Ready to Make a Change to Agile? Make it STICKY!

“Change means uncertainty; uncertainly breeds opportunity.”      Japanese saying

 “Uncertainty is the breeding ground of all great possibility!”        Jennifer Chrisman

Are you ready to adopt Agile project management to improve project delivery and complement and enhance “traditional” project management rigor? If yes, then you need a change management approach with actions that can make change happen — and make it stick.

In their 2007 book, Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath explain six principles to make change stick.

Let’s look at each principle:

Simplicity: Find the core idea; keep it simple; overcome the curse of knowledge

Unexpectedness: Surprise generates interest and curiosity to grab attention; opens gaps that you can fill with knowledge

Concreteness: Be specific (i.e., Put a man on the moon by the end of this decade and bring him back safely); no abstract speak

Credibility: Use relevant experts; size your statistics (use a human scale—i.e. don’t say “micro-seconds”); use the power of details (if suitable to the audience)

Be careful  . . . don’t declare victory too soon. To embed the change and ensure that it sticks, acknowledge the lessons learned. Engage and involve project team members over the long term. Reward best practices to capture the full benefit of the change.

Emotions: Tap into things people care about, appeal to self-interest, appeal to identity

Many project leaders excel at building the rational case for change, but they are less adept in appealing to people’s emotional core. Yet the team members’ emotions are where the momentum for real transformation ultimately lies. “Make it stick” communications need to be targeted to each segment of the project team, and delivered in a two-way fashion that allows team members to make sense of the change subjectively.

Stories: Tell stories, it’s the next best thing to doing it; incorporate as many of these sticky principles as possible.

Maintain continuous effort to ensure that the changes are indeed working. Keep talking about how well the project is doing with the change to Agile to encourage people. When hiring new project team members, make the Agile approach stick in their minds.

Read Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath and learn why some ideas survive and others die.

If you are adopting Agile project management, a change management approach such as this can help you enhance your overall transformation capability, increase the speed of implementation, and improve the probability of success.

To learn how to apply Agile project management principles and the Scrum framework to create software-intensive products, check out Learning Tree’s course – Agile Project Management with Scrum.

James L. Haner

Eleven Project Leadership Principles Worth Doing

Project managers, did you know there is a 1983 Army Leadership Guide that contains eleven principles of leadership well worth adding to your project leadership skill set? Funny how sometimes things survive the “test of time”, isn’t it? On this first day of June, here are some traits to consider the next time you are doing some self-analysis of your project leadership skills, straight from the US Army Military Leadership Guide.

1. Know yourself and seek self-improvement. As a project manager and a leader, we all need to look for opportunities to fine tune and improve our leadership skills. There is nothing quite like taking a good look at your project leadership skills and accentuating the positive skills, minimizing the negative things you might do and adding some new skills to the mix.

2. Be technically proficient.   Seems like the best leaders I have worked for and with on my projects knew their jobs and were very much “in the know” about my job, its tasks and the desired outcomes as well. That didn’t mean these leaders micromanaged me or were more technically proficient at the task level, though.

3. Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions. Every effective project manager is both responsible and accountable – for their project and for their team. Effective leaders look ahead to the future and also look back at the past for lessons learned to help the team succeed.

4. Make sound and timely decisions. If you don’t have a serious toolkit of   problem solving, decision-making, and planning tools, it is time to construct one. Effective leaders also involve the team in these activities – it never hurts to have more than one person thinking about how to solve a problem or do something differently.

5. Set the example. I have always thought that project managers set the tone for their team. They also set the bar for their team’s behavior and work ethic. Knowing this, who wouldn’t want to set the bar high for the team and encourage everyone to “strive to excel”.

6. Know your people and look out for their well-being. Taking care of your team should be a project manager’s top priority, right up there with achieving the project’s objectives and delivering a successful outcome. A manager I worked for many years ago told me that she thought of her team as a garden, and she was the gardener who nurtured her team members to help them grow.

7. Keep your team informed. All project managers know the number one cause of project failure is poor communication – with internal and external stakeholders, team members, the organization, specific individuals or all of the above. Effective leaders are capable communicators at all levels of the organization, and with one to many people.

8. Develop a sense of responsibility in your workers. This relates back to leadership trait #3. It can be tough to be a responsible leader when your followers and peers are not so responsible. Fostering and teaching your team to be responsible in the workplace pays dividends for everyone down the line.

9. Ensure that tasks are understood, supervised, and accomplished. Effective delegation skills are essential. This item makes me think about delegating work packages to team members or team leaders: involving the team in defining and planning what needs to be done, agreeing to the work, keeping you up-to-date with the status of the work and making sure the work is completed correctly. Remember, no micromanaging required.

10. Train and work as a team. Ask yourself, is your project team really a team or are they a group of people who work for you that are just doing their jobs? Teams of people do more than just show up to do their 9 to 5 jobs. High-performing teams work together to achieve a goal or objective, and oftentimes produce more than the sum of their individual parts.

11. Use and develop the full capabilities of your team. Leading your project team and encouraging them to achieve their full potential requires some effort on your part. To me, the idea of servant leadership fits really well here as you enable and encourage your team to excel but try to also get out of their way.

Susan Weese

 

Reference: U.S. Army. (October 1983). Military Leadership (FM 22-100). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

17 Ways to Get to Know Your New Project Manager

“The speed of the project manager is the speed of the project team.”
Adapted from Lee Iacocca

It’s been said that the average project team member will have 10 or more new project managers over the course of his or her career. That’s quite a few adjustments that team members will have to make. Building a productive relationship with your new project manager is critical and should be a top priority for you.

Here are some tips that can help you adapt to your new project manager.

1. Set up a one-on-one meeting as early as possible to learn more about him or her.

2. Determine your project manager’s priorities, goals and metrics to use to evaluate success. In this meeting, make sure to give a little background about yourself and your role in the organization. Your project manager may not have had time to learn about what you do and your background.

3. Clarify expectations on your job so the project manager knows what is reasonable or realistic. Don’t make assumptions – get clarity on what is required or needed.

4. Secure a commitment to resources you might need to be successful in your job.

5. Find out what his/her work style is like. For example, does your project manager come into the office early, or stay late, or do both? Does the project manager like to be updated via phone calls, face-to-face meetings, or e-mail? How often does he/she want to be updated? Does the project manager like getting an overview or strategic view of the issues and projects or does he or she want detailed specifics? What type of decisions does the project manager want to be involved in?

6. Identify your new project leader’s style in terms of likes, dislikes, hot buttons and preferences.

7. Be open and flexible to your new project manager’s style. You must be willing to embrace some change. This is not only a new project manager, but it is a new person.

8. Make a good impression. I am not talking about being a “brown-noser” or a “yes person” who just agrees with the new project manager or strokes his/her ego with comments about how great he or she is. Rather, it is important to share your knowledge and organizational insights with your new project manager. Be careful not to just pile on the flattery. Be genuine.

9. Help your project manager to be successful. This is critical for a new project manager. Help him/her get up-to-speed on the organization. It will be appreciated. At the same time, remember that your project manager is the project leader. So, while you might offer help, you don’t need to step in to take over.

10. Anticipate your new project manager’s needs. Show initiative and ask the project manager how you can help. Go beyond the call of duty.

11. Stay positive and enthusiastic. This can have an impact on having everyone around you have a positive outlook.

12. Watch what you say about your project teammates. It is not a good idea to say negative things about other project members. Be careful about making comparisons (even positive ones) between your new project manager and the previous project manager.

13. Find out who the project manager admires and is influenced by. Make sure to develop good relationships with those folks as well.

14. Keep a “new project manager list of questions or information” to share with him/her throughout the day. Use those short snippets of time to ask questions or share insights. Be organized in case you do not get larger blocks of time with him/her.

15. Get feedback. Set up a meeting within the first month or two to see how you are doing (from your project manager’s perspective).

16. Bring solutions to meetings, not just the problems.

17. Try to score some early wins and successes. Make sure to give them updates about what you are doing.

Remember, getting a new project manager brings with it new opportunities. Use this time as a way to try out some things you have always wanted to do: Speak up in meetings, take on new tasks/activities, etc. Also, remember that it is an adjustment time for the new project manager, too; so cut him/her some slack by giving time and space to adjust.

“No project team member goes before his or her time, unless the project manager leaves early.”
Adapted from Groucho Marx

James L. Haner

Seven Skills for High-Performing Project Teams

Successful project managers know that effective teams get the work done and then some.  The trick is to build and maintain an effective project team within your organization.  The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines a team as “a number of persons associated together in work or activity.”  Sounds good to me.

When I looked up this definition, I had to smile at one of the other definitions of team also provided by the website, which stated that a team was defined as “two or more draft animals harnessed to the same vehicle or implement.”  Now, I have worked on project teams where I felt like one of those draft animals, but I would prefer that my team be high-performing entities that function pretty much independently from my management and within the enabling framework of some leadership both from me and from the project sponsor.

In her article “Teamwork is a Contact Sport: Seven Skills of High-Performance Teams”, Mary Werner steps through seven interconnected skills that can help you improve your team performance.  The seven skills that effective project managers and leaders (along with their team members) need to keep in sight are:

1. Team identity
2. Motivation
3. Communication
4. Conflict resolution
5. Awareness of individual and team emotions
6. Ability to handle stress
7. Ability to have fun and maintain a positive mood

Werner states that teams that work together to build on these seven elements can become more effective teams in terms of their performance.  Let’s step through and have a look at each of these seven skills in a bit more detail.

Team identity.  A sense of team identity keeps the members of the team connected to one another and on the same page, working towards the same team goals. Everyone knows the team is, what the team is about and why we exist on this project at this particular point in time. A sense of team identity is what makes us a team versus just a group of people who happen to be working on the same stuff. When the team succeeds, we all succeed.  Not only that, we succeed together as a team versus separate individuals.

Motivation. If your team isn’t motivated, your work efforts aren’t going to go anywhere good. A high-performing team needs everyone’s technical, people and process skills firing at maximum power.  When I hear the term “synergy”, I think of team motivation working in an infinite loop.  Each individual member of the team applies his or her enthusiasm and skills to motivate everyone else on the team.  In return, the “well-oiled machine that we call our team” motivates each of its individual team members.  This positive motivation cycle should continue across the project life cycle.

Communication. Everyone on a performing team needs to use their communication skills.  Effective communications within and outside of the project team can make or break a project.  Communication skills are like making a cake – you have to do something with all those disparate ingredients and communication styles (including adjusting for the altitude around here) before your team’s collective communication style becomes a cake that is worth eating.

Conflict resolution. While conflict is inevitable on our projects and in our daily lives, that conflict does not have to derail the team and its efforts. Working in teams requires you to manage and address conflicts. It is essential that project team members recognize conflicts and learn to address them in a positive way. Sometimes the team has focus on examining the premises, assumptions, observations and expectations of its team members in order to resolve a conflict and get on with things.

Awareness of individual and team emotions. If you work with people then you need to be able to handle their emotions.  I think of emotions as simply part of being human. Everyone on the team needs to be aware of their emotions and how those emotions impact others. Team members also need to be able to regulate their emotions so they don’t get in the way of what needs to be done. This type of awareness can strengthen the team identity and provide for even more synergy when working together.

Handling stress. Working on most projects mean the team members are working under many types of stress: schedule stress, quality stress, budget stress, and even simply “dealing with other people” stress. The life, lemons and lemonade saying fits very well into being a member of a performing team on a project.  When we are faced with adversity, we work together to get through that adversity and keep moving forward.

Having fun and maintaining a positive mood.  According to Werner, this is an essential element of high performing teams. I agree absolutely.  Teams who are happy and optimistic have a much better chance of weathering the ups and downs of the project and achieving a successful outcome.

Werner indicates that being a team is a contact sport and that social connectivity with one another and with your work environment are important factors in achieving your team’s desired end result. Remember, a project team is a working group of people who learn from one another and share ideas.  These people are dependent upon ne one another as they all work together towards a shared goal or objective. In today’s dynamic, and fast-paced business world, there are many business challenges that are better met by teams of folks working together effectively.

If you are looking to refine or validate your team-building skills on your projects, take a look at Learning Tree’s 4-day course on project team leadership or their 3-day course on success through teamwork. These courses are certainly a great place to begin or revisit how well you are building and leading your teams and to learn some new skills and techniques for dealing with your teams even better still.

More power to the team!

Susan Weese

Reference: Werner, M. (2010, August). Teamwork is a contact sport: Seven skills of high-performance teams. CPA Practice Management Forum, 6(8), 5-9

How to be a Great Project Leader with the Millennials

“Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.”

Bill Bradley, former U.S. Senator and Hall of Fame basketball player

Are you the next Alexander the Great of project leadership?

Alexander the Great inspired, rewarded, and acknowledged those who fought alongside him. He instilled confidence and trust. His soldiers (teammates) were willing to follow him anywhere.

Successful project leaders do many things, but perhaps their most telling characteristic is a natural and authentic ability to inspire excellence while maintaining strength and a bit of humility. The true reflection of a project leader’s ability is measured not only in bringing projects in on target, on time and on budget . . . and also in the success and empowerment of each team member.

Effective project leaders command confidence and trust not by enforcing, but by encouraging. Wise project leaders know when to admit their mistakes and have an equal willingness to learn from them.

Lately, I have written about the “mindful” project leader and the “collaborative” project leader.  The prudent project leaders are those who adapt their leadership styles to resonate most effectively with the needs and ages of their project teams. These project leaders embrace change–especially the changing labor pool.

It is time to change . . . here come the millennials! Millennials are generally defined as the population born between 1980 and 2000.

Do you have an open floor plan  . . . no offices, no walls? Are you available to everyone on your project team? Do inspire a spirit of cooperation and collaboration?

Here is what an open floor plan says about your project leadership:

1. No walls, no barriers, no hierarchy. Everybody can talk to everybody.
2. Everybody can participate in a decision.
3. We all work together.

The time has come to ditch the long-standing, top-down, my-way-or-the-highway project leadership style in favor of a leadership style and office layout that encourages collaboration.

Successful project leaders are learning to not just give direction on the what, but to explain the why. And, you may need to step up and show the how.

“It’s best if you lead arm in arm with the team,” a CEO of a $5B insurance company says. “The best leaders are the ones who will roll up their sleeves, and the team knows they’re going to work with them, and they’re respected. That’s what the floor plan says to me–everybody knows I’m accessible.”

That assessment was reinforced in a December 2011 study, “Future Trends in Leadership Development,” by Nick Petrie, senior faculty member of the Center for Creative Leadership in Colorado Springs, Colo. “There is a transition occurring from the old paradigm in which leadership resided in a person or role, to a new one in which leadership is a collective process that is spread throughout networks of people,” Petrie wrote. “The question will change from, ‘Who are the leaders?’ to ‘What conditions do we need for leadership to flourish in the network?'”

Millennials are less interested in taking orders from the boss and more interested in solving problems as a team. Millennials prefer to work in an energetic environment. They like to work where they have a voice, where they can suggest things . . . and their voice means something.

Collaboration is the way to be successful with project team members who are younger. The idea that you sit in an office “cranking out resource leveling charts” doesn’t work anymore. The project teams who are going to make projects successful, don’t want to be led that way.

It is time to learn a new project leadership approach. The “old” way is not working. Think about this: Millennials want to learn. They like learning and feeling empowered.

To be an even more successful project leader, it’s all about learning to do things differently.

James L. Haner