Culture — Millennials in the Workforce

Transcript

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 Dana Brownlee, former Project Manager and Strategy Consultant and the Founder of Professionalism Matters Incorporated. We asked Dana to share her insights on creating highly effective working relationships between millennial workers and the generation before them. In addition to identifying a little-known relationship between helmets and piano lessons, Dana challenges the stereotypes, identifies behaviours and mindsets that work, and celebrates the killer app each group can offer the other. Dana, I've been looking forward to the opportunity to talk with you and it's a special privilege that we get to do it face-to-face since we're both here at the PMI Global Conference 2017, so thank you for taking some time out of your busy schedule here and sitting down with me.

Dana Brownlee

Thanks for having me!

Stephen W. Maye

Well, it's certainly my pleasure, and I love this topic. So you've agreed to sit down with us and provide some perspectives on millennials and millennials in the workplace, millennials in project management, really from both perspectives of those managing them and as millennials move into some of those leadership roles, and uh I think it couldn't come at a better time. With so many millennials in the workforce and continuing to enter the workforce, obviously it's a uh a critical piece of the workforce overall. So, with that in mind, let's pick up with this idea of, of really who we're talking about. So, you know, so a number of researchers have kicked this question around. The Census Bureau actually doesn't recognise millennials as a group, as a standalone group, but there are those that have published some numbers around it so I think we're gonna go with Neil Howard, sorry Neil [Howe] and William Strauss, who, first of all, called millennials the next great generation; [LAUGHS] I might get your thoughts on that in a moment. But they defined the group as those born between 1982 and 2004, so that's kinda who we're talking about so, for me, that means I have one child who is and one child who isn't. Uh we'll see if they turn out differently. Um, but with that group in mind, w-what do you think is the big difference? If we accept that there are some differences for that generation generally, we are painting with a broad brush, what's the big difference?

Dana Brownlee

I think that, again as you've alluded to, we have to be careful because, of course, we want to treat everyone as an individual and, as much as we talk about distinctions, there are always exceptions. But, for me and my experience and my work with clients and as a trainer, I see four significant uniquenesses or characteristics. First one is, think about it, these millennials have grown up with what I would call a very different parenting style; it was not that, "Hey, go out and play and come back when the lights go, [LAUGHS] you know the st... the street lights go off and whatever you do in the interim you're on your own."

Stephen W. Maye

Right. Yeah, I've had so many of my friends say, "My parents didn't know where we were."

Dana Brownlee

Exactly. [LAUGHS]

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah.

Dana Brownlee

I have to tell my husband, "Well, just 'cause you did it didn't mean it was a good idea!" [LAUGHS] But, so they've had a very, very different parenting style; it's that, you know, you've gotta have a helmet on while you're playing the piano and everyone, [LAUGHTER] you know there are no grades and everyone is great and, you know, you're not [INTERRUPTION] struggling but you're just doing it differently and, [INTERRUPTION] and different is great and [INTERRUPTION] everyone gets an A. And so with that sort of helicopter parenting, now they're being thrust into this corporate jungle! And, in their defence, that can feel fairly stark and, and it can feel very, very different. I'm actually reminded...I'm thinking about a client that I had one time who literally told me that this one millennial who was on her team just couldn't get to work on time! And after a while of talking to her, the, the person's mother actually called her [LAUGHS] to say, "Well, you know, she never could get up in the morning and so you really need to be a little bit more lenient with her, because that's just the way she is." [INTERRUPTION] And so, you know, one, just that parenting [INTERRUPTION] style, makes a, a huge difference in terms of what their expectations are of themselves and of the world. And then secondly, let's think about how companies have changed. You and I probably came up in a time where things were very hierarchical, almost militaristic. I mean, you had these huge org charts on everybody's desk and you knew who reported to who and, um, you did things pretty much because your boss told you to do it! And you didn't have a whole lot of questions and didn't need a whole lot of background on it, you just did it because you were told to do it, and there's been a lot of shift away from that. And, and I'm not saying that's bad, but that shift has been towards servant leadership and bottom up and it's okay to question. And, again, I say that a lot of those shifts have been good, however, we cannot look at them um in an extreme fashion and a lot of times we make the ex... we have the expectation that they might have a context that they don't necessarily have. I mean, let's look at, for example, even, you know, our President is tweeting things out because he wants direct contact with the, the average Joe Q walking down the street. But then they might think, 'Okay, if I have a question it's okay for me to tweet it to the President of the company,' or, 'it's okay for me to pick up the phone and call my boss's boss without talking to my boss first.' So just that whole concept of hierarchy, I call it organisational savvy, a lot of times they may not have and they may need someone to kind of walk with them and provide them that, that coaching of kinda the informal rules of the workplace: something that they may not have learned in college. A third difference that I see is just this whole concept of work-life balance! A lot of times I know I've worked with a lot of millennials who just have a whole completely different expectation about what their day looks like, you know, being able to telecommute on Mondays and Fridays, having a four-day work week. And, again, those aren't necessarily bad things, I think that a lot of those are positive trends that we see in the workplace, but I think what's difference is I literally remember working for a major company when the whole concept of a four-day work week came up, or being able to telecommute. It was a big deal! We had to actually write a business case, we had to have a trial, just to ensure that work would not suffer if we moved to this new paradigm! Well now fast-forward 20 years and it's an expectation! People are sitting in their interviews for companies saying, "Well I need to, you know, work from home on Mondays and Fridays, is, is that gonna be a problem?" And so that distinction makes a huge difference in terms of what the project output might look like! If someone is looking at this not as a privilege, but as a right or as an expectation, then I think that's setting ourselves up for some difficult conversations to come in the future. And then finally, a major difference that I see, is just the communica... the expectations around communication. I mean, let's be honest, I mean so many millennials just are not as used to the face-to-face conversation, even the phone conversa... even the phone conversations. So much more is happening over text, over IM, over uh social media, things like that. And when we talk about projects and project management, relationship building is so important. And I talk about selecting the right communication mode in so many of my training classes, and customising your communication mode depending upon the situation and depending upon the person you're communicating with. And if you're coming from a paradigm where 90 percent of your communication is online or is on your...or is through your phone, but you're being called or you're being presented with situations that really do require that face-to-face communication or picking up the phone, getting away from the email volleyball that's gone on for three weeks, and actually picking up the phone to call Sam to work it out, or walking across to Starbucks to really try to work through this issue, instead of kinda hiding behind texts or social media, that can cause some issues as well so I would say the communication mode choices I, I see as a fourth issue.

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah. Oh, I appreciate that and I think that's a, I think it's a great way to kind of put a ribbon around a lot... uh what a lot of the key issues are. I-If I am in the workforce today as a, and let's just, let's just draw a scenario here, so, uh, middle-aged-ish, um and I'm managing a large project, I'm working in a, and it doesn't have to be Fortune 100 but I'm working in a fairly large corporate environment, so I'm not in a 12-person, garage-based start-up, and I have more and more and more millennials coming in, more and more that are either already on my team, that are joining my team, some of...some of them actually have been in the workforce for a while. But if we think about some of those that are relatively new or entirely new to that corporate environment, if I'm a project manager, really any manager, where am I likely going to need to make the first, um, accommodation or the first adaptation to how I lead?

Dana Brownlee

I think that some of the first things that need to happen fall in the bucket of awareness and relationship-building. So first of all, we, just as human beings, tend to think the way we think and we think that everyone thinks the way we think! So we think that we have a much more homogeneous team than we do and the reality is there's so much more diversity on our teams today and that probably will only increase. So the first step is just having this level of awareness that people are different and they're coming from a completely different perspective. I had a guy who came up to me in one of my training sessions one time who worked for an airline and literally [LAUGHS] said to me that he couldn't believe it that someone on his team kinda pulled him aside, one of the younger people on his team, and said that he needed help making a phone call! And he looked at him and said, "Well, well what do you mean?" And he said, "Well, I've never actually used a desk phone, so I don't [INTERRUPTION] know how to use it!" So how many of us in our forties and fifties would look at him crazy because we've just never thought about it from that perspective? And then he actually went on to tell me, "Hey, I told him, hey step one, you pick up the receiver. Then you're gonna hear this [INTERRUPTION] weird noise that you may not have ever heard before. It's called dial tone."

Stephen W. Maye

That's good. Yeah.

Dana Brownlee

But you never really thought about the fact that it is a different process than when you're using a mobile device so step one for me is just having that awareness and being open [INTERRUPTION] to taking extra steps or doing things to try to address.... We talk about the upside of diversity. Well, you know, I don't wanna say there's a downside, but there's some certain steps that we might need to take to accommodate the diversity so that we have that cohesive team. And then another step right after awareness, I say is relationship-building. The biggest mistake that I see, with the four generations being in the workplace at the same time, is we break off into cliques. [INTERRUPTION] I mean and sometimes it's not just about age. I mean sometimes it's the smokers, the smokers are outside all huddled [INTERRUPTION] [LAUGHS], you know, smoking and so they become a clique or the people from [INTERRUPTION] New York or whatever it might be. But I do think that we tend to break off into our cliques and, if anything, that exacerbates the situation, so it reinforces negative stereotypes, itdoesn't allow us the opportunity to really get to know one another and learn from each other! There are amazing skills and talents. You mentioned possibly the greatest generation. Amazing skills and talents that these millennials bring! So we need to use that, we need to have a more symbiotic relationship. And I'll just give you a, a wonderful, tiny, tiny example. When I was doing...When I was ori... having a orientation session being on-boarded to a major Fortune 200 company, they actually paired us up t... into pairs um and assigned us rental cars. And so instead of...So for an entire week I had a partner that I had to, you know, ride in every morning with and ride back every evening. Now this person was probably 25, 30 years my senior. [INTERRUPTION] I probably otherwise would have never gotten to know him at all [INTERRUPTION]. I would have just huddled with the other young people [INTERRUPTION] in the group and talked to them about the cool stuff. But I rode in with him and rode back with him every single morning for five days. I actually got to know the man! I mean he [INTERRUPTION] was my parents' age but, guess what, [INTERRUPTION] I got to know him, I got to like him. You know a lot of times they teach 'know me, like me, trust me!' [INTERRUPTION] We all know how important trust is for an organisation. It's hard to trust a person you don't like and it's hard to like a person you don't know, so it all starts with being very intentional about breaking up those cliques and creating opportunities for people who might come from different generations to actually get to know each other, and from there you can do some amazing things.

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah, so w-we kinda moved into this space of talking about how someone as a manager who's outside of that millennial band needs to think about their priorities for adapting, for accommodating, and you talked really about this idea of first recognising that these are still individuals. You know we may think of people in particular groups, uh but in that there's still an incredible level of diversity and they're still individuals, so there's adapting to that or, or being aware of that. You moved also to this further awareness of the people and then building that awareness through relationship building. I think that's fantastic. Now we place most of that on the responsibility of the manager and for the person who's likely more senior, which is exactly what I ask you. I wanna turn it around though. So if I'm now the young person, I'm in my twenties, I may have some work experience but maybe I'm coming into my first real corporate job, and I'm coming into the f... the first time that I've really been in that kind of a structure and that kind of an environment. Where am I likely to need to make the first accommodations or the first adaptations to be successful there?

Dana Brownlee

I think that first of all it's so astute to acknowledge that responsibility lies on both ends. I mean you're not gonna be successful with this as, as the project manager or the manager if you assume that you are the full and complete solution, so both parties really need to shift in terms of expectation setting and, and really kinda pull, pull their weight. So from the other side of the coin, the millennial side, first of all I think there really needs to be a mental shift in terms of expectations. The reality is, their life and their lifestyle coming from wherever they came from, most of them coming from a college sort of environment, to this corporate sort of environment, it's a completely different environment! Not unlike if you move from one sort of company to a different sort of company culture, there's an adjustment that needs to happen there mentally. There should be an acknowledgement that when you move into a different environment, the onus is on you, largely, to adapt to that environment. And so I think that that is one of the, the big shifts that, that needs to happen is, one, really making an attempt to get up to speed, to say, "Hey, what's my corporate culture here? What's okay? What's not okay?" I've consulted lots of different...I've worked in, you know, very kinda button-up, stodgy sorts of cultures, and then I've worked in s... with some media companies where people had blue hair and piercings and [LAUGHS] I promise you, they were very, very different cultures [INTERRUPTION] with very, very different norms, so I think that a large part of the responsibility of millennials is to really acknowledge where they are and what shifts need to happen from an expectation perspective. Um another big thing that I think really falls on them from an onus perspective, is really learning to take feedback well, okay? One of the biggest litmus tests that I use for younger employees or team members is not just how well do they do on a particular task, but how well do they take correction, how well do they take feedback, because I promise you if I get someone who takes feedback really well and then I can tell they internalise it, they didn't, you know, fall down in a puddle and cr... you know cry and start getting super-defensive and turning it around and saying it's about me and, and all that, if I don't have to go through those drama and theatrics, that's someone that I can work with much better, um and so for me I really look at, you know, how do you take that feedback. The analogy I use is like with a boxer. Boxing is not just about, you know, giving punches but it's also about can you take a punch, [INTERRUPTION] and that really says a lot about you. Maybe that's not the best [LAUGHS] analogy, but that really says a lot about you in terms of your longevity from a, from a career management perspective. It's those people who know how to take that feedback in a very, very positive way without getting, um, completely defensive, without letting it demoralise them, and then they use that as fuel to really make themselves better, so I think that learning that early on is absolutely key.

Stephen W. Maye

And we did, we did check and to date Dana Brownlee has never punched a client. [LAUGHTER]

Dana Brownlee

Thank you. Thank you for that disclaimer.

Stephen W. Maye

She's never punched a client or, or a team member so that's uh, that's to her credit. Um. No, thank you for that and I, and I appreciate what you've drawn out here. You've really underscored the idea that, that this successful working relationship as we have, as you said, multiple generations in the workforce today and people are staying in the workforce longer, which means that's getting spread out even more, people are working alongside others that are literally young enough to be their grandchildren, and that it's not about one group adapting to the other, or one group accommodating the other, it's really uh reciprocal! What do you think is the, the more positive scenario for getting the most parti... productivity and the greatest satisfaction for millennials?

Dana Brownlee

I think the best scenario for millennials is, really for everyone, is having a more balanced policy. I think that we're, and when I say balanced I mean to use programmes like work from home, f-four-day work week, telecommuting, virtual office, things like that, where it actually really makes logical sense, as opposed to over-reacting, possibly, to saying, "Oh, oh my God, there's a stat saying that, you know, millennials have to have this and so now we're just gonna, you know, move to some crazy scenario where everybody can work from home, you know you don't have to have any justification." And so what I think you tend to find is the pendulum may be swung too far in one direction, and so now there's being a course correction which might swing a little bit too far in the other direction. When I was starting and we were actually writing business cases about a four-day work week and, and telecommuting, we looked at the benefits and the cost and, guess what, they didn't apply equally to everyone and every situation! There's some sorts of roles, maybe the IT people, it made a lot more sense for...that they could do it from home; they weren't client-facing, a lot of the work that they did really required concentration, so that made a lot more sense. But now I have clients who are really struggling with this, where they say, "Well my friend who's in another department, he gets to work from home three days a week. Why can't we?" And so you can see just in the asking of that question the paradigm is completely different.

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah.

Dana Brownlee

Telecommuting is no longer a privilege; now it's being viewed as an expectation! Kinda like [INTERRUPTION], "Well my friend Jonny can do it, why can't I do it?" [INTERRUPTION] And companies have to be really careful about setting policy based on trends, okay? That's probably why um uh, I don't know, fidget spinners were, were such a trend and now I see like everyone's got all these leftover [LAUGHS] fidget spinners because that's kinda fizzled out at this point, so you can't really let trends set policy. I think we need to go back to looking at things like telecommuting, working from home, four-day work week, as wonderful opportunities, but let's look at implementing them where they make sense, to the extent that they make sense and let's be very clear with all of our employees about how that's being rolled out, okay, so it's not [INTERRUPTION] being viewed as this privilege that I should just have just because I'm breathing and I'm wal... I'm, I'm working, I'm working in your space.

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah. Yeah. And so thank you for that. And I wanna ask you about something specific. So, as I listen to uh to the sort of pundits around this topic, around how to best manage millennials and what millennials are looking for in the workforce and in a work environment and what their priorities are, one of the things that keeps coming up is this, this connectedness, a kind of connectedness, and some have argued that it's a, that it's a different kind of connectedness than maybe, than maybe other generations have experienced, but the way they pay attention to each other. You know they're more likely to share their salaries and they are highly connected throughout the day through social media and so forth, all these kinds of things, so w... what does that say? Does it say anything about the work environment? In other words, if I, if, if I comment that as my life experience to this point, d-does your experience and the clients you're encountering tell you that they tend to be more satisfied as a group, and we are talking broad strokes here, but generi... generationally do they tend to be more satisfied if they can sit in a big, wide, open room and see their friends, or uh or have the flexibility of working from home?

Dana Brownlee

I love that question. I think that in a lot of ways millennials really are pushing us to do what we should have been doing all along, so I completely agree with that. What I tend to hear is, echoing a lot of what you're hearing, is that in a lot of ways they want job satisfaction! They want to feel like they're making a difference. They want true and authentic f-feedback. So again let's contrast this with our grandfather or maybe even our father, you know, and when he went to work in the coalmines, you know, I don't think he was [LAUGHS] necessarily focussed on, you know, his individual personal job satisfaction, he did that because he needed a cheque! [INTERRUPTION] And so in a lot of ways I don't think it occurred to them in previous generations to connect your work and your work-life with your personal satisfaction and so a lot of, in a lot of ways I think millennials are forcing us [INTERRUPTION] to ask that question, or forcing us to say that yes you should be deriving satisfaction from your work-life and shouldn't that make sense, and so a lot of that I think makes complete sense. I just think that we as managers can't necessarily... we shouldn't um run off halfcocked just because someone asks for X or Y, um or over-react or over-respond to one particular person's request; we always have to look at that within context and we always have to be careful about setting policy. So when it comes to things like, you know, really wanting and receiving tangible feedback and coaching, really wanting development, wanting to feel like we're making a difference, all of those things, I think that they're wonderful and I think they absolutely should happen. But the reality is, the other side of that coin, is there probably does need to be some messaging that sometimes I think we assume that people understand, but they may not which is, "Hey, most of what you do in your job is not necessarily that you love it, that you jump out of bed and wanna do it, but it's because you have to do it!" It's the same conversation I have with my eight-year-old, and, and to be honest I have a little bit of frustration with her school, where they don't have any homework, so [INTERRUPTION] I'm, I'm like, "Well, but part of what I'm trying to teach her as a parent is that there's some work that you need to do when you get home from school, because you just have to do it, because you're a student, because you're eight, okay, and then after you do that you get to play."

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah.

Dana Brownlee

And so, of course, what do I do? I'm popular. I create her own homework! [INTERRUPTION] Nobody else in her class has homework but her! [INTERRUPTION] But there's that lesson there, because I, guess what, if she continues to go through life thinking [INTERRUPTION] that, 'Okay, when you get home you just get to play and do whatever [INTERRUPTION] you want,' there's not this concept of, "Well no, you have to do what you need to do [INTERRUPTION] in order to get to do what you want to do," and I think that's an important lesson to learn and sometimes when we don't learn it, when we're eight and we're ten and we're 18, [INTERRUPTION] then we get into the workplace and we think that, 'Oh, a hundred percent of what I do all day should feel meaningful and it should be because I choose to do it and it should be the perfect fit with, you know, my interests and my skill set." Yes, that should be a goal, but there also is the acknowledgement that sometimes it's just work that has to be done and there's [INTERRUPTION] a piece of it that we just have to do.

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah. Yeah. I have a 12-year-old that would enrol at your daughter's school tomorrow given the choice, I'm, I'm sure.

Dana Brownlee

[LAUGHS] I know. We all would!

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Dana, we talked a little while ago about this idea of being on the side of the equation of, of welcoming millennials into the workforce, welcin... welcoming them into our teams, into our companies, uh from the perspective of someone who is older than that generation. We also talked about the, the millennial's perspective of coming in, new, or relatively new, to teams in-into to the workforce to corporate settings uh under the direction or management or leadership uh of people that are, that are older than them, by definition uh outside of that millennial band. I wanna go back to that but with a little bit different focus. So if I am that person who is older than that, I'm in a position of leadership, I am welcoming millennials into my team, into my company, into my organisation, what should light up for me? And I know we're talking in broad strokes here, but what should light up for me? When I see that kind of age band walking through the door, then what is that thought where I should be saying, "This group brings something special"? What is it? What's the special? What's the killer app?

Dana Brownlee

Certainly. Well I think the obvious thought is technology; is that they, you know, they live, they breathe it, they j... You know it's, it's funny how they look at [LAUGHS] the types... You can tell how old you are by what technology you use so I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn so I'm officially old. [LAUGHTER] And so, ask my husband, who has sisters who are [INTERRUPTION] much younger, and so when I ask them what technology they use, literally things I have not heard of, okay. [INTERRUPTION] I have not even heard of these things. I have no concept of them.

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah, they're, they're apps with made up words and, yeah, uh, uh sure. Yeah.

Dana Brownlee

[LAUGHS] Exactly. But they're talking a completely different language and, [INTERRUPTION] guess what, they're talking to each other, so if I'm [INTERRUPTION] trying to reach them in any sort of way I'm probably not gonna do it in Facebook and LinkedIn! So the first obvious thing is they're tapped in to an entire network that many of us are not. From a technology perspective I mean they just bring a wealth of knowledge, comfort, familiarity, so I think that that's obvious. The other element, and I think that this doesn't sound earth-shattering but it really can be, is that they bring a completely new, fresh perspective. In some ways they're a blank slate. They're not constrained by the way we've always done things or the way they've happened in the past, a new, fresh perspective, a [INTERRUPTION] new way of thinking about things, so I think that those things are, are just going to be huge in terms of what they bring. And then I just also have to say one of the first things I'd advise project managers, again of course don't make assumptions, but meet with people individually. When I had new people join my team I would always meet with them individually and I would ask them just all kind of things. I would ask them, "Hey, are you a morning person or a evening person? You know what's, what's better for you? What...If I were to reward you for doing a great job with something, what reward would be most meaningful for you?"

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah.

Dana Brownlee

And I promise you it varies dramatically!

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah. Yeah.

Dana Brownlee

There's some people where you could give 'em an extra assignment or a trip somewhere and that would be a punishment! But for someone else that would be a reward so figure out what really gets them or what's more motivating for them. And so I would ask them, you know, "Where do you see yourself in five years? What are you truly interested in? If you weren't doing this what would you rather do?" The more you can, going back to good to great, get them on the right seat on the bus, the easier a time you're going to have in terms of motivation, so trying to find that fit, trying to give them meaning is huge. So I would certainly say, yes, they bring a lot, I think the technology is gonna be huge, the fresh perspective, but I would also say, you know, just get to know them as a person because [INTERRUPTION] that's going to be huge as well.

Stephen W. Maye

Yeah. Yeah. So we are totally out of time. Thank you uh Dana for, for being so flexible. I wanna ask you one more thing before you take off. Is this a direction that makes sense for young people coming in to the workforce, in terms of gaining project management skills, whether or not they're gonna put that on their business card? I know you've, you've talked about and written about this topic before so I'm interested to get your kinda summary around project management skills for folks that are young and entering the workforce or working their way up. Where do you come down on that?

Dana Brownlee

I absolutely think their project management skills are so critical. In fact, I've even spoken with my graduate school a few times about trying to build some sort of project management curriculum into their, their NBA programme because I feel like it's missing! What I starkly remember, as a new Strategy Consultant with IBM, is they put me on these projects and they were high profile and a, a, a lot of money is involved, and when I think about the curriculum, I mean the NBA curriculum was amazing, but so much of what I needed, the skill set that I needed, really came back to project management! It wasn't Porter's Five Forces or the 7S model or, you know, any of that stuff that I felt that they were kinda infusing in us, it was the fundamentals of managing a project. And actually, you know, one of the topics that I talk about when I teach a, a class about managing millennials and working in a multi-generational workplace, and actually I have a little flyer that I'm showing you [LAUGHS] right now, that says, you know, 'Dana's top ten tips for early career professionals.' And tip number four is there are just certain skills that you may not have learned but you absolutely need to be successful. Tip number four, learn how to manage a project! Learn how to lead a meeting, really well! You probably didn't have formal training on that but, guess what, that's at least half of what you're going to do day-in and day-out in a corporate environment! So project management is not just for the construction industry, it's for everyone! My husband is a physician and I work in healthcare quite a lot and almost everyone I bump into says, "Oh, well we need that!" You know well [INTERRUPTION] everyone does. So unfortunately, it tends not to show up in a lot of academic curriculums, but in terms of real work-life success or success in the workplace, project management skills are absolutely critical.

Stephen W. Maye

Fantastic. And with that, Dana Brownlee gets the last word. Dana, it's been a pleasure!

Dana Brownlee

Thank you so much!

Stephen W. Maye

I could do this, I could do this all day! Thanks for being here!

Dana Brownlee

Thank you. It's been great.

Stephen W. Maye

I look forward to next time.

Dana Brownlee

Thanks. Bye-bye. [MUSIC]

Stephen W. Maye

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