Eye on the Workforce

A U.K. survey took the pulse of employees in July and found that employee morale remains low. After last week's post, this should not be a shocker, but there is some detail in the report that can help you respond more effectively. Morale matters because it is a direct influence on productivity. Usually when you see lower morale you see lower productivity.

First, consider what you can do to improve morale. Do you find it difficult to think of ways to work around morale killers such as bad corporate news, continuing layoffs, spending constraints, resource constraints and the like?

Well then, this report brings you good news. None of the above were listed as major problems by respondents. The three things that respondents said their bosses were least likely to do was:

Coach on the job

Discuss training and development needs

Give them feedback on how they are performing

You know, those items don't sound like rocket science to fix. But think a minute - How are you in meeting those needs? If you can spend a little time now helping workers improve their skills, you can have a significant effect on morale. And that will, in turn, improve productivity.

If you have not attended to the development of workers in a while, start looking for opportunities to do so. Examples to help you find something appropriate for your situation:

• Make it easier in your project for project workers to cross-train or help in new areas.
• Publicize areas where help is needed in your project and ask for volunteers
• Ask your HR employee development representative to assist you with creating opportunities
• Use internal discussion board to identify major skill needs in the project and discuss options for meeting those needs

By the way, my leadership article last month was used in gantthead's Head's Up Newsletter, which you should be subscribed to. It does not appear on my departmental page just yet, but I'm working on it.

Forbes is telling everyone reasons to stay put in their jobs for now while acknowledging the 2009 Conference Board survey that reported 45% of workers being satisfied with their jobs. Yet, despite continuing economic tribulations, some industries are expecting growth now and in the next few years. Financial services is one of these industries.  Now we hear from Modern Survey that employees in this industry are reporting that they are less likely than the previous two years to stay at their current job.

What does this mean? Evidently, industry growth releases workers' wanderlust.  They see other related companies growing and that grass looks mighty green. ("You know, I bet they could use my skills over at Greener Pastures Financial.")

What do you do? It depends on the growth possibilities of your industry.

Are you a PM in a growth industry such as financial services? Prepare to contain a trend of worker loss - or to manage the effects of this loss on your project.

Do you need project workers now?  Poach from financial industry! Start recruiters looking specifically for active and passive job seekers in financial services (or other growth industries) for your positions.

Are you expecting growth to come in your industry soon?  If an industry grows in this economy, its workers may begin to feel that they do not have to stay put to stay safe. Start inoculating your project or organization from loss of high-performing workers by initiating/refreshing appropriate human resource programs. Or use bribery.

The fourth and final post in the July series on leadership skills in change management...

A fourth skill to master is involving all levels in the planning and execution processes. As a project manager, you will have to make a special effort to maintain involvement beyond what is usually expected when major organizational change is not involved.

You will maintain involvement of Stakeholders, of course, but include other levels. Add to your routine communication duties direct conversations with those who report to those stakeholders and with team leaders.  Find and include other key players or high prestige individuals. In your communication plan, specify that the project will provide project information to a wide audience and respond to comments.

Remember that workers may be suspicious of changes they are not involved with. They may even be fearful or resistant to the changes. They may be supporters, fence-sitters or resisters. All this affects the success of your project.

You have to ask the right questions in your interactions to assess the situation. Here are some examples:

• What is your judgment on the changes that are planned? (HR Alternate Wording: How do you feel about the changes that are planned?)
• How are people around you accepting the changes in general?
• Do you see serious resistance from any source that will interfere with your team's success?
• How would you describe the climate of the organization around you?
• Would you say people around you are more "concerned," "anxious" or " fearful"?
• Do you know enough about the organizational changes that  are ahead? What questions do you have?
• Do you know enough about how we are proceeding with this project? What questions do you have?

Individual discussions are better for you in this situation than project-wide or organization-wide Q&A. Asking these questions will  allow you to assess the project impact of any issues you uncover - and remain "out in front" of such issues as described in my last post.

Given that much of this skill involves communication, consider beefing up the project communication plan to include these interactions. That will go a long way to helping ensure you have the justification and support to spend the time necessary in these activities.

Continuing the series for this month's Leadership theme...

If major organizational change is occurring and your project is a part of that change, you need a powerful anchor  to keep your project from becoming adrift. That anchor is the vision of the business strategy, the goal, or the end point (however it has been described by leadership). Information on the strategic goal should be clearly stated in your project business case.

Having such an anchor allows you to be much more effective in routine and problem-solving situations. It allows you to "get out in front" and stay there - a critical leadership characteristic to be described in a related article this month.

There are special leadership capabilities associated with managing through significant organizational change. Three of these can be inferred from the bullets in the last post:

• Communication within the project
• Collaboration with stakeholders
• Resolving extra-project Issues

So as your activities early in the project are most influential, you'll want to incorporate the strategic goals of the organizational change into your project planning thusly:

• The Communication Plan will need to incorporate the goal(s) of the business strategy and be a part of the general communication of these goals. Among other benefits, this will inoculate your project  from some frustrating push-back.
• The Stakeholder Analysis will need to identify those stakeholders who will be "adversely" affetced by the organizational changes. Of course this will have to be stated carefully, but it will allow you to be ready for likely conflicts as your project progresses.
• And finally, any part of the project plan that will deal with issue resolution or change management should state specifically that decisions must be consistent with the goals of the wider initiative. This will help you "trump" other arguments which will likely come from stakeholders and others.

Your resulting action after such planning will be much more suited to a successful project.

What You Said . . . In my first post in this series, I asked if any organization out there was preparing project managers for the skills they need to manage in pervasive change. Commenter William Ruehle reported that his IT organization is getting projects coordinated under the Strategic Planning Office and even has an IT Division of Change Management, but, if I may infer and summarize, the effort has not generated training for PMs to deal w/change management yet.

My position is that few IT organizations are preparing their PMs adequately for managing through significant organizational change. Do you agree? What about your org?

As pervasive organizational change has become so common, it is important to understand the relationship between project leadership and organizational change management. This will help you to become more successful in change situations.

Bas de Baar had some relevant comments in our Project Leadership discussion area (http://www.gantthead.com/discussions/discussionsTopicContainer.cfm?ID=15911). And in the Leadership GIG, there are more points about  project leadership, but organizational change management is a higher level, just as PPM and PMO lift our thinking above individual projects.

Say that an enterprise, driven by an adjustment in corporate strategy, is replacing an older business process with a new process supported by more sophisticated technology. Job roles change - some are eliminated while new ones are designed. Numbers of workers will be reduced in some places, added in others. Power and prestige will change among departmental leaders. Traditional experts will fear obsolescence. The only ones who will be confident at first using the new technology will be the vendors. Few in the enterprise will feel comfortable once the announcement of such a major initiative. 

Sounds like a great time to initiate an IT project! All is not lost, however. To the rescue will be various groups that will intervene to make things better. Expect HR, Corporate Communications, Learning & Development, Organizational Development even Executives to get involved to manage organizational culture. An IT project within such a high-impact enterprise-wide initiative will be affected by these related activities.

Now we can see more clearly how project leadership is affected by organizational change management in such a situation. The PM must exhibit leadership behavior consistent with the needs of organizational change management. These behaviors are not necessarily the same as  those of a project unconnected with enterprise-wide change. In fact, the PM in this situation may have to:

• communicate certain messages consistent with the wider initiative  ("But I already have an approved communication plan.")
• use leverage from the larger initiative to  get cooperation from stakeholders resisting progress because they are losing power  ("Like working with stakeholders in not hard enough!")
• support resources attending change management training that occurs simultaneously with the IT PM's project  ("The schedule is already too tight!")
• deal appropriately with complex and controversial enterprise change issues that erupt from outside of the PM's IT project  ("Ah, good! Something to fill my spare time and increase my subnormal blood pressure!")

These are just examples. There are a lot more. Project leadership during major organizational change is distinctly different than otherwise. Preparation for these situations is the key.