Strategic Project Management

Once upon a time, almost in another life, I spent some time working behind the counter at a convenience store to earn a little extra money. It certainly wasn't the most complicated job I ever had, but it did have its challenges. So when I noticed an article about motivating people within the convenience store industry, I couldn't help but take a few minutes and read through it. I have to admit, those things that make us similar are far greater than those that make us different

Like project leaders, motivating employees is a challenge faced by the operators of convenience stores. Citing Human Resource expert Todd Patkin, John Lofstock writes, "People will never admit it, but money is not the thing they desire most from their work. Instead, showing appreciation, respect, and, yes, even love are the three most important ways to make you people feel great about their work. Happy, engaged employees are the single best way to impact your company's bottom line."

Although money is important, there are numerous studies that suggest that it's not the most important reason people are motivated at work. "As a leader, I quickly found that if my team was content and their work environment was a positive one, they would be more engaged and motivated, and they would truly care about our organization's future," Patkin said.

The article suggests a number of tactics he uses to motivate people which are worth the read, however most of them boil down to a couple of the themes we talk about here on a fairly regular basis:

1. Communicate goals and objectives
2. Recognize accomplishments and share success stories
3. Have positive interactions with the team

Although this sounds pretty simple, it doesn't just happen. It takes effort.

What do you to do to foster a positive project environment to help encourage a happy team?

The story goes that a chicken and a pig were walking down the road chatting about starting a restaurant. The chicken suggested a breakfast place that served bacon and eggs. The pig wasn't too thrilled at the idea because his commitment to the enterprise was more serious than the chicken's. "You must make a regular contribution," says the pig. "But for me, it's a total commitment."

I'm not sure exactly when Robert Kelly posed the question: "Can Project Managers Really Be Held Accountable?" on the #pmchat group on Linkedin, but I noticed it last week and believe he's asked us all a very valid question. "I get that a project manager is responsible for cost, budget, etc., etc., etc. But I am thinking about this from a general business perspective and their perception of the value of PM in the enterprise," he says.

He brings up some great points about changing requirements and timelines and how sometimes providing business leaders with the value they are looking for is like trying to hit a moving target (my words not Robert's). Challenging at best.

He asks the question, "[H]ow do you measure success? Does the standard PMI answers/criteria work for you? When Executives in the corner office put a date on a calendar without any discovery work, is it a project failure if you don't hit the date? If you stay within budget, schedule, and meet all of the requirements of functionality/quality and they simply change their mind, is that failure?"

These are questions that anyone managing a project probably faces almost daily. And, although the definition of success is way to subjective for my taste and never as straightforward as it should be, I do believe project managers should be accountable for what happens within the team. I think one of the the things accountability gives the project manager is a mandate to makes sure requirements and a definition of success are well-established before the project even begins.

Most of the projects my team is responsible for are scheduled to start and finish within a calendar quarter. It's my job to make sure that every initiative is scoped appropriately so that we can accomplish it within that time frame. What's more, everyone on the team has skin in the game. There is compensation tied to our ability to execute on time and on spec. I'm often asking myself, as other "distractions" which have the potential of hurting the performance of my project goals appear, "How much of my bonus do I want to bet on this?"

I'm empowered, nay expected, to push back on anything that comes down the pipeline that might derail my team. And if requirements change or other priorities change the scope of my project, I'm expected to make sure the definition of success changes along with it. If I don't, the onus is mine—I'm accountable.

I don't think accountability is bad. In fact, I think accountability and ownership help everyone on the team perform at a higher level.

Not every project leader is able to enjoy the rewards of a successfully completed project. Maybe they should. I know that I am very motivated to see my projects come to a successful completion because I'm "invested" in their success—and so is the rest of the team. I'm also a fan of delivering value at shorter intervals because it helps facilitate this kind of environment.

After all, organizations do projects to produce value. Sometimes it's easy to forget that.

Short of making the pig's commitment, have any of you worked in a project environment where you had some skin in the game? Did that make a difference in team performance? Was it a positive thing?

"Winning is not a sometime thing," said professional football coach Vince Lombardi. "You don't do things right once in a while... you do them right all the time."

Earlier this week I came across and article published by HRMagazine, an online portal that talks about human resource issues published in the UK. Although the statistic I'm going to quote relates to a survey done in the UK and Europe, I don't think it's too hard to make that leap that the same conditions exist in the US.

Although I don't believe there's any question that an engaged workforce is more productive, more satisfied and willing to go the extra mile, according to recent data from Aon Hewitt's European Engagement database, "...the vast majority of employees across the UK and Europe believe that their employers view employee engagement as a tick box exercise, with only 18% of employees strongly believing that survey results will be acted upon."

If the same sentiment exists in the US, it would appear that we are only giving lip service to how we engage the workforce; and any hoped for increase in productivity appears to be a pipe dream. There might be some reading this who are thinking, "My company takes employee engagement seriously." If they do, you are fortunate becasue "The report shows nearly half (47%) of managers indicated that they spend only two to five days a year on activities relating to their annual engagement survey," writes David Woods.

Lombardi said, "There is only one way to succeed in anything, and that is to give it everything. I do, and I demand that my players do."

According to Jenny Merry, UK Engagement Practice Leader at Aon Hewitt, who is cited by Woods in the article, "It's clear that while most organizations monitor levels of employee engagement, many are failing to act effectively on the findings. Against a backdrop of economic uncertainty and salary increases below the level of inflation, ensuring your workforce feels supported and engaged is more critical than ever before. An engaged workforce will be more productive, more efficient and more likely to help the company reach its targets."

Whether or not your organization spends a lot of time working to create the type of work environment that encourages an engaged workforce, project leaders can create that kind of environment on the team. Is spending less than a week thinking about and acting on the things that would facilitate a productive working environment really enough?

"The well-worn phrase 'people join organizations and leave managers' is not the whole story; people leave organizations which have not properly equipped managers to be engaging," says Merry. "Managers could and should have a positive impact on employee engagement. With careful planning, expectation setting and support for managers, it's possible to make this a reality."

"Leaders aren't born, they are made," said Lombardi. "They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal which is worthwhile."

What are you doing to make sure you have all the skills you need to lead people? Is your organization serious about doing things that encourage engagement or do they give it only lip service?

Abraham Lincoln has always been one of my heroes. I'm in the middle of a book written a few years back by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Pulling together a cabinet of many of the men he defeated in the Republican primary and even a number of Democrats, Lincoln successfully cobbled together a team of divergent opinions that ultimately helped him lead the country through one of the most difficult times in American history.

One of the things I have come to admire about President Lincoln is his unwillingness for anyone to take responsibility for his decisions when others disagreed or even his mistakes while in office. There were numerous occasions when cabinet members were blamed for his decisions, and it would have been easy for them to take the political fall-out for them, yet Mr. Lincoln would never allow it. In fact, he often put himself at great political risk to ensure that none of his cabinet ever took the blame for something unpopular he did or advocated (you don't see that in Washington anymore). It reminds me of President Harry Truman who famously said, "The buck stops here!"

Last week Patrick Thibodeau, writing for ComputerWorld wrote an interesting article about software and project management. I must admit, it made me cringe, but over the last few days as I've thought about it, I think we need to think about it.

"The data about software development is sobering," writes Thibodeau. "Many projects end up over budget and behind schedule, and one study puts the failure rate at one in five."

I don't like reading this any more than you do.

Thibodeau introduces us to Billie Blair, an organizational psychologist and president and CEO of Change Strategists Inc., who is called in when multimillion dollar projects get into trouble. "In nearly every case, Blair said the source of all project dysfunction is the project manager," he writes.

Ouch.

Unfortunately, this isn't the first time I've heard this in the last six months. Tom Peters, who was one of the keynote speakers at the Gartner PPM Summit held earlier this year in San Diego, said, "All failures are your fault."

Although Mr. Peters' comments were designed to elicit a reaction and were meant to be a little more inflammatory than Mr. Thibodeau's and Ms. Blair's comments, I wonder if we should individually do a little introspection and evaluate whether or not we are part of the problem—or even "the problem" as Blair suggests.

Blair argues that there are many project managers who aren't up to the job. "Project managers have to deal with people, embrace conflicts and not run from them, know how to assist people in sorting things out, and be compelling," she says. Engineers and IT professionals "are wonderful at what they do and their skill set, but generally those managing skills are not there and they have to acquire them."

Thibodeau suggests that the people part of the software development equation is getting more attention thanks to more agile development methods that foster a "less rigid approach that requires a more flexible person at all levels, and not just the manager level."

I like the way agile approaches introduce individual team members to the planning process early and allow them to participate in an active way in creating the plan. I also like how deliverables are expected regularly and at shorter intervals. I don't see why projects that are planned in a more waterfall environment can't function in a similar way. After all, isn't the waterfall approach supposed to represent the natural cascading of one event to another? Wouldn't engaging the team earlier in the process increase buy-in, team member engagement and ultimately increase the odds of a successful project without negatively impacting the natural flow of events?

Whether or not you believe the studies that suggest there is a real problem with project success or agree with Blair and Peters who suggest that we (project managers) are the problem, I think we need to look at what we do and how we do it and honestly ask ourselves, "Are we the problem?"

I've committed to do that. Lincoln said, "I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."

I think it's time to look at the process with fresh eyes and discover ways that we can become wiser and improve the way we manage projects to successful outcomes.

Over the weekend our ride took as to the little crossroads of Elberta, Utah. At the southwest end of Utah Lake, the 1920s vintage gas station is a reminder of a time gone by, but also announces a point of decision. Our original plan was to ride toward the sleepy little mining town of Eureka, have something for lunch and then return to the Salt Lake Valley via State Highway 36 and ride along the old pony express route, but the clouds looked ominous and although the chill in the air didn't stop the ride, neither one of us were too excited about getting caught in the rain or worse out in the middle on nowhere.

At the crossroads, the question was  turn right into Eureka and what looked like bad weather or left into Santiquin and a warm sandwich? We chose the sandwich.

There are often times during projects when you reach a crossroads and must make some hard decisions about how best to move forward. At those times it's important to evaluate the relative risk to reward that might be the result of taking one action or another. Keeping in mind the objectives of the project helps make those decisions easier. For example, the objective for getting out on the bikes Saturday was to enjoy each others company and have a pleasant (if chilly) ride. Turning right into an early fall rainstorm wasn't part of the plan, so we opted to take another road.

When standing at a crossroads and faced with a decision about a risky course of action, what do you do to ensure that the project successfully meets the objective?