Voices on Project Management

by Cyndee Miller

It takes a certain swagger to be in a rock and roll band—and to launch a retail project in the middle of a pandemic. And yet defying conventional wisdom, The Rolling Stones and Nick Cave  launched their own retail fiefdoms, each one a fitting distillation of their respective brands. For the Stones, it’s an in-your-face boutique on London’s famed Carnaby Street. For Cave, it’s a new site hawking “things conceived, sourced, shaped and designed” by the man himself.

Purists might cringe at the blatant commercialization, but that’s poppycock. Rock and roll is—and always has been—a business. Mick Jagger might be known as the lead singer of the Stones, but he himself was a student at the London School of Economics—and clearly knows a solid project opportunity when he sees it. Billed as the first permanent retail space by a musical act, RS No. 9 Carnaby Street is a collaboration between the band and Bravado, the merchandise and brand management arm of Universal Music Group, the Stones’ label for more than a decade.

Make no mistake, these folks are no retail dilettantes. They picked a prime spot in the Carnaby Street district and worked with GH+A Design Studios to create a stop-shoppers-in-their-tracks boutique—starting with the massive 3D-printed statues of the Stones’ signature tongue-and-lips logo in the window. Inside, the studio brought in glass floors graffitied with Stones lyrics and five huge screens looping exclusive archival performance footage. The band even collaborated with the Pantone Color Institute to create a Stones Red hue featured all over the store and its line of goods.

This clearly goes far beyond the merch stand at concerts or even the pop-up shops dedicated to musical acts ranging from Rihanna to The Clash. (Those projects come with their own issues as PM Network reported a few years back.) But launching a brick-and-mortar store right now is an audaciously bold move even for the self-proclaimed world’s greatest rock and roll band. With Euromonitor predicting global retail sales to dip by more 3.5 percent this year due to the pandemic and more shoppers flocking to ecommerce, the Rolling Stones did what all good project leaders do: They adapted. Along with the new shop, there’s a dedicated RS No. 9 Carnaby hub added to the band’s existing online shop, with an interactive 360-degree feature that lets shoppers move around the London boutique and score digital-only options. “We had to pivot our strategy a bit and there’s a much heavier online component,” former Bravado CEO Mat Vlasic told Rolling Stone magazine.

The pandemic did delay construction and stalled the opening by a couple months. But make no mistake, unlike last year’s pop-up shop in the United States, the London outpost is built for the long haul and will follow the best practices of traditional retailers, with plenty of buffer in the schedule for new product design. Vlasic told the magazine that building out a longer timeframe allows the team “to be much more creative … and not be confined by ‘Oh you can’t do this because you don’t have the time.”

Cave’s retail empire is a bit more modest and a whole lot more esoteric, but this project too was born of the COVID crisis.

“I feel very free, free to do what I like—the music industry has been atomized, the rulebook has been torn up, few of us are working, but there can be an energy to disaster, a feverish need to respond to a crisis that is weirdly compelling.” Cave told Financial Times. Out of that came Cave Things, what he calls s “a mysterious, subversive, super-playful enterprise where anything can happen.”

Launched in early August, the ecommerce site offers everything from erotic wallpaper to what’s being promoted as the first and best bunny bowl designed by a rock star.

Cave already had an ecommerce site for him and his band The Bad Seeds. But it was pretty straightforward, whereas Cave Stuff goes “beyond merchandise but stops before art… the incidental residue of an over-stimulated mind,” as he describes it on the shop. And this indeed seems to be a project “that sits in a place entirely of its own.”

So what do you think? These rockers have definitely turned up the volume on innovation—can traditional retailers pick up a few tips?

by Emily Luijbregts

As a project manager, one of the worst things in the world is feeling like you’ve failed a team member. Earlier in my career, I experienced this feeling quite a few times. It was a really steep learning curve for me, but after gaining more experience, I thought that I knew how to communicate and manage teams. Still, I wasn’t prepared to adjust my approach to lead virtual teams amid the pandemic. And then I learned.

Here are my most valuable lessons learned for leading virtual teams:

1. Set expectations.

One of the most effective ways for me to manage my team is to establish ground rules at the start of the project and some clear expectation management for how we are going to work, what’s important for all of us as a team and what they can expect from me. It’s really important to avoid making any assumptions for how you think people want to work or what they are motivated by, as there is a high chance that you might be wrong. It’s not just about knowing your team members, but about having a deeper understanding of their motivations.

2. Monitor work-life balance.

I’ve had several team members who have burned out. Most recently, I’ve been mentoring someone, who, since March, was working 14-hour days because they felt like they had to be seen working. When I asked them about their work-life balance, I was bluntly told that it didn’t exist. They were completely isolated from interactions outside of work and this caused a dramatic deterioration in their mental wellbeing.

One easy way for me to address the work-life balance of my team is to address the meetings I schedule. Are they really needed? Do I have the right attendees in the meeting? Are the meetings the right length? I’ve managed to cut down 50 percent of my meetings and avoid Zoom fatigue by arranging shorter catch-ups or different meetings entirely to get the same information.

3. Build connections.

If you can, try to interact face-to-face at the start of the project. Using video can really help build trust. Another method for building a meaningful connection is to invest in your team members and ensure they have an opportunity for grow within your project. I try to understand each person’s own development plan and where they want to go in the next year(s), so I’m able to support that.

4. Plan teambuilding activities.

Try doing quizzes, virtual team lunches, show and tell, and setting aside time in team meetings for small activities, like online trivia or other conversational “ice breakers.”

5. Understand how your team likes to work.

I like to encourage my team to be innovative and creative. That includes having people think about how they work and if there’s a better way to do the work itself. As the project manager, you should understand how your team works most effectively and then protect its ability to do so.

What are the biggest virtual leadership lessons learned you’ve gathered this year? Let me know in the comments.

by Wanda L. Curlee, PMP, PgMP, PfMP, PMI-RMP

As artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT) and other new diruptive technologies enter the business mainstream, how will this impact project management? And how will it affect your job?

In any business, understanding data is essential. However, there’s so much of it that no one human being can review it all and truly understand the trends and what’s relevant to the project at hand. That means those project managers who embrace these technologies will be lightyears ahead of their peers. And those who do not use these tools will struggle to be of value to the organization.

Back to School

First and foremost, you need to understand these emerging technologies and how they can help you lead and deliver a successful project.

While the project management profession is lagging behind in adopting AI, IoT and other vital technologies, there are myriad ways to increase your knowledge.

Take all the classes your organization offers and find out who knows or leads the areas you want to learn about. Come prepared with questions and suggestions on how AI and other technologies could help projects for the company. Why is this important?

• You can start to assess how to integrate project management tools into the AI system(s).
• You can determine what company data needs to be extracted and analyzed for projects.
• And that leads to becoming more valuable to the company. 

Sell It Through

Even after you become an expert on technologies the company has to help further the success rate of projects, your work isn’t done. This is now your project to move forward. You’ll need to share your learnings and new ideas with trusted individuals because their feedback is essential. At the appropriate time, create an executive white paper and present it to your supervisor and a project management office lead or project portfolio office lead.

Remember, you’re looking for sponsors. If you’re not good at selling your ideas, get help. Ask other leads who don’t have a stake in what you want to sell to help you understand the hot buttons for the various ideas involved with your potential project. If those issues are covered, then your idea becomes easier to follow.

Whether or not your organization buys into your idea, you are now a valued asset. If the idea was rejected, make sure you receive feedback as to why and update your proposal. Then present it again.

Will AI replace you? No. It will be an adjunct. It will help you with decision-making and doing mundane things like chasing individuals to enter their time for the project, updating the schedule, suggesting the best what-if scenario or doing your first draft of a presentation, among other things.

How have you leveraged the benefits of AI?

by Peter Tarhanidis, PhD

We are now in the final quarter of a pandemic year. With many of us still isolated and working remotely as a second wave of COVID-19 emerges, project teams and leaders alike must consider how to close out 2020. Finishing strong together in a pandemic year without burnout is the goal—and it’s a crucial one for our customers, colleagues, families and communities.

But how can we avoid the desire to crawl back into bed until we’re past the pandemic? Let’s take a moment and conduct a check to see if any of us, our colleagues or family exhibit signs of burnout. This may include feelings of being overwhelmed, a lack of passion, emotional exhaustion and falling behind on normal activities. These symptoms all lead to rising irritability, conflicts and visible struggles. 

To cope with the stress and anxiety, we must reverse this cycle. We should re-prioritize ourselves to ensure we take care of our physical, mental and financial health, proactively recognizing our pressures and setting time aside to restore our mindfulness and spend time with family. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, find a strong support network. Taking action to create more balance is restorative and puts leaders in a position to be examples to others in doing the same.

As the end of year nears for me, I recognize finishing strong and limiting burnout involves adapting to pandemic tensions and refining my approach to leadership and project management

Do more:

1. Coaching and mentoring to direct others and yourself to complete the goal
2. Maintaining focus, flexibility and agility to adjust scope plans, milestones and project schedules by working with stakeholders and sponsors
3. Collaborating with teams and staying interconnected while practicing transparency
4. Celebrating and recognizing small and large milestones

Do less:

1. Losing sight of the key priorities and getting caught up with issues of low importance
2. Blaming colleagues for missed targets rather than gaining consensus on how to plan a way forward
3. Taking for granted the effort colleagues have put into their work and not celebrating their efforts
4. Slipping into disorganization instead of maintaining administrative oversight of critical project needs

Your turn: What are some of the best ways to avoid end-of-year burnout for you and your team?

by Cyndee Miller

Resilience: the most in-demand, most talked-about and likely most used super skill of the year. The coronavirus has forced everyone to throw out the playbook and dig deep to forge ahead. My team and I picked up a few lessons learned along the way, but I was ready to hear from some real power players: Olympic Games executive director Christophe Dubi and Olympic champion gymnasts Laurie Hernandez and Nadia Comaneci. Confession: I’m old enough to remember cross-legged in front of the TV watching Comaneci as she scored the perfect 10.0 performance—the first in the history of the games. (Yes, I tried out the pigtails. And yes, there may have been a poster hanging on my bedroom wall for a bit. And yet, I couldn’t even nail a cartwheel.) Fast-forward several decades and here are few tips I picked up from the leaders at the latest PMI Virtual Experience Series: “Going the Distance: Forging Our Path Forward.

It’s about progress, not perfection—even for Comaneci. “Having a good base is very important. Everyone wants to tumble and do those difficult skills, but if you jump from point A to Y, you won’t be able to progress in the right way and you’ll have holes you’ll have to cover.”

And those skills she applied in sports—planning, discipline, flexibility—help in life, too, Comaneci said. For the five-time Olympic gold medalist, preparation is just part of the process. “Gymnastics is not a sport you learn in a month, it takes you years to put all of it together,” she said.

For Hernandez, it comes down to zooming in and zooming out to see the big picture. “It’s about making sure you’re focusing on the details, but also not letting that stop you from moving forward,” she said.

The 20-year-old gymnast knows all about refining details—and persevering. Hernandez competed as a member of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team at the 2016 Summer Olympics, scoring gold in the team event and silver on the balance beam. The rising star was set to make her comeback at the 2020 Tokyo Games—which then had to be rescheduled because of the global pandemic.

It was a tough decision for Dubi and his team: “You’ve made so much effort and you’re so close, but you have to make that call.” The two biggest tasks: recognizing the disappointment and keeping athletes and stakeholders informed.

“There was very little resistance to the decision, actually, because everyone understood the situation,” he said. “People were confined, they had friends with the virus, they were reading about shutdowns in the news. And we had overwhelming support from partner organizations.”

So the project—number 7 on PMI’s 2020 list of Most Influential Projects—continued on, with Dubi keeping the team focused on the essential moving parts, while uniting them around a common goal.

“If you can mobilize energies around the greater good, you can make sure everyone understands the role to be played,” he said. “It’s about what you can create with positive energy, when you can embrace the diverse energy. In the end it’s all hands on deck.” 

While the games have been bumped to 2021, Dubi is looking ahead to what they’ll bring to Tokyo in the future: “The very first question we ask is: What is the legacy plan? Every public investment that goes into it has to be meaningful, not just for the games themselves, but afterward.”

The decision was a bold one—and part of being a leader is having the courage to stick the landing. “When you want to invent something no one has seen before, you get criticism,” said Olympic historian and graphic artist Markus Osterwalder. “When people get something they don’t know, they reject it at first. They need time to get used to it.”

It’s no doubt been a strange and ferociously challenging year, but leaders can’t be complacent.

“The future of work is not five to 10 years out, it’s here now,” said Alison Bakken, of Thomson Reuters. “Leaders need to actually model the behavior they want to see and create an environment that’s trusting and open and where people can grow and develop.”

X0PA AI founder Nina Alag Suri agreed that the new work-from-anywhere mentality is here to stay. And that will put the focus on power skills like self-discipline, time management and collaboration.

If you missed out on the action or you want to check out some #ExperiencePMI moments again, you can find virtual experience content from the full series on demand, now through 31 January.

What do you think? Are you ready to go for the gold in 2021?