Helping Project Managers to Help Themselves

The Scenario: 

1. Cary is a program manager at a large consumer products company.
2. Cary has been tasked by his management to drive cost and schedule completion for a critical initiative.
3. The critical initiative leadership team includes representatives from product management and software engineering.
4. Cary regularly meets with his product management and engineering peer managers to understand cost and schedule status, identify any scope issues, and document barriers to successful initiative completion.
5. Despite the regular meetings, Cary feels he is left out of critical conversations between his product management and engineering peers, only being informed after the fact versus being invited up front to provide input to the conversation.
6. Cary has repeatedly asked his peers to include him in important conversations, yet he continues to be left out.
7. Cary is frustrated and can’t understand why he’s left out.

The Message:

Regardless of your title or position, it’s likely you’ve experienced being left out of critical conversations only to be informed of decisions you could have provided input for. Definitely frustrating, particularly when your management is holding you accountable for something that you don’t have control over. I understand the frustration, but want to peel back the banana on this and focus on not the what, but the why. Why are you left out of critical conversations? By understanding the why, you may unearth some actions to help you provide better value so that peers will want to include you.

Look at these eight reasons for things you might need to change to make others want to include you:

1. You were meant to be included but were innocently omitted – The inviter made an honest mistake of not including you. Just watch out for chronic omissions with mea culpa.
2. The meeting was perceived to be a waste of your time – The inviter felt including you would have wasted your time and chose not to include you.
3. You’re viewed as too busy to participate – The inviter chose to not include you because they wanted to let you focus on more important things.
4. You’re an unproductive disruption – The inviter views you as someone who will disrupt work and increase the time and frustration to get through the conversation.
5. You’re viewed as not providing value – The inviter doesn’t see you as providing anything material to the conversation. You’re not necessarily disruptive, just not providing a helpful perspective.
6. You don’t show up even when invited – Your tendency is to not show up for discussions, so the inviter has given up on including you.
7. You have a reputation for not following up – Even when you are included in discussions and are assigned actions, you don’t follow up as expected.
8. You don’t align to a political agenda – The inviter is intentionally excluding you because your point of view runs counter to an idea or actions they want to sell and don’t want you to disrupt.

The Consequences:  When you fail to address reasons you’re left out of conversations, your consequences could include:

• Sub-optimized solutions – Solutions to problems needing your input isn’t included.
• Working to cross-purposes – You’re operating from old information or you don’t have full context.
• Wasted time and money – You’re either doing things that don’t need to be done or not doing things that need to be done.

The Next Steps: 

• Review and understand the above reasons.
• Be honest with yourself about which of the reasons apply to you.
• For items out of your control, like number 8 above, ask for help from management if you’re unable to make headway with the inviter.
• Put a specific action plan in place for how you will address the applicable reasons.
• Use a trusted advisor to keep you accountable.

The Scenario: 

1. Bert was an external hire with an impressive resume showing how he managed a team of individual contributors.
2. Wanting to make a good impression, in his first few team meetings, Bert tried hard to befriend the team, using humor and self-deprecating comments to appeal to them. Things started off great.
3. After a month on the job, the team started seeing inconsistencies with what Bert had on his LinkedIn profile and how he verbally described his experience.
4. The team started asking him questions about how he handled situations in his last job, but many of Bert’s answers were evasive and vague.
5. Bert missed a crucial deadline from his boss Eva. He never notified her that he would miss the deadline and she had to press him for the status.
6. Bert’s interaction with his team became less frequent and more evasive.
7. Eva grew increasingly concerned with Bert’s lack of credibility and started having skip level discussions with Bert’s team.
8. After three months of giving Bert an opportunity to establish credibility, Eva acknowledged that she made a mistake in hiring Bert. He was moved to an individual contributor role to give him a chance to turn things around.
9. Bert was eventually terminated, having never gotten over the credibility hump.
10. Five years later, one of Bert’s former team members was a manager at a new company. Bert’s resume came across her desk. “No way,” she thought as she moved on to the next resume.

The Message:

Earlier in my career, I attributed credibility primarily to what I knew and how I could demonstrate my knowledge to those around me. As I experienced the hard knocks of becoming a leader, I came to realize that my knowledge was only a small part of building my credibility. Having sustainable credibility as a leader means:

• Knowing what you are expected to know and admitting when you don’t know something
• Walking the credibility talk with customers, colleagues, leaders, and followers
• Delivering what you say when you say it will be delivered

As a scaled-up leader, you’ll be assessing the credibility of your followers to ensure they can drive results. This means you have internalized what makes a person credible. Internalizing the credibility characteristics means you practice them yourself. Assessing the credibility of others when you yourself have credibility issues is like the person who lives in a glass house throwing stones at others. Leaders are expected to be sustainably credible if they want to be followed.

Need to work on your credibility? See which of these 12 tips might help you get over the credibility hump:

1. Match actions to words – There’s a reason this is first on the list. People watch what you do and listen to what you say. If there’s a mismatch, your actions will be believed over your words. This is a huge credibility killer. Always ensure words match actions.
2. If you don’t know something, say so – It’s cringing to watch someone be evasive or try to guess their way through an unfamiliar topic. If you don’t know something, say, “I don’t know, but here’s when I’ll follow up with the answer.”
3. Think and act “win-win” with colleagues – Colleagues want to trust you. If you look at your interactions as, “for me to win you have to lose,” then others will view you as untrustworthy regardless of your command of the subject matter.
4. Don’t position yourself as least-worst – There are times, like competing for a job, when you do want to win over colleagues. Winning doesn’t mean berating others to make yourself look better—that says, “I may be bad, but he’s worse.” By all means, note bad behavior when you see it; just don’t use it to make yourself look good.
5. Don’t oversell what you know or what you’ve done – I’ve seen many resumes where someone has oversold themselves, but when talking with them I saw a cavernous gap between reality and resume. Be accurate in what you know, what you’ve done, and results you’ve delivered.
6. Don’t confuse credibility with charisma – Great leaders typically possess charisma that enhances their credibility. Not-so-great leaders rely on charisma to cover up credibility gaps. Charisma is great, but don’t let it take the place of credibility. You’ll get found out over time.
7. Don’t let a due date silently slip by – Being credible means you do what you say, when you say you’ll do it. Going silent on an expected action raises questions about whether you’ll do what you said. Don’t underestimate this trait; it’s crucial not only for you to do but also for you to hold others accountable when they promise something by a certain date.
8. Explain the why – As a leader, followers want to know the rationale behind your thinking, particularly when you’re making a potentially unpopular decision. Get used to asking yourself why you’re taking a particular action, even if you don’t have to explain it to others. Building this habit will be helpful when you have to expose your decision rationale to others.
9. Be the same persona all the time – Are you an in-person Jekyll and a social media Hyde? While you may think it’s safe to express yourself freely online, colleagues, customers and followers will see your online comments and extrapolate them to predict how they may be treated by you. Don’t think for a minute you can keep your personas separate.
10. Admit it when you’re wrong – Credible people not only freely admit when they’re wrong about something, but they can learn from it. Mistakes are going to happen; those who can’t admit it or make the same mistake over and over again never get over the credibility hump.
11. Plan and deliver results realistically – At the end of the day, credible people plan and deliver results based on reality. Note I’m not using the “under-commit-and-over-deliver” baloney mantra that weak leaders use. Plan to reality, manage risks and issues, ask for help when necessary, and deliver.   
12. Don’t undercut your own credibility – Poking a bit of fun at yourself or admitting shortcomings are good signs of a confident leader. However, when overdone you could inadvertently convince others you might not have the credibility to be followed. If it looks like you’re not confident in your own ability, why would others view you as confident?

The Consequences:  By not taking intentional action to build your credibility, your consequences could include:

• You won’t be believed – No amount of words can make a non-credible person credible. Colleagues, customers and followers simply won’t believe what you have to say.
• Your opportunities will be limited – A leader won’t give you a big problem to solve if they don’t think you have the credibility to solve it.  
• Your non-credibility ghosts will follow you – Simply put, people have very long memories, particularly when those who are expected to be credible fall short. Today’s colleague or follower could be tomorrow’s potential customer or boss.

The Next Steps: 

1. Look through the 12 tips and decide on your three greatest opportunity areas.
2. Review your assessment with a trusted advisor who is willing to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.
3. Commit to being held accountable by your advisor.
4. Put actions in place to address your top three.
5. Review your progress with your advisor.
6. After you’ve put new habits in place to address your top three, pick the next three, and so on.

The Scenario: 

1. Anita promotes Ed to a leader of leaders position from a position leading a small team of individual contributors.
2. Ed is excited about the increase in responsibility and is determined to show Anita he can handle the job.
3. Ed’s calendar gets bombarded with meetings and his to-do list grows.
4. Ed’s leadership team grows dismayed with Ed’s lack of responsiveness, urgent 3 a.m. email requests, and canceled one-on-ones.
5. Ed’s daughter is disappointed with dad missing yet another Saturday soccer game.
6. Ed misses a critical deliverable for Anita, forcing her to have an uncomfortable discussion with her boss. Anita takes the blame, not wanting to throw Ed under the bus.
7. Anita’s offers to coach Ed go unheeded because Ed is too busy to be coached.
8. Anita makes the difficult decision to tell Ed he will be demoted back to his old job.
9. Ed decides to leave the company for another job, rather than get demoted.
10. Nine months later at his new company, Ed gets promoted and repeats steps two through nine. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The Message: Unfortunately, Ed’s situation is all too common for those scaling up to a leader of leaders role. Increases in demands can’t be met simply by working longer and harder; at some point, an important commodity—time--dries up, because the leader can’t get everything done and keep balance. Just like the little pig that built the brick house the big bad wolf couldn’t blow down; the leader needs to build strong time-management skills early so he can better scale to the demands a leader of leaders faces. Waiting to become a leader of leaders (or worse, not building strong time management skills at all) means the leader won’t be sustainable as a scaled-up leader.

Want to get better at time management? Give these nine time-management habits a look:

1. Express to-dos in terms of deliverables – I like to think of this as “do vs. done.” What needs to be produced for the to-do to be satisfied? It could be a presentation, email, or meeting notes. Articulating the deliverable helps you better focus on what has to happen to satisfy the deliverable and reduce distractions in getting to “done.”
2. Stop at good enough – When defining your deliverable, think of the minimum requirement that needs to be met, create your deliverable to meet the requirement, then STOP. Spending extra over-achiever time on a deliverable only means you have less time to work on other things. Under-promise and over-deliver is fertile ground for wasted time. Be clear on what you need to produce, do it, then move on to the next deliverable.
3. Put anything that consumes your time on your calendar – Most people I’ve worked with use their calendars pretty much exclusively for meetings and treat time to get things done as off-calendar activity. Bad move. If something consumes time in your day, it deserves to be scheduled in your calendar. I schedule everything, including work time, personal activities, socializing with friends, exercise time, and family commitments.
4. Immediately schedule short-term to-dos on your calendar – Suppose you are given an action item to produce an important deliverable by end of the week, and you accept the item without any idea when you’ll get it done. As a result, you’re not only likely to work extra hours, but the deadline hangs over your head. Put it in your calendar right away with a realistic estimate of how long it will take. This may mean moving other lower-priority things around or could mean additional hours, but at least you’ve scheduled the work in.
5. Block out some regular time to work on important but not urgent tasks – I’d place a wager that you’ve got a list of action items you’d like to get done but never get the time to do. Block out some time on your calendar on a recurring basis to work on the important but not urgent items.
6. Put a “what I got done” meeting on your calendar at the end of your work week – On Monday mornings I plan out what I want to get done by the end of the week, then put a Friday 5 p.m. meeting on my calendar listing out those things I committed to getting done. Just remember to schedule the time during the week to get those items done.
7. Be realistic about what you put on your calendar – If you schedule time for a task on your calendar thinking there’s not a snowball’s chance in a hot oven you’ll get it done, you’re setting yourself up for failure. You need to respect your calendar as credible, otherwise, you won’t follow it. Be realistic about how long something will take.
8. Reward yourself with a bit of blue-sky time – I have a two-hour recurring appointment in my calendar that I call “blue-sky time.” I can use my blue-sky time however I want; maybe it’s working on an idea for a new book, going to Costco, meeting a friend for coffee, or watching a movie. Yours may be longer or shorter or a different frequency; it’s totally up to you.
9. You own your calendar, it doesn’t own you – Look, stuff happens that may mean you’ve got to defer a meeting, move a deliverable or burn the midnight oil. By all means, move things around, but make sure you’re not chronically pushing things off due to poor planning.

The Consequences:  By not taking intentional action to manage your time, your consequences could include:

• You’re less effective – Not managing your calendar well means you get less done, it takes longer to get things done, or you steal time from other areas of your life to get things done.
• You’re not sustainable – As you continue to scale as a leader and your problems get bigger, the importance of keeping a disciplined calendar grows. I’ve seen way too many leaders burn out when they took bigger jobs because they didn’t have good time-management skills and worked harder versus smarter.
• You’re limiting your own advancement – When a leader’s time looks out of control, his promotability can be impacted. The leader’s boss could see him as incapable of handling additional responsibility if he is already hanging on by a thread.
• You’re negatively impacting your succession plan – If a leader’s followers see the leader with a poor quality of life, difficulty keeping up with commitments, or chronically missing meetings, why would they want a job that looks miserable? Attracting the very best as a successor means making the job look sustainable.     

The Next Steps: 

1. Commit to getting better at time management.
2. Get an “as-is” picture by putting everything that consumes time in your calendar.
3. Assess yourself using the nine time-management habits and decide which ones you need to work on.
4. Pick the top three habits and commit to working on them, then the next three, and so on.
5. Don’t slip back into old habits, particularly when things get really busy.

The Scenario: 

• Samir had a reputation for being the best in his field.
• Samir could solve any customer’s problem with adeptness and speed at a fair price.
• Samir enjoyed his reputation and relished solving his customers’ problems.
• Over time, fewer and fewer customers visited Samir.
• Samir was dismayed, “I know this product better than anyone, yet my business is declining!”
• Samir tried everything--more advertising, special price promotions, but nothing seemed to work.
• With bills mounting, Samir decided he had to close up shop.
• On March 1, Samir’s Typewriter Repair shut its doors for good. He had to take a job he hated just to pay the bills.

The Message: Over the years, the Swiss army knife has become a figure of speech for having the right tool for the right situation. The tools, which can include a nail file, large blade, wood saw, scissors, and screwdriver, are designed to solve a range of problems. Similarly, a well-balanced professional will have the right mix of skills to fit the needs of their current (and future) jobs. Those who understand and intentionally pursue the skills needed to advance their career know exactly the tools needed in their career Swiss army knife. They understand which tools are well-defined, those that don’t exist, and those that need to be sharpened to function well. A Swiss army knife that only has a screwdriver won’t do well when a saw is needed; similarly, skills that are applicable to a specific function (like the typewriter repair skill), may not be applicable to more pressing problems (like computer repair). Your job is to know what your Swiss army knife needs to contain and how to build the skills to complete your own Swiss army knife.

Give these eight tips a look to see how you can intentionally build your Swiss army knife skills:

1. Create your pro forma resume – Think about what you’d like to be known for as a professional then write a pro forma resume that demonstrates your achievements. By all means, be aspirational but also be realistic enough to motivate yourself.
2. Match your current skills to your pro forma resume – Identify the skills needed to achieve the pro forma, then categorize them by those you’ve already mastered, those you still need to work on, and those you don’t at all possess.  
3. Create your plan - For skills that you have yet to master, articulate experiences you need to address the skill gaps, such as new jobs, additional training and certifications, or volunteer work. Know what you still need and put things in motion to address the need.
4. Leverage a skill to learn a skill – This is something I did a lot in my career. For every new job I took, I brought something into the job that was of value to the hiring manager, knowing full well that I would build new skills to take out of the job.
5. Commit you’ll get out of your comfort zone – Learning new skills means hard work, increased potential for failure, and possible uncomfortable interactions with those who have mastered skill areas you’re still working on. Joyfully embrace being out of your comfort zone; it’s worth it.
6. Don’t set yourself up for failure – Getting out of your comfort zone is good, so long as you have aligned expectations between yourself and your leader on what you do and don’t know. I’ve seen too many people oversell themselves to get a job only to crash and burn because the leap was too great and the expectations too high. Be transparent with what you do and don’t know and ensure your leader is willing to work with you to grow those skills you have yet to master.
7. Realistically execute – When given the opportunity to master a new skill, do all you can to capitalize on it. But, it’s crucial to know upfront your level of desire and ability to take on that opportunity. For example, someone with significant out-of-work activity, like a new baby or ailing spouse/partner, may not be able to take on significant skill-building and keep life-balance. Don’t compartmentalize your life; look at everything you’ve got going on and decide how much change you can accept.
8. Periodically review your Swiss army knife – Samir had two issues; his Swiss army knife was dominated by one tool that over time became obsolete. Make it a point to periodically review your Swiss army knife skillset to avoid going the route of the typewriter repair person.

The Consequences:  By not being mindful of the skills you need in your Swiss army knife you risk the following:

• Wasted time and effort – You squander opportunities either building skills you don’t need or not building skills you desperately need to achieve your pro forma resume.
• Obsolescence – Your market value diminishes because you possess yesterday’s skills that don’t align with today’s problems.
• Career dissatisfaction – Your career aspirations nosedive because you’ve chosen not to grow with the times and equip yourself with the tools you need.

The Next Steps: 

• Create your pro forma resume.
• Articulate the skills you need to achieve your pro forma.
• Be realistic about skills you possess and those you don’t.
• Put a plan in place to get the skills you need.
• Use a trusted advisor or colleague to help you on your Swiss army knife journey.

The Scenario: 

• Jake is sitting alone in his luxury penthouse overlooking Central Park.
• Jake looks down at his scribbled notes from his doctor visit. Cancer stage 4… too late for chemo… weeks to months left.
• Jake’s wife left 20 years ago after his affair. She’s since remarried and cut off all contact with him.
• Jake tries to call his kids, but neither picks up. They won’t talk to him and haven’t since the divorce.
• After Jake retired from his job as CEO, the coworkers he thought were his friends stopped calling.
• Jake takes out a pen and paper and writes “My Legacy” at the top.
• Jake stares at the blank page, pen ready to write, mind unable to come up with anything.

The Message: You may know a Jake, someone who is in their later years, and unable to point to anything significant other than his or her career and its financial fruits. For some, this may be their definition of contentment. In my years of experience, though, I’ve seen way too many people look back on their lives with regret; not acknowledging those things that are really important earlier in life.

It’s not too late to avoid being a Jake. It takes defining a practical and sustainable purpose statement--the north star that guides your actions. Then living it.

Not sure where to start? I’ve created a contentment assessment to help you think through areas in your life that are most important to you. It helps you develop a practical and sustainable purpose statement to guide you when to say yes to some things and no to others. Get started by downloading the assessment and doing the following:

• Acknowledge and understand each of the nine contentment areas:

1. Career Contentment - How content you are in your current and future career potential
2. Family Contentment - How content you are with your family life
3. Health Contentment - How content you are in your physical and mental health
4. Friendship Contentment - How content you are with relationships built and maintained with friends and loved ones
5. Financial Contentment - How content you are in your current and future financial status
6. Leisure Contentment - How content you are with quality time spent on leisurely activities
7. Spiritual Contentment - How content you are with your spiritual life
8. Giving Contentment - How content you are with your pay-it-forward giving
9. Legacy Contentment - How content you are with the legacy you are leaving behind should you die today

• Assess how important each of these contentment areas is to you.
• For areas that are extremely or very important, define your contentment goal and what you need to do to achieve it.
• Construct your purpose statement based on extremely or very important areas like: “Have a fulfilling and sustainable career with fair and equitable compensation BUT not at the cost of friendships, leisure, and life experiences.”
• Hold yourself accountable (or work with an accountability partner).

The Consequences:  By not taking intentional action to define your purpose statement your consequences could include:

• Time/priorities imbalance: Things you think are important don’t get the attention they need.
• Burnout: Too much work at the expense of other areas isn’t sustainable.
• Relationship neglect: Other people in your life don’t get the attention they need/deserve.

The Next Steps: 

• Download and complete the contentment assessment.
• Create your purpose statement.
• Be patient with yourself; it may take some reflection time to come up with a statement that energizes you.
• Live it, even if you need an accountability partner to do it.