Strategic Project Management

Last February, in preparation for the AtTask User Conference (WorkOut 2011), I went shopping for a new pair of slacks and wrote about what we affectionately call the "Scope Creep Sport Coat." As mentioned in that post, I'm not a big fan of shopping for clothes, but once in a while I need to bite the bullet and wear something other than a comfortable pair of jeans and a fleece sweater.

Professional obligations this summer required a new suit, causing me to stop by the local men's clothing store earlier last week. Remembering my experience from last February, I announced to my wife that I would be buying a new suit and that she would not be invited to come along. "Remember the scope creep sport coat episode," I said.

Much to the dismay of the clothier, it felt strangely empowering to say, "No, I don't need a new belt," and "Don't even bother to show me shirts and ties...I have what I came in for."

If you sell suits for a living, you know that ties, shirts, belts and other such items can add up to a pretty nice sale. By cutting off the salesman at the pass, I was able to keep scope creep under control (however I did a buy a little nicer suit than I had originally intended). It was very satisfying not to get sucked into the "Ty, that really looks nice" vortex this time.

I believe keeping project scope creep under control works the same way. I knew there would be a push to increase the amount of my intended purchase before I walked into the store. I was prepared and able (with my mitigation plan) to avoid blowing the doors of my budget. Scope creep starts innocently enough, but if you're prepared for it, you'll recognize it for what it is and it can be avoided or minimized. Addressing potential scope creep early, before it gets out of control, is a sound strategy.

Of course, my wife hasn't seen the suit I picked out yet...
 

I admit it.

I am a big Seth Godin fan. The first Seth Godin book i read was Permission Marketing. I think he was still at Yahoo! as Vice-President, Direct Marketing at the time. This would have been been somewhere around 1999, I think. I've come to appreciate that Seth's ideas are pretty fresh and really seem to be worth paying attention to.

A couple of weeks ago, on the heals of reading Linchpin: Are You Indispensable, I finished reading Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. I think he actually wrote Purple Cow first, and it felt like the business version of Linchpin to me. It was definitely a great read and reinforced much of what I had read in the previous book. If you haven't read it, it's a book I'd recommend. (One of these days maybe I'll publish my reading list, I'm reading Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink right now.)

I am a firm believer that we need to become indispensable within our organizations. However, what struck me while reading Purple Cow was Godin's definition of the opposite of remarkable. "The opposite of remarkable is very good," he says. "Ideas that are remarkable are much more likely to spread than ideas that aren't. Yet so few brave people make remarkable stuff. Why? I think it's because they think that the opposite of 'remarkable' is 'bad' or 'mediocre' or 'poorly done.'"

He suggests that making something very good isn't good enough to be remarkable. For example, "If you travel on an airline and they get you there safely, you don't tell anyone," he says. "That's what's supposed to happen. What makes it remarkable is if it's horrible beyond belief or if the service is so unexpected (they were an hour early! they comped my ticket because I was cute! they served flaming crêpes suzette in first class!) that you need to share it."

I don't think it matters whether or not we work on a project team as the project manager or an individual contributor, I think this applies to whatever we're doing. Doing a good job is what's expected of us—it's not being indispensible.

Godin suggests, "Factories set quality requirements and try to meet them. That's boring. Very good is everyday occurrence and hardly worth mentioning." He then asks, "Are you making very good stuff? How fast can you stop?"

I agree. Are you very good at what you do? How fast can you stop?
 

I came across an article yesterday with some interesting insight that is worth thinking about. SmartBusiness (sbnonline.com) published an article titled, How Employee Engagement Can Add Dollars to Your Company's Bottom Line.

The article asserts, "A landmark study of Performance Management Effectiveness by Hewitt Associates demonstrated a 35 percent employee productivity benefit from utilizing employee performance management systems as a result of staff working on projects and tasks that they should be working on. With clearer visibility of goals and how they will be monitored, employees work harder and focus their efforts on appropriate tasks. A conservative 5 percent increase in overall productivity results in a weekly gain of two hours per employee."

I have long been a believer that small and incremental gains in productivity will have the greatest impact on project success, however this is not the only benefit of engaging the team. "According to Gallup (2008 and 2010), engaged employees average 37 percent less absenteeism. Employees with preset, time-sensitive objectives are less likely to take unscheduled time off, unless truly necessary. If each staff member understands they are part of a larger team and their performance is crucial to overall success, unnecessary/unscheduled time off will be reduced." I've observed this to be true. When everyone understands the importance of what they're doing and how their roles are interconnected, nobody wants to drop the ball and let down the rest of the team.

What's more, I don't think there's anyone who would disagree that employee turnover is an expensive problem. "In the same study, engaged work groups show 25 percent less turnover in high turnover organizations, and 49 percent less turnover in low turnover organizations. Replacing those departed employees has a negative impact on a company's financial resources. Engaged employees are loyal employees and loyal employees are less likely to leave. Continuous feedback through performance tools helps employees improve, succeed and feel valued."

If I told you that team members who know the answers to four simple questions create these results, would you ask your team the questions? And, more importantly, would you take action once you know the answers?

Here are the questions:

1. What is your job?
2. What components of your job are most relevant?
3. How well are you doing?
4. What part to you play in the company's overall success?

Pretty simple questions aren't they? If you ask these questions of your project team, you might be surprised at the responses you get. Some studies suggest that only 20 percent of managers and employees can answer these questions with any confidence.

So what does that mean to you? As important as project management tools or project and portfolio management software may be, the tools and methodologies we use to manage the process aren't as important to the bottom line as ensuring that everyone on the team knows with certainty the answers to these four simple questions. What's more, I'm convinced that ensuring that the team understands their role and how it relates to the overall success of any endeavor needs to be a continual focus as we lead the people on our project teams.

Do you know the answers to those four questions in regards to your role?


 

I once worked with a guy who felt the need to take credit for anything good that happened within his department. If anyone noticed something the team had worked on in a positive light, he took credit for it. "Yeah, that was my idea," he would say. On the other hand, if it was something that wasn't as positive, he would blame the team. Most of us had skid marks on our backs where the bus had slammed on the brakes for another pass.

Needless to say, it didn't really take very long for him to expose himself as the fraud he was. Ultimately the team didn't like him, his boss didn't respect him and he was sent packing.

As a project leader (or any kind of leader for that matter) I think it's important to appropriately recognize achievements. In a recent article titled How to Build Trust When Your Team Doesn't Know Each Other, written by Wayne Turmel for Bnet, Turmel suggests, "There are many ways to show off the competence of team members. When you have message boards and social network tools, there are opportunities to answer questions, refer other team members and generally offer individuals a chance to shine they might not otherwise get. As the manager, take the chance to commend workers in ways that let the entire team know who did such great work."

In many organizations that espouse a top-down command-and-control management approach the only time anyone hears from the boss or their manager is when there's something to do or something is wrong. I like the idea of making it a point to look for ways to show off the competence of my team—to share their accomplishments with my superiors. It creates an atmosphere where people aren't afraid to speak with me and makes it a lot easier to have those sometimes difficult conversations when there are problems.

There's nothing wrong with finding ways to shine the light on exceptional effort or an exceptional member of the team. What's more, although money is a motivator for performance, it isn't the only motivator. Most people leave their employment for reasons other than money. Maybe their commute was too long, maybe they didn't like the job—but it's more than likely they didn't feel their contribution was recognized and appreciated or they didn't like the boss.

Over the course of my career, I've noticed the times when I've been the most successful have been the times when I've been able to facilitate an atmosphere where individual members of the team could shine and be recognized for what they bring to the effort. When my need to shine is superseded by the ability of individuals on my team to shine, projects have been more successful, the team is happier and as a result, it reflects well on me.

As a side note, in most cases, praise for a job well done should be specific and public. Vague platitudes aren't worth the wasted words. "Jones, the extra work you did to get the Acme project in on time really made the difference," is much more effective than, "Good work everyone."

Specific and public is how I try to address praise to members on my team as opposed to reprimand, which should be handled privately—unless you want to do irreparable damage to personal relationships (which are the foundation of project leadership in a world where most of the time everyone on the project team is usually a dotted line on the org chart).

What do you do to recognize exceptional work or exceptional team members?
 

Last week I wrote two posts that asked some questions that have generated enough comments that I thought it was worth expanding the dialog a bit. Do Happy Teams Really Make a Difference and Work-Life Balance and the Millennial Generation. The comments ranged from, "I don't know if it is that important that people are happy at work, but I'm certain that it is critical that people not be unhappy. In other words, the benefits of happiness may be unclear, but the costs of unhappiness are high," to "So, my theory is that 'unhappy' staff are created by management with poor leadership skills, who may (as the previous poster has said) have moved on to other management jobs before the impact of unhappiness is seen through staff turnover."

I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but I think the evidence is pretty clear that happy people work harder, are more productive and more engaged in what they're doing. I think Linda Mignone summed it up in a recent article published by CNN Money, "People who are happy at work put in far more effort, work longer hours, and are more productive than those who aren't. They remain at their jobs twice as long and they work 25% more time than an unhappy employee works."

I've read a number of studies that suggest the same thing. You might now be asking, "If that's true, why are you bringing this up again?" Which would be a good question. I guess I'm bringing it up because I think this is something important that project leaders should be aware of. And what's more, I think we're in a position to take action and do something that could impact the work our project teams are doing for the good.

Dave Garrett (@DaveG253) said, "In the context of a project however—I have seen situations where the requirements are very specific, there is an end point in sight and an unhappy team could effectively drive toward a well defined near term result. I think a lot of companies treat work as a series of unhappy sprints where some employees are replaced as they burn out. It's not what we want to see happen, but it's often the reality of the situation when we are in sketchy economic times."

This is sad but all too true. There are many companies that are intentionally driving people too hard knowing that jobs are hard to come by—and they know that they can abuse employees because they are just happy to have a job and won't leave. Dave continues, "As the economy picks up however, employees motivation/enthusiasm/happiness will become more important again. All of these things speak to retention which will be much more important in the coming months and years."

This type of management style is not a good long-term solution. In fact, it's not a good solution at all, unless of course your Attila the Hun. Speaking from my own personal experience, there have been times during my career when I have worked for the "Hun." Needless to say, I don't work for him anymore.

Some of the comments that concerned me, and instigated this post, seemed to suggest that there's nothing we can really do about whether or not our team members are happy, it's up to them. I couldn't disagree more. As project leaders we can foster an environment where team members can enjoy their working environment and ultimately be more engaged and more productive. Let me suggest the following as a starting point:

1. Encourage dialog among team members concerning time-lines and deliverables: Team members are more likely to engage if they have some input into the how, what and when of their contribution to projects. Instigate this dialog early in the planning process and you might be surprised at how accurate your project plans can become.
2. Set realistic expectations: Of course there will be times when a hard deadline is staring you in the face and your team may just have to buckle down and get things done, but it that's always the case—somethings wrong. If your project plan always includes a lot of overtime to get things done, it's not a good project plan, period.
3. Recognize extra effort: When putting in extra time or effort becomes expected, rather than recognized, it frustrates team members and does the opposite of motivates. People work hard for a number of reasons, one of which is for the recognition of being a consistent achiever (For many of us who have been in the workplace for a long time, we need to remember how it felt to be a younger member of the team trying to establish a foundation for our future career). A little recognition goes a long way. Don't believe me? Just try it for a week or two and see how far you get with your team.
4. Never forget that work-life balance is important: If I cut out of the office a couple of hours early every day (leaving work un-done), my employer would feel like I was stealing that time from him or her. And he or she would be right. However, what's the difference if an employer expects, nay demands, that a team member regularly work an extra hour or two each day without compensation? Does that equate to the employer "stealing" from them? My wife regularly accuses me of going into the office too early and staying too late, and she may be right. I enjoy what I do and have a large backlog of "stuff" on my plate. However, staying to get something done because I choose to is a lot different than staying because I am forced or expected to. Work-life balance is very important to team members (especially Millennials). If we regularly ignore this, we will see high turnover or worse—team members who stay physically, but aren't really there mentally.

Although I can't do anything to make people who are unhappy happy, I can nurture an environment where people can be happy if they choose to be. I can facilitate an environment where team members will "buy in" and "engage" in the projects I lead—making them more effective and successful. The beauty of this type of leadership style is that it isn't rocket science, nor does it require herculean effort. It's pretty simple.

What do you think? Can you add to this list? Don't the gains associated with a happy workforce merit the little extra effort required on our part to make it happen?