Ward Wired

My post a few weeks ago,  Investment in project leadership skills declines…from an already low point spoke about the declining investment organizations are making in leadership skills for their PMs. I’d like to follow this up with 5 ways that any project or program manager can successfully develop their own leadership skills. Sure, it’s a little more difficult than attending courses or having a formal development plan, but if no one else will help, you just have to do it yourself. After all, it’s your future. You need to think carefully about it.

Here are the five approaches I offered in my presentation entitled “14 Leadership Skills to Boost Your Career” which I delivered in Istanbul, Turkey as part of the PMI EMEA 2013.

Now, let me focus in on number 2 (do a self-assessment). I just read How to Get Better Feedback on The Build Network site. In the article, author and blogger, Scott Berkun, offers some great advice, including 5 tips for getting the sort of quality feedback you really need. Although you can go to the article yourself, I have pasted it below in its entirety for convenience (it’s short and to the point).

The answer, author and speaker Scott Berkun notes on his blog, is simple: “Feedback feels like confrontation to most people. And they don’t want to risk starting a fight with you. They’ve learned many people are just fishing for praise when they ask for feedback, so that’s what they provide. They don’t want to hurt your feelings, and they want out of a dangerous conversation.”

Berkun posted his observations along with five tips that anyone can use to get better feedback. The first four have to do with the way you ask; the fifth has to do with how you listen.

1. Consider who you ask.
“What coworker do you have a strong enough relationship with that they’ll take the risk? Seek them out on something small, push them to be honest, and then genuinely reward them. Repeat [this], and over time you’ll can take on bigger feedback requests. And of course, ask someone with expertise on the subject at hand, not just your friend.”

2. Take care how you ask.
Ask a vague question and you get a vague answer. Instead, Belkun suggests, ask focused questions like “How can I make this better?” “What did I miss?” or “Does this design solve these three objectives?” This gives the other person something to aim for. You, as the feedback asker, have to frame what kind of feedback you desire, simplifying the work for the other person.

3. Plan when you ask.
“If you want thoughtful feedback, give people the time to do it. Set up a meeting where you forward your work, or questions, ahead of time. This shows you’re serious and that you’re willing to give them the chance to both look at your work and think over their feedback. If you catch a random person in the hallway and shove something in their face, you’re betting feedback for yourself will be more important to them than everything they’d planned to do that day.”

4. Decide where you ask.
“We are social creatures and behave differently depending on where we are. You get different feedback in a meeting with 10 people than you would over coffee or a beer after work. Different people have different comfort zones, but generally the more informal the situation the more open people are about their opinions.”

5. Pay attention to how you respond.
“Everyone thinks they’re great at hearing feedback, but most people handle it poorly. They debate, they argue, and give off body language of offense. If you really want feedback you have to be prepared to shut up and listen. Ask qualifying questions — Do you mean X or Y? — and seek to understand their opinion more precisely, rather than to change their minds. And make sure to thank them sincerely (something that might only be possible after you’ve cooled down).”

All this is great advice. Hope it helps.

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Check out ESI’s Business Skills curriculum.

We all do it; it’s part of life. We do it at home and we do it at work. We squelch good ideas, put the kaibosh on creativity, and stamp out innovation because of the stupid things we say. What am I talking about? Communications Blockers, of course.

Here’s an example. A new member joins the project team. At the first meeting, you ask people for ideas on how to solve a particular thorny stakeholder issue. Farkas, the new member, speaks up and voices his idea. Everyone’s eyes start rolling, and you say “We tried that 10 years ago Farkas, and it didn’t work. Does anyone else have an idea?” Farkas slinks under the table thinking that’s the last time he’ll say anything.

In combing through my files I found something I saved from a while back when I  taught ESI’s PMP Exam Preparation course. When I reached the Communications Management unit, I had a slide addressing communications blockers and I had four of the greatest examples in history. Let’s see if you’ve ever heard of them. But we have to tell a little story about each one. So, here goes.

GREAT COMMUNICATIONS BLOCKER No. 1

You’re an assistant to the very famous Lord Kelvin. You’re in his study sipping sherry, smoking stogies, and talking about flying machines. The hot air balloon is already popular. You propose to the great Lord that perhaps some contraption that is self-propelled made of metal would also work. He looks at you as if you had three heads and says:

GREAT COMMUNICATIONS BLOCKER NO. 2

You are a electrical engineer working for IBM in the early 1940s. The company has produced its first computer and you were on the team. You see unlimitless possibilities for this new device. You rush into the offices of Tom Watson Sr and blurt out “we need to go into full production with this machine Mr. Watson. The world has been waiting centuries for this type of computing device.” He stares blankly at you and says:

GREAT COMMUNICATIONS BLOCKER NO. 3

You are a director for Warner Brothers in Los Angeles and the year is 1927. Silent films are in their heyday but you think something is missing: SOUND. You bravely walk into the offices of H.M Warner, head of the studio, and say “Mr. Warner, what if we could add sound to our movies?” He looks up from his desk, smiles condescendingly, and remarks:

GREAT COMMUNICATIONS BLOCKER NO. 4

You’ve landed your dream job as a producer for Decca Records. It’s the early 60′s at the start of the British Invasion. Rock music is hot, and there’s tons of money to be made. There’s a brash young group out of Liverpool, England you think will become big. You do your homework then approach the Board of Directors and recommend giving them a record contract.  They barely give you the time of day and brush you off saying:

 These are all real life examples of people totally convinced of their own “rightness” when, in fact, they were just dead wrong. No one ever gets it right all the time, but we need to encourage robust dialoge to make sure the best ideas are coming forth for consideration. Not all ideas are going to be good, at least at the time they’re presented.

It’s not that we have to accept every idea that our team members advance; rather, it’s how we make them feel when we don’t accept them. That’s an art form. I’m still trying to get better at it myself.

Let me ask you this: Where would Batman be without Robin? Dolce without Gabanna? And Homer without Marge? Up S _ _ _’s creek without a paddle, that’s where.

In fact, that’s the same creek many IT Project Managers find themselves “up” if they don’t have Business Analysts on their team. Why? Because a professional Business Analyst is there to make sure the requirements have been gathered, modeled, understood, tested, tested and tested some more, traced, verified and validated.

Why do we have BAs on IT projects specifically? It has to do with their ability to translate the business requirements into “technical speak” for the systems architects, programmers and testers. Without the BA, a lot of information gets, literally, “lost in translation.” When a requirement gets lost, the project doesn’t meet its goals ,and clients get cranky.

Many companies, especially in the financial industry (banks, insurance companies, mutual funds) have the specific role and title of Buisiness Analyst in their list of professions. However, there are many organizations which elect not to use that title. But, someone has to do the work of requirements don’t they? So, the function of business analysis is performed by individuals with a wide variety of titles.

At ESI, we once presented our How to Gather and Document User Requirements program to a group of professionals from one of the giants in the automotive industry. Although no one participant held the title Business Analyst, they all were responsible for project requirements. If you want to know who’s performing the role but you can’t identify them with the BA title, just ask, “who’s in charge of the requirements on this project?” The person or persons who raise their hands are the business analysts.

On some projects the project manager is also responsible for gathering the requirements. If it’s a small project, that’s usually not a problem; but, if it’s a project of any considerable size this is simply a very bad idea. A BA has his or her own “kit bag” of tools, techniques, and procedures that project managers are simply not trained in. BAs are experts in the requirements life cycle. The project manager is an expert in the project life cycle. BAs are team members with specific expertise that is applied to the project when needed. Having a project manager also perform the function of a BA results in the same problems if he or she is trying to be the project controls manager or project scheduler. Each job gets done, but not well.

If you want to know more about the critical role the BA plays, read this article: Business Analysts: A Key to Companies’ Success in CIO magazine. You’ll walk away with a new appreciation for how important they are and for how much they can ensure your project’s success.

By the way, visit the International Institute of Buisness Analysis for more information on the BA Body of Knowledge and credentials in the profession.

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Looking for information on ESI’s offerings and certificates in Business Analysis? Go here.

For too long training for project managers has focused on managing the triple constraint of the project itself. That was fine when things were good. But the world has moved on and without anyone noticing, project managers have taken the lead in transforming our businesses, establishing global IT infrastructure, and driving the products and services that are sold. Just about everything we do today is a project and business is more dependent than it realizes on project managers.

Just to survive in the new economic reality, project managers need essential business skills on top of their process or tools-focused project management training. Essential business skills have been ignored for too long because they are difficult to quantify, teach and master. That difficulty along with the current state of the global economy can make it hard to justify the investment. Before, it was acceptable to stumble through with a few ‘exceptional’ project managers who had the right stuff. Today, every project manager needs the right stuff.

Whether you are just getting your career started and need to manage stakeholders, deal with a senior executive sponsor and lead the team; or are a senior mega project manager dealing with arbitration, lobby groups, a large multi-cultural virtual team and a group of customers whose needs and personalities can make it seem like herding cats, your business skills better make the grade.

What are these essential business skills, you ask? They have been around for quite a while. They haven’t changed decades. They were what made the exceptional project manager. Now they are the minimum requirement:

• Critical thinking and problem solving
• Conflict management
• Business acumen
• Aligning the project vision and goals with those of the organization
• Communicating Up, Down and Sideways
• Leadership
• Managing and coaching the human resources
• Developing self-awareness and emotional resilience
• Negotiation
• Stakeholder and relationship management

Whether you get or grow your skills and expertise through self-training, such as reading articles, books or the web, or if you attend a class, hire a coach or go back to university, these skills are no longer optional.

It is nearly impossible these days to read an industry rag from the Human Resources or management fields and not come across the topic of “the millennials”. For the uninitiated, the millennial employee (or Generation Y depending on your bias) was born between 1981 and 1999 thus making them between 32 and 14 years old as of this blog.

Studies have shown that the millennials are characterized by traits of entitlement and narcissism (based on personality surveys), confidence in their abilities that border on hubris, a focus on becoming wealthy (75% of respondents in a University of Michigan study said this was the main goal of employment), and a need for social interaction and team leadership that most managers don’t understand.

They idolize the dot-com entrepreneurs who wore flip flops to work and took the reins of an organization before they hit 30. Conversely, they don’t understand the career trajectory of the industrial CEO who started as a junior engineer and ascended over a 30 year career with the same firm. They learned to network and develop relationships in cyberspace and came to believe that the only measure for the quality of your ideas was how many “likes”, “retweets”, or “trackbacks” you got from the digital masses. They look quizzically at relationships that take time, and substance, to nurture.

In short, the kids who grew up winning trophies for coming in 10^th place and developed social skills in a world connected via Prodigy Chat à Facebook à Blogspot à Twitter are now sitting two cubes down from your office believing that they could run your firm (better than you) if only given the chance.

While there is a tremendous amount of fodder on the millennial conundrum available (including all of the strengths they bring to the table), it is interesting to note that I could find little on the topic of the millennial project manager. I think this is a problem. In so many ways, the discipline of project management seems to be the equivalent of “millennial crack”. Let’s review:

• Millennials want to work in team-based environments – Check
• Millennials want to avoid boredom by working on short-term endeavors – Check
• Millennials want to take on leadership responsibilities without waiting for a promotion to line management – Check
• Millennials want strong structure and metrics that allow them to demonstrate performance and measure accomplishments – Check

This list could go on. The point is that the field of project management offers millennials many of the careers experiences they expect coupled with the “short cut to the top” that they desire. What’s more, millennials equate (given the reduction of insight to 140 characters and a complete lack of all respect for the dewey decimal system) the recitation of jargon with expertise…something the broader field of project management has struggled with for decades. It is one thing to know what the critical path is, it is another thing entirely to identify it, use it correctly, and have the battle scars from all the times it failed you. As such, it is quite likely that the PM field will soon be rife with this category of employee and indeed, in my experience, already is. Meaning, if you have not already had to deal with the millennial PM, you soon will.

Here are the top 5 issues I have seen with millennial PMs…You would do well to keep these in the back of your mind during your next coaching session/status meeting/annual review/awkward hallway discussion.

1. Leadership and power: Millennial PMs tend to rely too heavily on expert and referent power. They believe that if they are the smartest person in the room, and can name drop their boss, people will naturally fall in-line. The millennial has not yet had the experience to understand emotional intelligence, charismatic influence, or the power of organizational politics. They fail to understand influence techniques like exchange, coalition building, or superordinate goals. These power bases (an appreciation for and understanding of) come from experience. As such, while they can recite many theoretical aspects of leadership, they struggle to apply most of them effectively.

2. Follow through: Put simply, millennials love the honeymoon and hate the marriage. Their thirst to “work on new and exciting things” often causes them to be super engaged and excited at the beginning of a project but more distant and distracted as time goes on. Their acculturation of “instant gratification” makes the long slog of project management difficult to deal with. Don’t be surprised if your twenty-something PM is great at project kick-off meetings but rather lax in producing status reports.

3. Respect for the org. chart: As PMs we are constantly negotiating with functional managers. Our ability to thrive relies on our ability to respectfully influence the managers that hold our needed resources. Alas, the millennial believes that titles mean little and that (their over-inflated sense of) expertise reigns supreme. As such, many millennials find themselves in hot water when they sit across from a (real) expert vying for scarce resources using the leadership skills referenced in number one.

4. The (monetary) value of experience: The millennial PM will equate project success with career success at an early stage of their development. Said another way, the millennial believes that if he/she was able to deliver one or two projects on time, then this clearly means that they are ready for fancy titles, large paychecks, and a window office. This is a trait common across all millennials, but is particularly true in the hard-metric world of project management. Do not be surprised that if during the first review cycle after your millennial PM delivers an on-time, on-budget project they are asking for a Director title and assignment to lead your PMO. The concept of “putting in the time” means little to this crowd.

5. Translation: The millennial PM believes that the more corporate jargon and PM lexicon they can insert into a sentence the more impactful that sentence will be. It is not uncommon to hear something like the following in a status meeting: “We are focused on improving the CPI of this initiative in order to create better synergy with the other priorities coming out of the corner office. We expect the next fiscal Q to bring an augmented focus on establishing enterprise awareness of the project’s value prop.” It does not occur to them that saying, “if we want the rest of this place to keep thinking this project is important, we have got to get our costs under control.” Additionally, millennials rarely have the ability to tailor their communication to the appropriate audience. It is seemingly lost to them that the same tone and message you deliver to your lead engineer is not the same one you use when meeting with your executive sponsor (or vice versa). The nuance of communication comes with time and experience which…well…you get the drift.

At this point in the article, you are either, A) Chuckling (if you are an older senior manager) or B) Fuming (if you are a millennial). I concede that these are gross generalizations and not every PM aged 32 and younger suffers from these issues. Alas, as a wise man once said, stereotypes exist for a reason.

If you take anything away from this post (regardless of if you are chuckling or fuming) let it be that the millennial PM is a different-in-kind resource than what corporate America has dealt with before. Their motivators, personalities, value systems, and approaches to work may seem foreign and out of place with the rest of the organization. This, in and of itself, does not make the millennial good or bad. It just makes them someone who will require the time, patience, and coaching of the organization to make the best use of their skills.

Being aware of these 5 issues may make your relationship with the millennial PM not only more productive, but easier to deal with as well. But if you ever DO get frustrated by their seemingly out of place antics and requests, don’t let it bother you too much. Just remember:

One day they’ll be the ones shaking their heads in disbelief while trying to get the Generation Z crowd to understand why it is important to take off their Google Glass when leading status meetings.

What issues with millennial project managers have you seen and how have you overcome them?

Matt Ferguson, PMP, CSM currently serves as Director of Consulting Services for ESI International and is focused on establishing the organizational PM practices that support ESI’s learning programs.

He is also a recovering millennial PM (under the expert tutelage of LeRoy Ward) who both chuckled and fumed as he wrote.

He may be reached directly at mjferguson@esi-intl.com

A couple of weeks ago I raised the following question: Is the lack of project leadership training the reason we are still struggling with projects? Many responded with some very interesting insights. In this post I present data clearly showing that, despite organizations’ complaining about the apparent lack of leadership skills, that investments in soft skills training, and training generally, is on a disturbing decline.

First, a little background. For the past three years, ESI has conducted its annual Global State of the PMO Survey. In year two, we asked the respondents (> 3,000 responded) to tell us where their organization was investing in their development. We categorized respondents into two camps: those that work directly for the PMO, and those who are influenced by the PMO but do not report directly into it.

Here are last year’s results.

As you can see, only 40% of PMO folks and a little more than 30% of non-PMO folks reported that their organization invested in soft skills development.

Below, are the results from this year’s survey (which will be released soon. The numbers are even lower, with 30% of PMO folks, and a mere 20% of non-PMO respondents, reporting that their organization is investing in soft skills.

The message is clear: based on their investments, organizations believe that building a better WBS is more important than building a high performing project team. Yet, when a project fails, it’s rarely because the WBS wasn’t perfect!

You may think that because we are the world’s largest provider of project management training that we “rigged,” or otherwise influenced, our survey to show these results. Well, you would be wrong.

PMI’s Pulse of the Profession surveys show similar declines. For example, in PMI’s Pulse of the Profession of 2012, PMI research (data from 2010 and 2011) shows that in 2010 52% of the organizations surveyed had programs to develop PM competencies, whereas in 2011 47% did. PMI’s Pulse of the Profession Report for 2013 further confirms this trend showing that (data from in 2012) 45% of the organizations reported that they had such programs. From 52% to 45%…..in percentage terms that’s a 13% drop. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but what if your pay was cut 13%? I bet you’d think that was a BIG decrease (I know I would).

Where is this all leading? I don’t know, but one thing I do know, people who aren’t trained to do a job won’t do the job efficiently, productively, or to a high degree of quality. The results will be disappointing, and many surveys continue to show such disappointing project results around the world.

Why do organizations continue to lament, bemoan, and moan and groan about project performance as if some external force is causing their projects to go south? There’s no magic to any of this. It’s all about making sure people have the right skills and the right support. And, that takes investment.

What’s your take on this?

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Need to improve your skills in speaking to execs? Check out ESI’s Communicating Up: Winning Strategies for Successful Executive Conversations

I recently returned from the PMI EMEA Global Congress held in Istanbul where I gave a presentation entitled “Fourteen Project Leadership Skills to Boost Your Career.”  It was very well attended: SRO (standing room only), indicating that project managers are really interesting in improving those highly valued leadership skills.

I presented the results of a research project that Nancy Nee, one of my colleagues at ESI and Agile expert, conducted over the period of roughly 18 months in which we spoke with upwards of 30 of our strategic clients regarding their need for developing leadership skills for their project and program managers.

In my presentation, I spoke about the inexorable trend toward online learning and the rise of the MOOC (massive open online courses) as alternatives to instructor led training. I informed the participants of how Virginia Rometty, CEO of IBM, encouraged her employees to take 40 hours of continuing education in 2013, at their own expense (IBM would pay for books, etc), and how one individual decided to take a MOOC because it was free.

As part of my conversation, I asked the group this question: “Can you really learn project leadership skills online?” Because I had about 200 people in attendance, there wasn’t time for a robust conversation so I just had them vote. I gave them three options: Yes, No, or, Maybe. I asked them to raise their hands for each option. When I asked who thinks “Yes,” one hand, just one hand shot up. When I said “No,” most of the hands went up, and, when I said “Maybe” a sprinkling of hands were raised.

So, there you have it. To be honest, I wasn’t completely surprised. Many project managers, regardless of where they come from, think leadership skills are best learned in the traditional manner: live and in person. However, I did present them with this situation: what if you were taking a course on how to lead a virtual team, wouldn’t it be better to take the course virtually so you could actually see what it was like? A lot of folks smiled!

Regardless of whether you think project leadership skills can be learned online or not, you’d better get used to the idea of online or virtual learning. When such a large and resource rich company like IBM makes a decision not to pay for continuing education for its employees, and the only available “free” options are MOOCs or grainy YouTube videos, what does that mean for the rest of us?

Also, the trend for online learning is crystal clear. It’s not “if” you’re going to have to take courses online; it’s when. And for most companies the “when” is “now.”

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At ESI we have quite a few online courses. We receive many high marks for our approach. However, they’re not free! Check them out at www.esi-intl.com.

Psychologists and learning professionals have an interesting term they use for when things are, in my view, “out of whack.” They call it cognitive dissonance. Here’s an example. You’re in a conversation with your “better half” and say something that angers him or her. You recognize their anger and say ”don’t be mad.” They look you square in the eye and yell “I’M NOT MAD”!  Of course they are but they don’t really see it that way. That’s cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance at work

Organizations are like that when it comes to training project managers. We hear, and read, all the time, that executives, PMO Leaders, and business unit heads complain that their project managers lack critical leadership and business skills. They will point to this deficiency as a key reason why many projects are either in trouble, or fail outright. Yet, ESI surveys have uncovered that there is more money spent on developing hard skills of project management than in leadership development or “soft skills.” In fact, this is so prevalent, that this is the number one Top Ten PM Trends of 2013 as reported by ESI, where I work.  This is cognitive dissonance at the organizational level isn’t it. If organizations need project managers with strong leadership skills, yet fail to invest in this area, a good question to ask is “why?”

One reason becomes relatively clear when you have a conversation with some of these folks who are lamenting about the situation. Seems like every large organization has its own management and leadership development program. They vary, of course, but it’s usually segmented into three areas: supervisory training, management development, and executive leadership. This type of training and development is also the purview of HR which guards its turf quite jealously. PM training, may or may not be handled by HR, but even if it is, it handled by a different group of folks that deal with management and leadership training.

Why are leadership development programs guarded very carefully by its caretakers? It is because many organizations have their own competency models that apply broadly to various levels of management, and they don’t want leadership programs presented to their employees that don’t align with those models. Makes sense.

But oftentimes, the competency model for a general manager is not applicable for a project manager. After all, although there is much overlap in leadership skills, project management is different from general management and as such requires different skills which are often not addressed in general leadership training.

I’ve been told by more than one project executive that what they require is leadership development that is specific to the project and program manager role. The fact that their organization doesn’t have that causes them to concentrate more on the hard skills of PM; that’s an area they can control.

Unless and until HR and the PMO can work together to come up with a program that recognizes the difference between management and project management, we will always see more PMs being trained in building a WBS than building a high-performing team.

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Check out ESI’s Business Skills  program; it was developed specifically for project and program managers.

The next time you’re in a meeting look around and notice how many people are either blatantly, or surreptitiously, checking their smart phones, tablets, or laptops rather than paying attention to what’s going on around them. Chances are it’ll be about 50% or more.

Now, some people pride themselves on their ability to multitask. But we know that’s hogwash. The brain is a linear machine; it can only do one thing at a time. If it’s doing X it can’t be doing Y.

Are your meetings like this?

Some people will say the reason they do it is that the meeting is boring, they’re too many “talking heads” and “blabbermouths” wasting time so why not check email. Hey, fair enough!

But generally speaking, if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that when we’re checking email, perusing a dating site, or checking the box scores, we can’t possibly be engaged with what’s going on around us. If you’re a project manager and you need peoples’ attention, you need to have them tune into the meeting, and not their latest gadget. So, what do you do?

Well, you can turn into the “parent” of the group and yell at people, or gently remind them to pay attention. That gets old. I’ve seen this. It’ll work once, maybe twice, but people simply fall back into the same old habits.

One company I recently read about went so far as to ban all tech gadgets from their meetings. They had had enough. The company, Adaptive Path, simply told their employees to leave their toys in their cubes and come to meetings prepared to be engaged. You can read about it here.

I give these folks a lot of credit. They bit the bullet. People weren’t happy but they’ve gotten over it. And, I think they’re better off for it. It’s a well known fact, that Tweeting while driving can kill you and others. And, that a person who is talking on a cell phone hands free while driving a car has the reaction speed of someone who has had a few drinks. Why do we think we can sit in meetings and fiddle around with our devices and actually be very productive? In short, we can’t.

Check your tech at the door. Hide it in your bag. Sit on it. Do everything but use it. You’ll be more engaged and your meeting will be a more productive experience.

What’s the one thing you do to have better project meetings?

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At  ESI International we have a lot of free resources. Check them out.