During a group exercise in a recent project management class at a biotech firm, my main contact waved me over to ask a question. She noticed that women represented around 80% of the class participants and wondered if that's something I see at other clients. 

I told her it's absolutely a trend I've seen for years--increasingly so in the last decade. There are a few exceptions in some industries (e.g. construction) and the trend has not been as clear with some of my engagements outside the U.S., depending on the local culture. But I'm in-house at companies almost every weekday, and in just the last month, women have represented between 60%-75% of the participants in each of the sessions. 

Women are still in the minority of project management roles, but this is an encouraging leading indicator of what is to come.

What Is Driving The Trend?

Here's where my client and I went in our conversation, and where I'd love for you to share a comment with your thoughts. What do you think is driving the trend?

I'd love to hear what some of my favorite women in project management thought leaders think about this. What are some forces that are leading more women to pursue project management career paths? 

Also, for those of you who share my privilege of teaching and developing project managers, are you seeing similar trends? If so, what do you think is driving this?

Finally, for those of you who are in project leadership roles, are you seeing similar trends? Your insights would be helpful additions to the discussion as well.

Join the conversation by leaving a comment. I also invite you to share this with your colleagues to get their voices added to the discussion. Thank you!

The dirty little secret of business is that it’s all done on relationships. In our first article in this series, the bottom-line was that you can’t afford to not take the time to invest in this critical aspect of your career.

But that’s the rub, isn’t it? It takes time. And who has enough slack in their work week to add yet something more?

“Relationship-building? Great idea. I just don’t have the time.”

But Is It A Time Issue?

This is a bit personal but let me ask you a question. Prior walking into work, did you brush your teeth? Take a bath or shower?

I realize that norms vary by culture, but here’s the point of my prying question. We take care of at least basic personal hygiene before work because there’s typically a return on that investment of time in the morning! Most of us don’t roll out of bed and say, “Sorry! I just don’t have time to get cleaned up today!” (Unless, perhaps, when we’re working from home without any meetings with webcams!)

When I work with executive coaching clients and audiences around the world, nearly everyone agrees about the importance of relationship-building, as an idea. But, in practice, it’s often not perceived as sufficiently valuable to justify the investment of time.

Over the years I’ve had the distinct privilege of interviewing some of the top leadership thought leaders of our time, and one highlight is Dr. Ed Schein. Ed, who is now in his nineties, is the guy who coined the term corporate culture. It was like talking to Yoda.

One of the most important lessons I learned from Dr. Schein is the dynamics of learning and anxiety. “Learning anxiety comes from being afraid to try something new for fear that it will be too difficult, that we will look stupid in the attempt, or that we will have to part from old habits that have worked for us in the past.”*

Forget about trying to talk people out of learning anxiety. It’s the basis for resistance to change.

Ah, but there’s also survival anxiety: “the horrible realization that in order to make it, you’re going to have to change.”* His thesis is that learning only happens when survival anxiety is greater than learning anxiety.

Take a moment and let that idea soak in. You’re most likely to go through the inconvenience of learning something new when you think your survival depends on it.

Your Survival Depends on Relationship-Building

Stop thinking about relationship-building as a nice idea. Think of it as one of the top skills you need for career survival.

You are one acquisition or economic crisis or management change or automation disruption away from looking for a job. That next career opportunity will likely come because of a relationship.

But it’s not just about job hunting.

Mentors can radically boost your ability to navigate an increasingly complex business world. Broader relationships expose you to innovative ideas, provide early warnings about upcoming changes, and ease your ability to influence outcomes.

An Idea and An Exercise

Since you’re tight on time, here’s an idea: leverage something you’re already doing. Meetings are not just for information sharing and decision-making. Think of them as relationship-building opportunities. If you arrive before the meeting starts, seek out someone you don’t know as well and sit by them. Ask questions to learn more about them.

I like to ask people, “What’s something good from the last week?” It gets them talking, primes the discussion to be positive, and provides an opportunity to celebrate with the person--all of which are powerful ingredients of relationship-building.

Even if you sit by someone you know well, ask some questions. Follow-up with them about something they may have mentioned before (e.g., “You mentioned your family was going to get some time away. How was your trip?”). Avoid bringing the focus back to yourself (Celeste Headlee calls this conversational narcissism).

Beyond that, carve out 15 minutes for a network audit, an exercise described in Herminia Ibarra’s book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader. Here’s how it works:

Identify up to 10 people with whom you have discussed important work matters over the last few months. Perhaps you went for advice. Or used them as a sounding board. You don’t have to identify 10, and don’t try to think of who should be on the list. Only list people to whom you have recently turned for help.

Now, look that list over. What does it say to you about your network? What are the strengths of your network, as it exists today? What are the weaknesses?

One observation I took from my first network audit exercise: I don’t go for advice nearly enough. If I was truthful about how I actually went about work, the list of advisors I sought over the last few months was strikingly short.

I also realized that the network was not nearly as diverse as it should be. Here I mean not only gender or racial diversity. I also mean cognitive diversity. Departmental diversity. Job level diversity. Experience diversity.

A network audit is an easy exercise to skip. Don’t. Try it and see what it tells you.

Your survival may just depend on what you learn.

What stands out to you from this article? Please leave a comment to join the discussion. Keep an eye out for our next article as we continue this series on relationship-building.

* The quotes are from Diane Couto's Harvard Business Review article “The Anxiety of Learning” (available online at https://hbr.org/2002/03/the-anxiety-of-learning). 

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

You may have noticed that Adele dominated at the recent GRAMMY Awards. Sure, there’s some controversy over whether Beyoncé should have won more, but here’s why I even bring this up: Adele and Beyoncé were just two of many thousands of artists and producers who wanted to be on stage that night, lifting high their award for their big hit.

Yet few make it that far.

What makes a hit? And why should that even matter to project managers?

I recently sat down with Derek Thompson, Senior Editor at The Atlantic magazine. Thompson is the author of a new book entitled Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction. Thompson chased down this idea of what makes hits and has put together an engaging read on the science of what makes something popular.

I’ll take a wild guess and suggest that you’re not necessarily trying to write the next GRAMMY-winning song. But if you lead teams and projects, you need to sell your ideas. Whether it’s for your project or your career, there are approaches or ideas that you’d like to see get some traction. Thompson’s book outlines some intriguing ideas for your consideration.

You can hear Thompson talk about the book in his own words at http://PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/166

Here’s an appetizer of ideas that project managers and leaders at all levels can sample from Thompson's book.

Remember the MAYA Rule

First, when it comes to trying to sell an idea, Thompson suggests you follow the MAYA Rule. MAYA stands for Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. You may not recognize the name Raymond Loewy, but you’ve been influenced by him more than you know. He’s the father of modern industrial design, and Cosmopolitan magazine wrote back in 1950 that Loewy “has probably affected the daily life of more Americans than any man of his time.”

Loewy’s philosophy? Stretch the boundaries of something to make it new, yet keep it just familiar enough to be acceptable. Too much innovation before its time and it won’t be accepted. Too familiar and it won’t get noticed or catch on.

MAYA was his answer. What’s the lesson for us? If the idea you’re trying to get approved is rather radical—perhaps edging towards Most Advanced and Barely Acceptable—try to anchor your message with the familiar. Seek to show how this new idea is similar to something they already know. If you’re trying to get approval for something more on the familiar side, do the opposite. Seek to highlight what’s new.

Sometimes we try to ask for too much, or strive to change too much, too quickly—it’s beyond the Yet Acceptable threshold. Keep MAYA and Thompson’s related advice in mind as you try to influence in the days ahead.

Fluency and Disfluency

When an idea is easy to assimilate, it’s fluent. Thompson finds “fluent ideas and products are processed faster and they make us feel better, not just about ideas and products we confront, but also about ourselves. Most people generally prefer ideas that we already agree with, images that are easy to discern, stories that are easy to relate to, and puzzles that are easy to solve.”

Disfluency is the opposite. It requires hard thinking. It’s dissonant. And it may keep our ideas from catching on.

There are countless applications for us as leaders of teams and projects. Take an email to our stakeholders, for example. How can we make it as fluent as possible, which is to say, how can we make it as easy as possible for them to understand what we’re trying to communicate?

I teach an MBA class on project management and one of the assignments is a 2-page paper. One of my students submitted a paper where the initial paragraph was a page and a half! One paragraph! Opening that document was like opening a door to find a brick wall instead of a doorway! It screamed “Don’t read me!” “I don’t know what I’m talking about!” It dripped with disfluency!

We can cause disfluency by using jargon or not appreciating cultural influences. In a rush to send a message, we leave out critical aspects of our idea that leave the receiver without the necessary context.

Before you send that next message, remember to seek fluency instead of disfluency.

Beware Homophily

Whether you recognize the term or not, you’ll recognize the effect. Homophily is our tendency to sort ourselves into tribes (or, as Thompson prefers, “mini cults”). Homophily is impacting how we get our news, with whom we go to lunch most days, and how we build our networks of relationships.

Especially in this time of increasing polarization, I encourage you to intentionally fight back by seeking out people who think differently from you, who have different perspectives or even worldviews than you. Homophily will try to get in your way. Push through.

The dirty little secret of business is that everything comes down to relationships. Thompson provides insights and examples of how the success of your ideas, your career, and your projects could depend far more than you realize on who’s in your Top 5 relationships.

Go deeper into the organization, beyond your particular domain or area—even outside your industry. If you’re a project manager, take advantage of joining your local PMI chapter and take the time to get to know people who are leaders there.

Building a strong Top 5 is not brown-nosing or simply self-seeking. It’s just a great way to build your ability to make a difference, for you, your team, your organization and your career.

Quality is Not Destiny

We have this bias sometimes that the best idea wins. The smartest person gets promoted. The best approach gets approved. Our work should stand on its merits.

The best song or most talented artist should be on the GRAMMY stage, right?

No offense to Adele or Beyoncé: that’s not what the research finds. But if you’d like to learn more about how ideas take off, including some scenarios specifically relevant to project managers and other leaders, check out this discussion with Derek Thompson about his book Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction.

http://PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/166

P.S. If you listen closely, you’ll even hear my duet with Beyoncé.

So what’s your take? What questions or concerns do you have? Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below. I look forward to discussing this with you!

Andy Kaufman is a keynote speaker who helps organizations around the world improve their ability to deliver projects and lead teams. He is the host of the People and Projects Podcast which provides interviews and insights to help you lead and deliver.

What are you supposed to be doing right now, instead of reading this article?

I ask because there are countless demands competing for your attention, right? Your inbox. Text messages you need to return. Headlines in the news. A stakeholder who needs something. A problem at home. The deliverable due in a few hours. Something that went wrong on a project. An angry customer. A demanding boss. Something that you’re supposed to remember to do but can’t quite remember right now. Oh yeah, and this article.

Distractions bombard our lives. It’s an unrelenting attack of competing demands, all vying for at least a moment of our attention. Gloria Mark’s research finds that typical information workers are interrupted once every three minutes. Lest you want to lay the blame at the feet of millennials, open floor plans, or technology, Mark found that 44% of the time we interrupt ourselves!

Life in the Shallows 

We live in the shallows. Getting time for deep, focused, uninterrupted work is rare for most of us. If deep work was a species, it would unquestionably be on the endangered list. And it takes a toll on our projects, our organizations, and on our very selves.

What if your ability to succeed wasn’t really about your IQ? Or the number of hours you work? Or your title? Or your looks or the family you grew up in or the college you graduated from?

What if your ability to succeed as a project manager in the years ahead came down to this: your ability to focus. I’m talking about your ability to carve out undistracted time, pushing your cognitive capabilities to their limit, allowing you to create new value and improve your skills. 

After coaching hundreds of executives, one common thread I’ve seen across the most successful leaders comes down to what they focus on. The most successful have developed the ability to focus on the most important things, most of the time. They are less susceptible to being distracted by the trivial. 

We all are gifted the same 24 hours a day. The difference is what we pay attention to.

Deep Work

I recently interviewed Cal Newport about his book Deep Work. Newport offers up his Deep Work Hypothesis: the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate the skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.

Makes sense. But certainly you must be tempted to think, "Cal is an academic! What does he know about the realities of my business life? He doesn't know my project load. Or boss. Or demands at home." Or whatever objections come to mind that convince us that deep work is no longer possible in today's work culture. 

Well, before you get back to what you're supposed to be doing anyway, here's the seed I'd like to plant. I’m taking Newport's hypothesis as a challenge and I invite you to join me. I'd like you to join me in cultivating the ability to get more deep work into our weeks, making it the core of our working life.

In my next post, I’ll share some practical insights from Newport’s book Deep Work. For now, here’s where you can listen to Cal Newport talk about his book, in his own words: http://PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/144.

I'd love to hear your thoughts! What are some practical things you do to stay focused on the most important priorities, most of the time?

“You can hit this date, right?”

It’s Maria, one of your stakeholders from the other side of the business. She’s asking for a commitment to deliver a project by a specific date. You know the date is ambitious but the way she’s asking makes it clear that she’s only going to accept a Yes.

You pause.

“Sure!” is the word that slips out of your mouth. But if she could read your mind, she wouldn’t be walking away so confidently, leaving you once again with that sick feeling of “How in the world are we going to do this?”

After a day of ruminating about the project, you realize that you need something from her in order to deliver on the promised date. Your eyes brighten! She probably won’t be able to deliver on her part so that will give you some wiggle room! Brilliant!

You call her. “Hi Maria. You know that project we talked about yesterday? Well, in order to hit that date, this is what I need from you.” You elaborate on the needs.

It’s time to go for the ask. “I’ll need all this by the end of next week. Can you get that to me on time?” You pause, praying for a No.

Maria pauses. “Um. Well, let’s see. Yes, I can. Sure!”

Sigh.

Promises, Promises

Can you relate to the discussion with Maria? Perhaps you spend a lot of time in Maria’s role, receiving promises from people who you know won’t deliver. Or maybe you work with people like Maria, who press you with deadlines but don’t supply you with the information you need to deliver.

It’s important to note that you’re not alone. This drama plays out in organizations around the world, across industries. In a conversation with a high-level executive at a biotech firm, the discussion turned to how promises get made to investors and senior executives. He told me, “We make these date commitments but everyone knows we won’t hit them.”

I replied, “Kind of like mass hallucination, eh?” He smiled, but not with this eyes.

Project Culture

It is critical that you and your organization develop a culture that delivers. Relying on crossed fingers, hope, good intentions, and heroics doesn’t scale. The fundamentals of delivery need to be ingrained in the culture.

It’s rather fashionable these days to talk about organizational culture. Let me be clear: your organization has a culture of project management. It’s just a matter of whether or not that culture is helping or hindering your ability to deliver.

Yoda on Corporate Culture

Dr. Edgar Schein is the Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus and a Professor Emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He’s widely credited with coining the term organizational culture. When I set up the interview to talk with Dr. Schein, I didn’t realize what a superstar the guy really was.

It didn’t take long in the interview for me to feel like I was talking with Yoda! He responded with ease to my questions about culture.

What is culture, according to Dr. Schein? In short, it’s what has worked. It’s the sum total of what a group has learned that works in solving problems. Whether you like it or not, the project culture in your organization exists because it has sufficiently worked in the past.

Dr. Schein suggests that culture can be broken down into three levels: artifacts, espoused values, and tacit assumptions.

What You Can See

If you walk through an organization, you can see the architecture of the building, the layout of the workspaces, the type of technology they provide for their employees, and the signs on the walls. These are artifacts—things that can be seen. For projects, you might see methodology binders, organization charts, process diagrams, and computer systems to manage project data. You could follow a project manager around and see their behavior—the actions they take. All of these help define the culture.

What We Say

As you continue walking through an organization, you might want to know why certain things are done. You see that a standard operating procedure is documented (the artifact), but you’re wondering why it’s done that way. These would be examples of espoused values—the stated beliefs that give a sense of what is truly valued in the organization?

For example, let’s say you find a form that seems like an unnecessary step in a process. You might ask, “Why do your project managers have to fill out this form?” Perhaps a response would be, “Because we’ve found that the extra step helps make sure we don’t start projects without a business rationale. A couple years back we found that we were wasting too much money on different executives’ pet projects.”

What We Assume

Yet beyond what we see and what is said, there are underlying assumptions that drive what and how things get done in an organization. They are not even stated—just assumed—as if they are obviously a fact or a matter of truth.

All these factors are like an iceberg. Above the water we can see the artifacts and discuss beliefs and values. But below the water we have the underlying assumptions. As with icebergs, these remain unseen and yet can be deadly if not taken into account.

Let’s say your executive team regularly sends e-mails late into the evening. It might be assumed by others that such activity is expected from everyone. There’s not a policy in writing (artifact) that directs people to do so. If you asked someone in HR whether employees are required to be on e-mail until midnight, they could not point to such direction in an Employee Handbook. Yet there’s this underlying assumption of the expectation, which leads to overflowing inboxes and red, baggy eyes amongst a workforce assuming that sleep is not a priority.

In a previous post I wrote about the written and unwritten rules. When considering culture, think of Dr. Schein’s artifacts and espoused values as the written rules—those things above the water. The underlying assumptions are the unwritten rules, those drivers that we cannot see under the water that drive everything above it.

In our next post, we’ll talk about how to make some progress in changing your project culture. But for now, here’s my challenge for you: take some time to consider your current project culture. What is above the water, so to speak, when it comes to projects? What are the written rules? The artifacts? The stated reasons for why things are done?

When we talk about this in our workshops and keynotes, people often reply with things like tools (e.g. Microsoft Project, Asana, XMind, etc.), their Project Management Office (PMO), templates, processes, executive level support, stated expectations, etc. How would you resond?

In addition, what are those factors under the water, so to speak: the underlying assumptions? What are the unwritten rules at your organization regarding how projects should be managed? See how many you can identify. I invite you to share your observations and questions in the comments below.

You can’t sustain a culture of mass hallucination. Hope is a wonderful thing for humanity but’s a lousy strategy for delivering projects. Let’s start with diagnosing your current culture. Next time we’ll talk about how to change that conversation with Maria.

If this post was helpful, I invite you to share it with your connections and LinkedIn groups.

Listen to the interview with Dr. Edgar Schein athttp://www.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/25.