Strategic Project Management

“Because I said so!” has never worked.

30 years ago when your boss told you to do something, you did it (at least I did).  And no, we didn’t like it then either. Let’s face it, times have changed. Generation X and Y are used to having more control over what they do and when they do it than any other generation of workers before them. They’ve also been trained to work in a more collaborative environment and are used to receiving frequent and regular feedback and recognition for what they do.

Like many of you, I’ve had the unpleasant experience of working in organizations where people are treated like pawns to be pushed around a resource grid. It’s not very fun or very fulfilling. The days of top-down or command-and-control management style are quickly coming to an end. Assigning work has evolved into a collaborative process between the organizational layers and among peers.

As project leaders, it’s critical for us to embrace the reality that those doing the work should have control over it . The experts are really those at the grass roots and their manager is their leader—not their drill sergeant. Today’s project leader is expected to look into the future and plan how to overcome obstacles, facilitate better communication—not micromanage process.

One of the challenges faced by savvy and intuitive leaders who recognize this is the limitation of the tools they use. Traditional project management methodologies rely on the “old school” concepts of command-and-control management techniques that were developed in the beginning of the industrial age to manage the assembly line. Organizations that are content with a workforce that is simply putting in time to get their paycheck may be content with these archaic approaches to “managing” their people, however, if organizations want to achieve maximum productivity and empower their employees to maximize their potential, they must embrace this paradigm shift in management philosophy.

I have had many opportunities over the years to participate as a project leader and as a project team member. Random assignments that are arbitrarily pushed down the pipeline at me or my team were annoying and aggravating. As a team member, those times when I was given the opportunity to participate in the project plan and contribute to the setting of goals and milestones were satisfying and rewarding. As a project leader, as I have shared that philosophy with my project teams, I have found that they take ownership, are engaged, and regularly outperform my expectations.

It really isn’t rocket science. My grandma used to say, “Treat others as you would want to be treated yourself.” That’s always been good advice.

Over the weekend I spent a wonderful Saturday cruising the canyons of northern Utah on my motorcycle. It was a beautiful day and the canyons were incredible. My favorite rides are from canyon to canyon and Saturday was the perfect example. I started with a ride to Pineview Reservoir and over Monte Cristo into Wyoming. From Evanston I headed for the Mirror Lake Highway and a beautiful ride through the Uinta Mountains and home.

Unfortunately, there was a casualty on the highway. Sometime around 3:00 pm, a motorcyclist and his wife crossed the center line and hit another automobile head on. Accidents happen, but two fatalities marred what was an otherwise beautiful day to ride for that family. The local news hasn't shared many details about the crash, but it has caused me to evaluate what I do to stay safe on the road.

My heartfelt condolences go out to those who lost loved ones.

I'm certain the thought of an accident probably wasn't on their mind as they traveled through the canyon. Being about an hour behind them, I was enjoying the cool, crisp air and the scenery myself. I wasn't thinking much about the risks associated with a narrow, winding canyon road.

Planing for risk is an important part of a successful day on the road. Even though there is an increased level of risk associated with riding a motorcycle I don’t intent to stop riding, but I do try the best I can to prepare for and mitigate the risk.

Here are a couple of suggestions that might help you mitigate project risk:

1. Identify the risks associated with the project before it’s begun: All too often when projects are proposed, stakeholders are looking through rose-colored glasses. Although I think it’s important (maybe even vital in today’s economy) to look for projects that will provide potential value to the organization, ignoring the associated risks is very dangerous. If a project is presented for consideration and no risks are identified, that project sponsor should be introduced to a rather large river in Egypt.
2. Craft and follow a comprehensive mitigation plan: Although much of this work should be done before a project is approved, in the real world that doesn’t always happen. What’s more, it may be up to you to look at the identified risks and spend some brainpower on creating a reasonable mitigation plan. Considering a few “what if” scenarios is always a good idea. Engage the project sponsor in this process so that he or she feels a little skin in the game. Realize that you may need to do some education, as most project sponsors don’t really understand their role and will need a little guidance.
3. Don’t let risk paralyze you: Sometimes it’s easy to be so worried about risk that you never do anything creative. Avoid falling into the trap of doing what’s “safe” to keep out of trouble. “Safe” can usually be equated with low value, which doesn’t do any good for you or your project.

It's important to take risk seriously. There is always something that could go wrong. Facing the risk up front is always the best strategy—but that doesn't mean we should be paralyzed by risk. We should acknowledge it, prepare for it and work to mitigate the consequences as best we can.

How do you plan for and mitigate project risk?

Since I was a young man, I've spent countless hours in sitting around the campfire telling and listening to stories. People whom I respected often taught great life lessons sitting around the embers of a fire at the end of the day. I have also taken that time to share those same lessons with my sons (who are now all adults) and have been teased in recent years about how many of my stories tend to repeat themselves.

"I know that one Dad," says one of them. "That's the one about ABC."

My oldest will then chime in, "Dad, we've heard your stories so many times we've got them numbered."

"This one is number 78," says my youngest. "The life lesson is XYZ."

I suppose I should be happy that the lessons have sunk in. All three of them are fine men. I'm very happy to be their dad. However, I often wonder how much of this "tribal" knowledge really get shared within the work environment. There's often an "out with the old and in with the new" mentality when people and roles change. I can't help but wonder if that's really a good idea.

I was very fortunate when I entered the workforce that an older (and more experienced) colleague took me under his wing and shared with me the unspoken order of things within our organization. I’ll admit that some of them were pretty obvious, but there were others that were vital to helping me keep my foot out of my mouth. His serendipitous mentor-ship and the things he taught me have helped my career many times over the years.

What is the unspoken order of things within your organization? Is there any kind of established vehicle for sharing that information with those new to you organization, or do you leave it all up to chance?

Here are a few suggestions for sharing tribal knowledge that might help new members of your project teams get up to speed quickly. Of course, these are just suggestions, please feel free to share any successful approaches you might have.

1. Meet together regularly as a team to share stories. This could be part of a quarterly planning meeting or other team get-together. Stories are a great vehicle for learning. And, sharing stories about team successes and failures could be a great way to share the "unspoken order of things" to your team.
2. Assign a more experienced mentor to a younger (or newer) team member. There’s a reason that the trades are so successful with an apprenticeship program. It just makes sense to me that a more experienced colleague take a less experienced team member under his or her wing. This isn’t necessarily to make sure that they know how to do their job (we should be able to assume that), but someone to help navigate the nuances of working within the organization is a good idea.
3. Spend one-on-one time with team members on a regular basis. Once a month or once a quarter it’s a good idea to sit down with team members for a one-on-one conversation about goals and objectives along with individual and team performance. This is also a great time to share tribal information.

Regardless of how you choose to share tribal information, I look at it as more of an ongoing process than something you eventually finish. If you are doing something to successfully share this type of information within your organization, what are you doing? Do you think it helps your project teams?

It might be your fault.

Not exactly your fault, but according to Scott Blanchard of The Ken Blanchard Companies, "Leadership development training is a smart, prudent investment that drives eoncomic value and bottom line results. But if people perceive that senior executives don't care about development then—guess what—development will not be a priority for the company."

How does this make it even remotely your fault—or not exactly your fault?

I think most people would agree that training is a good thing. In project management, people train to be certified. In fact many organizations look for certifications before they hire a new project manager, but once hired, few organizations invest in the leadership training and development that a highly competent and skilled project manager would need to become an effective project leader. They force the project manager to rely on intuitive skills or natural charisma to lead the people on his or her team. Big mistake, according to Blanchard (and personal experience).

Maybe it's really your bosses' fault or even your bosses' bosses' fault.

Blanchard's research found "...that strong strategic leadership coupled with exceptional day-to-day operational leadership skills best coordinated to financial performance."

Subsequent research found that "...when employees perceived opportunities for meaningful work, growth, autonomy, and collaboration combined with fair working conditions, connectedness, task variety, clear performance expectations, and feedback, they had subsequent intentions to stay with a company and perform at high levels."

Blanchard suggests that when organizations invest in people, it sends the signal that they hope to keep the employee for the long haul. I think this is pretty significant when many people are job hopping every two or three years. I've noticed this to be particularly true in high tech. The longevity award at my company takes place at three years. When I entered the workforce, 20 years was considered longevity (but that's another discussion).

I'm convinced that developing leaders within an organization is critical. There's a lot of tribal knowledge inside employees that have been around for a while. This is very true for project managers. Over the course of my career I've seen organizations who look outside for leadership talent and ignore the talent pool they already have—encouraging many people to look outside the company for advancement opportunities.

Blanchard suggests taking a situational approach that requires a diagnosis of where an individual might be with their career, task, job or project. He explains, "An employee's level of competence and commitment develops over time any time they start a new role or a new task."

Although I've never seen it put into terms like this before, Blanchard's research really makes sense to me. I can't count the number of times I've seen people start off excited, watch the honeymoon end, and watch commitment drop.

"With proper amounts of direction and support," suggests Blanchard, employees will become what he calls "...Capable, but Cautious, Performer," ultimately becoming a "Self-Reliant Achiever". According to Blanchard, "This stage features high levels of Competence and Commitment and it is the place where an employee really impacts the bottom line."

When Blanchard talks to senior levels in most organizations, they are surprised to learn that most of their organization is stacked in the "Disillusioned Learner" and "Capable, but Cautious, Performer" category—short of where their employees really start to demonstrate high-value to the organization.

"If you operate with 75% of your people [below the Self-Reliant Achiever] level, you are going to have very anemic financial performance and low levels of passion and engagement," says Blanchard. "This is exactly what we are seeing in today's work environment. The result is an organization operating at 65 to 70% of potential. In our research into The High Cost of Doing Nothing, the impact of this untapped potential is costing the average organization over $1 million per year."

Blanchard makes a great case for training managers (and I include project managers) to help people develop from "Enthusiastic Beginners" to "Self-Reliant Achievers" to maximize the value of their people.

"Whenever there is great performance in an organization, there is also great leadership," says Blanchard. "It's always the human element. The best organizations get this. When you ask them why they are number one, they will always point to their people and how they work together. When you go to less successful organizations they are always focused on something else."

Early in my career I worked for a man who described his business and his people as a bucket of water. "I can stick my hand in here and stir this water around as much as I want. Even if water spills out, what do I have when I'm done? A bucket of water," he would say. Suggesting that it didn't matter what he did to his people, in the end, he would still have a successful business. I didn't stay there very long.

Frontline supervisors, middle managers and project managers can all benefit from leadership development and training in the same way executives might. If your organization offers such training, I'd suggest that you take advantage of it. If not, take the advice of my friend Tom Cooper, who suggests that you make the investment in yourself. If your current employer isn't willing to make the investment in you, making the investment in yourself could lead you to the next great opportunity that will enable you to build a team of "Self-Reliant Achievers" and set you apart as a very successful project leader.

Earlier this year Colleen Coates wrote a great piece about employee satisfaction and employee engagement. "A recent study by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that even though employees may be satisfied with their jobs," she says,  "it does not automatically translate into having an engaged workforce."

Several years ago I worked with a fellow who said something like, "I have a good job. I don't need to really like my job to be good at it. I look at it as a means to an end—a paycheck."

To be fair, he was very good at what he did. Although I admired his work, I couldn't understand his willingness to do something he wasn't passionate about. Throughout my career, being "satisfied" that I had a job has never been good enough. I want to feel passion for what I'm doing. I want to be engaged. I want to take ownership. And, I don't think I'm alone. I think my friend was just resigning himself to the fact that he was never going to get around to writing the great American novel, make a living and raise a family all at the same time. In reality, I'm not even sure if he really was "satisfied" at all.

"In fact, while 83 percent of employees said they were generally satisfied with their current positions, only 68 percent claimed to feel passion and excitement and just 53 percent felt tuned in at work," writes Coates.

As long as project teams are asked to develop exciting new products, introduce game-changing new processes or technological advances, we need team members who are totally engaged in their work. If we can't do that, we'll be stuck with boring products and services that provide little, if any, value.

With that in mind, the survey introduced a common thread among a majority of respondents: "Interestingly, 54 percent of respondents said that the aspect of the work experience that was most lacking was communication between employees and management," said Coates. "This is actually good news, because it is never too late to make strides toward improving communications."

I've been thinking a lot about communication lately. Yesterday's post, Four Keys to Effective Project Communication, is a great place to start. There's no doubt in my mind that it's important to:

1. Actually Communicate
2. Avoid Forcing People to Read Your Mind
3. Admit to What You Do and Don't Know
4. Lay All Your Cards on the Table

But saying that and doing it are often different things. The ability to effectively communicate certainly feels more natural to some than to others. Although everything on my list is important, I thought I'd share some ideas about how to actually communicate with the team. It's a lot harder to tackle the other three keys if you avoid communication in the first place.

1. Don't worry if it doesn't feel very natural at first: Like anything worth doing, it might take some time to hone your communication skills. The act of doing it makes it easier. And, your team will appreciate your efforts (even if they don't say it out loud).
2. Schedule time every day to step away from the computer to say hello: I find that if I'm not careful, I keep my head down, buried in the work and forget to say anything to anyone. In fact, I often put headphones on so I can tune everyone out to focus on what I'm doing. If I never take the headphones off and acknowledge that I do collaborate with others, I isolate myself from the rest of the team.
3. Watch for opportunities to recognize individuals on the team: Over the course of my career I've only seen one or two people who were able to do this well, but they really made an impact and were great leaders. They had a knack for noticing when someone was doing good work and would casually comment about it: "Hi Stacy, I noticed the contributions you made to the last brainstorming session we had were very insightful. You really added to the discussion. Thanks for contributing." It really doesn't take much—it just needs to be sincere.
4. Don't give up if your first attempts seem to fall flat: Particularly if this is something new for you. Sometimes it takes a while to gain people's trust and demonstrate that you're sincere. As important as team meetings or one-on-one reviews are, they are no substitute for connecting on a personal level. In fact, I think most people crave that kind of connection with the people they work with. I once worked with a guy who made it very clear that he didn't want to "make friends" with his employees. Business was impersonal and he didn't want to deal with any of the baggage of a "personal" relationship with anyone. Of course this is just my opinion, but business is personal. It's all about relationships, social capital and interacting collaboratively. Much of that requires a personal relationship. Needless to say, when it was time for me to move on it was very easy—we had a very impersonal relationship.

Many of the best interactions I've had with colleagues, team members and superiors have taken place outside of the traditional context of work discussions. They happen when we're on the road together, in the cafeteria or casually in the halls. Sometimes those conversations with the boss happened naturally and spontaneously, other times (as I look back) he or she was watching for those kinds of opportunities to start a conversation. Either way, they were very effective at building a relationship with me and helped me engage in my work and perform at a higher level.

I foresee that the project manager of the future will have to be a master of communication. As important as managing process may be, it's leading the people on the project team that determines whether or not a project is a success or a failure. It might be easy to say, "Communicate," but hopefully these suggestions will help get the conversations started.

What are you doing to make sure you take time to communicate with your team?