Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.
Business acumen isn’t just something that executives or other higher-ups have—it’s a skill that project managers can access and exhibit on a regular basis and within each project, no matter the size of the endeavor or type of industry.
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There is a lot of talk these days about Web 2.0. Now I’ll freely confess that I am not as hip and trendy as some, but I was always a bit confused about what the whole Web 2.0 thing was. So I asked my trusty friend Google (I know, if I were hip and trendy then I would have “Binged” it). Lo and behold, I stumbled across a blogger by the name of Ian Davis who says that Web 2.0 is “an attitude rather than a technology. It’s about enabling and encouraging participation through open applications and services.”
I can work with that--it makes sense. In fact it sounds a lot like project management--don’t we “enable and encourage participation”? So how can project managers take advantage of this Web 2.0 thing--how can we leverage the online tools and services that are available to improve the quality of our project management?
In a little bit of a departure for me, I am actually going to write a two-part article this month looking at some general tips for project managers who want to make the most of some of these modern tools that are available to us. In the second part I’ll look at ways that project managers can use some collaboration tools for sharing work, but in this first part I want to focus exclusively on how Communication 2.0 can handle real time communications like meetings and conversations.
Changing our thinking I don’t remember the last time that I managed a project that didn’t have some form of virtual team. It may only have been one or two people, but it seems that there was always someone dialing in to meetings on the conference system. They may have been in the office across the street or half way around the globe, or in this day and age they were increasingly home workers--but they weren’t physically with the project team for at least part of the working week.
Historically, project managers tried to accommodate them by sending out the access codes for a conference call and perhaps sending out review material ahead of time. Participants in the meeting then promptly forget that there are people on the call and when the conference phone suddenly bursts into life, someone immediately says, “Oh, I forgot there was someone on the phone”--hardly a warm welcome to the team!
This is just one example, but one that I suspect that most of us can relate to--I’ve certainly been guilty of doing it, and I know how it can make you feel on the other end as well. What many of us don’t realize, however, is just how dangerous this can be. If there is only one group of individuals working remotely, they will have a tendency to feel isolated from the team at the best of times--and being “forgotten” during meetings can easily be interpreted as a deliberate snub.
As project managers in today’s world of flexible schedules, remote workers and outsourced functions we need to understand the challenges that this poses to our interactions and modify our behavior accordingly.
Meetings 2.0 One of the best and most underutilized tools available to project managers is the online meeting tool. Whether your organization prefers GoToMeeting, LiveMeeting or another tool, these are tremendously powerful--I have a client who uses them to deliver three-day training courses.
They are also being increasingly used by companies looking to save money on travel. Why then do I say that they are underutilized? It’s because of the way that we use them. The majority of organizations still see these tools as a way to share a presentation and nothing more. To assume Microsoft use in my language for a minute, if a meeting includes a PowerPoint presentation then a LiveMeeting session is set up to allow others to see the slides.
But these tools offer so much more, and as project managers we need to be prepared to explore the capability of these tools. They allow for people to “put their hand up” if they have a question--that alone is a great feature. How many valid points have been lost from conference call participants simply because they were unable to interrupt the conference at the right moment? We will never know, but with the click of a button it need never happen again.
With webcams becoming more and more a part of modern laptops, we can also have remote face-to-face meetings. I admit that the technology isn’t great yet, but it’s getting better (and more affordable) and it doesn’t need to be perfect--just the ability to see the team smile at you when you join a call will help.
Consider also how these meeting collaboration tools can assist with planning sessions. The host can share their desktop with other users so that everyone can work together and see the process diagram and project schedule built before their eyes--even if it’s on another continent. With “smart board” technology, this can extend to whiteboards--a person drawing on a whiteboard in a room can have that image appear on their laptop screen and through meeting collaboration tools be shared globally (or across the street). Try doing that on a conference call!
Conversations 2.0 Of course meetings involving lots of participants are not the only way that project managers communicate with their teams--in fact, they aren’t the main way. We still need our individual conversations, updates, etc., and these tend to work better than conference calls. It’s just a telephone call between two parties, so no need to change anything right?
Well, maybe.
Wouldn’t it still be nice to see someone’s face when you talk to them? 55 percent of communication is body language, 38 percent is paralingual (intonation, tone, etc.) and only 7 percent is the words used. Therefore, on the phone you lose more than half of the communication. Sure, humans adapt to that, but it’s still not the same as a face-to-face conversation. Consider using Skype for your meetings--again the quality still needs to improve, and it may not be appropriate for client conversations, but for updates with our team members it is more than adequate (and is likely a very cost effective solution). Skype is one of those tools that has readily found acceptance with people in their personal lives but has yet to find wide-ranging acceptance in the corporate world.
Another tool that I am a big fan of is instant messaging. This is an even more controversial tool in the workplace, with many organizations banning its use entirely (perhaps sending the message instructing its removal by Blackberry Messenger?). The argument is that people can sit at their desks all day chatting to their friends and getting no work done--a problem made worse by the difficulty of trying to track message content in instant messaging tools.
I don’t want to belittle that concern, but at some point we have to trust our employees--and they can be useful tools. In much the same way as some of the most productive conversations in the office happen at the water cooler or the coffee machine, so instant messaging can help facilitate immediate dialogue when someone’s input would be helpful. It allows for thinking time that often doesn’t happen during a telephone conversation, and is minimally intrusive. Additionally, the intrusion level can be managed--simply changing status to “busy/unavailable” ensures that interruptions are eliminated entirely.
Pulling it together Smart phones have rapidly claimed a vital place in corporate culture. I sometimes feel out of place at a meeting if I only have one BlackBerry with me—apparently, the hip and trendy among us now have at least two. They have been successful because they deliver on their claims--increased efficiency and greater availability. The tools that I have briefly looked at here can deliver similar benefits, and as project managers we need to leverage these tools to maximum effect.
Go back to the words of Ian Davis that I quoted at the start: “attitude rather than a technology.” Your organization may be using some or all of these tools, but you as the project manager can create an environment--an attitude--where they are a key tool to managing your project, where all of their features are used and where the benefits are seen not just for the remote team members, but for all.
Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting Inc., an Ontario, Canada-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Additionally, Andy is Vice President of a new Canadian professional project management body--the Project Management Association of Canada. Learn more about them at www.pmac-ampc.ca.
