Eye on the Workforce

In today's change-focused world, effective resource management is difficult. One problem: You expect certain key resources to work full time each week, but instead they end up burning time in other activities. These activities may be supported by the organization. They may even be other important projects. The problem is that you actually end up with a "unknown" part-time worker.

Now, if you just knew an accurate number of hours to plan for these key resources, you would be more confident that you can meet planned deadlines. If the resources actually knew how many hours they would devote to your project you would be lucky. The answer to your problem is a series of questions.

Choose from among these questions to ask key resources to determine work hours per week or month, or use these questions to inspire your own.

• What regular meetings do you now have that are outside of this project?
• Do you expect to continue with these meetings?
• What competing workstreams are you working on now?
• Do you participate in any organizational business or process improvement efforts?
• How much time is involved in these activities each week/month?
• Do you have a role as SME for parallel (competing) projects or change efforts?
• What do you generally do in these initiatives? 
• How many hours max in any week/month have you spent on this project? Expect in the future?
• What has been your experience so far in terms of hours per week and flexibility?
• When are your fixed times on these activities we cannot use you (hours, days, weeks)?

Two more points...Even if you have just a few questions, it may appear like some kind of investigation, so preface your conversation with the individual in such a way that these questions are not threatening but are seen as proper planning so as to not place undue stress on the individual. It may be that in your project that these questions need to be asked by team leads or others. Make sure they know what questions to ask to get an accurate picture of the resource's availability.

If you are a project manager managing a project that includes using or implementing learning across world geographies, you will have a big chunk of work just to make that happen. Learnings from recent years helps you plan better.

Using Training In Your Global Project . . . If you are utilizing training provided internally but delivered in multiple global locations , take special care to plan how it will work. Your far-flung localities all have their own idiosyncrasies.

Involve savvy stakeholders from each global unit where training will occur. Training representatives will tell you how to request training delivery and other related process details. (We have a request process you should follow. Once you request, expect to schedule your first class in two weeks!)

You also need information from local training customers like you to get their view of what works and what does not. (Two weeks my eye!  My team has to wait at least four weeks for trainer availability and half the time there are not enough training materials. As for online training, that works better, but some of the content gets lost in translation. It wasn't developed with our culture in mind.)

Delegate fully to localities the responsibility of training when they are proven to be able to train workers. For unproven localities plan for closer collaboration and monitoring. Be ready for difficulties and surprises.

Implementing Training Software Systems . . . Thisarticle (registration required) suggests that a Learning Board is needed which includes members with a wide range of knowledge and skills*  to properly design and implement any global learning function. That makes a big difference in the charter, scope, schedule, stakeholders, etc in any project that is involved in implementing learning (such as new or major upgrades to Learning Management Software systems). One of the points made by the article is that having centralized corporate universities has caught on strong, but does not work well for global organizations. You should have a centralized core of courses, but also decentralized locality-specific courses. A hybrid organization as it were.

Novartis is used as an example. The Novartis organizational chart is here - notice where HR is positioned in relation to geographical business units.

If you are involved in a globally-significant learning project, be aware that if the project does not already have a large scope and plenty of diverse participants, you may be set up to fail due to issues outside of your control. Maybe a situation you have been in before, but now you know much more about how to plan better.

* including project management!

In my last post, we looked at the early stages of a workforce's change acceptance process. The upshot is that special care is needed to get workers through the early rough patch so that they can regain the performance required in your project and required in the organization generally.

Venting is acceptable at first. Allow workers to safely make statements of frustration, surprise, anger, fear, even rejection of the recently-announced change. All leaders and change managers must be seen as empathetic listeners during this early period. Keep telling yourself that these are not personal attacks on you (even if they sound a lot like it), but a natural reaction of the workforce as a whole when major changes are initially communicated. Oh, and your good-hearted attempts to respond with rational, logical counterarguments will be wasted.

Of course, leaders will have - and should have - a limit to what they will accept, such as anything close to Greek austerity measure protests.
 

You Can Allow Performance to Slip. You will see a reduction in worker performance early in major change efforts. Leaders of change efforts in years past overreacted in the face of this as they feared failure of multi-project initiatives. Overreaction means tightening the thumbscrews with tough talk and strict discipline. While there are times when this reaction is necessary, early in organizational changes is not one of those times. Patience and understanding are the tools of the most effective leaders during this time. Performance will recover. And it will recover faster if you respond correctly in the early stages.

With all this discussion, venting and underperformance it's a wonder you will be able to roll up a project successfully. This is one of the reasons why so many major change-related projects do fail or are challenged. The wise project manager will add extra time to the work plan early to handle the workforce emotional and performance "slump."

Does your organization tend to apply the thumbscrews too early in change efforts? Have you experienced a performance slump in organizational/business process change efforts? What was that like? Have you ever tried to respond to worker frustration with rationale counterarguments? How did that work?

If you are in a project that is supporting a big change effort - such as establishing a new business process or implementing role-distorting new technology - workforce groups will be responding to the change in ways that may make it difficult to proceed with your project in the initial period. What can you do to ensure progress?

A.  Tell employees to cowboy up
B.  Don't do anything - wait until it gets better
C.  Make examples of the worst offenders
D.  Send overwhelmed employees to therapy

Change management requires using different techniques throughout the change. The workforce goes through a process of acceptance after an announcement of a major change. Among the earliest stages are shock/surprise and denial/refusal. So if you are in the early stages of this type of change, your tactics should support the workforce getting through these stages without making things worse.

Discussion has been proven to help. Provide a way for workers to discuss the changes. It helps them - as a workforce - move from one acceptance process stage to another, which is better than groups lingering in stages that keep them from participating in the change and in the success of your project.

Schedule special meetings for these types of discussions. Make available online experts and change champions to discuss the implications of change and the effects it will have on the organization. But remember: In the early stages these discussions should not deal with facts as much as the shock, surprise and rejection rampant in the workforce. These interactions are more about listening and less about response. Avoid judging or pushing back in the early stages (no matter who you want to strangle).

More tips for interactions in my next post in a few days.

BTW: I've been moving to a new city and it has been more difficult than planned to keep up with my blog. Could this have been helped with better application of project management techniques? Now I wonder.

More on managing change : Managing Change in Organizations.

One of our members wrote to me recently asking I knew of any references for "hidden agendas". He was smart to ask. Being able to anticipate, identify and handle hidden agendas can, for example,  help you  interact effectively with managers of those who make up your project workforce. Unfortunately, I do not know any author who has written specifically on this topic. From what I can see, there remains only one category of books consistently covering this topic, books on negotiation.

 This is good, but not necessarily what we want all the time.

It is good that negotiation books cover hidden agendas because often your interactions with managers of work groups are in fact negotiations, whether you know it or not. The negotiation might be over

• Gaining the full complement of workers you need
• Getting workers to follow a certain process
• Getting  a manager's acceptance of changes caused by your project.

Classics like Getting to Yes and Getting Past No are designed to help you in any negotiations. There is a lot about negotiations that are relevant to you as a project manager. Being a good negotiator is a practical managerial/leadership skill.

Books on negotiation are sometimes inadequate because you are not always in a formal negotiation. A better term for your interaction with a manager is "collaboration." Collaboration is different enough that we would like to have a dedicated reference that includes dealing specifically with hidden agendas during long-term working relationships. 

Do you know of a book that provides specific guidance for anticipating, identifying and dealing with hidden agendas in project management or other collaborations? Respond to let us know.