I wish I had me when I was you...

Have you ever been told that you need to be more strategic? Did you think to yourself, “Geez, I thought I was being strategic!”

What the heck does it mean to be strategic, anyway, and how do you know if you are doing it?

Recently, I was facilitating a workshop on inspirational leadership with my client and they were charged with transitioning from a tactical function to a more strategic business partner for the broader organization. The conversation was swirling around what it meant to be tactical vs. strategic and how they must make the transition to being strategic in order to survive. The leaders gave descriptions of what it meant to be strategic, the mid-level managers said, “but I think we are doing that.” After we went through a few broad descriptions, I got them very tactical…about what it meant to be strategic. 

In order to have a good conversation about this topic, we need to make sure we are all speaking the same language on strategy and tactics…

OK, so what is strategy?

I like the Wikipedia definition for strategy:

Strategy is a high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty.

Hmmm…sounds like every project I’ve ever managed! 
 

If you are managing projects, you are implementing strategy…a plan to achieve one or more goals. You don’t have to necessarily be the one defining the strategy to “be strategic.” You simply need to be able to articulate the strategy, a.k.a. be able to talk about the business value of the project and help ensure alignment of that vision with the goals of the project.  (And NO, I do not mean Earned Value here when I talk about value. EVM actually has nothing to do with business value and return on investment (ROI). It simply tells you about the performance of your project according to the constraint.)

Now let’s look at the definition for strategic (the adjective we are all being told to be):

Relating to the identification of long-term or overall aims and interests and the means of achieving them.

Hmmm…sounds a lot like being able to bring your stakeholders with you through the change (a.k.a. project) to me.

So, in order to be strategic, we need to be able to relate to the long-term strategy and tie our project and all communications about that project to that strategy. We need to bring people with us through the change process, always keeping the shining star of “why are we doing this” front and center in our thinking and communication.

So that means that to be “strategic,” we need to be good change leaders…

Project managers that are successful are not just good at project management. They are also good at bringing people through change. They help stakeholders understand the “why” for the project and connect the outcomes they are achieving to the overall business objectives and strategy for the project.

Make sure you know how to help bring others through the process of visualizing and aligning with the strategy your project was intended to create and you will be acting in a “strategic” manner.

Many times as a project manager or PMO leader, you are in the role of strategic advisor. You are positioned to help the organization figure out how to best invest their organizational assets in a way that gets the highest return on investment possible. Now if that isn’t strategic, I don’t know what is!

OK, but how is that all connected to tactics? Don’t we have to be tactical, as well, to be good project managers? Don’t we need to know the details?

Let’s look at this Wikipedia clarification of strategy and tactics:

The terms tactic and strategy are often confused: tactics are the actual means used to gain an objective, while strategy is the overall campaign plan, which may involve complex operational patterns, activity, and decision-making that lead to tactical execution.

Tactics is the means and strategy is the beginning and the end. What I see in this clarification is that all strategists need tactics and all tactics should be a part of a strategy (otherwise, why are you doing them?). It also tells me that as a project manager, you need to be competent in both. You need to be able to carry the team through the strategic process (and speak that language) and you have to be able to execute the tactical details required to get the day to day tasks done.

Being strategic doesn’t mean you can’t also be tactical. Tactics are simply the breakdown of a strategy into its executable parts. It’s the project plan or the PMO plan or the how are we going to get all of these projects done plan!

OK, so I think I’m doing that, so why am I being told to be more “strategic”?

When you are being told to be more “strategic”, what they probably mean is that they need you to think bigger. It doesn’t mean you aren’t smart. It just means that once we have taken that strategy and turned it into its executable parts, the tactics, we need to remember to come back out of the weeds and see the bigger picture.

It might also mean that you need to speak the language of the “strategic” ones in your organization. If you talk tactics to the strategists, you will lose them. If you are unable to talk about the big picture impacts of the work you are doing, such as speaking to them about the return on investment for the project or the business shift that will happen as a result, then they won’t know that you can think bigger and be strategic.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article.

I welcome your feedback and insights. Please leave a comment below.

See you online!

Warmly,

Whether you are trying to make the case for the PMO for the first time or giving an update on the progress of the PMO, it’s extremely important that you tell a compelling story of both pain and progress. The story needs to take your audience on the journey from where they are today to a brighter future, addressing the challenges they have in getting projects completed under the current environment.

For the last 18 years, I’ve been making the case for the PMO, both as the sole person responsible for creating it, like many of you, and as a consultant guiding organizations through the process of finding the right size and fit PMO for their organization. I’ve discovered a process that works well to make that case for the PMO and it requires that we give a little thought to our audience and clearly define the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) for each stakeholder before you start “selling” them on the concept of a PMO. Then, by the way, DO NOT start selling! Instead, focus on bringing them with you so that it is a natural progression from where they are now (and the pain they are feeling) to a much more productive and effective way of getting projects done.

Here are some tips for creating a high impact presentation about your PMO, your vision, the plan for progress, and most importantly, how you will get to high IMPACT quickly. (And by the way, this applies to ANY project, not just the PMO.)

1) Keep it simple and short – no more than 5 slides. You want to grab their attention, but also make sure they know you can speak to them in executive speak – short, clear, to the point – Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF). If you make it too long, you run the risk of losing them in the process. Remember, you eat, sleep and breath PMO and project management – they do not. Keep it clear and straight forward and speak to them in a language that will resonate with them.

2) Leverage the industry perspective – get some good data (pmi.org has pulse of the profession studies you can use, as do many other organizations like CEB and Gartner) to tell the industry story about PMOs and projects – why they fail and how they succeed. Use that data to make a connection between your organization and what the industry sees. This gives them a “we are not alone” feeling when frustrated about project failure. You can also point out data that shows what successful companies that have higher project success rates are doing differently. This also shows them that your company is really not all that different. We all think our company and our PMO is so unique and different. Yeah, not really. They all have a lot of the same challenges and the same opportunities because they are all run by people who are all trying to solve problems (many times in different ways). When you can help your leadership team see that they CAN be successful just like some of the other successful companies out there, it helps them see what’s possible.

 

3) Show the short and long term plan – I would highly recommend you start small in your size and scope of the changes/services you want to implement for your PMO. You can read more about that here: Don’t boil the ocean (when creating a PMO). For the purposes of the presentation, you can list the services you want to implement now and then the ones you think you could implement down the road. Setting expectations that you are going to deliver a ton of services right away will show them two things: 1) you are taking on more than you can guarantee success on and 2) you are ready to solve all problems at once before you really have had time to see what the organization really needs and can digest. Instead, show a PMO services roadmap of what they get now and what you believe will be the next set of services you could deliver down the road once phase 1 is complete and proven successful. The key is creating alignment and focus for your stakeholders. As far as what to do first, you should NOT be starting with a tool or templates. For more info on why, keep reading.

4) Give them their WIIFM by explaining the “so what?” – Connect the services you believe will benefit the organization with the value it will create for each for your unique stakeholder groups. For example, if transparency on projects has been an issue, highlight how having a project portfolio perspective and a mechanism for reviewing that information regularly will help to draw out issues early and often and make sure that everyone is on the same page with project progress. This is also a place where you can use any successes you have had to date to help make the service real for them. Have you had a project success or project turnaround you or your team was responsible for that you can use to say “Let me give you an example of where we have had success with X” to make it personal and easy to connect to? What about an example of a project that has not gone well that you can say how your services could prevent that from happening in the future?

5) Clearly show the high impact you will have quickly – Start by doing something where you can show immediate impact and solve an immediate business problem. The business problem is never “we don’t have enough templates” because that’s just not a business problem! The business perspective is far more likely “our projects are taking too long to get done” or “our projects are costing too much” or “our projects aren’t delivering the value they were intended to deliver” kind of problems. Those business problems are not SOLVED through a tool or templates. Those problems are solved by doing better project management – planning and execution. So what could you do to help improve the project planning and execution? Is it more training for the PMs? Is it more experienced PMs? Is it coaching from some senior PMs in your team or elsewhere in the organization? There are so many ways you can create high-impact quickly, but you have to understand the business problem to do so. It might even be best for your team to take on a troubled project and rescue it. I’ve used my PMs to do this first in an area where we didn’t have a lot of buy-in. We go rescue their failing project and THEN they are willing to talk to us about engaging the PMO. That PM never went in with templates blazing, they just went in and got the problems solved, the project moving and the stakeholders aligned. There will be plenty of time to do templates later, but you have to build credibility first. Go solve a problem.

6) Do a dry run with someone – Get an outside perspective from a friend or colleague in the industry or at least in another part of the organization. You want someone that is a strong supporter of you that will be fair and honest about where you stand and what will need to be improved in order to make it fly in your organization and with your leaders. This should be someone that cares enough about your success to be honest, but will also offer suggestions on what you can do to improve or give you tips to help you tell your story in a stronger way to get to the heart of what matters for the business leaders in your organization.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article.

I welcome your feedback and insights. Please leave a comment below.

See you online!

Warmly,

Do you feel like you can’t ever catch up? Do you feel like you have countless meetings on your calendar and that leaving on time is an oh so distant memory? Maybe it’s because you are doing instead of leading.

We are doing too much doing. As managers, we find ourselves filling all of these roles we believe are necessary to manage our teams and get the work done. The challenge is that as a manager, your job is not actually to do all of the work. We believe that it’s our job to be the one they come to, the one to fix everything, the one that makes the team’s lives easier so they can focus on getting things done, right? Well, maybe not. Instead, you should be providing direction, coaching, and leadership for your team.

Are you actually doing your team or yourself any favors when you are their superhero? Maybe you need to take a step back and reevaluate your role…unless you really want to ensure job security at this level for the rest of your career and never climb the next rung of the ladder…if you aren’t replaceable, they can’t ever let you go on to bigger and better things!

As you think about how you spend your time each day, consider that you may not be as productive and helpful to your team as you are surely trying to be. What do I mean?

Here are some thoughts to consider:

• Nonstop meetings: Whenever I speak on this topic, I ask the crowd how many of them spend all day in meetings. Almost the entire room raises their hand. Sadly, I used to do this, too. I thought I had to always be “in the know” of everything going on in the organization to be effective in leading my team to get their work done. We often feel it is our job to go to meetings and “protect” our resources or fight for the things we need for our project. Instead, it might be a more effective use of your time to enable and empower your team members to step up and take ownership of their area of responsibility. If you aren’t rescuing or protecting them constantly, you can let them step up and take responsibility for representing themselves or their project within the meeting. Figure out which meetings don’t actually require your input and spend less time there and more time coaching and supporting your team.
  
   
• Manager as firefighter: Do you feel like you are spending your day putting out fires for your team? Do you find yourself bragging (or complaining) that you got to “fight fires” all day long? Do you enjoy the thrill of being able to fix things? I get it. I used to spend my entire day running from fire to fire. However, by fixing everything, my team wasn’t learning how to solve their own problems or put out their own fires. I thought I was being helpful to them and carrying a burden so that they could get other work done. However, I was left exhausted by running around and fixing things for people and they never learned the valuable skill of being able to solve their own problems. A leader will coach team members through the process of fixing their own problems so that they then have more time to lead the team instead of running from fire to fire.
• Answering questions vs. asking them: Does your team come to you all day long asking you countless questions? Are you the “expert” on the team? If so, your team has been trained that they don’t have to figure things out for themselves, but just come to you and you will give them the answers to their questions. I know it feels good and that you are valuable to your team by answering the questions. However, they are missing a key opportunity to figure things out for themselves both now and in the future. Instead, how about delegating the answering of questions or coaching your team to figure things out themselves? Empowering your team to become more self-sufficient will free you up for thinking about the future. Instead of answering questions, ask them. Questions like, “What do you think should be done?” or “How could this problem be solved?” will help them learn to think for themselves.
• Never letting your team fail: I used to think my job was to protect my team from failure. This was especially hard for me in the PMO space where we weren’t always appreciated or understood. However, by never letting my team fail and protecting them all of the time, I was actually limiting their opportunity to grow and develop their own leadership skills. In order to lead, you must fail (and then learn from it). Are you taking the opportunity to let your team figure out how to recover from their failures? If your team becomes super comfortable with you protecting them all of the time, you are limiting their opportunity to grow.
• Short term vs. long term thinking: Because you are spending all of your time answering questions, solving problems, and attending meetings, you don’t have any time to think beyond today. You have a constant backlog of things you should be doing or planning for and it all gets shoved to the far edge of your calendar, only to become your weekend or late night work. That will burn you out and prevent you from ever getting caught up. It’s a vicious cycle. Instead, consider scheduling time to think. This doesn’t mean you don’t spend all your time alone, but maybe find more efficient ways to move your team forward while also getting time to move forward your own planning.

If any of this is resonating with you, don’t worry, most of us have been there. I know I was there and it took a while to figure out how to get out of it. That’s why I share these topics with you…I wish I had me when I was you and I want to save you the time and frustration of learning things the hard way and fast track you to being the leader you were meant to be! It’s very hard to detach from a mode that feels like it’s working in the moment. Consider, however, that the things that are helping you move forward in the moment may actually be limiting your long-term goals and aspirations, both for you and for your team.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article.

I welcome your feedback and insights. Please leave a comment below.

See you online!

Warmly,

You know that feeling when you have made a difference in someone’s life? Do you know that high of having an impact through your service to others? I do and it’s absolutely amazing! Have you had that feeling when working with your team, your clients, or your business partners? If not, it might be that you are struggling with bringing those team members along with the change/project you are trying to create. For me, I get exhausted when I feel like I’m Sisyphus pushing a boulder up the hill, just to have it roll back down. Trust me, I’ve felt that feeling all too often when I was trying to implement PMOs for organizations for 15 years. It’s not fun.

But, I crave that feeling of being useful to others and as a result, I had to learn ways to help people through a transformation process. I’ve developed several techniques to ensure that I am as impactful as possible when helping organizations through change and want to share a few of them with you.

The key is using a change management technique I refer to is doing change with them, not to them. You must help them understand that this process is a journey and you have to take it with them.

Here are a few of my best practices:

1. Give them what they want before you give them what they need.

As my colleague Mike Hannan says, “You have to answer the mail.” If you don’t, they won’t listen to you when you try to give them the things that you know will help them have even greater success. We often think to ourselves, “I was hired as an expert in my field, I know what’s best for them” and you might…but they are very unlikely to hear you until you have built enough credibility with them by showing them that you can deliver on the things they want done. Then you earn enough of their trust to suggest the things that will help them improve…the things you know they need.

2. Hear them and show them that you have heard them.

People want to be heard and understood. In order for you to bring them along on a journey of change and high impact, you need to start with listening. Many leaders will do a lot of talking or explaining when what is really needed is just some good old fashioned shut up. I know that I used to be guilty of this. I would want so desperately for those that worked with me to understand why something was a certain way that I would forget to listen for the underlying tones of what they wanted to convey. Make sure you don’t respond to feedback by explaining.

When someone is showing courage and trying to share their concerns or expectations with you, just zip it and listen…and learn. Then, when it’s your turn to engage, DO NOT justify or explain your actions or thoughts. Start by showing them you hear them and understand them by reiterating what you heard. Then, ask more probing questions until you AND THEY feel you have a thorough understanding of their perspective. Once you’ve done that, you can ask them how you could help them understand your perspective or clarify your intentions and expectations. They may not be ready for it (and as impossible as it sounds, you need to be ok with that for now) or they may want to ask questions that you can answer. That keeps them in the driver seat and keeps the conversation open. If you immediately respond to them with explaining your point of view, they will see it as defensive (even if you are not trying to be) and the conversation shuts down.

Help them focus on the most important priorities.

Focus is something that many leaders struggle with regularly. Those that have it are easy to pick out. They are usually doing something like this exercise I suggest in the One Hour Manager blog post and they always seem to look super calm and have their act together. It can be an incredible feeling to have your act together for your day!

All too often, we let ourselves get caught up in the minutia of the urgent, leaving no time to focus on the important. It is way too hard to concentrate if you are constantly being interrupted by “urgent” emails and phone calls or visits to your office. Find and make time for the things that matter most. Simply put, they won’t get done otherwise. AND, if they are truly the most important, why the heck are you doing anything else? I love the concept my colleagues Karin Hurt and David Dye refer to in their book Winning Well. They call it your MIT: Most Important Thing. Make sure you help them think about their MIT everyday. Doing so will help them get off the vicious cycle of priorities getting shelved while minutia gets accomplished.

4. Help them handle shifting priorities.

Don’t you hate it when your priorities shift at work? You finally had things figured out and now your boss has gone and sent you in a different direction. Yuck.

Well, sorry. That’s life.

We deal with shifting priorities every day. You might be busy at work or running errands and you get a call from your child’s school. They are sick. Priorities shifted. You lose your job. Bam, shifting priorities, fast! You find out you are having a child, definitely a shift happening. Or even the day to day mundane, you get this killer craving for pizza. Now you are headed to the pizzeria instead of whatever else you had planned…shoot, I didn’t get to pick up the dry cleaning! 

What you are doing is moving forward with the information you have at the time and making the best decisions possible on what to focus on at that time, with that information. When the data shifts or something isn’t working, the smart business leader makes a shift. It happens. And it should.

Our role as business leaders is to help those we work with understand the necessity of shifting priorities and help our colleagues and our team rally around the priority shifts.

5. Constantly remind them that change is a journey, an evolution, not a revolution.

Sometimes it’s our own sense of urgency that drives us to want to flip a switch for change. Let’s make something happen RIGHT NOW. Totally get it. I’m not very patient, myself. However, no change is an overnight thing, even when it’s an overnight thing. There is always a period of time of adjustment for human beings when a shift has happened. The faster the shift, the harder the adjustment.

All too often, leaders will come into an organization trying to fix too much or change too much at once and it becomes more than an organization can digest. They do what my colleague, Heath Suddleson calls “organ rejection” where the change (or even worse, the person) is rejected by the organization because it wasn’t a good fit. If you treat change like an evolutionary process, it’s almost like they don’t even know it’s happening, therefore they are less likely to resist the potential threat of a shift. Even when a change is good for someone, that doesn’t mean that they will think so.

If you take the time to bring people with you through the process of creating impact, you will see the results you desire and you will feel that high that makes all of the work worth the effort.

We think and talk about spring cleaning and new year’s resolutions, but what do we do later in the year to get ourselves reset and refocused on what matters? 

We all get so busy in the day to day of doing our jobs and sometimes that means we forget to do the things we know will help us be our most productive selves.

The most important thing you can do for yourself everyday as you are setting up, running, or just trying to figure out what the heck is going on with your PMO (or project), is to take time for yourself. Take time to think!

I always saw those folks that came in super early in the morning, well before their first meeting. For many years, that wasn’t me. Between family, commuting, and a packed calendar, all I had time to do was get in and get settled before my first meetings (oftentimes more than one an hour and two places I was “supposed to be” at once). That meant that I was rushing into work, rushing into meetings and before I knew it, my day was gone. I would look back on the day as I was driving through traffic to get home, between conference calls I would even have while driving, and wonder what was actually accomplished that day. I know I was busy. I know I was in a lot of meetings. I know I was able to move a couple of projects further down the road. But was I really as productive as I could have been? No, definitely not.

Ever feel that way? 

So what do you do?

Take an hour for you. Take an hour to think and plan before you do. Aren’t we always telling our stakeholders (and even our PMs) plan, then do. “Plan, plan, plan. That’s how you make sure your project will be most successful,” you find yourself saying, again and again. OK, so then why are we caught in a vicious cycle of do, do, do, with no time to plan?

I know, there’s just no way you can squeeze in one more hour on your calendar this week, much less adding an hour per day. Trust me, if you do it, you will be forever grateful that you did. Those people that are calm all day, even under pressure, I bet they are doing the planning before the doing. You may not see it, but they probably have a process that allows them to think and prioritize before they act.

You can start today, but you don’t have to. Just figure out when you are going to start and write it down. If you just think there is no way you could block an hour on your calendar today to start, fine, don’t. Start tomorrow. Start next week. Heck, start next month. Just start. The way you ensure you will start is to write it down. Look at your calendar now and find the first place you can block an hour and do it. Then do it again at the next possible spot, even if that’s a few days or a week later. Then, keep doing it until you are far enough out on your calendar to start doing it daily and make it a recurring appointment with yourself.

Then, protect that time like your job (and sanity) depends on it, because it does.

How to use the hour:

1. 15 minutes to reflect: Take some time to ask yourself questions about your day to help you best prepare for the next one.
   • How did it go yesterday?
   • What worked?
   • What didn’t work?
   • What roadblocks kept me from progress?
   • Did I accomplish my #1 important goal for the day? If not, why not? How do I learn from that and do better today?
   • How does that win from yesterday help me prioritize my day today?
2. 15 minutes to plan: This should be obvious to us, but do we do it? Sometimes. Think about your most important goals, what must get accomplished in the day and how you are going to have the greatest impact possible. Ask yourself:
   • What is the most important task I can do today to have the greatest impact?
   • Where will I spend my energy today doing what matters?
   • How many meetings do I have on my calendar and which ones could I delegate or decline?
   • Who on my team could really use some help?
   • What do I need from my leadership team?
   • Where am I stuck and who can help me move beyond this obstacle?
   • How am I going to make time to accomplish my most important task for the day?
3. 15 minutes to manage: One of the best mechanisms I’ve ever learned for keeping your team on track and headed in the right direction is the 15 minute stand up meeting. Spend just 15 minutes a day with the team you manage and ask them three questions. Just three questions. And don’t let them go on and on with a laundry list of everything they have on their to do list for the day. That’s not the purpose of the meeting.
   • What was your biggest win from yesterday? Did you accomplish your #1 priority objective for the day? If not, why not? What lessons are to be learned so we can shift and retry? If so, why? This is a chance to thank someone else that helped, shine light on goals that are moving forward, or just bring general awareness where your priorities are impacting others.
   • What is your most important priority for today? Your goal is to get them talking to each other and you about their most important priority for the day. Verbalizing that priority with others creates a sense of accountability for the person and also creates an opportunity for alignment (or avoiding misalignment with what others believe their most important priority should be). These should be sized such that they can be accomplished in one day (otherwise everyone will just report the same thing over and over again and you won’t know if any real progress is getting made) and they show how you are progressing toward greater goals.
   • Where are you stuck? This is a great place for them to tell the team what is standing in the way of their progress. Again, not a laundry list, just the big thing (or person) that is standing in the way of them accomplishing their priorities. Don’t be tempted to solve all of the “stucks” yourself. Sometimes, there are other members of the team that can help solve the problem they have, while you keep others moving. Encourage others to step in and help their teammates solve a problem or point them in the direction of the answer they seek. Sometimes, just clarifying something in a sentence or two in response can remove someone’s perceived stuck and get them going. Do not problem solve in this meeting! There isn’t time. Answer a question, if that can keep them moving (like, “I need a yes or no decision from you on x”), but then that’s it. Keep the meeting moving.
   • Then answer those questions, yourself, for your team. Many people feel like they don’t understand their boss or what they are thinking, working on, or doing. This is your chance to help them understand where you are headed and what matters most for you as you look out for the whole team.
   • Make sure to keep it short, simple, with no more than a minute or two for each team member. Don’t worry. That doesn’t seem like much, but the commitment to meeting every day will help alleviate concerns that they aren’t getting enough air time with you. Remember, sometimes, this might be the only time during the day that you talk to your team members.
4. 15 minutes to make progress: Before your day gets out of control, and because I know you probably work in an environment where it’s not easy to just block off all day to work on your most important priority, make this 15 minutes sacred. 15 minutes to focus on your most important priority for the day. It may not seem like a lot, but sometimes it doesn’t take much to keep the momentum going for your project. Have a meeting later in the day where you are hoping to get some decisions made? Send out a quick note thanking the participants for making time for your meeting, tell them what to expect and what you want to accomplish in the meeting. Is someone waiting on you for an answer so they can proceed? Make the decision and send the email now. Is there something you can delegate so that progress is being made while you are in other meetings? Find someone that can do it for you and make it worth their while to do so. People often need a little motivating to make your #1 priority, their #1 priority. Find their WIIFM and get aligned.

Can’t make it happen in the morning? That’s OK. Do it at the end of your workday or even when you get home after your workday. Just make the time to do it.

If you do this, this will likely be the most important hour of your day. The one that tells you whether or not you are accomplishing your goals, keeps your team moving forward and even offers the chance to course correct if things aren’t going as planned.

Now, go have a great impact on the world!

Thanks for taking the time to read this article.

I welcome your feedback and insights. Please leave a comment below.

See you online!

Warmly,