Strategic Project Management

A few days before the holiday last week, I came across an interesting article written by Alison Sigmon for Business2Community.com. I liked her perspective when she suggested, "Just as politicians pay close attention and respond to the opinions of constiutents, so must project managers when leading a project. For a project to be successfully delivered, it's critical to get collective action from a group of people who may have very different interests. Easier said than done."

This sentiment might be difficult for grey-haired managers who aren't used to consensus-building as a leadership strategy (I know when I first entered the workforce, I did what I was told because I was told to do it—I just don't believe that is a good long-term leadership strategy). Therefore, when Sigmon suggests, "The key to achieving collective action and creating a sense of belonging among team members is to engage them in playing an active role throughout the project," I agree with her.

I've found that my team is more creative, more productive and arrives at solutions I might never have thought of myself, when I engage them early in the project planning process  and facilitate an environment where they can "own" what they are doing.

"It's been said that people own what they help create, and that means actively engaging team members at regular intervals to provide input and perspective," writes Sigmon.

I think it goes without saying that it would be naive to expect that we will always be able to achieve some kind of consensus. There are going to be times when the project leader has to make a decision or set a course of action—however, I've found those times to be fewer and farther between than I might have thought just a few years ago. Let me suggest a couple of ways to successfully create an environment where team members can "own" their contribution to the project:

1. Invite team members into the planning process—This can sometimes be messy business as "Too many cooks can sometimes spoil the soup," but when everyone owns the plan, everyone owns the project. Scrum teams successfully work together to plan a Sprint, I see no reason why the team can't contribute to building a successful plan regardless of the methodology.
2. Encourage real dialog—I really like the idea of making task "requests" rather than making "assignments." The difference might be subtle, but the idea of a request encourages dialog and captures feedback from team members who can often provide a more complete view of what's happening within the team—including resource availability and timelines that might not otherwise be known.
3. Don't solve every problem, allow the team to come up with solutions—For many of us, it's easy to take all the responsibility for solving every problem that presents itself. Many years ago, a wise mentor taught me that part of identifying a problem is to also identify a few potential solutions along with it. I'm convinced that those closest to the work understand it the best and often have the best solutions. Whenever I'm presented with a problem by someone on the team, the first question I ask is, "How would you solve this?" In fact, I seldom have to ask anymore, most of the time the members of my team now present a couple of possible solutions anytime they come to me with a problem.
4. Never shoot the messenger—Projects are messy and challenging things. Sometimes "stuff" happens. I'm convinced that my team is doing the best they can to achieve whatever objectives are the focus of our current projects. When things go wrong (which they sometimes do) shooting the messenger creates an atmosphere where the team won't identify potential problems early—giving those problems the opportunity to grow into insurmountable obstacles.

None of these suggestions are really anything new. However, as Sigmon suggests, "Consensu won't always be achieved, but ... a project team culture of belonging [can] be experienced within the team."

If you've seen some successes in this regard, I'd welcome your input into the discussion.

Earlier this year (September) the Guardian published their Sustainable Business Quarterly and shared some of the take-aways from the employee engagement discussion groups. I thought there were a number of interesting things brought up—many of which seem to easily apply to the project environment. I thought I would share just a few. You can see all of them HERE.

• We need to stop dividing people up into the blunt categories of consumers and employees and to get messages to both much more aligned. I once worked with a man who said, "You brand is not who you say you are. It's your values, and how you act on those values at every point of contact with your customers and your employees." If there is a disconnect, it doesn't take long for customers to find out who you really are.
• Employees are torn when they have to leave their sustainable values at the door. I have worked with very few people over the years who were willing to check their values at the door. Most people want to be a part of something that supports those values. As project leaders, I think the challenge is determining what those values are, finding a way to incorporate them into the project environment and facilitate an atmosphere where people can work to achieve corporate objectives without making value compromises.
• Empowerment is crucial as it includes the space for individuals to take a lead if they want to. If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you already know how important an empowered workforce is in my opinion.
• Transparency—sharing all that you do as a company, not just the good things. This gives you credibility and humility in the consumer's eyes. In project terms, we talk a lot about executive visibility. I agree that visibility is critical to inform decision. I don't think it matters if you're talking to employees or customers, transparency wins. How many times have you read a corporate press release so "spun up" and filled with hyperbola that there was no conceivable way it was credible? As a counterpoint, you might be interested to know that this blog is not censored or otherwise manipulated by AtTask management. Those things we talk about here (and the way we talk about them) reflect a transparent environment where ideas can be openly shared and discussed.

We can learn a lot about creating a productive team environment by looking at how organizations are trying to engage the team in sustainability efforts. I'd be very interested to learn more about some of the things you are doing within your organizations.

I've never really thought of being an enabler as being a good thing? Most of the time enabling behavior is couched in the context of someone who enables another persons negative behavior—which is why Dimitri Ivanenko's recent Voices on Project Management blog caught my attention.

Ivanenko describes an enabler as someone who goes "...beyond the task of effectively driving the project activities and focus on the elements that empower the team by fostering a strong work ethic, high morale, satisfaction, and attaining personal and professional accomplishments. Enablers are very good at working with all the team members—internal and external to the project and organization..."

He suggests that this type of leader allows everyone on the team to achieve the following four behaviors that I'd like to expand upon:

1. Align to the overall goal: I think this is critical for the team to feel that what they're doing is meaningful. My team's objectives and the associated projects that roll up into them are generally a reflection of the greater departmental objectives which roll up into corporate objectives. As we set goals and establish project plans, it's not uncommon for the members of my team to ask how our objectives roll up into those larger departmental and corporate objectives. In fact, if they don't, it is questioned why we are working on them in the first place. However, for that to happen, they/we need visibility into what those objectives are. Without a transparent working environment, this would be impossible.
2. Emotionally connect why the project's overarching goal is important: Although there might be many who suggest that this is a superfluous step—"It's important because I say it's important"—if the team is unable to understand why any particular initiative is important, they'll never be able to individually connect with the goal and will unable to take any ownership. At that point, they become "butts in seats" and can do more than what they're told. This step is vital to creating an environment where the team can step up performance and contribute at a higher level.
3. See their own purpose on the the team through their contribution and knowledge: I firmly believe that people want to contribute to something greater than themselves and that they want to provide value to that contribution. Working with a very motivated group of young people has taught me that when I give the team opportunities to do what they do best and contribute with their unique talents and abilities, they give their best efforts—and our organization gets their best work.
4. Feel validated for their inputs and recognized for their efforts and outputs: There is no question in my mind that people (myself included) like to be recognized for their contributions and achievements. That's not to say that insincere "atta-boys" are what team members are looking for. They are looking for validation that what they do is considered valuable. What's more, meaningful acknowledgement of superior performance and accomplishment will never be unappreciated.

Ivanenko suggests, "The great value of project managers serving as enablers is that—when combined with authority, they are able to drive the project and enable their teams to deliver higher quality projects and longer lasting results. This value is reflected in the quality of the product or service, processes and process adoption rate, plus greater organizational awareness and integration."

I think he hits the nail on the head. Are you an enabler?

I'm a big advocate of leveraging the social media metaphor as well as social media tools to make teams more effective and engaged. Over the last few months I've written a lot about how the social media metaphor is a great way to encourage collaboration among the team, but there are other ways we can leverage social media within the project management process.

A Network of Subject Matter Experts

When I first started following the project management world online I was literally blown away by how many brilliant project managers willingly shared their smarts with the rest of us via Twitter updates, blogs and even podcasts. If you have a question there's an incredibly active community of really smart project managers on the #pmot hashtag and most recently the #pmchat hashtag to name just two.

Some of the smartest project managers I know are very active bloggers. It doesn't matter if you want to read about Agile methods or more traditional approaches, there are guys like Derek Huether and the Agile Scout as well as more traditional project managers like Robert Kelly, Josh Nankivel and Todd Williams (and there are dozens of other like Liz Harrin, Deanne Earl, Mike Meikel...the list goes on).

Podcasts have become very popular over the last year or so with anything from the fifteen minute PMChat podcasts Robert Kelly is doing to podcasts like Raechel and I do with TalkingWork that are about an hour. Anyone wanting to learn more about how to be a better project manager has lots of opportunities to do so.

I'm also a big fan of the online project management communities like Gantthead, ITToolbox, Projects@Work and PMHut. These are great places to keep up to date on news, articles and current project management thought.

Capturing and Leveraging Best Practice

Wikis have a lot of potential for capturing, cataloging and sharing best practices. There are also tools like Dropbox, Evernote and other cloud based filing systems that have great potential for sharing lessons learned—many of which are free or very little cost. What are some of the ways you are using these tools to facilitate effective project learning?

Online Survey Tools, Facebook and Forums

I've successfully used Survey Monkey and Facebook to get feedback from colleagues, but Forums are another very powerful way to participate in the project management conversation as well as learn and meet new people. What are the forums you turn to when you need answers?

We've only scratched the surface—how are you leveraging social media?

Not long ago I read an interesting article published by the Canadian Industrial Equipment News about a recent study completed by ESI International, a project management learning company. The point of the study was to find out if organizations are successful in facilitating team collaboration.

The findings suggest that although the majority of organizations value a highly collaborative work environment, less than one out of three organizations actually have a framework in place to facilitate it. Wishing your teams would collaborate more effectively isn't going to do the trick. Here are a few of the key take-aways from the report identified by the CIEN:

1. The majority of organizations, in fact, do not work collaboratively, despite the value that they realize would come from better teamwork
2. Rigid work structures exist within companies that keep people from working together
3. Organizations are not investing in the right mix of skills training needed to improve collaboration on projects and initiatives

Another part of the survey called out by CIEN that I thought was particularly interesting was, "While 65.5 percent of respondents believe that their organization's project performance would improve if their teams worked more collaboratively, only 27.8 percent actually do."

I would like to say that this is a Canadian problem, but I don't think so. I think there are many organizations in the U.S. and around the world that give lip-service to creating an effective collaborative environment, but don't do anything about it. In fairness, I think it's more that they don't understand what to do than that they don't want to do it.

I believe that creating an environment where teams can effectively collaborate requires attention to two very important factors:

1. The tools they use
2. The organization's leadership approach

It seems like everyday there are new collaboration tools available. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that no matter how long the list, it would leave many solutions unmentioned. Although I am biased, I would like to suggest a few (there are many others we could also talk about that just won't fit in a blog post) key elements that should be part of any potential project management or collaboration tool you might be considering:

1. Collaborating needs to feel natural: This is why I'm such an advocate of implementing a more social media-like approach to project management software. If the PM tool or collaboration tool your using is clunky and cumbersome to use, nobody will. We know that a social media-like approach works, maybe it's time we stop fighting it and start leveraging the metaphor to create a more collaborative project environment.
2. It needs to be easy to use: If collaborating in the software is a pain, it just won't happen (see #1). What's more, the valuable information project leaders need to make decisions and manage the process need to be captured at the team member level. If we make collaborating easy, it will be easier to capture that information.
3. It needs to take place in real time (in the cloud): Let's face it, many organizations are working with distributed teams spread throughout the world. For real collaboration to take place in real time it needs to take place in the cloud. A SaaS product allows people to log in and collaborate regardless of what time it is anywhere in the world. In my opinion, any PM or collaboration solution that limits individual users to the software installed on their desktops and doesn't share information over some kind of universally accessible network just doesn't facilitate collaboration. I think the SaaS model does this the best. It shouldn't matter if you are at your desk, in the office, on the road or anywhere in the world—software in the cloud enables real-time collaboration to happen.
4. It needs to be available and accessible to the world: I know it's problematic for software vendors to produce their product in every potential language spoken by project teams around the world, but at the very least it should accommodate the major languages of the world: English, German, French, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, etc. I know of a number of organizations with teams in the U.S., China, Mexico and Europe comprised of team members who don't all speak English. I don't know of any software provider that does this flawlessly yet, but I think being multilingual is an important part of collaborating for many teams.

In addition to the tools we use, the approach we take with the team can hinder or help create a collaborative environment. My team is very collaborative. It starts with how we plan our projects (we do it together) and how we interact regarding them. I'm a big believer in allowing individual team members to make decisions about how they're going to tackle their contributions to initiatives and encourage a lot of discussion and interaction among the team.

I'll admit, this is sometimes messy when we all have divergent opinions about a particular approach, but once we come to terms and agree, the sense of personal ownership felt by everyone on the team ensures that a greater number of projects end successfully. Encouraging the negotiations that usually happen anyway gives everyone a sense of ownership. And, if your PM or collaboration tool makes it possible to capture those conversations and negotiations seamlessly within the tool, then you're really on to something.

If this survey accurately represents the state of collaboration in most organizations, we need to get to work making it easier for our teams to collaborate. What are you doing to facilitate collaboration among your project team members?