Hey Boss: The Conclusion
| The more than 40 comments on my last post Hey Boss, What About Work-Life Balance? provide an interesting mix of views. Here are my thoughts on how to work effectively and build a relationship with someone like "Sebastian." This input comes from a position of advantage since I knew the real person. The first key to building any effective relationship is to avoid stereotyping. Sebastian was a very effective, upwardly mobile manager with a focus on being promoted to the main board. Interestingly, most people liked him as well as respected him. It's just that he had a different life focus, which is not uncommon in successful senior executives. The second key is to recognize that in every relationship there is a power dimension. How a manager like Sebastian would use his power is to an extent a generational issue. Many younger managers would see nothing wrong in you setting reasonable boundaries and procedures, as long as they understand their purpose. Managers with more experience are used to operating in a command and control environment are likely to react negatively to a "junior" pushing rules upwards. The third key is mutuality. Team members need to understand what he or she needs from the relationship (support, resources, backing) but also what Sebastian needs from the relationship. Then, work to negotiate mutually beneficial outcomes that meet both sets of requirements. For the team member discussed in the post, the requirement was time-related; Sebastian's requirements were not defined in the original post. However, by defining what's important to Sebastian, then linking your requirements to the achievement of his requirements, you can start to achieve real communication inside an effective relationship. Finally if you wish to be taken seriously, you need to develop a reputation for credibility. Senior management needs to recognize that if you say something, it is backed up by facts, and if you commit to something, it is delivered. Credibility is earned by performance, but there is no harm in quietly making sure your performance is noticed in the right places. In the end, relationships all depend on the situation. But mutuality and credibility are the two keys to advising upwards. If you are seen as a serious contributor to the organization's success and can link your needs to the needs of senior management, there's a high probability of achieving your desired outcome and benefiting the organization at the same time. |
Project Manage Yourself
Categories:
Teams
Categories: Teams
| Getting team members committed to the project scope, budget and schedule is a matter of removing any roadblocks and helping resolve any conflicts. Sounds simple enough. It's what project managers were trained to do, more or less. But while the project manager has a lot to do with getting everyone aligned on the right approach, how team members manage themselves impacts the project outcome just as much. Here are some things project managers and team members should keep in mind to make sure the outcome is what everyone has planned: --Think twice before engaging extra team members. Be ready with a plan of what you need from the resources and whether they're in a position to provide it. --Treat external staff members that help out with the project as if you had to pay for every minute of their engagement from a mini budget that you will be held accountable for. --Make sure you're aware of how your role and your deliverable contribute to the final project result. And validate that role and deliverable with the rest of your project team to ensure you're only working on what's going to add the most value to what is required. --Be able to account for the work you've done and prove that it directly related to the scope and activities assigned to you. Be completely responsible for everything you commit to along the way -- as if you might be audited. --Create your own measure of success and communicate it to the team. Be ready to show the results of your work, whether you're asked for it or not. --Be aware of time wasters -- they eat away from the time you have available to deliver your assigned tasks. Make your own efficiency one of your accountabilities. When each individual manages his or her time and tasks with these basic rules, the entire team is better positioned to deliver on time, on budget and within scope. |
Show Your Team You Care--And Not Just About Deadlines
Categories:
Teams
Categories: Teams
| In the process of putting together a new course on Leadership and The Power of Acknowledgment, I've discovered some interesting information about employee engagement. A survey by The Gallup Organization over a 30 year period posed the following question to millions of employees: "Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?" Isn't that an interesting question? Most of us might not even think of it as a measure of how engaged we are in our work. But if the truth be told, doesn't the slightest personal attention -- even a small inquiry about an ailing parent -- make you feel like you're more than just a worker to your manager? I love the example cited by Stan Shimizu of Resourceful HR LLC in the podcast about reward and motivation that he and I recently did for PMI. Stan explained how the executive team at his former company made sure, in spite of the long hours everyone normally put it, that he left the office every day by 5 p.m. to tend to his wife who was having medical problems. The executives even sent meals to his home. These actions meant more to Stan than monetary compensation could have and made him feel tremendously valued as a person. He states that these simple, kind acts increased his dedication and loyalty by 1000 percent! Here's another wonderful example. Roberto Daniel, vice president of engineering at Invensys Controls South America, regularly spends one-on-one time with each of the people he manages. During this hour, the person is not "allowed" to talk about work at all -- just about personal interests, family, hobbies and the like. His people look forward to it, as does Roberto. He considers it an essential tool for getting to know his people and what they are about, and he says it makes a huge difference in the productivity and engagement of the team. Since 2006, he has had over 200 of these face-to-face meetings. Especially in this tough economy, we all have to work doubly hard to let our people know that they are valued and appreciated. Let's not let this simple pathway to productivity and well-being be overlooked! |
The Key to Career Success? Relationships.
Categories:
Career Development
Categories: Career Development
| I heard it over and over again: "Not you! No way. It can't happen to you! Impossible!" It was a nice thought, but the fact of the matter was that it was happening, and it was happening to me. I was one of the most connected and well-known project managers in the company. I had a huge variety of experience and a sterling reputation. I was coming off of a wonderful two-year international assignment and was just getting ready to start back to work in the United States when I was told that my position was being eliminated. While I had been away, my entire management chain had changed and my organization's mission had shifted out from under me. The company was laying people off in droves. A father of five, I was staring unemployment in the face. The first order of business was to try to find another position within the company. It took a mad five-month scramble, but I managed to hang on. During that period, I was very busy. Still, I took the time to reflect--not just on what to do about the situation, but what I might have done differently, and what I might do in the future to prevent it and how to be better prepared if it should happen again. In retrospect, it's easy to recognize this as textbook risk management. I also considered the things I had done well (that in the end made it possible for me to find another position) and reflected on what I might do to ensure that I continued to do those same things in the future--textbook lessons learned. I collected my thoughts, my resolutions, my lessons learned, in a one-page document titled simply, "I wish I had." I review it periodically to keep it at top of mind and I will tell you honestly that often enough, it's painful to re-read it. Some lessons are only learned painfully. I'm happy to say that I have been given the opportunity to put those resolutions into practice, and so I would like to comment on them in this space with the sincere hope that perhaps you might find value in the lessons I've learned. In our business, a certain level of technical prowess is necessary but not sufficient. Beyond technical skills, we need to develop people skills, and the essence of people skills is relationships. As I look over my one-page document, I note that there are some things that I don't see: • I wish I had been better at making Gantt charts. • I wish I had been a better software developer. • I wish I had cultivated deeper skills in earned value analysis. On the contrary, my list is filled with resolutions about relationships. It's about people skills and how I need to further cultivate and employ them to not only ensure continued career success but also appropriate work/life balance. I'm looking forward to sharing more reflections around these career lessons learned--and hearing your thoughts as well. |
Treat Me as a Client
Categories:
Teams
Categories: Teams
| Dealing with vendors and customers provides a very good example of the peculiarities of human behavior. As a project manager, you may feel obliged whenever you do anything for your customer. But when it comes to vendors you perhaps put yourself in a position above them and treat them differently. Take this example: In the IT industry we have a software engineering process group (SEPG) and software quality assurance group (SQAG) responsible for ensuring the implementation of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) processes. Project teams follow the groups' instructions and do whatever is required to clear an audit. Once the organization clears the audit and receives a certification, no one cares about the processes anymore because of the following reasons: 1. The project team feels unnecessary extra work was pushed on them by the SEPG/SQAG groups and the project team just wanted to be done with it. 2. The project team feels that they are doing a favor to SEPG/SQAG by implementing the processes rolled out by them, and the SEPG/SQAG feels otherwise. The best way to keep a sustainable process model is to mentor project teams about the importance of processes to their project. This compare to what we do with our client -- we work as a trusted advisor, providing consultation at each step. When it comes to an internal project we start treating internal teams as a vendor and ask them to do whatever we need, it doesn't matter if it really adds any value to them. My suggestion SQAG/SEPG teams is that you shall treat the project teams as your client and act as a trusted advisor to them. This is the only way you can have a sustainable model. |
