Helping Project Managers to Help Themselves

The Scenario: 

• Greg gets promoted to a “leader of leaders” position.
• Greg assumes that he will have to increase his hours, so adopts 60-hour weeks.
• Greg doesn’t scale up his leadership style and still works as if he’s leading a small team.
• Greg’s direct reports grow increasingly frustrated with his inconsistent leadership style of sometimes micromanaging, sometimes ignoring, sometimes doing things others can do, or sometimes creating fire-drills to get deliverables done.
• Greg’s manager sees him not getting things done and puts more pressure on Greg.
• Greg steps it up to 80-hour weeks.
• Greg’s direct reports start leaving, citing Greg as an ineffective leader.
• Greg’s manager signs Greg up for a class on how to scale as a leader. Greg doesn’t go because he’s too busy.
• Greg’s family grows increasingly frustrated with his not being present and part of the family.
• Greg puts on ten pounds due to poor eating habits and lack of exercise.
• Greg’s manager makes the difficult but needed decision to demote Greg.

The Message: The above scenario may be unfamiliar to some, but to others it might mean replacing Greg’s name with their own. Scaling up as a leader doesn’t have to mean longer hours and greater sacrifice. It does mean that the leader needs to adopt some new habits and adjust expectations of both himself and others to sustain as a leader.

To effectively and sustainably scale up as a leader of leaders, consider which of these 13 principles you need to embrace:

1. Embrace that your job is more about seeking clarity, setting direction, and driving decisions versus being a doer.
2. Embrace that your world is about choices; what to do and what not to do. Sometimes your alternatives are good and bad, but many times your alternatives are worse and worser. You will find yourself at times choosing least-worst alternatives.
3. Embrace that not everyone will agree with every decision you make; your job is to ensure they understand the “why” behind each decision and can respect it.
4. Embrace the concept of intentional empowerment and think in terms of empowering others to solve problems, providing guidance, being clear on due dates, and establishing a follow-up rhythm. Empowerment is not set-it-and-forget-it or errand-running.
5. Embrace that your to-do list will not only contain things you need to do, but also follow-ups with others on things you have empowered them to own (see #4).
6. Embrace that you will need to be deliberate about scheduling nonwork time--friendship, leisure, and life commitments--and treating them with the same importance as work commitments.
7. Embrace that to succeed in scaling up you will need a leadership team you trust to get things done and with members who can grow to take your job in the future.
8. Embrace that holding others accountable is not just for your leadership team and those in your organization but is also about peers and senior leaders.
9. Embrace that others may do things differently than you. Your job is to align on the what and advise on the how, unless there is some legal or policy reason to be prescriptive on the how.
10. Embrace that being sustainable doesn’t mean you never have to sprint or re-prioritize work and personal life; it just means that you don’t chronically do it and try to sprint a marathon.
11. Embrace that you will always be genuinely seeking and candidly sharing wisdom. It’s your responsibility as a leader to not only grow yourself, but others as well.
12. Embrace that others in the organization don’t want to hear that you’re nervous; they want to hear that you’re focused. Others are drawn to the calm and prescriptive one in the room when everyone else is freaking out. You may not always know all the steps to get out of a crisis, but you should always know what success looks like and what needs to be done next.
13. Embrace that it’s lonely at the top. You need a safe, trusted advisor to help you grapple with issues who can affirm when you’re right and advise when you’re wrong.

The Consequences: 

By not taking intentional action to scale your leader of leaders influence your consequences can include:

• • •  
• Burnout – You try to do too much on your own and chronically burn the midnight oil working to get it all done.
• Reduced employee satisfaction – Your leaders won’t feel trusted to own problems and do their job.
• Late or missed deliverables – Trying to do too much on your own means more things are likely to be missed because of too many balls in the air that you can’t catch.

The Next Steps: 

• • •  
• Review the 13 principles to embrace.
• Decide which top three you need to work on.
• Review your plan with an accountability partner.
• Work on the three for three months until you’ve developed good habits, then choose the next three, and so on.

***Colleagues: I'm experimenting with a new blogging format to more effectively give you insightful | concise | direct nuggets. I'm calling it the BTL (Building Thriving Leaders) BriefBlog. Be honest with me; would love to know what you think!

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Messenger or Manager: A BTL BriefBlog Episode

The Scenario: The project manager is providing a weekly status report to the project sponsor

• PM: The vendor told me yesterday they will miss their delivery date by a month.
• Sponsor: Just a month ago I gave you the money you asked for to get the project done. What's the issue?
• PM: The vendor is telling me it's more complex than they thought. They can't deliver.
• Sponsor: What??? I gave you what you asked for and now you're telling me they can't get it done?
• PM: That's what they're telling me.
• Sponsor: What are you doing about it?
• PM: Well, we have a weekly status meeting and will discuss again next week.
• Sponsor: Have you escalated to their management?
• PM: No.
• Sponsor: So you're telling me that we just have to accept it?
• PM: Well, I can try talking to them again.
• Sponsor: Get them on a call, and include me.
• PM: Ok.
• Sponsor (thinking to himself about the PM): Delivers bad news, no plan to address, I thought he was a PM; he's just a messenger.

The Message: It's good to provide early warning to potential issues, but it’s bad when you don’t provide the next steps you're taking or what help you need. This labels you as a messenger rather than the manager you’re expected to be.

The Consequence: Issues without next actions or asks gives the impression you're not taking ownership of the issue and you're expecting someone else to manage through it.

The Take-Away: Don't be an issue messenger. Define the issue, articulate what next steps are, and be clear on what and when you expect others to do to help squash the issue.

*** Colleagues: This post is very personal to me. My hope is to increase awareness on disability inclusion and help you consider those with disabilities when discussing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) within your organization.

The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) Special intelligence Unit 9900 is dedicated to everything related to geography, including mapping, interpretation of aerial and satellite photographs, and space research. Within this unit there is another, smaller unit of highly qualified soldiers who can detect even the smallest details—the ones usually undetectable to most people.

These soldiers all have one thing in common; they are on the autism spectrum. Their job is to take visual materials from satellite images and sensors in the air. With the help of officers and decoding tools, they analyze the images and find specific objects within the images that are necessary to provide the best data to those planning missions. The IDF has also found that soldiers with autism can focus for longer periods of time than their neurotypical counterparts.

This story speaks to me personally. My son Trevor was diagnosed with autism at age five. The only thing I knew about autism at the time was Dustin Hoffman’s Rainman character. Raising a son on the spectrum drastically changed my point of view on disability inclusion, seeing strengths through the challenges, and cultivating those strengths while accommodating the challenges. He’s a grown man today, living on his own, working, paying his bills, saving money, and building relationships. His strengths outweigh his challenges.

The same reckoning with his strengths and challenges can lead to success with overseeing how an organization thrives, but how do you begin to ensure inclusion of disabled people’s strength in the workplace at scale with at an organization level? It has to start with leadership. 

​The Center for Disease Control and Prevention defines a disability as “any condition of the body or mind (impairment) that makes it more difficult for the person with the condition to do certain activities (activity limitation) and interact with the world around them (participation restrictions).” A disability can:

• Be present at birth (i.e. down syndrome)
• Become apparent during childhood (i.e. autism)
• Be related to an injury (i.e. spinal cord injury)
• Be associated with a longstanding condition (i.e. diabetes), which can cause a disability (i.e. vision loss).

In 2018 Accenture published an outstanding research report entitled Getting to Equal: The Disability Inclusion Advantage. Some of the statistics in the report are eye-opening:

• 29 percent of working-age Americans with disabilities participate in the workforce compared with 75 percent of Americans without a disability
• There are 15.1 million Americans of working age living with a disability
• If companies embraced disability inclusion, they would gain access to a new talent pool of 10.7 million people.

The Disability Equality Index (DEI) is a joint project between the American Association of People with Disabilities and Disability:IN (formerly known as the US Business Leadership Network). DEI’s primary goal is to provide a benchmarking tool to help companies assess disability inclusion policies and practices in six key areas:

1. Culture and Leadership
2. Enterprise-Wide Access
3. Employment Practices
4. Community Engagement
5. Supplier Diversity
6. Non-US Operations

Organizations complete a survey (DEI estimates between 30-40 hours to complete), send it into DEI, and receive an objective score on their disability inclusion practices and opportunities for improvement. DEI puts respondents achieving 80 percent or better on their website, with companies like Accenture, Microsoft Corp., AT&T, The Walt Disney Co., Capital One Financial Corp., and Boeing Co. achieving a score of 100 percent. DEI has an advisory committee comprised of corporate and nonprofit executives and advocates who advise on benchmarking topics and questions.

While it’s a commitment to complete the survey, it gives an organization an honest and introspective lens into their culture, policies, and practices on disability inclusion and is valuable to help identify areas where an organization needs to improve.

This isn’t fluff stuff. The Accenture report notes several tangible results of those organizations that embraced a disability inclusion culture.

• Companies that were DEI disability champions (score of 80% or better) were twice as likely to have higher total shareholder returns than peer companies.
• Companies that weren’t disability champions but had improved their DEI scores over time were four times more likely to have higher total shareholder returns than peer companies.
• Staff turnover is up to 30 percent lower when a well-run disability community outreach program is in place.

If you're passionate about disability inclusion, make it a priority to work with the senior leadership team to understand your company’s disability inclusion position and ensure disability inclusion is baked into the culture, not just an add-on project. Here are three things you can do to get started:

• Use the DEI Benchmark Survey to assess your culture as-is. Whether or not you submit your responses to DEI for scoring, at a minimum, download and complete the survey to understand your company’s strengths and weaknesses on disability inclusion. You’ll at least get an understanding of where your company need to focus on the disability inclusion journey.
• Find a senior leadership disability inclusion champion. Identify a member of your organization's senior leadership team to be an internal and external-facing voice on disability inclusion for your organization. The executive should be known as a person with a disability or be a passionate supporter of people with disabilities. As with any other inclusion leader, passion is key.
• Be a disability inclusion advocate. Maybe you have a disability or someone in your life has a disability. Don't wait for someone else to be passionate about disability inclusion. Take the reins.

Disability inclusion is not just a social responsibility buzzword meant to enhance reputation. There’s tangible business value to be had. Be the change agent to ensure your organization is promoting a disability inclusion culture where the business benefits can be realized.

Colleagues: I originally wrote this article for board members and their interactions with executive teams. The parallels apply to a leader-follower relationship so decided to publish the article as-is and give you some nuggets that you can apply to your leadership journey.

Pat hated giving board updates. As the head of integration of a recent acquisition, Pat was required to provide monthly updates on the integration to the board. There was one board member, Cary, who focused on how the integration project was being done, questioning Pat on initiative processes, minor deliverables, and detailed assignments. Cary was experienced in acquisition integration and spoke from a position of authority, but Pat was also an experienced professional with six successful integration projects completed. Because of Cary’s experience and strong personality, the board chair permitted Cary to deep-dive on minutiae. Pat’s frustration with being micro-managed boiled over to the rest of the executive team, creating a tone of distrust between the board and executive team. Pat’s updates became less and less transparent, with Pat reasoning that more information was only fodder for Cary’s drilling. The integration project ultimately was completed, but the trust relationship between the board and executive team was significantly eroded.

Boards are filled with experience and wisdom. Its members know, through success and failure, how to get things done, the pitfalls to avoid, and not to touch a hot stove. Their insight is crucial to the success of an organization. That insight, though, doesn’t mean a board and its members have license to over-function with its CEO and executive team. Unchecked, a CEO and executive team can feel micro-managed due to being told not only what should be done, but how it should be done. Being overly prescriptive on the how is a material pain point in the board/executive team trust relationship.

Being clear about defining and understanding the what/how roles and accountabilities is crucial to a healthy, functioning board/executive team relationship. When done well, the executive team is able to execute without disruptive oversight, and the board members are transparently and satisfactorily informed about key initiatives. When done poorly, nervous board members, with the best of intention, can actually disrupt work through increased updates, shadow management, and unsolicited advice on how to get things done. I call this behavior “love-bombing.” When an executive’s confidence is shaken on a key initiative for which he or she is accountable, the exec will tend to increase his or her involvement in the initiative, requesting more frequent updates and deeper dives on issues, looking for ways he or she can help. In an effort to be helpful, the exec actually creates more work for the initiative leader and team to calm the exec’s nervousness. It’s no different with a board. The board will want to help and offer its collective experience, but in the process can delve too much into the how, putting a strain on the board/executive team trust relationship.

Managing and controlling the what and how relationship between the board and executive team falls squarely on the CEO and board chair to clearly articulate the what/how relationship and set the tone with its board members to align on the what and advise on the how. To help establish a fruitful what/how relationship the chair and CEO should employ these actions:

1. Set what/how expectations with the board – The board chair and CEO have to set the tone with the rest of the board on the board’s place in what/how alignment. Being purposeful about the distinction not only sets expectations with the board, CEO, and executive team but also serves as a good reminder when a board member over-reaches. Both the CEO and board chair have the responsibility to ensure alignment is in place and call a time-out when discussions get in the weeds.
2. Get crisp on what “done” looks like – For an initiative which will include regular board updates, ensure there is a clear understanding of what needs to be done, why it’s being done, when it’s to be done by, and who’s accountable for getting it done. Having a good grasp and concurrence of what, why, when, and who helps board members stay in their lane and focus on results.
3. Be deliberate with initiative updates – “Going dark” on initiative progress on what, why, when and who breeds nervousness among board members and can instigate board members delving into how things should be done. Provide a regular initiative status and proactively realign what, why, when and who if necessary.
4. Solicit advice then decide what to do with it – Boards generally have a great cross-section of experience and wisdom to contribute, and it would be foolish for a CEO and executive team to not tap into that experience. Be thoughtful about soliciting advice, then decide if the advice makes sense to implement given the full context of the initiative. 
5. Use committees to do deeper dives and help on the how – Depending on the initiative it may make sense to leverage one or more board members to advise on a deeper level to better ensure initiative success. The CEO and board chair should assess whether a board committee is necessary, then be thoughtful on its setup and review rhythm.
6. Don’t put an initiative at legal, regulatory, or compliance risk – A key function of a board is to help an organization identify, assess, and mitigate risk. Board members should continue to be on the lookout for legal, regulatory or compliance risks and speak up when one is identified, even if it delves into how an initiative is done. The board chair and CEO should clearly set this expectation with the rest of the board and executive team.
7. Break the rule in extraordinary situations – There may be some situations, i.e. material strategy misalignment or CEO performance issues, where broader deeper dives are necessary for the sake of the organization. The board chair should make those calls and deliberately drive those discussions.

Trust is crucial to a healthy board/executive team relationship. A key driver of trust is clear articulation of the what/how accord and where the board and its members need to function. Be proactive in defining it and holding both the board and executive team accountable in the relationship.

Tom looked at the clock.

“Midnight,” he said to himself as he took a sip of coffee. The milestone review for the second phase of the project was the next day. As he updated the project plan, he came across the organizational change management tasks that were supposed to be done in phase one that got pushed to phase two. He saw that the tasks were still zero percent complete.

“We’ll pick them up later,” he said to himself as he added the tasks to the phase three workplan.

During the milestone review the next day, Tom’s manager, Gayle, asked about the incomplete organizational change management tasks.

“Ran out of time,” Tom said. “We’ll get them done in phase three.”

“Isn’t that what you told me three months ago during our phase one review?” Gayle asked.

Tom looked down. “Um, yeah,” he said.

“Phase three is even more intense than phase two, what makes you think you’ll get the OCM tasks done in phase three if you didn’t get them done in phase one or two?”

“Gayle, we’ll get them done,” Tom said.

“OK, I’m holding you to it, Tom.”

Three months later, at the phase three milestone review, Tom walked through the workplan, then got to the OCM tasks. Tom knew what was coming.

“Still not done,” Gayle said as Tom avoided her gaze.

~~~~~

Before we go any further, I want to articulate a principle that I’ve not only seen in countless projects but also experienced personally:

The closer you get to a project delivery date, the less time you have to complete tasks kicked down the road from prior project phases.

It’s rare that availability to do work increases as the project gets closer to its final delivery date, and that tasks deferred throughout the project now have extra time to get done. Typically, the project team is working hard to accomplish the only-most-crucial tasks to meet delivery, with other tasks either deferred to post-release or not done at all. The attitude is that those tasks can be completed later when there’s more time. I have two problems with this:

1. If the task was important enough to include in the original plan, then why is it now unimportant enough to be pushed to tomorrow (or not done at all?)
2. Tomorrow (almost) never comes.

To avoid the temptation of kicking tasks down the road only to have them die on the vine, give these five takeaways a look:

1. Don’t short-change planning – Pick your quote: Fail to plan, plan to fail; You don’t have time to do it right, but you always have time to do it over; Measure twice, cut once. The bottom line is to have a realistic and believable plan that focuses on deliverables, has an understood critical path, specifically named task owners (not “the team”), and clear dates. Just make sure the plan supports the project and doesn’t become a project in and of itself.
2. Resist the urge to push tasks off – OK, sometimes hard choices need to be made and something might need to get pushed off to a later date. This becomes a problem when it’s the rule more than the exception. If you chronically push tasks off because you’ve run out of time, perhaps something in your planning needs to change.
3. When you have to push tasks off, articulate the implications – Putting something off until later or cutting the task altogether means the project will incur some incremental risk (assuming the task was value-added in the first place). Have mitigation in place for managing any incremental risk.
4. Adjust the plan when things hit the fan – I’ve seen it many times: a project starts out great, the plan is reviewed on a regular basis, life is good. Then something goes wrong. More often than not, the plan either doesn’t get updated to reflect reality or it gets abandoned altogether. Keep the plan current and drive decisions on hard choices when tasks must be deferred. Just remember to articulate the implications (see takeaway 3) of the choice. Keep the plan current and realistic.
5. If it’s truly not necessary, then cut it – When planning your project, do a reality scrub to ensure only must-need tasks are included. Ask yourself, “What’s the consequence if this task isn’t done?” If there’s no clear consequence, then consider not doing it. Just make sure the project team agrees with cutting the task before it goes in the shredder.

Remember, the closer you get to a project delivery date, the less time you have to complete tasks kicked down the road. Resist the urge to push tasks off until tomorrow, because tomorrow almost never comes.