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.

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.

There’s an interesting message hidden in the offerings at the recent Project Management Institute’s World Congress.  Classes in Technical Skills comprised only 18 of the 65 classes listed by “content aim;” the largest individual class category was not about Agile, or Change Management – it was “Leadership Skills for Project Managers, Program Managers and Portfolio Managers.”

It affirms our conviction, backed by a survey quoted by PMI, that people skills are a major factor in a project manager’ career.

Trends in leadership theories abound; Googling “Business Management Leadership Theories” yields nearly two million hits.  It’s easy to get tangled up in Theory Overload –

Management By Walking Around, Emotional Intelligence, and others flourish.  Whatever the theory, though, our years of experience confirm that the best project managers:

•  Recognize that the most important element in a project is time
• Earn and maintain the trust of the project teams
• Inspire the team members commitment to the project with mutual support and individual accountability.

Those three points work together and will work with just about any theory, yielding successful projects and successful careers.

Society is becoming ever more reliant on digital solutions – even delivering anesthesia.  This is certainly evident in project management; although Microsoft Project leads the top 20, there are literally hundreds of others available.

PSI trainers often hear of enterprises looking for the “silver bullet” software solution, but our mantra is “Software doesn’t lead projects, people do.”  The human element is what drives project success; even the most powerful and sophisticated software will fail if:

• Project managers can’t strike the right balance of project oversight and either micromanage or under-manage.
• Project managers lack soft skills in people management, consensus building and communication.
• The people who will actually do the work have insufficient input into planning.
• The project charter and schedule are not updated, monitored or committed to by the teams and the project leader regularly (preferably every two weeks or less).

A company with the same problems no matter what software it uses may need a more comprehensive solution that goes beneath the surface.   But no matter what software option you choose, people will still be a decisive factor in the success of your project…at least until Skynet takes over.

Recently, several studies confirm what PSI trainers have long known. The dreaded “S” word – stress – can exhilarate –if handled correctly.

All too often, people procrastinate and downplay future challenges; as the deadline approaches, they panic. The results (and the teams!) suffer. However, introducing pressure sooner can actually decrease it in the long run, and yields better project results.

The key is shifting The Worry Curve early on, using PSI methodologies to empower team members to take control of their roles by:

•  Participating in planning and meeting the project’s requirements, challenges, deadlines and risks;
• Publicly committing to specific, well-defined project responsibilities;
• Meeting every two weeks to report on their progress, identify problems, update the plan to include any required changes, and again, commit to their role in the project’s success.

Problems are solved along the way (not at deadline), by teams invested in their roles, in the team as a whole, and in the project’s success. Eventually, the project ‘crosses the hump” and the worst is over, instead of just beginning.

At this point…believe it or not, many team members look at their roles in the project in terms of the “F” word: Fun.

Impossible? To learn more about the Worry Curve and how it works, contact us.

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.

One distinctive – but misunderstood – aspect of the Project Success Method is the importance of frequent, face to face meetings. Frequent meetings are too often considered productivity-killing time-wasters – there’s even an app for that.

Yet, time and again, we’ve found that face to face team meetings are the best way to get things done, especially if the ‘mechanics” of the meetings are right:

•  Schedule consistently, using the same dates/times. Apps can help; a comprehensive roundup is here.

• Be brief. After 45 minutes to an hour, focus plunges.

• Create an agenda, stick to it, lead it and end it on time.

• Stay on track. Note essential, but non-agenda concerns, and follow up after the meeting.

• Refreshments? Beverages yes; food no.  Dehydration hampers focus, but it plummets if attendees sit still for an hour in a crowded, windowless room while digesting lunch.

• No electronics or side discussions.

• Air concerns, questions, problems and solutions…but not complaints or whining.

These “mechanics” help create a successful meeting, but proper planning and people skills are key.  Together, these elements can make meetings less of a necessary evil and more of meeting of the minds.

There’s an interesting message hidden in the offerings at the upcoming Project Management Institute’s World Congress.  Classes in Technical Skills comprised only 18 of the 65 classes listed by “content aim;” the largest individual class category was not about Agile, or Change Management – it was “Leadership Skills for Project Managers, Program Managers and Portfolio Managers.”

It affirms our conviction, backed by a survey quoted by PMI, that people skills are a major factor in a project manager’ career.

Trends in leadership theories abound; Googling “Business Management Leadership Theories” yields nearly two million hits.  It’s easy to get tangled up in Theory Overload –

Management By Walking Around, Emotional Intelligence, and others flourish.  Whatever the theory, though, our years of experience confirm that the best project managers:

-Recognize that the most important element in a project is time

-Earn and maintain the trust of the project teams

-Inspire the team members commitment to the project with mutual support and individual accountability.

Those three points work together and will work with just about any theory, yielding successful projects and successful careers.

Looking at lists of ‘epic product fails” it’s easy to wonder how experts in well-established companies could miss such obvious problems – snacks that cause gastrointestinal distress, for instance, or a complete misstep in brand perception (Yogurt shampoo?)

Now, though, product success could also hinge on identifying and satisfying new ‘must haves” in product attributes. Industries today wrestle with benchmarks unheard of twenty or even ten years ago. The ground rules for product – and project – success are changing to include new “must haves” like:

–sustainability in products and processes.  The Global Development Research Center even created a program for Environmental Assessment as a project management tool.

-confidentiality of personal data.  Three out of four Americans say they won’t use Google Glass because of privacy concerns.

For project managers, this means rethinking project charters with a more expansive collection of stakeholders, and a wider description of constraints, assumptions and risks.  We teach an extensive pre-planning effort (we call it the Project Success FirstStep Process^®) that covers forming the team, doing the ‘pre-work,” creating the charter (via an extensive, in-person process), and getting it approved before starting the planning phase. Everyone has a chance to put their arguments on the table.  The result is a charter, and a clear set of marching orders, that is approved by stakeholders and in line with what the customer wants.

That way, their projects or products can stay ahead of the Next Big Thing…instead of getting run over by it.