373: Moneyball in Projectland with Grayson Barnard and Dawn Mahan
Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers!
PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills
This episode is personal for me in a way most podcast conversations are not.
For the first time, my son and co-author, Grayson Barnard, joins me on the PMO Strategies podcast. One of my closest friends, Dawn Mahan, is here too. The three of us talk about Projectland, baseball, the books we created together, and a leadership lesson PMO and transformation leaders cannot afford to miss.
You can do everything that looks like good project management and still fail to help the team win.
Your tool may be sophisticated. Your templates may be complete. Your governance process may be consistent. Your report may contain 85 metrics. None of that matters if leaders still cannot see the decision, the team is protecting activity that does not advance the outcome, or the project finishes without creating the business value it was funded to produce.
Grayson recognized that lesson immediately in Moneyball. The goal was not to replace star players with people who looked like star players. The goal was to find what produced wins and organize the team around it.
That is the question at the center of this episode: What is your team's version of getting on base?
In this episode, you will learn:
✅ Why Grayson believed Moneyball was the obvious story for our chapter.
✅ How to distinguish work that looks professional from work that advances the business outcome.
✅ Why individual performance measures can pull people away from the team win.
✅ How Dawn's Projectland characters help teams understand roles, sponsors, stakeholders, and saboteurs.
✅ How both Projectland books make serious leadership lessons more engaging and easier to apply.
✅ Why fun is not the opposite of disciplined performance.
✅ How to prepare a team for the moment the plan stops matching reality.
Connect with Grayson Barnard and Dawn Mahan
Explore Projectland
Read the free Moneyball sample chapter
Explore Projectland Goes to the Movies
Explore Meet the Players in Projectland
Browse the Projectland movie list on IMDb
Continue with the Executive Perspective
Continue the baseball connection and watch What Baseball Teaches Us About Project Management
P.S. Once you know what matters, the next challenge is helping leaders understand why they should act. Join me live for Make Your Case on Thursday, August 20, from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m. Eastern. Bring one real strategy delivery challenge and turn it into a clear, leadership-ready Case for Change you can use in the room. Live only. No replays. Owners of The IMPACT Engine join free. Your book is your ticket.
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Warmly,
Laura Barnard
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