Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Viewing Posts by Lynda Bourne
Valuing Your Employee Stakeholders
Categories:
Stakeholder Management
Categories: Stakeholder Management
| Rewarding good performance helps keep employee stakeholders motivated during projects. But there's a difference between the methods many businesses use to motivate people and what actually works. Simple financial incentives and other "carrot and stick" methods have been shown to be largely ineffective motivators, especially for employees on your team. And these incentives can be totally inappropriate if applied to stakeholders outside of the organization. Instead, rewards should address our deep need for: Autonomy: The desire to direct our own lives Mastery: The urge to get better at our work and be successful Purpose: The yearning to work in the service of something larger than ourselves Rewards don't need to be huge, but they should be visible to the entire team. They can be as simple as acknowledging a job well done in a daily stand-up meeting. Or it can be more substantive, such as granting greater autonomy or responsibility. As a leader, you must allow employee stakeholders the freedom to define their work within appropriate boundaries. Provide opportunities for them to develop new skills and link your team's work to the objectives of the organization or a larger social benefit, where possible. So where can you start? Rather than instructing the team member receiving the award on what to do and when to finish, offer a little bounded autonomy by asking how he or she can best achieve the objective of the task and how quickly it can be accomplished. If the stakeholder is a senior manager, create a sense of purpose by linking your request for help to the manager's goals for the organization. You may be surprised at the positive reaction. What do you think? Can autonomy, mastery and purpose be motivational rewards? |
What Elevators Can Teach Us About Project Management
| People in elevators fall into two broad groups: One group walks into the car, pushes the button and waits for the control system to do its job. The second group has what I call Advanced Button Pushing Syndrome (ABPS). They believe that the more they push the buttons, the faster the elevator will move. Of course, second and subsequent button pushes add no value at all, but when an elevator arrives after someone pushed the button six times, they truly believe it made a difference. Some people need to feel in control, even if they aren't. ABPS can be found in the workplace, too. When a project is running behind schedule or over budget, it's the equivalent of a slow responding elevator. Project managers with ABPS may demand additional meetings or more frequent reports from the project team. Time and money could be better spent working on the project deliverables, but these resources are diverted to placate the manager's need for control --to the detriment of the project. Unfortunately, when the project is eventually delivered, the project manager believes all of the extra reports and meetings helped achieve the outcome. But correlation is not the same as causation. Unfortunately, there is no easy way of measuring how much sooner the project would have finished if the resources had not been diverted by the manager's ABPS. This isn't a clear-cut situation. It's easy to go from requesting useful information that will help inform decisions to a situation where the requested reports and meetings are actually counterproductive. The next time you are considering requesting more reports or extra meetings, think about ABPS. Will the diversion from the project's work be constructive or detrimental? Do you know of project managers who suffer from ABPS in the workplace? How did it affect the project outcome? |
Improve Your Communication to Improve Project Outcomes
Categories:
Communications Management
Categories: Communications Management
| New Year's resolutions are rarely maintained. But one simple action plan can dramatically improve your project outcomes. Make a sign that says, "I will communicate better!" And then place it where you can read it aloud once or twice a day. After all, 90 percent of a project manager's time is spent communicating -- do it better and you can expect better project outcomes. The first part of better communication is learning to listen for meaning, which goes beyond just hearing the spoken words. As the late U.S. State Department spokesman Robert McCloskey once famously said, "I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant!" This applies to most people when they speak about technical subjects they're not totally comfortable with. Understanding that person's meaning taps into his or her expectations, emotions and requirements. Manage those three things and you are on your way to success. The second part is learning to communicate what you mean effectively. A few ideas to help keep your message clear and concise: • Either avoid jargon and acronyms or make sure everyone understands them. Note that people are reluctant to admit they don't understand. • Remember Albert Einstein's advice: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Clarity is inclusive and builds understanding. • Make sure your meaning is clear by checking for understanding before worrying about agreement, or disagreement. If your listeners misunderstood something you said, and agree to it, you have a problem. You've probably been doing the other 10 percent of your job right for a long time. Make improving communication a defined action plan for 2011 and see what happens when you get better at the 90 percent that involves communications. What other project resolutions do you have for the upcoming year? |
Implementing Difficult Decisions
| In my last post, I asked what you would do as a project manager if, hypothetically, two key team members could no longer work together after ending their romantic relationship. Some suggested avoiding the issue, but while that may buy you some time, it doesn't get to the root cause. Others suggested confronting the problem. Using a proactive problem-solving approach reframes the issues, engages others in the solution and creates opportunities for an all-around positive outcome. Yet unfortunately some conflicts are virtually unsolvable and an important part of a problem solver's role is to recognize this. I can't tell you what to do, but I can suggest how to handle this. Most dilemmas involve deciding which is the least damaging of the alternatives. But the nasty thing with dilemmas is that making no decision is almost always worse than the most terrible outcome from any of the other options. You have to decide something to minimize the overall damage. So first, make a call and then seek support of your decision from your senior managers. When you're "advising upward," you must succinctly lay out the facts, your interpretation of the facts and the steps leading to the decision. Then your managers can make an informed decision to support you or to suggest alternatives. After gaining the necessary support, you have to implement the decision. It will be unpleasant and stressful, but such is the nature of the situation. As an ethical leader, you need to take responsibility for the bad and the good in your project. If you handle a situation like this decisively, but also with empathy and consideration for others, you'll find your team's respect and support for you as a leader will be enhanced. |
When Project Decisions Get Difficult
Categories:
Teams
Categories: Teams
| Two important members of your project team recently ended a six-year romantic relationship. While they're both trying to keep their domestic problems out of the workplace, the inevitable tensions between the two ex-partners are obvious and are causing the team to split into two camps. The situation is affecting the team's ability to achieve a successful outcome on a high-stakes, high-pressure project to deliver critical capabilities to a customer. You've tried working with both team members and sought assistance from the HR department to minimize the issues with limited success. Each of them is vital to the delivery of the project's objectives. However, you've suggested to both that perhaps the team would be better off if one of them moved onto another job. Unfortunately, neither have a viable option. Your analysis of the situation is as follows: If either of the people leaves, the team's ability to deliver the project will be reduced by 10 percent. If both of them leave, the team's ability to deliver the project will be reduced by 20 percent. If both stay, the team's ability to deliver the project will be reduced by 25 percent and will get worse over time. The customer cannot afford any reduction in the team's capability to deliver this business-critical outcome. As the project manager, what would you do next? Post your comments below, and in my next blog, I'll summarize reader reactions and look at the options. |