Easy in theory, difficult in practice

Whether it is in one of LinkedIn's project management discussion groups or in PMI's Projectmanagement.com community, one of the more frequent requests made by members is for mentoring. Sometimes the mentee has done a good job of articulating their needs which will increase their odds of finding a suitable mentor but this is the exception, not the rule.

Project management mentors are usually senior practitioners who tend to be quite busy, hence providing limited information almost guarantees that the request won't be fulfilled in a timely fashion.

So before you post a request for a mentor, take the time to answer these five questions:

What are my objectives for the mentoring relationship?

This is a good case of where the S.M.A.R.T. test for objectives should be used - are they specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound?

This question will help you answer the next one.

Is the mentoring relationship I'm seeking short or long term?

This will help prospective mentors decide whether they are willing to commit for a longer period of time and will serve as a good sanity check on the achievability of your objectives.

The answers to these two questions might help you answer the next question.

Will I be better served with a mentor whom I can meet in person?

Depending on your objectives, you might find that geographic or temporal distance will significantly reduce the mentor's ability to help you succeed such as intimate knowledge of the local business environment. Thankfully many PMI chapters have well established mentoring programs which might help you to connect with a local practitioner.

How much effort will my mentor need to commit to help me achieve my objectives?

You might think that you have found the perfect practitioner from a personality and experience perspective but if they are too busy to effectively support you, you may need to connect with someone that has more time but less experience or you might need to adjust your expectations of the mentor's time commitment.

Finally, while many mentors provide their services on a voluntary basis, others might treat it as billable work.

Am I willing to pay for mentoring support, and if so, what is my budget?

If you don't know what you want to get out of a mentoring relationship, no mentor can help you achieve your goals.

When I first read it, I found that one of the more interesting characters in Tom Clancy's debut novel, The Hunt for Red October, was the political officer, Ivan Putin. His role is to ensure that the leadership and crew of the nuclear submarine were acting in alignment with the values and principles of the Soviet Union. He acts independent from the rest of the crew as his reporting relationship is to Moscow and not to the submarine's leadership team. While the role is expected to help the crew navigate the complex set of rules and regulations, Ivan proves to be more of an impediment than an asset.

What does this have to do with project management, you ask? At the risk of offending some readers, it is about political correctness and cancel culture.

As I approach my mid-fifties, I recognize that there are behaviors, beliefs and phrases which were generally acceptable when I was growing up which are no longer so. And while I am comfortable receiving constructive feedback from others on how I could modernize my mindset, I also recognize that if I were working full- time in a project management role I might accidentally violate one of our new norms with potentially severe consequences to myself.

These day many folks no longer remember Hanlon's Razor.

When leading projects, as the number of stakeholders increases the likelihood of causing unintentional offense will also increase. To prevent "cancellation" of project managers and their team members, perhaps we need a new PCO role to educate and help them avoid committing such errors. While that acronym normally stands for Project Control Officer (which is a support role similar to a Project Analyst or Project Coordinator) it might now stand for Political Correctness Officer.

Should our profession evolve (?) to warrant such a role, it would be advisable to remember the treatment which Ivan Putin received at the hands of Captain Marko Ramius.

(Before you correct me for misstating the iconic quote in this article's title, read ahead)

Over the past week, I've seen a number of posts from different practitioners on the Mastodon.world instance complaining about agile.

Here are a few of the examples I've read:

• Agile events or meetings taking up most of the productive time each day
• User stories not providing an understanding of a user's needs and wants
• Continuous delivery of changes resulting in significant unplanned outages
• Sprint burndown charts showing zero completed work till the very end of a sprint

Now if someone's experiences with adaptive delivery are limited to such examples it is no wonder that the reaction would be "Agile sucks!"

To which I respond #NotMyAgile.

Until someone invents a bracelet which delivers mild shocks to leaders and team members who ignore the basics of adaptive delivery, adoption challenges will persist.

And the more concurrent teams an organization has, the greater the likelihood of this unless each team has sufficient support and guidance to help them through these growing pains. An in the early days when there are very few people who know what to avoid, their capacity should be the constraint on how much work is done using agile approaches.

But barring that, team members can ask themselves the following question when they, the team as a whole or their leaders are deciding on what to do: "Does this result in greater value delivered to our customers, improvements to the quality of what we are doing or will it help improve our engagement or motivation?".

If the answer is "no", speak up.

I'm in the middle of Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton's book Leading with Gratitude. I really enjoyed one of their previous books, The Carrot Principle, which provided great case studies on the importance of recognition in the work place as well as multiple suggestions on ways to recognize colleagues without spending a cent. Leading with Gratitude is a very readable sequel to the previous one, and focuses on the importance of gratitude in improving individual, team and company performance.

I've written previously about the importance of creating a culture of appreciation within teams and provided one way to do this regularly via retrospectives, but this book provides some additional insights and ideas.

The authors mention the research conducted by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer which indicated that a significant boost to our emotions and motivation comes from making progress in work which is meaningful. The research also shows that the more often we feel that we are making progress, the more creative and productive we are likely to be.

As project managers, we tend to be goal oriented, and recognizing our team's efforts in achieving a major milestone is important. But it is equally important that we express sincere, regular gratitude for the small wins which our team members are achieving.

If you happen to work in person with your team members, it is easier to identify incremental progress and recognize it in real time. But this can also be done virtually if you are watching your team's progress via work boards or following their discussions in collaborative chat tools.

Keeping a gratitude journal (or OneNote Notebook if you prefer) is also a good way to remind yourself about what's going well and what might be acknowledged.

While it is important that leaders express gratitude, if by doing so team members start to do the same to each other, that creates a compounding effect.

One way to do this is during daily coordination events (e.g. Scrums, standups or huddles). While the focus of the events is to help the team coordinate their efforts towards the day's goals, it can also be a good opportunity for an individual on the team to do a shout out for one of their colleagues.

Gratitude can also be baked into the working agreements of the team and how team members will act on it might vary. One example of doing this which comes from sales teams is to have a bell, squeaky toy or other type of noise maker which is triggered whenever someone has done something to be grateful for.

And if you are worried about diluting the value of gratitude by expressing it more frequently or thinking that team members will get tired or numb of it, don't worry. Based on the extensive research done by the authors, they have not run into one instance where someone complained about being praised too much.

A new year has just got underway and if there is one resolution which is worth making and sticking to, it is to be more grateful.

As I've done in past years, I like to review the articles I've written over the year and share the ones which were read the most.

2022 was the first year since I started blogging when I took a hiatus of more than a couple of weeks. While I was able to write a few articles in the late Summer based on my municipal election campaign, the overall number of articles this year was less than in previous years.

Here are the top five articles based on views from my personal blog site.

1. Even though the phenomenon of Quiet Quitting has existed for as long as people have been working (I'm sure there was a caveperson going through the motions of hunting for prehistoric buffalo but whose heart wasn't really in it!), it joined the unholy triad of the Great Resignation and Quiet Firing to generate a lot of press. Little surprise then that Are your team members "quiet quitting"? was number one on the most read list.
2. After moving to Welland which doesn't have quite the same sport scene as a major metropolitan city like Toronto, I rekindled my enjoyment in the game of baseball. Our team, the Welland Jackfish, placed very well in the regular season standings but was unfortunately eliminated in the second round of the playoffs. I am hopeful that 2023 will bring the championship to Welland. Watching their games inspired me to write Project management lessons from the old ball game.
3. A chronic challenge faced by project managers in many of the companies I've worked for or consulted with is that rather than spending the majority of their time on high value, strategic activities such as effective managing stakeholder engagement or dealing with emerging risks, they are busy filling out forms and reports. So no wonder that Are your PMs drowning in paperwork? was a popular read.
4. Project management theory tells us that a charter or something equivalent is required to authorize a project's existence. Of course, real world practice varies widely which is why I wrote Are you Batman? If not, get a real charter!
5. When we learn about common techniques to reduce project durations, fast tracking and crashing are often the first two which come to mind. Scope reduction, however, is often a safer and cheaper alternative. While it may not be applicable in all cases, it is worth investigating the option of Do less, finish earlier.

While it was not in my readers' top five, I'd like to close out 2022's final article (which will be published in early January 2023) with a challenge for those of you who are making New Year's resolutions as well as those of you who run retrospectives or similar improvement ideation events: Why hold retrospectives if ideas don't get implemented?

I hope all of my readers enjoy a peaceful, prosperous, and healthy 2023!