Strategic Project Management

In Greek mythology Narcissus was a favorite of Apollo and considered one of the most handsome young men alive.  His beauty has been compared to Adonis, whom Aphrodite the Greek goddess of love herself, loved.

The story goes that Narcissus, having come to a pool of water to quench his thirst, saw his own reflection in the smooth surface of the pool and fell in love with it.  Since he could not obtain the object of his love, he died of sorrow by the same pool.  The nymphs grieved the loss of Narcissus, but when they prepared his funeral pyre, they could not find his body—only the flower that bears his name.  Supposedly, Narcissus still gazes upon his own reflection in the waters of the river Styx, in the underworld.

Yesterday, CIOZone caught my eye with an article they titled, Sometimes IT Leaders Are Too Smart for Their Own Good, where they suggest that, "Even the smartest person in the room can benefit from listening to others, provided those people have been chosen wisely."  The author, RD Lewis calls it "Social Cognition-driven Hierarchy Level Establishment and Positioning (SCHLEP)." 

He suggests, "The subject isn't emotional intelligence.  People who lack that can't effectively work with other people—a related but different affliction."  He suggests that these people "...don't listen because they don't see the point."

Lewis asserts, "It's the intellectual version of a well-known tendency among male, muscularly-advanced high-school students: looking at their social world as a pecking order, within which they seek their level—preferably, someplace near the top—but through intellectual rather than physical pushing and shoving."

I think most people who have been in the workforce for any length of time have had to contend with a narcissistic personality at one time or another.  Sometimes they are called "the smart person in the room," Lewis calls them "SCHLEPers," I just call them "Narcissists."

I once worked with a guy who thought that he was the only one with any brains.  He wouldn't listen to anyone and his fingerprint needed to be indelibly stamped on every initiative.  In fairness, he was very smart, but his organization couldn't grow beyond what he could personally control.  I didn't stay there very long.

I don't think it matters whether you are the project manager, the CIO, or the CEO—surrounding yourself with people who know things that you don't know is smart, very smart.  Having the self-control and trust to actually listen to them is brilliance—and critical to accomplishing things greater than oneself.

Lewis suggests that, once you "[s]tart down this path you'll discover something wonderful: Many people who are far less intelligent than you know something important you'd be wise to learn from.  It has to be this way, because no matter how smart you are, and how little sleep you think you need, you only have 168 hours in a week to add to your fund of knowledge.  Line up nine decently smart employees who each spend 20 hours a week learning more about their professions, and every week one of them will know something you don't."

"Most people know something you'd benefit from hearing," he continues, "You just have to help them figure out what it is."

Regardless of how you manage project-based work or your particular project management software, always being the smart guy in the room just isn't a good idea.  It alienates both stakeholders and project teams—and ultimately inhibits project success.

What do you do when you need to work with a narcissistic personality?  Or, if you tend to be what Lewis calls a SHLEPer, what do you do to foster dialog and keep from always being the smart guy in the room?
 

I believe most project managers would agree that pushing projects to completion on time and under budget should not be the only measure of whether or not a project is successful.  Ultimately the project needs to provide business value to the organization.  Here are some other considerations that should be applied to successful projects:

1. Success is about doing the right projects, not just doing them right.  Delivering business value and satisfying customers is becoming more important than ever—and it starts with the evaluation of which potential projects will meet those needs and provide that value in the first place.  Hopefully, this has always been important, but organizations are realizing that they have to do more than give lip service to meeting customer expectations while meeting organizational goals.  It must become a primary measurement of how we determine the success or failure of any IT project.
2. Project teams need to completely understand and address the business needs of every project.  Although everyone would agree that "quality" is very subjective, if everyone on the team doesn't have a thorough understanding of the cost of defects and rework, it doesn't matter what work management tool you use, it won't help.  Edward Deming used to talk about how organizations must build quality into the product, it can't really be inspected in.  Quality assurance needs to be a part of every process from start to finish.  Smart organizations are looking at defects and their root causes through the project life-cycle to develop methodologies that improve the quality of their final deliverables.
3. The final product needs to be stable, compatible, and easily maintainable.  It's just too expensive for organizations to maintain software that's unreliable or incompatible with current systems.  With staff and maintenance budgets at a premium, software that isn't will be abandoned for something that is.

The way organizations measure the success of project-based work is changing.  Managers who leverage project management tools to meet the new objectives are able to better address business needs and ultimately increase the value within their organizations. 

How do you measure project success?

 

Although Alexander Graham Bell considered his most famous invention, the telephone, to be an intrusion on his real work as a scientist, I don't think you'd find very many people today who would be willing to give up their cell phone.

We live in a world of instantaneous communication.  Cell phones, the Internet, text messaging, social media—all keep us connected and communicating, right?

There are times when I feel like technology has made communicating more accessible, but does it really make communication easier.  For project communication to be effective, we need to be thoughtful in how we utilize the technology.  It's important to remember that we may be writing an email or updating a status report, but the person on the other end of that email or status report is a person.  It's probably just the nature of technology, but sometimes I think it's a good idea to remember what makes effective communication, effective.

Here are a couple of techniques that aren't original with me, but might help you improve the quality of your project communication:

The Sundown Rule: 

Unless you work at Walmart, you've probably never heard of it.  According to their corporate website: "It's really just a twist on 'why put off until tomorrow what you can do today?'  Observing the Sundown Rule is very simple.  Whether it's a request from a store across the country or a call from an associate down the hall, we do our very best to give our customers, and each other, same-day service."

I work with a colleague who did a college internship in Bentonville, AK at Walmart's corporate headquarters.  He said the Sundown Rule is the real deal.  It didn't matter who he reached out to during the day, he would typically get a response before the sun set.

Would you treat email or other project correspondence among your project team members a little differently if you knew the expectation was a response before the end of the day?

No Email Fridays:

I heard about U.S. Cellular's No Email Friday rule a couple of years ago.  COO Jay Ellison thought it would make life a little easier and lighten the load for employees, but instead it initially caused a fire-storm.  In an article written by Sue Shellenbarger of The Wall Street Journal, she quotes  Kathy Volpi, a marketing director who said, "I thought, 'He just doesn't understand how much work we have to get done, and how much easier' it is when using email."

With the exception of responding to urgent matters, normal email is considered taboo.  The initiative was designed to encourage more face-to-face communication with customers and co-workers, raise productivity, or provide a break from the ever-filling email inbox. 

It looks like it's been a success.

Even Ms. Volpi, now U.S. Cellular's director of product management and marketing, has become a fan.  According to Shellenbarger, "Gradually, she realized that reading and responding to all the email she was sending was probably a burden to co-workers.  Now, she makes a point of visiting co-workers on Fridays.  Business, she says, isn't only about emailing 'cold reports' and being efficient, she says, 'It's about human beings and interaction.'"

Would either of these techniques work within your organization?  I don't' know.  There are so many project collaboration and communication features incorporated into many traditional or online project management solutions that completely eliminating that type of communication might be problematic.  However, regardless of the project management software or work management tools you use, everyone can step out of their cubes for a few minutes and have a real conversation occasionally.

I have to admit that sometimes it's easier for me to ping a colleague 10 feet away with an Instant Message that it is to get out of my chair and actually go talk to him or her.  I wonder how many of us have forgotten how to really talk to each other as we IM, text, and email our way through life?  Give these two approaches a try and see if they will work for you and your project team.  You might be surprised at how effective your daily communication becomes when you incorporate a little face-to-face time once in a while.
 

Are you making project decisions with trustworthy data?

If you answered no, you're not alone.  If the data associated with project-based work is questionable, is there a way to improve the overall trustworthiness of the data used for decision-making?

The short answer is yes.  We can improve the accuracy and quality of the information used to make informed project decisions, however doing so requires us to recognize that the traditional top-down, command-and-control project management model is broken.  As a 12-year-old mowing the lawn, I always chaffed when my dad would come out and tell me how to do it.  Whether or not he was trying to help or just "manage" me, I didn't "own" the process, and the effect was to demotivate me.  Have you ever experienced this kind of thing with team members?

Executives and managers need both quantitative and qualitative information to make decisions.  Business leaders who leverage solutions that capture better information are able to keep an accurate pulse on their business and make more proactive decisions.  In my opinion, there are two keys to improve the quality of the information used to make project decisions:

1. Capture Information at the Front Line: The people closer to the work understand it best.  Involving team members in project plans promotes a greater sense of ownership over priorities and commitments.  Allowing team members to make public commitments, take ownership, and prioritize their own work, changes the team dynamic from "You will do this," to "We will do this together."  Most project management methodologies focus on planning and solving problems at the project manager or executive level (a traditional top-down approach).  I believe a more effective approach engages individual team members in the process, encourages real dialog, along with a more accurate flow of project information upward.
2. Capture the Whole Story: The most significant factor to improving data accuracy is capturing more qualitative information.  Encouraging a flow of conversational (qualitative) information, and providing frequent and more descriptive updates delivers greater visibility and a richer understanding of the real story.  Qualitative information flowing upward in organizations gives managers and executives the ability to follow conversations on relevant initiatives—along with a greater sense of confidence in the data used to make decisions.

Looking at how individual team members interact with the project management process and how that positively impacts the quality of the information used for making decisions is important.  Engaging the front line with project management software or other project management tools will provide accurate and up-to-date information that can be trusted for making informed decisions.  What are you doing in your organization to encourage a more front line approach to managing projects?

No matter how you slice it, being super-human may not be enough.  By all accounts, whether you were an ancient Greek or Roman, Hercules was "the man."  Hercules' legendary exploits were so popular, ancient Romans like Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony) wanted some of that Hercules mojo for themselves.  Antonius went so far as to invent a son for Hercules, named Anton, to make the connection to his family tree.

Despite his divine parentage and his incredible strength; in the end, it was an act of jealousy that took his life.  Poisoned from an arrow that had previously killed one of his enemies (the centaur Nessus) was administered by his wife, Deianerira, who thought he had fallen in love with another woman.  Even his father (Zeus or Jupiter depending on whether or not you were Roman or Greek) couldn't save him.

I have observed that the same is true when "Herculean" efforts are required, or even perceived to be required, for project success.  No matter how incredible your personal stamina may be, if every project you lead takes heroic efforts to successfully accomplish, you will ultimately crash and burn just like Hercules. (Whether or not your spouse administers poison to you.)

I came across an interesting article from CIOZone this morning, Be Honest About YOUR Boundaries, in which the author suggests that the problem with the expectation of 24/7 availability by your boss may be self-inflicted.  The author describes a common scenario with a new boss, a critical project, and working extra hours to impress.  Over time, he or she just expects that you carry your Blackberry or iPhone at your hip and will answer emails at any time day or night. "Whose fault is this?" she asks. "It's your fault, isn't it?"

She continues, "You were so eager to make a good first impression that you forgot that setting expectations is a two-way street.  You have now set an expectation that you are available 24/7.  You didn't necessarily ask for it.  But you did demonstrate willingness to work-related communications all night and all weekend."

My wife has kicked me in the pants dozens (if not hundreds) of times over the course of my career for this same thing.  I'll admit that even now, every time my iPhone chirps at me, I look to see what it is.  And, as I glance up from my iPhone to my beautiful wife sitting across the table from me at our favorite restaurant, I think she wants some of that centaur poison for me.

Of course there are times when extra effort is required to accomplish a critical project.  However, those times should be the exception rather than the rule.  If your boss sees you working long hours all the time, he or she might think that's just how you work.  Or worse, that you don't know how to effectively manage your time.  Either way, it will be taken for granted that you are going to work that way all the time. 

That being said, the need for heroic efforts all the time could indicate that your project is in trouble.  A project running on schedule should really require little or no overtime.  Working long hours is often just a quick fix, leading to poor employee health from too much caffeine, too many late nights, and too much junk food.  I have also noticed that the ratio of mistakes to accurate work increases exponentially for every hour or two you're in the office after nine or ten hours.

Leverage project management software or other project management tools to help you manage projects more efficiently and ease the burden on your schedule.  Engage the team in helping establish legitimate time-lines and milestones—giving them a greater sense of ownership and you a few extra minutes to tackle one of the dozen other things you need to accomplish right now.  Don't try to do it all yourself.  I once worked with a fellow who felt he needed to do everything himself.  It wasn't long before he was burnt out and ineffective.  Don't let that happen to you. 

Remember, super-human strength wasn't enough for Hercules—and it won't be enough for you either.

What are you doing to minimize the need for heroic project efforts on a regular basis?