Agile Ways — An Ongoing Journey

Narrator

The future of project management is changing fast. On Projectified with PMI, we'll help you stay ahead of the trends as we talk about what that means for the industry and for everyone involved.

Stephen W. Maye

I'm Stephen W. Maye for Projectifed with PMI. For an easy way to stay up to date on Projectified with PMI, go to iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music and PMI.org/podcast. In this episode we meet Lauri Bingham who leads the technology PMO at communications giant T-Mobile. Lauri shares her insights and lessons learned on adopting and integrating actual principles and practices into a variety of work environments. It's an ongoing journey and we're excited to hear about it. Lauri I've really been looking forward to talking with you again, thanks for being here.

Lauri Bingham

Thank you so much for having me.

Stephen W. Maye

Well it is certainly our pleasure, so why do you do it? You are making a career, you have made a career in complex large-scale projects and programs and I know from my own experience, that is not the easiest way to make a living.

Lauri Bingham

Journey that I have been on, especially when it comes to project management, uh, what keeps me going is the fact that it's constantly changing. It is always been incredibly exciting and fun, challenging and hard, um, but I would say that, uh, just the, the constant change of all things in I.T. and project management and engineering, uh, it just excites me on a very regular basis so, so I keep coming back every day.

Stephen W. Maye

You have worked across, um, a variety of industries. You've worked across a variety of functional areas and focus areas. What do you see changing?

Lauri Bingham

Well, especially when it comes to the structure of projects and understanding project management and program management, uh, it has changed over the last couple of decades while I've been doing this to be much more of a profession, uh, it did not start out that way early in my career. We didn't call it project management but we were doing that same kind of work. I think the, the big change for me has been, uh, the professionalism of project management and the appreciation of project management and so I, I think that that's, you know, probably the, the biggest change is just that there are more organizations that are recognising that you, uh, you need a project manager to get a lot of this work done. You can cut a PMO out, uh, but ultimately it's gonna crop back up again because, uh, that work needs to get done, it needs to get organized, it needs to be structured in order to be able to be successful.

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah, you know one of the things that I've observed is a shift in focus. If I look across maybe the last decade, there's been a shift in from exclusively looking at, or primarily looking at, uh, technical components of the work which are still really important things and this shift over to things related to managing change and gaining [INTERRUPTION] [BIAN] and creating alignment and leadership and a whole variety of soft skills that are now [INTERRUPTION] seen as, uh, critical for successful project management so I'd be interested in what your take is on that.

Lauri Bingham

Yeah, no, I completely agree. It's, uh, it's incredibly valuable to, to bring that to the table. The project manager is not just somebody whose writing down the tasks, tasks and the due dates, they're there to see that, uh, work as a grander scale, um, and they bring tons of soft skills to the table so they're helping to motivate, uh, team members to make sure that they are doing the work when they need to and they're getting the support that they need so that takes, uh, you know, a lot of, uh, what we would traditionally call management, uh, skills but the project manager needs to have those too, they need to understand how their project fits with the total portfolio of all of the rest of projects and they need to understand how their project is contributing to the company's bottom-line. You know, making that connection for themselves as well as the project team makes all the difference in being a successful project.

Stephen W. Maye

We wanna hear more about why and how your company has been making this journey from a, uh, much more traditional view of projects to something that is both Agile and one of the words that you've used is hybrid. Not just Agile but also hybrid projects so, talk to me a little bit about the, the why and the how around that.

Lauri Bingham

Sure. We take lots of risks, we go big and we push the industry forward and so we may be trying new technology, we might be trying, uh, a new way to connect our cell sites to our network, we're, we're reaching out and trying to do brand new things that nobody has done before and you can't do that in a Waterfall kind of project approach. You're gonna have to try things, try it fast fail fast, um, be able to move forward and make those corrections as quickly as possible. So our, our projects are, uh, traditionally more Waterfall-ish, in that, in terms of engineering, I mean that just kind of, uh, lends itself more to a Waterfall approach but there are times when we have to do, like what you were saying, and you call it a hybrid. It's, you know, the very beginning of the project may be very Agile because we're trying things, uh, in a new space that's never been tried before. When we deploy it across our entire network that may be a little more Waterfall-like. When we have to deploy it across 50,000 cell sites, so, um, we, we try to talk about Agile as if it is a tool in the toolbox. It's not right for every project, it's not wrong for every project and we want our PMs to, to have it as a tool that they can use, given the right circumstances.

Stephen W. Maye

I, I love hear the, the up-close, personal, first-hand experience so that we understand what the journey looks like for you. Where did you come into the process and specifically at T-Mobile, where you are now, but when you came into that, that transition of moving from, uh, a much more Waterfall environment to something that is, that is both Agile and hybrid. Where were you in the process and then where are you now?

Lauri Bingham

So, two plus years ago there was, there was very little and it was just kind of a discussion topic, uh, now we have multiple teams who are branching out into it. We've got people who are going through training, we've got certain teams that are further along than others but I would say, especially in the spaces of the tools that we use in order to be able to, um, automate things that engineers may have been doing more manually in the past. Those, um, utility teams that are building those kinds of tools are using much more Agile principles than ever before and we're, the PMO is there to help support them so the teams are becoming more Agile and going through their training and the PMO is right there alongside them, uh, to be able to help and support them. We, we help and support, uh, some teams more than others. Some want to be very independent in their approach, uh, and others want some, some more collaboration and so we scale our involvement, depending on what they need us to do.

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah, so you are specifically involved with a technology PMO and, and obviously you’re in, uh, in the wireless industry. Um, if you look right now at, at all of the projects and programs, however you are dividing those up with that are under the view of that PMO or in some way supported by that PMO, what's your mix now?

Lauri Bingham

We have, uh, anywhere between 400 and 600 projects in our port...portfolio at any one point in time which is crazy amounts of numbers, um, I would say it, it's probably a smaller percentage that are pure Agile, there, there's much more in that hybrid, uh, arena where they're doing parts of the project using Agile and other parts that might be a little more [INTERRUPTION] Waterfall. Um, I would say probably in that hybrid space there's, there's easily a third of our portfolio right now that's in that space, um, and there's some areas that are just never gonna be that way so it's not like we have a goal to force, uh, teams and, and projects into that methodology, we just want to be able to, uh, allow all of the PMs exposure to the methodology and as well as the teams themselves, exposure to the methodology and see, hey, does this fit for your team or not. We had, as an example, one of the teams that we have been working with, um, started out thinking that they should probably go to Agile, you know they did some training and, um, and it wasn't seeming to necessarily fit their work and then we had a discussion with them about using a Kanban board and they were like, oh, well that fits our work much better and it's like, right, that's exactly what we're talking about [INTERRUPTION], it's like you gotta find the right tool for the right team for the right project.

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah, yeah. So, it sounds like you are leaving that decision to the project manager?

Lauri Bingham

Sometimes we've left it to the team itself, uh, sometimes it has been the influence of the project manager, sometimes it's more of a steering committee kind of discussion and sometimes it's, uh, you know, the project team has started out with one methodology and moved to another, uh, midstream, so we don't have a prescriptive way that, that happens [INTERRUPTION], uh, we let it kind of happen a little more organically and, and that seems to work for us, um, some of the teams, like I said, we, we have some teams that are, um, pushing all of their work into the Agile space and so naturally when we're engaging with those teams, uh, we would kind of lean towards using an Agile methodology, um, and then other teams haven't been exposed to it yet so we wouldn't necessarily push it on them but we would certainly, if it felt right to introduce it, we would introduce it, um, but, again, it's, it's the team members that really have to be engaged in that. If it, if it's not the right time for that team to, to suddenly flip the way that they do their work, we're not gonna force them.

Stephen W. Maye

Right, right. So it's, it's interesting to me in this situation it sounds like people do have a choice [INTERRUPTION] but you're still making significant changes? It sounds like you've made [INTERRUPTION] a lot of progress in two years so what do you think is motivating that?

Lauri Bingham

Well I think they're just really seeing the benefit of it, uh, they're, they're recognizing and they're kind of, you know, seeing the team that might, you know sit next door to them, hey, they're doing some things a little bit differently and they're able to deliver a whole lot quicker, maybe we should try that out, um, you know, and we do a lot of communications about the success of our projects and what they're able to accomplish in a short amount of time, um, and, so I think it's, it's partly the, the reputation of the success of the projects that are using the Agile methodology that is sparking some interest in others, uh, and you know, it's, it's sharing those kinds of learning so that other people can recognize it, um, and like I said, we, we are a company that moves super, super fast and if you've got a methodology and a, and a process that, uh, doesn't necessarily lend itself to moving fast, um, we have a lot of people that will encourage you to rethink that [LAUGHS]. Maybe a little competition thrown in there too [LAUGHS].

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah [LAUGHS] I'm, I'm good with some healthy competition, that's okay [INTERRUPTION] so, so you've, you've given us a sense of, of the environment, you've made a lot of progress, two years, uh, it sounds [INTERRUPTION] like your still in a journey but when you look back what do you think have been the most significant challenges?

Lauri Bingham

Well I think the most significant challenges just, uh, you know, the team or the project that tries it first, uh, that, that's always the hardest, uh, step in the process, uh, you know, being the first one out there, uh, to get all of the attention is, is not an easy place to be in, um, and I think, you know, the, the other challenge is, uh, recognizing that you might need to make some tweaks in the process, um, quicker and sooner in the process than you ever did before. So, it's that contra...constant, uh, retrospective that you need to include in the process, um, changing that habit of talking to the customers on a regular basis and getting their feedback on a regular basis and then reacting accordingly, that's not, that wasn't, um, you know, that wasn't a standard part of our process before and we've, we've had, uh, you know some stumbles along the way of not including the right stakeholders, even as we were doing retrospectives until the end and, and then a very significant stakeholder may look at the product and say, hey, wait a minute, did you think about this and everybody sighed and said no [INTERRUPTION], um, so, so, we still have some way to go, um, we still have some learnings to do but, but this organization is one that appreciates that and understands that and doesn't punish people for it which is fabulous, you know, they, they get excited when we have learnings and can, um, and can then, you know implement those in the next go round, so nobody is shamed, nobody is, you know, blamed, we don't have that kind of culture here, we have a, a ongoing culture within our organization of let's try it, let's try it, um, fast, let's learn from it and, and introduce those kinds of changes back into the process.

Stephen W. Maye

So, do people there view this, this move, this journey, this transition to a, a more Agile way of working, do they view that as a project?

Lauri Bingham

No I wouldn't say that we view it as a project, partly because it's, it's kind of the way our entire company is thinking, you know we are not only changing this within engineering and I.T and, and those kinds of disciplines but we are sending all of our managers to a class called, um, the Agility Shift so we want literally everybody in our entire organization to think in an Agile manner, um, it's a culture shift and change within the entire organization so, is it a project with a project manager like checking off, um, milestones? No, but everybody has to go to class and then everybody has a vocabulary that they can use to, to talk about things differently and, um, it, so, it, it's more of a program that we are kind of embedding within the organization, um, but no, not as, and I've worked other places that have run it like a project, um, [INTERRUPTION] but no, here at T-Mobile we're not.

Stephen W. Maye

What's the highest level in the organization that would pay any attention to it, that would ask about it, that would monitor where we are? Wh..Where does that go in the organization?

Lauri Bingham

Well, certainly our CTO, Neville Ray, um, [INTERRUPTION] knows about this and knows about it, um, from the engineering perspective as well as I.T organization. Our CIO, uh, Cody Sanford, reports to Neville as well, um, so, so he is very well versed in it and he's a former project manager which makes, um, conversations with us super easy, um, and so I would say he definitely and if he knows about it, then I'm gonna say, uh, Mr. Legere knows about it too [INTERRUPTION] so, all the way to the top.

Stephen W. Maye

Maybe I, I'll ask him about it on Twitter about that.

Lauri Bingham

Okay, you ask him, he'll tweet you back [LAUGHS]

Stephen W. Maye

He's very, he's very active, he's very active on Twitter.

Lauri Bingham

He is very active, he is, yes indeed.

Stephen W. Maye

He's, he's fun to watch.

Lauri Bingham

 And he's just like that in person too.

Stephen W. Maye

Is he really? I, I've never met him. I could, I, he comes through that way. He does come through sincere and you do think this guy would be just like this if you sat down to have lunch with him.

Lauri Bingham

Yeah, exactly. We talk an awful lot about, um, being authentic here at T-Mobile and I, I think that starts at the top [LAUGHS].

Stephen W. Maye

If you go back and think about where, uh, this move towards bringing Agile thinking, Agile practises, Agile, Agile approaches, uh, to projects at T-Mobile, it sounds like it goes beyond projects, the way your describing [INTERRUPTION] it. Who started it? Where did this begin, uh, T-Mobile?

Lauri Bingham

Yeah, um, I think it probably started in a couple of different pockets, all kind of simultaneously, so our, our EIT organization, um, so Enterprise I.T, um, started a couple of years ago by training all of the staff within I.T. on Agile principles, uh, in the engineering space, there have been, um, you know, different pockets of the teams have, you know, kind of tried it more organically, um, and then you know, all the way over into the business side of our, uh, of our business, whether it's the care and retail and even finance and H.R are all going through the Agility Shift classes for all of our managers, so they, they had some sort of, you know, impetus to trying out, um, that particular methodology within our manager classes, so I think it kind of started from multiple points, um, and is kind of bubbling all up together.

Stephen W. Maye

One of the things that you said became a challenge somewhere along the way was that there were times when leaders wanted, in your words, were "lock all sides of the triangle". Tell, tell me, [INTERRUPTION] tell me more about that.

Lauri Bingham

Sure. So, so this was not at T-Mobile [LAUGHS]

Stephen W. Maye

Oh, okay, I'm taking this back, I'm taking this back even further then, okay.

Lauri Bingham

Yes, a little bit, um, further back in my career but, but yes, it's, um, it's when, when the organization has gotten, uh, used to and trained on how a Waterfall project works and you can describe the scope and you can define the budget and the timeline all at the very beginning, uh, they get very used to being able to talk about projects that way at the very beginning, um, moving to an Agilemethodology was, uh, it was a very interesting conversation, uh, when they, uh, you know, had somebody present to them and say no, we want you just to give us a bunch of money and we'll come back in, you know six months and let you know what we built and [LAUGHS] that was, they, they, pretty much laughed us out of the room. It was, you know, they're trying to run a business, the idea of giving a project team a bunch of money and you, we'll let you know what we come up with in six months just doesn't really fit a good solid business model. So, at, at that particular organization we had to come up with a way of satisfying wanting to know all three of those aspects at the beginning but also being allowed to use Agile principles and methodologies, uh, to run the project and had to come up with a balance so we would do a def...what we called a define phase at the very beginning of the project, very Waterfall like, um, being able to come up with a very distinct set of scope, um, but then the development phase of the project was run with Agile principles and then we would flip back to Waterfall again at the very end of the project to make sure that we had operational turnover and training etc in a more Waterfall approach at the very end of the project so, so, in, in businesses that are, you know, very Waterfall at the first and trying to move to a Agile methodology, like moving from one to the next is a giant leap for some organizations and so you, that's, you know, it's through that experience that Ilearned, you have to tailor it for the culture of the organization. That particular organization was very, um, accounting focused and was very, um, concerned about the bottom-line and the cost of every project so budget was very important. Other organizations, like I've, I've worked in, um, you know, non-profit organizations, it, it's not that they aren't concerned about budget, it's just that they're more concerned about the quality of the project or the timeline of the project so different organizations care about different aspects of the project and you have to tailor your Agile implementation towards, um, what's important to that organization.

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah, yeah and thank you. I, when you had mentioned it before we didn't get a chance to go in-depth and just for, uh, some that may not be familiar, give us the, the 30 seconds on what you mean by the three sides of the triangle.

Lauri Bingham

Oh sure. So, three sides of the triangle, that's a PMI thing [LAUGHS] um, it's a scope on one side and budget on the other and timeline on the third and then usually quality is, you know, either around the outside or in the center, um, but, but being able to lock, what am I gonna get? How much is it gonna cost and when am I gonna get it and defining all three of those at the very beginning of an Agile project is, you know, because you haven't done all of that, the work that would tell you those answers at the very beginning because your, because your Agile and you’re doing in sprints, um, it was, it was a difficult thing to do at the very beginning.

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah. You also told me about, uh, a kind of lesson learned that you had around this idea of letting the data lead us to the answer. Tell me, tell me that story.

Lauri Bingham

[LAUGHS] sure. Um, this, this goes to, um, all of the folks out there who might be, uh, familiar with Six Sigma methodology [LAUGHS] so, uh, you know, it's, it's really important to let, uh, the, the data lead you to the answer. We, we have had, um, a scenario here, uh, in the last, just in the last couple of months where we've been trying to prioritize features so we have a list of features and we want to figure out, you know, which one's do we, you know, basically do first, second, third, um, and through that process there was lots of, uh, passion, uh, by multiple constituents, so we've got stakeholders in multiple organizations, um, that are all feeding in their requirements for the features and, uh, lots of passion, but it was more, uh, emotionally-driven, not necessarily bad emotions but, um, but it was anecdotally-related and not data-driven so we took some time to do some data analysis and figure out just some basic things like, what's the duration of the particular, you know, like how long does it take to do the process today? What's, you know, what's the start was and how long does it naturally take in today's world? Uh, how many times do we do it? So what's the volume of, uh, how many times we have to do this thing and then, um, what's the air rate or failure rate of how often we do it and it doesn't work. So those kinds of things and we talked in advance of having to actually talk about any of the features but we talked about the prioritization model in advance so that we said things like if it's, but you know we would want to prioritize something that has the longest duration first, um, things that may take six months to do, um, would come prior to something that is only a few minutes to do, um, we would also want to prioritize things that have the highest volume so if we do 10,000 of them every month we would want to, um, think about doing that feature first versus something thatwe only do once or twice a year, um, and same with the failure rate, if we have a failure rate of 50%, like, half the time it doesn't work well, um, we might want to prioritize that feature above all the rest and what was very interesting is when we finally got the data in front of us, people were surprised about one of the features that they had naturally put down, maybe five or six on the list, actually had the longest duration, the highest volume and the highest failure rate out of all of the features and they were like, wow, this is really helpful to have this data and, you know, of course I chuckled and said, yes, we're letting the data lead us [LAUGHS] and, and then it becomes a completely non-emotional and much more objective decision-making process, um, it was, it was a spectacular moment in my mind.

Stephen W. Maye

So it becomes the integration moment of Agile and analytics?

Lauri Bingham

Exactly. Yes.

Stephen W. Maye

Are there particular practices or a particular practice that has really stood out for you? If you were to say look this is the thing that more people have gotten value from or more projects have gotten value from than anything else, what, what would that be?

Lauri Bingham

Uh, listen to your customer [LAUGHS] like build a relationship and listen to the customer is by far the, the biggest change in all of the Agile methodology as, and it's kind of one of our principles, uh, here at T-Mobile to begin with anyway, it's like, and the, you know, that's what Legere does is he talks to the customers, that's why he's so active on Twitter is because he's trying to find out from the actual customers what they want and need, um, when it comes to Agile principles, that is, that is the biggest difference, is that suddenly the development team is right there with somebody who is, you know, we used to call them the business, um, they're, they used to be, you know, the organization that was over in the other building and the I.T organization or the engineering organization didn't necessarily talk to them on a regular basis. It's, it's that building of relationship that is ongoing and constant that changes the entire dynamics of the project.

Stephen W. Maye

Is there an end game in your mind or is it well, we're, we're doing a much better job applying Agile practices, we're leveraging this great principle of listening to the customer and engaging more effectively with the customer, so, that's great, let's do more of that? Or is there a, a point that you can see out there where you'd say, yeah, for us we've, we've accomplished the journey?

Lauri Bingham

Yeah, so, I, I guess I would answer that with no, it's always a journey, uh, you know, I don't, I don't think we will ever be done and, and I also think that, you know, by the time we get pretty far along in this journey, there will be, you know, some new fancy methodology that we'll get to use, you know, it's, um, it's a, it's an ever-changing, uh, kind of field and industry and, and we want tobe able to roll with the punches in, in anything that we do so, uh, no, I don't think that there is an end game, you know, there's just, there's gonna be more projects and [INTERRUPTION] the technology is constantly changing so, yeah, there may be a time when, when what we think of today as no, this will never be Agile because it has to be Waterfall, there may be a time when that technology completely flips around and suddenly it can be Agile too and, um, so as a result, no, I don't think it'll ever change, I think we will be constantly on this journey.

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah, yeah. I wanna drill in a little further into what you had identified as the sort of single highest leverage practice, this focus on customer, this more mature way of, in, thinking about engaging with and listening, uh, to the customer. What does that look like in your experience? So, when you think about a team that's doing that well, what are they actually doing?

Lauri Bingham

Well there's a lot of listening going on and, um, you know, it, it looks like there are very tight relationships between what, what would be called the customer and the developer and in the sense that when it looks real, like it's a really tight team that is doing it really well, you can't tell the difference between who is the customer and who is the developer. You know, like, they end upspeaking each others language and can understand each other in a whole new sense that if they hadn't have been on a project team together, they wouldn't have had before, um, it's, it's those long-term relationships that then get built so that then, when you have another project that's another, you know really hard project with a really hard, you know, short deadline, those relationships help to, uh, streamline the next project and you can get a whole lot more work done when you've had, you've already established those kinds of relationships so it's, it, it looks different in the sense that it's not a bunch of emails going back and forth to people that you don't really know and trust and, and understand well. It's, it's much more collaborative and understanding of where people are coming from.

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah. There was something else that you mentioned, uh, when you and I talked recently. You talked about this repeated process of learn, trial, learn. Describe what you, what you meant by that.

Lauri Bingham

Yeah, it's, it's just of the what I'm learning as I have now moved into an engineering space, it's the traditional try it, um, learn from it then, um, you know, reintroduce what you just learned into the next time that you do it. It's a natural part of the engineering cycle, uh, which I think there's a lot of I.T organizations that could probably leverage that on a, on a much more regular basis but again it's to be able to try stuff, learn from it quickly and be able to reintroduce those changes. It's, um, it's, it's just the natural way that this organization works which I find really exciting and really fun and sometimes it's really scary because we, you know, we do some crazy things sometimes, uh, but, but I think it keeps the energy fresh and, and like I said, it's, it's not aculture of blaming anybody because that thing didn't work. It's like, wow, what did you learn from that and being able to celebrate what you learned from the experience, rather than focusing on hey, that thing failed, um, it, it creates an, an opportunity for everybody on the team to be able to come up with what organizations may call dumb ideas but we're allowed to be able to explore those in a, in a much more supportive innovative way.

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah. You've been working across wireless, healthcare, scientific research, you've worked on the I.T side, you've worked on the engineering side, so you've had a, a pretty broad view of projects and programs and, and a lot of that in the midst of this journey into, uh, more Agile work practices. What have you learned about being effective in constantly-changing environments?

Lauri Bingham

Sure. Well, yeah, when you say it like that it sounds like I'm a little nutty [LAUGHS]

Stephen W. Maye

Just bold that's all.

Lauri Bingham

Yes, bold.

Lauri Bingham

Bold and courageous.

Lauri Bingham

[LAUGHS] so I think it, um, you know what excites me about all of those changes is the fact that there is constant learning going on, you know, I, I get really energized by learning something new and it may be a different industry, it may be a different discipline, you know, there's, there's always been project management in my head, uh, you know even before it was called project management so, so that's been a very constant but, you know, and we, we talk about this in project management that you can be a project manager for anything once you learn how to be a good project manager and, and I think my career probably is an, is a testament to that. You can change industries, you can change from I.T to engineering and all of those disciplines lend, you know support you well and support the projects well and support the people around you really well.

Stephen W. Maye

One of the things that I know about you is you've had, uh, a lot of involvement in organizations that help women to prosper in technology and in business. When you sit down with, uh, a young woman who is up and coming project manager, project leader, what's your best advice to her about how she's gonna flourish in the next decade?

Lauri Bingham

Um, I, I think the, the best advice that I can give, um, to any woman, and actually I would say this for anybody, um, it's, it's work really hard, you know, let, let the work that you’re doing shine because you’re doing a stellar job at your work, uh, that is the foundation of any of the job moves that I have made in my career, um, you know building that reputation of being really good at whatyou do is foundational for any career move, um, that you can have, you know decades letter, later. It's, it's really important to do your job well, um, be able to, to build teams well, to have all of those soft skills that we were talking about earlier, you know, you have to be a good leader, you have to be able to, you know, be empathetic with your team members, uh, you have to be able to lead them through very challenging, very hard times, uh, you know there, there were times as a project manager when, you know, I [LAUGHS] we had a, a project that was going wrong in the middle of the night on a weekend and it had to have one of the software developers come in and he had a small child that he had to bring with him to the office while I brought my oldest daughter [LAUGHS] who was a great babysitter to be able to support his, his little one [INTERRUPTION] and you know, you do what you have to in order to be able to make the project successful but it's because I knew him and I knew the, the challenges that he was gonna have in his personal life, you know, there's no, there's no separation between personal life and work life sometimes, you have to understand the whole person [INTERRUPTION] and, you know, making that journey together as a team, uh, makes it all worth it.

Stephen W. Maye

I know a few years ago Patrick Lencioni, in his book 'Three signs of a miserable job' cited one of those factors as, that people want to be known as people at work, they need to know [INTERRUPTION] that there's somebody there that understands them intimately as a person and I think that's part of what you're describing.

Lauri Bingham

Absolutely, yes. You said that very well.

Stephen W. Maye

Well thanks. We should give Patrick Lencioni credit for that.

Lauri Bingham

We should. [LAUGHS]

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah and with that, uh, Lauri Bingham gets the last word, Lauri, thank you. It has been a pleasure talking with you. I look forward to doing it again.

Lauri Bingham

Thank you so much.

Stephen W. Maye

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