What if the fastest way to align a project team wasn't another 47-slide deck, but a two-minute film clip?

In Episode 222, Dale and Val sit down with Dawn Mahan, project leader, educator and author, to unpack why movies are surprisingly powerful tools for project leadership, communication and team alignment. Dawn coined the term "Project Land" to explain why the world of projects behaves so differently from the day job, and it has stuck with thousands of people since.

We get into:

• Dawn's origin story, from Y2K coder to accidental project manager after one out-of-the-blue phone call
• Why Apollo 13, The Martian and The Matrix explain iteration, problem-solving and belief better than most training courses
• The real reason projects fail, and why the root cause almost always traces back to the start
• "Are you good?" vs "How do you feel?" and why that one change transformed how Dawn led teams
• Why communication is everyone's job, not just the project manager's
• Assessing people on ownership rather than leadership, and why that is fairer
• Trust, vulnerability and healthy conflict, drawing on The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Whether you are being parachuted into a live project or just trying to explain what you actually do to your family, this one is full of practical, human ways to lead people better.

Dawn's books:

• Meet the Players in Project Land: Decide the Right Project Roles and Get People on Board
• Project Land Goes to the Movies: 22 Blockbuster Strategies for Project Success

Connect with Dawn:

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dawnmahan
• Instagram: instagram.com/dawnjmahan
• Project Guru Academy: linkedin.com/showcase/projectguruacademy
• PMOtraining on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/pmotraining
• PMOtraining on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCLYJDA7-15rotZyEDEv8gyg
• PMOtraining on Facebook: facebook.com/PMOtiger

This podcast is free and always will be. If you got value from it, pay it forward and share it with someone in your team.

Stay safe, be disruptive, and have fun doing it.

Most consultancy owners can tell you their revenue. Very few can tell you their net profit. That gap is where the money quietly leaks out.

In this Australia-only episode, Val sits down with Josh Stone, who grew a civil and structural consultancy from £3m to £30m over a decade, sold out, and now coaches 70+ engineering, surveying, architecture and town planning founders on how to build businesses that actually pay them back.

We get into the commercial side we rarely cover on the show:

• Why 30% net profit should be your benchmark, and what to do if you are sat at 12%
• How to escape the generalist "red ocean" and charge what you are actually worth
• Why winning the work is only half the job, and how to stop client relationships living and dying with the founder
• The four-stage path from technician to conductor to lifestyle or investor
• A grounded take on AI in engineering, and why the founders experimenting now will outbid the ones who wait

If you are stuck being the bottleneck in your own business, this is the practical, no-nonsense conversation to fix it.

Guest: Josh Stone

More from Project Chatter: www.projectchatter.com

Free access, no paywalls. Keep liking, keep sharing, keep paying it forward.

Most data scientists have never touched a project. Yash Desai looked at the project controls world through the data first, and what he found says a lot about why this industry lags behind others on AI.

In Episode 220, Dale is joined by returning co-host Martin and first-time guest Yash Desai, Head of Data and AI at Movar Reply, for a practical conversation on where data, AI and robotics actually fit in project delivery.

We cover why project controls sits behind other industries, what an orchestration layer really is, how to future-proof your role, the data scientist vs project controller debate, hiring for drive over a skills list, robotics on site today vs the hype, and the Fable situation. No buzzwords, just useful insight.

Chapters:00:00 Welcome back01:38 Who is Yash Desai?04:09 Why project controls lags on AI09:44 What is an orchestration layer?14:23 Future-proofing your role22:48 Data scientist vs project controller33:26 Grads and the assurance layer36:17 Why robotics is getting interesting46:21 Robotics in one to two years52:10 Should governments regulate robotics?57:23 The Fable situation and 'Pragmatic'01:01:01 Final thoughts

Connect with Yash: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yash-desai-00847216b/Subscribe to Pragmatic: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/pragmaitic-7347631768201535488/

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www.projectchatter.com