Beyond Tools: Building Trust and Accountability in Remote Project Management with Sri Ganesan

00;00;08;05 - 00;00;36;17
Wayne Turmel
Hello everybody, and welcome to the Long-Distance Worklife Podcast where we are determined to help you thrive. Survive generally make sense of the crazy, ever changing world of remote and hybrid work. My name is Wayne Turmel. This is a Marisa-less episode, because as we do every other week, we have a really excellent conversation planned for you.

00;00;36;19 - 00;00;57;00
Wayne Turmel
So I'm going to introduce today's guest, Sri Ganesan. Is the boss of all things at Rocketlane. We're going to talk about project management, managing projects, setting up teams in a remote environment. Tre, how are you today?

00;00;57;02 - 00;01;03;10
Sri Ganesan
I mean, thank you so much for having me on your show today. I'm doing well. Things are good.

00;01;03;12 - 00;01;15;22
Wayne Turmel
I am delighted to hear that. We will try not to, mess that up. So real quickly, tell us, who are you? Why do we care? And what is Rocketlane?

00;01;15;24 - 00;01;43;24
Sri Ganesan
Sure. So, you know, as you introduced, I'm one of the founders and the CEO here at Rocket Lab, and this is my second SAS venture, built one from 2012 to 2015. And then, you know, that company got acquired, went through a seven and eight year journey overall in the previous business. And had a lot of learnings from that venture, which pushed us, me and my co-founders, the same co-founders of the last time, towards building something new.

00;01;43;27 - 00;02;09;13
Sri Ganesan
And we started Rocket Land four and a half years ago. We found that client facing project delivery felt very broken. We found a category called PSC Professional Services Automation, which had a bunch of legacy tools, and we thought, hey, what if we make this customer centric, modern PSC as a category that we can champion, we can create, and that's what we are on to at Rocket Lab.

00;02;09;13 - 00;02;32;00
Sri Ganesan
So we are a professional services automation tool which has a customer facing angle to it and helps both in the back end of operations for project delivery teams, like resource management, time tracking, etc. but also on the front end of it helps you with the actual project delivery, the governance around it, and so on.

00;02;32;03 - 00;02;40;21
Wayne Turmel
What was actually broken in the client facing piece of this? What was the problem you were solving for?

00;02;40;24 - 00;03;08;22
Sri Ganesan
So it's say two things. One is there's a deluge of tools that people were using. So you use one tool for the actual project management. You use something else to collaborate on documents. You use a conversation tool like a slack or a teams. You also use a PSA tool for same time tracking, budget tracking, you know, invoicing, etc. so information gets siloed across all of these and email as well.

00;03;08;22 - 00;03;30;05
Sri Ganesan
You can imagine. And everyone does also stuff an email. And then also the work gets siloed, which means, you know, there's there's tasks, small things that you need to do emerging from something you documented on email saying, hey, here's the action items from a meeting. There's something else that's in the project management tool. There's a comment on a document that needs to still be resolved.

00;03;30;07 - 00;04;00;14
Sri Ganesan
So work becomes too siloed. It's spread across too thin in different places. It's hard for anyone to be on top of it. And along this journey, the internal team and the customer are on a different page, right? Like you have a version of everything internally, you have a version that you've exposed to the customer. Everyone feels it's a little bit of a black box as to what's really happening, what's happening in the customer's mind the customer is anxious about, hey, are you really going to deliver on time?

00;04;00;16 - 00;04;19;22
Sri Ganesan
Because all they see is like a status update or a weekly status report you publish each week. So a lot of anxiety, mistrust along the way that builds up. People are not on the same page, and things do get dropped as well because of how siloed information and what this.

00;04;19;25 - 00;04;58;29
Wayne Turmel
Now, project management is one of the first areas that really embraced and figured out remote work. And when I say figure it out at least enough to make it happen, right? You remember working on remote projects back in the 90s and what? What has gotten easier over the years with remote project teams and what still remains a bear that we just haven't done as well as we might.

00;04;59;02 - 00;05;33;04
Sri Ganesan
I think what's gotten easier to just meeting more often, I think people have just gotten used to the fact that, hey, there's going to be zoom meetings every other day that we need to jump on and keep each other updated. I think the practice of project management has evolved so much that those who are in the know around those practices do a great job of surfacing risk earlier, being transparent about where things stand, calling out you know, things that need to be resolved, across teams, etc. but it's not necessarily something that everyone still does.

00;05;33;05 - 00;05;49;14
Sri Ganesan
Right? I think those who are who have embraced project management over a period of time as a practice have evolved to a state where they're able to do a great job of all of this. But you wouldn't find this to be universally true. What else has become one of the.

00;05;49;17 - 00;06;11;14
Wayne Turmel
One of the things that and I'm throwing you this curveball. So if the answer is you don't know, that's an acceptable answer. But I know that, Project Management Institute and the PIM Borg had instituted a lot of knowledge about what project management is. And I know that plays a role in the fact that people are getting better at it all the time.

00;06;11;16 - 00;06;20;23
Wayne Turmel
Has the Pim Bork adjusted to remote work as well as it might, or what's it missing?

00;06;20;26 - 00;06;43;13
Sri Ganesan
I would say the principles are, you know, universal in the sense that it doesn't matter if it's a team doing things remotely versus a doing team getting together in person, but it's more about, I would say not everyone is going to be a PMP, the new.

00;06;43;14 - 00;07;04;00
Wayne Turmel
Project management professional. And my apologies for throwing Pim back out there. Like everybody knows what it is. That is the project manager Book of Knowledge, the One Ring to rule them all. Project management is industry looks at. So my apologies to the to the listeners who just went Yeah.

00;07;04;00 - 00;07;11;13
Sri Ganesan
So like likewise, my apologies to throwing PMP as a term, but you would see if someone is a PMP you would see it on their LinkedIn. Right? Like the.

00;07;11;13 - 00;07;16;00
Wayne Turmel
Name. Oh, they are not shy about telling you if they're.

00;07;16;02 - 00;07;44;17
Sri Ganesan
My what what I've seen is we are increasingly moving to a world where people are not specialists in project management. Not every project, a big project has an engagement manager, a project manager assigned. But very often people are expected to play that dual role of, hey, I'm, I'm working on the things that need to get done, but I'm also managing the project, in which case, I think, you know, the expertise in project management is not going to be there.

00;07;44;20 - 00;08;32;19
Sri Ganesan
But you expect that with tools that are available, you get the job done. You you know, there's enough, that that you have to, tool systems, emails, etc., that you still should manage to get the project delivered successfully without a full time expert project manager. And that's that's where I think things actually break down. It's true that not every project deserves a full time project manager, but the systems need to adapt and and help bridge the gap in a better way around best practices around governance for projects, etc. because the people you know, and then they're running their first few projects or even later are not necessarily well attuned to.

00;08;32;21 - 00;08;46;02
Sri Ganesan
If you go to any SAS company, for example, the implementation teams there typically are not PMP certified. So you need to deal with that reality in how you deliver on your projects successfully. Even without that kind of expertise.

00;08;46;05 - 00;09;14;15
Wayne Turmel
Well, what you just said is really important because yes, you know, there are project managers and there are official projects, but every leader on the planet deals with projects and, you know, ranging from organizing Alice's birthday party in the break room to huge, you know, system changes. I guess there are two sides to this. One is that my experience?

00;09;14;15 - 00;09;44;09
Wayne Turmel
Is that project teams, project managers are not necessarily the manager of the people on the team. Right. So there is a little bit of you're my project manager, but I answer to Bob. And so there are these, conflicting priorities. Sometimes miscommunication. Can technology help us address that?

00;09;44;11 - 00;10;07;07
Sri Ganesan
Absolutely. I think there's a few. I mean, you made a very good point around you're responsible to get things done on time, but you're not the boss of most of the people on the project. As a project manager and think about customer facing projects where you also need inputs from customers, approvals from customers, things to happen on time, from the customer side.

00;10;07;09 - 00;10;30;26
Sri Ganesan
And you're definitely not the boss of your customer. So how do you handle that? Right? The way I've seen things. Then when you don't have the right technology, the team member is always worrying about, like the project manager or the person assuming that role for the project is worried about, hey, I just asked the customer about this yesterday.

00;10;31;04 - 00;10;49;06
Sri Ganesan
Is it okay for me to ask about it again today, or should I give it a couple of days? Even for an internal team member, I. Hey, the last time I asked about it, they said they'll get back in a week. Should I follow up midweek? About. Hey, are we on track still or is it going to get too annoying if I keep doing this?

00;10;49;09 - 00;11;18;27
Sri Ganesan
So there are these soft software aspects, right? And, you know, there's a gentleman, one of my customers once asked me, how does the project get delayed? And the answer to that was, you know, I came up with various reasons, like, why does the project get delayed? Here are like ten reasons why a project gets delayed. And he said, hey, you know, the question was, how does a project get delayed?

00;11;18;27 - 00;11;59;26
Sri Ganesan
And the answer is one day at a time. So his input was that every day matters, right? And you need to get really tight on your execution for you to actually deliver on time. You're not going to manage to keep a project on track if you don't have that tight governance around how things are happening. And I think the right tool can actually help you with that governance and automation around the governance so that it's not down to, hey, I have this hero project manager here who does a great job every single time and is on top of things and knows when to follow up, but it's more system driven.

00;12;00;03 - 00;12;18;12
Sri Ganesan
So can we move from hero driven to system driven? I think that's the responsibility of a great client. Facing project delivery to a great PSA will throw risks at using hey, this project has a schedule risk, a scope risk, a budget risk, etc. so that you get ahead of the problems.

00;12;18;15 - 00;12;52;04
Wayne Turmel
I think that is such an important point, and I think on remote teams, because you can't just poke your head over somebody's cube when there's a problem. I think that it's really important to remember that systems are replicable and heroes seldom are. It's way easier to build a good system that people can plug into than it is to try to create a whole bunch of great project managers.

00;12;52;06 - 00;13;15;29
Sri Ganesan
Absolutely. And I think, you know, it's not just for internal when you're working with the customer. It's also about, do you have a sense of what's what's going on in the customer's mind in a remote world? You see them on zoom for like one hour every alternate day maybe, and you don't necessarily. You're paying attention to what you're presenting and how someone reacted to that.

00;13;16;01 - 00;13;38;21
Sri Ganesan
You're not necessarily gauging what else is running on their mind, and very often, you know, you think things are going great. And then there is an escalation from the customer. And by the time that escalation comes in, it's too late to recover from that. There's there's so much that has built up in the customer's mind around what's working, what's not working, why this partnership is good or not good anymore.

00;13;38;24 - 00;14;07;15
Sri Ganesan
And that's led to that escalation. Whereas if you have a great system, the system should capture along the journey. What's the sentiment of the customer as well and help you get ahead of a problem the first time you have a three star rating for like a workshop or a training or something else you did with the customer, is a great opportunity for your leader to connect with them, saying, hey, what could have made this a five star experience?

00;14;07;18 - 00;14;19;26
Sri Ganesan
And, you know, turn things around if you have if you don't know about like if it's a one star experience, you hear about it because there's someone shouting at you already. Yeah, but if it's multiple three star.

00;14;19;26 - 00;14;50;13
Wayne Turmel
About it very quickly and then actually, I think is a point whether you're using project management software or not on remote teams, I think it's really critical that there are the big check ins, right? The the meetings, the conversations. But there's also this constant feedback loop of the ability to check in, the ability to just check a number rather than call a meeting.

00;14;50;13 - 00;15;20;06
Wayne Turmel
The, you know, that information needs to be flowing both ways all the time. And that's just true of remote work, right? If you wait until there's a big challenge, it's very often too late or it's created way more drama than it needs to. Let me ask you this. We're going to switch gears just a bit as the guy running the company, right, has the CEO.

00;15;20;08 - 00;15;44;05
Wayne Turmel
And I know that just because people make a certain software or have a certain expertise, doesn't mean they always execute perfectly. So what are the things that you wish your team did better? And how do you handle it? Because you're sitting in Lehigh Utah, and they're not. Yeah.

00;15;44;08 - 00;16;13;20
Sri Ganesan
So we actually have, team members globally now, of course, as you would expect. And I think the way we've thought about this is we look at it from the customer's perspective. What is the journey that a customer is going through with us when you are executing on a project? So our projects, for example, are we are delivering like we are implementing our own software as a project and it is project management software.

00;16;13;20 - 00;16;36;08
Sri Ganesan
Of course, that's it's sort of a I think question over there. But but we are implementing using our own software. So we need to come across as the experts. We need to be one of the best customers of our own. Software is not the best. And we learn from our customers all the time. But we sort of engineered a lot of things to get this right.

00;16;36;08 - 00;17;13;06
Sri Ganesan
I would say it starts at making a great first impression and setting expectations right very early. So that kickoff meeting, even right from kickoff and kickoff, I think there's a lot of effort that's gone into perfecting what needs to happen over there. How do we help customers see us as experts early on? How do we help create a few teaching moments, even from the kickoff meeting where the customer walks away from that meeting thinking, hey, I learned something today from the Rocket Lab team that I can put in use in my projects with my customers.

00;17;13;08 - 00;17;43;23
Sri Ganesan
It's also about, you know, getting their permission for, hey, we're going to be intense in this project. That's our style. Are you okay with that? So one of the questions we ask in the kickoff meeting is what should we do if your team is not reacting or responding to what we need on time and with the exec sponsor on the other side, usually they're going to say, hey, if there's a day of delay on your site, suffice it to me, I'm happy to figure out like how to solve this and move things forward.

00;17;43;25 - 00;18;10;12
Sri Ganesan
But I want to hear early because the exec wants to hear early and we are thinking about, hey, Will, will we be throwing someone under the bus, should we escalate or not, etc. but now you have the permission from the leader saying, hey, here's the way you're going to operate, here's what's going to happen every week. So that's those are some things that we've done early in the journey and then throughout the journey, if it's a large project, as you said, there's like a steering committee meeting that happens.

00;18;10;14 - 00;18;23;28
Sri Ganesan
But for smaller projects, we have a set that goes out automatically for every deliverable along the way. So you catch sentiment problems early. You also catch like a critical milestone, slipping early.

00;18;24;00 - 00;18;49;15
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. I want those of you who are listening who are not necessarily project managers. I don't want what Sri just said to slide by because it's something not enough people ask, which is you're talking to your customer, you're talking to your stakeholder, and you want to say, hey, everything's going to be great. And here's what we're going to do.

00;18;49;17 - 00;19;22;17
Wayne Turmel
But pointing out if there is a problem, how do you want to handle it as quickly as you can? And getting agreement on what that is prevents so much drama. And and Shree, thank you, because I haven't heard anybody actually put that into the process. And I think that's really important. We are running out of time. Sri, what is the one thing that you want to leave with the folks who are listening?

00;19;22;25 - 00;19;41;06
Wayne Turmel
We will have links to Rocketlane. We will have links to the demo. We will have links to Sri in our show notes, but, Sri, what's one piece of brilliance that you want to leave our listeners with?

00;19;41;08 - 00;19;48;15
Sri Ganesan
I'll say two things, if that's fine. One is. Oh, fine. I would say just remember that.

00;19;48;17 - 00;20;09;00
Sri Ganesan
I would say one thing for any project team to remember is if you're working with the customer on a project, the ball is always in your court. You may believe that it's in the customer's code, but you still need to internalize that it's still on you to hold them accountable and make things happen because you don't want finger pointing later.

00;20;09;03 - 00;20;47;12
Sri Ganesan
The exact on the customer side, you know, trusted you to deliver as a team, and that includes making their team do work on time. So that's one second I would say is pay attention to what's happening in the last year and a half around AI, because it's going to change a lot in this space. You need to, if you're like in your budgeting season budget for I need to do some AI experiments to to figure out how to make my team more efficient, to get more, you know, high quality, work, focus on our team versus like the mundane tasks that people are doing, etc..

00;20;47;12 - 00;21;03;03
Sri Ganesan
Right. So I think very important for us to actively be experimenting with new AI tools in this space and to ensure that we are getting ahead of the game and equipping ourselves and our teams to to embrace what's coming our way.

00;21;03;05 - 00;21;16;25
Wayne Turmel
Without going down the rabbit hole. Because, boy, that's a big rabbit hole. What is one thing that you think AI is going to change about the way rocket land works?

00;21;16;28 - 00;21;41;23
Sri Ganesan
We already have a bunch of things that have come in that use AI to make our teams, the teams that use rocket, land more productive, but I feel the biggest thing is, again, the system identifying opportunities, risks, you know, things to surface for at a county level, not just one project, but you're running multiple projects with customers across a project.

00;21;41;23 - 00;22;06;06
Sri Ganesan
You're playing on different calls and emails and so on. How do we identify risks? Early problems early surfaced not letting it to be something that someone needs to raise their hand and say, I need help, but instead the system saying, hey, pay attention. This project. Someone needs to look at what's happening over here so that a leader can help resolve things before something goes south.

00;22;06;06 - 00;22;08;20
Sri Ganesan
So catch it while it goes sideways, not after.

00;22;08;27 - 00;22;41;14
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. So it's surfacing things proactively. Yeah, that's very cool. Thank you I appreciate that. I am going to excuse me for just a moment while I tell you that, you know, leadership is an important part, whether it's project leadership or traditional leadership. Kevin Eikenberry in my new book, The Long Distance Leader Revised Rules for Remarkable Remote and Hybrid Leadership, that is the second edition updated for 2024.

00;22;41;20 - 00;23;24;09
Wayne Turmel
You can find out more about that at long distance. Kevin eikenberry.com/ldl or long distance work life.com/ldl. And the book is now available on audible. If you enjoyed the show, please like subscribe, listen to past episodes. If you have an idea for, topics for guests, if you have comments, questions, vicious personal attacks, you can contact us directly Wayne at Kevin eikenberry.com Marissa at Kevin I can barrie.com or through LinkedIn for either of us or the long distance work life page.

00;23;24;11 - 00;23;48;17
Wayne Turmel
You know what? The world is changing so fast, and that's why we're here. As I said, we will have links to Straight to Rocketlane. You can learn more about the software, on our show notes. Long distance work life.com. That's it for another week. I'll be back with Marissa. Marissa. Next week we will be having a really fun conversation.

00;23;48;17 - 00;23;55;01
Wayne Turmel
You want to check that out? And in the meantime, my name is Wayne Turmel. Don't let the weasels get you down.

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