Succeeding With Best Practices and Methodologies

Today is Memorial Day, an American holiday, honoring the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. It was originally known as Decoration Day. The origins of it came years following the Civil War and only became an official federal holiday in 1971.

This practice of honoring those who have fallen in battle dates back to the ancient Greeks and Romans who held annual days of remembrance for loved ones which included the soldiers. The first known public tributes to war dead was in 431 BC, when Pericles, an Athenian general and statesman, delivered a funeral speech praising the sacrifice and valor of those killed in the Peloponnesian War.

Each of us as citizens of the planet earth have to hold our elected officials accountable from taking our rights away and becoming tyrants causing pain to us and our neighbors and thus avoiding the sacrifices of our brave soldiers.

It's beginning of the new year and we make grand resolutions that we would fail to achieve. Studies show that by the end of the year only 10% of the people will keep their New Year resolutions. Don't make overarching goals which will be unachievable. I use SMART goal setting:

S - specific

M - measurable

A - achievable

R - realistic

T - time-bound

Here are my 5 Project Management Resolutions for your New Year:

Stay Healthy

Learn About Your Team

Communicate More

Provide Business Value

Celebrate Wins

Stay Healthy

Staying physical and mentally healthy is not just important for your job but for your life as well. Eat right - more fish, nuts and berries. Coffee - last call before 2pm so as not to interfere with your deep sleep. Hydrate - drink water throughout the day. Exercise - do muscle straightening as well as cardio. Turn off all electronics at least 1 hour before sleep. You'll have better concentration, you will be more creativity and productive the following day.

Learn About Your Team

Over the course of the project you will be asking your team to perform tasks so that the project gets completed. What I like to do before the project starts is get to know each person on an individual basis. We all have strengths and weaknesses. I like to help each one on my team to improve on their weaknesses and get their strength to the next level. Have conversations with each member of your team. Observe their behaviors. Are they an introvert or an extrovert. Are they a problem solver or someone who needs a little push.

Communicate More

In overseeing programs and portfolios, I find that most project managers only report things that are going well fearing the "shoot the messenger" blow back. What I tell them is: give me the good, bad, and the ugly. That way I can help them break down obstacles that are in their way.  Other project owners will do the same. That's our job.  Your project owners are looking for ways to help you and will help you remove roadblocks and provide guidance.

Provide Business Value

You finish your projects on time, within scope and within timeframe, as well as with the right quality. All too often focusing on the output without understanding why. You need to understand how your project contributes to the overall business. That way you can make better decisions and recommendations during the execution of the project.

If you understand the outcome what the project will provide, you will contribute to the business value over the course of the project and not just complete the project successfully. Look at the bigger picture. And ask a simple question: Why? Why are we doing this project?

Celebrate Wins

Have you ever noticed how the minute you accomplish one thing you scratch it of your list and go to the next task? You become a robot doing a task after task after task.

Celebrating individual and team achievement, large or small, during your project. Provide a meaning, remind the team of the reason for what they have done and accomplished. A simple "Thank You" through the day goes a long way in motivating your team and letting them know that their work matters.

Let me know about your New Year Resolution.

Having people do certain things without having authority over them is difficult to say the least.

One can use the Carrot and Stick approach. A Carrot and Stick approach is a traditional motivation theory that asserts, in motivating people to elicit desired behaviors, sometimes the rewards are given in the form of money, promotion, and any other financial or non-financial benefits and sometimes the punishments are exerted to push an individual towards the desired behavior.

A better approach would be to use Because approach.

Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard, conducted a research in 1978 on the power of persuasion of the word "Because."

Langer had people request to break in on a line of people waiting to use a busy copy machine on a college campus. In 1970′s people didn't have home computers nor printers. There were lines waiting to use a copy machine.

The researchers had the people use three different, specifically worded requests to break in line:

• “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine?”
• “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I have to make copies?”
• “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”

Did the wording affect whether people let them break in line?

You batcha.

Here are the results:

• “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” Resulted in 60% compliance.
• “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the v machine, because I have to make copies?” Resulted in 93% compliance.
• “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?” Resulted in 94% compliance.

Using the word “Because” and then giving a reason resulted in significantly more compliance. This was true even when the reason was not very compelling such as “Because I have to make copies". The researchers hypothesized that people go on automatic behavior as a form of a heuristic method of short-cut, and that hearing the word “Because” followed by a reason, no matter how poor it was, would cause them to comply.

They repeated the experiment for a request to copy 20 pages rather than 5. In that case, only the “Because I’m in a rush” reason resulted in increased compliance.

So, what does this all mean? When the stakes are low people will engage in automatic behavior. If your request is small, follow your request with the word "Because" and give a reason, any reason. However, if the stakes are high, then there could be more resistance, but still not too much.

Please let me know how this “Because” approach worked out for you. Because I asked nicely.

#Because