Succeeding in the Project Management Jungle How to Manage the People Side of Projects_5 docx

This page intentionally left blank INITIATING (OR INITIATION) BEGINS at the point in which a specific project, one of the many potential projects an organization may be con- sidering, is approv ed. When a new project is initiated, these ques- tions are key: > Who will lead it (PM assignment)? > Why is this project being done (project charter)? > What will be done (project scope)? Obviously, you want to be assigned to projects that will enhance your career. In many organizations, a complicated political process is involv ed in determining which projects get approved and then who gets assigned to the key roles on those projects. This process is certainly not always logical and straightforward. American Management Association • www.amanet.org 103 Initiating CHAPTER 7 Make sure you know why y ou accept each new project assign- ment. There are valid reasons why you might not. For example, Bea twice passed up the chance to work on promising projects in her organization, once because she didn’t trust the senior manage- ment to support her in what she could see would be a tough situ- ation and once because she w anted to giv e a promising subordi- nate a chance to run a project. Refuse too many projects, howev- er, and you may quickly find yourself outside your organization’s mainstream or e ven out the door. Also, be a ware that organizations often misunderstand the proj- ect charter process during initiation, allowing other agendas to pig- gyback onto it. They also pay too little attention early on to the details of the project scope. The key areas in initiation are: > PM assignment > Project charter > Project scope PM Assignment Being assigned to the right projects is critically important for y our career; therefore, much of this chapter focuses on PM assignment. Just how are project managers assigned for major projects? Bob Carroll graduated from Harvard University in 1972 and has an extensive background in manufacturing management and project management. He has written numerous papers on technology issues, lean manufacturing, and self-directed work groups. Carroll has hired many project leaders in his career in a variety of roles, including operations section manager at Motorola, Inc., in Scottsdale, Arizona. His list of desired qualities for strong project leaders includes the following: > Solid engineering/science education > Intelligent > Honest/trustworthy > Strong people skills > Self-confident > Self-starter 104 AVOIDING PITFALLS IN THE FIVE KEY PHASES OF A PROJECT American Management Association • www.amanet.org > P ositive attitude > Open to new ideas and new ways of doing things > Loyal, nonpolitical Mark Finger, HR VP at National Instruments (NI), says: “The best engineers often don’t make the best supervisors.” Finger also mentions that NI spends a great deal of time identifying and match- ing needed skills with potential leaders. It looks for the ability to communicate eff ectively so as to bridge the various stakeholder viewpoints, to manage and balance risk, to have the willingness to make the tough calls (even if unpopular), and to do all this in a wa y that is consistent with NI’s values. So, if you have the leadership qualities your supervisors are looking for, can you count on getting the plum assignment? Certainly, this will get you on the short list. After that, organiza- tional factors are involved. In my e xperience, these organizational factors are (in no particular order) as follows: > Availability of desired individuals > Organizational politics > Recent past performance > Grooming considerations f or career growth > Diversity > The number of new projects requiring a project manager No w onder getting things done and generating business results is so hard, considering how few of these factors are directly related to getting the product out the door. Two pitfalls commonly occur with PM assignment, and they can hav e lasting negative effects on both the future success of the project and your success with it. Project Pitfall: Project Manager Assigned After Project Approval Often, there are more potential projects than there are seasoned project managers. Consequently, before the project receiv es final approval, the organization may assign someone to oversee the proj- INITIATING 105 American Management Association • www.amanet.org ect who will not be the ex ecution project manager. This task ma y be only one among many other tasks for this person. She may not ev en be a professional project manager; for example, she ma y be the marketing professional who is pushing for the project. She may not make the time or have the expertise to ensure that the neces- sary actions are performed, leaving a mess f or the next project man- ager. Sure, the right checklists will be filled in and the required reviews will be held, but the effort might not match what is required for the project to have the highest chance of success. You might think: How can I be held accountable for issues that predate me back to initiation? Larry, the project manager in Chapter 5 who took what looked lik e an interesting project assign- ment after months of unemployment, made a statement much like that to me. Larry seemed to meet all the criteria f or a strong proj- ect leader, but he struggled for a long time because of issues that had come up before his involvement. There are several things you can do before you accept a posi- tion to ensure that the position will work well for you. First, to deal with what are admittedly complicated and confusing situations wrought with emotion and overwhelming time and financial pres- sures, you need a set of bedrock beliefs, established before trouble started, upon which you will base your decisions. My bedrock beliefs are embodied in the sev en characteristics of TACTILE Management. They drive my actions at w ork and, increasingly, in the rest of my life. Tak e the time to think about what your key beliefs are and how you would deal with situations like Larry’s. In addition, you must decide before the next project what your personal approach will be concerning issues not of y our making. My advice is to identify and giv e voice to such issues early, before they attach themselves to you. Include a page of discovered issues/risks in your first and all subsequent monthly ops re views. Refuse to lie to customers, management, or your team. It might be better for y ou to find a new job, no matter how painful that might be, than to try to find y our w a y through the minefield of other peo- ple’s problems. Your values should driv e how you live and work. If trust and other similar values are important to you, you will not find playing loose with the truth a viable strategy. 106 AVOIDING PITFALLS IN THE FIVE KEY PHASES OF A PROJECT American Management Association • www.amanet.org Next, y ou must network. Technical people often prefer work- ing technical issues by themselves rather than building personal networks. To av oid Larry’ s fate, you must get out of your cubicle and network often to meet people who share your values. Develop a key set of friends who watch out for one another . One technical person who does this well is my Texas Aggie friend Ann. Ann used her very extensive Central Te xas netw ork of not just co-workers but also college classmates and professors, neighbors in affluent West Austin, fellow choir members, Scout parents, soccer parents, and several other groups, dev eloped and nurtured ov er many years, to find an entirely new career field that she loves and in which she is successful. Finally, impro ve your emotional intelligence so that you can better discern situations that don’t work w ell for you. IQ is the tra- ditional measure of cognitive abilities. In contrast, emotional intel- ligence (EQ), per Reuven Bar-On, creator of the Emotional Quotient Inventory, as quoted by authors Marcia Hughes and James Bradford Te rrell in The Emotionally Intelligent Team (Jossey-Bass, 2007), is “a cross-section of interrelated emotional and social competencies, skills, and facilitators that determine how effectiv ely w e understand and express ourselves, understand oth- ers and relate with them, and cope with daily demands.” This sounds to me like the definition of a good project manager. If you accept this definition, it seems fair to sa y that many of us techni- cally trained f olks have higher IQs than EQs. ActionsYou CanTake To improve your EQ, assign yourself the following action items: > Read Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, a classic. Also, Dr. R eldan Nadler’s The Leader’s Playbook is a hands-on guide to using emotional intelli- gence concepts in the business world. > Take an EQ assessment from a professional. Bar -On’s EQI, Hay es Group’s Emotional Competency Instrument, or the May er - Salov e y-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) will give you INITIATING 107 American Management Association • www.amanet.org insight into yourself and your situation. The easiest way to find a qualified professional to administer these assessments is through the International Coaching Federation (ICF). There are chapters in most major cities. Also, the companies that own these assessments can give you a list of qualified administrators. The Skinner and theThree Letter Agency Some organizations use two different individuals in planning proj- ects. I call one a trapper, used to win a contract or gain approval of a project, and the second a skinner, used to run t he project. The use of different individuals for these two roles allows for organizational plausible deniability, a kind of collective shrugging of the shoulders ov er who is really responsible when things go wrong. Was it a bad contract or just poor execution by that young, or new, or inexperi- enced project manager? Project managers in these situations can easily become scapegoats if something goes wrong and they have not had time to build a strong network of support. James’s Three Letter Agency, mentioned in Chapter 4, is just such a story. When you are the skinner, wondering if you are set up to fail, you may feel like giving up and going wherever the organization culture seems to push you. But it is always best to tell customers, y our management, and y our team what they need to hear, ev en if they vehemently do not want to hear it at the time. The wisdom (or emotional intelligence) is in knowing what they need to hear, when they need to hear it, and how to present the information. Be able to present a handful of options. Keep on point with a simple message that cannot be confused or construed dif- ferently from the w ay you intend. Telling the truth in this way will ultimately increase trust in the ov erall relationship. The Three Letter Agency customer would have been much angrier for much longer had James stayed silent (which is often what is done) until he ran out of money and then told the agency. Be a w are when you are in a skinner position. Decide if the risk is worth the potential return. F or James, ev erything worked out, but this is certainly not always the case. 108 AVOIDING PITFALLS IN THE FIVE KEY PHASES OF A PROJECT American Management Association • www.amanet.org Project Pitfall: PM Assigned Before Project Approval Let’s move on to the position of the project leader who negotiated the contract or led the team through the company’s internal proj- ect approval process. This position may seem better because you have more knowledge and control, but it can still be dangerous, because stakeholders are tempted to sa y, “You should have thought of that during the preapproval phase; it is in your baseline.” Or if the requirements (scope) document is vague, they will be certain that whatever issue you raise was already addressed and will like- ly say, in angry, dismissive terms, something like, “I am sure that was covered during the project approval process. Why are you bringing it up now?” ActionsYou CanTake Here are a few steps you can take during initiation and then build on as the project mo ves through the other phases: > Focus on closing all the unresolved actions you can before the approval meeting through discussions with stakeholders or oth- ers who can resolv e the issue. > Document the approved baseline as best you can, along with the open actions, action owners, and due dates. > Publish this baseline list of actions, and make sure some part of your ongoing monthly operations review package discuss- es any actions that are still open each month. You don’t hav e to ov erdo this; one page will likely be enough to keep those impor- tant needed actions on the awareness burner. > Drive the remaining actions quickly to closure as the proj- ect proceeds. ToolYou Can Use:The Interpersonal Situation AwarenessTool Many of us may think we can handle any assignment given. In some cases, we ma y think we ha ve no choice about whether to accept an assignment. The Interpersonal Situation Awareness Tool (ISAT), shown in Figure 7-1, provides you with some self-generat- INITIATING 109 American Management Association • www.amanet.org ed information to raise your awareness when you must decide not only which projects to take on but also which relationships will require some effort. Situation awareness (SA) means ensuring that the necessary information to make a decision is available and understood by the decision maker. The ISAT is meant to give you situational aware- ness on a key decision: which project assignments you will agree to. The se ven ISAT components are: 1. Relationship with your key project partner (A) 2. Relationship with your supervisor (B) 3. Relationship with your customer (C) 110 AVOIDING PITFALLS IN THE FIVE KEY PHASES OF A PROJECT American Management Association • www.amanet.org Figure 7-1: Interpersonal Situation Analysis Tool 4. Your personal power in the situation (D) 5. Relationship with your team (E) 6. Net relationship with your supervisor’s key peers (F) 7. Net relationship with other k e y stakeholders (G) In the pages that follow, we’re going to go through each of these seven components one at a time. As you fill out the ISAT, be brutally honest with yourself. This is a learning exercise, geared to help you better understand yourself, those around you, and the sit- uations y ou are in so that you make wiser choices in the projects you choose to work on. Five Key Questions The sections in the ISAT concerning the relationships with your key project partner (A), supervisor (B), and customer (C) use some or all of the fiv e questions that follow. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 = not at all; 2 = somewhat untrue; 3 = neutral; 4 = somewhat true; 5 = extremely true, answer the following questions, as applicable to sections A, B, and C. The “he” or “she” mentioned in the ques- tions refers to your k ey partner, supervisor, or customer, depend- ing on the applicable section. (Note that Questions 3 and 4 are not scored for your customer relationship [section C].) 1. To what extent is she committed to y our success? 2. To what extent does his basic value system around people management and concepts like integrity, transparency, accountability, communication, and trust match y ours? 3. To what extent is she supportive of y ou in the organization, especially when things get tough? 4. To what extent does he seek to understand and maximize your personal strengths? 5. To what extent does she apply what y ou consider useful emotional intelligence to your benefit? These elements, by no means based on a statistically valid sur- ve y (but several technical professionals did fill out versions of the questionnaire to help me calibrate it), are what I have found to be INITIATING 111 American Management Association • www.amanet.org [...]... integrity, while being the right kind of strong leader to enable the team to generate the desired execution results Avoiding Toxic Management in Initiation In Chapter 5, we discussed two toxic management styles: Country Club Management, a lax, undisciplined project environment where project managers are not empowered to build the right culture for success, and Take the Hill (At Any Cost) Management, a draconian... projects The ISAT can help you in many ways Obviously, you can use it in the initiating phase to convince yourself to avoid or accept a project During planning, you can also use the output of the ISAT to identify key people problems so that you solve them early, before they cause major problems that result in the usual firefighting or diving catches required by lack of planning Of course, the higher the. .. going to accomplish Involving the team appropriately in the process of clearly defining the problem they are going to work on is the right thing to do Organizations often don’t do American Management Association • www.amanet.org 126 AVOIDING PITFALLS IN THE FIVE KEY PHASES OF A PROJECT so, because they think it unnecessarily takes too much time or makes this harder and more complicated than it needs to. .. number in the ISAT spreadsheet I often have had great allies in management or among the HR people who supported the organizations I was in Conversely, I have had occasionally found my way obstructed by influential managers, usually managers who felt that my project management function was gaining too much influence over how their people were directed Your relationship with the management food chain can... by not informing your customer or management up front of the impact of these issues, and your goose will likely be cooked when the truth finally comes out It is true that I have never seen a scope document that was totally finished during the initiating portion of a development project Often, they are not 100 percent finished even during the project s execution But you accept a huge risk (to project. .. consider Your approach going in is key to future success Do you view management as allies who can help or as irritations to be humored? Evaluate the key members of your management food chain They are considered key if they are somehow involved in your project from a management perspective and can affect your current or future positions Then subtract the number of people in the chain who are demonstrably... to spread the initial investment across more business units, were using the project charter process to broaden the design to fit more applications His fear was that this might cause his company to miss what appeared to be a golden consumer opportunity Management s hijacking of your project charter—jumping onto and disrupting your neatly structured and organized project train, then jumping off when it... time to stop this and move on, but move into planning only with a list of actions that clearly shows what needs to be done and identifies the risk in doing so Start the process now of being transparent, holding yourself and others accountable, and driving clear communication and American Management Association • www.amanet.org 122 AVOIDING PITFALLS IN THE FIVE KEY PHASES OF A PROJECT trust with integrity,... periodic reviews with the scope document owners to keep them focused on closing open scope issues Also, highlight open TBDs in your monthly operations reviews or other reports to management Preplanning the Plan Some organizations simply do not understand the essential difference between the process of approving projects (initiating) and the subsequent planning and executing of these projects Data that... charter documents the goals and objectives of a project in relation to the organization’s overall business strategy (which, we hope, is informed by an intimate understanding of the customer’s American Management Association • www.amanet.org 116 AVOIDING PITFALLS IN THE FIVE KEY PHASES OF A PROJECT needs), as well as some high-level information on the investment required John Berra, chairman of Emerson Process . charter process during initiation, allowing other agendas to pig- gyback onto it. They also pay too little attention early on to the details of the project scope. The key areas in initiation are: >. obstructed by influential managers, usually managers who felt that my project management function was gaining too much influence over how their people were directed. Your relationship with the management. ability to do many things, including some of the high-performance team- building activities that we wanted to accomplish. On the other side 114 AVOIDING PITFALLS IN THE FIVE KEY PHASES OF A PROJECT American