Becoming a better PM: Lessons from 'How to get better at the things you care about'

 

As project managers and professionals we all want to improve ourselves, become better at what we do and grow. In his video 'How to get better at the things you care about', Eduardo Briceño talks about what we can do to continue improving. Here are my 5 takeaways.

1.    The Two Zones

The most effective people and teams alternate between two zones,

• The learning zone: Maximizes our growth and future performance.
• The performance zone: Maximizes our immediate performance.

To continue improving we must have both of these zones in our lives and we must be clear about when we want to be in each of them with goals, activities and expectations. The learning zone includes goals for what we want to improve and the activities for those improvements. This is where we concentrate on what we haven't mastered and most importantly expect to make mistakes. In the performance zone we focus on what we have mastered, execute as best as we can and try to minimize mistakes.

2.    The Way to High Performance

One of the reasons we don't improve despite our hard work is because we spend too much time in the performance zone, doing. This hinders growth and long term performance. To become a high performer we have to alternate between learning and performing.

The learning zone is where we do deliberate practice, being clear about which sub skills we are trying to improve and concentrating on going beyond what we can currently do. For example, improving our typing speed by 10%. We can also solicit frequent feedback and continue to adjust.

In the performance zone we get things done in the best way that we can and gather information to identify what to focus on next, when we go back to the learning zone. The key is to purposefully build our skills in the learning zone and then apply them in the performance zone.

3.    More Time for Learning

To continue improving we must spend more time in the learning zone. There are several things we can do to achieve this.

• Develop a growth mindset by believing and understanding that you can improve.
• Find a purpose that you care about, because improving a particular skill takes time and effort and it can't be done without a purpose.
• Have ideas or find ideas about how to improve and what you can do to improve.
• Be in low stakes situations. Mistakes are expected in the learning zone and their consequences must not be significant.

4.    High Stakes vs Low Stakes

One of the reasons that most of us spend more time in the performance zone is that our work environments are often high-stakes. Most of us operate in organizations that encourage great work and flawless execution cultures. We can't afford to make mistakes in our projects because the consequences could be catastrophic. This type of environment leads employees to stay within what they know rather than trying new things and taking risks. The learning zone requires low-stakes environments where we can make mistakes and learn from them. One thing project managers can do is to create low-stakes islands within high-stakes environments for ourselves and our teams.

5.    Create Low Stakes Islands

There are several things we can do individually to create low-stakes islands for ourselves and our teams.

• Find a mentor: Find a person with whom you can exchange ideas, have vulnerable conversations or role play.
• Feedback: Ask for feedback oriented meetings as your projects progress.
• Self-learning: Take time to read, watch videos or take online courses.
• Observation, reflection and adjustment: Execute projects and perform as expected. Then, reflect on what you can do better next time. Observe and try to emulate experts in the field.
• Sharing: Lead and lower the stakes for your teams by sharing what you want to get better at by asking questions about what you don't know and by soliciting feedback. Share mistakes and what you learned from them so that your team members can feel safe to do the same.

Always have something that you are trying to improve so that your improvement is never ending. “When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.” ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist