David Julian Price - Workshop for Project Management Institute
David Julian Price leads a workshop on decision-making for project managers, covering why decisions don't get implemented and how cognitive styles like globals versus specifics affect outcomes. The session includes research from Harvard and Forbes, audience exercises with volunteers, and practical techniques to improve meeting productivity.
Chapters
Okay, and for the main event today, we have a very special guest. We're here to hear about decisioneering. That's the art and the science of decision-making. Nothing happens until a decision is made, and as project managers we know, especially in project management. But do you know that the decision is the best it can be? In this— in David's lively and entertaining presentation, you'll get some tools that you can use instantly to optimize your decisions in any situation, to make sure there's buy-in from all stakeholders, and do it all in an effective timeframe. Our speaker today is David Price. David Price shows organizations how to save thousands of dollars that never appear on your balance sheet lost through unproductive meetings and ineffective decision-making. David works with executives and managers to revolutionize their meetings, decision-making, and presentations to get more of the right runs on the board more quickly, save time, and make collaboration more effective. David's clients engage him to work out with them and get the results in in areas such as revolutionizing managing, organizing and running meetings, chairing meetings, record keeping, minute taking, governance for associations and not-for-profits, implementing decisions, collaboration, how to make presentations to boards, facilitations for teams, groups, and planning idea development and implementation, and facilitating masterminds groups to generate results. Since 1986, David has worked with large companies including Qantas, nonprofits, and small businesses all over the world from the USA to Dubai, as well as communities from One Arm Point to Barklydeen. Being a vexologist, David flies one of his 200 240 country or novelty flags each day, and also, as an aviation tragic, has a collection of scale models of aircraft he's traveled on.
Wow.
Dave has a personal daily goal: to make a total stranger laugh or smile. He achieves that almost every day, and I can say I'm pretty sure he'll achieve that today as well. I'd like to welcome David Price.
Thank you, Cole. Now, to my knowledge, I've only met one or two of you before, but I know something about all of you, and it is this: I know one of the first 3 or 4 decisions that that you made today. Now I can see some interesting smiles. What do you think it is that I'm referring to?
Breakfast.
Probably before breakfast.
Underwear.
Probably before underwear. Getting out of bed. Probably after getting out of bed.
Going for a wee?
Yes! Going for a wee. Now I'm not going to ask those of you who did not decide to do that to indicate because the rest of us will think there's something unusual about you. But let's focus on that decision. So you woke up this morning. What's the first decision you probably made bearing in mind that it's cold at the moment? Shall I get up? Yes, shall I get up? And then the next word is now. Or shall I stay in bed for a little while? First, who made that decision this morning and remembers consciously making the decision? Shall I get out of bed now or will I delay? Okay, so about half the room made that decision. Next decision?
What to wear?
Probably before what to wear was the— which one?
Toilet.
Yeah, the loo. Now, let's look at that one. Was it a decision? How many of you remember consciously deciding, I think I'll go to the bathroom? Not one of you, am I right? But how many of you went to the bathroom sometime in the first half hour of you getting out of bed? Probably all of you. So was it a decision? Then what was it?
Natural.
So it was just a natural thing that happened. So why wasn't it a decision? What makes something a decision and something not a decision? You've got a choice. Yes, and with choice there has to be what? Some— begins with an O.
Options.
Options, there has to be an option. But when it came to going to the loo, was there an option for you?
No.
No. So it wasn't really a decision. But here's the interesting thing. There is some research that's been done by Harvard. And how many decisions do you think they found the average person makes in a day. Now let's just clarify what the average person is. It's obviously not you because you are above average. But if you look at the person on either side of you, it's clear, isn't it? Perfectly clear. So the average person, how many decisions do you think they found? How many decisions do you think they make in a day?
200. 200? 2,000. 2,000? 10.
10 what?
Decisions.
10 decisions. They came up with 35,000 decisions every day. Now I am not here to say that's accurate and I'm not here to say it's bollocks. I don't know. But Harvard is pretty good at its research and how they came up with 35,000, I have no idea. But they did. But can we agree that we all make more decisions than we probably realise we do?
Yes.
Is that a fair comment, do you think?
Yes.
Okay. So my son at 2:21 on the 23rd of June, which is just 2 weeks ago, had a phone call. The phone call was from his settlement agent to say, Settlement has gone through on his first property at 22. Do you think he was pleased?
Yes.
Yes. At 2:22, he rang me. I was then pleased as well. So he bought his first property. What do you think went through his mind in buying a property at 22? So if you think this is a sit and listen to me session only, You've come to the wrong place. So, talk to the people next to you, next to you, and around you. What do you think things went through his mind in terms of deciding to buy the particular property he bought? Go. Just have a quick talk. You're not gonna do this for 10 minutes, just for 10 seconds. What went through his mind? I think he wanted to buy a property that was reasonably healthy.
Yeah, probably.
Would you buy a property that was unhealthy? Would you mind gathering the handouts from the chairs at the front and giving them to the people at the back? There is the paper and the card. Okay. What do you reckon? Call it out. What do you think went through his mind? Dad, leave me alone. OMG. Oh my God. Yes. What else? Someone said something about a loan.
Will Dad give me a loan?
Will Dad give me a loan? That was a really quick one, I can tell you. Yeah, he has to stand on his own 2 feet, our kids do. Anything else? What went through his mind? What should I buy? What will you buy? Okay, so that comes with the word you said before. Options. So what do you think his options were? What he can afford. Okay, so what did that create?
A need.
Well, it created other options, didn't it? Or it limited the options. Limited the options. OK. So his budget was up to $400. OK. So now what are the decision-making factors that go in? OK, where. What else? How big. So what. Where and what. Yeah, how big. What else? Can he get the money? Can he get the money? Yes. He'd already clarified that, but yes. Old or new, yep. Anything else?
Job security.
So there's a whole range of things. Now, I'm not trying to teach you to suck eggs here. We all know this, don't we? That there's a whole range of things that go into decisions like that. Would you agree that for most people, buying a property is probably the biggest single financial decision they make in their life? Probably. You know, and I'm not worried if there's people who disagree, but generally people would agree with that. Would you agree? Okay, so I'm gonna give you some data. This data might surprise you and this data comes from 2 sources. One is again Harvard University and the other is Forbes magazine. Forbes, you may know, commission lots and lots of research. Sadly, there's very little research done in these sort of areas in Australia. But here's the data that I wanna share with you.
What?
What percentage— and you may already know this if I sent out some information in advance, so you may already know— what percentage of decisions in organisations do you think are never implemented? Decisions that get made in organisations and never get implemented. What's the percentage, do you think?
A lot. A lot.
Now if I had Freddo Frogs with me, I'd give you one for that. So yes, it's a lot. Give me a figure.
75%.
Very close. 70%. Who said 70? Here is a Freddo Frog for you. There we are. There we are. So it's 70%. Who is surprised by that figure? Brad, you are? Why are you surprised? I don't personally believe I live by that mantra. I, I personally like to, to aim for fewer decisions and, and get them done rather than allowing so many to go unchecked. Yeah, okay. So why do you think it is that in, on average, 70% of decisions are never implemented? And by the way, they found it was up to 95%. They tracked one particular health system in Canada and they looked at all of the decisions that were made in that health system in a 12-month period and when they looked back, 95%— they just went through minutes of meetings and decisions— 95% of the decisions that were recorded were never ever implemented. Why do you think that is? Poor project management. Poor project management, and that's an interesting one because one would expect you people to have a lower percentage than that. Would that be a fair comment, do you think?
Yes.
Okay, I'd love to tell you that's true, but there's no evidence for it whatsoever because it's not up to you so much necessarily to do the implementation. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Is that a fair An accurate comment? Yep. So why do you think things don't happen? There's actually a very simplistic formula. There's only 3 reasons. It's sort of a decision.
Resistance.
Well, that's one of the causes. So I'll give you the 3. People either don't know what to do or people don't know how to do it or something or someone gets in their way. Which of those, the last 2, something or someone gets in the way? Which do you think it normally is? The last one. Someone. And who do you think that person nearly always is? Their immediate supervisor. Nearly always. So that's the simplistic view. Now those of you who are supervisors, how many of you are supervisors? You have people that answer to you. If you've got people who are poor performers, that's a really good formula to work out why they're poor performers. It's either they don't know what to do or they don't know how to do it or something or someone is getting in the way. It's a really good formula to do a bit of troubleshooting from the people who just aren't performing as well as you'd like them to. But it leads us into the area of where decisions are made. What is it, what is the phenomenon, what's the beast where most decisions get made? Begins with an M.
Meetings.
Meetings. Now, if you went and asked the people in your organisation, what is the productivity of the meetings in this organisation? What do you— the laughter preempted— who laughed? Yeah, so what am I going to say?
Very low.
Yes, the productivity of meetings is very low. Why is that? Meetings are not hard and yet in every organisation and I'm being broad there in saying every but in almost all organisations in the world, If you ask the staff what's the productivity of the meetings like, they say very low. Why? People come unprepared. They come unprepared. That's the biggest reason of the lot. People come unprepared. Now we don't have time tonight to go into that 'cause there's a million reasons for that. We'll touch on it but they come unprepared. But let's just link the two of meetings and decisions. Where do you think most decisions get made in organisations and it doesn't matter what type of organisation it is. It doesn't matter whether you're quality assured or whether you've got project managers coming out of the pores of your skin. Where do you think most decisions get made? And I mean geographically. And I mean microgeographically within the organisation.
Where?
So I'll give you a hint. Do you think they happen in the meeting rooms? In the coffee shop. They happen either in the coffee shop in today's world or in the corridor. Most decisions do not happen in the meeting room. But if you ask the average manager where a decision's made, where will they say?
Meeting room.
The meeting room. Why do they say that? Because it's the right thing to say. But they don't do it. They make decisions in the corridor. So we are in a completely secluded, confidential environment. And these video cameras that are here are Are fakes. They're not recording anything. How many of you know that's true in your organisation, that some meetings— decisions get made in the corridor? Very good. See, the video cameras have not captured any of that, don't worry. So we're going to edit that out, aren't we, Pete, the hands? So most decisions get made in the corridor. Let's follow it through. You're project managers, you're good at process. So what's missing in that decision? There's a crucial thing about the decision that's made in a corridor that's missing. A record of it. A record of it. Therefore— keep going, your project managers. It never happens. Why doesn't it? Because it's not recorded and everyone, if they're involved in it, remembers it maybe. But it's nearly always for someone else to do, but they weren't there at the corridor and it hasn't been recorded, so they don't know that anything has to be done. So what you've gotta do is really have a good hard look at where the decisions are really made. Now let's go onto some thin ice here now and talk about certain types of managers. Clearly not you. Clearly not you. But the person 2 rows behind you and twice across to the left is this one. So this is the manager who calls a meeting to justify the decision that has already been made by them. In the corridor. I'll run that by— it may be. I'll run that by you again. The manager who calls a meeting to justify the decision that they have already made themselves. themselves. Now none of you would do that but how many of you have ever been in an organisation where that clearly happens? You go to meetings for the boss to hear that, yes, that's a great idea, boss. Therefore, do you think those decisions are the best? Why not? They don't involve the masses really. The wisdom, the knowledge and the awareness of one person. And yet the meeting is designed to do what? Gather the experience, the wisdom, the knowledge, and the awareness of a whole group of people, put that into a melting pot, stir it up, and come up with the best decision. But how often does that happen? Would you agree that that's relatively rare? Would you agree that most meetings you go to to make decisions, you know before you arrive, if you're not the chair, what the decision is going to be. Is that the case or not? Half of you are nodding, half of you are looking at me blankly. Okay, but that's what happens. That's what all the research shows. Most people know. Now, the average person that goes into that sort of meeting where they know what the decision is going to be, what do you think they contribute?
Nothing.
Nothing. Why? Because they've learned To keep their mouth shut. But the manager then goes away and says, my team agrees. But they don't. But they did. But they didn't. Can you start to see the confusion? So I'm now about to give you one of the secrets to human life. Are you ready for it? I talked to Cole earlier today. We had lunch. He paid.
PMI paid.
With PMI funds, so you paid. Thank you. We discussed tonight's presentation and we discussed that it would be really good to do a follow-up to this presentation. Cole agreed that it would be great to do that and he also let slip that PMI is flush with funds And so he agreed that we will have a follow-up to this in March next year in San Diego. PMI will pay for everyone who's here in the room to go to San Diego in March for this particular follow-up. It's what we talked about, wasn't it? It's what we agreed. Say yes, Col.
Yes.
I want you to imagine now that we are flying to Los Angeles because that's where we have to go to get to San Diego. How many of you have been to San Diego? Okay, so you'll know that you need to go through LA and then we need to probably drive down to San Diego. So we've landed in Los Angeles. You're in the car park in a rental car and you are sitting in the passenger seat. And someone is coming along giving things to other people in the rental cars in the passenger seat. And when you get yours, you see that it is 2 maps. One map is very, very clearly labelled Map of Southern California, how to get from San Diego— from, sorry, from LAX to San Diego. From Los Angeles to San Diego. The other map is very clearly labeled Map of LAX. Now those of you who've been to LAX, you know you need a map to get out of there, don't you?
Yeah.
To get to the right freeway to get to San Diego. Now you can look at either map, it doesn't matter which, but you will— something will make you decide To look at one map or the other. The map of Southern California or the map of LAX. You decide right now which map you will look at. So imagine you're sitting in that rental car and you're now deciding which map you're going to look at. How many of you will look at the map of Southern California? Can you put your hand up? In fact, can you stand up? If you're gonna look at the map of Southern California, just stand up so that we can see if you're gonna look at the map of Southern California. I'm gonna look at the map of Southern California. Okay, so you people are what we call globals and I'll explain that in a minute. The people sitting down, you look at the map of LAX, you are what we call specifics. So have a seat and I'll explain it to you and this is the secret to life as we know it. The population is divided roughly 50/50 into specifics and into globals but it's not a A clear dichotomy. It's not clear-cut. It's a continuum. So I'm gonna call people who are specific 1 and I'm gonna call people who are global 10. But it's actually a continuum. So there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. So the midpoint is what's important. So in the exercise we just did, those of you who stood up are on the right-hand side, 6 to 10. of the midpoint. Those of you who are sitting down are on the left-hand side of the midpoint. And I'm gonna show you how it works. So I need a volunteer. Look, there's one. Now this volunteer's name is Michael. Michael, do you have a hacksaw at home? Do you have a shed?
Yes.
Where is the hacksaw? On the shelf. On the shelf. Did you stand up or did you sit down?
Sit down.
You sat down. Ah, very interesting. So this is starting to show that that first test is not a definitive one because this answer is very much a global answer. On the shelf. You know, how many of you could find his hacksaw from that description? Well, if you knew where he lived, maybe. Okay? So that's— what number do you think? If 6 to 10 is global, what number answer do you think that was?
5.
No, it's probably about a number 8 answer. It's pretty global. Who knows that they would give a more specific answer? Okay, where's your hacksaw? It's in the middle cupboard in the garage on the 3rd shelf behind the—
Perfect.
Perfect. I love these people. Okay, so let's run it again. Do the whole thing again. Say it again. It's in the garage. In the garage. In the garage. It's in the middle cupboard.
Middle cupboard. Third shelf. Third shelf.
Behind the electrical box. Behind the electrical box. What number answer do you think that is? No, that's not a number 1. Need the address? It's probably about a number 2 answer, okay? Now, let's pick someone else. Who's got a frying pan at home? Very good. Where's your frying pan, Alison? It's on top of another frying pan in the corner cupboard. On top of another frying pan in the corner cupboard. What number answer is that? Yeah, I would say it's about a 4. Okay, nowhere near a 2. It's about a 4 answer. Okay, who knows they would give a more specific answer than that? Where's your frying pan? Where is your frying pan? 53 Liberty Drive, in the kitchen, thank you, under the microwave, bottom drawer. And does it have a handle?
Yes.
Which way is the handle facing? Towards the outer side. And it always is, isn't it?
Yes.
Now, let's— what's your name, sorry?
Dippity. Sipi? Dippity. Dippity.
D, you can call me D.
D.
If you were in a meeting with Dee and a meeting with Michael, they speak different languages. On any issue, they will speak different languages because Dee's answer was a number 1 answer. Okay? Your answer was about— I think I said number 8, didn't I?
Yeah.
Yeah, about a number 8 answer. So globals and specifics live on different planets. They speak different languages and they do not understand each other. And what I wanna do, if nothing else tonight, is give you an understanding of this because while I'm sort of joking when I say this is the meaning of life or the answer to life, it really is in many ways. There are so many problems that you can put down to the fact that people are on the other side of the midpoint to each other and that's why they don't see eye to eye. They're completely different. How many of you are engineers, have an engineering background? Very common in project management, of course. Your training was which side of the midpoint? The specific side. That doesn't mean you are specific, but your training was that way. Would you agree? Who do you think is trained to be on the right-hand side?
Politicians.
Salespeople. You're right. Marketing people tend to be global. But that's not universal. So it doesn't mean all engineers are specific and it doesn't mean all marketing people are global.
No.
But it does mean there's a tendency. So I'm gonna give you another few examples because if you're thinking that, okay, this is all very well but it's never been used on me, trust me, it has by almost every professional salesman or salesperson you've ever come across. So I need— can you all point to the ceiling like that please? Please, just like that. I need a volunteer. Oh look, here's one. Elsa. Elsa, I am a— could you stand up for a minute?
Okay.
I'm a bookshop. This is a bookshelf. And for some reason, this book has grabbed your attention. Okay? All I want you to do is imagine you're in a bookshop, take the— and I'm only showing her the spine. I want you to take this book off the shelf and do what you would do. Don't Don't talk. Just do what you would do if you were in a bookshop and this book grabbed your attention. She's a specific. Now, this is the secret that salespeople know. Who thinks they're global, by the way? OK. Chantelle? Same thing. Stand up. Take the book. Don't talk. Just do. There we are. She's a global. Thank you. Specifics always start at the front and look from the front. Globals always flick from the back. Always. Now— Depends whether you're Japanese or— It may do, but that's another night, okay? Kyle, book me in for another night to talk about that one. So this has been worked on you All your adult life. How many of you have got a financial planner in your life who sometimes comes and sits with you and talks to you about things? Okay. So when your financial planner, if they've really been trained to sell well, they'll come and sit down with you often at your kitchen table. They'll often suggest they sit at a table. Have you noticed that? Not in a lounge chair but at a table. And they'll nearly always sit at right angles to you. And they'll put a brochure on the table. And you think they're just putting a brochure on the table. They're not. They're testing you. Because the minute the brochure goes down, what will a specific do? Look at it. How will they look at it? Pick it up. Pick it up.
Screen it.
Where will they start looking? At the front. At the front. And they'll turn it over and a specific will do something that a global will never do. They'll read words. Globals don't do that. Globals like pictures. So you're the customer of your financial planner. You pick up the brochure and you start looking. They know you're specific. Now what happens then is the financial planner changes gears.
