In this conversation, Andy interviews James Louttit about his book Leading Impactful Teams: Achieving Low-Stress Success in Project Management. They discuss the challenges of leading projects and teams and what it means to be an impactful project manager. James introduces the SAVE meeting facilitation technique and discusses prioritizing value and effort and the importance of transparency, prioritization, and humanity in project management. You'll also learn how Baloo the Bear from the Jungle Book movie was a project management philosopher!

If you are responsible for leading teams and projects, this is the perfect episode for you!

• "Experience is worth what it costs you. Go out and have the experiences, and some of them are going to be painful, but the learning from them is going to be valuable."
• "What stakeholders want to see is how seriously you're taking the thing. If it's genuinely urgent and critical, you need to ramp up governance when there's a crisis."
• "If you're only focusing on high-value, low-effort things, you don't need to use a claw when you pick a pear with a big pawpaw."
• "Just because something's easy doesn't make it low value. Sometimes the minimum viable product is something we can get out there sooner, and so it might actually have high value."

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:59 Start Of Interview
• 04:28 Parkinson's Law And Project Management
• 07:17 What It Means To Be An 'Impactful' Project Manager
• 09:46 Fatherly Wisdom And Career Influence
• 11:47 The SAVE Technique For Effective Meetings
• 16:52 Understanding Value And Effort In Projects
• 20:45 Understanding Value Estimation
• 24:27 Handling Project Crises
• 28:47 Three Levers: Transparency, Prioritization, And Humanity
• 33:11 Applying Project Management At Home
• 35:14 Wrap Up
• 35:56 Andy Comments After The Interview
• 38:31 Outtakes

You can learn more about James and his organization at ImpactfulPM.com.

With the constant stream of AI news, it's sometimes hard to grasp how these advancements can benefit us as project managers and leaders in our day-to-day work. That's why I developed our e-learning course: AI Made Simple: A Practical Guide to Using AI in Your Everyday Work.

This self-guided course is designed for project managers and leaders aiming to harness AI's potential to enhance your work, streamline your workflow, and boost your productivity.

Go to ai.i-leadonline.com to learn more and join us. The feedback from the program has been fantastic. Take this opportunity to unlock the potential of AI for your team and projects.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!

Talent Triangle: Ways of Working

The following music was used for this episode:

Music: Summer Morning Full Version by MusicLFiles
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Excerpt from YouTube video: {LYRICS} The Bare Necessities - balu the bear - The Jungle Book - 1967 - Walt Disney song's available at https://youtu.be/WJizAYb7OAk?si=ZgipVTq-liJDJ2gZ