see what is out there to see if it's a good match. They also need to make sure that they're talking to us in the right speed and pace. If somebody talks to us and a week later they want to sign a contract, we need to get going. We need to get going. I say, go away. Go away. Or we need to talk longer. That's too fast. If something goes six months or 12 months that long, that's also a really big problem. You also want to make sure that somebody has time for you. And not just the one person that's been working with you, the entire team. If they can't come to your office, they can't sit and talk to you. They don't have time. Oh, I just need a bit. Then we'll figure it out. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Slow down. The sales process is not necessarily for us. It's for the client to figure out what they really want to do. It's a lot of money. You might as well take the time. Also, if somebody comes to me and says, you know what? You guys are great, but I have my own designer. Or you know what? Can you just design it and do the layout and then we'll go build it? That typically means the trust isn't going to happen. Anyway. Because they already think before they even talk to you that you can't do a part of their job. So those are the signs. So what can we do about them? Well, if you are able to get into the sales process, nudge your way in. That's great. If you don't and somebody dumps this on you, I say we have our own sales process. Let's have a pre-kickoff to the kickoff. Let's have a meeting to establish who we are. Talk about what we can provide. Right? Sell yourself. Show some work samples. Sell your team. Really get them excited about working with you. And you do this with the entire stakeholder team. You also want to make sure that you're on the same page. Do you guys have the same expectation about what's going to happen? Because you're stuck together now. There's some contract. And are you guys talking the same language? And then really take the time to get their know their business as well as their personal side. This is the time to kind of find your niche in the relationship about them. They spend most of their time with the business, but they also have time outside of the work. So who are they and what are they trying to achieve with that? The other thing you need to be super careful about is that repeat buyer. So anybody have a client that comes back and like, I want a new website. You know, you guys worked together before. Those are kind of the most dangerous ones, I think, because I always like, okay, great. We know you. Here we go. Let's go. You almost have to slow it back down like a sales process again because you shouldn't assume you want to do the same billing cycle or the same timeline style or the same development cycles. Things are different. They're different people. So we need to re-establish those expectations. Sell yourself again. And frankly, you know, make sure you talk about what went bad, like hash it out, like get all that bad stuff out there. And then if you feel like they're not, they're just kind of settling for you because I think there is time to break up at a certain point. Let them go see what else people have. You know, if you can chance losing a bid, go to have them talk to other people. What are they going to offer? What are they going to provide? Are you sure you want to work together? All right. Number two. Lesson number two. People gravitate to smart or smarty pants, which was too long to fit on the slide. So what I'm really talking about is making sure that your key contributor to a project and not being irrelevant. Well, that sounds pretty basic, right? Well, I kind of had a good example of this when I switched jobs about a year ago. I started coming to the company and all my developers are really, really good project managers. I was like, how did this happen? And it's not that developers can't be good project managers, but they were really good, like all of them. They could talk to clients. They could answer your questions. They were in base camp. They were doing this and that. And I said, how? You know, why do you like to do that? And I realized that the project management role over the lifecycle in the company really hadn't been stable. They've been rotating every year or so. They've been really giving a job that was really about scheduling and booking meetings and taking notes. They didn't have a stake in it. So what happened is the clients kept bypassing them, skipping them over constantly and talking to the developers. But I think that's wrong. They should still talk to the developers when they should. But I think the project management role should really grow and become really the central piece to the team. They should really be moving and shaking and doing all the things that need to happen to make it flow. And it's really important. And I think, especially if you came up in the Drupal community, first came the developers, then came the designers, and the PMs were kind of the last thing they stuck on to take care of the stuff nobody wanted to do. I'd like to flip that around and make sure that every single role has equal value. And I think that really starts with finding a passion that you're interested in. This really kind of shifted the scales for me when I started getting involved in doing either wireframes or QA testing or content strategy. I had something that I kind of liked to do that had an impact on the project. Also, whatever we made that got launched was different because I changed it. And I started feeling like people were asking me questions on my team, and then the clients were more into it because I could answer questions and I had ideas and I could push on them. So if you're looking to make a bigger role within your team, figure out what you like to do. Do you like to do training? Do you want to be into the content strategy? Do you want to do user testing? Those are all these things we've got to do as a team to make a really good website. I promise you someone on your team isn't doing some of these things. Nobody's got time for all of it. So take your piece of the pie and really make that difference. The other thing you can do is really become the person that dives in deeper on the business. Maybe the user experience person doesn't have the time to really map out business procedures or how they're making content. Maybe you can fill in there. You could also be like the educator free resource person. Oh, I saw this article. It seems like you're struggling in this. I read this or think about that and really become the resource person throughout the process. Also having the authority to make decisions instead of being like, well, let me ask the developer. You know, try to make that like a 50-50 or 75-25. You know, be able to answer all those questions mostly yourself until it gets too technical. And then really just challenge them and push them. They want someone to be like, no, I don't think you should do that. What about this? Or explain to me why you think that's important. They don't want just a yes person all the time. I also think the time between a meeting when these people arrive before you start the meeting is super critical. I have a guy on my team that will chit chat his way all the way through and the client thinks he walks on water. It's great. He's built a rapport with them. So push yourself to ask them personal questions or about work or business or something and fill that time instead of just sitting on the phone or waiting for everyone to show up. I think that really is a critical time for a relationship. All right, lesson number three. We must be teachers. All right, let's do a little poll here. Show of hands. If you have built, been part of one website launch in 2015, raise your hand and keep them up. Okay, how about five, 10? Okay, 15? How many? Thirty. Thirty. Anyone higher? That's a lot of websites. Right? My team last year, I wasn't there the whole time so I'm a little skeptical, but they have 50, almost 50 websites. Now, some of them were phase twos. There were large chunks, but they went through 50 cycles. Do you ever feel like every time you launch a website and go through the process, you learn a lot? Like, oh man, I wish we could change that for this one. Okay, now we can change it for the next one and the next one. So how many websites do you think our clients make or build or people in here that are clients? You probably build one maybe in two years. Some people are really iterative and have lots of budgets and get to change things a lot, but one every two, three years. It's not very often, right? So they don't get the chance to learn as much as we do every single day. So we need to walk in assuming that they don't know anything, not because they're not smart, wonderful people, but they just don't do what we do every single day. And the key is, when someone's really technical too and presents that kind of aspect to them, that's almost more dangerous because we assume they know all the other pieces. We should walk in and assume that they don't know something and when they do, awesome. But we should be educating people all along the way. And then you're probably saying to me, well, that's nice. I don't have the time or the budget or anything to be able to do this. Do all this extra time and work with people. But I think that if we spend more time helping people understand the parts that are really hard for them along the way, I think projects go faster. I think it's a complete wash. And I think it's kind of our job. Like open source, Drupal, it's our job to make the world a much better place. So I think we've got to find out why someone wants to build a website. What's their individual motivation? Did their boss make them do it? Are they excited? Are they trying to push an initiative? We find that and then we help to focus all our education around that. Or also what they're falling short on, what they don't understand or need to know and focus that on there. Also as we walk through things, we need to explain why it's important, right? I can say we're going to do this, this and this and this. It doesn't mean anything. It means a lot to me. But we need to make sure it means something to the people we'll partner with. So sometimes you get all the way to the design process and then you get a bunch of feedback. Like where were you before? People sometimes don't see things until they see things visually. So do they need to see it visually? Do they need to see documentation? Maybe they need to be part of something. Like a user testing? User testing is great with clients. Pull them in, do a user testing? Okay. All the lights click on or like navigation testing with Treejack where they actually figure things out and they're like oh maybe we don't need to do this. Or even part of a content audit. Make them do that. Then they can start thinking through what they need to put on their site. And then we also just need to make sure that it's not a one-time thing. So a lot of people do training. Once you get their website ready to go, you got to enter content. Let's do dooper training right here. And then that's all we got time for. But there's pieces along the way that we need to be plugging so that it's a continual education experience. All right, creepy slide. Lesson four. My husband hates clowns, by the way. He really was mad about this slide. Clients are humans. Yes, we all are. Hey, does anyone read Us Magazine and wants to sell themselves out? All right, I'll sell myself out. I look at it on the plane. I hate flying because it's really big heavy plane full of metal. And it should fall from the sky because it's heavy. So I like to read magazines that are really goofy that distract me. And they have this awesome section that says celebrities are just like us. Anyone seen that? They drink coffee? They go to the grocery store? They play with their pets? I think it's kind of important that when we work on projects, we kind of forget that clients are humans too. They're just like us. We kind of separate them sometimes, especially if we get cranky about some things that they're doing. And they have lives. And in fact, they have stressful lives, just like we do. All of these things have happened. Except for one thing with a client over my years. I bet you can't guess which one didn't happen. Yes, I haven't had that. But 2016, it might happen. In fact, I had this experience once where I worked with a client for, did their website. It was awesome. It was a great experience. They were wonderful to work with. And then three years later, they're like, okay, we're going to do another website. And we have this actual real launch date because a building is being opened and it's going to be great. We need to go, go, go. And after a month or two, I was like, good God, lady, why won't you respond to me? I've worked with you before. We have a rapport. What is going on? And I kind of was getting ticked off. So we finally got her on the phone. It was just me and her. We were on the phone. And she started crying. It turns out she wasn't talking to me because her husband had cancer. And here I was the jerk ticked off that I couldn't get the project done. And she had a much more important thing to do. Those are the things I forget when someone starts disappearing. It's hard because things happen and you don't know that. So instead of just being a partner, we should be a friend to people because I kind of want my partners to be friends too. It's kind of how they would treat me. I want to be treated the same way back and forth as a friend that's really there, not in a hostile environment. So what shouldn't we do? We shouldn't stand them up, right? Going gets tough. Don't disappear when they say, oh, you know what? They won't contact you for a month good because I've got all these other projects so I'll ignore them. No, no, no, no. That's when problems happen. We don't promise thing to them and then not fulfill those just like we don't want them to fulfill their promises to us. We also want to tell them not just what they want to hear, so if that dress looks bad on them, you should tell them that. Well, maybe not that. But don't tell them, yes, that's a great design decision. Make that pink and blinky. Just don't tell them. We might end up with pink and blinky, but don't lie right off the bat. You know, also, share the responsibility when you're going over budget, over timeline. Share that responsibility if that seems fair. You know, don't just stick them with that by themselves. And last but not least, the minute somebody points to a contract and says you're not being my friend on line 48, it says you'll do this, forget it. Either sign. You're done. The relationship's gone. So what we need to do instead is really invest in them fully. I like people to ask about my kids too. I'm interested in other people's kids. It's kind of neat to know people outside of just the work thing. Kind of relax the thing a little bit. I also think we need to make sure we're visiting each other's homes. So if you work remotely and you don't get to see people, make a point to try to go to their place of work. This is where they spend 40 to 50 hours every single week. We also want to respect their opinion, right? We don't have to agree, but they have an opinion. We want our friends not just to agree with us and we want to have opinions for them as well as help them as we've kind of already talked about. Be very honest and laugh together. Have fun. I've had a project where we had passed around pink bunny slippers from project to project. That's fun. It's very silly, but it's a good time. All right, lesson number five. Be your process. Pretty website, right? Yes, it's a little old. We didn't build it, though I wouldn't be ashamed if we did because it is older, but it's a client of ours. They came to us one day and said, I like my website. I don't want to change a thing. I just need you to move it to Drupal so I can edit it because it's in an old system I can't touch. First of all, red flag item number nine we're not going to talk about because that's a whole other thing, but we're like great and they didn't have a big budget. That's fine. So the budget was 10 grand. Just move it over to Drupal and make them allowed to edit it. They don't want to change it. All right. Well, we went on our merry way. We, without telling the client, changed our process, figured things out, and we got to the design and we presented this design. So we changed the design a little bit even though he was happy with what he had and we presented this design to him. Turned out he hated it, like despised it. I wasn't in the meeting, but man he hated it. I was like, okay. So they walked away and they were kind of, my team was kind of describing what happened. I said, you know what, I just don't think we're on the same page. Like just the feedback and stuff and I said, why don't you call him and just talk to them and they called and they talked to, they actually talked about nothing about the design, but they just had a conversation. So then they presented a new design. This one. Similar, right? Slightly different, but similar. And guess what? He loved it. Loved. Walked on water. Was happiest as all can be. We spent one hour changing it. One. That's it. And he loved it. So what the heck happened on that phone call? Well turned out that we changed our process and we didn't tell him. We just scheduled the meeting, got on our way. This is great. We kind of forgot that we needed to define the process to them. Let them know where we were going and what decisions we were going to make together. He just was lost. It wasn't even like he was even thinking about the design. He was just like, what does this mean and where are we going and what's going on. And it was like, oh, yes. I am so silly. Like I was mad at myself, but that happens. We kind of forget about it. The thing is it doesn't matter what steps we take. I've sat through some sessions already today where everyone does something different. You can continue to do something different. Everybody in this room probably does something different. But as long as you know what those steps are and why you're doing it and where you're going, that's all that matters. It could be any steps. You could do like two steps and build something. You could do 20 steps with content and this and that and still be happy. You just need to understand it. And mostly you need to make sure the client understands that. Because we should really be changing our process from client to client and tweaking it because it should be unique to clients and projects. But if we don't explain to the client where we're going, they're lost. And they'll trust us. If we have that trust, we can tell them whatever we want for a process. That's a great thing about having that relationship. The other thing is is that you must believe in it. So if you're working on a process right now where you're like, I don't know why we do this or what about this or why don't we do this, then change it. If you don't believe in it, your client's not going to believe in it. And I realized that really closely when I changed jobs and I got the ability to implement a new process that I really believed in and was excited about. And I was excited about it. Everybody was willing to give it a go, but they didn't understand, you know, fully what it was going to do and change. So for months, they were regurgitating it. Not to their fault, but to mine. Once they saw the changes, then the process really clicked and things went off. But I left them in the dark for months, just execute this step. Yeah, yeah, just do this step. So I learned a lot from that. Lesson number six, you must commit first. A PM's job is full of freedom. It's very exciting. I think maybe 5 to 10% of the websites I've ever worked on has actually had a launch date. Like, you know, like come to me with the launch date. Like something's going to happen at this point. So we've got a launch by this date. And I used to work in TV where everything had a launch date, right? Like PBS, they're going to air it on this date next to Dought and Naby. And there you go. It's back time, and you got it. So we have the freedom to set whatever we want. A lot of things. Willy-nilly. So when I moved over to the web world in 2008, I was like, great, I got this. I'm going to make schedules and time it out. I'm going to do the whole thing right off the bat. Well, I really pissed off some of my developers. They're like, God, do you just back everything up? No, we've got to get this done because we don't want to change the date. I'm like, oh, thank you, Mad. At the same time, my projects got bigger and bigger and bigger. So I went from 50,000 to 200,000. And I was like, I don't want to make a mistake. I don't want to be wrong. So I was like, I'll just not do a timeline. Oh, be fine. We have great relationships. So my developers were just having a heyday. There's no deadlines. So I would go call the client or email and be like, OK, can you have this done by next week? And they're like, whatever, I have a job. So I was like, maybe I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too. And it wasn't working out. Kind of what I realized is I needed to focus in on pieces. So I'm not going to set a deadline right from the start or lock everything down because that's silly. I don't know a lot about the client yet or the project, but I'm going to lock down it as we go in pieces. So I'm going to commit really early. I keep talking louder. I'm going to commit very clearly as well as in writing. And my slides are going really slow. There we go. In writing, it's pretty critical. And I think that's almost more critical for me than the client because then I put it in writing. Dang it. OK, it's set in stone. I got to do it. And then I think that really focus around the three things that clients need structure around, which is your budget, your timeline, and your scope. So what I started doing is sending our budget internally to the client. I didn't make anything fancy or special to display. Basically, every single week I was tracking a budget and I would send it directly to the client at the end of each phase. Say, here you go. Here's the risk or I have no concerns. Here's where we're at. And then I held my breath and waited for them to pick every single line item. And I'd have to say since 2008 I've had only one client do it. They didn't care. They just were happy not to be in the dark. They felt really lost because when I said, well, we can do this or this or we can't do that because of the budget, they'll be like, I don't even know anything about the budget. How am I supposed to make some decisions? So it wasn't very fair of me. So I think it's important to share what we're seeing at the same time and being really transparent. I also think we need to really make a firm document of the scope. And I'm still struggling with the best format for this. So I know a lot of people do agile and scrum and then work through stories and prioritize. But I think that's hard for people that don't do that or in that space all the time. When you prioritize you still think you're going to end up with most of those things and us as developers are like, well, you know what we can get done. I don't think that really works. And when I've been working on smaller projects now, I think, you know, you just need to commit to what you're going to do. So I've been working on a document now of after the kickoff meeting really saying, here's what's in, here's a maybe and here's what's not. Then we can argue it all we want, but at least we're setting some sort of boundary to get us going. And then as far as the timeline goes, I think it's also not fair not to give anything. I tried that for a while and that didn't work out so well. So I like to, at the very beginning, do a month month. Here's what I'll do in May. Here's what I'll do in June. Here's what I'll do in July. I think I feel comfortable with that. I know what I can do or not do. And then each single time I go to a phase where it's UX or design or build or whatever you want to break it down to, then I get some real dates in. Those are the real dates I'm going to commit to and they're going to commit to and we're going to do it together. I do wait until the end of the kickoff meeting though because I find out after the kickoff meeting can they even pull themselves together and do homework together? Can they schedule the next meeting quickly? Because I don't also want to feel like oh, dates don't matter. We can throw it away. So I set that after that. All right. Lesson number seven. People quit. This one's a hard one for me. It really bugs me. But I'll tell a story first. Has anyone watched the 2004 Athens Olympics? Awesome, right? So there was this guy that came out. Michael Phelps won like eight medals that year. Well, I watched a lot of that but then I do what normal people do and just keep watching for like eight hours straight like binging on Olympics. You're like I'm watching some fencing that I've never seen in my life. Well, I watched Marathon that year. It was awesome. There's a woman named Paula Radcliffe. She holds to this day the women's fastest time marathon. It's like two hours, 15 minutes in some second. I could probably run like five miles in that time. Like it's amazing. So she was going to the Olympics for Britain and she was kind of like the hopeful that was one of their big medals and they were running that day and they go 26.2 miles, right? So she gets all the way to the three mile left mark which is 23.2 and right where they're going to run into the big stadium, right? Where they have 100,000 people cheering massively into that and something happens which was unbelievable to watch on TV. She stopped and the Guardian wrote that day but in that moment she was alone with Herbert Wilderman. The spectators lined the streets. They could not offer her nothing except silent sympathy and so after a handful of strides she stopped again, sat down on the grass and wept. It was unbelievable. Three miles, go! She stopped because she's a human and her body shut down. Like I get that. But clients stop. It happens. They disappear. And it drives me nuts. But then I thought, you know, okay think about people for a minute and then I thought, you know, maybe clients are kind of set up to fail. I think it really depends who you're working with and as I work with smaller and smaller groups or people that haven't done this as much I feel kind of bad that I get mad about it because it turns out they don't have time to do this. They work 50 hours a week, right? And now they need to build a website because they're probably not a communications director and maybe they don't even have a marketing department. They don't really understand what they're supposed to do. Hey, you're going to be the new project manager on our website. Big initiative for the company. Don't screw up. It's a freaked out, right? They're scared. And maybe you don't know what to do. What are you supposed to do? What's your role? And maybe you don't know anything about technology. It's kind of a bad deal for someone that isn't like their job as the marketing web person. It sucks. So I haven't figured this one out completely but here's my theories and the things I've been working on. First is that whole motivation factor, right? This comes up over and over but why do you even want to build a website? Why do they want to build it? That one person you're working with that holds all that weight for the rest of the team. What do they want to do? And then what scares them? Why shouldn't we just ask in a kickoff meeting tell me what scares you about this project? Tell me where you want a little extra help. I haven't even asked that. I should ask that. I'm going to do that from now on. Because why not? People are nervous about things. It's okay. And then you want them to shine really in front of their coworkers and make them stand out and be really strong. And then if those things or those starters don't happen now it's kind of tipping into the recovery mode, right? That's when you show up at their office and you're like, I was in the area wink-wink and I just wanted to say hi and make them know you're checking on them. I don't care because no one's trying to do this on purpose to be mean, right? And if not, you know, either you can help them do their work because I'd rather spend eight hours in my time doing it than having the project last for another four hours. Let me know. That's going to be way more expensive and stressful for the team. Or you can tell on them. We did that recently about a month ago for a project that went dark for about three, four months. We're launching in two weeks but it's not the best relationship to have but it might be there. I'm also thinking about a fee charge. You know, if you go silent for four or five months, you know, it costs more money for my team to start it up again. Maybe a little money will kind of push some people. Not everybody but some people. And then worst case scenario you say, but goodbye because at some point you can't change somebody. They're not going to do it till they're ready. Sounds like a 12-step program but I think you got it. And I think the key thing is too though you don't want them to disappear first, right? Once you lose them, you're done. I think that about timelines all the time. Once you pass your first deadline, if you don't make the second time, you're done. Nobody cares about timelines anymore in deadlines. They're treated without respect. All right. The final one because we're going to do eight but really ten is trust your instincts. So I live in Minnesota as I mentioned. Amazing place. You guys might not think that if you live there. Beautiful winters. People snowmobile, ski do all these great activities. They even drive on the ice. Kind of weird but happens. And then we sit on our porches with light shawls and drink cocoa together. And it turns out that is an utter, utter lie. And it's cold and I hate it. And I've lived there, well I'm not going to say how old I am, but I've lived there my whole life and it sucks, it's cold. So every year I climb into my little house and lay under my bed and go from my heated garage to my office and hit the button that heats up your cars. Maybe if you live in the south, you don't have those. And that's how I deal with it. And then I say to myself, hey, it wasn't so bad last time. Yeah, it's never going to be like the Halloween Blizzard of 1991 where I wore a belly dancer outfit. I don't know why my mom even let me do that. I begged for years. And it snowed 37 inches. 37! It's not going to happen again, right? And I can change, I can go outside and go skiing on the plains of Minnesota and be out and do all these things. Or global warming, right? It's always going to be great. Now all you people in the south are heading that way because we're going to have better weather. And it turns out it's not going to change and I should really just move. Just like clients and projects don't change, that inkling that you have as a project manager is well-honed. It will not change. They will act the same as last time. That project will turn out that way. That situation will be like that. I think the key is what do we do as project managers to make that manageable? Because sales is not going to just say goodbye to all the work in the world because we don't like it. They should though and I'm looking at my boss over there who also manages sales. But what are we going to do to make it different? What are the different techniques? Your instinct is right. So try a different avenue every single time. And something I've been doing a lot lately is sitting in that meeting and calling the client out right off the bat. If I see a huge political situation, I'll just talk about it. So here's where you're at. What are we going to do about it? Here are some of my ideas. Do you want to try those? It seems to work when you say it out loud better. I mean everyone probably knows what the elephant is and what lessons. And again I'll be happy to talk about 9 in 10 over a drink. And in case you were wondering whatever happened to my daughter she found the love of her life Lincoln. She's met him for two days. Hasn't seen him for two months but she's confident that they're going to get married. And basically we're just kind of looking forward to second grade. We're calling this a wash this year. We're moving on. I did decide to call the principal after that not to sell the teacher out because I don't think I'm going to be able to do anything but mostly just because I should make a difference I can do something and we're going to find a better match for her personality next year. So we're going to do questions but also if you want to evaluate I'd love to get some feedback from you guys directly otherwise there's a URL up there and then also I will get the slides posted on SlideShare right after that and my SlideShare account is winterlin. All right. Loud enough, fast enough. Yes. All right. We have 20 minutes. Man, I talk fast when I do this in person. Anybody have a question? No, no, no. Questions. So the question was and I'm going to repeat it because we're recording this is when do you need to act differently when you're an internal project manager versus external? And I think that's absolutely the case because I think it's easy for someone like me who has a personality and voice when you're internal you don't get that. It's treated very different so I think you have to bring to the table a lot more analytics or facts so I find that data whether it's user testing or analytics or something to bring your points across is often kind of the best way to get people to make changes. I think it's really hard when you want to make some change and tell people out and then be like I'm going to see you every single day for the next year. It's just not the same. So I think anything you can do to remove the relationship from it and make it more of a factual situation I think is really good. Well, you guys can have 20 minutes back of your life. Thank you.