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People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast

People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast

Written by: Andy Kaufman PMP PMI-ACP
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Welcome to the People and Projects Podcast, where we provide interviews and insights to help you lead people and deliver projects. Since 2009, this show is brought to you by speaker, author, and executive coach Andy Kaufman. If you're looking for insights on project management, leadership, and how AI influences both of those, you've come to the right place! And if you hold a project management certification, you can even earn free PDUs for listening!(c) 2001-2025 Institute for Leadership Excellence & Development Inc. Careers Economics Management Management & Leadership Personal Success
Episodes
  • PPP 510 | The Word Great Leaders Keep Using (And Most Leaders Avoid), with Marcus Buckingham

    PPP 510 | The Word Great Leaders Keep Using (And Most Leaders Avoid), with Marcus Buckingham
    May 19 2026
    Summary In this episode, Andy welcomes back Marcus Buckingham, bestselling author and researcher, to discuss his new book, Design Love In: How to Unleash the Most Powerful Force in Business. For 25 years, Marcus studied the most productive teams, loyal customers, and effective leaders in the world, and the word that kept appearing in his data was one he kept changing: love. Andy and Marcus explore what love actually means in a business context, including how leaders are really experience makers whether they know it or not. You will hear the remarkable story of Josh D'Amaro, the CEO of Disney, and what his leadership reveals about designing love into a team's daily experience. Marcus unpacks the five feelings that lead people to say they love working for a leader, starting with something counterintuitive: control. The conversation also covers tough love, AI's limits as an experience maker, and how these principles can transform how we lead our families too. If you're looking for a fresh, evidence-based look at what drives sustained high performance, this episode is for you! Sound Bites "I kept hearing that word (love) and shame on me, but I did keep changing it because I felt like it was a careless exaggeration of the word like or something.""Don't keep changing the word (love). The word's the word. The question really should be why and how do we replicate it?""You're paid to change behavior. That's all you're paid to do. You're not paid to run a project. You're paid to change behavior as a leader.""When you send an email, it's not an email. It's an experience for the person on the other end. When you call that team meeting, it's not a team meeting. It's an experience.""You join a company and then you quit your boss.""Undesigned experiences lead to unpredictable outcomes.""It's cowardly, not loving. It's cowardly to leave them in that job.""I am for you. I am for you. That doesn't always mean that I am going to tell you what you wanna hear. It means I want you to flourish.""Loving's an ingredient, right? Loving isn't, 'Be nicer.' Loving's like, 'What are you trying to do for me?'""The beginning of love is rules. The beginning of love is clarity." Chapters 00:00 Introduction01:48 Start of Interview01:57 Why Marcus Spent Decades Avoiding the Word "Love"05:47 Misconceptions About Love in Business11:29 Inside the "Josh Effect"18:02 What Great Leaders Don't Do22:13 Local Leadership and Variation in Team Experience27:54 When Senior Leaders Couldn't Say the Word31:04 Applying the "Is This Loving or Unloving?" Lens37:43 Tough Love and Difficult Performance Conversations46:20 Practical Takeaways: The Five Feelings of Love50:25 AI and the Role of Love in Leadership56:34 Designing Love Into Parenting and Family1:01:26 End of Interview1:01:57 Andy Comments After the Interview1:05:03 Outtakes Learn More You can learn more about Marcus and his work at BuckinghamInstitute.com. For more learning on this topic, check out: Episode 252, which is our earlier interview with Marcus Buckingham. That book still impacts how Andy leads years after having Marcus on the first time.Episode 332 with Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel. A discussion about keeping your teams engaged and connected, even if they're not co-located.Episode 324 with Jim Harter. Jim is the Chief Scientist at Gallup and they have an insightful discussion about building resilient and thriving teams. Chat with PMeLa You can chat directly with PMeLa—the podcast's AI persona—to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her. Pass the PMP Exam If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start. Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year! Join Us for LEAD52 I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks! Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast! Talent Triangle: Power Skills Topics: Leadership, Love in Business, Team Culture, Employee Engagement, Customer Experience, Project Management, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Parenting, Organizational Culture, Experience Design The following music was used for this episode: Music: Summer Morning Full Version by MusicLFiles License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende ...
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • PPP 509 | Stop Letting Great Ideas Slip Away: A System for Leadership Recall, with author Steve Kahle

    PPP 509 | Stop Letting Great Ideas Slip Away: A System for Leadership Recall, with author Steve Kahle
    May 13 2026
    Summary In this episode, Andy welcomes back Steve Kahle, entrepreneur, executive, and fractional CIO, author of Leadership Recall: Harness Insights. Accelerate Innovation. LEAD WITH AUTHORITY. Steve first joined the podcast in episode 184 to discuss email overload. This time, the conversation turns to a challenge every leader faces: the forgetting curve. Research suggests we forget up to 83% of what we learn within a week, and Steve argues this is not just a learning problem, it's a leadership problem. Steve shares his CCR framework (Capture, Catalog, and Recall), along with practical tools such as the Anki flashcard app and the Email Me voice-note app, to build what he calls a learning operating system. The discussion covers how to design a recall fitness practice in as little as three minutes a day and how removing friction at every step keeps the system sustainable. If you're looking for a practical system to stop letting great insights slip away and start leading with more authority, this episode is for you! Sound Bites "I think God put in my heart to be a relentless optimizer. I like to see things work and work well.""When you really zoom out in life, those who are really successful have figured out what are the frameworks, what are the methodologies that work, and they simply apply those.""Our subconscious mind can handle about 11 million bits of data per second, but about 40 bits conscious mind.""I went all in. Christ totally transformed my heart, and I'm realizing that scripture memory is a superpower.""Time swiftly washes away the obvious.""Learning really is a privilege, and we need to be able to find time that works with our daily rhythms.""Three minutes a day is really all you need to be able to see tremendous traction on being able to recall things that matter""Instead of 'I'm bad at remembering names,' you could, do a reframe like, 'Hey, I'm getting better at remembering people's names.'" Chapters 00:00 Introduction01:48 Start of Interview02:06 Early Experiences and the Instinct to Remember04:08 Is Memory a Natural Gift or a Trainable Skill?05:19 Forgetting as a Feature, Not Just a Bug07:10 The Leadership Cost of Forgetting09:10 Shifting the Bottleneck from Input to Retention12:02 The Five-Hour Rule and Three Learning Archetypes14:19 The CCR Framework in Practice: Capture, Catalog, and Recall19:50 Removing Friction from Your Learning System23:23 Inside Anki: Cloze Deletions and Building Cards26:10 Organizing Your Recall Decks27:30 Real-World Results: When Readers Apply the System28:56 Building Recall Habits in Your Kids32:50 How to Get the Book34:01 End of Interview34:17 Andy Comments After the Interview37:46 Outtakes Learn More You can learn more about Steve and his work at leadershiprecall.com. For more learning on this topic, check out: Episode 184 with Steve Kahle. It's our previous conversation about keeping your head above water when drowning in email and commitments. Definitely recommend checking it out.Episode 411 with Laura Mae Martin. She's the head of productivity at Google and shares ideas that I still use to this day.Episode 376 with Nick Sonnenberg. It's a book about helping you and your team stop drowning in all the information and commitments at work. Chat with PMeLa You can chat directly with PMeLa—the podcast's AI persona—to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her. Pass the PMP Exam If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start. Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year! Join Us for LEAD52 I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks! Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast! Talent Triangle: Power Skills Topics: Leadership, Memory, Learning, Productivity, Knowledge Management, Recall, Spaced Repetition, Personal Development, Continuous Learning, Networking, Project Management The following music was used for this episode: Music: Imagefilm 034 by Sascha Ende License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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    40 mins
  • PPP 508 | Why Where You Work May Matter More Than How You Work. The Indoor Epidemic, with Dr. John La Puma

    PPP 508 | Why Where You Work May Matter More Than How You Work. The Indoor Epidemic, with Dr. John La Puma
    May 9 2026
    Summary In this episode, Andy welcomes Dr. John La Puma, a board-certified internal medicine physician, professionally trained chef, regenerative organic farmer, and two-time New York Times bestselling author of The Indoor Epidemic. Did you know most of us spend about 93% of our lives indoors? Dr. John makes the case, backed by more than 2,200 studies, that where we spend our time may matter just as much as the soft skills and productivity systems we so often focus on. In this conversation, Andy and Dr. John dig into what he calls digital obesity and analog wellness, the science of morning sunlight and circadian rhythm, why looking at the horizon for just one minute per hour can improve focus and eye health, and what forest bathing actually does to your immune system. They also explore loneliness as a health crisis, the social dimension of outdoor time, and practical ways to build a 17-minute daily nature habit that doesn't require moving to Santa Barbara. If you're looking for science-backed ways to boost your energy, focus, and long-term wellbeing, this episode is for you! Sound Bites "Digital obesity is when you consume more pixels than you can metabolize.""What people don't understand about this is that it's not a character flaw, that it's a biological mismatch.""People don't appreciate that nature is actually social, and that social part is good for you.""And loneliness is what? 15 cigarettes a day in mortality.""Nature works through your senses. You touch, you listen, you see, you smell, you taste.""You have a 56% higher function and number of natural killer cells because you are in the company of trees that are making these chemicals, alpha-pinene, D-limonene in citrus trees, many other trees, that improve your ability to kill tumor cells and kill virus infected cells.""But immersion in the forest means that you're immersing your senses in it, and the forest is, is the therapist, and the walk is the therapy.""Rest is actually self-preservation and capital investment.""Often you can upgrade the thinking in a room just by opening a window.""But you don't need a forest, and you don't need a park even. You just need a sky view." Chapters 00:00 Introduction01:56 Start of Interview02:06 Background: Origins of the Indoor Epidemic07:03 Digital Obesity and Analog Wellness10:33 Dr. John's Morning Outdoor Routine13:21 The Benefits of Looking at the Horizon17:22 Experiencing Vastness and Awe22:47 Forest Bathing: More Than Just a Walk24:32 Walking Habits and Nature Recalibration26:52 Loneliness and Outdoor Social Connection30:04 Practical Tips for Parents32:03 End of Interview32:39 Andy Comments After the Interview35:15 Outtakes Learn More You can learn more about Dr. John and his work at drjohnlapuma.com. For more learning on this topic, check out: Episode 461 with Dr. Patricia Grabarek. We talk about why our typical approaches to wellness are missing the mark.Episode 421 with Dr. Bijoy John. He's a practicing sleep doctor and I think you'll find some practical ideas from our discussion.Episode 200 with Jeffrey Pfeffer. He's the author of a book entitled Dying for a Paycheck and I think you'll find his insights challenging enough to look at work differently. Chat with PMeLa You can chat directly with PMeLa—the podcast's AI persona—to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her. Level Up Your AI Skills Join other listeners from around the world who are taking our AI Made Simple course to prepare for an AI-infused future. Just go to ai.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com. Thanks! Pass the PMP Exam If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start. Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year! Join Us for LEAD52 I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks! Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast! Talent Triangle: Power Skills Topics: Nature, Digital Obesity, Analog Wellness, Productivity, Loneliness, Forest Bathing, Morning Sunlight, Wellbeing, Leadership, Sleep The following music was used for this episode: Music: On Point by Steven OBrien License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Music: Energetic Drive Indie Rock by WinnieTheMoog License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/...
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    38 mins
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