Voices on Project Management

By Wanda Curlee

Spikes in cases. The new normal. Limited opening. Social distancing.

These are all new taglines that we’re hearing as we slowly move back to the office. Granted, some of us were already remote workers and in that case, the change will be minimal. But those returning to the office will experience a radically different environment.

What does this have to do with project management? Well, project managers play an integral part in the transition, and it started sometime back.

When the pandemic first hit and lockdown started, project managers were needed. Companies could not just send their employees home with their laptops and hope that work would continue as usual. Project managers had to put in extra work to ensure employees and resources were prepared for the transition. And there was minimal time to prepare.

I am sure that many companies did not expect to be on lockdown for months. For many, it has been devastating. But now it is time for project managers to help transition employees back to the office.

Compared to going remote at the beginning of the pandemic, project managers now have more time to plan and execute the project to transition work back to the brick-and-mortar office. But a project to transition work back to the office is also quite different from transitioning to a totally remote environment. Transitioning back to the company’s physical location requires setting up the office to meet social distancing requirements and other regulations established by the state and the federal government, making sure IT is in place to handle the transitioned workforce, instituting updated processes for the new environment, ensuring contractors are hired to maintain new cleanliness procedures, helping the workforce learn the new cleanliness policy and what to do if an employee is sick, and so forth.

Or will it be a different type of project? Companies’ leadership may have considered how well the remote workforce did. Recently, I read that some companies located in Manhattan may not return to their office spaces at all. The leadership saw that working remotely was much cheaper and resulted in a happier workforce, with more or at least the same amount of work accomplished. Sure, we heard about parents who had to work while also looking after or homeschooling their children. But for many, this is a temporary phenomenon.

If the leadership decides to keep the workforce remote, the tasks will be different. The project manager may have to look at helping all employees move their offices back to their homes, make the IT system more robust, develop procedures to support the workforce with upgrades, create processes to help employees with broken laptops and keep them working while the computer is fixed, develop new processes for hiring and assisting new employees in understanding daily expectations, and assess whether new tools are needed, such as online signatures and secure conference systems, among other tasks.

Project managers will need to think outside of the traditional ideas of a virtual environment or a brick- and-mortar office. These project managers will be establishing the new normal for their companies.

How are you helping your team transition?

By Mario Trentim

These days, many of us have traded in-person meetings for videoconference calls and business casual for sweatpants. We’re spending much more time working in front of our computer screens and in an astonishing number of new meetings.

The time spent on video chat apps has increased by 277 percent since March, according to research by RescueTime. As a long-time user of time-tracking software, I review my screen time weekly. Since the start of the pandemic, I’ve noticed a dramatic change in my activities. And it made me wonder about the remote work habits of my team members as a result of the new paradigm.

So, I decided to investigate further from two perspectives:

The Collateral Effect of Working From Home

Employee Engagement: Although some people enjoyed flexible work options prior to the pandemic, most project teams were not fully remote. My team, for example, had a chance to meet and greet at the office every day, building our unique culture through real-world interactions.

Shifting to remote work in the wake of the lockdown made people anxious. I believe that some of us felt a little disconnected. We lost our routines and rituals. Moreover, social and economic effects became a major concern for all of us.

During the first week of lockdown, we assured our team that no one would be laid off during the next three months. Multiple strategic changes and an enormous effort from all of us helped the company not only serve our customers better but improve efficiency, increase capacity and strengthen our relationships.

Despite the happy vibes described above, there was—and still remains—a lot of uncertainty. Another tipping point happened about 45 days into the lockdown. Confined to our homes, despite our new processes and best practices, we started to become disconnected again. We were struggling once again to find motivation and engagement.

Productivity: From the productivity perspective, it appears as if we are getting more done. There are several reasons for that. For one, cutting commute time down to zero gave people much more productive time.

Coordination and communication protocols were established around ground rules and organizational culture. Information technology helped a lot, improving productivity as manual and repetitive tasks were automated, processes were reviewed in search for operational excellence, dashboards and KPIs were made available to support decision-making and more.

In summary, the global pandemic forced all of us to ask time and time again what adds value and what is wasteful in every aspect of our projects.

5 Best Practices for Remote Work

As many of us adjust to the reality of our project teams working remotely well into the immediate future, there are some things we should all keep in mind to keep engagement and productivity up. Here are five ways to fight remote work fatigue and produce better results:

1. Focus on what adds value for your customers. I know this seems like common sense, but there’s no room for misalignment in organizations working fully remote.
    
2. Adopt a lean approach in the pursuit of operational excellence. Encourage employees to discuss processes and tools frequently. Get rid of what doesn’t work—or rethink it.
    
3. Provide training. A lot of organizations were caught by surprise. They turned to any collaboration tool available and sent employees home. Unfortunately, not everyone is tech-savvy. Without the right training for digital tools, many people falter during remote work.

4. Plan, execute and adapt. Digital transformation is a complex journey. Integrated platforms and architectural decisions must be carefully made. However, planning with no execution is of little use. Adapt as needed and manage changes.

5. Promote a balanced life. There are various definitions of a balanced life. Promote whatever best suits your organization and culture. And leave room for some fun in the process.

How do you avoid remote work burnout?

by Dave Wakeman

I’ve continued to watch as the world works its way through the coronavirus pandemic, keeping an eye on leadership styles around the world. The successes in places like Australia, New Zealand and Germany can teach us a great deal about what a great project manager can do and achieve with a good scope, strong leadership, trust in their team and consistent communication. 

But over the last week or so, I’ve also been toying with something else that I think is playing into the success or failure of countries’ responses to the pandemic: systems thinking. I keep coming back to the idea that maybe one of the big challenges that folks are dealing with is that their systems aren’t set up to help them be successful during this pandemic. Then, I got to thinking about what we can learn if that is the case. 

Here are three things that have stuck with me the last few weeks:

1. To have a successful theory, you need a unified theory of your system.

In the United States, we’ve seen each state approach the coronavirus in its own way, with different measures of success and failure and different ways of communication. 

That’s one extreme.

On the other side of the world, in New Zealand, we saw the prime minister lock down the entire country with a shelter-in-place order mandating people to stay exactly where they were. 

The idea behind New Zealand’s thinking seems to be that if everyone in the country were on lockdown at the same time and didn’t move, they would be able to stop community spread in its tracks. 

In the U.S., having 50 different governors offer up 50 different plans for their states has allowed people to interact with each other much more freely, increasing the likelihood of community spread. 

To put it another way, thinking about New Zealand as one big system enabled them to act with the entire country in mind and take actions as a unit, whether or not every area needed the exact same prescription at the moment. The system took precedent over any individual component. 

2. Looking at the world as a system can help point toward a quicker recovery.

Adaptation is at the heart of strong systems. And, as we have seen the pandemic move around the world, countries have had their impact from the virus start at different points and end at different points. 

Take, as an example, the German Bundesliga—the first professional football (soccer) league to return to action, providing a roadmap for how football clubs around the world could manage playing games without fans and ensure players remained healthy after returning to training. 

The same idea is taking place as we look to reopen many of our economies. In Japan, it was reported that the country’s response to the pandemic was not completely successful, but that having their population conditioned to use masks helped them avoid a tremendous disruption due to the virus. 

Both of these examples can point us toward solutions that will enable us to reopen more quickly and, hopefully, reduce the possibility of a deadly second wave of coronavirus infections. 

You can already see this taking shape in the way that La Liga, the Premier League and the NBA are working to restart their leagues. And it is prominent in much of the messaging about the importance of wearing a mask to prevent community spread of COVID-19. 

3. Successful systems still need good communication. 

Even in a huge system, we are seeing that communication is essential to adaptation and dealing with a challenge. 

This is true in any situation. 

The countries with greater success navigating the pandemic have had their leaders communicate in a way that is consistent, clear, built on facts and science, and gives folks points of reference. People are able to see the success or failures of the actions that they are taking, which provides motivation and compliance. 

I’ve said this many times before, but in general, around 90 percent of your time as a project manager is going to be spent communicating. In looking at the pandemic and the responses to it as a system and through the lens of a project manager, I can see that this number still holds pretty true, no matter the nature of your project.

It’s another way of saying that leadership matters, communication matters and having a grasp on the changing facts of the challenge you are working to overcome and the willingness to constantly communicate them in an effective manner makes this pandemic look less unusual—and more like a really complicated project. 

But, maybe I am biased. 

What do you think?

By Cyndee Miller

With the global death toll now over 410,000, COVID-19 is recognized as a clear and present danger to public health. But lurking just beneath the surface is another disturbing—often less visible—crisis: the damage to our mental health.

People aren’t just living with the fear that they or someone they love might get sick. They’re also dealing with extreme economic uncertainty and the prolonged isolation that comes with social distancing and working from home. And then in the past few weeks, we all bore witness to the murder of George Floyd and the painful reckoning of a world trying to dismantle systemic racial injustice and inequality.

It’s a lot for the human psyche to bear—and the weight is clear: More than 40 percent of people said their mental health had deteriorated since the pandemic began, according to a global study by SAP, Qualtrics and Mind Share Partners in April. And 66 percent reported higher stress levels since the outbreak.

Many project leaders would count themselves among that group at least part of the time. I know I do. It’s just the reality of our current situation—and acknowledging our struggles with mental health (hopefully) lessens what is still too often seen as a stigma, especially in the United States.

No matter how you’re feeling, part of being a good leader is recognizing what your team is going through. Yet the survey found less than half (47 percent) of people say their manager is tuned in to their well-being.

It takes empathy, emotional intelligence and active listening—none of which are especially new, of course. But they’re fast emerging as power skills for project leaders. With so many teams dispersed and working virtually these days, there’s been “a lot more talk and a lot more understanding around things like well-being and mental health,” PM Network^® columnist Lindsay Scott recently told Projectified^™.

Even before the pandemic hit, Scott remarked in an earlier episode of Projectified^™ that she was seeing an increased focus on “pastoral care of teams” in the U.K., where she’s director of recruiting firm Arras People. “As a project manager, it is up to you to be making sure that your team is not under undue stress or under stress for long periods of time.”

Showing you care doesn’t just generate warm fuzzies—it can reduce business risk. In the study mentioned above, those respondents who said their manager isn’t attuned to their well-being were 61 percent more likely to say they’ve been less productive since the coronavirus outbreak.

Forward-looking companies are taking action to increase access to care. Consulting giant EY has been using employee feedback to steadily expand mental health services since launching its We Care program in 2016. The goal is to better equip HR professionals and managers to identify and respond to subtle changes in behavior, like a decline in job performance, which can indicate poor mental health. As part of a recent project that targets impaired sleep, for example, EY created a digital sleep assessment and enhancement tool. Employees who score high for disrupted sleep are invited to participate in a customized, digital cognitive behavioral therapy program.

Since EY launched We Care, employee use of the company’s internal mental health support team has risen more than 100 percent. “That’s a reflection that our people are getting care and getting it early,” EY Assist director Michael Weiner told PM Network^®.

PMI President and CEO Sunil Prashara suggested ways to cope with loneliness and stress as project leaders work remotely on The Official PMI Blog. Be good to yourself in simple ways, he says, such as “eating a healthy diet, staying hydrated, getting enough sleep, exercising regularly and going outside for some fresh air.”

Another piece of advice: Stay connected—but not too connected. Technology can be both a gift and a curse, Prashara writes. “While social media allows us to share news and keep friends and family close, it can also create needless anxiety by amplifying misinformation and negative rumors. My advice is to consume social media sparingly and thoughtfully.”

What strategies are you using to stay informed about your team’s mental health and help those who are struggling? And most importantly: How are you doing? Let me know in the comments.

By Lenka Pincot

Project management affords a great opportunity for professional and personal learning with the identification of lessons learned as one of its standard practices. Discussing the lessons learned within the team or sharing them with other colleagues outside of the project is all about looking for ways to do things better next time. But what can be done to maximize the use of lessons learned?

There are numerous examples in which the ability to identify opportunities for improvement and put them into practice falls fully within a team’s autonomy. These may be, for instance, suggestions on how to prepare for a kick-off meeting, tips on how to onboard new team members faster or how to better engage project stakeholders. But there are also points that can’t be addressed within the project, because they are in the hands of teams outside of the direct project manager’s influence. The team may be challenged to stay motivated during the lessons learned session while they express doubts that any change will occur.  

I came across the aforementioned frustration when discussing the topic of lessons learned during one of our PMI chapter events. When I recalled my own experience and efforts to maximize the benefits of identifying lessons learned, I realized there are three focus areas:

1. Adjust the frequency and format

Lessons learned sessions are no longer expected to happen only after the project is delivered. Learning is a continuous process and, as such, should be encouraged by frequent lessons learned gatherings. But it is also important to note that we learn when we need to learn—when it is useful. And when we need something, we take the path of least resistance to get the piece of knowledge we are looking for.

When we say lessons learned repository, we probably imagine an Excel file or database. Is there a way to make the content more visible and instantly accessible? To have it in front of our eyes and updated frequently so we have a rough idea of what information we can find there?

At present, I mostly work with teams using agile project management methods, for which lessons learned sessions are replaced by frequent retrospectives. We look back at a specific short time frame and are expected to agree on what experiments the team will try in order to achieve improvement. Outcomes of retrospectives are written on white boards, then placed either in a physical team space or a digital space (their interactive wiki pages.)

2. Practice Kaizen principles

Kaizen comes from Japan and is a term that refers to good change, continuous improvement or change for better. Kaizen is based on a reflection of the team’s performance, addresses inefficiencies and is delivered in increments.

When you discuss the lessons learned, empower your team to make a difference by translating the areas of improvement into smaller steps that are within the team’s influence and can be delivered. Encourage them to execute these steps. As they are less complex and more achievable in short time frames, the team can experience benefits sooner and realize that the change is in their hands.

3. Reach across the organization

Projects do not exist in a vacuum. The way they are delivered is highly influenced by the entire organizational setup. In order to change the determining environment, look for ways to use the power of project learning to influence the organizational environment. In my experience, it only works when you are able to identify the value that the change brings to the other parts of the organization.

In one of my assignments, I had often heard complaints about insufficient testing and training of users of a new information system that was the outcome of IT projects. The lesson learned was that users were not involved soon enough, the training materials did not meet expectations and that it should get more attention next time. We identified a solution that we applied to our project with positive outcomes. How could we prevent this situation from happening with the other projects that were coming down the line? What was needed was to make our approach an organizational standard so that other projects could benefit.

If you don’t have the mandate to make a change, use your influencing skills. Raise awareness of the topic, use success stories collected throughout your project to demonstrate that there is a way to solve the issue, make allies by delivering good work and network to spread the good news. When the decision-makers start to get curious, have your recommendations at the ready.

How do your project teams use lessons learned to grow?