Strategic Project Management

I don't think I've ever worked on a project where everything went off smoothly from start to finish. That's not to say they haven't been successful projects.

I am convinced, that by their very nature, projects are unpredictable and often provide numerous reasons to nitpick the work done by members of the team. Unfortunately, this isn't a management behavior that fosters an environment of creative problem solving or productivity. When team members are worried about whether or not their work is going to be "nitpicked" they aren't creative and can't do their best work.

What's more, nitpicking behavior isn't limited to project leaders. Sometimes it's a colleague on the team who feels it's his or her responsibility to nitpick everyone's work.  This personality isn't reserved for senior members of the team either, I've even seen new members of the team start off with nitpicking the work done by their new project team. I've worked with team members like that before—have you? Joining a new team with that kind of behavior often requires a lot of work and time to transpire before they are accepted by their new team.

Let's face it, it's much easier to critique than it is to create—which is why so many people do it.

In a speech given in Paris in 1910, Theodore Roosevelt said, "It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is not effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

While I've served my time in organizations where nitpicking each other is very common, I've also worked in organizations that fostered an environment where people were encouraged to be creative and even take some risks. When mistakes are looked upon as learning opportunities rather than excuses to nitpick, team members are able to create and invent.

What do you do to minimize nitpicking among the members of your project team?

In a perfect world, everyone on the team gets along and there are never any problems with performance. Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world. That's even true where I work (shocking, to be sure).

Yesterday, along with several colleagues, I spent the day with a delightful consultant, Sue, from Interact Performance. Over the next twelve months, every manager at AtTask will be going through this training. My group was the first to start the training (we'll finish up with another day of instruction next week).

Every day away from work is one day less to accomplish my goals and objectives, but I enjoyed the discussions and came away with a different perspective on some foundational skills I had been taught before. Although I consider myself to be a pretty capable manager most of the time, I enjoyed looking at some of the things I do from a different perspective. What's more, the training yesterday will impact how I interact with my team going forward. Yes, I thought it was that relevant.

We spent the first half of the day discussing how to effectively communicate the situation when there is a performance problem. We identified four foundational principles that are important when communicating the situation, they are:

1. Be Direct: This doesn't mean abrupt or rude, but avoiding the problem or beating around the bush doesn't help the situation. I view it the same way as taking off an band aid. I just rip it off. Yeah, it hurts, but it doesn't hurt for long. "Jim, we need to talk about a problem..." The longer it takes to address the issue, the more difficult and painful it becomes. Be direct.
2. Be Specific: It just doesn't make sense to be vague. "Jim, I've noticed lately that you've failed to update project status on the last two or three tasks you've completed." The temptation might be to try to solve the problem here, but all we need to really do is identify the problem and give Jim the opportunity to express himself and offer a solution (I imagine I'll talk more about how we discussed resolving these problems in future blog posts).
3. Be Non-Punishing: "Punishing" might be an awkward word, but I think the point is to be non-threatening or condescending when we directly and specifically identify the problem. A matter-of-fact approach works best. I think it's important that we assume the best in people. Most people have a reason for why they do what they do, I think it's important that we listen and give them an opportunity to respond. When we use a punishing tone or body language, Jim will immediately get defensive and we'll usually lose any opportunity we might have to coach or mentor to improve the behavior.
4. Follow Up: Often, once we've addressed a performance problem, we fail to adequately follow up. "Jim, thanks for your willingness to stay current on your project status updates. Let's talk about this again in our next one-on-one and see how things are improving." Saying that isn't enough, it's important that in the next one-on-one meeting with Jim, we actually do follow up and address any improvement or acknowledge if there is still a problem.

At first I thought it was kind of silly to spend so much time talking about and doing exercises concerning communicating the situation. I was wrong. Like most things, the first steps are very important. That applies to how projects are initiated, how the foundation of home is constructed, and how we address performance problems on the team.

"So, before you can solve the problem, you need to communicate the situation in a way the other person understands. You must also describe it in a way that sets a positive tone. Done poorly, you may create a whole new set of problems," say the authors of the program.

I'd love to hear what you think of this.

Over the years we've all worked with great (and not so great) people on our project teams. Sometimes their greatness is obvious—but not always. In an economy where it's critical that we create an environment where everyone on the team can maximize their contribution to success, maybe we need to start looking at the individuals on the team  and see if there are some common denominators that make team members remarkable.

Earlier this week I stumbled upon an article written by Jeff Haden that might shed some light on how to spot greatness. "Forget good to great," says Haden. Here's what makes a great employee remarkable."

I think we all have a pretty good idea about what makes a good team member. However, in addition to their technical skill set and work ethic, what makes someone remarkable? Haden identifies eight traits that remarkable people share:

1. They ignore job descriptions: We've all worked with people who hide behind, "That's not my job." Remarkable people are able to think on their feet and jump into a situation to offer help, whether or not it's part of their job description. I have come to recognize this quality in the people I enjoy working with the most.
2. They're eccentric: I've never thought about it this way, but I think Hayden's right. Some of the most talented people I know are a little unusual (usually in a good way). "People who aren't afraid to be different naturally stretch boundaries and challenge the status quo," writes Haden, "and they often come up with the best ideas."
3. But they know when to dial it back: Even though I appreciate a little "weirdness", the best employees recognize that when situations get stressful and it's crunch-time, they need to seamlessly fit into the team. It's a balancing act to be sure, but there are people who are able to do it—and they make great team members.
4. They publicly praise: "Praise from a boss feels good. Praise from a peer feels awesome, especially when you look up to that person," writes Haden. I couldn't agree more. Great team members aren't afraid to publicly recognize the contributions and successes of others on the team. They have a "team success is my success and my success is team success" point of view that builds a lot of camaraderie amongst the team.
5. And they privately complain: Nobody likes to be publicly thrown under the bus. Sometimes more can be accomplished with a private conversation than a public flogging in front of the boss. I agree that problems need to be brought forward, but if they can be handled quietly, without making minor issues matters of public concern, I think that's a good thing.
6. They speak when others won't: We all know people who will never speak up about the elephant in the room. Hayden argues, "Remarkable employees have an innate feel for the issues and concerns of those around them, and step up to ask questions or raise important issues when others hesitate."
7. They like to prove others wrong: It's less about confrontation and more about proving the naysayers wrong. "The kid without a college degree or the woman who was told she didn't have leadership potential often possess a burning desire to prove other people wrong," says Haden. "Education, intelligence, talent, and skill are important, but drive is critical." Sometimes those real performers aren't the people we might expect.
8. They're always fiddling: I've known and worked with some pretty incredible people who are always trying to improve what they're doing and make things better. They're never satisfied with what's happening right now.

As  you look at your team, do you see any of these traits? If so, are you fostering an environment where they can contribute at a higher level. Doing so increases efficiencies, team performance and ultimately project success.

I'm a big believer in applying the social media metaphor to the project management process, but I don't believe that implies that I suggest we incorporate Facebook or Twitter. I believe the social collaboration that takes place within project teams needs to happen inside the firewall and should leverage social media practices within the team, but not where it might include individual team members' larger network of friends.

Over the weekend I read an interesting article citing a Pew Internet & American Life Project survey that suggests that the number of Facebook users de-friending people within their network is on the rise. Up to 63 percent in 2011 from 56 percent who responded to a similar survey in 2009.

The study cites a number of reasons, reputation management being one of them.

Having become a de facto spokesperson for my company, I entered the social media landscape from a professional perspective and have since included a number of my friends and colleagues who have found me online. Some of whom have been great to interact with via Facebook, while others—not so great. Some I have had to de-friend because I want to maintain a public image that is consistent with those things that I value as important, and secondly, because I have two rules regarding my social media persona:

1. I don't want to say or do anything that would embarrass the company that I work for
2. I don't want to say or do anything that would embarrass my mom

I feel like those are pretty good rules for social engagement for me, you may have different rules (or maybe even none at all). I work within the bounds of what feels comfortable for me.

Although I am a firm believer in the social media metaphor as an incredibly powerful vehicle to encourage collaboration, I'm not comfortable with allowing that conversation to take place publicly via Facebook, Twitter, or whatever. I prefer to leverage social tools within the project management software I use, enabling those social media-like conversations to take place among my network at work—my team.

I imagine that there are some who would suggest that restricting the network or the context of the conversation defeats the purpose of a social media platform. It might. However I'm convinced that the benefits of doing so positively impact the ability of the team to perform without the added distractions associated with traditional social media as exemplified by the Pew survey. That being said, I don't suggest we restrict social media use in general. In fact, there are a number of networking, learning and best practice sharing that takes place outside the firewall that I believe is critical to becoming better project leaders and team members. I just don't think that's the best place for conversations about the tasks and issues associated with current projects.

I'd welcome the opportunity to hear what the rest of you have to think about this. Am I missing something?

If you'rer talking about incorporating something like Twitter, Jabber or Facebook into the project communication mix, the short answer is no. Let me explain.

Of course this is only my opinion, but Twitter et al have the same challenges as email for project collaboration, it lacks context. By that I mean, you have to follow the whole thread from beginning to end to understand what anyone is talking about. Have you ever been invited into an email string that has been going on for a while? It's difficult to wrap your head around the context of the conversation (I'll come back to this).

I'm a very big fan of the social media metaphor within the project and work management environment—I just don't think disparate conversation threads add to the conversation. I think they contribute extra noise.

Social media does a couple of things very well. In fact, in collaborative work environments, we can learn a lot from social media:

1. It encourages natural and regular conversations: Collecting feedback and status is an important part of a team members interaction with the project management process. I doubt that there would be much argument with the fact that most project management solutions (whether they be spreadsheets, white boards or project management software) don't do a very good job of encouraging communication among the team. I can't count the amount of time I've spent in previous lives going from cube to cube asking, nay begging, for the team to update their project status so I could report on progress up the chain. However many of those same people will go home, login to Facebook "updating status" with their network of friends and tweet or check-in from their smart phone—wherever they are.
2. Social media isn't really very complicated: I think my introduction to Facebook took less than five minutes and Twitter was even less than that. It certainly didn't require two or three days of intensive training to learn how to collaborate with my personal network of family and friends. Project management software could learn a thing or two in that regard. Most team members aren't project managers and shouldn't be required to become such to update their task status. I have colleagues who have spent countless hours interviewing project teams who tell me that the most common feeling among team members is, "Tell me what I need to do, make it easy to report on progress and then get out of the way and let me do my job." Does that sound familiar?
3. Are you paying attention to me? Social media like Facebook feeds the need of many people to get a little recognition for what they do. Let's face it, most people are proud of what they do and appreciate a little recognition for a job well done, for accomplishing a particularly difficult challenge and sometimes for just showing up. I read recently that the worst thing a manager can do to an employee is ignore them. It's worse than even chewing them out. People crave recognition (some more than others). Almost every time I post a personal status on Facebook, one of my friends will make a comment—sometimes they're even sincere.

Why does this matter?

Project leaders and other managers that work in collaborative environments need to facilitate conversations around tasks, issues and work. Leveraging the social media metaphor to channel social media-like conversations around work is a very powerful way to encourage teams to interact. This is particularly true of distributed teams. Creating an environment where the conversations can be focused on the task, or tasks, at hand can help people accomplish more and ultimately help organizations be more profitable.

The benefits of keeping it simple should be pretty obvious. The social media metaphor is easy to learn, easy to use and very intuitive, particularly for all the millennials in the workforce now. We should be working to make it easy for teams to participate in the project and work management process. At least, if we really want them to participate in the process.

The real benefit of making it easy to collaborate and update status is that business leaders will have accurate and timely information to make decisions. They'll have context and color around status updates—giving them the real story. I know people who are always 75 percent complete regardless of what they really are. Those types of status updates don't really do anyone any good. We need real information, filled with context, to understand the real story.

The social media metaphor is a great approach. We just need to make sure that we implement it correctly and invest in the right tools.