People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast

Summary
In this episode, Andy talks with Jia Jiang, bestselling author of Rejection Proof and creator of the 100 Days of Rejection experiment, about his new book, Easy Discipline. Growing up in Beijing, Jia was taught the value of chi ku, or "eating bitterness," the idea that the more pain you can tolerate, the more you can achieve. The problem? He was terrible at it. Over time, he discovered that his best work came when he was having the most fun.
Andy and Jia explore what easy discipline does and doesn't mean, why action goals can work better than outcome goals, and how stepping into a character, like a consultant instead of a salesperson, can change your results. They also discuss how project leaders can build a momentum loop early, how a single one-action goal can help turn around a struggling project, why some efforts work best as time-boxed sprints, and how to tell normal resistance from work that simply doesn't fit who you are. Jia closes with stories of how he and his wife apply easy discipline as parents.
If you're looking for a more sustainable way to stay consistent without constantly fighting yourself, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"It literally translates into English as eating bitterness.... The idea is the more bitterness, the more pain you can tolerate, the higher achievement you can go to."
"If work ethic is the only thing that matters, the best factory workers will be the richest people in the world, right?"
"It's really the inner drive that takes us to go a long way."
"I did programming to achieve a goal, to achieve some sort of success. He did programming for fun."
"The things I didn't like to do? I failed miserably. For the things I like to do, I was doing them so well."
"If you can tap into the 'play' part of yourself, the enjoyment part, that's where you are at your best, even at work."
"Having a deadline, having a finish line is sometimes magical."
"The key for me as a parent is this: How do I enjoy being with them more?"
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:58 Start of Interview
02:08 Seen as Lazy and Hopeless: Learning to "Eat Bitterness"
04:53 Grind Culture and the Myth of Hard Work Alone
06:21 Elon Musk and the Power of Inner Drive
08:00 What Easy Discipline Doesn't Mean
09:11 Chasing the Bill Gates Dream
11:42 Fired and Rehired by the Same Boss
13:26 Applying Easy Discipline to Losing Weight
16:05 Outcome Goals vs. Action Goals
17:48 What Jia Still Hasn't Made Enjoyable
20:28 Getting Into Character
22:36 Accessing a Real Part of Yourself at Work
23:43 Building a Momentum Loop Early in a Project
26:05 Delivering Early and Finding Stakeholder Support
27:14 One Action Goal for a Struggling Project
29:22 Why Jia Told a CEO to Stop After 100 Days
31:03 When Fast-Tracking Everything Backfires
32:33 Normal Resistance or the Wrong Work?
35:22 Living Someone Else's Dream
37:23 Easy Discipline as Parents
41:02 End of Interview
41:44 Andy Comments After the Interview
45:27 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Jia and his work at JiaJiang.com. You can also watch his TED Talk, What I Learned from 100 Days of Rejection.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 522 with Ross Blankenship and Maggie Sass. Their book Friction shares related ideas about reducing the friction in what we do.
Episode 377 with Cassie Holmes. She's a happiness researcher who shares evidence-based approaches to live and work with more meaning and joy.
Episode 242 with James Clear about his bestselling book, Atomic Habits, which has a lot in common with turning hard things into habits.
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.
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: Discipline, Motivation, Habits, Goal Setting, Momentum, Project Management, Leadership, Stakeholder Engagement, Career Development, Self-Awareness, Intrinsic Motivation, Parenting
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: Laughing Children Full Version by MusicLFiles
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summary
In this episode, Andy talks with Dr. Kelly Heuer, Vice President of Learning at PMI, where she leads global learning strategy across professional standards, training, certification, and career-long development. Kelly takes us behind the scenes of the updated PMP® exam and explains what changed in project work that made this refresh necessary.
You'll hear why the business environment domain now makes up nearly a quarter of the exam, how new multi-question case scenarios assess judgment instead of memorization, and why broader recognition of associate and vocational degrees matters to her as a first-generation college graduate. Kelly and Andy also explore what a strategic project leader actually looks like, why judgment may be the new job security in the age of AI, and practical ways early-career professionals can build judgment as entry-level rungs disappear. Kelly shares how she learned to say the thing, the difference between perishable and enduring skills, and the two capabilities she most wants to grow in her kids.
If you're preparing for the PMP, already certified, or looking to sharpen your judgment as a project leader in a world shaped by AI, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"You needed a project manager. And instead you got me, and I have no idea what I'm doing."
"But you know, I am a firm believer that, you know, the credential associated with your name, the name of your university, whether you went to university or not, is nowhere near an adequate representation of your actual potential or your actual skill."
"You don't have three facts. You have an entire story, right?"
"Having a consistent measurement system where you're looking at value accumulation, value realization throughout the course of a project through project close is a really important differentiator."
"And it's about thinking three steps ahead and three rings out like in concentric circles of influence."
"But one of the ways you can combat that is being specific about what you mean and what it looks like, right?"
"But, you know, the way I think of it is AI is just, like, the latest test of professional judgment."
"But I want to make one more point as well, which is that learning by osmosis was never a good professional development strategy anyway."
"So in here, in this case, I actually think AI is part of the solution to the problem that AI caused, which is one of the great things about AI, even the freely available tools, is it's kind of like an inexhaustible interlocutor."
"Find ways to lead and manage small projects, even if you're just organizing trash collection in your neighborhood."
"I think there's also just a lot of observational learning that doesn't have to hurt at all."
"But you can do a lot of saying the thing, challenging directly, asking the question if you pair it with a lot of signals of interpersonal warmth, which can be things like smiling and eye contact."
"It's so much less relevant to actually wordsmith your prompt now. It's much more about context engineering."
"So in my opinion, the most enduring human skill of all is a capability for continuous learning, staying curious, staying fresh, staying open and permeable to new information, and strategic about how you build those skills so you're not wasting time doing it."
"The robots are overconfident."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:00 Start of Interview
02:12 From Philosophy to Project Management
04:55 What Changed in Project Work to Drive the PMP Exam Update
07:52 Business Acumen and the Shift Toward Agile and Hybrid
09:22 Recognizing Associate Degrees and Technical Education
11:22 Counting Project Experience After Career Gaps
13:29 Inside the New Multi-Question Case Scenarios
16:47 Exam Prep Advice That No Longer Helps
18:46 Closing the Gap Between the Real World and the Exam
20:49 What a Strategic Project Leader Does Differently
25:11 Avoiding Bias When Assessing Strategic Thinking
26:17 Judgment as the New Job Security in the Age of AI
29:15 How Early Career Professionals Can Build Judgment
34:51 Small Projects, Observational Learning, and Near Peer Learning
36:54 Learning to Say the Thing
40:17 Coming Across as an Ally, Not a Critic
41:21 Perishable, Durable, and Enduring Skills
45:14 Growing Curiosity and Humility in Our Kids
48:18 End of Interview
48:51 Andy Comments After the Interview
51:53 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Kelly and her work on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com/in/kelly-heuer.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 319 with Sierra Hampton Simmons. Sierra is the former head of certification at PMI, and many of the ideas we discussed still apply to the refreshed PMP exam.
Episode 513 with Fred Marshall. It's not about certification, but it's all about thriving in an age of AI, a major theme in today's episode.
Episode 509 with Steve Kahle. Steve shares practical ideas for improving your ability to recall what you've learned.
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: Business Acumen
Topics: PMP Certification, PMP Exam, Project Management, Business Acumen, Judgment, Strategic Thinking, Systems Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, Career Development, Early Career Professionals, Continuous Learning, Communication
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: Energetic Drive Indie Rock by WinnieTheMoog
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summary
In this episode, Andy sits down with Dr. Maggie Sass and Dr. Ross Blankenship, consulting psychologists and authors of Friction: How Tension, Emotion and Change Reveal Better Leaders. Project managers are trained to remove blockers, and much of the time that's exactly right. But Maggie and Ross draw a distinction that's easy to miss: some friction is simply waste, and some friction is information.
You'll hear how the unwritten rules we learned about emotion early in life still shape how we lead, what starts happening in a room before an irritated leader says a word, and the four words Ross thinks can rescue a team meeting. We also dig into why burnout is often a system design problem instead of a self-care problem, what a project leader can actually do about structural friction when they can't redesign the whole system, and which human capabilities are worth protecting as AI makes more of our work faster and easier.
If you're looking for a more practical way to read the tension on your team and use what it's telling you, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"But I think the unwritten rule at home was that talking about emotions and living through them safely were two distinct things."
"Humans need things, and sometimes they don't even know what they need until you are together in a space or in a call."
"You don't ask questions. You don't bring up creative ideas because you have no idea how that's really gonna go given what you're watching a leader do."
"But I think the older I've gotten, the more convinced I am that our job as adults inside organizations is not necessarily to be perfect, but it's to repair as fast as possible when you make a mistake, and that's the thing that doesn't happen when people are scared."
"I've found that these four words can save your team (and marriage): 'I'm experiencing some friction'."
"It helps me remember that between the stimulus and the response, I have space, and the more that I give myself, the better."
"There is no real way to separate task and relationship because the humans are doing the tasks."
"Being the hero may allow you to solve massive problems or create really compelling products in the short term, but it's not a sustainable way to run a business because businesses are run by people and people have limits."
"It's a good example where AI makes you more productive, like, you got 'em done faster, and almost entirely strips the meaning out of it."
"And we need to take seriously that our kids need to learn to fail so that they develop resilience."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:14 Start of Interview
02:23 The Unwritten Rules Maggie Learned About Emotion
04:06 Growing Up in Ross's House
05:41 Why Ross Was Skeptical of EQ
08:22 What Ross's Pushback Changed for Maggie
11:01 Do You Have EQ, or Do You Do EQ?
13:06 Can We Get Too Good at Smoothing the Path?
16:56 Where Ross Deliberately Leaves Friction in Place
18:46 What AI Missed When They Tried Using It on the Book
20:35 Leadership as Emotional Intelligence in Action
20:50 What Happens When an Irritated Leader Walks In
24:39 Four Words That Can Change the Room
27:00 When Your Body Writes the Story First
29:28 Maggie's Physical Cue and How She Creates Space
32:55 Burnout as a System Design Problem
35:28 Patterns, Hero Ball, and Structural Friction
37:00 A First Move When You Can't Redesign the System
38:39 Which Human Capabilities Should We Protect From AI?
42:11 What Maggie Refuses to Outsource
43:27 Parenting: When to Remove Friction, When to Allow It
46:22 The Tin Can Phone and a Kid Who Made Her Own Plans
48:44 End of Interview
49:18 Andy Comments After the Interview
53:13 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Maggie, Ross, and their book at TalentSmartEQ.com/friction.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 397 with Dr. Julia DiGangi. It's a discussion about emotions that has stuck with Andy for years, and it's a great supplement to today's conversation.
Episode 394 with Joshua Freedman. Joshua is a leading voice on emotional intelligence, making this a really good follow-up to Friction.
Episode 446 with Adam Galinsky. Helpful insights on how to inspire those around us instead of sucking the life out of them.
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.
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, Project Management, Emotional Intelligence, Friction, Conflict, Psychological Safety, Burnout, Team Culture, Artificial Intelligence, Parenting, Self-Awareness, Communication
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: Ignotus by Agnese Valmaggia
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Synthiemania by Frank Schroter
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summary
In this episode, Andy sits down with Dr. Jeremy Pollack, a social-organizational psychologist and founder of Pollack Peacebuilding Systems, author of Wired for Peace: Using 7 Neuroscience-Based Principles to Resolve Conflicts. Jeremy looks at conflict through the lens of the brain and nervous system, which helps explain why disagreements escalate so quickly and why the fixes we reach for often make things worse.
Andy and Jeremy talk about why de-escalation has to come before problem-solving, since solutions and stress do not mix. Jeremy walks us through his Sapien Model of six basic psychological needs, giving us a far more useful lens than labeling a stakeholder difficult, defensive, or resistant. You will hear how memory and prediction shape the way we read the person in front of us, what a team learns when its leader consistently avoids conflict, and why changing our experience of conflict requires new experiences, not just new beliefs. Jeremy also shares how this shows up at home, in marriage and parenting.
If you're looking for a practical, evidence-based way to handle the conflicts that come with leading, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"The most fruitful relationships from what I've seen at work, at home, et cetera, are those that can weather storms without the real fear of abandonment."
"That was pretty interesting to me to see how much of the science is telling us that, like, our brain is mostly a predictive machine."
"Anytime we're in an escalated or emotionally charged state, there's something going on in our brains, usually subconsciously, that's tracking a threat or an impediment to our basic needs."
"It's de-escalate first because solutions and stress just don't mix."
"What I'm feeling right now is not a result of what the person's saying. It's a result of the way my body is responding."
"I call it an experiential thumbprint. It's completely unique to you and no one else has your nervous system, and you don't have anyone else's."
"If we have a negative experience with someone and we go into a place of fear or pain or anger or something like that, the way that we see them going forward can change very, very quickly, and it's a lot harder to get us to unsee that."
"We access memories in edit mode. And so after we retrieve it, and when we write it back, it's not always quite the same thing, and that's always made me question not is that memory correct as much as is it completely correct."
"All conflict is an opportunity for learning."
"The threat of abandonment is the big thing to really watch for when we're having arguments."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:27 Start of Interview
02:35 The Family Cultures That Shaped How Jeremy Sees Conflict
05:51 In Awe of How Much We Still Do Not Know About the Brain
07:49 The Brain as a Prediction Machine
09:55 The Salad Lady and What Sits Underneath Defensive Behavior
12:45 An Introduction to the Sapien Model
16:19 Why a Framework Beats a Label
16:58 De-escalate First: Catching Yourself Before It Is Too Late
20:54 When Our De-escalation Attempts Backfire
22:43 Empathy Without Having to Agree
25:03 How Memory Distorts the Person in Front of Us
27:46 We Do Not Access Memory as Read-Only
30:45 Joe, the Conflict-Avoidant CEO, and What a Team Learns
33:03 Taking Inventory When Nobody Pushes Back
34:53 New Experiences of Conflict, Not Just New Beliefs
38:08 Tell Me More: Creating a Gap Between Stimulus and Response
40:31 Peace Starts in Small Ways
42:49 Interrupting the Pavlovian Pattern
44:19 Bringing It Home: Marriage, Parenting, and Attachment
47:17 End of Interview
47:57 Andy Comments After the Interview
51:57 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Jeremy and his work at CoachJeremyPollack.com.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 371 with Amanda Ripley. Amanda is an amazing writer, and her book High Conflict is a great follow-up to today's discussion.
Episode 148 with Dan Shapiro. The title of his book Negotiating the Nonnegotiable sounds like it's about negotiating, but it's really about navigating the conflicts that suck the life out of us.
Episode 61 with Mike Roberto. That discussion was over 15 years ago, and there are ideas from it that Andy still uses to this day.
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.
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, Project Management, Conflict Resolution, Neuroscience, De-escalation, Psychological Safety, Emotional Regulation, Memory, Stakeholder Management, Team Culture, Accountability, Parenting
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: On Point by Steven O'Brien
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/standard-license

Summary
In this episode, Andy sits down with Johan Roos, professor and executive advisor at Hult International Business School, Executive Director of the Peter Drucker Society Europe, and co-inventor of the LEGO® Serious Play® method. Johan is the author of Human Magic: Leading with Wisdom in an Age of Algorithms, and he has spent decades studying how people think, create, decide, and lead together.
Andy and Johan explore the two paths Johan calls erosion and amplification, starting with a question Andy has been wrestling with as he hands more of his manual driving over to Tesla's self-driving. You'll hear what an eroding project manager actually looks like day-to-day, why practical wisdom matters when the analytically optimal answer is not the wisest one, and how AI feeds one kind of curiosity, the laser, while starving another, the radar. Johan also explains the difference between becoming an AI concierge and practicing what he calls professional citizenship, and he shares what parents can do to help their kids hold onto the messy, hands-on curiosity that machines cannot supply.
If you're looking for a thoughtful, hopeful way to use AI without surrendering your judgment, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"Almost every good idea I've had was not in front of the screen."
"I know what to do, but I've stopped understanding why.".... The eroding project management can no longer explain the why."
"So in a sense, they argue that the better the system, the stronger pull down the erosion curve."
"So the message is really when the machines are taking over more and more of some of these subtle, very valuable capabilities we have, we have to climb the value creation ladder."
"So a complexity is exactly where our wisdom gets exposed."
"So every metric said fantastic, but nobody asked why, and is this right?"
"If AI can write a document that is important to you, the document was never where the value lived."
"But we just have to be careful to not sort of delegate too much of our brain power and sort of erode our jelly bean."
"When you lean back and you haven't struggled enough, you may be super smart and, and the best brilliant individual in the world, but, you know, friction is good."
"Are you able to argue for your case without holding on to the AI-produced slide?"
"Protect the wandering curiosity, unstructured exploration, questions with no immediate payoff, the freedom to follow something nowhere in particular."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:35 Start of Interview
02:44 Growing Up Inquisitive and the Power of "Because"
06:04 Self-Driving Cars, GPS, and the Erosion of Our Abilities
10:31 Becoming an Active Supervisor Instead of a Passive Passenger
13:55 What an Eroding Project Manager Looks Like Day to Day
18:52 When the Optimal Answer Is Not the Wisest One
22:03 Intuition, Gut Feel, and When Something Does Not Smell Right
25:54 The Laser and the Radar: Two Kinds of Curiosity
27:52 Creating Independently Before Consulting AI
30:44 What Happens in the AI-Free Time
35:18 Is It Intuition or Is It Ego?
37:48 Turning the Models Loose on His Own Book
40:00 Asking AI to Be Brutally Honest
41:02 AI Concierge Versus Professional Citizenship
45:51 Advice for Parents Raising Kids in the Age of AI
49:26 Staying Human: Theater, Walks, and Getting Your Hands Dirty
50:44 End of Interview
51:15 Andy Comments After the Interview
54:46 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Johan and his work at humanmagic.one.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 500 with Steve Brown. Steve is a former Google DeepMind futurist, and he has a unique perspective on where we've been and where we're going with AI.
Episode 479 with Matt Mong. Matt shares his take on the AI skills we need to stay relevant in the years to come.
Episode 463 with Faisal Hoque. Faisal helps us go beyond the fear and the hype around AI to a helpful way to think about the human-AI relationship.
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.
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: Business Acumen
Topics: Leadership, Project Management, Artificial Intelligence, Practical Wisdom, Curiosity, Critical Thinking, Creativity, Decision Making, Judgment, Professional Development, Human Skills, Parenting
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: Echo by Alexander Nakarada
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Chillhouse by Frank Schroeter
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license