Eye on the Workforce

A recent smallish survey reported several organizational priorities that can easily affect project managers. Organizations that use Learning Management Systems (LMSs) are making plans for the future and you need to know what may happen and how it may affect your plans for your projects.

More organizations are unsatisfied with their LMS this year than last year. Specifically, survey respondents say there will be less messing around with customization, and more dealing with challenges. In addition, a large percentage of survey participants are considering purchasing a new system or consolidating multiple systems. These will be major projects.

The Most-Often Cited Challenges

If you manage projects connected with learning management systems, then be ready for efforts to improve LMS performance. If the LMSs are working fine, then you may be asked to assist with moving more courses and related material to the existing LMS. And there could be a new effort to improve system administration in addition to any of those projects.

If you manage projects that use LMSs for training and perhaps regulatory compliance,  you might be asked to participate in an effort to get more employees to use the LMS courses. You might also be asked to support in your project the integration of new content on the existing LMS. HR managers and functional managers just love the assessments, testing and reporting provided by their LMS. I'm not sure if there is good evidence this information is used to improve organizational business outcomes or even if there is confirmation that there is positive return on investment for LMS-related projects, but they love those reports.

Finally, if massive integration projects are underway or if multiple LMSs are being consolidated, access to online courses needed by workers in your project might be disrupted.

If you are dealing with LMS issues in your project, please let us know what they are and how you are handling them.

There have been a couple of posts I made recently that drew comments on opposite sides of the debate  on whether bad managers persist or whether they are more typically eliminated as soon as their inadequate competence is made manifest.

Recently we have received more clarification in this area. But first, which of the following do you think is the most effective strategy organizations can take to ensure business efficiency?

a.  Promote based on merit (as defined by best competence in the previous position)

b.  Promote individuals chosen randomly from the workforce

c.  Promote alternately the best and the worst individuals in terms of competence

I would not have been able to ask such a ridiculous question if Italian researchers had not tested for these  very alternatives in a sophisticated workplace simulation. Their simulation promoted individuals based on the three strategies listed above, but in each case competency in the new level was not dependent on the competency in the previous level. (You can debate how much like real organizations this last criteria is.)

Without this study, I would also not have been able to describe the startling results. Ponder the following:

• Promotion based on merit reduced global organizational efficiency in the simulation.
• To avoid the reduction of global efficiency, the simulated organization had to promote based on the rules  in (b) and (c) - the random rules.

The results were at once surprising, then seemed to explain so much. Often, individuals are promoted into positions for which they are not ready (and may never be ready), predominantly based on performance in their previous position, even though the skills needed in the new position are much different. 

For the time being, you will simply have to be prepared for functional managers who are dysfunctional and leaders who cannot lead. Project management skills can help you survive in such an environment.  Maybe someday, though, we will hear in our workplaces the announcement that will tell us things may get better:

You over there! You win the workplace lottery! You're manager now. Move your stuff into that office.

Which TWO of the following have been proven?

A. Slime molds can solve puzzles.
B. Training is more effective when it includes elements targeted to learning styles (visual learners, “left-brain” learners, etc.).
C. Knuckle-cracking does not cause arthritis.

Sometimes we “know” something because it is simply common sense - most of those around us believe it. Recently, a group of cognitive scientists conducted a review to see what scientific support there was for "learning styles" and found that there really wasn’t any. So where did the idea start and how did it grow to be a standard way to design training? Interesting questions. Unfortunately, however, I don't have an answer.

I do know that scientists proved A* and C** and were recognized for these most excellent findings. One scientist actually cracked the knuckles on his left hand every day for 60 years. BTW: The Ig Nobel Prizes for 2010 will be webcast Thu 9/30 at 7:30 PM ET.

Mike Donoghue lamented in his recent gantthead article that workers scramble to complete online training in between too many other tasks. He said that people are not in classrooms anymore learning with other committed trainees. This is true . But we cannot go back to the old instructor-led classroom method for all training. Training needs to work differently to fit into modern project work life.

The way formal training (classroom or online) has been designed in the past does not fit what is needed today. Using unproven design principles is just one problem. It takes too long to create. It is too expensive to create. It becomes obsolete too quickly. Yet we still need workers committed to learning and organizations committed to providing an environment where learning is continual and effective.

My upcoming article will describe how social media can help take us to the next step. Social media can, if used correctly, enable techniques that have been proven to improve retention. There are actually newly found and classic techniques scientifically proven to improve learning. Soon after the article is published, I will lead discussions on social media and project training in the Social Media in Project Management GIG. Are you a member?

P.S.  Remember how you were told to find a good quiet, well-lighted place to study and use that place always? That was also wrong! It's better to vary your locations for learning. Is nothing sacred?

* "Intelligence: Maze-Solving by an Amoeboid Organism," Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Hiroyasu Yamada, and Ágota Tóth, Nature, vol. 407, September 2000, p. 470.

** "Does Knuckle Cracking Lead to Arthritis of the Fingers?", Donald L. Unger, Arthritis and Rheumatism, vol. 41, no. 5, 1998, pp. 949-50.

Which of these movies most accurately reflect how your employees perceive the work conditions at your workplace?

• Wall Street
• Mad Max
• The Godfather
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
• Panic Room

Does it really matter that much?

The manager featured here thinks that employee perception is secondary. He was reacting against comments that a key focus area must be with employees, saying that the focus of managers should instead be on meeting customers' needs and making sure the business is successful. He says managers should make sure employees are focusing on the same things.

Now we have objective evidence to help us see where the manager's focus should be. Gallup, Inc published a study that found if you know the employee perceptions of their jobs, you can predict organizational success. So, if you know that employees have positive perceptions, you know the organization benefits with real financial results. Does it work the other way? Not so much. Just because the company is successful does not mean employees will have positive perceptions of their jobs.

Now we have a way to bridge the gap that keeps coming up in the conversation about how far is it worthwhile to go to obtain employee engagement. The manager's focus should indeed be on employee engagement as that will lead to real organizational benefits, but part of that focus should be to make sure that employees are clear on organizational objectives.

Gallup said in their published work that a tactic for managers to improve employee satisfaction would be to "clarify expectations for employees by helping employees see the ultimate outcomes the organisation is working to achieve and how they play a role in achieving those outcomes."

Any project manager can make sure the project's business case is communicated to the workforce.

The previous post described the importance of finding an individual who not only can do the job but who also fits into the environment and culture of your organization. Posts in our GIGs agree that preparation for selection is important, so what special preparation does it take? There are two types of interview questions that are particularly useful here.

Forced Choosing . . . Create a set of questions that require the candidate to choose between two culture/environmental situations, one that describes your culture and another that describes the opposite. Be careful not to "telegraph" the answer you are looking for. Force a choice, then ask for the reason why to get to the detailed candidate preferences that matter. Example:

If you had to choose, which is your preference: To work in a group that changes direction every few months to meet  demands of leadership or in a group where projects are usually executed to completion to meet demands of the marketplace?

What Would You Do? . . . Ask a set of behavioral questions that require analysis and response to see if candidates decisions are consistent with the existing (or desired) work culture. Example:

What would you do in this situation? You are working on two separate projects as a business analyst and both projects require you to complete major deliverables within a couple of weeks. Recently some unplanned meetings have taken up your time and you do not believe you can complete both deliverables  on time.

Your organization may prefer the individual to follow specific escalation steps in this case or either prefer that the individual resolve the problem on her own . The candidate's tendencies will come out in answers to questions like these.

With a set of questions from both of these categories, you can more easily identify candidates that will fit and those that will not fit.

Teammates can be a great help to purge the unworthy, because they will suffer as much as anyone if the wrong choice is made, but they do not necessarily have the interview skills required. The solution is to provide teammates with the questions and guidance on what responses well fit candidates will exhibit and let the future co-workers give candidates a good lookover.

If you have had problems with smart workers that are "unfit" for your culture or environment, please comment. If you have other selection tactics, let us know.