Volkswagen, once renowned for “German Engineering,” is in turmoil with the news that it engineered its cars to falsify fuel emission standards.   A disastrous ripple effect is causing a CEO resignation, a 30 percent drop in share price, the loss of corporate reputation and a hit to Germany’s GDP.

This huge, skillfully-engineered effort to deceive consumers and regulatory authorities requires more than just replacing the CEO, considering the size and scope of the deception. There were clearly problems throughout the entire enterprise:

•  Lack of transparency
• Lack of accountability
• Lack of sufficient controls to monitor and prevent malfeasance
• Profound human error and failure of ethical standards.

This should be a wake up call for management everywhere to review their project procedures and new product development systems enterprise wide.  Management, project managers and teams should take the lesson – if you don’t take accountability…..accountability takes you.

Between online productivity tools and tracking software, is micromanaging passé?

Hah.

In today’s multi-project environment, empowering teams is a survival technique, not a management technique. Yet PSI trainers and consultants still find managers who over-monitor, dictate how tasks should be done, or insist on daily work breakdowns. The result? A demotivated, demoralized, disengaged team.

Micromanagers hide by calling themselves “perfectionists“. Here’s a quick summary of the difference:

• A perfectionist insists that project materials and reports contain no typos.

• A micromanager rewrites everything for style, not substance, and proofreads everything personally because s/he doesn’t trust Spellcheck.

If that sounds familiar, try these behaviors:

• Barring emergencies, wait for the update meetings.
• Don’t ask to be copied on emails for small details.
• Monitor activities with a one-to- two week (5-10 working days) timeframe to avoid tracking minutia.
• Share the big picture; let staff figure out how to achieve it.

Of course, letting go is easier with a system that empowers teams so managers can supervise multiple projects effectively.

Meanwhile, for the micromanager in your office, send them this. They’ll probably need to lie down with a cool compress for the rest of the day – so you can get some work done.

Microsoft’s Windows 10 is generating a storm of coverage about its rollout being hijacked by scammers tricking folks into installing ransomware on their computers.

No doubt Microsoft thought it was making the upgrade foolproof by automatically installing the upgrade.  Sadly, we live in a world where hackers hack, spoofers spoof, people don’t read the instruction manual and drivers don’t ask for directions.

In other words, we may be hardwired for optimism, but project managers should save it for team morale-building: realists make better project planners.   Project plans based on best-case scenarios don’t take into account that fraudsters hack, employees give notice, or competitors preempt a new product launch.  Similarly, plans built using worst-case scenarios, not only result in unrealistic project completion dates, but a loss of credibility.

The Project Success Method can show teams and managers, in a matter of days, how to plan for contingencies, and how to schedule for the unexpected with techniques like the Worry Curve, forward pass scheduling, strategic compression and much more.

It’s the kind of project management approach even a pessimist could love.   It might even turn them into optimists as the project deadline approaches, on time and on budget.

One cause of project failure can be found on desks in offices everywhere:  “Side of the Desk Syndrome.”  This strikes when team members juggle tasks for different projects, especially for projects that are “add ons” to a regular workload.

The result:  The extra projects are shoved to the side of the desk, and tackled in spare moments. The tasks are deprived of the kind of focus that gives good results, or left untouched until “crisis mode.”

Luckily, there are some remedies:

-A simple, repeatable and proven methodology that can be learned in two or three days.

-A scheduling system that frees teams to tackle tasks on a schedule based on their own time estimates and with their full commitment.

-A proven cure for procrastination that empowers team members without micromanagement.

“Side of the Desk Syndrome,” while not life-threatening, is part of a serious business problem.  One 2012 study reported that the average large IT project runs 45 percent over budget and 7 percent over time, but delivers 56 percent less value than predicted. Cumulatively the study estimated that cost overruns for large IT projects ran to about $66 billion – enough to fund about 91 more missions to Pluto.

Who owns your project? Is it the customer? The stakeholders? The project manager? The project sponsor? The one who signs the checks?

Despite semantics about distinctions between “responsibility”, “authority” or “accountability”, the key is performance.  The project team and their performance drives the outcome, and a powerful way to enhance performance is by fostering ownership of the project – not necessarily by profit sharing or company stock – but with psychological ownership.

So effective is psychological ownership, one study shows, that it can boost motivation and productivity even among unmotivated employees with a bad attitude.

PSI’s training encourages ownership from the very start of the project and throughout:

• Teams are actively engaged in planning and scheduling.
• Teams control their schedules provided they meet the deadlines they agreed to.
• Face to face meetings every two weeks encourage dialog and team unity.
• Encouraging communication so that everyone feels they’ve been heard.

Employee ownership is not bestowed or assigned, but developed over time.  With a skilled project manager, even diverse teams can “own” their projects and find professional satisfaction…and a bit of personal satisfaction as well.

That’s what I call The Joy of Ownership.

How’d you like to get an extra 40 percent of productive time at work and maybe even save lives?

Don’t multitask.

Despite claims that texting during meetings or operating a tablet and smartphone simultaneously is working smart, science says otherwise:

• One research study found that switching repeatedly between tasks causes brief ‘mental blocks” while the brain recalibrates itself for the new activity. The cumulative effect of switching consumes up to 40 percent of someone’s productive time.

• Some other studies claim multitasking can actually cost 15 IQ points and even shrinks your brain.

In project management (or any office environment), multitasking causes poor focus, sloppy planning and implementation, or emails with typos. It can put a career or a project off the rails…but in other circumstances, it can kill.

Multitasking behind the wheel – known as distracted driving – claims more than 3,000 lives a year and causes hundreds of thousands of injuries.

So as summer comes to an end and school begins, make sure all the drivers in your family monotask on the road; no eating, drinking, texting, phone calls, putting on makeup or even changing clothes while driving.

Don’t roll the dice just to save a few seconds or minutes. You might just save an eternity that way.

Happy summer. Your project is about to get disrupted.

Summer brings vacations, kids free from school, office summer hours, and weddings.  It disrupts the flow of business (up to 20 percent decrease in productivity and a 13 percent increase in project turnaround times).  Global projects are particularly vulnerable to The Summer Syndrome, since many workers abroad often vacation at the same time, in August.

In the U.S. not everyone will vacation at the same time…but that’s a mixed blessing. A string of vacations taken throughout summertime creates a ripple effect as the project progresses. Decision makers, team members, vendors, consultants, shippers, payment processors – every function and business segment is affected.

That’s a compelling argument for the Project Success Method’s duration based project planning.  Our seven-step duration estimating process helps team members devise real-world timeframes (in which people go on vacations, for instance), while our add-in for Microsoft Project give managers more control of the schedule.

Of course project managers must still monitor for schedule slippage to prevent the Summer Syndrome.  However, the right tools and realistic scheduling can help make projects and teams have it “made in the shade” clear through to project completion.

Even if PSI’s headquarters weren’t in Atlanta, we’d still be fans of the Hawks.

They gave us an exciting season – and gave the Cavs a close call in Game Three despite injuries.  They also brought to life the importance of teamwork. (Earlier this year, the NBA named the Hawks’ entire starting five “Player of the Month.”) In the Eastern Conference finals with the Cavaliers, the contrast could not be starker:  a team playing as a unit, vs. a team with a Superstar – the Superstar – LeBron James.

They were swept by the Cavs, but they succeeded in other respects.  They demonstrated that real teamwork, with no one player bigger than the rest, sharing the ball, communicating, and helping teammates is a powerful strategy.  Injuries and questionable behavior from opponents took a toll, but this is a young team committed to a long-term strategy.

That’s a lesson that project managers trying a new approach might take to heart – institutional success is a long game that requires a long-term commitment.   In project management, that’s a compelling and relevant lesson. A superstar is a phenomenon, but everyone in project management works on a team.

We can’t wait till October.

A survey of 32,000 employees revealed that people who met with their managers up to six hours a week were more inspired, engaged and innovative at work. That confirms PSI’s preference for in-person, biweekly team status meetings to shift the Worry Curve.

We know it’s difficult to make time, coordinate schedules, and reserve the room. However, consider the pitfalls of relying solely on electronic status reports – for project managers and teams:

• It encourages procrastination:  Emailed status reports and updates sit in an inbox with other email – easy to overlook or put off. It doesn’t command the attention a meeting would.

• It discourages group problem solving:  Electronic reporting deprives the project of the collective insight and support of the entire team when problems arise.

• It hinders accountability: The biggest problem electronic reporting creates is enabling team members to avoid public accountability for their tasks by hiding behind email.

In-person meetings create team commitment to the project, to each other and to their own roles in the project, while project managers find it easier to monitor progress, see deviations from the plan and tap the insights of the whole group to find solutions.  Being in a room together drives accountability, results, and a sense of community.

It’s a lot better than hiding behind an email.

There are ‘teachable moments” but April presents a teachable month. Tax time makes project managers of everyone who files a return.

Most people procrastinate, then scramble for records and spend days with an accountant or tax software. As April 15 approaches, they cross their fingers, file, and hope. They prove PSI’s philosophy: of the three measures of project success – time, budget and quality – the key element to manage properly is time.

 Busy managers have two common solutions, both wrong:

-Count backwards from the deadline

-Let the software handle it

 Both solutions are cages, not structures. Scheduling backwards is inflexible, unrealistic, and suppresses team commitment…and despite “time management software” and its 320 million Google hits, software alone is not the answer – people are.

We developed an add-in for Microsoft Project that puts people in control of their schedules. Our Project Success Toolkit lets users revise an activity’s duration without impacting resource assignments, and vice versa. This creates a more stable schedule because task duration, resource assignments and status do not change without user input.

We can’t help with IRS schedules, but we can train staff on the Project Success Method in just two day’s time – three with the Project Success Toolkit program. That’s a schedule any project manager could appreciate.