Speaker 1  1:01  
Hello and welcome to today's webinar project management to build a compete for and manage complex multi party consortium grants presented by Autumn. My name is Melissa Weber autumns professional development director and I will be your staff host today, all lines have been muted to ensure high quality audio, and today's session is being recorded. If you have a question for the presenter, please we encourage you to use the q&a feature on your zoom toolbar. If you have a technical question or comment, please feel free to use the chat. Should you need closed captioning during today's session, the Zoom live transcript feature is turned on and available on your toolbar. Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to welcome or to acknowledge and thank autumns online professional development sponsor, Marshall Gerstein, IP, we truly appreciate your ongoing support. And now I'd like to welcome today's presenter. Ian McClure is the Associate Vice President for Research innovation and economic impact for UK innovate the University of Kentucky, where he leads efforts to translate UK discoveries for the public good. Seek equitable returns on UK intellectual property, develop innovative approaches to develop fund and support opportunities for near stage research. The grant funding funding to enhance UK investment in innovation and expand industry and other collaborative research programs with UK research and in Kentucky more broadly. He was the executive director of the UK office of technology commercialization, where he oversaw a team of staff managing the university's innovation, intellectual property and startup portfolios. Ian is the immediate past chair of autumn, a board member of Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation and advisory board member for the Oak Ridge Innovation Institute, and co founder and advisor to Kentucky commercialization ventures. Ian has successfully built and sustained innovation and entrepreneurship programs with grant funding. He has been a key eye or CO eye on 34 million in grant awards, all of which are multi partner projects, including six federal awards from the NSF, EDA and NIH, and began his career as a market mergers and acquisitions and intellectual property transactions attorney. Following private practice, he helped build a startup company in Chicago IP exci. That was the world's first financial exchange for IP and technology rights, which he led through product development, capital raise proof of concept and growth to 30 plus full time employees and two offices. Welcome. And we are so excited to learn from you today.

Speaker 2  3:59  
Thank you, Melissa. And I am going to share my screen. I have some slides to share today. When we put this into presentation mode, I want to thank everybody for joining me when I had the idea to to present this. It was really in the context of autumns recent investment in a focus around grants management, that the the tech transfer profession is sort of new to and, you know, I think it's it's critical that that the association is supporting the profession as this sort of tidal wave of new grants, expectations are being put on us. And in the construct, I sort of said, well, I'd like to do a webinar around project management as really, it's one of the most important aspects of what we're being asked to Do Neuilly with all of the federal awards that are coming our way, including even state grant opportunities to support technology transfer. Almost all of these require multi party complex interdisciplinary team building. And there is one skill set really that is, well, there's many, but the one that is overarching that, that is required for capitalization or optimization of these opportunities, which is simply project management. Project management is not just sort of a term of art, right? This is a field in and of itself. Project management is a certified profession, just like technology transfer is a set of skills a, a, a knowledge base, and a an approach, even a scientific approach that is required to really do it best. And to do these multiparty hybrid team building exercises that are required to put together competitive grant proposals and then manage awarded grant projects, like things like the NSF art program, and SF engines, these tech hubs, these large in age reach hubs, all of these that require interdisciplinary teams, it all requires project management. So what I thought I would do is hopefully, this is a productive exercise for all of the all of us, and everyone joining here today, I recognize that the attendees that will be here, probably some very new to the grants, pursuit process, and some are seasoned veterans, and are very good yourself at attracting awards. But not every tech transfer office is of the same set of experience and doing this, some have done it a ton and are very good at it. Some are new to it, and are just getting into this process with these new grant programs, targeting technology transfer, to lead them. So with that, let me just jump in a bit about my own just background. Melissa talked about my my background generally, but as it as it specifically relates to multi party Team building for grant projects, I thought I'd give a quick snapshot. In my entire career, I've hired over 60 people. And in every one of those positions, it's truly interdisciplinary organizations that I've worked in, and or service based organizations that work with many types of companies. And so I think that has actually a lot to do with with team building, and the interdisciplinary nature of of these teams and these projects. I've executed many multi party transactions and projects from patent pools, to strategic alliances, industry consortia. And then now and even federal federally funded grant projects. As Melissa mentioned, I'm a co RPI on nine different state and federal grants, six of those being federal grants, but every single one of those is a multi party project. And in many cases, as many as 50 to 60 partners. And in almost every one of those more than three or four partners. Those total now over 36 million in total funding, but very notably 13 million. So almost almost a third of that are grant dollars that actually came to my institution here at UK, that should tell you something about the partner, the partnering approach to all of these projects, that requires not just sort of going and getting a grant but sharing the money, motivating engagement and activity amongst a strategic team, and then distributing the budget accordingly. And we'll get into the the purpose of some of that and how you do it best. All right, so what is project management? It's, it's, it means a lot of things to a lot of different people. I mentioned it's a certified professional with skills that are well defined. I'm going to talk about project management specifically in the context of multi party team building, and then project management. And you can think about this specifically in the context of large federally funded grant opportunities. I'm going to talk about this in four different pillars, perhaps the four most important aspects of project management and especially in hybrid team building, from my perspective, which are people process, communication and accountability. So let's walk through these one by one. The first is people you can't do multi party complex project management without truly taking a human centered approach a people centered approach to to finding success. I call the the approach especially around building large consortia To to accomplish a project I call it the performer, the tent in the circus, the performer are those are the individuals, those are the doers. And you need these people on the team. But the doers can't act in their own independent fashion without understanding that they're all under the same tent. Right. And there's going to be a tent that is the sort of the core leadership designers and or project designers and leadership. And then you got the circus, which is everything else that happens around it, the tangential relationships, the partners that that want to be in. But there are probably more stakeholders that are going to be impacted by the project. So one of the most important things to do from a human centered approach people centered approach first is to map capabilities to the needs of the project overall, I'm going to talk about that more, more when we get to the process pillar here, but understand this importance of mapping capabilities to process. But you can't do that first without an understanding who has what capabilities. And so we do this really, in circles, we build circles of

Speaker 2  11:09  
around this, this entire circus. And the circles are usually workflow based, right? And you have to motivate the people who are going to be working in and are leading these different circles, by using terminologies that is sort of endearing, that is incentivizing, right. In a lot of cases, these people are the people, you really need our champions. And I'll talk in the next slide about really the role of the champion. But you have to create the these circles have to be different types of partnerships. And I'll talk about how to build sort of these inner interdisciplinary teams through a third of these different types of partnerships. But one way to do this is through different categories or tiered. So, you know, we have seen this in the construct of, for example, the NSF engines program, they have taken one sort of piece or piece of the sort of the project management pie, if you will, and laid it out for us by having this sort of core partner category. And then the other supporting partner category. That's project management one on one, you have to build the inner circle in the outer circle. And you do it through organizational structure, and careful communication. And also, before you define individual roles, it's really, really important to set the tone for cadence and messaging, and sort of an overarching way, right? Communication is one of the pillars we're getting to here in a minute. But it's really important that before you map individual roles and give people roles, that you establish kind of a cadence of how often you want to talk with them, and how responsive you'll be to their to their needs. All right, the role of champions, perhaps the most important role in any large multidisciplinary team, especially in the consensus building process is the role of champions. Now in most of these grant projects, what we're looking for is an organizational commitment, right, we need a letter of commitment from an organization, we need a, we need an organization to represent certain responsibilities and perform whether that's a partner to university, its industry, it's an investment firm. But you're not going to get an organizational commitment, if you don't equip a champion within that organization to do the dirty work. So to speak, right, you have to have somebody that you build a one on one direct relationship with. And that person is the is the person you should view as carrying the torch, right? It's a one on one cadence with them that has to be developed. And you have to make them feel like they're the one that is important to the project. And they're the one who will carry the torch. And you can't do that without equipping them with the messaging that they need to take internally to their stakeholders to their approval process. For example, you have to equip them with a why is it good for us? Messaging, and that has to be clear. So champions is one of the first things that have to be has to be developed. And you have to think about this as I don't need this organization. First, I need a champion. And then after I establish a champion, I can get the organizational commitment. So let's assume we have built a ring of champions. And we have these organizations now that are around our tent or inside of our tent. Right? One of the most important people centered processes to project management is what I call voluntary consensus building. Right? I like this, this representation this image from from a 2016 study, around sort of consensus building principles, because it really goes through the various layers or steps that are required and consensus building that consensus building is not just selling an idea, although that is ultimately the end goal. You have a shared mission or a goal that you're trying to get to and you need everyone to buy in. But voluntary consensus building is really about making sure that everyone feels like they have had input to the idea itself. And so the first one of the very the top thing of this circle, one of the most important things to do is once you have everyone around the table together, make it very clear that it is it's obvious that cultural or background or perspective differences are going to be tolerated and accommodated, right. So it's important that you have everyone who's sitting at the table, understanding that their perspective is important to the overall conversation to the overall idea. And so you want to acknowledge that there are different perceptions, and then that's okay. That's, you know, different thoughts is, is not only tolerated and encouraged, then you get to go through this, this, this wheel here, of creating a level playing field, making sure it's a sort of a safe space for conversation, creating opportunity for ideas, not just feedback, not not just selling an idea, not tell me what you think. But making people realize that their the ideation is invited, right? That their ideas are part of it. And ultimately, what you're doing as the as the central leader and the project manager is you are moving this thing towards voluntary consensus building. All right, that it gets a little sort of more granular than this right. Before we jump ahead to sitting around that table, the voluntary consensus building process requires a sort of a two step communication protocol. The first is the one on one conversation, right? So you, you've done that, so to speak by building your champions, each of those one to one champions discussions. So before you sit down as a group, it's important as the project leader in the project manager to build not only that the champion, but to help them understand that they have a role to play when you get to the group conversation. Okay, so one to one conversations first, before you get to a first group conversation. And here's one of the most important reasons why, when you, I call it the art of the first group meeting, before you have those meetings, those one on one conversations are critical, because the first conversation with the group should start with something like or the first email to the group and fighting, the discussion should have something like, as I have discussed with each of you, right, and now that's a very sort of short and maybe not obvious phrase that could get glossed over, but it has it packs within it a lot of meaning to the entire group, which is everyone immediately realizes that they have had that each have had a discussion with the project leader or project manager. And that things should be clear, hopefully, that conversation was the same as with everyone, because now that we're sharing it as a group. There's there's sort of a level playing field or asymmetry of information that comes to the understanding, a critical couple. And these are just sort of tidbits and or hints, or tips that maybe seem small, but they're really, really important, which is when you call when you host recall or invite the first meeting, don't call it a presentation, or a meeting, call it something like a workshop or a roundtable or a feedback session, that invites immediately it sort of just creates the feeling that what's what's going to be happening here is an invitation to talk and share and provide feedback. And that's really, really critical. When you send the calendar, the calendar invite, tag it in the subject line open discussion, or put at the top of an agenda ideation, right. So people think that they're coming to the table and invited to share their ideas and be a part of the ideation process. Even though you know that there are goals, there's sort of an endpoint you're trying to get to. Yeah, people have to feel like they are a part of workshopping and feedback loops from the beginning. Right. The other critical tip is, if any drafts are being developed for this first meeting, or as pre reads, or even an agenda, make sure that none of it is marked final. If think about like when you save a PDF, save, save as a Word document, don't put final or put, you know, something like that. In the title of the of the doc or the file name, make sure it's marked draft, or even more clearly expressed in the transmittal email or on the doc itself, live working doc for discussion purposes. Right. So people think about things being in a live working format, and nothing will be finalized without everybody's input. And that's a really critical part of the champion, building the one to one conversation and then forming the art of that first group meeting which is so critical. All right communication protocols. My team knows that I often talk about communication protocols being very important to just the overall relationship building process. One of the most important things that I love to preach all the time is emails, start with pleasantries. Like Hi, John, don't start an email, which is John, because that's actually not disarming, you might say you might be having that doesn't tell me what kind of tone you're coming with. But simply putting high before a name can be disarming, actually, because it sort of says hi. And it's it's just a very simple communication protocol that invites a tone of, of sort of happy and and relationship friendliness.

Speaker 2  20:37  
The most important communication protocols are that and then, you know, ending in email communication with you know, please let me know, your thoughts on this, please let me know how you feel about this. If you have any questions, always inviting thoughts. And those are two simple things, starting email with high and ending with a please let me know your thoughts or questions about this, our simple, but really important communication protocols. All right, building a contact information database, this is critical. When you have a large team, especially something like 20 partners, you know, 30 partners, it's, it's critical to build a contact database and share it. So everyone feels invited to talk amongst the group. And I think that's a really critical, transparent piece of transparency. I mentioned the sending materials marked a draft, also very critical. And then the cadence of meetings having sort of takeaways, action items that are clearly assigned that are discussed within the meeting. And then ending with timeline, I think it's always important to keep people, people work in temporal fashion. People love lists, especially ones that are that have sort of tied in tying, helping them manage their priorities, right. And so ending every meeting with a here's where we are in the timeline for either near term timeline, or long term timeline. And I'll show a couple of examples of this is really critical. So people understand the context of timeline to action items. And then finally, give credit impress, always sort of give where someone had an idea. And that idea is now a part of the the mission, make sure people receive credit for bringing that idea to the table. All right, now we're getting to kind of we've built the tent, we filled some voluntary consensus around what our project is hoping to accomplish as a goal. But now you need the inner circle, right? You have to build a motivated leadership team, working groups and designating leads is critical. And one of the one of the things that, for example, these large projects like EDA tech hub, for example, right, those things are going to require the development of so many different workflows, from research and development, to workforce development, to entrepreneurship and commercialization, to contracts. And so those working groups can't be led by the project leader. All right. So you designate workgroups, but then really critical to designate leads of those workgroups, and that those leads should make up a leadership team, that is kind of the inner circle, those are the people who fly the flag, right? For the for the functions of the project. And you can minimize people showing offs by creating a regular cadence with those people, right, just by spreading out in these workgroups or work streams, you're not, you're not, you shouldn't view it as just losing control. Because if you have a leadership team that you have a regular cadence with, that's where the feedback loop comes back to you. And then you as the project leader, project manager can curate the feedback and bring it back to the group. For for feedback loop. Here's an example of sort of very distributed leadership team and this is part of our, we have an NSF engine development award, a type one award. I mentioned we have over 50 partners that are a part of this project. And we have a very distributed organizational process or organization itself, the leadership team itself has 10 members from from core partners of the overall organization. And every single one of those people is not just a member of the leadership team, they are actually leading a work stream. And so they each have every every one of these has either a committee or a working group. That is their own group of people that they are leading to develop plans and activities for those workstreams. But we have a regular cadence ourselves, the leadership team gets together once per month to manage the feedback loop the ideas and takeaways that come from working group meetings, and then to work as a group through through where those ideas are headed in In a sort of a linear or interrelated fashion, all right, motivating, is a key word here, right. So to have leadership is one thing, but to have participatory and engaged leadership is another. And it's really critical. When you have such a large, complex multi party project, to have leadership that is really motivated to do their work. Well, oftentimes, functions don't really motivate people, right? My role here is to do X, Y, and Z. Sometimes that's not motivating. That sounds like work. And so you can flip it by identifying instead themes, right? The the important thing, things that we are all that are made up of, right. So while workforce can be a function, sort of develop a game, a project plan for our workforce, that is a function, but the theme is human centered, health and well being workers. And that's a theme that then a lot of people who are mission focused or motivated by themes can sort of feel like they're carrying a flag for something. And I often identify themes to sort of motivate people instead of just activities, or outputs are really important to ensure inclusivity and all in all facets, but important to understand the differences between perspective participation, right? Two different things, you need two different perspectives involved, but active participation of those perspectives is critical. But then also the benefits that come out of a project is different. And I think it's, it's important to recognize the perspectives. broad input is needed. But then you have to create as project manager, certain protocols or cadence to make sure that the inclusive perspectives, the diverse perspectives that are a part of your project, are not just invited, but actually, truly, operationally create. Facilitated, right. And then also understand that as a project, if you accomplish your goals, you're going to have impacts and you want to make sure that you are intentionally helping people to understand that there are impacts that come back to them in no matter what perspective they're taking. And so creating as a project manager, creating a clear understanding of the difference between these three will help people not just understand, okay, we're being accessible. And we have access to these conversations, but they are participating in an engagement or because they understand that there are clear impacts or benefits that come back. Okay. It's important to really build intentional mechanisms to ensure this, right, and this is truly like the, you know, as we see in almost all project, notices for funding these days, that requirement of EDI as a part of project plans, but it's more than just making sure that there's equitable opportunity and access. It's the intentional activities that are required to be competitive these days. And for one example, in creating a I mentioned different work streams or workgroups creating a work group whose intention is inclusion and access is one way to do it. And but it's also critical to have that distributed through all other work streams. And so it's, it's not enough to have a sort of a committee of people who are focused on it in their own silo, but that you can create opportunity for them to participate in every other workstream discussion through what we call inclusion anchors. And then intentionally budgeting funding activities that are that are for and promote inclusion and access, and equitable opportunity is critical. And that can't be done without creating metrics, actual EDI, metrics and milestones. So understanding as Project Leader, project manager, the importance of intentional action, budgeted earmarks, and then metrics and milestones that will in help motivate an entire group around a culture right of inclusion. All right, project management 101, for helping everyone understand their role is to have an org chart, right? If you have a multi, even in a multi party proposal process that is two or three organizations or one that is 50 organizations. Of course, the more complex you get, the more important an org chart is. But even for ones that are more that are that are simple, even where you have maybe three different roles or three different organizations that are partners on a project, have an org chart under so people understand where they fit as a champion where their organization fits within a a sort of a In information and workflow, it's just critical that no organization really could work without something like this. And so it's important to have part of the process. And that's, that's a, that's a part of my people pillar, because people need clarity around where they fit within an org chart. And not just an orange, just an org chart, but within an organization, right, you have to think about these projects as an organization. And as project manager, the role is to keep that organization

Speaker 2  30:31  
organized. For lack of better word. All right, now we're going to shift over to process Okay, so we've taken we've, we've taken this sort of people centered approach to building our tent, understanding the difference between our performers, our tent and our circus. And the process I mentioned, you know, back on my very first slide, one of the key things about taking a people centered approach is mapping capabilities to responsibilities, or to roles. This is really a if anyone is a sort of Lean Six Sigma geek, or really gets into sort of ISO 9000 processes and SOPs. This is what we're talking about, when you do what you've done first, through the voluntary consensus processes. He's built a strategy, right, you've identified goals, everyone has bought into those goals. And then you've identified themes, right to motivate people to get to those goals, right. But to do that, of course, then you need tactics, right? You need activities that can be achieved to produce outputs. And there has to be an understanding of how do we get to those outputs, like what are the what are the skill sets and the knowledge sets and the resources that we need to get there. And then within that, that's where you get to the capabilities, right, so the organizations have resources, but people have capabilities. Or, or if an organization has a capability, maybe it's a, you know, an equipment a space, maybe it's a knowledge sets of 30 years experience in a certain field, your champion is still the person who carries that torch, right for that capability. And so that's where you map that capability to your top line, strategy or goal. And that's where you really empower people, right. So as a project manager, it's really, really important to map almost exactly like this slide has done, you list your set of strategies, then you list your tactics, which are the ways you're going to get to those goals. And then for each tactic you list the capabilities needed. And the milestones you have to achieve to get through each of those capabilities, right to to apply those capabilities, and to know that you've applied those capabilities successful. And then you can start to map people to those to those capabilities. And so they understand I'm here because I have this capability. And that's how I get through this tactic that that achieves the goal that we've all bought into together. So, milestones and timelines, project managers often will gravitate immediately to this, because it is the how do we do anything if we don't have sort of a checklist right of things to get there? But yes, this is critical. So once you've done all of the voluntary consensus building, and the mapping of capabilities in the motivating of people, approach process that should be done together is the milestone and timeline building. Okay. So I've done this through templates and forms, you have to create checklists that are repeatable for people. And it's really important to one thing, one sort of quick thing that I like to do is, I keep a timeline slide that every leadership team meeting, we sure will look at that same timeline style, but you will have noticed that like the DOT has moved on the timeline slide and the outputs or the the milestones. Have you either checked or not. Right. And so it's just a clear checklist, sort of a repeatable checklist that people are familiar with, that keeps people on task, right? One of the most important things about milestones and timelines is celebrating achievement of milestones. And as project manager, you keep a team focused, by keeping them motivated, and you keep them motivated by celebrating every time, so their full group praise. You know, we've achieved this pat on the back clap hands. And then we're now focused on on next milestone. The way you do this in, so I call it celebrating the wins. But really what that is, is just continuously updates, right? And so, updates, communication is everything, and you can over communicate, but I would say in project management over communication is better than under communication. And so people need routine updates on progress. So here's two examples on how this is important but also differentiating between near term and long term. This is just a near term timeline of right here's what we have in the next You know, four months to get through. And this is for a large grant proposal with many, many partners involved, right? This might be something that where I move this red box each time we get together showing how we're moving through the timeline on a month by month by month basis. Okay, so people need to understand that people, really a lot of a lot of people like to focus on what's next, what am I doing next? What's the next box we're heading towards. And so there are near term focused. But it's also really critical for a project manager to put the near term focus in the context of a long term timeline, also. So I always show nearer term timeline, but then also long term timeline. So people understand we're still at check one or step two, or whatever it is. And here's where ultimately we're trying to get to over a 510 year project, if it's that long. Okay, so what's next is important, but also how does that fit within the ultimate long term project timeline. All right, next, and process is truly just about execution, right? The execute as project manager, it's all about execution. And execution requires inner circles and outer circles, and then a feedback loop between them, I have a couple of tips to share about, especially that, that includes the context of workgroups, and how it's critical to have these work streams set up. So they are separated, and you have equipped leaders of work streams. But then the project managers role is to keep those workgroups on task, right. So assign work product with sort of at this back by the next time and in sometimes this can just be in leadership meetings, you create an opportunity for report out, right, so each work group leader knows that they have three minutes on the next leadership team agenda to report out, have you done this or not? Or where are you with this. And so it just keeps a set of accountability. But that's also creating a feedback loop. So between the worker and the overall project, Lead Project Management, you need a feedback loop. And that's through that cadence requesting deliverables to you remember, as Project Leader, it's not enough just to meet your leadership team at the leadership team meeting, the one on one cadence is critical. And that's where some of that can happen. Right. So you create the feedback loop, not just in a group setting, but also in the one on one cadence as well. And then, you know, again, the, the the importance of and this is simple, but it's but it's important the importance of of labeling documents as drafts at first. But you know, and before you finalize something, but you can't forget about the outer loop. So the inner loop is that leadership team, and they lead these workers, but everyone that's a part of that work group considers themselves a part of the entire project. Right. And so they themselves will want at some point opportunity for what I call open comment. And so sure, with the leadership team, you have come to a here's what we believe is the final draft of this document, this proposal, this whatever it is, right, this this project plan. But don't finalize it, don't call it final until you have sent it out to any stakeholder that's been a part of that process. And ask for an open comment period, right? Again, it's voluntary consensus building, you've done that to build your champions and your tent, but you also need the entire circus to feel like they have had the opportunity to provide open comment. And that's that feedback loop is so critical to execution of, of a project with so many different people and institutions or organizations. Okay, next, is about utilizing advisory committees. A lot. And we're seeing this now with a lot of these large consortium grant

Speaker 2  38:51  
proposal, notices of funding that are requiring that we have an advisory committee, this is really this is sort of organizational development, one to one. And this is less about the execution and more about ensuring that there's a compass, right. advisory committees can be used for many different things. Advisory Committees usually are made up of external folks, not on the project. So they're not a part of the tent, or even the circus, if you will. They are onlookers from the outside having requisite experience, but they act as a compass. Right. And also, sometimes when you're within the tent, especially if your role is project management and project lead. If you're within the tents, it's tough to do it without getting blinders on at some point. Right. So advisory committees are critical for setting up to sort of keep the compass of of where you're headed and alternative ways to think about about where you're headed. Right. The documents that are created in the process of of these projects are critical and it's not just about getting to final document There's, there's a science for project managing, getting from scratch draft of a of a document or a part of a document or a PowerPoint presentation and getting to final, right, if you are the project manager or the project leader, one of the most important things to do is be the owner of the document. Now, we love these days shared shared documents, shared folders, everybody can get in everybody can see other people's work, or comments that everybody can see, at one time. That's fantastic. And those tools can all be utilized in this process, but someone has to own the document. And typically, that's going to be the project lead or the project manager. And they're still even with shared documents, an importance to manufacturing open comment periods, so perhaps so have people understand, okay, the document is now open for comment. But that period closes at this point. And there's going to be a time where there's a blackout period where you don't have access to that document. And you as Project Lead, own that document during that time to collate the input, incorporate suggested additions, or accept edits, and then republish a document, right? So there's open comment period, it goes offline, you own the document, and then you republish it for final look, right? Maybe that's the time when you share it with the outer loop right after it's been digested by the interviewer. But it's really important for Project Lead Project Manager to consider yourself as the document owner, and then you are the person who needs to label a document final. But remember, I'll remind you again, make sure it is marked a draft that whole process. So people understand it, this is not a unilateral decision of of when this document is final. All right, you might have surmised that none of this can happen without communication. Well, communications, it's not enough to just say, yes, we'll communicate a lot. There are protocols, there are ways that can be that good communication for project management, can be achieved. I mentioned the contact list, this is a really important thing, where if you as Project Lead, are the only person that has the contact information of the other people you're working with. For example, let's say you send every email to a 20 person list of leadership via BCC, the perception is going to be that you're the only one that can own the conversation with them. So creating a contact list, sharing it is just a simple a simple signal that open transparent, collaborative work is being invited here, right, that will help immensely but the voluntary consensus building process, send initial emails to workstreams be a part of the initiation of the different work groups. But then step out, I think it's critical that people understand that as as you have delegated leaders of different work streams, that they are the leaders, right, that they have room to work, that they own the conversation. And so being in you know, being in the room is fine to support. But then also, it's really important as project manager project lead to step out, also and let those and then then your will from there is the feedback loop, the accountability timeline, and the one to one cadence right with those with those people. Okay, understand the need for incentives and seeing inside the tent. Now, everyone is a little different with their sort of need for information. But everyone is going to feel like not only do they need to be motivated, but they want to know what else is going on inside the other work stream. So when you have different work streams, people want to know what's going on over there. So that gets back to the the as the connector, the report out that you have in your leadership team meetings, is not just a accountability measure, but it's also a connecting measure, because you're letting people see inside the tent of other workstreams. And so that just creates a more engaged atmosphere where people feel connected, not just accountable, but connected as well. All right, I call these things contracts. As my team knows it's a part of our UK innovate operating model, that when when I wouldn't even when we say hey, we're gonna meet at 3pm, can you make it and someone says yes, that's a contract. We have made a contract, we have set an offer and an agreement on a time and then holding fidelity to that contract. It's critical. It's really important as project manager to you, yourself, hold 100% fidelity to contracts, but also to facilitate contracts between people. I think one of the roles of great project leaders and team leaders, especially in the grant process, around proposal drafting is, you know, you're likely going to be delegating parts of a proposal to be drafted by different people. When you when you delegate that you're making a contract with someone and when they say yes, I'll do it that's that's a contract but then as project manager, it's your your responsibility to ensure that that contract is not just held, held to fidelity on your side, but on the other side, as well. So timelines, check ins. first drafts have a process where a draft is due comment period, those kinds of things that helps people understand the contracts can be easy, you know, are easier to, to fulfill, right. So as project manager, you want to make sure people are creating these contracts, but also, that you're facilitating the fulfillment of those contracts by creating lists, timelines, milestones, and making those transparent. Alright, there are works workstreams for project management, and communication, both pre and post different of the steps in these milestones. So before meetings, let's say your leadership team meetings, pre meeting preparatory communications are important. That is an agenda that is any pre reads, and any context around things to think about. Here's what, here's what we're going to do next week. And these are the things we're going to talk about, here's the agenda, come thinking about, you know, and then it's, you know, think about Agenda Item number two, and I really need your feedback on on that just a simple comment like that will, you know, people might not peruse the entire agenda, but they will see the transmitted communication. And they'll say, oh, item number two, I need to go think about that. And they'll go check it out and give it some thought post meeting summaries critical. And these are, these are seemingly simple things. But this is project management, right? actionable communications of here's what we did, here's what's next. Updates and progress. Email written is is key, because people often will forget oral communications. And they also can't go back to oral communications. And this is the meaning of an update or Takeaways summary that is written can become really powerful as well. All right, I mentioned in the very beginning, the power that we have the performer, the tent, and the circus. So it's important as project manager to understand the need for different kinds of communications with different of those audience sets. The one to one touch points is critical for the performers, these are your champions, these are the leaders, you won't be able, however, to have a one to one cadence with the rest of the tent or the Circassia, right. But they have to still feel communicated to Okay, and so to manage the work with the entire tense can be done via newsletter, maybe it's a cadence that you set up where they expect a two week email, a two week update from you on here's what's done, here's what's going on. Even if the circus right is not inside the tents, and they necessarily can't be or shouldn't be to get things done, they still have to feel like they know what is going on. And so those kinds of communications are critical, that's not going to be a one to one, but it should be a one to many that has a cadence to it where they can expect it. And and that you hold fidelity to that contract that you'll continue to send it.

Speaker 2  48:02  
And then you know, that's that's a part of creating transparency and buy in with the full circus, which is critical, because in the end, these things aren't just going to get done with the inner circle. Alright, our last pillar here is about accountability. So if we've taken that people centered approach, if we've, you know, built our teams, our workflows, we've kept people on time, we've openly communicated, we've built voluntary consensus, so people feel bought in and they're motivated because they feel tied to a theme that's important to them. And we've created a sense of either belonging or access or participatory for everyone, via even something as small as documents marked a draft for their feedback. Right. Now, the last role that's so important for project management is accountability. Right. And ultimately, this is what it all comes down to, right. If you've done all of those things, what were what you've done is increased substantially the opportunity to achieve but even so, people need to know, some there are some there's some critical sort of tips or steps to take to ensure that accountability is not just about you know, pounding the stone and saying get it done. People need to feel accountable, like a sense of self responsibility about being accountable, and there's a few things that you can do to help with some of that. For example, one thing is in group meetings where, let's say you had a milestone and you it was a deliverable you needed from different workgroups and you got what you needed from some but you didn't from others. It's a bad move to in a group setting point out those people that did not do it. But you can apply this and actually create the same sense of accountability or guilt about not getting it to you by celebrating those that did and actually point them out. And so, so you can actually you know, statements like really appreciate those that got me this. That's been really, really helpful. I know a few of you have not yet. And I look forward to receiving that. And then immediately they think, oh, yeah, I didn't send that to them. And then you can, you can instill a sense of self accountability, by creating that celebrating the wins is also an accountability tool, right? By showing people how much praise that others get, right when they achieve things when they when they meet milestones. By celebrating those wins, you are at creating other accountability by others that want to be celebrated. Right. And so hopefully, there'll be accountable now. Because they want their their win to be celebrated as well. renegotiating contracts has a lot to do with accountability, those contracts I mentioned, you want to have fidelity to those at all times and sort of facilitate that fidelity by having timelines by having progress updates. But oftentimes, contracts are going to get broken and we call it a renegotiation. And so when a contract is broken, when I saw that, on number two, where I have said, some people have gotten me this really appreciate that. Others haven't yet look forward to receiving it. I've just renegotiated that contract. But you know, the renegotiation has to have a new fidelity point to it, which is, and I hope to receive it by Monday. Right? You just renegotiated a contract. Understand that. And then hopefully, you've gotten an email afterwards, from that person that didn't send it to you said, I heard you Yes, didn't get to it, I'll get it by Monday. And that's great. You've negotiated a contract. And you've, you've still instilled a sense of accountability around that. And the last one here is just show progress and give credit, right, that celebrate the wins aspect. But do it in an update manner, where by celebrating the wins, but also just providing continued progress updates, to achieving parties, people want credit. And it's important to identify that credit and say, this person did this thanks to these people to help with that. And that really helps with group accountability, through project management. And that's it. Those are our four pillars. We have people process communication and accountability. And when it gets to large, multi party grant initiatives, the first part is ideation. voluntary consensus building, that's perhaps one of the hardest parts, right? Beyond that, it's a lot of execution tasks and clear communication. None of it is rocket science, but a lot of effort. And there is a science to it. There are there are certainly approaches that are really critical to successful project management. And it's, you know, to build competitive proposals, reviewers can see past the surface of what's being said, they can tell if people are actually bought in if there's roles for people. And if this has been something that's been developed with all of the organizations that they see on the list of partners, or if maybe just one organization, wrote the entire thing. And I'll stop there and see if there are any questions.

Speaker 1  53:07  
Thanks. And yeah, we have a couple of questions in the q&a. The first one is, you've explained how the project management approach can be applied by the formal, formal leader of the project, what would be your top three recommendations for implementing project management strategies within hybrid teams working on complex grants, especially if the role of the project manager is more akin to consulting than the actual project leadership or ownership?

Speaker 2  53:36  
Yeah. So I'm going to unpack that if I can. I think the question is really getting to, if you're not the project lead, what role does project management have for you, as, as a part of maybe the partnership or a part of the project? And especially if and I think there's a cut something in there that that is key, because we see a lot of this now, these graphs that we're going after, because of how large some of them are there, people are going and getting third party project management. I think it's critical that project management and I kind of started by trying to describe project management as a necessary skill set. At tech transfer offices actually are very good. Generally, at project management, we have to be like with as much stuff that we cover. And at all of it being interdisciplinary in our teams, our tech transfer teams, you know, have such interdisciplinary backgrounds, we project manage really well. But as partners, I think, if you can bring to the table a sense of your own responsibility for managing your piece of a project and following all the Katyn steps that I just mentioned, like communication protocols. progress updates, the one to one communication, so there's a different project lead, and they haven't developed a one to one cadence with you yet. develop that one to one case for yourself. So they understand and maybe suggest that to the project lead. Because you will know that that's important to you. And then there's, you know, there's, you know, there's a sense of, of education there, as well as helping a project manager understand, hey, you know, a one to one cadence here's is working, try that maybe with someone else. And so that's, I think, hopefully, these multi party approaches have someone that has a designated they understand they are the project lead. And if not, that's something you can help with. And I think that's, that's as a, as a tech transfer profession, something that we actually can bring to the table, because we're much better at this than than many others, that that pull people together.

Speaker 1  55:50  
Awesome. All right. Next question. What are some good resources for best practices in project management?

Speaker 2  55:59  
That's a really good question. One of the things is to go, so I mentioned project management as a certification. So there are there's actually a lot of materials that you can read about just the art of project management, tons of literature on the art of project management, approaches to be taken. Not a lot, interestingly about that applies it specifically to the grants process. And, you know, part of that is, maybe we're seeing now more large multi party grants, Project initiatives that we have seen in the past. But I'm not actually aware of of others other than the act. So there's lots of academic literature. And then for the certification, you go look at the education materials that anyone studying for that might take. We have somebody actually in my office that we have just transitioned into a full time project management role for our large multi party grant initiatives. And they're currently going to go through the certification process, because we understand it's a it's a really important skill set. And there is a set of things that you can learn and study for. Awesome.

Speaker 1  57:15  
Um, so are there any optimal materials, forms, documents that you use? Or that you know of that could help me help it manage and in an interdisciplinary team towards buy in and understanding their roles? Yeah,

Speaker 2  57:31  
yeah. Good. Good question. So I do have forms and approaches, one of which is the very first slide and the process, pillar that that I presented, that went from strategy to tactics to capabilities. That's something that I've used in the past, and continue to use to sort of help map people in our organizations to the capabilities that we need to let to get us to goals. That's one, Project lists, I mean, a project checklists is not a form that I sort of have to use every time but a checklist is always critical. And then one thing that I have used in my last couple of large projects for accountability is a, a, like a shared report out document. For we I call, I've called it playfully the scoreboard for our NSF Engine project, which basically is a shared document that has as an Excel spreadsheet, and it has tabs for each of the workstreams and workflows. And then the milestones for each of those workflows, or workstreams is in each of those tabs within it's just a table. Right. And it requires for updating the table based on a timeline. And that's a sort of a shared accountability tool, if you will, because everybody can see it, and everybody can see who's gotten to what progress points who has not. And so it's kind of a an implicit way of keeping people accountable. So those are really good forms. There are, if anyone, again, is that sort of Lean Six Sigma, ISO 9000. Geek, there are really good standard operating procedure forms out there. But they get those get really detailed, there may be too much actually to try to accomplish in the in the context of writing a grant proposal.

Speaker 1  59:29  
All right. Another question from the audience. What would you say a PMP certified T to or would you say a P PMP. Certified T to is an advantage for career progression in tech transfer.

Unknown Speaker  59:45  
Certified to sit again TT

Speaker 1  59:48  
PMP. So, the project management?

Speaker 2  59:52  
Absolutely, I think, I think it's it's a critical skill becoming more of a critical skill. So the P IP so professional PMP here's the problem within the tech transport professional PMPs. With that certification, often you'll find those people mostly in industry, and they have they have a high pay scale. This is a in demands professional skill set with a certification and people with a PMP make over $100,000 average salary. And so that's a that's a tough pill to swallow for, I think for a university to hire somebody with that professional skill set. However, you know, tech transfer has been overcoming those obstacles for years. And I think it's a it's a really important skill set, the more that we could either get our licensing officers, commercialization managers or people within our tech transfer offices to hat to obtain the PMP or to hire in those that have the PMP Absolutely. It's a it's a critical skill.

Speaker 1  1:00:54  
Awesome. All right, well, let's go ahead and wrap up. So on behalf of autumn I'd like to thank you, Anne, for this informative presentation. And thank all of our attendees for joining today and for participating. As a reminder, a recording of this webinar will be available for viewing in the autumn Learning Center within a week of this event and is included in your registration. Please remember to complete the webinar evaluation which will open when you sign off from the session and a will be sent and a follow up email tomorrow. This is going to help us serve your needs in the future. Thank you again for joining us and have a good rest of your day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai