Look Beyond the Usual
From the Voices on Project Management Blog
by Cameron McGaughy,
Lynda Bourne, Kevin Korterud, Peter Tarhanidis, Conrado Morlan, Jen Skrabak, Mario Trentim, Christian Bisson, Yasmina Khelifi, Sree Rao, Soma Bhattacharya, Emily Luijbregts, David Wakeman, Ramiro Rodrigues, Wanda Curlee, Lenka Pincot, cyndee miller, Jorge Martin Valdes Garciatorres, Marat Oyvetsky
Voices on Project Management offers insights, tips, advice and personal stories from project managers in different regions and industries. The goal is to get you thinking, and spark a discussion. So, if you read something that you agree with--or even disagree with--leave a comment.
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Date
By Cyndee Miller
We all prefer the familiar. I gravitate to pizza and a big glass of red wine. I buy a lot of jewelry (usually with insects and/or skulls). And I tend to hire people who ask a lot of good questions without stirring up a lot of drama.
That hardwired pull to what we know and like isn’t just human nature, it’s evolutionary biology. But it can also mean project practitioners are skimping on the critical thinking.
“What’s most familiar to you is you,” keynoter Margaret Heffernan told attendees of PMI® Global Congress 2015—EMEA in London, England. “To the degree that we surround ourselves with people predisposed to agree with us, we are editing out the opportunity for challenges. And that’s dangerous because the people who are just like us won’t notice the early warning signs that we turn a blind eye to.”
She challenged the nearly 800 project practitioners in the audience to avoid such “willful blindness.”
London was a fitting venue for the gathering: It’s an ancient yet hypermodern city where people from around the world rub shoulders and help invent the future. And that future, said Ms. Heffernan, will reward organizations that help teams value diversity and avoid thoughtless conformity.
“Organizations don’t have ideas,” she said, “only people do.”
To build the teams that give them a competitive edge, organizations must foster connectedness and trust—what Ms. Heffernan called “social capital.”
“Teams that are highly connected can be more powerful and effective than teams that are highly funded,” she said. Yet that requires an organizational commitment to stop team churn. “The longer teams work together, the more effective they become.”
So how can organizations build their social capital and avoid being eclipsed by more forward-looking competitors?
Create an environment “where nobody has to ask permission to have great ideas,” Ms. Heffernan said. It’s not just about getting smart people in the same room. Three traits characterize top-performing teams, she said: Team members are socially empathic. All members have equal importance and influence. And the teams aren’t male-dominated.
The goal must be to see the threats and challenges “that we most desperately need to see, early,” Ms. Heffernan said.
Posted
by
cyndee miller
on: May 12, 2015 05:52 PM |
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Comments (2)
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Kevin Raney
Project Manager| Duke University Health Systems
Eugene, OR, United States
Thank you for posting this. Mrs. Heffernan is right. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who once said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?...To be great is to be misunderstood."
We should strive to feel slightly uncomfortable because that is a sign we are at least looking in the right direction.
Sujith Kattathara
Founder, CEO| FreelanceTeams Private Limited
Ernakulam, Kerala, India
Cyndee
Agree, but with reservations.
Anyone would love to be part of an organization that truly appreciates honest opinions. Being able to give and receive inputs without being posted to Siberia a week later for having corrected the CEO.
But, isn't this a Utopian dream? A couple of reasons why I believe this:
- CxOs and other Executives are mostly people with big dreams, strong beliefs, and a huge amount of confidence. But egos typically being fragile, questioning of this nature may not be appreciated.
- A Startup company may start off with a truly Open environment. But as it stabilizes & grows, new people get added, and bring in their own thoughts & hangups; Also, existing people also start changing. And eventually, their egos also become fragile, as in the earlier scenario.
The people who are able to offer ideas openly not only have ideas (or promote someone else's ideas), but they have the political savvy to present the ideas in the best possible context for its acceptance. For this, they will know what buttons to push and when.
Thoughts?
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