Brett Harned:                                          Hey, welcome back to Time Limit. This is your host, Brett Harned. I'm so glad that you tuned in for this episode because I actually think it's a special one. You know, I've been thinking a lot about kindness at work lately. I think we all have our best intentions and for whatever reason, things get in the way of that kindness, particularly for project managers who are stressed out and are under the gun to deliver projects on time and under budget and also tend to be pulled in a lot of different directions every single day. But then I start to think that's really no excuse for not being kind. It's something that you live, not something that you do. But how can you get better at being kind, and thinking maybe one way is to practice that kindness actively outside of work, but doing something that's maybe work-like. So what I'm saying is bring your PM skills to a charity or to another initiative outside of work that helps you practice in a less stressful environment.

Brett Harned:                                          So that's why I'm really excited to have my friend Sophie Brydon on Time Limit today. Sophie has a ton of experience managing digital projects and recently joined the Hygiene Bank in the UK as a volunteer. And the work that she's doing is pretty amazing. In the interview, she offers insight into how you can get involved in a charity and how you can bring the power of project management to do meaningful work for other people and helping other people. There's a whole lot more to this interview, but I don't want to spoil it, so let's check it out. Hey Sophie, thank you so much for joining me on Time Limit today. How are you?

Sophie Brydon:                                         Yeah, no worries. Thank you for having me. I'm really good. How are you?

Brett Harned:                                          I'm great. And I'm actually really excited to talk about kind of how I got you on this episode. So we met at the Deliver conference in Manchester in the UK probably a few years ago the first time. Last year, I remember, you were one of the speakers and did an amazing job. It was great to see that.

Sophie Brydon:                                         Thank you.

Brett Harned:                                          And then a few weeks ago I ended up reaching out to you because I saw a tweet on Twitter about you pretty much using your amazing project management powers for good. And that just made me feel like, "Wow, there are people out in the world doing great things with project management." I think we don't talk about that enough, so I was hoping maybe you could tell us a little bit about the organization or the charity that you're volunteering for and the types of projects that you're working on.

Sophie Brydon:                                         Yeah, absolutely. So I volunteer for a charity called the Hygiene Bank. It is a national UK charity focused on hygiene poverty. I think when we think about people living in poverty, we tend to think about the obvious, food poverty and homelessness or access to housing. What we don't tend to think about straight away is, "Is there access to other basic human rights, like hygiene products, the ability to keep clean and look after your wellbeing, your dignity, and your health?" And it's so important. The founder of the charity started probably 16 months ago. It's not been going very long. There was a film that came out in the UK, if it's available in the US I absolutely would recommend people watching. It's called I, Daniel Blake. And it's actually set in Newcastle where I live, and it tells a story about a couple of people living in poverty and the challenges that they face gaining access to support from the government and how they have to rely on food banks.

Sophie Brydon:                                         And it has a scene where one of the girls gets arrested for shoplifting, and what she's shoplifting is a deodorant because she can't afford one. And it really sparked something off in our founder, and she started the charity. And I found out about them pretty soon afterwards. So we started our project, which is specifically in Newcastle where I live, in January of last year. So we've been going for about a year and a lot is involved in terms of starting a charity project. So it's a bit like a program of work to be honest. The way that we work is, we put donation locations into local businesses so people can drop off products that they want to donate. And then we pick them up, we sort them out, and we take them to local charity partners who can get them to people who need them.

Sophie Brydon:                                         So food banks, homeless shelters, women's shelters, refugee charities. We support charities who help women who've just fled domestic abuse. It's quite wide-ranging, so we kind of have that day-to-day management of stuff. And then obviously we've got the awareness aspects. I think the issue is still relatively unknown or not as well known as I'd want it to be. So we really have to work on that, in terms of events and publicity and PR and that kind of stuff. So there's quite a lot of little things going on at any one time that you have to kind of keep an eye on, which is really what we're used to every day, isn't it?

Brett Harned:                                          Yeah, absolutely. I didn't realize that you joined this charity when it was brand new, so you're basically helping to build a nonprofit organization. That's a lot bigger than just managing a couple projects.

Sophie Brydon:                                         Yeah, I guess. But the way that the charity works is that, obviously the umbrella, the charity is there, but for it to run in particular locations, it runs off project coordinators in the individual locations starting that project up and running that project themselves. So we get support from HQ, but really what we do in Newcastle is all me and Jess, the other coordinator of the charity. That is all us. So yeah, pretty much. I see us as a little grassroots charity project, really. We're just one of very many within the Hygiene Bank family.

Brett Harned:                                          Absolutely. So how did you get involved?

Sophie Brydon:                                         I think I heard about it on Instagram. I'll be honest, I actually can't remember. So there was another charity in the UK called the Red Box Project, which specifically supported young girls in school with access to period products. Obviously they're super expensive, and obviously that's really tough for families when their kids start their periods. So this charity collected period products and put them into schools so that kids had direct access to them for free. And I found out about this issue probably September of 2018, and I didn't really know about it and it blew my mind. And so I was like, We need to do something about this."

Sophie Brydon:                                         So at work I said to everyone, "We need to do a collection here" and got loads of donations in. And I think because I found out about them and I started following them on Instagram, I started following a few other charities within that space. And that's when I found out about the Hygiene Bank and I could see that there wasn't really an active project in Newcastle. So I emailed and said, "Can I get involved?" I had really wanted a volunteering opportunity for a while. I knew that I had skills I could give to a charity, I just needed to find the right one. And then I came across the hygiene bank and realized that that was the one, really.

Brett Harned:                                          That's really cool. So essentially for anyone who's listening, the lesson there is if there's something that you feel passionate about or there's a place in the world where you feel like you can help or want to help, all you have to do is reach out because they'll want your help. My question to you, Sophie, is when you reached out, were you thinking that you'd end up offering help in project management or were you thinking, "Hey, I'll kind of just do whatever they need me to do?"

Sophie Brydon:                                         The latter, definitely the latter. Me and Jess came on at the same time and we kind of laugh now thinking about what we've actually gotten ourselves into, especially with the situation we're in. I oversee work in a consultancy and that's a pretty full on job. She is a trainee psychologist doing her PhD, so she's getting her doctorate and works three days a week in hospitals and then is studying the other two days. So we both have it pretty full on and then are trying to grow a charity project as well, so you can kind of see the types of people we are. I didn't really know what I was going to get myself into, very much blindly walking into it and now we're in it and we care so much about it and it's like, "Well, it's got to be done now."

Brett Harned:                                          Absolutely. So the work that you're doing, you've mentioned project coordinators a few times and that's pretty much code for project managers in my world, right?

Sophie Brydon:                                         Yes.

Brett Harned:                                          We call PMs every different kind of title under the sun, but that feels very kind of project managementy, if that makes sense. What are the kinds of things that you're doing as a project coordinator?

Sophie Brydon:                                         We are reaching out to local businesses and trying to get them on board as donation locations, that's both public businesses and private businesses as well. We are reaching out to charity partners and getting them on board if they want our support. That obviously requires a lot of admin, so our inbox is always overflowing. Obviously once we do have donation locations in place, we need to make sure that we're keeping in regular contact with them, that we are picking up the boxes as soon as they're full, that we're taking them, sorting them out, and distributing them. We now have a team, so thankfully in the past few months we've got another three volunteers and a social media volunteer as well. So we now have a team to coordinate with in Newcastle and we also coordinate the region, so we have people in South Tyneside and North Tyneside, which is kind of outside of our catchment area as Hygiene Bank Newcastle, that we oversee as well with them running their projects. And then we have a side gig in Northumberland as well that we kind of have a small donation location there that we then support a food bank over where my parents live. So we technically have, we call it four projects that we then program manage, to put it in our speak.

Brett Harned:                                          Wow. That's amazing. Some of the words that you used are very indicative of project management. It sounds like it's a lot of communication and coordination, making sure that things are happening with a bigger team, which is exciting. I wonder, you're not a PM now, but as someone who has really solid and firm project management experience, what do you find that you can contribute in that realm of project management that really feels like you're doing a good job and you're making the organization better and you're really serving those people? Cause obviously the mission for this is really important and it sounds like it's a mission that's really important to you, which I think at the beginning just makes you excited and want to do a great job. But I'm just curious, what are the things kind of within the realm of PM that you feel like you're offering that are really helping?

Sophie Brydon:                                         For me PM is all about communication. You can have your RAID log and you can have your project plan and all that stuff, but if we don't communicate well then we're not going to succeed. And for me, I think that's super key here as well. I think PM 101 is crafting a good email. And especially in this kind of scenario where I regularly have to go to people and ask them for something where they don't need to give me it. We have a saying in Newcastle. I'm not from Newcastle, so I can't really say it very well, but, "Shy bairns don't get nowt", which pretty much means if you want something go and ask for it. And I kind of follow that mentality when it comes to running the charity.

Sophie Brydon:                                         If you don't ask someone for help, the worst they can say is no, so you might as well ask them. So there's a lot of crafting well-rounded emails, a lot of convincing people face-to-face as well that you need their help and that this is the cause that they should care about. Obviously a lot of communication between our teams as well.,A lot of planning, especially now that we have our smaller projects and we're doing a lot more kind of PR and events and stuff. My personal Hygiene Bank calendar, having to coordinate that with my work calendar and everyone else's is a feat within itself. The soft skills that I think I've really managed to hone over the past few years as a PM I think are really serving me well in this role.

Brett Harned:                                          That absolutely makes sense. It also sounds like your ability to kind of break things down and understand what needs to be done in order to get the donations that you need or to get an organization on board to help you out, that sounds like that's serving you really well in this role as well.

Sophie Brydon:                                         Oh, for sure. But I think, and I imagine you might be the same, everything inevitably gets broken down into scope and a project plan in my head, whether or not I plan to do it. It'll happen, it just will happen. So yeah, I think that when we've got quite a lot on and we've kind of got to break it down, I'm always Whatsapping Jess being like, "Right, well I think we need to do this, then this, then this, then this. And these are the things I'm concerned about and these are the risks that I think we've got and this is how I think we'll mitigate them." It's just, you kind of can't help yourself, can you? It's just a constant [crosstalk]

Brett Harned:                                          Oh my gosh, you're speaking my language.

Sophie Brydon:                                         I know, right? Your brain just always goes to that place. Even if you're like, "Brain, stop," you can't get it to stop.

Brett Harned:                                          Absolutely. I will do this on a Saturday where I have a couple of things to do at home just around the house, and then maybe I have a couple of errands to run. I'll be thinking, "What's the order I need to do this in so that I can be the most efficient with my time and actually have time to relax?" It's just the way that my brain thinks. So I think drop me in that kind of scenario where it feels like there's a lot of gravity to the projects and you feel like really connected to the cause and it might put me into overdrive. I imagined that, sure, projects are important when they're work and that's how you collect a paycheck. But there's a certain sense of meaning when you're doing the kind of work that you're doing. Do you feel that way?

Sophie Brydon:                                         Oh, for sure. I can't imagine what it must feel like to live in a situation where you can't have access to basic hygiene products where you have to rely on food banks for food, and you don't necessarily know whether your housing situation is longterm or not, or you're sofa surfing. I get reminded every day of my privilege. I get into the shower in the morning, I don't have to think about whether or not I've got shampoo or do I have to wash myself in a bar of cheap soap that I've managed to find somewhere. People live in these situations every day, and I think until we are in a situation where higher powers, I'm not going to get political, but where higher powers can help solve that situation, we really need to take things down to a community level.

Sophie Brydon:                                         And I think community means so much more to me now having gotten into this work and it kind of shows how important a strong community around you is. It's just really been hammered home to me since I started doing this. And yeah, I feel so passionately about it that even weeks where your work life is overflowing and you've not got time for anything, I still know I have to make time for this because we're making people's lives better now and that is so important.

Brett Harned:                                          Yeah, absolutely. Not to move away from such an important point because I totally feel that, but I want to talk a little bit about something that you mentioned earlier. You talked a little bit about planning and I know you and I have talked a little bit about kind of the fact that you've done planning with Hygiene Bank. Can you talk a little bit about that process? Do you have plans for each of your projects or initiatives? Do you break them down that way and when you're thinking out a plan, are you documenting it and building out, again, a chart or a plan or a checklist or anything like that?

Sophie Brydon:                                         Last year was very loose cannon, I can say. It was very much just as soon as something came up, we'd deal with it. But we sat down in December and we decided to set some Q1 goals, what we wanted to achieve over quarter one, what that actually meant in terms of the reality, what we would need to do, and then started to make action plans in terms of then what we needed to do to get that delivered. We talked about the fact that we wanted to get more volunteers, so we started making plans for the kind of events that we could look out for or sign up for, the other kind of routes that we could get volunteers through, some of the social media and advertising, et cetera. We did the same with funding, did some research around places that we could apply for.

Sophie Brydon:                                         Especially in the UK, there's a lot of supermarkets do charity voting because they charge you for carrier bags and that's really good for a [inaudible] project like us. Sitting down and doing goal setting and breaking that down effectively into tasks and then kind of agreeing who was going to pick that up, was the first time that we really sat down and said, "Right, what instead of look ..." We spent a lot of time looking at just what the next thing was, but actually stepping back and looking at that kind of three month view and saying, Where do we want to be at the end of March?" That was really, really important for me and actually I think if I look back now at what we wanted to achieve and where we are now, we've probably smashed that already. We've been very lucky the past few months in that a lot of things have happened that we didn't actually plan for and that's been really great. But actually if you align it back to what we wanted to achieve and what we set our goals out to be, we are still achieving on them in that awareness and volunteers were the two things that we wanted to achieve. We had started on the path of the plans that we had made and the tasks that we'd kind of given ourselves and then scope creep happened, but in a really good way.

Brett Harned:                                          Of course it happened. That makes sense though, the idea that first you would agree on goals. I mean, that's something that you would do in any project. And then coming up with, I like the term action plans. So essentially what you're doing is coming up with a bunch of projects of different sizes and scopes and rolling out in different ways with different people and then just kind of tracking them. That absolutely makes sense. It also feels like when something does come up, like you mentioned, having those plans in place or at least an idea of what you want to do and a goal that they roll up to, helps you to reprioritize because you only have so much time in the day. You've got a full time job, you're doing as much as you can with the charity and you can't take on everything as much as you probably want to.

Sophie Brydon:                                         Yeah, I mean that not taking on everything and delegating is something that I am trying to get better at. And that is genuinely, I mean that's the kind of work thing as well. I think I am your classic kind of chaos junkie, firefighter type person in that if I see a fire going on in the corner, it doesn't matter whether it was my fire, I'll still try and go off and put it out. And when it comes to this stuff as well, especially when we see opportunities come through, I think it's easy to go, "Oh right, I'll do this, I'll deal with that, I'll deal with that."

Sophie Brydon:                                         And then all of a sudden you've got a to do list that's a mile long and you actually can't achieve it. And now that we have a team really trying to focus on people owning individual parts, we do have a self-organizing team and that we are working on our individual bits and that we do have that kind of delegation path. Cause I think what we are effectively building is a hygiene poverty scrum team. Hopefully that will work really well in time. I might coin that. I quite like that.

Brett Harned:                                          I think you should.

Sophie Brydon:                                         Yeah, I like that a lot. But that really is kind of what we're aiming to achieve and you kind of need to take that ethos that we get from our lives and really plug it into that.

Brett Harned:                                          Yeah, absolutely. We kind of talked about what you're bringing to the organization as a PM. I'm wondering if that goes the opposite way. Have you learned anything in the work that you're doing as a volunteer that you've been able to apply to your work in your job?

Sophie Brydon:                                         I think it makes you quite resourceful in terms of being able to do whatever you can with what you've got, because we really did build this from the ground up. And I think it's enabled me to be a bit more kind of confident in asking for scary things because when we're asking for things on behalf of the charity, it's just so easy to do because I'm asking for people to help someone else, not help me. It's really easy to do, but then when you're asking, when you're having those kinds of difficult conversations and when it does affect you, sometimes it's a lot harder to do, but I think it's maybe giving me that different edge in terms of my communication skills when you're having those kinds of conversations. I think the biggest thing, I mean I've always been very vocal about causes that I'm passionate about at work.

Sophie Brydon:                                         They know, my work colleagues, I'm always banging the drum to them about a particular cause. But actually it has shown me how important looking after your community is, especially as a business. We are a business that's been located in Newcastle for 15 years or so and we have a massive impact in the community in terms of the fact that we employ 300 people and we're right in the city center. We see everything going on. We have a responsibility to positively impact our community in my opinion. And it's really made me see the impact that the corporate kind of social responsibility has and it doesn't have to be a buzz word, it can actually be a real thing and that, as someone who works for an organization, whether it's two, three, four people, whether it's a massive corporation, you have the ability to impact your local community by speaking out at work about causes that affect people that live in your community.

Brett Harned:                                          Absolutely. I think it's something that for whatever reason we don't do much of. I think sometimes we get worried about bothering people with that stuff. But I think if you feel so strongly about it and you feel like you're making a positive impact, then why not say it? It kind of comes back to your point about the volunteer work helping you to approach difficult conversations or ask for things that you think might be difficult to get. I really like that point about it cause I think what you're doing is just making, first of all, the most amazing thing that you're doing is helping to build this great charity that's doing amazing work. But you're also kind of growing yourself as an individual and also in some ways as an employee because you're finding ways to bring that kindness into the work that you're doing every day when kindness isn't always something that's expected at work.

Sophie Brydon:                                         No, no, definitely not. And it's funny, I've worked at the same place for nine years and it's a real family environment and I really care a lot about the culture and I care about everyone who works here. It's really nice. I'm very privileged, I think, to have that kind of experience every day. And it is great. And we're all kind of like-minded people, so we do try and bring our kindness in every day. I mean, it's not easy because we work in a stressful environment. Everyone has their days, but we do try and bring that kindness in towards each other. And for me it's about taking it that one step further and just showing our kindness to the world as a whole.

Sophie Brydon:                                         And the one thing that I've always been so grateful to about my work family is that if I say to them, "Guys, look at this cause. Look at these people that need help. Will you help me help them?", they'll always do it. They always step up. We are running a little charity week right now for four charities in the region. Obviously Hygiene Bank's one of them, but we are supporting a local food bank, a local kind of homeless drop in center, and then a wonderful charity that supports women getting back into work with interview training and clothing. So we just have some boxes around the office for people to bring their donations in and, as I expected, everyone has stepped up and I really love that. I feel really grateful for that.

Brett Harned:                                          That's cool. I'm curious, do you have any tips for our listeners if they want to get involved in an organization or they want to kind of bring that kind of what you've done here as kind of bringing that into the office and seeing if people will participate. Are there any things that you think people could do to kind of make that feel a little easier?

Sophie Brydon:                                         I mean it can be quite interesting to actually put some feelers out to understand what causes people you work with feel passionately about, because there's probably some shared views in there. Or you could run little fundraisers that support multiple charities. But also I think it's great to just come in and stand up for a cause that you believe in, if you've got Slack or kind of something similar just to kind of pop a message out to people and say, "Hey, I've heard about this cause. What do you think? Can we pull something together for it?" I think people are really open to it. It's just, it's not necessarily something that we always seek out. We have busy lives and we just don't necessarily always seek out those opportunities unless some things maybe particularly happen to us.

Sophie Brydon:                                         The other thing I would say is, if you have the time and you have the inclination, look for the community projects and charities that are within your kind of local area that people haven't really heard of. Because there will be so many of them, these very small grassroots organizations that are doing an amazing amount of good and they just don't get heard about. And you can, even if you shared information about that charity at your workplace and three or four people listen, that'd be three or four people that didn't know about that charity yesterday. And they may tell one or two people that they know and you are spreading the word and those real small charities, they really need it.

Brett Harned:                                          Absolutely. So last question here. The title of the podcast is Time Limit. The last question I ask everyone is around kind of time-saving tips. And I feel like you're going to have a bunch because it sounds like you've got a very busy job. You're working with this charity and it sounds like you're doing a lot of amazing work. That's a lot of a lot of stuff to to kind of layer onto just being a human, and doing all the things that you want to do with your life outside of work. I'm wondering if you can share any tips for things that you do to save time when you're kind of trying to organize everything when you're trying to plan projects, manage projects, be a good communicator, all of that stuff.

Sophie Brydon:                                         Yeah, so I thought about this a little bit. Actually, I've got a few answers, but you are right. I do have far too much going on in my life and so I have to really plan what I'm doing and make lists. You said something that really rang true with me earlier, every weekend I will make a list of what I need to achieve on my phone with those ticky things that you can tick it off and you feel really good about it. It moves down the list. I have to do that and I have to build, I start building them up on a Friday night because I have so much going on in my head that if it don't write it down I will lose it. That for me is like my mini kind of weekend combined Kanban board or whatever. And I'll even plan if I've got loads of stuff to do in the car, if I've got drop-off routes cause I've got donations to drop off, I will plan the path of most efficiency around town to get to places.

Sophie Brydon:                                         I even do it if I'm walking around town. If I've got these four shops to go to, I'll plan my route for efficiency purposes. So yeah, for me, especially balancing a really busy life, I think this is in the workplace as well, making lists, planning my time, blocking my diary as well. I forget about personal commitments that I've made nowadays if I don't put them in my diary, which is awful, but genuinely it happens. I'll just forget. I leave my personal diary overlaid with my professional diary at all times. I like to keep them separate. I used to have all my personal stuff in my work diary for years and then I just realized I needed those two things to not be the same. But I have them overlaid so if I'm making a work commitment that'll have me working late or coming in early or traveling that I can see my commitments side by side.

Sophie Brydon:                                         But when I originally thought about it, I thought about the initial kind of few days and few weeks of a project and the things that you can put in place up front to save time later. And I actually think, and this does kind of work for the Hygiene Bank as well, spending more time communicating up front and at key points in the project will save you time across the board even though it doesn't feel like it. And I think that's just so important for work, for projects. For the Hygiene Bank, we have our kind of regular meetups with the group, we might not even have like an agenda for it, but actually I'll then leave with a list of like 5, 10 things that people have committed to and that we've got to do or ideas will kind of be generated. And it's the same for projects as well. I think it's actually really important to put the extra time in for communication at those key times in order to save time later.

Brett Harned:                                          Absolutely. Yeah. All of those things are ringing true for me, all things that I do just in my daily life. So we're on the same wavelength. We're both project managers at heart, whether we're doing that right now or not. I appreciate all that. I think one thing I want to do before we go, and this has been such a great conversation, thank you so much for joining me and for sharing your experience and for doing the amazing work that you're doing too.

Sophie Brydon:                                         Thank you.

Brett Harned:                                          While we've been chatting, I brought up my browser and did a Google search for the Hygiene Bank and so it's thehygienebank.com.

Sophie Brydon:                                         It is.

Brett Harned:                                          Your photo is right there on the home page, which is great.

Sophie Brydon:                                         It is. Yes, that happened yesterday.

Brett Harned:                                          It's a beautiful website and I just wanted to throw the URL out there just for anyone who's interested and would like to get involved or contribute or whatever they can do. So check out thehygienebank.com and then any other information, Sophie, that you have to share, we'll make sure that we include that in our show notes as well so folks can check out the Time Limit website. But again, thank you so much for joining me. It was really great to catch up with you and hope to talk to you again soon.

Sophie Brydon:                                         No, thank you very much, Brett. I have looked up to you since I became a PM eight, nine years ago, so I really value this conversation. I really appreciate you having me on.

Brett Harned:                                          Thank you so much. That means a lot to me. All right, thanks everyone for joining us. Thanks. All right, folks. That's all for this episode. Again, huge thanks to Sophie for joining the show and for sharing some really valuable information. I hope the conversation that we had inspires you to act on something that you're feeling or thinking, whether that has to do with helping charity or planning your next initiative. I also hope that this interview and others on Time Limit inspire you to learn more about the work that we're doing at TeamGantt and maybe even to rate the podcast and share it with your friends and colleagues. That's a little wink that I'm doing there. Anyway, I'd appreciate it if you could help us to make the show better just by sharing and rating the show. Thanks again for joining. We'll see you again in two weeks for episode number 30.