Archive for Projects

Don’t Ask For Permission When Forgiveness is Easier

April 29, 2010 · Filed under Organizations, People, Projects · Tagged , , ,

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.

decision makingNext time you find yourself in one of these situations ask yourself these two questions:

  1. Is my motivation and intent pure in taking the action?
  2. Is it easier to ask for forgiveness than permission?

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.

Bookmark and Share

Comments (2) »

Five Pillars of Practical Project Management

April 14, 2010 · Filed under Project Management, Projects · Tagged , , , , , ,

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.

Five Pillars of Practical Project ManagementThe five steps include:

  1. Project Planning
  2. Project Baseline
  3. Reporting
  4. Change Control
  5. Project Closure

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.

Bookmark and Share

Leave a comment »

Was Your Project Late or Underestimated?

March 26, 2010 · Filed under People, Project Management, Projects · Tagged , , , , ,

It’s amazing how a simple tool such as a project schedule, with multiple tasks and a project completion date, can create so much shame or joy for people in an organization. Taken at face value, completed tasks and projects bring about strong emotional reactions. If the task or project is late it’s a bad thing. If they are early it’s a good thing. Very black or white. Quick judgments about the outcomes imply negative or positive behavior respectively on the project manager or team member.

hour glassIt’s common to hear statements like, “The project manager must have been unorganized or did not work hard enough to keep his team on schedule.” “The business analyst really knows what she is doing, superior skill allowed her to finish the requirements document early.” These judgments sound very cut and dry but, are they correct? Actually, they could be misplaced.

The problem with the above statements is they assume estimates are sound constants and a person’s skill, experience, and behavior are the only variables. The fact is, more often than not, estimates are flawed. If a project is completed late, perhaps the time required to complete the task or project was underestimated. Conversely, if a project is completed early the duration could have been overestimated. Yes, behavior and skill do vary but no more than project schedule estimates do.

In reality, most estimates that are underestimated come from lack of experience or succumbing to management pressure. Most estimates that are overestimated also come from lack of experience or risk adverse sandbagging. A lack of experience in estimating, the level of skills people posses, and odd behavior only improve with time. But when all these factors are taken into consideration a late task or project could simply be the result of management pressure and an early task or project the result of sandbagging. Now which person deserves the shame?

Next time you observe and assess a completed task or project, remember that you shouldn’t judge the results at face value. Dig deeper and look at the underlying circumstances, experience, behavior, and skill. That’s where the truth lies, that’s where just judgments are revealed.

Bookmark and Share

Leave a comment »

Keep Your Process Pure

March 3, 2010 · Filed under Organizations, Project Management, Projects · Tagged , , , , , ,

No one needs to beat the drum about the importance of processes in business. Processes have been a valuable tool since the start of the industrial revolution, establishing uniformity and gaining efficiencies. Some processes are documented into formal procedures. Others remain informal but are still commonly understood. Most processes are composed of action steps with strategically placed gates points to obtain consensus or establish authority for moving forward. Pure processes are processes that are true to their intent, serve that function only and exert the least amount of effort while providing the most value. Processes that become contaminated usually do so in two different ways: by trying to accommodate for all possible situations and attempting to control malicious participants.

Processes That Accommodate for all Possible Situations

Processes are usually designed to accommodate about 90% of situations that occur. When an extremely rare situation presents itself and it leads to a negative result, management will be tempted to change the process in order to handle the rare situation when it occurs again (regardless of the impact on the process). The extra effort that is imposed to cover an extremely rare situation usually has no payoff. Furthermore, all processes have inherent risk but most of the risk is never encountered and, rightly so, is off our radar screen of concern. Just because we encounter a risk does not mean we should track it on our radar forever.

Processes That are Derived to Control Malicious Participants

Sometimes individuals feel they have special needs which compel them to deviate from the defined processes. It may be to avoid a gate point or to leverage a loophole so the individual can have greater access to resources for their personal gain. These deviations may or may not go unnoticed. But when they are noticed management always wants to include additional steps or gate points to ensure these abuses do not occur in the future. The addition of gate points due to one person’s actions is commonly known as “tyranny of the minority”. When tyranny of the minority occurs everyone has to expend additional time and effort into the process just because of the actions of one individual.

The best thing to do in this case is to address the behavior of the rouge individual. They will often play victim when confronted saying they didn’t know better or didn’t understand the situation, but do not hesitate or withdraw from your position. If the majority can follow the process then the rogue individual can too. It is up to them to learn what the right way is and how to stick to it.

Regardless of how they came to be, these appendages to the original processes are usually unjustified; stay past their need; and end up being followed blindly, wasting people’s effort and time. They diminish the value of the process and cause frustration.

Let’s take Alice for example. She is the manager of a systems engineering organization and her department is responsible for the integration of various spacecraft subsystems. Because these subsystems are being built in different parts of the country Alice’s team travels extensively. Her company has travel guidelines but because her department is currently over budget she has been keeping a close eye on travel expenditures. Over time Alice began to realize that one of her employees, Tim, was constantly exceeding the guidelines. He always had excuses and Alice has been struggling with how to rein him in. At her wits end, Alice decided to add an additional gate point in the travel procedure that requires everyone to get authority from her before they deviate from the guidelines. While this action did stop Tim from abusing the department’s travel budget but, it also caused everyone else on the team (who wasn’t abusing the travel guidelines) to put forth extra effort and time to get approval for unique situations they typically dealt with on their own. In one situation an employee, Jennifer, could not get authority to change her air travel plans to come home early because Alice was out sick. This resulted in additional lodging costs since Jennifer had to stay two days longer than needed, and not to mention a loss in productivity from being away from the office unnecessarily.

In your organization fight for pure process and procedures. Make it a personal campaign. It will mean moving away from a controlling mindset and towards personal responsibility. It will also entail moving away from risk aversion and towards embracing ambiguity. While doing this may be hard the end result will be a much more efficient organization.

Bookmark and Share

Leave a comment »

Is Your Project Schedule Dynamic?

February 23, 2010 · Filed under Project Management, Projects · Tagged , , , , , ,

Most everyone starts their project with a schedule. They define the work that needs to be completed in the form of activities with varying levels of detail. They then identify the duration of each activity and sequence them based on interdependencies, and may also associate the level of effort (hrs) to each activity. When all is said and done the final product is a schedule that documents the overall duration of the project and perhaps the total level of effort as well. Great! There’s nothing better than a good plan at the start of a project.

Gannt ChartHowever, no sooner than the first week of the project something happens . . . things don’t go as planned. Activities that should be completed aren’t. Others that were scheduled to take the entire week finish early allowing for new activities to begin that weren’t originally scheduled to start until the following week. So much for a good plan. Now we have a schedule that doesn’t reflect reality.

There is nothing unusual about this situation. It happens to every project. But, one of the things that separate the good project managers from the bad is how dynamic their project schedules are.

As work begins on projects actuals-to-date are recorded and estimates-to-complete are re-evaluated for some subsets of activities. This often results in a change to the initial predictions; however, these changes may or may not be realized in a timely fashion depending on how dynamic the schedule is. Knowing the true current status of a project is paramount to delivering it close to the initial time, cost, and scope predictions. It’s all dependent on the frequency of the updates (actuals-to-date and estimates-to-complete) and the underlying structure of the schedule.

Highly dynamic schedules are always built using the full functionality of a project management software tool such as Microsoft® Project. There is just no way to get around it. Managing the current status of all the activities, maintaining the interdependencies, and calculating the estimated completion date on a weekly basis can only be accomplished with these tools. When updates are only accounted for once or twice a month and the underlying structure of the schedule is in the head of the project manager then scheduled updates will be infrequent and often not reflect reality.

This is what Kevin experienced when he was asked by the CIO of a Fortune 100 company to audit an ongoing $20 million project that would overhaul the financial applications for the company. He began his quest by interviewing the project sponsors, program manager, and project managers. The general feeling he got was the project was progressing well but was a little behind schedule. After his interview with the program manager, Jessica, he asked if he could get a copy of her schedule. Jessica inquired if he wanted it in the standard format; however, Kevin didn’t know a standard format existed. Jessica led him to the break room and showed him a large four foot by eight foot, six phase Gantt chart with a version date of seven weeks ago. Kevin’s stomach sank as he realized that the project audit was not going to go very well.

Small and simple projects can be effectively managed in the heads of the project managers using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to record major milestone dates, but don’t try this with larger more complex projects. It will lead to major surprises, lots of bad news, and missed opportunities. Build your schedules using a highly dynamic underlying structure and you’ll save yourself time and a lot of headaches.

Bookmark and Share

Comments (2) »

Baselines: A Valuable Tool in Life and Projects

February 3, 2010 · Filed under Project Management, Projects · Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

We’re all very familiar with baselines in life. We may not call them by that name, but they’re all around us. They tell us when we should change the oil in our cars, how much we can afford to spend on vacation, how much our monthly payment is for our house, and what age our child needs to be to start school. Dictionaries define baselines as an imaginary line or standard by which things are measured or compared. That is why they are a valuable tool for us in life. They guide us and let us know if we get off course.

Project BaselinesIn projects, baselines are invaluable tools that help us navigate towards success. They’re communication devices that establish expectations between parties: when is the project going to finish, what is going to be delivered, and how many hours of effort will it take to complete the project? Yes, baselines are only estimates at the start of a project, but they also set the expectation that gets everyone on the same page. Baselines are often formalized in project charters and plans, requirements and design documents, schedules, and budgets. They are distributed broadly to establish a consistent set of expectations.

When baselines are compared to current progress and new estimates they produce variances. These variances let us know how far off we are from where we want to be, signaling we need to take strong action to get the project back on course. When these variances are monitored closely, they indicate trends that point to root causes of negative results.

Given that baselines are expectations between all project stakeholders, they need to be revered and protected. While it may seem like no big deal to quietly change some portion of the project baseline without letting everyone know, it destroys the trust and cohesiveness of all parties involved when it happens. Baselines should only be changed when approved by a configuration management process were all stakeholders are informed of the desired change and the ramifications of doing so. This is not to say project baselines should not change: quite the opposite. Baselines must change. Very few projects are completed as estimated at the start; therefore, the expectations must be aligned closer to current reality as the project moves closer to completion. It is always better to be proactive and announce less than favorable news as soon as it is known than to delay it until it becomes a bigger problem and more of a surprise.

People struggle with project baselines in three ways. They delay setting the baseline in the beginning until they get further along in the project so their estimates will be closer to what they actually deliver. They keep their distribution limited and don’t share their baselines broadly leaving people in the dark. And lastly, they never change the baseline during the life of the project which only disappoints stakeholders when the project is delivered. At the root of these three scenarios is the fear that the baselines will hurt them: they are seen as a weapon to be avoided, not a valuable tool to be embraced.

Take Becky for example, who was excited when she was assigned her first project to lead. It was a smaller project but it was her chance to move into the role of project manager. Becky built her project plan and established a schedule. She had it reviewed by her team, boss, and project sponsor and, once approved, she began work. In the beginning things progressed well and Becky was excited. One day her sponsor came to her office and told her he wanted to add one more item to her list of deliverables. She told him no problem, she would make it happen. A few weeks later her sponsor came by again and told Becky he needed the project to be finished three weeks early. Again, because things were going so well she thought she could meet his request. Then the project began hitting some tough times. One of her key team members got sick and missed two weeks of work. Then she realized it would take twice as long to produce the extra deliverable the sponsor requested. Now Becky’s schedule showed her finishing a month later than she first estimated, and almost two months after her sponsor wanted it finished. She told no one about the projected change in schedule and just hoped for a miracle. Becky felt that if she told her boss and the sponsor she would never get another project to lead in the future. For four months Becky didn’t tell anyone about how late the project would be delivered. When the expected date of delivery came she finally broke down and told her boss and sponsor. They were shocked and surprised. Both of them explained they could have helped her if they had only known.

Becky stumbled in two major areas related to baselines. She did not treat the baseline as sacred and changed it without going through the rigorous configuration control process. Changing scope, or end dates always has an impact that needs to be understood and communicated. She also failed to communicate the schedule variances and the need to align the baseline to the current state of the project. As a result, Becky limited her ability to take corrective action. The lesson to be learned is that if we don’t embrace the value of baselines it will not only diminish our effectiveness, it will handicap our project stakeholders and cause tough times for them. And, nothing good comes from a surprised and disappointed stakeholder.

Bookmark and Share

Comments (1) »

Project Management ROI

December 15, 2009 · Filed under Project Management, Projects · Tagged , , , , , , ,

All project managers see their job differently. Some are very lofty in describing their role; others seem lost still trying to discover it. There is talk of making customers happy, working with users, managing risk, and many other activities. But, if you ask a director of projects managers, “what is the role of a project manager?” they are very clear: plan the project, put a stick in the ground, and meet it.

A formal definition of projects management is predicting, with as much certainty as is possible or required, the project’s scope, time, and cost at completion, and then embracing reality and influencing activities to meet these predictions.

It is a very scary thing for project managers to predict where a project will end up because it holds them accountable, but it is imperative. If there isn’t an end point for the project manager to drive towards there won’t be any management or direction of the project, there is only drifting. Who wants a project drifter leading their project?

There is no such thing as “one size fits all” when it comes to project management. Every project has different constraints, requiring different levels of certainty when it comes to predicting and meeting scope, time, and cost. This is important because the amount of effort expended managing a project is directly related to the amount of certainty obtained. The relationship between certainty and effort is known as project management ROI. With just a little effort, a fair amount of certainty can be achieved. The more effort you apply, the more certainty you obtain. Today’s project managers often identify how much time they have available to manage a project and let the certainty be determined as a result. This tends to result in poor project results and dissatisfaction across the board. In fact, for this approach, the average cost overrun is 189%, time overrun is 222%, and scope reduction is 61%. While these results may be reasonable for some low priority projects, higher priority projects require more certainty.

The proper way to approach a project is to first identify the level of certainty required and then let the amount of effort be determined as a result. This approach will drive who is selected to manage the project, the expectations set for them, and whether they manage it fulltime or part time. It also drives the amount of process and rigger the project manager follows.

Know the importance of your project, determine the certainty needed, get the right Project Manager, have them predict the end result, and expend the required effort to bring it to a reality. That’s the pathway to project success.

Bookmark and Share

Comments (1) »

How Work Gets Done

December 12, 2009 · Filed under Organizations, People, Projects · Tagged , , , , , ,

Most organizational leaders are compensated for executing on strategy and maintaining daily operations. While true, this is an overly glorified way of presenting their job description. Stated bluntly, leaders are responsible for accomplishing, producing, innovating, and providing value. You know, doing good things and getting work done. Their bonuses and annual pay increases are dependent on how well they perform at this.

Globe PuzzleGetting work done sounds simplistic, but it is actually very demanding. By definition, leaders do little of the work, relying on others to get it done, which means they are more focused on orchestrating than performing. These leaders may have succeeded in the past based on how well they did the work, but now the rules for success have changed, now they lead the people who do the work. In addition, their scope of responsibility has broadened, they are now pulled in many different directions. Leaders don’t always know what they don’t know, but they will soon enough, because it will knock them upside the head when they least expect it. Sounds like a lot of fun, huh? Getting work done can actually be very rewarding with just a little structure for focusing a leader’s attention, exploration, and energy.

So, how does work get done? It gets done through people, projects, and organizations. Now, there are a lot of topics under these major categories that make a leader’s job demanding. Knowing them provides a map for getting more and higher quality work done. Let’s take a look at these three categories in more detail.

People
People are our most prevalent resource in companies, they are also our most complex resource. People are highly unique, each with different strengths and weaknesses, not to mention likes and dislikes. There is no one size fits all when engaging and interacting with them. People are also very dynamic, they can change year to year or hour to hour based on circumstances.

Finding the right person for an open position is a mixture of science and intuition. Often, a number of frogs have to be kissed to find the prince. Finding the prince puts you on the path to good production, but being handicapped with the wrong frog effects work quality throughout. The affected work quality occurs not just with the wrong frog but also with the other people they interact with.

Helping people work better together has a lot to do with helping people relate well to one another. It starts with leaders relating to their subordinates and then continues on to all individuals. If people in the department don’t learn to play well in the sandbox together energy is diverted away from production to positioning and settling scores.

Managing performance is both proactive and reactive. Leaders must learn what motivates individuals and act on it. Make sure the training that individuals need keeps up with what the organization needs. Look for teachable moments, coaching and mentoring is required to help individuals get to the next level of performance. If people plateau, their value to the organization will deteriorate over time. Leaders must invest the energy to keep high performers producing high value. It will prevent employee churn and save the organization energy, time, and money.

Projects
Projects are the mechanism we use for moving our departments forward, one step at a time. Projects are what we use to chunk our initiatives, make our products better, organize our efforts, and turn “what could be” into “what is”. In reality, everything is a project. Some are big, some are small. Some require a lot of process and discipline; while others can be handled on the fly. There is a very specific set of skills and processes that are required to effectively and consistently get work done through projects.

Fleshing out the details of what needs to be accomplished keeps the horse before the cart. For some reason we humans are more interested in how to design and build something than what needs to be built. Many a project has failed because of this.

Matching the right approach for producing a product to the specific product being produced can be difficult. Is the product something you produce all the time or is it highly unique? Can the end result be easily envisioned or must the customer interact with it and give feedback many times before it is complete? Are the risks involved minimal or must we prove that critical pieces are feasible before we invest heavily? All of these factors influence the approach and can send efficiencies through the roof or deep down into the cellar.

Managing the efforts of all the project resources makes the project more predictable. That means finishing the project on time so it integrates with other codependent projects, not going over budget so the project does not have to steal funds from future projects, and releasing resources when other projects are expecting them to be added. Without predictability all projects currently ongoing or those projected to start in the future are at risk.

Organizations
Organizations provide the environment for people and projects to exist. They are an ecosystem for healthy effort and production. When organizations are at their best they are hardly noticed. At their worst, they are as restrictive as shackles and toxic as an oil spill. Organizations can create an emotional tie with people or drive them to a fight or flight response.

Knowing what to expect from the environment and providing guidance when operating in gray areas is accomplished through an organization’s culture. This is huge considering we as humans spend a lot of emotional energy keeping ourselves from unpredictable situations. Also, there are many more shades of gray than situations that are black and white.

Establishing a reasonable governance system is needed to bring about order and reap economies of scale. Policies and procedures are not bad, people often appreciate them when they are appropriate and thus ensure stability and guarantee justice. When policies are not appropriate they can incite people to game the system through covert means or outright rebellion.

Providing a purpose and vision gives individuals a sense of community and belonging. It helps them feel as though their efforts are multiplied when combined with others and that they are contributing to something bigger and better that will make a difference. Work takes on a special value that is worth the extra effort and sacrifice when a purpose and vision are provided. Without purpose and vision narcissism creeps in and destroys community. Work becomes just work, with no intrinsic value.

Mastering all of these areas is a momentous endeavor, but that does not mean energy should not be invested in trying to do so. As they say, knowing there is a problem is half the battle in overcoming it. Leaders that chip away at their people, project, and organizational weaknesses end up with highly functioning departments that get the work done.

Bookmark and Share

Leave a comment »

Haunting Deadlines

October 21, 2009 · Filed under People, Project Management, Projects · Tagged , , ,

Working on projects can be very demanding, taxing our energy and resiliency. There are often spurts of overtime that have to be put in to get a project back on track. Sometimes you have to work months upon months of long hours just to stay a little behind. If you worked on just one project at a time you might catch a break; however, most people these days seem to be working on multiple projects at any given time.

haunted house_BwThere has been a lot published on the effects of working overtime for prolonged periods. Researchers have determined that only spurts of overtime are effective. Dr. Jim Loehr of the Human Performance Institute talks about viewing effort at work like wave making. You have to make time for breaks so you can be more effective when working. While it sounds easy, this is hard to put into practice. Thankfully companies have instituted policies for holidays and vacations that allow us to get away from our work environments and enjoy doing other things or nothing at all.

Vacations and holidays take care of the physical and mental effects of working long hours, but what about the emotional effects of constantly chasing deadlines? Deadlines are points in time that were negotiated in the past and are not easily changed. When we are on holiday or vacation deadlines do not simply go away and they don’t care if we are on scheduled time off.

Deadlines can be a source of accomplishment if you are not overwhelmed by them, however, this is not the case for most folks. Deadlines are a major source of stress that distract us and take us away from our family and friends. Those of you who are working on multiple projects know that they haunt you, even to the point of disrupting your sleep and causing nightmares. Six to twelve months of constantly challenging deadlines can drain and numb you emotionally, potentially resulting in depression and mood swings.

Unfortunately, deadlines are a core component of projects. They have to exist to facilitate completing the project at an expected point in time. Deadlines are not going to go away. The solution to the problem then is to learn how to minimize their emotional toll.

Joe noticed his project team was getting overly stressed towards the end of a nine month period of continuously tight deadlines. Some members were getting very thin on patience. Others were becoming prone to emotional outbursts. Joe knew he was driving them pretty hard and forced each of them to take a mandatory one week vacation. When they returned he noticed that they remained stressed.

After a significant emotional outburst in a meeting by one of his team members, Joe called a time out and told his team to go back to their desks and write down five work related things they have wanted to do but have not had time for because of the constant deadlines. He then instructed them to start doing the things on their list and to stop working on the project all together for one week. He then contacted his Department Head and negotiated a delay of two weeks for all deadlines. After the one week break ended his team began work on the project with a totally new emotional disposition. They completed the project over the next three months without missing a single deadline.

Joe’s story is a great example of how to mitigate the emotional stress of haunting deadlines. The key to his success was to unconditionally slip the deadlines. This gave his team a tangible sign for releasing the stress they were carrying. This could have been combined with a one week vacation; but, it seems to produce better results if team members stay at work and do something that they’ve been wanting to do. Usually this includes researching tools for becoming more efficient or gaining knowledge that will help them be more effective.

Everyone handles the stress of constant deadlines differently. That means everyone has to be aware of their own emotional state and take steps to keep themselves from going over the edge. That being said, it helps to have a manager who is aware and looks out for the welfare of his team members as well as the project deadlines.

Bookmark and Share

Comments (2) »

When Does Done Mean Done?

October 1, 2009 · Filed under Organizations, People, Projects · Tagged , , , ,

How many times have you asked someone to do something for you and when they tell you they’ve done it you come to find out it’s really not done? It can happen when driving home after having your car repaired, opening the bag on a takeout order, or having your kids clean their room. The work was only partially completed or it is riddled with errors. Either way, it doesn’t matter, done didn’t mean done.

Finished StampFor managers, this is a real frustration. They end up playing the quality assurance role for someone else, meanwhile time is stolen away from other things they needed to do. Managers want the work to be done right the first time.

Done means done when the end result matches the expectation of the requestor. Now we all know there is a lot to this statement: does the requestor know what they want and is the person responsible for the task capable of doing the work? The majority of the time the answer to these questions is yes. So what makes it so hard to do?

Basically, this is a work quality issue. No one sets out to screw things up, it just happens; and, usually because an employee was rushed for time, uninformed, or lacked an orientation to detail. While these can seem like reasonable excuses, they are not. They can all be overcome with some initial forethought and effort.

Employees shouldn’t wait until the last minute to tackle a task. That way they will have time to complete the task in its entirety and review their work for errors without being rushed. They shouldn’t play the victim role by saying “I wasn’t told this” or “I didn’t know about that” because their work missed the mark. They are responsible for finding out all the information needed to make sure their work matches the expectation of the requestor. When assigned a task employees should use the 5 W’s to find out all there is to know: Who is going to use this information? What format is needed? When do you want it finished? Where is the data located? Why is this so important? Lastly, if an employee lacks an orientation to detail, they should have a co-worker review their work to uncover anything that is missing or in error. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Not having an orientation to detail is a common weakness; and having work reviewed by someone else is a great coping mechanism.

Take Jerry, for example, who called one of his new employees, Kelly, into his office to ask her to prepare a report for him. After telling her what he wanted, Kelly started asking a series of questions. Jerry was caught off-guard and a little bothered at first, but then realized Kelly was gathering what she needed to do the job. A week later the report was delivered on time and after Jerry reviewed it he was surprisingly amazed at the level of detail and completeness from someone so new to the organization. He called Kelly back into his office and asked her how she was able to do this. She replied that she developed the initial draft and then took it to two co-workers to review and they gave her a handful of suggestions that she then incorporated. As Kelly was leaving Jerry’s office, he smiled and thought to himself, wow, that’s a great hire.

Yes, making sure done means done takes extra effort and discipline, but doing so is what separates the great employees from the good ones.

Bookmark and Share

Leave a comment »

« Previous entries
Next Page »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.