Your Project Stakeholders are Biased!
| Have you ever wondered why communication with senior stakeholders so often breaks down? It's because of the deeply embedded cognitive biases innate to all of us. Research by behavioral economists has demonstrated people are naturally irrational. The challenge is to accept people as they are and then work rationally within our innate biases. When your project has an issue that has already caused a cost overrun and needs more expenditure in the short term to potentially recover some of the losses later, you and your stakeholders may experience a bias called loss aversion. Most people will make risky decisions to avoid a loss, but are reluctant to make a decision of exactly equal to achieve an exactly equal gain. And most people also tend to prefer short-term gratification to long-term benefits. Therefore our natural instinct is a strong bias towards not losing more money -- even if the short-term loss is significantly outweighed by a longer-term gain. The best antidote is a credible communication process that outlines the issues and risks, supported with additional reference materials such as the PMBOK® Guide. Proximity bias is to prefer our own creations to other people's creations. This tendency is reinforced by what behavioral economists call the "IKEA Effect." The more labor we expend on a project, the more we love the result -- regardless of its quality. Before your manager expends too much effort on her own solution the problem, you should communicate in a way that allows a jointly crafted solution to develop. When communicating with senior stakeholders, try to help them resist these biases while working to avoid them yourself. Rather than provide your solution, offer a range of ideas that allows stakeholders to own the solution (with your help). Aim to shift their thinking to a viable benefits-focused solution. How do you cope with biases among stakeholders? Read more from Lynda. Read more on stakeholder management. |
Avoiding Friction through Project Management
Categories:
Teams
Categories: Teams
| It can be an obstacle when project teams encounter friction among members, as it impacts their ability to work together and finish a project successfully. Often, that friction can come from a team member's experience in project management -- or lack thereof. In my opinion, a great deal of control over the project and its outcome depends on how well a project manager or team member is trained in a well-structured project management environment, whether through formal or on-the-job training. Truly understanding project management practices and how all the components of it can work and integrate together can save a lot of grief and reduce or avoid friction among the team members. It provides the tools for "winning the game." Project management provides a pathway to successfully managing a project and its components toward its completion. Any given practice of it is regularly fine-tuned and updated based on the experiences of various project managers and their teams. Equipped with that understanding, project managers must pay attention when there's friction among team members. Project managers can get team members back on track with the project management practice they use, while allowing the team members to focus on the goal: to deliver results in the area for which they are responsible. Do you think project management training can impact friction among team members? Why or why not? See more posts from Dmitri. See more about professional development. |
Project Communications: A Visual Understanding
| The purpose of communicating with any stakeholder is to build his or her understanding of a project. But there is a huge gap between looking at a written message and understanding its contents. The PMBOK® Guide differentiates between the: • Message -- what you want to communicate • Medium -- the way you send the message and • Noise -- things that interfere with comprehension. The concept of noise disrupting communication is easy to appreciate when you are talking with a stakeholder, either face-to-face or on the phone. But what many project managers fail to realize is that the same principles apply to written communication. A significant body of research suggests a well-designed document can communicate up to 80 percent more information to your stakeholder than one that is poorly designed. Consider these elements when designing your next project document: Page layout: In most cases, the eye starts naturally at the top left of a page and flows down to the bottom right. Ignoring this flow disrupts the natural reading pattern and reduces comprehension. Clutter: Multiple fonts, font sizes and colors may create a great visual impression but fail the communication test. The best combination for text color is a black font on white background. I find that serif fonts, like Times New Roman, are easiest to read in the body of a document. Sans serif fonts like Ariel look cleaner in headlines. Use one of each with minimal embellishment to reduce noise. Page design: Leave plenty of white space at the margins, between paragraphs and around images. Place key messages in headlines, use diagrams wisely and caption them effectively. Designing an effective document layout is an art -- you need to balance creating an attractive document with making the information inside easy to read and understand. Do you think document design can impact your project's communications with your stakeholders? Why or why not? Tell us about your experience. Read more posts from Lynda. Read more posts about project communications. |
Program Managers Can Be An Organization's Top Salespeople
Categories:
Program Management
Categories: Program Management
It's usually up to the sales representatives and executives to pique the interest of potential investors or partners in a project. But program managers are in a prime position to offer unique insights into project proposals:
But program managers should also be justifying and arguing the long-term benefits of their new projects -- not relying on others to do that for them. Program managers have a duty to do more than ensure projects under their supervision are completed on time and on budget. Program managers have a lot more authority and opportunity -- and therefore responsibility -- to further the strategic objectives of their organization than a project manager. Program managers need to realize they're a catalyst -- someone who should be open to new opportunities, ready to explore new business ideas and enable their organization to move forward. From this viewpoint, program managers resemble salespeople. They have a duty to sell a vision for the future to their senior management and all their stakeholders. What do you think? Should program managers act as salespeople, too? Read more posts from Roger. Find out more about the Program Management Professional (PgMP)®credential. |
Project Management at Work -- And in Life
Categories:
Reflections on the PM Life
Categories: Reflections on the PM Life
| Let's face it -- although we may not see ourselves as the great organizers we'd like to be, we are often more organized in our projects in the workplace than we are at home in our own lives. Of course we're trained to do what we do at work, which isn't always the case for everyday life. We seek out specialized training for our field, and then we get to obtain certifications and credentials, continue our education and earn professional development units (PDUs) to maintain our designation. Meanwhile, there's no training for how to live an organized life. Having project management knowledge allows us to be better project managers in our lives -- not just in our workplace. Indeed, project management processes can be applied to life's personal projects and activities. When I was studying for my Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)® certification, for example, I realized that my knowledge of the PMBOK® Guide applied to everything I was up to -- not just the management of projects at work. I became more organized. I worked on more projects of my own and had structure that allowed me to progress faster, and with better concrete results and more confidence. All that came from this preparation. When I obtained my CAPM®, I was convinced that every single person that worked in the office could benefit from this education and certification, including project managers, project team members or department members that don't even work on large projects. How do you apply project management principles to your life? See more on PMI certifications. See more posts from Dmitri. |
