Ty Kiisel | AtTask Blog | Page 2

About Ty Kiisel

As an "accidental" project manager, it's very satisfying to contribute to the project management community online with anectdotes and stories I've picked up from my own experience and talking to other project leaders. I hope you enjoy our daily conversations—which are also available at Alltop, CIOZone, Gantthead, and IT Toolbox.

Project Management is Really Work Management

2 May 2012 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

The lines between what we call work and what we call projects is starting to blur. Last spring I attended the Gartner PPM summit where Audrey Apfel suggested in the next few years 30 percent of what we traditionally call “projects” will not be considered projects anymore. “The work isn’t going away,” she suggested, “but how we categorize it is going to change.”

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone leading teams these days. Dealing with Ad Hoc work is part of the challenge project leaders face every day as they struggle to wrap their heads around capacity and resource management. If a project manager doesn’t have visibility into all the work on the table, how is he or she ever going to accurately plan for the resource needs of any project.

I was involved with a focus group of several project leaders a little over a year ago who initially suggested that they don’t manage any ad hoc or unstructured work with their team. “We do projects. Period,” they asserted. However, after a deeper dive they all admitted that ad hoc requests were an issue they were all struggling with as people from outside the team made relatively small one-off work requests that on the surface probably felt like fairly benign interruptions, but cumulatively had a negative impact on team productivity.

Interestingly last fall Forrester’s Tim Harmon (in a webinar sponsored by AtTask), shared an interesting statistic. Tim suggested that on average over 50 percent of the work done by project teams was non-project, ad hoc work. For some teams the percentage could be higher and for some lower (if you’re percentage is lower, consider yourself lucky). If half of the time a project team spends at work each day isn’t related to the project plan, I think it’s safe to say that project resource plans that don’t take that into account are doomed from the start.

Whether we like it or not, we need to start looking at how we manage projects differently. I’ve always been an advocate of a methodology-neutral approach to how we manage projects—throw ad hoc work into the mix, and we really need to take a different view. Here are a few suggestions:

In-bounding work is more critical than ever before: Ad hoc doesn’t mean unimportant. Although some very important work might not need a project plan (a “to-do” list might be all that’s required), evaluating and prioritizing simple work requests are every bit as important as it is for projects. I liken it to putting a fence around the team so the team’s focus is on prioritized work and not the personal agenda of a particularly squeaky wheel. This is a lot easier for organizations where work requests (projects and otherwise) are filtered through a formalized request process. This gives them more visibility into all the work and helps them better allocate resources to accomplish those initiatives that provide the most value to the organization.
We need to look a everything (including projects) in the context of work: I think the idea of project teams working exclusively on projects is a pipe dream. We need to implement systems and tools that give project leaders visibility into all the work being undertaken by the team. Without it, they’ll never be able to accurately plan for those initiatives that ultimately become projects, capacity planning will be impossible and project plans will be crippled from the start. Let’s face it, project management really is work management.

A one size fits all approach to managing projects and other work just doesn’t work. Just as some projects are more suited to an Agile methodology as opposed to a more traditional approach, all work won’t fit neatly into a project plan—however, we still need visibility into what’s going on. Visibility into all work makes it possible for project leaders and decision makers to understand the real story behind what’s happening within their teams and allows them to get out of theoretical capacity planning and really manage their human capital.

Are you seeing this within your teams? What are you doing about it?

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What Can We Learn From the Search for bin Laden?

2 May 2012 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

It’s been a year since US forces found and eliminated Osama bin Laden. If you’re like me, you’ve got to be asking yourself, “How did the world’s ‘most wanted’ man keep himself hidden from the United States for so long?”

In a recent NBC News article, Amna Nawaz postulates that he had help, lots of it.

“If you’re a six-foot-five Arab, and the most wanted man on the planet, you can’t just walk into a place like Pakistan without support,” Kamran Bokhari, vice-president for Middle Eastern and South Asian Affairs at Stratfor, a global intelligence company said. “So what’s the nature of that support?”

It’s not unusual for projects to have detractors, some even become saboteurs, which the search for bin Laden demonstrates can make project success practically impossible.

“U.S. officials publicly state they have no evidence that any Pakistani institutional leaders had any knowledge of bin Laden’s presence here, nor played any role in helping to move him,” writes Nawaz. “Privately, however, some admit that the deep mistrust between the two nations has led to strong, lingering suspicions within many in the U.S. that Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency—Inter-Services Intelligence, or the ISI—must have known, at some level.”

As with most projects, high-level detractors spell disaster for unpopular projects—regardless of how valuable the initiative might be.

I’ve noticed over the years that this often manifests itself as “fear of change” or resistance to change. In most cases this is really a fear of the unknown and can sometimes even create detractors. Here are some of the most common fears that organizations face from project detractors resistant to change:

It’s different. Realizing that there are some people who really thrive on change, but most people don’t, is important. You might get push-back simply because it’s a change. I think the key here is to understand that sometimes it takes time for people to embrace the change. Whether it’s a new practice, a new process, a new boss or a new project—giving people time to accept change is important.
Some people (managers and team members) are uncomfortable with the additional scrutiny that often accompanies change. If your organization is implementing a project review process to evaluate potential projects, some stakeholders might be a little nervous that their proposed projects might not stand up up to peer review. It’s important to realize that projects that might be important to one senior manager or stakeholder might not be important to another. Making the review process transparent and understandable to everyone often helps reduce those types of concerns and minimizes the danger of project saboteurs.
Some projects are more important than others. Implementing a sound work management methodology will mean only those projects that provide the most business value will get pushed forward—not the “pet” projects of influential stakeholders. Because this might negatively impact some projects, there are stakeholders that may try to block the process and even stand in the way of project success.
There are tough decisions to be made. Sometimes it’s not easy for decision-makers to make choices regarding projects and people, but it has to happen. It’s important that senior managers understand that they have a responsibility to the organization—not just their individual departments or careers. There will be some who don’t like this fact.
Implementing change takes time. Regardless of the change, it never happens overnight. It takes time to implement new methods, it takes time for people to accept the change and accommodating for that time is crucial for change initiatives to be successful.

The search for bin Laden teaches us the value of keeping detractors from becoming saboteurs. Have you ever had to deal with people who actively fought against one of your projects? What did you do?

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What is Collaborative Work Management Anyway?

30 April 2012 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

I talk a lot about “Work Management” in my blog posts and this blog is even named the “Work Management” blog, but what is Work Management, really? I’ve been asked that question several times, so this is a post about how I define Work Management and how it relates to traditional project management—and why it should matter to all of us. I personally think this is a really big deal—maybe even a game changing shift in how we look at work and interact with the management process.

Work Management represents an evolution of project portfolio management (PPM) and is a paradigm that recognizes that a person’s workday consists of more than structured project-work; it includes ad-hoc requests that come from colleagues, personal tasks, goals, objectives, and repetitive duties that must be understood and prioritized. The goal of this approach is to provide a 360-degree view of all work, including a space to collect, prioritize and manage work with tools that help teams work collaboratively on the things that matter most to an organization.

How is this really different from Project Management?

I consider traditional project management to be a sub-set of Work Management. The Work Management paradigm is an on-ramp to all the work done by teams (including traditional projects), enabling project leaders and other managers to evaluate potential and current projects, set the right strategic and tactical objectives, validate corporate initiatives, and promote and execute on those projects that provide the greatest business value (within the context of all the work done within an organization).
How does this impact teams and culture?

As workplace culture changes (generation X and Y are accustomed to having more control over what they do and when they do it than any other generation of workers before them), a people-centric Work Management approach doesn’t treat the workforce as resources to be put into productivity buckets, but rather as the linchpin to business success. Assigning work has evolved into a collaborative process between organizational layers and peers.

This democratization of how work is allocated represents a paradigm shift recognizing that those closest to the work understand it the best and should have the ability to help set timelines and milestones for deliverables. Today’s leaders are expected to look ahead and plan to overcome obstacles through better communication, not increased micromanagement.

How does Work Management accommodate structured project-based work?

Looking at projects from the perspective of Work Management frees us from dependence upon any single execution methodology like Agile/Scrum, NPD or waterfall; which are all accommodated within a successful Work Management Approach.

The traditional project management paradigm teaches a top-down planning approach, which attempts to align people, skills, time, and activities. Unlike this approach, which relies on a centrally owned and managed process with people reporting status against a plan, a Work Management approach seeks to democratize the project plan and invites feedback regarding time-lines and deliverables. Enabling individual project team members to make commitments regarding project delivery dates facilitates a more accurate picture of project status and provides managers with a forward-looking view of the schedule.

Empowering everyone throughout the organization involves people in the execution of structured work and delivers a rich stream of contextual information into status and activity.

How does this accommodate unstructured work?

Most of a person’s workday is spent managing unstructured work (requests from peers, colleagues and work that is not associated with formal projects). Work Management provides a workspace to capture unstructured work from various sources to facilitate collaboration including: wikis, blogs, document sharing, meetings, chat and group resource scheduling. It also provides visibility into what others are working on, enabling comments and updates around projects and tasks.

In my opinion, the biggest change associated with a successful Work Management platform is a shift from a focus on work governance to a focus on optimization. What are your thoughts about this new paradigm?

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Managing Projects in the Cloud Simply Makes Sense

27 April 2012 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

Salesforce has done a great job of carrying the torch for SaaS solutions. In fact, I can’t think of anyone I know that uses an on-premises CRM software anymore. With the global nature of many projects and project teams today, working in the cloud makes collaboration much less problematic. With that in mind, I thought I’d give you a few of my opinions as to why I’m a fan of SaaS in general and the idea of project management “in the could” in particular:

It’s relatively easy and inexpensive to enter: Not too long ago I spoke with the PMO director of a very large international organization in the middle of an implementation of SaaS project management software. He expressed frustration at a previous three-year-long unsuccessful installation of a legacy project management software that claimed to offer business process expertise. The inherent complexity of many legacy solutions make implementation and adoption lengthy and difficult. His consternation is shared by many who don’t have the time or resources to accommodate an expensive, multi-year implementation process.
Pay-as-you-go vs. pay-through-the-nose: Because SaaS software is typically subscription based, organizations can pay for the software when they use it, and access it via the Internet, rather than going through the expensive process of installing software on individual machines or purchasing expensive and costly-to-maintain servers to keep their systems up and running.
Cloud-based project management solutions make real-time collaboration possible: Although all SaaS products aren’t created equal, taking project data from the desktop and putting it in a centralized location gives project managers and teams access to all the data relevant to their projects. Although some SaaS vendors do this better than others, this is the first step to real-time collaboration.
SaaS software empowers everyone—it isn’t only for the enterprise: There will always be mega-organizations who insist on spending millions of dollars on legacy applications, but SaaS allows organizations with much smaller budgets to take advantage of the latest (and in my opinion, some of the best) project management technology available. In fact, most SaaS solutions, by their very nature, are committed to a robust schedule of continual update and improvement. It’s part of the culture.

This isn’t an all-inclusive list, but for organizations that want affordable access to the latest technology, SaaS project management software is a terrific option. Is your project management solution in the cloud?

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A Happy Workplace: Does it Really Matter?

26 April 2012 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

“We often hear that a happy workplace is a great place for productivity,” writes Susan Adams at Forbes. “But is that claim just happy talk? Don’t happy workers have a tendency to become complacent and goof off?”

I know that I’ve certainly heard that from time to time over the years. However a new book by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton, argue that empirical evidence suggests that happy workers are indeed more productive. The authors identify what they call the three “E”s and suggest that this is the definition of a happy workforce:

Engaged: the employee is attached to the company and willing to put out extra effort
Enabled: the company environment supports the employee’s productivity and performance
Energized: the employee feels a sense of well-being and drive

I’ve been a big fan of these particular concepts for a long time, however after collecting data from 700 companies in 2009 and 2010 interviewing 303,000 employees that displayed what the authors identified as “high-performance business results” there seems to be a measurable connection. They argue an increase in “…operating margins of better than 27% during a time when the economy was struggling,” writes Adams. “The authors claim those companies had margins that were three times higher than companies with low engagement scores.”

There will be many, including Adams, who acknowledge that some of this is kind of “squishy” and really difficult to measure, but I like the three “Es”. At least over the course of my career I’ve noticed that when people are happy, they tend to perform better.

In an article she wrote for CNN Money, Linda Mignone suggests, “Aside from it sounding sensible, recent studies have demonstrated that the happier a worker is, the more productive they will be on the job. While an employee may appear engaged in their work, they may not be as effective as they could be if they were happy.”

Knowing this should help us better lead and engage the people we work with on project teams. “People who are happy at work put in far more effort, work longer hours, and are more productive than those who aren’t,” continues Mignone. “They remain at their jobs twice as long and they work 25% more time than an unhappy employee works.”

If that is truly the case, it appears that creating an environment where people are happy could be a very good strategy for increasing profitability in an economic environment where organizations are trying to squeeze every little bit of productivity they can out of people.

I think there is a relationship between happiness and engagement. In my experience, most people have a real desire (dare I say need) to contribute to something bigger than themselves. Modern Survey spoke to 1,000 working adults, releasing a report titled, Employee Engagement in the U.S. Workforce. You might find it interesting to know that those folks who could answer the question, “Does your company have a clear set of values that people know about and understand?” are 17 times more likely to be fully engaged than those who answered “no”. I suggest that they are a lot happier too.

It seems simple enough. Make sure everyone is aware of the value of their contributions. Maybe it’s even too simple. However I’m convinced that it’s the first step to a happy and engaged workforce.

Maybe we should be asking our project teams the same kinds of questions asked by Modern Survey to determine how our project teams feel:

Does your company have a clear set of values that people know and understand?
Do you understand the value to your organization of the project you’re currently working on?
How is this articulated to you?

Mignone suggests (and I agree), “When employees feel like they have some control over the work they are doing and when they feel like they’re making progress, they are generally happier and more productive, and these feelings are amplified when employees are part of a team. A team makes bigger, bolder, richer sound, with more layers, like an orchestra. And the richest sounds come when the team feels they are part of something big; a big idea, a vision.”

My personal experience suggests that this has been true for me (and many of my colleagues over the years). What’s more, happy people are less likely to jump ship for a few thousand dollars more in pay than their unhappy counterparts.

What are some of the things you are doing to create a happy working environment?

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Distributed Agile…

25 April 2012 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

Earlier this week Projects@Work released a 38-page report—Distributed Agile Teams: Achieving the Benefits. Individuals from over 40 countries where surveyed and asked about what they do, the industries they were in, and the number of Agile managers working within their organizations to cite just a few of the questions asked.

“Given the high proportion of IT respondents, we expected most Agile practitioners to report working for an IT PMO, or at least the IT department. However, 39% of all Agile practitioners report across all business areas, which shows that Agile is breaking out of the IT department and adding value across other teams. A further 14% reported that they were affiliated to a corporate PMO. The remaining 47% said they reported into IT, with nearly 20% of these reporting to the IT PMO,” writes Projects@Work. “Even in the IT industry, fewer than half (46%) of Agile practitioners report into IT. The majority report either to a corporate PMO or across other business areas.”

Regardless of the type of project you manage, I’m convinced that an Agile approach shouldn’t be overlooked because of its traditional roots in software development and IT. In fact, I’m of the opinion that project managers should look at every project and evaluate whether or not a traditional Waterfall approach or an Agile approach might best produce the desired business value. I’m convinced that a one-size-fits-all approach just isn’t the way to provide the most value to the organization.

I recently spoke with a very talented project management veteran on the TalkingWork podcast who has jumped into the Agile methodology with both feet. Although they still have what she calls “traditional project teams” there are some projects that are just better suited to an Agile methodology. What’s more, Projects@Work identifies that over 60 percent of respondents reported that more than one in five their Agile projects are run with distributed teams.

Distributed teams pose some unique challenges to most organizations. “With distributed teams, the notion that you can use a story card board goes out the window, you are pretty much forced to use some type of tool,” said one practitioner in federal government. “The good news is that there are tools that do a decent job in this and from my perspective as a Product Owner, I prefer to use the same tool to manage my Product Backlog as the team uses to manage their Sprint Backlog and tasks. The challenge is getting the team to go into the tool and record their progress and ‘to do’ estimates frequent enough (daily hopefully) to glean any useful data from it.”

Last summer I spoke with a brilliant project manager who is working to eliminate email from their project communication—it takes place within their software. All the messages (whether direct messages or in the message stream) are attached to tasks, issues and projects which makes them easy to search and reference for building out reports and effectively collaborating. Eliminating disparate communication methods like email and instant messages makes it possible to have “one source of truth” when it’s time to ask questions and evaluate project success. This is very consistent with the idea of keeping the backlog and the tool the SRUM team uses on a daily basis the same.

It should be no surprise that 80 percent of respondents suggest that it’s harder to work with distributed teams. It’s also no surprise that the vast majority of respondents suggest that “poor communication” is the biggest challenge. This seemed to be true regardless of the experience level of the manager or the team. Whether the team is co-located or distributed, this is a challenge for every project team.

However, the flexibility of an Agile environment was viewed as the greatest benefit to distributed teams. Projects@Work suggests, and I wholeheartedly agree, “The essence of Distributed Agile is all about collaborating and putting together the way we want to execute a project by means of leveraging Agile best practices and fine-tuning existing methodologies.”

Whether or not you are working with distributed teams, I think it’s time that even organizations that have relied on traditional project management methodologies for the last fifty years, take another look at Agile methods to see where they might be best utilized within their organizations. I’ve personally had experience with agile projects within a marketing context with great success—for the right type of projects.

There’s so much great information in this report that I will likely bring it up here again. It’s worth the download and review. I think you might be surprised at how effective an Agile approach could be with a distributed (as well as a co-located) team.

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We need to be more Agile…or is it agile?

24 April 2012 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

The former Prime Minister of England, Harold Wilson said, “He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.”

Although the economy is improving, it doesn’t appear that organizations are inclined to expect less from project teams or project managers. I don’t think there’s any question that the role of project managers is changing in most organizations, and the need to do more with limited resources will continue to be a priority.

Because of these economic realities, project leaders need to look at projects in the context of all work, along with adopting a more flexible (or agile with a small “a”) approach to managing toward objectives. Rather than asking whether or not Agile, Waterfall, Six Sigma or any other methodology is best, we must determine which method is the “best” for any given project and ensure that we are working on the “right” projects in the first place.

I don’t think anyone would disagree that we need to look at the administrative burden associated with complex project plans and determine what can be eliminated and what must be maintained, so project leaders and project teams can focus on managing work to successful outcomes. If, as I’ve mentioned before, 20-55 percent of project requirements are really unnecessary, reducing or eliminating that burden on projects and project teams seems critical to me. Although there are projects where governance is mandated and important, I don’t believe that can be said of every project.

Our focus as project leaders must be on producing value (which may be different for every project). Nonetheless, projects are initiated in the first place because someone within the organization perceives that the outcome will produce some kind of value—whether or not it’s a cost saving project, an income-generating project, or some other anticipated value. What’s more, depending upon the project manager’s role within his or her organization, they may or may not have much input into this discussion now, but that does not mean that they shouldn’t have that input.

Regardless of your current role, the world is looking for project leaders who are willing to seize the opportunity to do more than simply follow a prescribed process, they are looking for people who actually lead project teams to consistently produce organizational value. The need for agile project leaders has never been more prevalent than it is now. It’s up to us to create that role in our organizations, if it doesn’t already exist. Project teams and project leaders in particular should be where organizations look for future leaders. After all, projects are where people are tried by decision-making and leadership fire.

To do this, we need to put aside our preconceived notions of project management methodology and become more agile (with the small “a”), or ultimately wind up in the figurative cemetery.

Please share what you’re doing to incorporate flexibility into your work management methodology.

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Three Fundamentals of Leading People and Managing Projects

20 April 2012 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

Living in Utah there are lots of opportunities to explore the past. Last weekend I spent some time tooling around southern Utah visiting ghost towns. A couple of years ago I stopped by another obscure corner of southeastern Utah to visit the ruins at Hovenweep—an ancient Pueblo or Anasazi settlement that was settle sometime between 8,000 to 6,000 B.C.E. and was inhabited until sometime in the 1300s.

Looking at what remains from these communities, I can’t help but marvel at the structures that are still standing. Certainly they had primitive materials to work with, but I don’t think you could call the workmanship of these folks primitive. They definitely understood the fundamentals of masonry construction.

I’m convinced that there are some fundamentals that apply to working with people and managing work that tend to result in more successful projects, here’s the first three:

Make sure everyone understands what they’re doing and why they’re doing it: It might sound like a no-brainer that everyone should know what they’re doing, but it’s not uncommon for a lot of time to be wasted by people trying to figure out what to do next or what work is the priority. What’s more, people tend to perform better when they understand the value of what they’re doing. “Do it because I told you to” is not the best way to motivate people. Most of us want to work toward a goal that is bigger than ourselves. When we enable people with that vision, they are more likely to step up, be creative and perform at a higher level.
Make sure everyone is committed to see it through to the end: This doesn’t mean a “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” attitude is appropriate. There are times when a struggling project should be put out of its misery before it wastes too much valuable time and resources. It’s important that everyone is committed to see things through. If people are quick to give up in “crunch time” very little will ever get done. This often applies to stakeholders and sponsors who sometimes have short attention spans. Everyone involved in the project needs to have a commitment to see things through to the end.
Don’t be afraid to empower individuals to make decisions for themselves: I don’t think it matters what type of work you do, forcing people to ask, “Mother, may I” on every decision just isn’t a good idea. If you have the right people on your project team, they should be allowed some autonomy to impact what they do and how they do it. If you can’t trust your people to get the job done, maybe it’s time to start looking for other people. The key is to identify a decision-making process—who has authority to make decisions and what type of decisions can they make?

Implementing the fundamentals will help your team contribute to sustainable initiatives that will stand the test of time. 2000 years from now, I doubt my home will still be standing like the dwellings at Hovenweep.

Do you have any fundamental skills you’d like to add to the list?

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Teamwork in a Tube

19 April 2012 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

I spent the day yesterday in San Francisco. I like the bay area (but that’s another story).

On my flight from Salt Lake City I sat next to a former Navy submariner. I usually keep to myself when I fly, but he was a friendly guy who wanted to talk about the Navy, submarines and how there were many submarines that weren’t much bigger than the jet we were taking to San Francisco.

I knew submarines were small, but I hadn’t thought about it that way before.

He talked about how living at sea in cramped quarters for two or three months at a time forced the team to get close—real close. “You learn pretty quick who you can count on and who you can’t. Those you can’t count on, eventually wash out,” he said

He also told me that nobody gets assigned to work on a submarine, it’s volunteer duty in the Navy and about 60 percent of those who do volunteer don’t make it. “It’s a real badge of honor,” he said, “to pin those dolphins on your chest.”

He talked about how everyone on the sub is cross-trained and understands the ins and outs of how a submarine works in case there’s an emergency. “You might need to do someone else’s job—even if you’re the cook,” he said. Earning your certification is a big deal. In fact, some twenty or so years after his retirement, he and the men he served with still get together to hash out old times and celebrate the friendships they made at sea.

I realize that the dynamics of a submarine are a little different from the environment on a project team, but there were a couple of things he talked about that resonated with me:

Submariners are all volunteers: When people are doing the work they feel passionate about, they often volunteer. What’s more, we typically get their best work. Granted, team members aren’t always able to do the work they enjoy, but if we make it happen frequently team members will be more engaged in their work and perform at a higher level.
Submariners can count on each other: I don’t think it really matters what type of team it is, if team members can’t count on each other when it’s crunch time, the odds of project success are slim. I know I can count on the members of my team to put forward their best efforts every day. In fact, we expect everyone to bring their “A” game and if they don’t, they eventually wash out. It’s very rewarding to work with such talented people. It definitely makes me want to perform at my best.
Submariners are proud of what they do: I’m convinced that most people want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. They want to be a part of something they can be proud of. When project leaders make the vision of the work visible to team members, it gives them the opportunity to “buy in” to what they’re asked to do and take ownership of their role in the bigger picture. This is the way to really engage people and create an atmosphere of pride in the work.

Do the members of your project teams share some of the same characteristics of submariners? What are you doing to encourage that type of environment among the people you work with on projects and other work?

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Is Your Team Working Through Lunch? It Could Hurt Productivity

17 April 2012 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

More than likely.

According to a web survey conducted last year by Right Management, only a third of American workers say they take a lunch break. The survey suggested that 65 percent of workers eat at their desks and don’t take a break at all. I imagine that there are a lot of project teams buried in those statistics.

CareerBuilder found that less than one-fifth of executives surveyed eat lunch at a sit-down restaurant anymore. Their survey suggests that 40 percent are brown-bagging it and 17 percent are eating fast food.

It probably doesn’t come as a shock to anyone that the volume of work and fewer resources have really made a difference in how, or even if, workers take a lunch break or not.

USAToday/Money suggests, “Today’s fast-paced work environment and sluggish economy have left many employees with more work and less time to do it, making the once-cherished midday lunch break a disappearing option.”

I don’t think there’s any question that stepping away from the desk for a lunch break is important to foster a productive and creative work environment. Larry Muhammed for The (Louisville, KY) Courier Journal writes, “Experts say taking an uninterrupted meal break is healthy, increases job efficiency and improves morale, benefiting both employees and their companies.”

Lyle Sussman, a University of Louisville professor suggests that research on creativity and productivity “…shows a lot of good stuff comes about when employees get away from their work and their desks, and smart managers and smart companies find a way to make that happen.”

Part of a project leader’s role is to foster an environment where people can perform at their best—sometimes that might mean making sure the team steps away from the desk from time to time to eat lunch or otherwise take a break.

What are you doing to keep everyone productive and engaged?

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