Eye on the Workforce

Being professional. At first, it seems to mean something obvious and important. Given further thought, however, the precise meaning isn't so clear. Include interpretations by different generations and the obvious definition is lost entirely. But the importance of professionalism for project success should not be lost.

The 2013 Professionalism in the Workplace Study (pdf), which you have probably not already read, describes the problem of the professionalism of millennials - our newest generation in the workforce .  Today's workplace managers and existing employees are clear on what constitutes professionalism in their world. Evidently, however, millennials are not.

Some millennials are reported to say that they have not been trained or educated on being professional. Is this true? Let me know what your experience is. If you are a millennial, were you educated on how to be "professional" in some way?

It is important for you as a project manager to consider workforce professionalism because managers and existing workers in your project are making judgments on other workers all the time. The lack of professionalism can make success in your project more difficult to achieve. Existing workers can get the idea that a new worker is a slacker, or worse, that all new hires will be slackers.

To prepare yourself for taking effective action in your workplace, ask yourself a few questions.
What are measures of professionalism in your organization?
a. Dress
b. Interaction skills
c. Hours worked
d. Taking responsibility for your own work
e. Getting results first, every thing else second
f. Other measures

Do different workers display different levels of professionalism in your organization?
a. No, everyone is basically professional
b. Yes, but it is the newer, younger workers who seem to be ill-prepared
c. Yes, there are a few who are unprofessional, although they cannot be lumped into one generation

Do you agree with the measures of professionalism in your workplace?
a. Yes, the measures work to create a positive atmosphere
b. No, the measures are sometimes barriers to getting work done
c. No, they interfere with work-life balance and may even create a toxic environment

Now that you have an idea of the current circumstances in your organization, what should you do?
Check out the study to obtain good ideas on how to define professionalism.

Define the professionalism expected in your project if not in your workplace. Get guidance from leaders and/or HR.
Address the following criteria (which at least some workforce subgroups think are part of professionalism):

• Dress . . . at least describe what is in bad taste, then describe a range of dress that is acceptable in your environment.
• Work hours . . . hours that are critical to be available and the reason why
• Working from home . . . number of days per week someone can work from home and not appear
• Getting desired results . . . and what flexibility is acceptable to achieve the results
• Sanctity of vacations . . . how much workers are "protected" in their vacations from work interruptions
• Interaction skills . . . politeness and positive/constructive problem-solving
• Time off for family or other reasons . . . To minimize (1) friction from the problem of "kids vs. working extra because you do not have kids," and (2) a host of work-life balance problems

Allow project workers to comment on the definition of professionalism, revise it and approve it before using it as an expectation in your projects.
Try to get this definition approved by leaders of your organization.

I recently completed an article on Better Annual Performance Goal Planning but was not really finished. There is more advice to pass on. 

You can read the article first, but it's not necessary. But definitely read it. Really. 

The point of the article is that small process improvement projects can be great to use as goals in your annual personal/career development plan - if you do it right and take advantage of your project management skills. Here's an example scenario to help you understand how to apply the steps to yourself.

• You see a problem with recent project selection where IT infrastructure improvements have been the norm and business processes updates have not  been given adequate attention.  You want to show that you can fix this to add to the efficiency of the organization while improving your skills.  
• Your plan is to define your skill improvement as leading a short-term project updating business processes to correspond to recent IT infrastructure improvements.  
• You put that project into your annual development plan, after obtaining approval from the boss. You are not finished, however.

This project is a little different than you are used to in that there will have to be a closer collaboration with more business stakeholders. Of course, that is how you are developing new skills. You determine that you need, in addition to your existing project management skills, training in certain business details, and that this training should be included in your development plan.  

You can be general about the training required, because considerations get a little complicated. For example, once you get into the project in this scenario...

• You will likely need business organizational information (who reports to whom, which departments do what activities, etc.). This may or may not require formal training.
• You will likely need to know current business process workflows. These should be documented somewhere. If up-to-date business process workflows do not exist, too often the case, you may have to develop or update them in your project. To be successful in this activity, you may have to take some kind of legal/compliance training or obtain knowledge specific to the business. That would be documentable.

Finally, keep track of your deliverables and development in association with the project so that you can document all that you did for your periodic development review. 

Putting together project teams is so common, we don't even think about it anymore. But we should if we are looking for better solutions to problems. I have good news and bad news for you.  

The Good News:  Recent research has given us new information that helps us manage the workforce better for creativity and innovation.  

The Bad News:   The findings tell us that those who tend to be introverted are rarely able to thrive in a team environment, so the solution will be difficult. Some team  management practices that have become routine must be changed or supplemented.   

To summarize the basics:

• Introverts find it difficult to interact assertively in groups. Groups and routine management practices favor those who are articulate and extroverted. A work group, then, can naturally miss capturing introverts' opinions, ideas and solutions.

• This work environment is particularly bad because introverts can be excellent innovators with their ability to focus and work alone. (For more, check out the new book by Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking.) New tactics are required.

Some of this may not be obvious, so here are some examples of how introverts could be stymied and what you could do about it.

• An introverted enterprise architect's innovative vision is overrun by two powerful business personalities who want to keep the status quo, even though it requires staying on obsolete infrastructure.  
  Your Intervention:  You facilitate others in IT to support the benefits of the more innovative approach, putting particular attention on business rationale.  

• An introverted programmer's attempt at a solution on a web form is not accepted well by customer experience advocates. You see there is a big picture they are not understanding, but the programmer cannot be persuasive enough.  
  Your intervention:  Conduct a separate meeting where you or a champion explains the big picture in terms the customer experience advocates can  understand.   

• An introverted designer finds an elegant way to leverage existing features and functions to create the project solution more cheaply using the current production system.  Strong voices from experienced and respected IT stakeholders, however, want to start from scratch due to extreme obsolescence of the system. The designer considered future replacement of current system upcoming was long-term anyway and looked for immediate benefits.
  Your intervention:  After you ensure the issue is escalated, you facilitate use if the original design by the programmers, which is best for short-term benefit while waiting for system-replacement.   

This new understanding of the plight of introverts puts in question the use of techniques such as brainstorming as well. The ideas and views of introverts can be lost in such group interactions.

There are many ways to support introverts. Just stay aware and make adjustments as necessary.

Continuing from my last post…

 When you are successful at getting project workers to participate in an authentic conversation, most likely in some kind of corporate social media, you will naturally get incidents of unconstructive posts. To maintain Inclusion you must take quick, clear action to correct the violation. Be active in this effort because there is a difficult transition from regular social posting to corporate posting.

• Enforce the etiquette rules established earlier by searching for posts that are not constructive, make personal attacks, or even indirectly question the skills of someone who posts.
• Refer to etiquette rules to explain why there was a specific problem and why this will not be tolerated.
• Especially in the early weeks and months, send general reminders around to remind participants of the etiquette rules.
• To avoid appearing to be a school marm with a ruler, "like" those posts that are constructive, even if they challenge sacred cows.

Now it's time to look at the fourth of four factors contributing to real, honest and constructive project communications:  Intentionality .

This seems a little vague at first, but it is actually good practical advice. Your project has a charter, a direction, an objective. It supports a business strategy. You should make sure that the project communications align to all of this.

• When posts get off track from the project, make posts or comment to these posts to bring the topic back to support of the project. For example, when a discussion degrades into complaining about the state of IT education in regional universities, you or your designee posts a re-directing post perhaps asking a question like, "OK, we can't fix that problem, but can we resolve the issue which started this discussion of having to wait for contingent workers to be hired for testing? As stated in a previous comment, we are trying to improve quality of our deliverables this year."

• Allow interactions to proceed that are resolving complex issues by bring up outside-of-project solutions. These are not necessarily off-track and may be just be the authentic conversations that you are trying to support. For example, when a discussion post blames a project problem on lack of management attention to the project, don't shrink away. Pursue this further to get details. You want an open and honest conversation.

So it turns out that, for your project, there's not an "I" in team. There are four I's: Intimacy, Interactivity, Inclusion and Intentionality. You need to manage them all for ongoing effective communications and workforce just-in-time learning. You should utilize modern corporate social media and use the correct tactics. It's a new set of problems, but if you master the solutions, you will be setting yourself up for the new era in project management.

If you think abut it, this is not too much more than what a great project manager should be doing already: Setting the tone, laying the groundwork for good communications, enabling people to perform better, ensuring appropriate learning gets done.

But doing this using your new knowledge of tactics based on Intimacy, Interactivity, Inclusion and Intentionality, will allow you to surpass those who, for whatever reason, choose not to embrace the inevitable. You will set yourself apart as a leader in communication and workforce learning and performance. You will be appreciated by project participants and enable those who are gatekeepers for your next career move to see that you should motor through.

This is the third post in a series, translating concepts in this Harvard Business School article about the book Talk, Inc into tactics usable in your project. That article stated that there are four key factors necessary to create a constructive, authentic continuing conversation. The reason why there are so few organizations that have this vital type of conversation is that four factors must be managed properly.

Previously, I have described how you can set an environment where Intimacy exists so that workers are comfortable in honest and open conversation . You have also seen how to maximize Interactivity.

According to the book, the third of four critical factors to improve the corporate conversation is Inclusion. You will have to be inclusive of all project participants in your communications to ensure  that

• the information transferred is authentic, constructive and continual
• participants learn efficiently
• teams perform efficiently

The more the merrier. Getting everyone involved in the conversation is very important to maintaining that communication, but this will take special effort, even after you deal with the passive-aggressive individuals. You have to set the tone from the beginning that you desire all to participate. Then you have make that goal a reality.

Once you get the lines of communication open, make starting the conversation easier.

• Train everyone on any relatively new communication technology to the organization, especially if it is corporate social media. While those of certain generations enjoy social media as a part of their daily lives, others do not use it much in their personal lives. They just need a little help learning how to use it at work.
• Explain what kind of communication "turns off" others. Focus on interaction etiquette. This will reduce problems. For example, explain that opposing arguments should be against an idea, not an individual. Everyone must maintain a professionalism and respect while they get work done and issues resolved.
• Send a message to everyone that it is time to begin the conversation.
• Actively and publically bring in others from groups who usually do not have constant involvement, such as certain stakeholders. They can easily use the same discussions everyone else is using, so there is some egalitarianism.
• Actively request input from passive-aggressive participants.
•  Explain how the project leaders understand the importance of everyone having a voice prior to decisions being made and to avoid and resolve issues.
• Have the project leaders individually explain their value of everyone being involved. Say what a value it will be to get honest input in real time to make the project work better.

To get project participants to keep on communicating,

• Respond to their comments quickly.
• Use hash tags to respond, so that the acknowledgement gets to the individual and can be captured in trending statistics.

How does this bring benefits to project learning and performance? Because learning is social, everyone involved in the ongoing project conversation will be able to get a fast transfer of information in a compelling format that can be used to get work done. This is real, practical sharing unlike what has been possible before. There has never been a better way to maintain a feeling of togetherness and collaboration in your project or organization.

In my next post, I will finish up Inclusion by explaining how to deal with communication problems  when they arise. We can't wear rose-colored glasses here!  To solve obstacles to effective conversation, you have to know the fourth and final critical factor. Can you guess what letter it starts with?