Voices on Project Management

by Dave Wakeman

Has your leadership style evolved to reflect the modern business environment?

Old leadership styles put a premium on command and control, which made sense when there weren’t so many specializations.

Now, our culture, and the way many of our projects are organized, requires that we are more collaborative and more focused on enabling our teams. Let’s call this “leadership by empowerment.”

Having fully engaged and empowered teams is now a key to project success.

If you are struggling with adopting this new leadership style, here are a few tips to help you build empowerment in your teams:

1. Focus on communication: With all of the tools at our disposal, you would think communication and information sharing would be easier than ever.

But it isn’t.

In most cases, it feels like our communications are hampered more than ever by all of the noise and demands from technology. But knowledge is empowerment and if you want to empower your team to maximize its impact, you need to renew your focus on communications and getting people the right information at the right time. You can do this by clearly spelling out the way that you will communicate with your team and how they should communicate back with you. You can create areas, tools and methods for accessing the most important information. A tool like Slack may be a way that you can better organize your information.

2. Allow your subject matter experts to be experts: In projects it is easy to lose focus on the fact that as the leader, you can’t know everything. This can cause project managers to want to dictate every action and every possible scenario to your team members, but that is a clear path to friction, delay and failure.

As the project manager, your job is to put your team of experts in a position to succeed. One way I do this is by setting outcome-based goals for my teams with clear check-in points so that I can understand the status of tasks and activities , but give my team members the power to do the work in a manner that they feel is best.

3. Provide continuous opportunities to learn and grow: We talk a lot about constant learning and development, but how much of that is just lip service? To help empower your teams, spend some time developing the skills that are truly going to help deliver better results for your organization (not just the ones that are going to help your team members learn something new).

You can do this by creating a training calendar or schedule that focuses on mission critical tasks, sharing best practices or interesting new ideas, or inviting in guest speakers.

Remember, your job is to use the tools you have at your disposal to make sure your leadership empowers your team to do the best work they can for you.

How do you empower your team members? 

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by Lynda Bourne

I recently wrote a post about influencing without authority, which looked at building credibility and “currency” to trade for the support you need. Those ideas buy you a seat at the table. This post looks at ways you can influence situations to move everyone to a satisfactory outcome once you’re at that table.

Smart influencers recognise it is often futile to work against powerful resistance. Rather than fighting the situation (and making it worse) they look for subtle ways to influence the outcome. Key methods of smart influencers include:

• Being open and aware. In stressful situations, effective influencers slow down, take a breath and observe before taking action. When we focus on our breathing we relax, which increases our perception, can provide a new perspective and heightens empathy.
• Using movement to trigger an attitude change. Suggest, for example, going downstairs for a coffee. It may open up other ways of “moving together.”
• Using the space around you to influence attitudes—both in formal meetings and in your own office. Creating the right ambience will help you influence others. Things to consider include:
  • A meeting table is divided into personal zones. These zones are maintained zealously. Make sure you don’t inadvertently cross the lines.
  • Be aware of personal space and seating hierarchies. Rather than confronting the “opposition” across a rectangular meeting table, consider setting up a round table where everyone can work together.

• Using collective language. “We” is almost always better than “you.”
• Avoiding closed questions. It is easier to avoid getting a “no” in the first place than to change a “no” into a “yes” later. Consider these three examples:
  • “Do you like my suggestion?” This is a closed question and if the answer is “no” you have nowhere to go.
  • “You do not appear to like my suggestion, why?” This is better. You now have a conversation starter but the ‘why’ has negative implications. It may seem as though you are blaming the other person for disagreeing with you.
  • “How could my suggestion be improved to make it acceptable to you?” This opens up a whole new paradigm. If the person makes some suggestions that are incorporated into the overall proposal, the proposal becomes “our suggestion.”
• Focusing on what you want to achieve. By openly stating what you want to achieve, you lead by example and create an opportunity for others to do the same.
• Keeping body language in mind. For most people, the reaction to body language is subconscious. It can help or hinder your attempts to influence. Focus on:
  • Paying attention. This makes the other person feel valued and is likely to enhance your ability to influence the situation.
  • Your hands. Gestures can have very different interpretations in different cultures.
  • Not overreacting to body language. It is a complex language and generally reacting to superficial signs can cause more harm than good. But paradoxically, your subconscious reading of the whole situation will often be accurate.
  • Not faking body language (unless you are a professional actor). To get yours right you need to have the right attitude first and then let nature do its bit. For more information on this, read Influence: Body Language Silent Influencing by Michael Nir.

The ability to influence people is a key leadership skill. One way to acquire the skill is to watch others in a group situation and see how the people who are influencing attitudes and actions are behaving. Then try emulating their behaviours in your next meeting.

How effective are you at influencing others?

by Wanda Curlee

I recently came across an article by consultant Melanie Nelson about project management and situational awareness. In the article, Nelson argues that project managers need to be more than just technically savvy.

They must also be able to see the bigger picture and understand the context they are working in—including industry culture, employee pain points and the other projects and business goals competing for attention in the company. They must hone their situational awareness.

Situational awareness is the ability to understand what is happening around you, why it is happening and what you need to do or not do in reaction. Some call this a soft skill, but I believe it goes further than that.

As rookie project managers, we learn about which processes and procedures are done in what order. However, project managers with situational awareness may question, for example, whether or not all steps in the process need to be completed, what processes must be changed to accommodate the needs of the organization or even if the correct methodology is being used.

For a software project, that could mean questioning if agile or waterfall is the best approach or if lean should be used instead. To paraphrase Nelson, she loves Kanban but she knows that it is not appropriate for all projects.

Situational awareness is a skill beyond understanding earned value management, creating status reports, or managing conference calls and client meetings.

It is about asking, for example, in those client meetings questions such as:

Do you have the attention of the client? Are the right people in the conference room? If not, why not? What will you do about it?

It is not easy and takes a lot of practice.

Do you have the situational awareness needed for your project?

By Conrado Morlan

During the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, you may have seen them on TV: men around the Olympic pool in red trunks and yellow t-shirts, with whistles around their necks and flotation devices tucked beneath their arms.

Yes, they were lifeguards.

Why are lifeguards needed in a pool where the world’s best swimmers are competing? The answer is simple: regulatory compliance.

FINA, the sport’s international governing body, states in its guidelines that “owners of public pools or pools restricted only to training and competition must comply with the requirements established by law and the health authorities in the country where the pool is situated.” The law in the state of Rio de Janeiro requires the presence of lifeguards at swimming pools larger than 20 feet by 20 feet, according to The New York Times.

As a project manager leading the efforts of a global or regional project, you will need to be aware of all the regulations that may impact your project. Assuming that you can lead a project in the same way you do in your country of origin is a bad assumption.

Preparing for Compliance

Complying with regulations can mean big hurdles in project deployment, so you need to plan ahead to avoid any major impacts. At the same time, regulations may be an opportunity to establish relationships with governmental entities that define the regulations (as Amway did in China in the last decade).

When dealing with regulations in your projects, remember:

• You are not always in control. The existing standardized and repeatable processes to execute projects, as well as the existing technological platform to implement the project, may not be applicable or available in certain countries. You will need to think “outside the box” and move out of your comfort zone to make your project successful.
• The rules in other countries are unique. Regulations, culture and resources vary. Get insights from your local team to understand and take advantage of the established rules.
• You may need to take a step backward. Adaptation is key in global projects. All the features and functions delivered by your project may not be necessary for a particular country. Have a list of the minimum features and functions required to make your project successful.

As a global project manager, you need to develop and master your cultural awareness. This will help you to establish the foundation of communication and identify cultural values, beliefs and perceptions.

This will help you understand the local environment and market, build long-term, trusting relationships and keep your project in track.

As a global project manager, how do you face regulatory compliance in different countries?

By Mario Trentim

In my last post, I discussed the importance of getting risk identification right. Now, it’s time to tackle the challenge of qualitative risk analysis—which project practitioners often tend to confuse with subjective analysis.

Objective vs. Subjective Analysis

Subjective analysis is based on personal opinions, interpretation, points of view, emotions and judgment. It is often ill-suited for decision making and, in particular, for risk analysis.

Objective analysis is fact-based, measurable and observable. For qualitative risk analysis that means using scales to evaluate risk, whether textual (low, medium, high), color-coded (green, yellow, red) or numeric (from 1 to 5), or some combination of these.

Getting Qualitative Risk Analysis Right

Consider this all-to-common scenario: In a project team meeting to assess risks, the only available information is the risk name and the words high, medium and low. Because there is no definition on what high, medium and low mean, and because there is not enough information about individual risks, the risk analysis is based on guesses.

So how can project practitioners stop the guessing game and ensure objectivity? Here are seven tips:

1. Consult tools and standards: Qualitative analysis tools are mentioned not only in PMI’s A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide) but also in PMI’s Practice Standard for Risk Management. For more risk management reference material, check ISO 31000:2009 and ISO 17666:2003.

2. Define qualitative scales in the risk management plan: The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission’s Risk Assessment in Practice has created some good examples of what impact and probability scales could look like. (See pages 4 and 5). You may also want to check the Project Risk Management Handbook: A Scalable Approach (page 20).

3. Gather and document information about identified risks: Interview and involve relevant stakeholders, review lessons learned, document assumptions and information for each risk.

4. Adopt expert opinion, whenever possible: Get a second opinion from more experienced project managers, project management office leaders and other internal experts. If you are not familiar enough with risk identification and analysis for a particular project, hire external experts or consultants.

5. Consider using a risk breakdown structure: Grouping risks in categories helps in identifying root causes and in developing effective responses.

6. Assess probability, impact and urgency for individual risks: Investigate the likelihood of occurrence for each specific risk and its potential effect on project objectives (scope, schedule, cost), documenting the results according to the predefined qualitative scale levels.

7. Prioritize risks using the probability and impact matrix: Rate risks and develop your final probability and impact matrix to determine the need for further quantitative analysis and to plan for risk responses.

Adopting a well-defined qualitative scale and carefully assessing risk data and information will help your team perform better risk analyses. Do you agree with that? Please share your comments and experience.