Hello listeners. This is the risky planner podcast. Thanks for tuning in. So what's good? Albert, nice to see it. Hey, you're Yeah, man, you too. It's been a hot minute since we've hung out in person, and that trend continues because it does farther away than ever before. I know you're doing some you're you're on a trip for an extended period, you're doing some really cool work that we'll get into. But where are you? Just for our listeners, I am in I'm in Dubai, which is the, you know, amongst the Kardashians of the United Arab Emirates. It's most definitely the Kim Kardashian of the United Arab Emirates. Okay, you know, okay. Are you proud of me for making a Kardashians reference? I am proud of you. I was gonna say, depending on who you are, that could be like a good or a bad thing. It's all perspective. But, you know, I think the most flashy, the most famous, arguably the most beautiful. That's where I was going with that interesting. I've heard great things about Abu Dhabi too, and that's where our office is, but you're in Dubai right now. How is it? Yeah, generally, it's, it's, it's pretty interesting. I mean, that sounds like I'm all negative on it. I'm not. I really like it here. But, you know, we were talking off Mike. Well, not off Mike, but we were talking off record earlier about kind of, you know what it means to travel and like trying to look for opportunities to do as much of that as you can. And that seems to be like the the reason why everybody is here, okay, because there's not, it's not like it's just chock full of people who are from Dubai or Abu Dhabi. Even this is very much an immigrant city. There's so many people around, from all over the world. Like I've met people I've met, like, one or two people who were from here, and everybody else is from other parts of the Middle East, or from India or China, or, you know, elsewhere Southeast Asia, lots of Brits. You know, the the Empire is very well represented here. Number of Canadians and Americans as well. They love their they love their Americans here. So it's a safe space for Americans. It was described to me as a safe space for Americans, really, first trip out here. Okay, yes, what do they safe space? What do you what do you mean? You and I both carry multiple passports, right? That's right, you know. So I don't know about you, but I strategically select which passport I'm using, 100% I'm not gonna put any value judgments on that or explain why I do it or where, but I am gonna say this here, it'd be fine to use either. Yeah, okay, because I also do I'm strategic with my passport use, so, but travel is great, you know, like you're in a different land, you're in a different culture, you're in a different space, you're learning a lot. We'll dive into what we're doing that's really cool and exciting there, and the work that you're doing on the ground, and sort of, what, what the problems that you're addressing. Because, you know, that's what we do on this podcast. Your travels remind me of the time almost 20 years ago, when, when I ended up going to Cebu Philippines, the Philippines to Well, I was traveling, but I landed. I had no visa and I had no exit ticket. So I was kind of landing, and I didn't have, you know, a valid reason to be there, right? So, so it became a criminal immediately, yeah, right now. I mean, I landed. It was like 3am you know, I the airport, like, almost 20 years ago. Was just this, I don't know, sort of box of a building. And I walk through customs, they they see that I don't have a ticket, they see that I don't have a 30 day plus passport. They just stamp my passport anyways. And I go sleep like, you know, looking for somewhere, like a couch to sleep on. There's really nothing there. And then the police from the office. They're like, what are you doing here? And I'm like, Well, you know, I can't find a cab to go into the city, and you know, the ATMs, it's been broken and robbed. And so I ended up going and hanging out with these cops in their office. And then, you know, the next day, I go to the passport office, and this is an amazing story. I meet with the immigration official, and, you know, 15 minutes later, yada yada yada, I get a stamp, and I've got a, you know, extended passport, and I ended up staying, it's staying on Boracay for about three months. But, yeah, the Philippines travel is amazing, right? Like, stories, you know, it's fun, yeah, now that is, that is the exact kind of story that would be functionally impossible here. Okay, this is why the Disneyland of cities. It's just, it's all very It feels very manicured, very constructed. It was, it was it kind of sprung into existence in its current form in the last 20 years. Yeah. Okay, so the like, the architecture is super wide. Wild because it looks like a grab bag of things that you would find in major cities all over the world. You know that there are, there are buildings there that I would swear to you are exact replicas of, say, like a hotel in Toronto, or something from Tokyo, or like a Malaysian bank office, that kind of thing, like you see almost, but not quite. As there's a building looks just like Big Ben, but it's like eight times as tall, really. It's things like that, yeah, it's crazy. So you walk around outside and you're like, Oh, another thing like, to the extent that there's a unique architectural style at work here, I would broadly classify it as building with a hole in it. There's lots of buildings with holes in them, okay, right? Which is fun and flashy. Like you know, maybe the most I put up a LinkedIn post maybe a week or so ago about my first trip out here and several buildings with holes in them in that picture, including the frame the museum of the future, both in my neighborhood. So, yeah, yeah, the frame is super cool. Yeah, the architecture is super cool. Okay, let's pivot now. Let's talk about, what is the work that we're doing in Dubai? What are you doing in Dubai? Like, why am I here? Yeah, yeah, I get that question a lot, but the answer is that I'm here with small team. We're setting up a PMO for a very large real estate development, very large, as in, like, you know, the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. On an inflation adjusted cost, this project will be more expensive than that. Wow. Okay, wow. So it's very large. If you haven't heard of it already, you will soon, but I can't, I can't go into any specific and it'll likely be in, like, the next Mission Impossible movie or something like that. Yeah, exactly. You're gonna see parachuting off of it 100% and, like, without getting into too much detail, there are definitely places on this building where you could do action movie stuff 100% there are sir, right? I don't know like, but I'm looking Liam Neeson, like Tom all of you guys, yeah, he has a new daughter, and she is also taken, and he and his other daughter are going to go get get that. I like it. I like it, yeah, I like it. I miss my calling. So you're there. There's this huge, mega project we're saying, like, where, how did we begin, sort of setting this up, like, what's the scope? I'm gonna talk a little bit about, about what a PMO is, because it's, it'll help frame up the conversation as we go forward, but I gave an exam. I was on Matt Calvin's podcast at beyond wealth not too long ago, and I gave a pretty concise explanation for what project controls and project management are and where they diverge. And it basically boils down to scale, okay? Like if your project is super tiny, like if your project does make a ham sandwich, you can probably plan, manage funds, execute the entire thing yourself. You don't need to, you know, bifurcate, tripurate, replicate all of the roles, okay? But if, instead of making a ham sandwich, you're making a factory that pumps out 1000 Sam sandwiches an hour, then you probably need to start thinking about division of labor. Okay, so your project manager is going to look after integrations and like interface management and making sure that all the bits and pieces of the project are functioning well, and that communications are handled your project controls. Manager is going to look after the cost and schedule of it, make sure that things stay on track, make sure that you're not costing too much, that trends are looking good that, you know, the contractors know what they're supposed to be doing. They're following the rules, all that stuff. And that's, that's what would happen on like one project, you'd have a project manager and some project coordinator types, and then a project controls manager and some project controls coordinator types people doing the cost and schedule, change management and risk work. Okay? And estimating less. I forget estimating. That's one project. So on multiple projects, like, let's say, instead of building that one ham sandwich factory, we're building a bunch of them, okay, like, we're gonna build a whole park devoted to the manufacturer of packaged sandwiches. So we've got the ham sandwich building, we've got the turkey sandwich building. You know, we've got, out of out of respect for all of my friends here in the UAE, we're going to have one word. No pork is allowed in the building whatsoever. I like it will be the chicken sandwich building. Okay, club sandwich. Gotta have a club Yep, absolutely classic. Sorry, I'm taking you on a tangent with beef bacon. Yeah, that's okay, because I should talk about beef bacon at some point, because it's all over the place here. But anyway, so yeah, we'll do it. We'll do a turkey beef bacon club sandwich building as well. Why not? And you're gonna have to have roads and an infrastructure plan that stitches all these buildings together. This is kind of similar to when we were talking about Wonder Valley on another episode. Yep. So this has ceased to be a project and has. Now become what's known as a program like a bunch of related projects. Okay, so if you have a bunch of related projects and you you need to do all the same project management and project controls functions on all of them, it makes sense, from an efficiency perspective, to centralize a lot of those functions into what's known as a project management office or a program management office. Either way, it's a PMO. Okay, are you? Are we just like, is this like a rinse and repeat, or is the PMO sort of capturing best practices and then helping it scale? It is absolutely capturing best practices. It is absolutely looking after scale. It's absolutely going to cover off things like organizational change management, where we're going to make sure that the PMO processes are well utilized and, you know, quote, unquote sticky, right? So to some degree that that is a little bit of rinse and repeat, but, but the truth is, you know, all of these things are unique in some way, okay, because the the needs of my ham sandwich plantation are not going to be the same as the needs of the real estate mega project that we're about to embark on here. Okay, different things need different classes of help. Okay, different Yeah. Like different companies have different cultures. They need different processes and different approaches. And the culture really drives some of these. It does now, when, when you when you first start, there's a lot you can do by just doing a quick scan of existing documents, a quick scan of the scope of services, you know, a few deep dives on some key some key scope elements, and you can jam out some process documents pretty fast based on best practices and what you've read. And that's the phase of work that we've actually just completed here. So phase one of the PMO setup is doing a needs assessment based on the existing situation, coming up with a framework for building, you know, more detailed processes into, okay, getting feedback on that framework, rolling it out to core members of the team, and then you really, really get to work. So that's, that's where we're at. That's, that's the reason why I'm here is to get that phase one delivered, and we just did that actually two days ago. Yeah, what is when you say we're done with phase one? You know? What does that look like? And then what's next? So we handed over, we handed over 10 governance framework documents covering a variety of topics that are, in fact, unique to this actually, no, we did. We handed over eight we're making up math again. Making up math. That's what we do on this podcast. Guys edit that out. Okay, I don't want Nate calling me out on my math skills. I take the wins when I get them. That's that's what I do. Yeah, yeah, go back. We got eight documents. We're saying. So what is the we handed over? We handed over eight documents. Yeah, eight framework documents. So what you're you're gonna ask me a question. I'm sorry I was gonna ask you, what are those? What's the framework document? It depends on the project. This is where things start to diverge. But in general, you just need to cover off some major areas of of program management, like stakeholder management, for example, and project controls management, the establishment of baselines and for cost and schedule. How do you do change management? That's that's a big one, like we had a our two largest framework documents that we handed over, covered off risk management and change management. Okay, I like to explain risk management to people by saying that risk management is literally everything you do all the time, you know, especially on projects like, if we could all just trust each other and everything would happen precisely according to plan. Wouldn't it be nice need project managers? No, it would not, because I'd be out of a job. And so would you, yeah, yeah. Well, maybe you wouldn't, maybe, no, I'd be back selling, I don't know, Barbies, or, you know, like, armored vehicles or whatever, I've marketed in the past. It's been a, yeah, you know, the normal two things, Barbies are armored vehicles. Sorry, I want I once, like, in my career, I once had, like, an armored vehicle manufacturer and Mattel were clients at the same time. So I'm just just saying, you know, I'm not necessarily a plumber, you know, so to speak, like I'm not a trade. But you know, I can fall back. I know some I'm not. It should you tragically perish. I will be very, very sad, but I will make sure that I'm not necessarily a plumber is written on your tombstone. Good, yes, I've got a few things that should be written on my tombstone. So let's go back. So we've handed over these documents. Okay, so I'm gonna ask you, from the context of you know, dokay and company, we have built award winning pMOS for companies. Yes, world recognized PMOS. In fact, one came in. First, they won PMO of the year the Americas and and then, you know, they were runner up for the global award. And that PMO, you know, very specific to the organization, systems, processes, the risk management, the controls, the estimate, etc, etc. What? Special about you nailed it. Yeah, what's what's special about these, this? So you this, this. Okay, so every project is a beautiful and unique snowflake for lots of different reasons. In this case, one of the sources of kind of uniqueness is, is the the contracting framework. So the whole project is going to be built by a single purpose vehicle, a joint venture partnership between, you know, partners that I'm not at liberty to name, but they're all bringing something different to the organization. So one of the purposes of the framework documents was to spell out who's going to supply what services and how. Okay, you have to be careful not to create conflicts of interest when you're doing what do you mean by service? Do you mean by services? What services are we talking about? Well, one of one of the partners, is a very well established company that is already doing business in the area and has been for a long time. Okay? So they have things like an IT department and HR, and they have office space and things like that. So part of the you know, what's known as it's a shareholder agreement, is the contractual framework that stitches together the joint venture partnership. So one of the things that's spelled out in the shareholder agreement is, well, we're going to use services from this partner where it makes sense to do so, and we're going to spell out how we do that, you know, somewhere else, yeah, the somewhere else where we're spelling out how to do that is the framework documents that we just handed over. Okay, okay, so there's a connection. There's a real, you know, at a fundamental level, to how this whole JV is going to operate. It's really interesting. That's the right way to put it. Like at a fundamental level, we're basically writing, you know, the rules and tools for the frame, for the for the entire joint venture, yes, how do you balance the standardization with the flexibility or the uniqueness of this project versus others? It's it's a, it's a that's the reason why they all end up unique Nate, because every, every client, like every organization that's building something big, is going to want to retain different parts of their core identity when they when they set out to build, you know, their next big thing. Okay, so in the case of our current client, like they, they are two of the investment partners have very similar, but complementary, I would say, goals for the project where one is very much the we do this all the time. We're going to get this thing done, like, we're going to build, you know, it's a real estate development. Real estate developments are like, what we do, and then the other ones are, you know, this is going to be beautiful, it's going to be high spec. It's going to be ultra luxury. We're going to capture a market share that doesn't even exist yet, like so high end, it'll blow your mind, like that kind of thing. So there's a push pull there. Of like, we need to do it in a cost efficient way, but we also need to do it in a way that will attract extremely high real estate value clients. You know what I mean, like people who are looking to own their third or fourth penthouse, and this will be the nicest one. You know, that's the level of market capture that we're going for. So making that profitable is more challenging than you might think, no doubt, because you've got to build a massive, massive amount of quality control into your execution. What kind of quality control? Yeah, what do you mean by quality Well, that's yet to be determined. So, like framework documents, what we're doing is putting, like, the balancing act in place, where we're saying we need to have a change management framework that will allow you to suggest cost optimizations, but we need to make sure that someone from the like, you know, fancy real estate development side of things is looking after all of those cost optimizations so they don't compromise the end product. So how specifically are they going to make that judgment call? We don't know yet, but we put that they need to make it in the framework document. Okay, one example, yeah. So we're, you're describing like our work has a direct connection to the end result, or, you know, like, how is our work? Could you describe how our work is connected to what sounds like, sort of the revenue generation part of this project? Yeah. So I can't get into too much detail about that part of it, because it, you know, might kind of tip our hand a little too much. But like any large project where sales are involved, the you know, sale and, by the way, all you have to do to understand what I'm talking about is take one walk through the Dubai Airport. Okay, so if you, if you ever are fortunate enough to come visit me in Dubai. Then you will walk through the Dubai airport and you will see multiple kiosks where there are people Hawking real estate. Okay, interesting. Yeah, yeah. So foreign investment in real estate, and, you know, setting things up for people who want to come live here or do business here, is a big part of Dubai's. Like revenue generation generally, like as a, as a, as a nation state, like they, they generate a lot of revenue from foreign investment in real estate. Okay, that investment is getting funneled directly into the construction of large, high end real estate projects like ours. So how that funnel functions is another thing that we are covering off in the framework documents. Okay, who's making the sales? How do they contribute to our cash flow and our bottom line? How is all that managed? How does it integrate with project finance, that kind of thing? Okay, there's a whole operational element to this. I think we could explore at a later point in time, but that's a pretty good. You're doing a good job of being vague, where we need to be vague and so but let's start. Let's pivot back to the PMO itself, like we've so I mentioned we've built award winning pMOS, where we're building this PMO for this, let's just say this beautiful, you know, elegant, massive project in Dubai. What are pitfalls? What are some of the pitfalls? How do you avoid these pitfalls in PMO implementations? Well, the biggest one is that you build a beautiful machine that no one uses. Let's say we do the best and perfect job at setting up all the framework documents and the supporting procedures and desktop guides, and we implement all the systems, and they're fabulous and efficient, and you know, everything's perfect, but no one's using them, what you will have done is you will have added cost to the project without delivering any benefit. If no one is using the fancy new system, you're paying for it for no reason. Okay? So part of it is making sure that, you know, the fancy new system isn't just fancy on paper, right? Like, it doesn't just make sense for me, you know, trying to, like, conceptualize the platonic ideal of a PMO, and then putting that into practice doesn't help anyone. Okay, what actually does help people is something that folks are going to use, right? Like, you know, they say that the greatest camera is the one you have on you, okay, so, the greatest tool is the one that you'll actually get out and use when you need it, right? So that's what we want, and that's how you deliver business impact. That's how you deliver value with a PMO. Because every PMO set up on the planet is justified on the basis that they'll make things more efficient for people, okay, but again, that's only true if people actually use it and if those efficiency gains are realized. Okay, so the real key to unlocking that is ongoing, long term support through organizational change management, regular feedback collection, having, you know, systems in place. Because one thing I will highlight here, and this is not unique to this particular client, so I'm not giving away anything here by saying this. This is a group of people who they told some of them anyway, told me that their number one frustration is they don't feel free to change what's not working interesting. So when they have procedures or processes that are cumbersome or, you know, overly burdensome, just make things harder rather than easier, they still have to use them, or they do workarounds. Okay, so now you know the their PMO, such as it is, you could broadly describe as a bunch of extremely intelligent, talented, well intentioned people just doing whatever makes the most sense to them in the moment, right? Okay, and it doesn't matter how well intentioned talented, experienced you are that's still going to be a pretty inefficient way to do business. That's a really interesting thing to say. What would be the circumstance or the environment, or what would compel someone to say that to you, that you know they don't feel free to change what's not working. So it's because there's, there's a simple answer and a much more complicated one. So I'll start with the lend the two. No, I want to book. You got time? We got time? Yeah, we have a little time. The simple answer is that there's. There's simply no process in place to change processes. Okay? So you need an explicit change trigger that says I have identified a gap in our processes, or I've identified something that isn't working, and now I can raise a change in the organization that will sort of go through the workflow of being approved and evaluated and then implemented. And that may sound like a silly thing, like, oh, I have to fill out a form before I make a change to a process. Yeah, you do. Which brings me to the second more complicated reason, okay, real estate development in Dubai is very heavily tied up with public funding, either from within the emirate or outside. Okay, so public funding means government. Government means process and rules. Okay, accountability. You know, whatever you know totally and whatever image you may have of you, because there's some real cowboy project management going on here. You know, some real buildings in the plane while they fly it. But that doesn't mean that they're flying by the seat of their pants here. Okay, they are extremely fastidious about following the rules and making sure that there's no. Appearance of, or actually any corruption, that everything is totally above board, that, you know, it's all being done honest and in the open, scrupulously, and well, okay, but that is a that is the one thing that's a priority. I'm saying, Yeah, it's a huge priority, like it came up at every single meeting we had for them. Okay, so that, let me tie that back to the process thing. Okay, so if you've got process documentation that has already gone through the ringer and gotten approved, like, Nope, this is not going to create the appearance of corruption. It's not going to create loopholes for people. It's not going to, like, drain value from the public interest, then going through the process of changing that, if you don't have a nice, streamlined process in place for it is more trouble than it's worth. It's gonna create the appearance that you're trying to, like, shortcut or something, yep, you know, Yep, yeah. And that could be problematic. All right, so we talked about, you know, real business impact and sort of the upside of PMOS. What? Why do a lot of pMOS fail to deliver real business impact that you've just described. Well, we definitely covered off one reason, which is that they're not open to or able to be changed. Yeah, right, and that's a very serious problem, but it's not the only one. Another one is that, you know, you have some PMO set up companies, so that's what they do, right? They show up with their packaged process, and they throw it at it. Say, like, we've done this, does you know we've managed billions of dollars of work, and here's our process for doing it, and like, it's a big old fat stack of documents, and here you go. And I want to make it clear, there's nothing wrong with that. Okay, that is a great place to start. Okay? It is not, however, a great place to finish. So, you know, that brings me the thing too, which is relevancy. Okay, if you have the fat stack of excellent processes, it's a little bit like what I was saying earlier about, about having, like, distilled the platonic ideal of a PMO from from, like, the celestial ether, and then implementing it doesn't really help anyone. Okay, that's effectively what happens when a lot of companies set up pMOS, is that they bring their big book of rules, they slap it on the desk, they do a light coat of paint over top of it, you know, change out some icons. And I'm not being totally fair about this, but that does happen. Okay, so when that happens, you can reasonably expect the people on the receiving end of that to be like, I don't know what I just got, okay, yeah, or, like, there's a lot of things in here that don't apply to me. You know, what am I supposed to be using? So you wind up with a really excellent set of processes that have been battle tested and are great that just aren't usable because the people that you've directed them at don't know how to use them. So training and clear roles and responsibilities that are tailored, you know, you have to be willing to break something if you actually want to improve it sometimes, yep, and that's definitely the case for this kind of, like process documentation, like, if you, if you have, you know, an intricate clock that, in order to it's not running, but it has a beautiful crystal. And if you wanted to take the, you know, make the watch run again, you have to take the crystal off. And take the crystal off. You got to break it, okay? Well, your two options are you have to get rid of your beautiful Swiss clock by breaking the crystal and putting a new one on, and it'll never be the same again, but it will run, okay. Or you can allow it to continue to not run, and it just looks pretty on a shelf forever, or you can, yeah, you can check it out back, take a bat to it. Yeah, that's the Jackass version. But yeah. So Relevancy is, is really I mean, relevancy matters in so many places, so many aspects of business. So it's interesting that you talk about relevancy. And I think what you were describing is quite a bit more than just a reporting function, you know, at a PMR, 100% living, breathing. You know, a hub that that helps control, operate, evolve. You know what? What is the, what's the difference between, you know, I guess some pMOS, or, you know, a reporting function and in a true project control hub within a PMO, right? So some organizations, and again, this is valid depending on on the organization and the projects they're running. But some organizations will split those two concepts into two different groups of people, where you have one group that is exclusively doing rules and tools and data gathering and reporting, and they're doing systems upkeep and that kind of thing, and then you have another group of people that is, you know, sometimes known as like, a community of practice, okay, where you have all the best practitioners from the different, you know, project management and project controls disciplines come together to dream up solutions to real, everyday problems. Okay, the issue there is, it creates an interface. Okay? It's a little bit like, you know, if you have your your you know. I'm going back to my ham sandwich situation, like you've got the ham sandwich being built in one building. I love a ham sandwich. I'm so, yeah, it's dinner time for me and breakfast time for you. Is there, is there a gap between this reporting and then, sort of the because, you know, if you're analyzing reporting, you want to hear more about my Yeah, I want to hear more about the sandwich. There's not really any value if you don't do any you don't do anything right with the insights, yeah, well, I mean, everybody wants to do something with those insights. Which brings me back to my sandwich. Okay, so if you're doing all of the, you know, the construction of the interior of the sandwich in one building, and you're doing all of your bread work in another building, that creates a need to bring those things together, and that creates complexity. Okay, so is it manageable? You bet? Well, you can truck the bread over, you know, put the stuff in there. You got yourself a sandwich. Okay, but you do have to do that. So the version of that in my PMO setup I was talking about before is that the rules and tools system upkeep, people, you know, are going to be receivers of all the good ideas from the Community of Practice people and the Community of Practice people are receivers of updates and changes, or hopefully upgrades, to the systems and rules and tools that the PMO people are making. Okay. And in between, there is a real potential for failure, because you know, you're playing a game of telephone whenever you hand things from one stakeholder group to another, and we all know what happens in the game of telephone, things get scrambled. They don't work as well as they should. Okay, it's usually, I'm usually the one that changes the message. But yes, oh, you're that guy. I am totally that guy. Yeah, always, man. So what is, what are we talking about? Like, how, what is, what's the nature of that you were just about to, I mean, Yep, yeah. I mean, well, well, I'll tell you what that interface is. In a word, it's optional. Okay, so this is why, when we set up pMOS, they aren't just one or the other thing, like, we don't offload the big idea stuff to some other phantom group of people. The big idea stuff comes internal to the PMO, done by the same group of people that are managing the rules and tools and systems and data and stuff. Okay, so you got subject matter experts that, you know, I use the term battle tested earlier to describe procedures, but you need people who have done this before, right? Who've done, you know, in this case, large real estate development work before, okay, who know what the challenges are going to be, and can work directly with project teams to help them solve those challenges and also collect their feedback, so that you know as or like this PMO person knows what kinds of stuff needs to change and what kinds of stuff these people need. And if that person is sitting within the PMO, they're sitting metaphorically or physically right next to the reporting and data management person, okay, whose responsibility it is to, you know, configure the data management systems, and they work in tandem. You know, there's a lot of research out there that says, like, if you build a diverse cross functional team, the expertise actually matters less. Like expertise and experience matters less than having a diversity of opinions and a cross functional teaming mindset, where ideas are given, like room to breathe, and there's, you know, at least somebody kind of minding the store, so to speak, in terms of how they get put into practice. Lots of research indicates that that's the right way to do, like, you know, big idea decision making and make real change happen. Okay, so if you know that, then you know that separating your big idea people from your, you know, data and process people, all it does is it, is it? Is a D cross functionalizes Those teams. You no longer have a cross functional team. You have a functional team. Are we like? Are you just overburdening, you know, an individual with, you know, it sounds like multiple jobs. You're sort of being heaped on, like one person, or maybe, you know, multiple jobs on a couple of people, let me tell you, yeah, what's that dirty little secret of project work? Okay? Is that that's gonna happen anyway? Okay, okay. So that you know, as soon as these people make the incredible and common mistake of making themselves useful, right, showing themselves to be indispensable and really striding their stuff, they're gonna wind up with an over full plate anyway. But that's why systems matter. It's like, right? It is why systems matter. So you know, your systems have to solve two sets of problems, like one is they have to be built in service of those, the people who are actually executing the work. Okay? And I want to be clear here. PMO, folks are generally not the ones swing and hammers and pouring concrete. Okay? They are, you know, two or three management layers above that or beside that, if you prefer, like just providing the support that is needed so that that work can be controlled and planned and measured well, and if there is no interface with those ground level work, face level folks, then everything's going to fall apart. So that's one thing, and it's kind of a little bit like the answer to your your observation from a moment ago, of like, well, people are going to wind up wearing many hats. It's a little bit like the observation that, well, projects tend to run over. On schedule and overall cost, right? Both of these things are true, and they're likely to be true on your project. So your choices aren't, you know, overrun or don't overrun or overload your people, or don't overload your people. Your choices are whether you're going to plan for that first Okay, okay, so, you know, build that cross functional team, put clear roles and responsibilities in place, but also build some flexibility into that framework so that it can change what it needs to and that people are just allowed to do what makes the most sense while still adhering to the framework. Yeah. So relevancy, you know, process. What are some other best practices? If you could just summarize from the conversation? I think there's, there's a few, yeah, definitely. What flexibility onto that list. Flexibility. Systems are important. There's a lot of data that's going Yeah, forth. The word that ends in y that I'll use for systems and data is maturity. Hmm, okay, you need system and data maturity and to explain what in a mature data environment and what mature system? Yeah. How did I know you know me too well. Albert, I know Nate. We don't want too many of these. So what is maturity? Albert, yo, what an excellent question. Nate, so, of course, an immature system is the easiest way to explain this. Okay, so an immature system is like if you just throw caution to the wind and let all these very smart people do their very smart people business however they choose to, they're going to wind up with functional stuff that does work. Okay? And it's all going to be built in Excel. It's all going to be a Byzantine maze of someone else's brain, which, if you've ever tried to use someone else's undocumented work product before, even if that person is, you know, a super genius whom you admire, operating their spreadsheet is going to feel like, you know, taking a walk in the dark through a maze you've never been to before. So, possibly entertaining, definitely not very productive. So, you know, large projects often devolve into a series of loosely connected spreadsheets maintained by a cabal of disinterested people who are two or three steps removed from the person who actually built the dang thing. So that's immaturity, right? A disinterested Cabal, by the way, because there was gonna say as a great metaphor, and there's so many little ones that you threw in there. Yeah, I'm really waxing philosophic today. You know, with my platonic ideals and maths, just creating maths, that's what we do, exactly. That's right. But how do you fix that problem? Well, the answer is that you do have to structure things. Okay, you have to do it intentionally, and you have to do it with the needs of the project in mind. And that sounds very weasel wordy in part, because it is okay, like gamma. We can't really get into the specifics here. But you know, the nice thing about standing up a project with a joint venture that's a single purpose vehicle is that single purpose means, like, there's a whole new company coming out of the ether, like being distilled into existence to do this one thing, okay? And this company, we have another client, by the way, that's also setting up a single purpose vehicle to build something cool. Okay? And they came to us and said, like, well, how are we going to set this thing up? That is the best question that you could possibly ask is, like, what do we need for this? So I'm saying all that to say that we have a great opportunity here to actually build the data structures and the systems from the ground up. Okay, and say we get to cherry pick the best, the best of the best, all the best systems, all the best data management schemes, all the best end user tools, like mobile enabled 4d BIM, anything we want, we can just put into, you know, a set of requirements, price it out, and as long as it clears the bar, from like, an affordability perspective, we can do it right, you know, yeah, and it's going to have major impact, major impact, yeah, if You were to give, you know, one piece of advice to a developer. What would that be? I assume this developer is setting out to do something big and big projecting, yep. Then here's, here's my piece of advice. And this is a pretty good piece of advice for anybody embarking on a new project, and that is, Do not be too precious about the way things are today. Okay, be willing to break your toy, okay? Because there's a pretty good chance that it needs to be broken so that you can have a cooler, newer toy, right? Okay, and that could apply, so that definitely, like you said, applies to not only the developer, but I mean a project manager, you know, on the ground, you know, schedule or estimation. So thank you. That was really interesting. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I'll just, I'll close with this one thing, like, you know, every project, professionals heard this at least once per project, every project, which is, well, I've been doing this before for 30 years, and it's always worked for me. That's the truth, you know, and that means that you're using the same thing that you were 30 years. Ago. Don't you think things got better? I use that on my kids all the time now, when I was a boy, but when I was a boy 30 years ago, this is how we did it. It's always been this way. Why do you turn into a Sesame Street monster when you're tired? Yeah, I don't know. Well, Albert, it was great to see you. I know it's what is almost midnight, your time. Oh, Nate you see you're fun. No, it's 6pm I'm good. My next step is to cut that out, or let's keep okay. How dare you don't you dare? Yeah, okay, well, Albert, I hope you have a great night. Go get some dinner. Enjoy your evening. It was a pleasure to see you and pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much for the insights on the PMO, Absolutely, my pleasure. Have yourself a fine morning, and we will talk again soon. Yep, safe travels. I'll see you soon. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks everybody. You Hey everybody, it's Albert here. Thanks for tuning in to the risky planner podcast. We hope today's conversation was informative and above all else, inspires you to excellence in what you do. If you liked today's episode, don't forget to rate subscribe and leave a review. It helps us reach more listeners just like you. I'd also like to thank Thompson, Igbo EBO for letting us use his excellent music on our show. If you like what you hear, check him out at Igbo music.com that's E, G, B, O music.com talk to you later. You.