Raechel Logan | AtTask Blog

About Raechel Logan

I'm interested in people, so naturally that's what I like to write about. I believe that, on project teams, it's often the individual team member who is closest to the work and understands it the best. The purpose of this blog is to give that person a voice. Like what I write? Follow me on Twitter: @RaeLogan

Adventures in the Project Journey

2 March 2012 - POSTED by Raechel Logan

I am a lover of great literature. One of the most fascinating theories (to me) about literature and story-telling is what David Leeming (influenced by Joseph Campbell) called the “Monomyth,” or the “Voyage of the Hero.” This theory suggests that all the stories ever told can be simplified into one single archetype – meaning, all stories are the same basic story, told in different ways with different characters, influences, and twists. Theoretically, every story’s “hero,” goes through the same basic stages of the hero journey.

The other day, I started thinking of projects in the context of a monomyth. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the life cycle of a project, which typically begins with the initiation of a project and ends with a post implementation review (and some projects, unfortunately, don’t even live to see that part). But, when I really think about it, I think the project life cycle story is missing (or lacks emphasis on) two vital pieces.

What I’m suggesting is not a mere life cycle where a project is born with initiation and dies at completion. Rather, I believe projects should be thought of in terms of a project journey – a journey that begins with gathering and filtering through project requests and keeps cycling through as lessons are learned, templates are created, and projects become repeatable and more efficient. Let me explain.

Phase 1: Managing Project Requests

This is the first phase that often lacks emphasis. Many project managers lead teams that receive several, maybe even hundreds, of project requests a year – especially if their teams provide any type of shared service (such as IT or marketing teams). Other project managers may receive fewer requests. In either case, most project managers are required to find some way to filter through all of their requests and choose the projects that will provide the most value. Often, project teams get more requests than they will ever, realistically, be able to work on and if they don’t have a solid intake process in place for collecting and evaluating those requests, they run the risk of working on too many things at once, setting unrealistic timelines, and/or letting the most valuable projects pass them by. All of this work is an important part of a project manager’s work and is the first stage of the project journey.

Phase 2: Project Management

As a project manager filters through project requests and is able to prioritize and select which projects to work on now, which to schedule for later, and which to reject, he/she can then begin converting requests into projects. This is where the typical project life cycle fits in – initiation, planning, resource management, capacity planning, Gantt charts, execution, collaboration, reporting, etc., all the way through project completion.

Phase 3: Learn, Template, Repeat

After project completion, projects enter into another important, but often overlooked, phase. Good project managers understand the value of a postmortem, where the team can review lessons learned, what went well and what can be improved. This is a great opportunity (especially for PMs on shared services teams) to increase efficiency. Here they can establish templates for projects that are repeatable and keep improving those processes until they have an automated system for completing like projects. For PMs that receive multiple project requests, anytime the process can be made repeatable and scalable, they can increase the number of projects they can work on a year as well as their team’s efficiency at completing those projects on time, on scope, and on budget.

I’m a big fan of being strategic while also being able to see the big picture. This strategy, or project journey, may not be what works best for every project team, but for those expected to turn out multiple projects a year, I think this is a journey worth taking.

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3 Lessons I Learned from Managing an Unconventional Team

7 December 2011 - POSTED by Raechel Logan

I’m a huge fan of football – college and NFL. So, I was really excited a few weekends ago when I had the opportunity to travel to Phoenix for an Arizona Cardinals game. I was there on business working with 50 Star Productions, an event production company that specializes in giant, football field-sized American flags and other patriotic-type field “accessories”.

My job was to lead a team of 150 volunteers from different sects of the armed forces in the pre-game and halftime flag shows. We only had time for one practice run to make sure that the team knew the proper processes and procedures for carrying, opening, and folding the flag in the allotted amount of time, with the exact cues and so forth. Then, it was up to me and two other people to oversee and direct the armed forces team as they operated the flag in front of the entire stadium full of fans. One false move and we could have ended up with a giant bow-tie on the field during the national anthem and on national television – an embarrassment none of us wanted to endure.

In working with such a large team of volunteers (individuals not getting paid to do the work) from different places and walks of life, I couldn’t help feeling like I was managing a giant, short-term project and let me tell you, I learned a lot.

First, for a project like this we had to take extra care to make sure all the volunteers understood what failure meant. Going into the production, (as it was my first time) success seemed pretty straight-forward. I had never considered how much planning, process, and risk was involved in something as seemingly simple as unveiling and then folding up an American flag. So, the production managers got the team together and told them, very specifically, the two main things they needed to remember: 1) Make sure that you never let go of your handle. If the handles don’t end up on top, the flag can open up twisted and that would not only be a failure, but a disaster. 2) If you fall, stay down and crawl out from under the flag later. If you see someone fall, don’t stop to try and help them. This would disrupt the opening of the flag and would also constitute a failure. If everyone simply remembered these two things, success would be much easier to achieve.

Second, (especially when working with large, unpaid teams) never assume that everyone understands what is expected of them after the first meeting. Even after our practice run, when everyone was assigned a position, was told their cues, and were instructed in the proper procedures, I found myself hearing things like, “So what do we do now?” “Are you going to cue me?” “Do I go first, or does he go first?” 30 seconds before go-time on national television. Turns out, sometimes the unforeseen risks end up being people panicking at the last minute, or being so overcome with excitement that they missed some of the instruction during the practice run. Had we had the time, it would have been extremely beneficial to approach each team member individually to make sure they understood what was expected of them and who or what their dependencies were.

Third, when we finally began execution in front of what seemed like the world, as I was overseeing the team members in my section, I noticed that a few of the team members got excited and acted too hastily, leaving a giant piece of flag that wasn’t being held – which could have caused some serious lop-sided issues. So, I was able to jump in and grab hold of the flag where there was a lack of “resources” and quietly directed a few of the nearby team members to slowly inch their way over and help fill in the gaps. As a manager or leader of a project and team, it’s up to you to see where there are holes and figure out ways to fill them, even if it means you roll up your sleeves and do some of the work yourself. Whatever it takes to make sure the project succeeds.

All in all, my first time managing a project of this nature was a success – the flag didn’t twist, no one fell, the crowd cheered, the field managers shook our hands with a smile, the Cardinals won with an exciting 90 yard return in overtime, and I left feeling good about the work I had done and knowing what I could do to improve next time.

Have you ever worked with a large team of volunteers? What important lessons did you learn from that experience?

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Knowing Your Team Members and Their Capabilities

2 November 2011 - POSTED by Raechel Logan

I came across a forum on LinkedIn today where someone posed this question: “What do you believe are the top five skills or attributes for a successful project manager in today’s business environment?”

Of the five or six responses, the majority listed some form of teamwork skill, i.e. “people skills”, “team builder/motivator”, etc. And one individual listed this:

“Know your team and their capabilities.”

I tend to agree that this is one of the most important skills of a successful project manager in today’s business environment. In a recent TalkingWork podcast interview, Ty and I had the pleasure of hearing a great story about a project manager who has developed this skill. She told us how she had inherited a project team that she knew very little about, so she asked the previous project manager for information on each individual team member. Unfortunately the previous project manager knew nothing about the team members’ likes, interests, families, career goals, etc. So, the new project manager took some time to observe the team members and then sat down with each one and asked them about their lives – their ambitions, how they felt about their jobs, etc.

One particular team member she had observed to be incredibly intelligent, but for some reason consistently delivered no more than was required. When she pulled him into her office and asked him about it, she found out that he was bored and desired the opportunity for new challenges. So, they decided together that he would train someone new to do his current job and then he would be given the chance to tackle something larger. The results far exceeded any expectations. The team member loved his new responsibilities so much that he often worked long hours because he had new ideas he wanted to try and his contribution went from merely “meeting expectations” to consistently “exceeding expectations”.

I love this story because it shows the contrast between a project manager whose focus was not on the people and one who took the time to know each team member and their capabilities and was willing to create an environment of empowerment – where team members could grow and succeed. The result was a win-win situation; team members were happier and projects were more successful because of that.

What types of things do you do to get to know your team members and their capabilities?

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Rising Above the “Best” Bar

24 October 2011 - POSTED by Raechel Logan

When was the last time you charged someone on your team to “just do your best”? A week ago? Yesterday? This morning? The phrase “just do your best” sounds good at first – it sounds like you have faith in your team members to do a good job, right?

I remember when I was in high school my Mother would often tell me, “just do your best” when it came to my grades. So, if I took a harder class and didn’t get the A, she would ask, “Did you do your best?” and if I said I had, she’d say “okay” and let it drop. But the thing is, now that I think about it – I probably could have done better. I knew that I only needed to do my best, but I was the one who defined what my best was. Ever heard that saying that says “you are your harshest critic”? I think most of the time we set the bar of our best much lower than it actually could be – we are capable of so much more than we usually give ourselves credit for.

I recently read a post on the Leadership Freak blog called, “Overcoming the Mediocrity of Doing Your Best”, where Dan Rockwell says, “‘Do your best’ is an excuse for not doing your best. It’s code for, don’t worry if you don’t make it.” I tend to agree. The problem with project leaders saying something like that to their team members is that it’s vague. “Your best” depends on what you think your best is – and you’re probably wrong. However, a good leader can see a team member’s potential and the greatness that they’re capable of and can challenge them to achieve beyond what they may think their best is.

As Dan Rockwell put it, “Stop telling people to do their best; give them a goal, instead.” The vagueness and ambiguity of the term “Just do your best” does more harm than good. What’s more powerful is working with them to create a more specific, challenging (yet still attainable) goal, allowing them to take ownership of that goal and making sure they know that they will be expected to be accountable for the work they do. But perhaps even more powerful than those things is when a project leader expresses their confidence in the team member’s ability to reach the goal that’s been set. Give them a reason to believe they’re capable of achieving more than the “best” bar they set for themselves and watch them soar.

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A Good, Better, Best Mentality

17 October 2011 - POSTED by Raechel Logan

I had the pleasure a few weeks ago of interviewing Dr. Michael Brenner on the TalkingWork podcast. While, so much of what Dr. Brenner spoke of resonated with me, one point that he made really hit home. He said (and I paraphrase), “You wouldn’t use a computer or a cell phone from twenty years ago; so why are so many of us still employing management styles from 50-100 years ago?”

Boom. I think the obvious gut reaction to that is, yeah, why do we do that? When you put it that way it seems so silly!

We talk so often about “traditional”, top-down, command-and-control management and how studies (and experience) are now showing that these methods have ceased to be as effective as they once were. Instead, more and more organizations and teams are embracing a more democratic leadership style – one centered on autonomy, engagement, creativity and trust. But, not everyone is buying into this.

I suppose if we think about it, what is the biggest reason that we as human beings (the creatures of habit that most of us truly are) resist change? I think it’s because we’re comfortable. If it’s not broken, then why should we bother fixing it? Compelling logic, isn’t it?

For me, I think the logic we should be using is this: Is this good, better, or best? Yeah, using a computer from 10 years ago could probably still work; possibly even do a good job. But is there something better? Is the 10 year old computer the best option? In the business world, I think we’d all agree that the focus is profit – regardless of how that profit is defined. Is using a computer that’s a decade old going to be the best thing for our company? Probably not. It’s good, but it isn’t the best. In today’s world if you don’t want to get left behind, you have to have the best; or at very least you need to have better than good.

The reality is that sometimes, we have to be willing to give up what is good so that we can have what is better or best. So, is traditional management good? Yeah it can be. It can still get results. But is it the best thing for your company? That’s something that probably has to be decided on a case-by-case basis. And it’s true, there are many factors that we should take into account – what will work best for our team members? What will bring the best results, etc. Hopefully we are all willing to give up what may be comfortable or traditional or still “good”, to have something of better value.

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Introducing: The Project “Leadager”!

10 October 2011 - POSTED by Raechel Logan

There’s so much discussion in the cyber world these days about leadership versus management – are they the same? Are they different? Which is better? etc, that I thought I’d just add my short two-cents.

I saw a tweet by one of my respected colleagues recently that said something to the effect of, “There’s so much talk out there about leadership that I wonder if we’re forgetting that managing is a part of it.” At first, I disagreed. I thought to myself, no, leading and managing are completely different. And while I still believe that they are fundamentally different, I think I am coming to understand what my colleague meant – which is, that the best leaders are also good managers. I like to call them, “Leadagers”.

Around here, we tend to believe that “you lead people; you manage process”. People aren’t things – and they shouldn’t be managed as though they were. When it comes to people, if you want to be an effective leader you need to acquire a certain set of soft skills – and those aren’t skills that can be learned in a minute or two. It will take years, if not the rest of our lives, to develop some of the skills necessary to be a good leader. Great leaders, in my opinion, are those leaders who are continually trying and practicing – even progressing, in those skills. As a wise colleague of mine recently pointed out, these skills take “a minute to learn, a lifetime to master.”

Managing, on the other hand, is less about soft skills and more about being strategic. It’s learning how to manage the many-faceted nature of processes to make sure that they are employed correctly, efficiently, etc. Great “Leadagers”, again in my opinion, possess the necessary soft skills for working with people as well as the strategic talent to manage processes. I believe that “Leadagers” are the ones that are truly successful – they are the ones that we should be recruiting. They’re the one we want to work with and for. Think about it – as a good leader you can have fantastic people skills, but lack the attention to detail of a manager. In the project management world, that’s probably less than ideal. Or, as a good manager, you can be extremely organized and strategic, but lack the soft skills your team members need you to have. Again – probably less than ideal when it comes to project management.

So, this is my two cents; it’s not leader versus manager. It’s not better to be one or the other. The ideal is to be a healthy balance of both – the ideal is to be a good Leadager.

What do you think?

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Projects and Pumpkin Pie

3 October 2011 - POSTED by Raechel Logan

It looks good, but does it taste good too?

Leaves are falling off the trees outside my office window. Looks like the fall season is upon us! So naturally I have pumpkin pie on the brain. (With me, everything relates to food – even project management, as you’re about to find out.)

My 87 year-old grandma makes the best pie in the world and, of course, she makes all of her pie crusts from scratch. Last year, I decided that I was finally going to attempt making her pie crust for my pumpkin pies. And let me tell you, what a project that was! There’s only a few ingredients, but the process is pretty tricky – long story short, I mixed, I cut in, I rolled, and before I knew it I had pie crust. And it was beautiful. I poured in my pumpkin pie mix, baked the pie, and couldn’t wait to taste the end result. But when I put the first bite in my mouth, it was all off. The crust tasted like chalk. And that’s when I realized that I forgot to put in the salt! Epic fail my friends, epic fail.

So let’s examine this project. The original goal was to create a pie crust. Which I did. But the project was still a fail – why? Because a pie crust has three main requirements to be successful:

Make the pie look like a pie
Hold the rest of the ingredients together
Taste good!

Requirements 1 and 2 were definitely accomplished, but somewhere in the process of the pie project, something small was forgotten (salt) which sabotaged accomplishing requirement 3. And that wasn’t noticed until the finished product was already presented – it looked like a pie crust, it smelled like a pie crust, it held everything together just like a pie crust is made to do. From the looks of things, the pie crust project was a success. But when it came down to it, someone (me) got so wrapped up in making the finished product look good, that they (also me) forgot the other important and original objective – taste. Without tasting good, even though everything else was accomplished, this project did not accomplish what it set out to do. It failed. All that work and I had to throw the whole thing away.

Take what you want from my pie crust metaphor. All I know is that next time I attempt Grandma’s pie crust, I’ll be a lot more focused on making sure it meets my goal all the way, instead of 2/3rds of the way.

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How to Rapidly Lose Your Team Members’ Trust and Respect

26 September 2011 - POSTED by Raechel Logan

A friend of mine told me this weekend that the company she works for recently made some organizational changes that resulted in her having a new boss. When I asked her how she liked him, her reply was that she found working for him to be extremely frustrating. Apparently, one of the first changes her new manager made was to have her send him a weekly report logging all of pieces she edited and every single editorial change she made to them (she is a journalist/editor). Well, this change is causing my friend significant stress because it makes her work longer in order to copy/paste her edits and makes her feel like her boss is breathing down her neck and micromanaging her every move. As I thought about my friend’s predicament, I thought to myself, man, if I had a manager that did something like that I would lose respect for him/her – and fast. That thought, in turn, got me thinking about a number of different things that could cause a team member to despise their project manager and this is the list I came up with. I like to call it, “How to Rapidly Lose Your Team Members’ Trust and Respect”:

Micromanage their every move. Just like in my friend’s case – being micromanaged is really frustrating. It creates a relationship between team member and boss that is built on feelings of mistrust and fear instead of trust and respect. It also creates extra and often times unnecessary work for everyone involved. This is no way to win the respect or loyalty of a team. Instead, it’s a surefire way to lose those things quickly.
Don’t try to listen to or understand what they’re saying. The art of listening is something that we read about in Leadership books and blogs over and over and over again. Apparently it’s kind of an important skill to learn. I’ve worked with managers before who, no matter how or how many times I rephrased a question or suggestion, would shoot me down without even trying to understand what I meant. In their minds, they were right and we were doing things their way – end of story. After that, I not only stopped wanting to share my input and ideas, but I knew my boss wasn’t going to listen anyways so I just expected them to be jerks about things. Not listening to team members is a great way to create a closed environment for them where they roll their eyes at you behind your back and wonder why they work so hard to please someone that doesn’t even care.
Make them feel small and insignificant because they are “under” you. It’s true, it’s important to make sure that expectations are clear and that team members understand the proper line of authority for their projects, however, putting team members in their place (especially publicly) is a great way to lose their respect and loyalty. Remember that team members are people too – and they really appreciate being treated as a fellow person instead of as their manager’s inferior. Making them feel considered as a peer and an equal will help them feel more loyal and will result in them working harder to do their best work.

Sure, there’s more that leaders can do to lose the trust and respect of their team members, but for me, these are the biggest things. And yes, the trust and respect thing should go both ways – but the other side is a post for another day. Until then, it is our duty as project managers to make sure that our teams are equipped to function the best they can – and if we aren’t trusting team members, trying to value and understand their input (even if we don’t agree with it) or treating them like people instead of inferiors, we aren’t going to get very far.

What things do you do to earn and keep the trust and loyalty of the people on your team?

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Our Technology Security Blankets – Time for an Intervention?

21 September 2011 - POSTED by Raechel Logan

Linus and his blanket As a very young child I had what I so lovingly referred to as “my blanky” – a security blanket that I carried around with me everywhere I went. I’m serious, EVERYWHERE. It was a part of me.

After a few years, my blanket was so ragged from being dragged around, that Mom decided it was time for an intervention. She stole my blanky from me in the night and threw it away! The next morning, I was beside myself with withdrawals. I couldn’t function properly without blanky. Mom was so alarmed by my reaction to losing blanky that she eventually decided to sew me a new one.

You may be wondering why I’m discussing my childhood blanky addiction with you. Well, it’s because I’ve recently discovered that I have an adult version of blanky. It’s called my iPhone. Seriously – I have that thing with me so often that it may as well be an extra phalange. If I forget it, I feel slightly lost. If I think I’ve lost it, I panic. And get this – I even sleep with it. Okay, I don’t really sleep with it, but I do sleep with it right next to my bed. Luckily things aren’t so bad that I’ve named it.

If you read that last paragraph nodding your head thinking, Yep, I do that too! Then this post is for you. A few months ago, the PRSA published an article called,“Smartphone Pillow Talk” about a study conducted by iPass that surveyed more than 3,700 mobile employees from 1,000 companies. The study found that “60% of mobile workers sleep with their smartphones in the bedroom, and 44% keep them within arm’s reach.” As a result, guess what the first thing is that most people do when they wake up in the morning? They check their e-mail. Guess what else? 29% of those surveyed reported that their mobile technology usage causes friction in their personal relationships. Are these numbers frightening to anybody else?

We all know that when it comes to projects and project management, communication is key. The unfortunate thing about text messaging, instant messaging, and even e-mailing is that so many elements of communication get lost – tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, etc. If these are our main methods of communication, then maybe it’s no wonder that so many projects fail because of insufficient communication! And what’s more, Scott Eblin recently wrote an article on how “Being Busy Makes You Stupid” where he points out how easy it is for us to get sucked into the vortex of excess busyness, which often leads to missing important details, a decline in creativity, extra stress, etc. One of the things Eblin suggests we do to combat the detrimental kind of busyness is by incorporating “at least half a day a week of ‘chill time’ – no email, texts, commitments, appointments or anything else that I have to do. It gives my brain time to reset.”

So, if technology has become your new security blanket too, consider this your intervention. Try a little face-to-face communication with your project team a few times a week. Trust me, your team members will thank you. Remember, we used to be able to get things done without cell phones and technology – and while they are fantastic and useful (even necessary at times) tools, we are all still human beings – and we all need healthy “human” communication.

Sorry iPhone, tonight we’re breaking up.
(But don’t worry, we can get back together in the morning.)

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Teams: Why People Do the Things They Do

24 August 2011 - POSTED by Raechel Logan

Last week on the TalkingWork podcast we interviewed Bernardo Tirado, whose passion is to mix industrial psychology with project management. One of the things we touched on briefly was the Myers-Briggs personality Assessment and how those types of tests and the information they give about an individual can help leaders understand how to work with each person on their team.

I’ve always been fascinated with psychology and especially personality assessments. There’s something about learning explanations for why people do the things they do that intrigues me in ways I probably can’t explain. So, I’m pretty familiar with Myers-Briggs (I’m an ENFJ last I checked) and The Color Code (I’m a Blue-Red). But our conversation with Bernardo got me thinking about how useful these types of things really can be in the work place – and especially on teams.

Now, of course if you buy the books they tell you straight-up how their assessments can benefit you and your company. This isn’t new information… I’m merely spreading the word. However, a hot topic (in the project management industry especially it seems) amongst leaders lately has been how to get team members more engaged and motivated so they can add maximum value to their projects and their companies. I believe that one way to do this is by figuring out why your team members do the things they do.

For example, The Color Code breaks the entire world of personalities down to four colors: Red, Blue, White and Yellow. Each of those colors represents a core motivation. For Reds, the motivation is power. For Blues, relationships. For Whites, peace. For Yellows, fun. If someone is managing me and they know I am a Blue-Red, but at work I’m predominately Red, they would know that giving me tasks that make me feel like I have a certain amount of important responsibility, power or influence would motivate me most. And really, you could assign me any task that you wanted me to and as long as you worded it to me in a way that spoke to my core motivation, I would hungrily attack the task, own it and deliver the best results I could for you.

Do I think that you should make personality assessments your bible for leading teams? Heavens no. However, having some basic information about what motivates the different individuals on your team and learning how to speak to those motivations could make a big difference for you.

What are your thoughts? Do you use any tools like this to help you?

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