How can you create a better experience for the people around you? How can you project the right leadership and management? Amy Vetter and Jana Axline, CEO of Project Genetics, share answers to these questions. In this discussion, Jana talks about what she learned in her career around customer experience and building relationships that have helped her create success as a project manager. As a focus leader who achieves ambitious results, she believes that understanding others on a personal level is key to motivating them to do things well. For more leadership lessons, listen further and take note of Jana's strategies towards success.

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Stop And Have A Conversation: Build Relationships Without An Agenda With Jana Axline

Welcome to this episode where I interviewed Jana Axline, who is a focus leader who achieves ambitious results. She drives ideas from initiation to implementation, achieving successful outcomes for clients. She is the immediate Past President of the Project Management Institute, Mile Hi Chapter and she speaks internationally on project management, employee engagement and leadership. She is an active PMP, ACP, Certified Scrum Professional and Scaled Agilist and has a Master's of Business Administration and Finance from the University of Colorado. My conversation with Jana spans her career from starting out in music and wanting to be an actress to ending up as a project manager and her journey of how she learned from the jobs along the way that have helped her in leading these projects to success.

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I am with Jana Axline. Jana, would you like to start off and give us a little background on yourself?

I’m Jana Axline. I started a project management consulting company a few years ago because I’m passionate about project management. In addition to that, I’m the Past President of the Project Management Institute, Mile Hi Chapter, which is a chapter that services project management professionals in the industry. I enjoy project management and all things about project management. It takes up my life.

Project management is such an important topic on its own. A lot of times, people think they're doing that, but they have other specialties that they do. I’m a CPA and a lot of times there are tons of projects going through a firm or a corporation. Not understanding the importance of the difference of what a project manager does to keep that on task. Can you explain that first before we get into your story?

To what you said, there are a couple of things that happen, either people are doing project management and they don't realize it or they are project managers but they fell into it and they didn't choose that as a career. Project management touches every person's life, whether it's at work or at home, because a project is something that has a defined start and end, meaning it's not a continuous thing. You build a house, that's a project. You decorate for Christmas, that's a project. There are a lot of projects at work. The thing that a project manager is responsible for, the key things are keeping things on time. Making sure you stay in the budget and keeping things within the scope. You are doing what you said you would do and nothing more, nothing less. The challenge there as a project manager, you have to orchestrate everybody else. Oftentimes, you're not doing everything yourself, you're relying on other people. I look at project managers as a conductor of an orchestra and understanding which pieces are supposed to come in at which time and making sure that everybody is doing things within the right time at the right moment with the right volume. All of those pieces so that you have a lovely piece of music that you're hearing. That's how I view a project manager.

Did you have a musical background? I played the violin.

I play piano and flute.

Was that growing up?

I played flute growing up. I still have it. Once every five years, I play with it. I still play the piano fairly regularly.

Let's start backward of understanding your journey into the career that you have now. When you were young, what was it that you wanted to be when you grew up?

There was president, actress, lawyer and banker, but I never had even heard of a project manager. I had quite an eclectic journey when I graduated because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an actress at that point but my parents were not supportive of that. When I first got to college, I worked eight jobs before I finally found project management. I did make movies, but I was on the backside of the camera doing production support. From there, I was a Registered Securities Assistant, I could trade stocks and bonds. I was a legal secretary and then I worked for Starbucks, Banana Republic, then I started catching shoplifters and then moved into management at Target. It was a huge growth experience for me because Target focuses on personal growth. The microscope is on you all the time. At that time, I enjoyed my time there but I also found within a couple of years that this wasn't the best fit for me especially long-term. Target paid for my MBA. I had an undergrad in International Business and I was getting an MBA with an emphasis in finance. The last semester I had to take a Production Management Course. I had to do that in my undergrad and I hated it. It was one of the worst classes I had to take.

What made it bad? 

I don't even remember. It was long ago but the only thing I remember out of it was that we read a book called The Goal. The Goal is a dry book. It's about production management, but it's written like a story. The only part of the entire book that I remember, and it was a valuable lesson, was the author was taking a group of boys on a camping trip. He had to get the boys where they were walking through the woods and he was leading. There was one kid that was always falling behind. He took that kid and he set him in front of the line so that kid set the pace. That's what's important about production management. Whatever is your slowest crap, let's try to put that most forward through in your production line so that it sets the pace for the rest of the production line. That’s the only thing I remember. Anyway, I was trying to find the least of all evils. I saw this thing called project management. I’m like, "That doesn't sound too bad. I’ll take that course."

This entire career field is for me. I was excited. I couldn't wait to get a project management job, but you heard my eclectic backgrounds. People weren't that eager to hire somebody who had no project management experience. Fortunately for me, my professors suggested for me to join the Project Management Institute for the local chapter. I did. I jumped in with both feet and started my first volunteer role was doing the symposium. I made the speaker selection. I volunteered there so that people got to know who I was and got to know what my capability was. I was so fortunate because of that volunteer experience when Cigna Healthcare was hiring for IT project coordinator, somebody said, "We should hire Jana." They let me interview and I got the role. That would've never happened if I hadn't built the network within the chapter. I have no direct project management experience, no IT experience and yet they hired me. It was awesome. I got promoted three times within 3.5 years. It was a career field that was right for me.

To go back a little bit because you said, “This is totally me,” I’m trying to link why you thought that was totally you. A project manager is detailed. What was it that got you about it?

I like checking things off the list. The course I was taking was how to use Microsoft Project. For those people who don't know, that's a tool that you can trap all the tasks of a project and who was supposed to do them and when they're doing all of that. It's so much fun to set it to 100% when it's done but it translates to more though. I like seeing where we are, where we need to go and what are the steps to get there are. I like to coordinate people and facilitate problem-solving so that we can get there on time. The first thing that spoke to me was checking things off the list of being able to do the Microsoft Project plan.

It's always interesting to see what the thing is. A lot of accountants will say getting the balance sheet to even out. One of the things that is challenging for a project manager, your reference to orchestrating, but you're not directly responsible for anybody. How do you overcome that? What skills do you put in place so the things from your past that you've been able to utilize and make it successful for you?

You could do an entire course on all of that. The place I learned the most was Target. When I was at Target, I started researching employee engagement because people could leave Target, move across the street to the competitor. There was a strong emphasis on what employee engagement looks like. There were a few things that I did because I am not naturally a pat-people-on-the-shoulder type of person. I expect us all to be there and do our jobs and let's get them done. In retail, you can't have that perspective because people are not paid as well. You’ve got to treat them well. Otherwise, they'll leave because there has to be more than the money that's keeping there is what I’m trying to say. It's a little different in the corporate world. There are people who are a little more, “Let's all get our jobs done,” but people still need those extra pieces. That's where we all learn about company culture and valuing the team. When I was at Target, I felt like I didn't take the time to talk to them. I came up and said, "Can you get this done?" Rather than, "What's on your workload? How are things going?" building that relationship. Building relationships is important. I would say that's number one.

Number two is making sure you can communicate the vision. Not everybody always understands why the project is important or why hitting certain deadlines are important. Communicating that vision is critical. The other thing is being a facilitator. In most cases, project managers are not the ones with all the answers, it's your team. It's your job to get those answers out of the team. You need to be able to facilitate gathering those answers to be able to build a schedule and manage risks. Second, you have to have those strong facilitation skills to help them problem solve and deescalate. Making sure that when people are taking things personally, how do you help them step back and focus on the problem and not each other? Finally, you have to know when to escalate. Escalating with, “Here's the situation and here's my proposed solution,” so that you're not a person bringing up problems but you're a person who's helping be part of the solution. Since you are not controlling the resources, sometimes you do have to get other people who are in control involved. Doing it tactfully is important.

Do you think any of the interests that you have before an attorney, actress, all of those things, because some of those traits go hand-in-hand with some of the things that you were talking about?

Target was the biggest one for me. The other one would be Chick-fil-A. I worked at Chick-fil-A as a teenager. I learned more about business there in customer service than I ever did in my university courses. I would say Chick-fil-A had a big impact on taking my MBA and having to read. There were a lot of good leadership books that I had to read. I had to take personality assessments. In Target, I talked about employee engagement and we had what’s called a PIT. I can't remember what it stands for. It was my development action plan and making sure every week I was doing something to develop. 

Finally, in Cigna, I had three mentors that I chose. I did my own development action plan above and beyond what the company asked for. I was constantly introspective. Finally, they saw my leadership capability and sent me to what they called Leading for the Future course, which was another great way. I got a lot of good feedback. One time, one of my team members after reviewing, we had to do these activities and then assess each other at the end. You're assessing each other for leadership skills. The person told me, "Jana, you're right 90% of the time, but if you would stop and have a conversation with people and get other people's perspective, you'd probably be right 100% of the time." It's impactful for me to remember not to bulldoze over people and run with solutions without making sure that you've got the insight from other people.

You said customer service at Chick-fil-A. What was memorable about that for you that you've learned? 

There were a few things. I got to work for a great guy down in Colorado Springs. At that time, he owned all the Chick-fil-A's down there and he had worked at the Broadmoor when he was younger as a chef. The Broadmoor is high on customer service. He was constantly talking about simple things like keeping your head up. What that meant was always be looking around. When I was a team lead, I got promoted as a team lead within a year of being there. He's constantly reminding me to know the customers. What's going on with customers? What's going on with the team members? He always talked about it being like a car and that you have to make sure that all the little pieces are working. It's my job to be constantly observing all of that and making sure all those pieces are working. The other piece he talked about is these are little things, but he would tell us we weren't allowed to say, “Have a nice day.” I know that Chick-fil-A now, a lot of people say the same thing, they say something like, “My pleasure,” or something. That was not a requirement when I worked there. His big thing was, “Don't order people to have a nice day. We are not telling people what to do. You could say, "I hope you have a nice day or I hope you enjoy your meal." We could never say the same thing to two people in a row so that it was personal.”

The biggest thing I got from him was being able to see the big picture but also see the little details. Making sure that the tables were clean and that customers weren't waiting. Are you constantly looking at their body language to assess how their experience is? The final thing was never get tied down as a team lead. I should never jump on a register and start taking orders because if anything else goes wrong, I’m stuck there. It was about only jumping in places where you could eventually leave. I thought that was a valuable lesson because many leaders want to jump in and solve the problem and then they don't see what's headed their way because their head is down. Project managers do that all the time. Project managers that are too technical. Start trying to solve the technical problems rather than letting the technical teams do it. They may get all wrapped up in the details and they miss what's headed their way.

That's such an overall lesson of micromanagement, all of those things because a lot of people get promoted based on their skills but not necessarily their leadership skills. They're good at what they do. If you start doing everybody else's work, then you can't do the work of the leader and be able to do your next best thing so someone can step up. Noticing the details and never saying the same thing twice, that's the real challenge. You said at Cigna you had three mentors. Can you give a little bit of background on that and how they helped?

When I looked at mentors, I picked one who was in the department that I wanted to work in, so that I could build a relationship there and understand what that work would look like. He would know what I was capable of and hopefully that would clear the path. I picked a mentor who seemed like me, but was better at the things that I felt I needed to get better at. She wasn't an overly bubbly warm person, but she was good at connecting with people. People were loyal to her and they felt like she cared. I enjoyed that about her and I wanted to emulate it. I selected her as a mentor so I could talk to her about specific situations that came up and asked her how she would have dealt with it or how I should deal with it and be able to glean some of that. 

What did you adjust by learning from her?

It was going back and building those relationships. There's that theme throughout my career of learning how to build relationships that aren't focused on getting the work done. She did that too. She died young, I attended her funeral and there are probably 300 people there. Even that years later, it made an impact if you want to be remembered for what you’re doing in people's lives on a day-to-day basis. To help their growth, help them as a person. The third one was assigned to me by corporate because they were starting a new mentoring program. I asked them to give me a mentor and she was completely different from the rest. She was in an area that I wasn't necessarily interested in going in but was definitely a good perspective. I believe she was in finance and accounting but not project finance completely like in the finance department. She was a strong woman. I feel like I’m a strong woman as well and she was strong. She cuts to the chase and calls things like they are. We had such different backgrounds in life that oftentimes I didn't agree with all her advice, but I found her perspective enabled me to round better out my decisions or the things that I was going to do. I might've had a set plan, but by gaining her perspective I’m like, "I could tweak it a little bit. Maybe I don't want to do it the way she's saying it, but I see where she's coming from and I should tweak what I’m doing.” 

That's an important lesson. A lot of times, people think they have to emulate exactly somebody else. It's more like picking the things that work and are comfortable in your own skin because you still want to be unique in how you deliver. How have you seen from the things that you've learned and over time that you've had an impact on others in your career from some of those learnings or what do you try to do? 

There are a couple of different examples. On a personal level, I have somebody who is my accountability partner and she loves to tell the story because she's a speaker. She kept telling me over and over that she hated the work she was doing and she didn't like it. At one of our sessions, I said, "Quit your job or change your attitude, but we're not talking about this anymore." It got to the point where you quit being a victim, we are all in control of our circumstances. If you don't want to quit the job, then you've got to change your attitude because this isn't healthy. That was the pivotal moment in her life because she did quit her job and she became a consultant, a speaker and went independent, which is what she wanted to do.

It made me realize that we have an impact on people sometimes when we don't even know it. She came back and told me how many other people, whether positively or negatively, have I impacted through the day-to-day conversations. I try to remember that going into different encounters that we don't always realize the impact we have on people. I didn't even remember that when she told me. It took me a while. I was like, "Yeah, okay." That was not a significant conversation for me, but it was for her.

The other thing is that when I started my company because of all of this, I’ve tried to come up with practices that are going to help make this a company that people want to work for. Thinking about paying people fairly, paying them so that they know they're valued. It is coming up with bonus structures so that people want to contribute to the business but they also feel like they have power over it. In a large corporation, sometimes your bonus is tied to the stock price and earnings and all of these things that you don't have control over in a 30,000-person company. I wanted them to be tangible things. I worked on some stuff there.

I try to implement employee growth activities within our company when it comes to doing assessments to the team and talking about what those mean to each other. Letting people go to professional development, things that they choose and pay for it. All of those things may sound small, no big deal. It's a big deal for $1.5 million company to be able to do those things. It takes a lot out of our bottom line to be able to offer those things. That's what I think is important and that's how I try to give back to my people. 

I like to end with some rapid-fire questions. You pick a category, family and friends, money, spirituality or health.

Let's go with money. 

Things or actions that I don't have that I want with money?

This can relate to a lot of things. I have the yo-yo effect and also I’ll be good at saving and then all of a sudden, I’ll get compulsive and buy things I haven't budgeted for.

Things or actions that I do have that I want with money?

I budget and track my spending on almost a daily basis. I know where every dollar is assigned and where it goes. It goes back to the first part of making sure that those assigned dollars only go to the assigned place. I know when I am not following my own rules.

Do you do it in your business as well as personal?

In the business, I’m less compulsive. It's clear of what we should be spending our money on. Both of them have a budget and reconcile that on an almost daily basis.

Things or actions I don't have that I don't want with money?

To not know what I’m spending. I can't believe how many people are spending money and they're like, "I pay off my credit card every month." How do you know whether or not you'll have enough to pay off? How can you live with that ambiguity?

I was on a call with some entrepreneurs that are women. A lot of women don't like to look at their numbers, as if that means it's not happening.

Stick your head in the sand. If I don't see it, it's not happening yet.

Take it personally how a business is doing versus you’ve got to look at it as an outside entity and what you can do and keep improving upon it. If it isn't doing well, what do you have to shift? Rather than thinking like, "I’m doing that." Last one, things or actions that I do have that I don't want with money?

That goes to the first one. I need to be better overall with longer forecast pieces like I’m not ready for retirement. There's a risk on that. Being balanced, having discipline over the long-term for balanced saving.

That's a good point for any entrepreneur when you're not in a salary job as putting that money away still. Anything that you would like to make sure that people walk away with from this conversation or anything about the PMI Mile Hi Chapter that you'd like to close out with?

Two things, volunteering is a great way to break into an industry that you might not be in already but want to get in, or if you want to make a job change within an industry. Volunteering is a great way to get your name out there. The Mile Hi Chapter did change my life. The second thing I would say is we should never be a victim of our circumstances. While life may put us into situations, once we're in a situation we have control over it. Choosing to make the most out of a situation regardless of what it is, is going to get us further than accepting whatever punches are and not countering that.

I want to thank you for taking the time and sharing your story. Our readers are going to get a lot out of this conversation. 

Thanks for your time.

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Now, some time for our Mindful Moments from this episode with Jana, where she covered some big leadership lessons that I think all of us should step back, pause and think about before we enter back into our day. I love the first thing she said about becoming a conductor of an orchestra. No matter if you're a project manager, a leader, whatever that is, it’s realizing that there are many different pieces that need to be coordinated and understanding how they harmonize together. Not getting too bogged down in any one of those pieces, but noticing where one gets off track where the music would sound different if you don't spend a little bit more time to lift it up and make sure it gets back on track. When we're thinking about our teams, it's important to understand people on a personal level. When we see someone struggling, what is it that's creating that struggle?

Is it something internal? Is it a job capability issue? A lot of times, sometimes it's not a job capability. It's some fear or something that needs to be addressed in someone. When we personally care, we can make sure that the team overall keeps operating. Another thing that she talked about and I think in many projects and change management that we deal with, is where she talked about that quote in the book about whatever your slowest part is, put it first, put it in the lead. A lot of times when something's not going well or there's a part of your project that is going off the rails, it's easier to keep pushing that to the side and keep moving forward with the things that are moving faster. If you don't take care of that part that you don't want to deal with, it can blow the whole thing up.

That was an important lesson for all of us to take away, look at our projects or teams, and what piece of it is our slowest part that we're trying to avoid? How can we put it in front? When she was talking about when you're entering a new field as she did with project management, she didn't have the experience, and she volunteered with the PMI association in order to get to know people. This is true whether you're an entrepreneur looking for a job, whatever it is. A lot of times we think it will come to us rather than understanding when we go in and serve, when we go in and volunteer, create community and network, it helps us achieve the goals that we want in our life. Not expecting things to happen to us, but what do we need to do in order to create the result that we want and give back in order to get what we want?

The other thing that I thought was important and I think it's somewhat a trait of a lot of leaders and people that need to get things done is we're moving at such a faster pace. We're constantly trying to keep everything on task, pushing an agenda forward and not treating everyone as a human. Sometimes, we have to remind ourselves whether it is setting an agenda when we go and meet with other people that are on that agenda, we remind ourselves to have an open conversation that has nothing to do with the work that you're doing. The problem is when we are seeing that we don't personally care about the other person, then they're not as motivated to get the work done as well. Also, in a lot of those personal conversations, you uncover things about another person that you realize might make the project even better.

It's understanding the little nuances in that person. By you having that deeper understanding of what makes them tick, you might be able to get things on task faster. It's slow down to speed up but in order to make the shifts that you want, we have to realize that everyone's human and they want to connect. She also had used the term not bulldozing over people and stop and have a conversation, which in our busy life is hard. Those mindfulness things we have to incorporate in our day, to remember to pause.

I love the discussion about Chick-fil-A and the customer experience. The first thing about never saying the same thing to each customer of how do you shift it a little bit to make that experience unique. This goes back to treating everyone as a human whether they're a customer and employee that they don't think that you say the same thing to everybody. That you personally are invested in them and care and are pausing enough to assess their body language and other things that you may not pick up if you have a script and you're pushing through. The important thing she talks about in that was not taking over a person's job or getting too deep in the weeds when you're a leader on a task of what your escape plan is, so that you are staying at a high enough level to keep a project moving, to keep a team moving, that you don't start doing their work for them.

The thing is when we start jumping in, then those people know we will jump in and it's easier for them to back out because they think you're going to redo what they're doing anyway. It's important that you give people space to create what they create. Come in and make your suggestions and back out again so that you can keep doing the other things that are important as a leader in moving an initiative forward, a company forward, whatever that is. When she talked about one of her mentors that had passed away, she talked about how she was remembered. Even though she was a driver of getting work done, people connected with her because she tried to make sure that the things that she did on a daily basis would be remembered. That's something we have to be mindful of or slow down our day in order to think about, “What is a memorable thing that I can do for someone else or make their day better?” Pause a moment and see if they're stressed out or frustrated and why they are and ask the question rather than ignoring it.

All in all, when we think about leadership, project management or change management, how we go about it with the attitude that we want to project is important. It's not something that happens to move through a project. We want to create energy, a culture where people want to engage and move forward. If we feel like our attitude is going down or we're getting negative, then those are the points that we need to stop and pause and think about what could we do differently? How could we shift things? How could we pivot it a little bit so that we can create a better experience for the people around us?

Important Links:

• Jana Axline

• Project Management Institute, Mile Hi Chapter

• The Goal

• @PMIMileHiSym – Twitter

• @AxlineSolutions - Twitter

• @Jana_Axline – Instagram

• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/janaaxline/

• https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/pmi-mile-hi-chapter/

• https://www.Facebook.com/pages/PMI-Mile-Hi-Chapter/115920358469237

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