PMTips: Today’s interview is with the highly renowned expert in the field of project management, Sean Whitaker.
Recognized internationally, Sean Whitaker is an established project manager who is specialized in building partnerships with organizations and individuals to evaluate and improve their level of proficiency in program and project management capability. His extensive expertise lies in working with a huge variety of industries such as IT, telecommunications, mining, energy production, space exploration, construction, research, etc., but his primary focus is mostly set on production organizations.
Sean is the author of a large number of books, most of them guides to the PMP exam, including The Professional Project Manager and The Practically Perfect Project Manager. Aside from his work as an author of books, he has written a large number of papers, blog posts, and whitepapers on the practice of project management. Sean is also a presenter at seminars, a host of workshops, a life coach and personal trainer. Moreover, Sean is a member of many reputable organizations including PMI, the PMI New Zealand Chapter, IPPA (International Positive Psychology Association), ICF (International Coaching Federation) and IAC (International Association of Coaching).
Sean, thank you for accepting our invitation and taking the time to do this interview.
Sean Whitaker: Thank you very much. I am honored to be here.
PMTips: Sean, you have quite the experience as a project manager. Being in the field for over 20 years, can you tell us more about your professional development and what your view of the profession is? What do you think the greatest benefits of being a project manager are?
Sean Whitaker: Well, it's a great question. Just briefly in terms of my own professional development – I think, like a lot of people, I was an accidental project manager insofar as I sort of fell into the profession. And at first, probably for the first two or three years, I didn't realize I was a project manager, and it was probably only after maybe five or six years of being in the profession that somebody told me, “You're a project manager, you should probably look at this professional development stream.” So for me it was quite accidental, and once I realized I was a project manager, that's when I really focused my own professional development and professional development of opportunities on learning to be a better project manager.
For me the profession of project management has been a major part of my life now for well over 20 years, approaching 25 years, maybe even a bit longer. And, professionally, it's given me a great deal of satisfaction, it's been something that I've been really passionate about for that long, and just on that note, one of the things I've learned in life is that you generally end up following the things that you are passionate about. So I've done a lot of different things in my life, but the profession of project management has been the one consistent thing in my career because of my absolute passion for it and that's a great realization to have because that has also enabled me to follow my passion and really enjoy the profession.
In terms of what I think are the greatest benefits of being a project manager – it's interesting because I think there's a whole set of skills that you learn as a project manager that you're expected to apply in your career, that you can also bring to the wider parts of your life. Now, I know that it's possible to be too organized and in certain parts of your life you don't want to be too overly managing it so to speak. But there are definitely a lot of skills that I've learned, technical skills, but also probably more importantly some soft skills: communication skills, listening skills, skills of empathy, that I've needed as a project manager, that I've developed in my personal life. So the greatest benefit of being a project manager in my professional life has been to my own personal development outside of my professional life.
PMTips: You started your career as a Project Manager at First Residential where you worked on residential, commercial and tourism building projects. What challenges did you face at the beginning of your career as a project manager?
Sean Whitaker: Well that's an easy one. I didn't even know I was a project manager, to be honest, like I said before. I was a bit of an accidental project manager, and there was a company of mine I started out years ago as a property developer, and I think I'd heard about the term project manager and maybe that's what I thought I was doing with these projects. I think the lasting impression for me – just to cut a very long and boring story short – is once I discovered what project management was, I realized during that part of my career everything I didn't know. And to be honest that hurt a little bit, because I think during that part of my career with First Residential and doing all those property developments, I would have been much more successful had I known a lot more about the profession of project management; just simple things, cost estimating, time estimating, vendor management, stakeholder management, communications venture – I would have just been a better project manager during that time. So my main challenge was simply not knowing about the profession of project management.
PMTips: You currently work as a Project Management Consultant for Crystal Consulting Limited, where you provide a range of consulting and contracting services to clients in the USA, New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific. How challenging is it to lead the development of companies in different parts of the world and address and resolve the various issues they all face?
Sean Whitaker: That's an ongoing issue, to be honest, and I think it's – when you have a company that operates in multiple areas, I think you’ve got two choices to you. You can try and develop a product stream in the consulting area that’s tailored to every different market, and try and be everything to everybody, or you can do what I've chosen to do, which is just offer a very small niche market of consulting services that you can offer in the same way. There are different ways of doing business between New Zealand and the USA, in Australia and the USA, and around the Pacific, so my decision has been that at this stage in my career I want to run a very small company, a very niche company. I have in the past run much bigger companies, but going back to one of the first points I made in the interview, I realized that my passion was about the profession of project management, not about running a big company. And so for me, what I've chosen to do is to stay true to my passion and focus just on core project management consulting services, not building a large company, not worrying about marketing, not worrying about strategic growth or growth of any cost.
I've tried to make operating in different countries as simple and straightforward as possible for me by just focusing on my passion – project management. And even within the field of project management, my consulting services specialize in things like maturity assessment, audits, assurance, practitioner competency development, and those visualizations within the very broad profession of project management, once again, they reflect my passions within the profession of project management, so although I’m passionate about the entire profession, I have certain things within the profession which really excite me.
In terms of the consultancy that I've built – and this is probably about the fourth consultancy that I've built, and previous incarnations were either a lot bigger or a lot more complex, and just at this point in my career, while I've been building this company for the last four or five years, I've chosen to avoid a lot of those things becoming large, becoming too big and that means me, as the founder, I would be expected to do business development, marketing, networking, growth orientated activities. Those things don't excite me, so in a way I've made a very conscious decision to keep things simple while working internationally, by just following the things that I'm truly interested in and offering those services to a select group of clients, and that's worked really well for me today.
PMTips: In 2016 you were recognized as one of the top 123 Global Influencers in the profession of project management. What was your initial response to receiving this kind of recognition and did you at all expect it to happen at some point? Did it influence your professional image in any way?
Sean Whitaker: Yeah, that was a strange time. I received an email one morning “congratulating you.” This is a great honor, and I took the – honestly I thought it was a joke, I thought it can't be true. So there it was, I was on the list and I knew about half the other people on the list, and I was like, wow, this is great company to be here, but I'm not sure I deserve to be there. It’s certainly never been an intention of mine. I love to give back to the profession of project management. I like to write my blogs and my opinion pieces and my white papers, you know, through a bit more rigor around the research. I love writing my books, and I love training people. And somewhere in amongst all of that I guess I've developed a profile that was large enough to be recognized. My first reaction, after I’d got over the shock, was, well, it’s just deeply humbling. I think for anybody when you're recognized in any way in your profession it's a moment, I think, where you reflect and go, “Well, this is a good profession to be part of.”
In terms of influencing my professional image, I haven't had my door beaten down by people going: “Oh, you were nominated, or you were recognized as one of the top global influencers.” But for me personally, it's given me a great deal of satisfaction. It was never something I strove for, and it's not something I've sought to repeat since. I just kept doing what I do. And I think that's all you can ever do, and obviously it’s wonderful to be recognized like that, and of course I sent a copy of the press release to my parents and the rest of my family on that day too, so that was a wonderful way to sort of share my excitement. If anybody ever gets the chance to be nominated and anything like that – good on you! I think to me it means you've done a great job for the profession, and from my experience there's probably a lot of selflessness in what you do and you deserve it.
PMTips: A few months ago you published an article on LinkedIn about PMO and its importance. As you explained, PMO is a complex aspect when it comes to applying it in organizations because there is not a single standard format that can be used and that PMO should be the center of excellence. Can you tell us briefly what center of excellence means and why PMO is so important? In addition, is the implementation of PMO applicable to every organization or are there cases when it is not advisable to have it implemented within an organization?
Sean Whitaker: Wow, this is such a great topic. This is a topic that I’m really passionate about. This is so topical, because on one hand I think the research is really clear about this that organizations with any form of PMO do better than organizations without. Now, that research gets repeated and it's a consistent finding, so for me you've got to have something that – you can call it what you want, you can call it an EPMO, a DPMO, a PSO, assurance units, whatever you want, there's lots of names you could call it – but you've got to have something within the organization that represents the center of excellence – and I’ll explain a bit more about that – for the organization at that point in its journey.
Now, one of the things we also know is that PMOs become political footballs, and for some strange reason when organizations feel financial stress or strategic stress, one of the first things they cut is the PMO, which is completely the wrong way of looking at it. The PMO should be the thing that survives. In my opinion, one of the reasons this happens is that the incredibly good, talented people who are in the PMO are great project management technicians. They're not necessarily great communicators at telling everybody how great their PMO is and the value that they deliver to the organization. And I think if there's one thing that anybody who's listening to this interview should take on board is that if you are part of a PMO you need to make it part of your core activity that you regularly tell everybody in the organization the value you are delivering to that organization, and that is necessary for your survival.
In terms of what I mean by center of excellence – let’s just recognize that the core purpose of any structure called a PMO, or whatever you want to call it, is to be the center of excellence, whatever that means at that point in time and for the near foreseeable future for the organization's project management success. Now, if you've got an organization that's a low level of maturity, its PMO can simply be a collection of processes, tools and templates that people can use voluntarily. But you should also look to the next 12 months and be building up resources perhaps to take on more responsibility for promoting project management excellence within the organization. And obviously at the other end of the scale, PMO does the hiring and firing of project managers, it does all the training, it does all the portfolio management, portfolio selection and prioritization, it does the project audits and health checks, and somewhere in between there, there is a form of a PMO that is right for your organization right now.
Now, as your organization changes either strategically or in levels of maturity, the PMO has to be prepared to change with it or it will become irrelevant, and this is another challenge that PMOs face – it is that if they don't change, they become obsolete and they will be disbanded. So I would like to see every organization have something that's a PMO. This is answering your last question about “are there cases where it's not advisable to have it implemented within an organization?” – I believe there are cases where it's not advisable to have a really controlling-style PMO that's doing too much, if it’s greater than the maturity of an organization. But I think that you can find room in any organization, and every organization, for something that is the center of excellence for project management within that organization. And somewhere on that spectrum between the simplest PMO that is just a collection of tools, templates and processes and practices, right up to the other one that controls every aspect of the portfolio program and project management in the organization, somewhere on that spectrum there is a PMO that is right for you and your organization, and the promotion of project management excellence within the organization, so I hope that answers your question. It’s a topic that I’m really passionate about. I work with organizations all the time that are facing challenges to their PMO, and I just want to shake them and go, “You're doing amazing work, keep it up, but tell people what you're doing. Be prepared to change, stay relevant”. So that's my very long-winded answer to what’s probably a very simple question.
PMTips: You provide coaching to professionals looking to improve their levels of health and well-being, and you also coach executives, leaders and professionals looking to increase their professional skills and leadership abilities. Can you tell us more about you using positive psychology as the foundation of your coaching practice?
Sean Whitaker: Yeah, so I think I’ve been coaching for a while and more recently I've chosen to formalize my coaching practice by embarking on a series of credentials through the International Coach Federation and the International Association of Coaching. The thing that kept coming up and up again as I trained to become a certified coach was the practice of positive psychology and I was really drawn to it. So, positive psychology has been around now for in excess of 20 years, originally developed out of the University of Pennsylvania and people like Martin Seligman and Chris Peterson. What it does – it focuses on your strengths and leveraging those strengths to improve the quality of life that you have. Sometimes when you enter a coaching relationship, or a mentoring relationship, or perhaps even a counseling or a therapeutic relationship, the traditional tendency is to focus on fixing what is wrong, and the assumption has been that if you fix what is wrong, then you make things right – well that's a fallacy. Fixing what's wrong doesn't automatically make things right, it just makes things less wrong. So what positive psychology sets out to do instead is to take what's right and make it more right, and that's where the focus of positive psychology is, which is a very simplistic way of describing it.
So in my coaching practice we do focus on the things that are good and we try and focus on the strengths, and we use those to make things better in the future. I do provide a range of coaching services to executives and to senior managers, and recently due to my own experiences with burnout, which snuck up on me a couple of years ago very slowly that I didn't notice it, one of my passions in coaching has now become health and well-being for executives, leaders and senior managers, particularly those people who may be at risk of burnout or have already experienced burnout and want to recover from that. Positive psychology is an excellent approach to take, to help people looking to improve the general state of health and well-being, to avoid, mitigate or recover from burnout as well. For me, personally, I've applied the key principles of positive psychology to my life. I've seen how that worked, and I'm enjoying being able to coach others to prevent or recover from similar instances in the past. And in fact it's a topic that I've found has become really important to project managers as a whole. I've given a few talks over the last 12 months, presentations at conferences, online webinars, I've presented at chapter branch meetings throughout the US and New Zealand, and the response to these talks I’m giving on health and well-being, and protecting it and enhancing it using positive psychology has just been amazing. And I think we're at that time – the big picture here is – I think we're at a time in the profession of project management where 10 years ago we all got really fixated on hard skills, you know, we got fixated on Gantt charts and Earned Value Management, Work Breakdown Structures, and then we progressed and as a profession we acknowledged and got fixated on soft skills and leadership, communication, empathy, all of those things, and I sense that there's a change in the profession now, to now focusing those things inwards. So taking those soft skills, which we've been taught to focus them outwards, on managing stakeholders, on being great leaders, and now turning those soft skills in upon ourselves to make sure we’re performing at our best. So that’s the reasoning behind it, and, as I said, for me positive psychology is definitely one of the strong foundations that I use to help my clients enhance their overall health and well-being.
PMTips: You were the Project Director of an alliance of companies that were tasked to carry out the complete rebuilding of the Christchurch Pedestrian Mall as part of an initiative to revitalize the inner city. The alliance contract ensured that the project was delivered ahead of time, under budget and it delivered more value than originally planned. How challenging was it to achieve all that and finish the project so successfully?
Sean Whitaker: Yeah, I loved that project. That was a fantastic project. So I’ll just give you short answers to that one. First and foremost, alliancing as a form of contracting when set up properly is an absolutely brilliant way of contracting and engaging in any large construction works. And at the time we did that – which was over 10 years ago now – we didn't realize it, but alliancing in the public works or even in the construction sector reflects a lot of what we're seeing now with agile teams and empowerment and self-organization of agile teams, because the alliance form of contracting gets you to do that. So look, we were very successful and there are a couple of attributes I’ll put down to it. One was the alliance form of contract, two were the staff – and there were some fantastic people working on that project, one in particular, a guy called Craig Mackenzie who was the project manager, who was in charge of construction. When you've got great staff on board and you let them do their job unimpeded, then you're going to end up with a great result.
And then when I look back on that, my main role as project director was simply to run interference for great people doing great work and stop other people getting in their way, and that was my main job. And my main challenges – I was the one who took the flak from the stakeholders that weren't happy and wanted to come in and interrupt and impede the flow of work. And, at the end of the day, my role as project director, under that particular alliance contract, with those amazing staff working on their thing, was simply to make sure they could keep being amazing, so I was happy to put myself in the way of general management and senior management of the customer organizations, keep them at length with good communications, good stakeholder management. I was happy to be the front face of the project to the community, the pedestrians, the shopkeepers and members of the public, and what we tried to do, as I said – good people doing great work under a great form of contract will deliver an amazing result. So the challenges that we had, they weren’t as bad as they could have been under a different form of contract, with a different group of people who weren't given permission to be amazing. So if anybody's listening to this, and you are considering either an alliancing form of contract, or any form of agile forms of working, where you empower teams, go for it. The results are absolutely amazing.
PMTips: One of your roles as a consultant for Human Systems International (HSI) was to assess the organizational project management capability of global organizations. HSI holds over twenty years' data on the actual practices of leading project-based organizations, which is the world's largest database of its kind. What were your conclusions at the end of your involvement from having seen what goes behind the doors of project-based organizations and the project management practices they implement?
Sean Whitaker: Yeah, that was – I loved working with HSI, again some great people in that team. I made some great friends and learned a lot there, too. So HSI was unusual – it's now shut its doors, it was purchased by the Project Management Institute and shut its doors about a year ago, but for 20 years HSI had been servicing Tier 1 clients globally. And so I was lucky enough to do work with HSI for a number of years, and do work for these same Tier 1 clients. And for me that was a real eye-opener, because I've been doing say 20 years’ worth of consulting work in many different fields for probably Tier 2 and Tier 3 clients, and in my mind, you know, Tier 1 clients were mythical in a way and I always imagined they were somehow enormously different. I think one of the things I found out is it doesn't matter how big your organization is and whether you're dealing with projects with 10 thousand dollars, 10 million dollars or 10 billion dollars – we face the same challenges. That was probably the big surprise to me. So I went from working with organizations that say operate in the 0-100 million dollar range in terms of project spends to consulting to organizations that had project spends in the billions of dollars. And the issues were all the same, which was really interesting. But at the same time, when we encountered true excellence at that level, it really stood out, and we did work with a number of organizations that were truly excellent, and we would do maturity assessments for them, so we regularly work with organizations that scored 4.8 out of 5 or 4.93 out of 5, because they were truly excellent. And for me, professionally, it's just an absolute eye-opener to sort of see what absolute excellence looks like with the project management profession and how it contributes to organization success. But most of the clients we worked for, they were smack in the middle of the maturity range, you know, they’re 3 to 3.5 range, and they were facing exactly the same challenges, the same political challenges, same financial challenges, the same strategic challenges, the same competency challenges for staff – all of these things that much smaller companies would face. And, just off the top my head, I'm sure you could pull out some of the reports that I wrote for some of those Tier 1 companies, and if we just pulled out the recommendations that we wrote for maturity improvement, or process improvement, or competency development, you could take any of those recommendations and apply them to any company. So I think that was probably one of the biggest surprises about what goes on behind the doors of these intensely project-based, large, complex organizations, but they were just the same and they face the same challenges as any other organization.
And I guess I'm just listening to myself talk a little bit and one of the things I've just realized as I've been speaking is, for me, excellence in project management in any organization really comes down to the organizational culture and the organizational culture is the sum of the individuals that you recruit. So excellence in project management really comes down to the competency, the attitude and the aptitude of the people that you recruit, and I think that's the one common element that we found no matter whether it was Tier 1, Tier 2 or Tier 3 organizations, so yeah, that's great though.
PMTips: You have taught project management courses for the masters in Project Management degree at Curtin University, the MBA program at the University of Canterbury, and graduate and post-graduate project management courses at CPIT (Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology). What led you to become a professor and to actively share your experience and knowledge with students? How do you maintain your success in your professional and teaching careers?
Sean Whitaker: Yeah, it was – I loved it, I loved that to bits. Teaching’s in my blood I think and I love sharing my passion for the profession with everybody. And when the first opportunity came up to be a lecturer, truthfully I was scared. I was like oh my God, I've got to appear in front of these incredibly bright people, and I tried conveying technical knowledge, but I've got to convey my passion to it. So in all of my lecturing experience I took the approach to convey my passion for the profession because I think as an educator of any sort you have to move beyond a didactic form of learning, which is simply an exchange of knowledge. It's a communications exercise; you have to communicate, we want to learn. So I let my passion direct me, and that's how I became known, and even students today from my past will comment on the fact that I stood out from other lecturers because I let my passion and my excitement come through, and even students who didn't end up going to follow a career in project management still contact me to this day to say how much that affected [them]. That gives me a lot of pleasure, because I'm happy to share my passion with anybody.
Now, the interesting thing though is, to be a good lecturer, you need to be a good professional. So while I was a lecturer for about seven years, and one of the things that I insisted on doing during my teaching career was to make sure I kept my consultancy engagements up, because I had to stay relevant in terms of my own professional development and continuing experience so I could give the best teaching to the students. There was no point in me being that lecturer that spoke of things that I used to be 10 years ago or 15 years ago, so the two are hand in hand – I found my professional experience really complemented my teaching and lecturing, but at the same time my lecturing and my training forced me to stay at the top of my game of my professional consultancy. So funny enough it's something that I gave up, I think about four years ago, because I got incredibly busy with a whole lot of consulting work, and I actually sold off one of my companies which was a project management training company to enable me to focus more on the consulting side of things. But lately, particularly the last six months, I felt that calling again, to go back into teaching and to go back into lecturing and it's that same thing that drew me to it in the first place – the absolute desire to share my passion with people. So again, if anybody's listening and you are considering teaching, or training, or mentoring anybody in project management, just do it. Share your experience, but more than share your experience, share your passion for the profession.
PMTips: Is working as a professor an entirely different challenge from working as a project manager? Has it in any way influenced your view on certain aspects of project management?
Sean Whitaker: Yeah, it is a different challenge, because as a project manager you will focus on a certain subset of skills of the profession, either in your consulting or your project delivery role. You don't need to know or apply everything from those roles. But when you're a lecturer you need to know, have some level of knowledge of the whole profession of project management to be able to teach it. So that was one big challenge for me – I had a really broad knowledge, I've worked in a lot of different industries, delivering all sorts of different projects, and I had a broad consulting background, but I still had to become the expert in a lot of things that I didn’t know. So one of the things I hadn’t done a lot of, for example, was agile ways of working. So at the beginning of my teaching career I had to go out and not only learn about agile, but apply them so I can give people real-time experience and all of these things.
And in terms of has it influenced my view on certain aspects of project management – yeah, it has. The depth of knowledge that I forced myself to get to be what I consider to be a competent lecturer and teacher has made me aware of the depth of the professional project management.
PMTips: One of the many topics you explore in your book The Professional Project Managers is the assessment of organizational project management maturity. How is this aspect helpful to the transformation of a project manager into a more professional project management practitioner?
Sean Whitaker: This is absolutely core to any organization – the concept of organizational maturity - because every organization needs to know where it is right now, and where it needs to be to be performing optimally in terms of its project management. So one of the reasons I get so excited about organizational project leadership maturity is it covers every aspect of the profession of project management that's relevant to you and your organization, and that includes practitioner competency, it includes the tools and techniques and the software that you use to support your project management activities. I find too many people, too many organizations seem happy to be oblivious to where they are. In fact just last week I had a colleague contact me and asked me to put together a proposal to go to his organization for a project management assessment, to tell them where they are and come up with some relevant and appropriate recommendations for improvement. And he got back to me and said that he desperately needed this done, but the senior managers had told him – I’m paraphrasing what they told him – they said “We know we're bad, we don't need somebody to come in here and tell how bad we are.” Now, that's a funny attitude to have, because I find that a lot of companies are scared to face the level that they're at, and like that company, simply accept that they could do better, but they don't really want to. For me the issue of organizational project management maturity should be forefront at the mind of any organization, and they should be looking to improve it to an appropriate level to help them do better at project management.
PMTips: Your wrote The Practically Perfect Project Manager with the intention of giving the reader an understanding of the importance of choosing the right combination of tools and techniques and applying them appropriately to ensure the successful delivery of a project. With that said, what kind of advice would you give young professionals who are at the very start of building a career in project management? Which skills should they focus on most in order to become practically perfect project managers?
Sean Whitaker: Great question, love this question. If you’re starting out a career in project management, or you're considering a career in project management, first and foremost recognize that you're entering a profession. Too many people still just accidentally fall into the profession, and to me that's absolutely wrong. So for anybody new to the profession, treat it like you would if you were in any other profession. Treat it as if you were an engineer, or an accountant, or a lawyer, or a medical practitioner. Recognize that you're in a profession that’s got a body of knowledge, or several bodies of knowledge, which try to collect what is considered good practice. Commit to your ongoing professional development. Your professional development will never stop. If it stops, you’re stagnating. Don’t allow yourself to stagnate, so make sure that every 12 months you’ve got some things that you’re looking to achieve. Now what you’re looking to achieve is not necessarily just for the next 12 months, but it’s for the next five years, so stay on top of your professional development. If you’re going for a tertiary credential, or bachelor’s or master's degree, or even a PhD in project management, commit to it. After that, look at those professional credentials that different organizations offer, whether it's PMP or IPMA’s credentials, or Australian credentials, look at methodology credentials – just keep your professional development going. At the beginning of the career you'll focus on more technical credentials, as you progress through your career and want to ascend through leadership ranks, you'll need to change your focus to focus more on the soft skills. They should start with yourself for a start, you should take good hard look at yourself, get a good look at what your strengths and your weaknesses are. Then you can really start to focus on much broader leadership skills around communication, stakeholder management, empathy, things like servant leadership or emotional intelligence, things like that.
The key message is never stop learning in the profession. If you stop learning, you're not doing yourself any favors, you're not doing the profession any favors and you're not doing any of your employers any favors at all. So that's one thing I would really like to see is that every person who decides to become a professional or practically perfect project manager absolutely commits constantly to their own professional development. And I'd like to put myself up as an example – right before logging into this interview I've been online completing a new credential that I'm following. I've been in the project management profession for 25 years, I'm still out there getting credentials, I'm still out there attending conferences, I'm still out there learning from others, so I'd like to lead by example and that's the main thing that I'd like to pass on to anybody starting their career in project management.
PMTips: Sean, that was our last question. Thank you for joining us today and for providing our readers with valuable insights into project management.
Sean Whitaker: Thank you very much, and just feel free to sing out with any questions about anything that I've talked about at all.
PMTips: Of course, thank you very much.
Sean Whitaker: Thank you.
Interview conducted by Ana Mitevska