Most work environments require interacting with others. Some people view these interactions as separate events they must endure and others view them as enriching, ongoing relationships. The truth is, you get out of your work relationships what you put in. If you are totally independent in your work environment, not requiring anything from anyone, then you don’t need to read any further. But, if you’re dependent on others, then you need to learn how to build strong work relationships.
There are four key behavior traits that contribute to building strong relationships. You need to be trustworthy, care about the other person, be committed to excellence in your performance, and bond through adventure. Let’s look at each of these in more detail.
Be Trustworthy
It is important for you to do what you say. When you commit to something others listen and then watch. They want to know if you can be trusted to deliver on your commitment or if you will just blow it off. When delivering something will you deliver it as requested and on time or will it be incomplete or late.
Others also want to know if you are going to attempt personal gain at their expense. They will watch how you go about getting things you want, looking for methods or actions that take advantage of others. Even if they are not involved, it will be a tell tale sign that they need to watch their back when working with you.
Care About Them
People want to know if you care about them as a person or see them as an object, a means to an end. No one wants to be viewed as a resource for someone else’s consumption. They want to be known as a unique individual with life experiences, emotions, and a choice in their work demands. Showing someone you care about them requires showing respect regardless of their position in the company and gaining general knowledge of who they are and what they like and dislike.
In practice this means scheduling a meeting or conversation instead of just dropping in or calling. If you can’t schedule in advance, do not interrupt an ongoing conversation, politely wait and then ask if it is a good time to chat. Before you discuss any business ask them about their personal life. When you are first building the relationship, ask general questions about their past and current experiences. Topics could include family, hobbies, vacations, pets, past jobs, etc. As time goes on, you can ask more specifics questions, but wait until you sense trust developing between the two of you.
Another way to show you care is to reflect back the information you receive. If Sally tells you she has a big vacation starting tomorrow, then make sure you ask her about it the next time you see her. If Bill tells you his dog died, don’t forget about it and then ask him if he took his dog to the park two weeks later.
Commit to Excellence
Very few people like to work with low performers. You can’t help but get a little slimed from someone else’s deficiencies and poor results. Working with a person like this can require twice the effort and time of a competent worker. This is why your work attitude and quality affects your work relationships. Committing to excellence means showing initiative and not waiting for someone else to point work out to you. Having a can-do attitude signals you are not afraid of a challenge and that you will carry your weight when times get tough. Remember to be thorough and complete when you declare something finished. This will not only make you pleasant to work with, but it will also inspire others to follow your commitment to excellence.
Bond Through Adventure
Adventures are not all good or all bad; they are a mixture of both. In a work environment they are always experienced with a group of people, and have a general beginning and end. Adventures never kill us nor take us to nirvana and they usually have a central theme. In our personal lives adventures may be vacations, kids sports teams, neighborhoods, community efforts, etc. In work environments, they may be projects, departments in transition, recessions, building moves, working with a very difficult person, etc. Adventures almost always develop deeper bonds because they are shared experiences that we get to survive together, laugh and cry about, reminisce about, and to some extent relive the emotions again.
The key to reaping the benefits of bonding through adventure is by creating adventures in your day-to-day work environment. This starts with identifying the themes of your group adventures, highlighting the highs and lows you experience, acknowledging things will change and the adventure will end, and enforcing the group experience of it.
Each of these key behaviors requires multiple interactions over time to make a difference. There is no pill you can take to instantly have strong work relationships. In the beginning, ten good interactions may take you a level deeper in your work relationship with someone, but one bad one will set you back a level. Over time grace becomes more a part of your relationships and good and bad interactions become less pivotal to the relationships strength. Strong work relationships will not only make you more productive, they will make you a lot happier too.
Exciting news, Systemation has released a new website! We are still at the same address (http://www.systemation.com), we just changed how the site looks and functions.
One great new feature is that our blog has been incorporated into the new site, now you can find it here. We will continue to post to this blog only until June 1, 2010 so please make sure to update your bookmark and/or RSS feed. You can subscribe to the new RSS feed by visiting our new blog and clicking on the orange RSS icon or entering your email address in the right-hand column. You can also subscribe by going directly to our feed.
Feel free to stop by and check out our new site. We look forward to seeing you online.
We’ve talked about how useful the project triangle (RIP: The Project Triangle) is for understanding the dynamics between scope, time, and cost on projects. Now we are going to see how useful it is in making decisions about controlling projects.
Every project is launched with an explicit or implied priority scheme for the project triangle. This priority scheme establishes which side of the project triangle is most flexible (lowest priority) and which is least flexible (highest priority) when it comes to leveraging one side to benefit another. In fact, all project planning efforts use a priority scheme to create the initial estimates of what is going to be built, how long it will take, and how much it will cost.
The majority of projects start with scope being the highest priority and therefore time or cost must flex to meet the demands of the scope. Sometimes the number of resources is limited, making time the most flexible; this is when the project end date is determined by planning efforts and not stakeholders. In other situations where scope is the highest priority, the project’s end date may need to be within a 6 month window; this is when the number of resources and money need to be readily available to accommodate the scope and time.
Many different factors determine the priority scheme for projects. If the project deliverable is aimed at beating your competition to market, then time will be the highest priority. On these types of projects cost will be identified as the most flexible side of the triangle. If the project is going to use an iterative methodology for development, there too, time will be the highest priority. Each iteration will be time-boxed to accommodate the development approach, and the number of resources will be held somewhat steady forcing scope to flex the most. In tough economic times, cost will be the highest priority. This is also true of projects that are funded by grants. In each of these situations scope will be the most flexible because there usually is a time frame the project needs to be completed in.
It would be nice if priority schemes remained the same over the life of a project, but unfortunately they don’t. Some of the changes may be driven by external fluctuations in the business environment: economic cycles, competitor behavior, customer demands, etc. These can happen from time to time; however, the vast majority of priority changes happen because of the specific time in the project lifecycle: major intermediate milestones or project completion. Take for example a project with the scope as the highest priority. As the project nears completion, the stakeholders often become impatient and want the major deliverables sooner than later. Now, all of a sudden, time is the least flexible and cost is the most. In iterative developments, as they come to the end of the time-box, it may be most beneficial to make scope the least flexible and time the most. This is because it may take longer to pull out features than to keep them in and finish them late.
Decisions made on projects based on priority schemes usually are critical in nature. For this reason they need to be explicitly agreed upon and communicated. When the project is being planned there should be an agreement with stakeholders about which side of the triangle is the most flexible and which side is the least. Remember, as the project progresses the prioritization can change. It’s not as though there is a specific point in time when the prioritization scheme changes, it usually is discovered over the course of many decisions. But, when it becomes clear, the recognized change needs to be agreed and communicated amongst all project stakeholders. As with all projects, the more clarity people have regarding the project’s environment, the more consensus you will have when making decisions and the quicker the project will be completed.
If you’re a leader you have a vision. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Your vision is the starting point to make your organization better in some way. It’s supposed to bring about positive change and consumes a sizable portion of your organization’s resources in doing so. But, we all know that not all visions become realities. They start off with such flair but can burn out before they are achieved. Making your vision become a reality is what separates the great leaders from the good ones.
If you want to insure that your vision becomes a reality take these three actions: don’t try and boil the ocean, learn to say no in lots of different ways, and hitch yourself to the initiatives. Let’s look at these actions in detail.
Don’t Try to Boil the Ocean
Visions always have a lot of passion and desire built into them by their creators. There are no limits in the creative genitive process and, as such, they can become massive in scope. This is not a good thing. The larger the scope of the vision the less chance there is of it successfully becoming a reality. The reason for this is that the bigger the vision, the more people need to be involved, and the harder it is to communicate the vision with clarity. Additionally, it will take more time to complete and thus, harder to keep the momentum moving in the right direction. In general, a vision should take no more than 18 months to complete; it is far enough over the horizon to constitute a vision and yet still very manageable. The vision should also have very hard edges, meaning you have to know what is included in the vision and what is not. This will become very important in the next action. And lastly, it should be very easy to communicate to others; people should be able to follow the flow of the vision and easily connect the dots.
Learn to Say No in Lots of Different Ways
Visions put today in the context of tomorrow. This is not to be taken literally but figuratively. Because of this, not doing the right thing today will take you away from where you are trying to go tomorrow, your vision. Visions rarely get derailed due to large unexpected events; they typically fail because they lose momentum due to attention and resource parasite attacks over time. Visions need to be protected and to successfully achieve a vision leaders need to spend twice the amount of time defending the vision as they did creating it. This means saying no to people and ideas that appear to be great opportunities in the moment but will actually dilute the efforts directed towards your vision. Yes, these new ideas may make a lot of sense and can be easily completed in a very short period of time, but it will be at the expense of the vision. Leaders must become masters of disappointing people at a pace they can handle, so as not to discourage them from pursuing your vision.
Hitch Yourself to the Initiatives
Initiatives are used to organize the efforts required to make visions become a reality. Leaders almost always delegate responsibility for managing these initiatives to their staff. It is how organizations function and how work gets done, but not all work is created equally. Rarely does a vision consume all the organization’s resources. Therefore, there will always be projects commencing at any given point in time that have nothing to do with the vision. While it may not be efficient for a leader to get actively involved in these projects it is imperative that they get involved in the initiatives of the vision. This tactic does multiple things. It shows others the level of importance of the initiatives and helps them prioritize their work accordingly. Also, if the momentum begins to drop leaders will know it right away and be able to adjust the level of intensity to correct the problem. Lastly, the leader’s level of knowledge and awareness related to the initiatives will be high enough to allow them to make real-time adjustments to resolve vision ambiguities. This will save time and reduce any frustration team members may encounter.
As you can see, having a vision only gets you so far as a leader. Making that vision a reality requires some heavy lifting on your part, but doing so will put you in another league. Follow these three actions and you will be on the trail to success.
You’ve heard it said that electricity follows the path of least resistance, so why shouldn’t this principle apply to our decision making too? We’ve all been faced with making decisions in situations where the time available to make the decision is less than ideal. Some of those situations were probably such that the best action was not readily apparent causing us to seek permission or validation before we decide. Others had readily apparent actions but the time required to obtain permission came close to extending past the deadline for action. We can still remember the angst we felt in the moment that caused us to freeze up when deciding what to do in the little time we had left to decide.
Next time you find yourself in one of these situations ask yourself these two questions:
Doing so will lessen the anxiety in making the decision and put you in the best light after the action is taken.
Let’s look at two scenarios and see how asking these questions would help. One night Alison was the last person in the office from her team. They had just released a new version of the order entry application the sales department uses the night before and all had gone well. Her boss was currently in flight on a trip half way around the world when the VP of Sales came to her desk. He was irate because one of his sales persons could not enter a huge order into the system. The customer wanted it booked that day so it would fall into the current quarter’s budget as he had no budget for it in the upcoming quarter. Alison researched the problem and found the error in the code. It was not hard to fix however, her boss and department relied on a strict testing and configuration control process to insure the quality of the application. The process required Alison’s team to run a set of regression tests and her boss to sign off on the new release before it was installed. This process would consume most of that night and the next day to complete. If Alison implemented the fix without getting permission would her motivation and intent be pure? Yes, she wanted to fix the application so her company would get the big sale. Would it be harder for her to get permission to implement the fix than to ask for forgiveness the next day? Yes, given getting permission was almost impossible and implementing the fix had little room for failure.
Now for scenario two. Mark wanted to take the direct flight the following week on his sales trip. It was Friday and he was waiting for his customer to confirm the date and time of the meeting, so he had not booked his flight yet. His boss had left early for an extended weekend vacation, but was available via cell phone as usual. When the meeting was confirmed by his customer Mark checked out the availability and pricing of flights and found that the non-stop flight was twice the cost of the connecting flight. Company policy required Mark to get approval from his manager before booking the more expensive flight. If Mark booked the direct flight would his motivation and intent be pure? No, he wanted the direct flight regardless of the cost incurred. Would it be harder to get permission than ask forgiveness when the airfare was reviewed? No, his manager was available via cell phone all weekend long.
Next time, relax a little more when you find yourself in one of these situations. Ask the two questions and answer them honestly. It may do you more good than harm to break the rules.
Leaders don’t like problems in their organizations, they want them to be pure and defect free. They want them producing at high levels and performing like a well tuned machine. If problems do arise, they expect them to be discovered quickly and fixed right away. If they aren’t, they get frustrated and take it out on their staff. Phrases like: “Bill should have seen this problem months ago. Doesn’t he know what is going on in his group?” “This problem should have been fixed a long time ago. Why didn’t Karen jump on it sooner and fix it?” can be heard coming out of leader’s offices.
This situation happens over and over in organizations. And why? Because of a simple truth: No problem can be solved before its time. Problems hide away until it is time for them to be noticed. No matter how vigilant we are, there are problems in our organizations that have yet to be discovered, yet business goes on. When problems are identified some of them do so quickly and are fixed right away. Others, however, show themselves slowly over weeks, month, or years. Solving them can take just as long. In these situations problems need the environment to change before they can be discovered and fixed. It may be that the business has to shift focus for them to become a high enough priority, a new employee may need to be hired with a right skill set, or advancements in technology have to become available and implemented.
For years at Systemation, we have been struggling with entering contact data for workshop participants and getting completion certificates to them in a timely manner. It seems like a simple process however, it had been a quality and timeliness issue for years. The evaluations we received from participants were hard to read due to varying handwriting abilities. The person responsible for data entry had other responsibilities that were becoming much more demanding. Lastly, completion certificates often did not reach the participants because of internal company mail and distribution problems.
A few months ago the problem reached the right time to be resolved in full. Soon trainers will be traveling with iPads and having workshop participants entering their name and email address into them. After the workshop is completed the data is sent to our internal systems that generate an email to each participant, allowing them to go online and evaluate the workshop. After submitting the evaluation the participant receives a PDF of their completion certificate. Problem fixed, but not before its time.
What does this mean for your organization? First you have to shift your focus away from how many problems you have to how much better you are becoming every time one gets identified and fixed. Otherwise you will drive yourself crazy and put those around you in a constant state of fear. Shifting focus moves the organization away from identifying blame and towards rewarding others for helping the organization get better. It will make a huge difference in the way your staff handles problems. I’m not saying to be less investigative; I’m saying become a little more accepting of the problem identification and resolution process. It’s like a fine wine. No problem can be solved before its time.
Really? With such a preponderance of project management literature it is hard to believe there are only five pillars of practices that a project manager has to engage in to maximize their potential for success. OK. What are they? I’ve got to see them.
The five steps include:
That’s it. If project managers can do these five things, and the little things behind them, they will see great gains in project management performance and greatly enhance their ability to succeed. Sounds simple enough, but sometimes the simplest things are the hardest ones to accomplish.
Project Planning
Project managers need to stop over-complicating this initial phase. In its basic form, project planning focuses on identifying and documenting items related to a project’s scope, time, and cost. In short, it is the basic process of documenting the understanding each party holds related to the project.
Nothing else should be allowed to creep into this phase. The worst thing that happens at this stage is when project managers take a project plan and start adding little things to it. The project plan must be matched with the project’s size and complexity and tailored accordingly. It is not a one size fits all approach.
Project Baseline
The project baseline captures the project’s predicted scope, time, and costs at the very beginning stages, or anytime thereafter if someone chooses to change them. In other words, it’s a snap of the chalk line. Project teams must treat the baseline as sacred, and only modify it through the change control process as described below.
This is possibly one of the hardest things to get through to project managers, and once again culture is the culprit. If a company’s culture is one where people tear one another down when mistakes are made, then people are always going to hedge their bets. Nobody thinks what they’ve got is going to be good enough, and therefore they overestimate what can realistically be done. Project managers must become good at knowing when good enough is, well, good enough, and have the discipline to tow that line.
Reporting
Reports should be based on variances from the baseline in terms of time, cost, and scope, and they need to be metric-based to ensure people are collecting information on a regular basis. If metric-based reporting doesn’t occur, then managers won’t ever get the data they need because no driver or reason exists for collecting it.
Good reporting ensures all people are collecting important information on a regular basis, and keeps all project managers out of the fantasy world they so often like to inhabit. It keeps them anchored in reality. Most project managers don’t like to report on progress, and yet somehow they continue to believe (i.e., hope) they will magically improve anyway. Reporting provides a snapshot of where project managers and their projects really are at any given time, not where people wish them to be.
Change Control
The change control process is meant to protect sacred project baselines while helping to manage key expectations among project stakeholders. The very word ‘control’ implies that somehow the process is intended to stop something from happening. But while change control does need to be a strict process that treats the project baseline as holy, it does not need to be inflexible. This is an important distinction that eludes many practitioners, much to the detriment of project results.
The main goal of the change control process should be to get and keep everyone on the same page, foster discussion, and then realign expectations when necessary. Rather than emphasizing control per se, project teams should be placing more emphasis on collaboration. In other words, everyone needs to view projects with all three major criteria in mind – cost, scope, and time – as this is what leads to project success. If, for example, a change in time is requested, there will likely need to be some give and take in the other two areas to accommodate such a request. When project managers are able to see the big picture, they are much more willing to compromise on certain issues if it means realizing a greater overall result.
Simply put, change should not be feared. However, stakeholders must understand that they can’t get something for nothing. Instead of prohibiting any adjustments, the change control process should foster the free exchange of ideas, negotiation, collaboration, and a realignment of expectations. It should not be a cold gaiting process or be characterized by one transaction. Rather, it requires multiple iterations, and often times relationships need to be nurtured. This approach serves to remove ambiguity in expectations, and is the ONLY process by which the hallowed baseline should be changed.
Project Closure
When one project finishes there is always one or more needing to start-up, often already behind schedule. Project closure is often skipped because of this to the detriment of everyone involved. Without closure between projects work becomes this monotonous flow of never ending intensity. Closure is important intellectually and emotionally. There is no hiding when a stakeholder is asked to sign off on the projects. They either do it or continue the project. It forces finality. Lessons learned must then be collected to broaden the project team’s and the organization’s experiential base.
Finally, a get together to enjoy each other’s company, replay the good memories, laugh at the not so fun ones builds emotional bonds between project members and encourages us to move on and embrace future challenges.
Don’t underestimate the amount of effort it takes to master these five areas. They contain the bulk of project challenges and forgo the nice to know stuff. That’s why the five pillars are so important. They keep project management practical and reap efficient success as a result.
We spend lots of time and energy covering our butts. Documents and emails are generated to record agreements, records are created for tasks we work on, and emails are stored in elaborate folder structures. All of this effort is put forth because we think we may need these documents in our defense later. So, how has this served us? When has documentation ever saved our butts? Yes, I’m sure there are a few of you raising your hands but, how many of you didn’t?
There are two courts where documentation can come to your aid: a court of law and a court of public opinion. You know what and where the court of law is. The court of public opinion is much different. It is comprised of your management, peers, team members, and anyone else who will listen to the gossip. It is conducted in hallways, lunch rooms, offices, and cubicles.
In the court of law a large amount of money is spent creating contracts, agreements, and documentation. There is also a lot of money spent defending positions too. Opposing parties never agree on the interpretation of the documents and what the circumstances of the situation were. Countless hours are spent posturing and clarifying what was documented. This is not a problem if the price of loosing is much greater than the legal costs of defending.
But what about the court of public opinion? Usually money isn’t spent or rewarded so money may not be at risk but reputations are. The process is much less sequential and formal. Both parties share their documents and emails with managers, team members, and friends in an attempt to bolster their position. Sometimes management meets to discuss the situation, but very little resolution comes of it. It becomes a he-said-she-said situation. No verdict is proclaimed; neither party’s reputation is seriously scarred but, a lot of time and energy is wasted.
Think about it. Where else could those hours have been used? What might have been produced with all that wasted effort? Given that we all have so much more work to do than we have time to do it, wouldn’t it be better for us to tackle this other work than spend time protecting our butts? This is not to say we shouldn’t keep any emails or document anything, we just need to be a little more reasonable about it.
Next time you start to document something stop and think about not doing so. How much anxiety does this stir up inside you? This will give you a sense of how prone you are to wanting to protect yourself. Then ask yourself if you are documenting to protect yourself or if you are attempting to enhance communication between you and the other party; if you are enhancing communication that is a good thing. Then ask yourself what the potential consequences are if you don’t document and judge the severity of the situation using a much more liberal perspective. In the end it may not be worth your time and effort. All of these check points may cause you to act differently. That’s OK. Try it. It could be a very freeing experience.
What is your opinion about keeping documentation at work? Let us know in the comments section below.
You have probably all heard of Myers Briggs, Social Style, DISC, and other personality style assessments. They are great for helping us realize that people are different than us and that by paying attention to other’s styles you can work more effectively with them. Many people have benefited from these personality categorization systems, but there is another factor that sits on top of these styles and drives them to some degree. It’s a person’s power base.
When we were very young our parents were our protectors and builders of self esteem. As we got older we interacted with others more on our own and started to develop a foundation for operating in social settings. It was a lifeline that helped us get through our Middle School and High School years. By early adulthood we had fully established our own base of power that would aid us in social settings by attracting the admiration of others and limiting the potential for harm.
As we moved deeper into adulthood, our power base became so integrated into our very core that we don’t even realize anymore that we have one. When our powerbase is stroked we feel very good and when it is attacked we become defensive. In fact, we have to be careful not to step on a person’s power base because they tend to over-react disproportionately to the threat. But the great thing is you don’t even need an assessment to identify a person’s power base; you just need to observe them
Why is it so important to know a person’s power base? Because it can be very useful in building support from someone and keeping us out of harm’s way by inadvertently crossing it. Keep in mind however that one should never use this information to manipulate others, only to enrich your interaction with them.
Below I describe six prominent power bases. There are others, such as humor and athleticism, but these six cover the majority of people. Each type will include a short description of what a person’s standard behavior is, what they do when confronted, and who they appeal to in social settings.
Aggression: People who are aggressors like confrontation and deal with it directly. They are not afraid to say things that other people might shy away from. They will get in your face and force you to engage them. When confronted they will attack harder. There is no backing down. They attract other people who have the same type of power base and some people who want additional protection.
Intelligence: Intellects are typically smarter and know more than most people. They like talking about difficult subjects and are lifetime learners. They will challenge others when they witness errors or misinformation. If someone else starts the discussion on a topic they will ultimately end up leading it. When their intellect is challenged they will bombard the aggressor with tons of information and facts in an attempt to undermine their credibility. They attract anyone who values learning and has an interest in a variety of subjects.
Niceness: Lots of people are nice. But these folks only know how to be nice. They literally cannot show outward anger towards anybody. As a result they do not experience many threats but, when they do they tend to display victim behavior. They drum up support from those around them and get others to own and express their internal anger. People in this category get along with everyone and as a result attract others of all kinds.
Physical Beauty: A person is born with physical beauty, but these people take it to a new level. They work hard at keeping themselves at a specific level of attraction. If they do find themselves in a tough spot they kick into another gear and turn on the charm to get themselves out of it. They know how to leverage their beauty to get the most attention and support from others. Regardless of their personality or character flaws, they always know there is a subset of people who will ignore those flaws just to be close to their beauty.
Hiding: People who rely on hiding usually are introverts. They don’t tend to engage others often, don’t express their opinions, and generally keep to themselves. They would rather be on the sidelines observing things around them. If they are confronted they quickly acquiesce and try to hide even more. They strive to attract no one and establish friendships only with others in this category and only after a long period of time.
Producing: People in this category are doers. They work hard and produce a lot. You may think this is just a good work ethic but these folks are compelled to produce. If you challenge them they will draw upon their last several months of deliverables and quote to you how many hours they have put in. They tend to associate with other producers and look down on people who are sub-standard producers.
As with all behavior driven systems, there are some individuals who do not display the exact behaviors described in the above categories. Some display behaviors from two or more different types, and others do not display any of the behaviors at all. For the majority, however, there are usually observable behaviors that can help you navigate your social settings by simply keeping the different power base categories in mind and applying them to the people around you.
What types of power bases do you experience on a daily basis at work? What are different methods you use to communicate with these different categories of people? What power base category do you fall into? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
