Work Management

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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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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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“This is a waste of time!”

6 April 2012 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

Over the years I can’t even count the number of times I’ve either said that, overheard that or had it said to me. Sometimes, what we were doing really was a waste of time. Other times, because of my lack of perspective, what I thought was a waste of time really had value. Most people, whether they are able to clearly articulate it or not, want to add maximum value to whatever they are doing. I think most of us would agree that those days when we go home and feel like we’ve accomplished something worthwhile are very satisfying. I like what I do, and those days when I really feel like I’m making a contribution to something worthwhile and not wasting my time are very rewarding.

I don’t think I’m that unique. In fact, I believe that most of the time the members of project teams feel the same way. How often have you heard, “I hate wasting time on this,” or “This is a waste of time,” or “I don’t feel like I’ve contributed anything worthwhile today”?

Regardless of how you manage projects or the project management tools you use, if we can better align people to the right work at the right time, we can help people enjoy their jobs, gain satisfaction from whatever they’re doing and allow them to feel like they are really contributing to something bigger than themselves. What’s more, that kind of environment fosters a culture of productivity, innovation and profitability of our organizations.

I’m not a fan of wasting time and I don’t know too many people who are. The world talks a lot about conserving our natural resources, but we seldom talk about how organizations waste their most precious resource—their people. Here are six tips to help you avoid wasting team members:

Make sure everyone has a clear understanding of what they should be doing: I know this sounds simple, but sometimes it’s easier said than done. When people have to spend time figuring out what they should be doing, people are wasted.
Don’t make it difficult for people to find documents or other project resources: When people have to hunt for the document or other project asset they should be working on, people are wasted.
Don’t make it difficult for managers to see what their people are doing: When team leaders and managers have to spend time trying to figure out what their people are doing, people are wasted.
Don’t spend entire days in meetings simply talking about work: If all you do is talk about work and never get around to doing the work, people are wasted.
Keep people focused on those initiatives that provide the most business value: When people spend time working on initiatives that don’t provide the most value to the organization, people are wasted.
Streamline repetitive processes: When people spend time in repetitive process that could be streamlined or automated, people are wasted.

Project and work management practices or tools that don’t help avoid these wasteful behaviors make it difficult to maximize the value people. As project leaders, we should be looking at the processes and methods we use to manage work to see if we are contributing to frustration and waste or encouraging efficiency and empowering team members.

What are you doing to reduce waste?

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Checklists and Surgery

22 March 2012 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

Steve Bather commented on a post from the other day about simplification. He reminded me of a story I had heard a couple of years ago about Dr. Atul Gwande, a NY heart surgeon who has been successfully implementing a checklist into the operating room. The NPR story talked about some research he had done at the Harvard Medical School. I found the article very interesting, I think you will too.

“Our great struggle in medicine these days is not just with ignorance and uncertainty,” Gawande says. “It’s also with complexity: how much you have to make sure you have in your head and think about. There are a thousand ways things can go wrong.”

Because doctors are human (just like everyone else), they sometimes miss things. So Gawande looked at other fields that deal with complex circumstances and visited, among others, Boeing to see how they make things work. He cites the “pilot’s checklist” as a good example of how other complex tasks are completed outside of medicine.

Unlike a pilot, there is no checklist in surgery, just the surgeon’s experience and intuition that dictates how a procedure is performed. So as an experiment, he brought a two-minute checklist into the operating room of eight hospitals—after having worked with a team of folks that included Boeing to show them how to put the checklist together.

How did it work?

“We get better results,” said Gawande. “Massively better results.”

“We caught basic mistakes and some of the stupid stuff,” Gawande reports. “We also found that good teamwork required certain things that we missed very frequently.”

Something as simple as making sure that everyone in the operating room knew each other by name turned out to be incredibly valuable. Isn’t it interesting how similar some of these issues sound to the work management issues project teams face every day?

Not unlike some project managers I have met, many of the surgeons weren’t originally too keen on operating with a checklist. However, when all was said and done, 80% of the surgeons saw the value of the checklist. And, although 20% said they didn’t need the checklist, 94% said that if they were going to have surgery they would want their surgeon to be using a checklist.

I realize that heart surgery and project-based work don’t have a lot in common. That said, the surgeon could learn a few things from project managers about how to create a sound work management (surgery management) methodology. Project managers could also learn from this study. “We caught basic mistakes and some of the stupid stuff,” Gawande reports. “We also found that good teamwork required certain things that we missed very frequently.”

Despite all the evidence, Gawande wasn’t sure that using a checklist would help save the lives of his patients—after all, he was from Harvard. However he started using the checklist and says, “I was in that 20%. I haven’t gotten through a week of surgery where the checklist has not caught a problem.”

Like surgery, capturing best practices and formalizing processes are critical for success. Like the surgeon’s checklist, the right project management tools can help. Fortunately, there is a lot we can learn from Dr. Gawande’s study. As well as what a heart surgeon could learn from a project manager.

If you were going into surgery, would you feel more comfortable if you knew the operating team was using a checklist to make sure nothing got missed? I think I would.

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Project Management’s Holy Grail

6 March 2012 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

Forget everything you thought you knew about the Arthur legend. The search for the Holy Grail has nothing to do with Indiana Jones or the Crusades. When talking about collaborative work management, we’re really talking about managing capacity.

Whenever the topic of capacity planning comes up among my project management friends, there seems to be two pretty standard comments:

“Capacity planning is a critical part of our work management process and makes us more efficient and competitive.”
Or, “We see the value of better capacity planning and are working toward a more formalized method for actually measuring capacity.”

Project management software companies have been trying to figure out the best way to capacity plan since they started making project management software. Everyone takes a different approach, some of them seem to work—while others don’t. In my opinion, there are a couple of critical components to any attempt to accurately plan for capacity. Although they might sound simple, depending on your organization, it might be easier said than done:

Filtering requests is critical: If you provide shared services within your organization like the IT, Marketing, HR or Finance departments, you receive inbound requests from throughout the organization everyday. When those requests come in via email, text message, phone conversations or a hallway chat, it can be difficult to make sure nothing gets missed, the requests that deliver the most value get addressed first and everything gets handled in a timely manner. Organizations that have formalized the project request process with an inbound request queue find managing capacity a lot easier. They have a better handle on which projects get attention now and which projects need to take a back seat. This helps them better allocate their resources on the work that provides the most value to their organizations.
We’ve got to start looking at projects within the context of other work: In a perfect world, your project team works on your projects and nothing else. Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world. What’s more, by some estimates, project teams spend upwards of 50 percent of their day working on tasks that are unrelated to any active project. That’s not to say the work doesn’t provide value, but the idea of a project team working on only projects is a pipe dream in most organizations. When project leaders have visibility into all the work being undertaken by project teams, they’ll be better able to project plan, manage capacity and successfully complete projects.
Make it easy for the team to engage in the work—or they won’t: The problem with most solutions designed manage projects, teams and capacity is that they are complicated and cumbersome to use. I’m a big fan of the social media metaphor for this reason. It’s familiar, it’s easy and it encourages dialog, which is critical to understanding what’s happening within the team today, what the workload looks like tomorrow and how that’s going to impact your capacity plan.

This is where the right tools can really make a difference and add value. When project leaders and decision makers have visibility into what’s really going on with their project teams and can get out of theoretical capacity planning, they can make informed decisions about their capacity—and maybe even find the Holy Grail.

What are you doing to understand and manage the capacity of your project team?

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Does Your Car Have Wheels?

6 March 2012 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

Of course it does. So does mine and so does your neighbor’s.

Whenever the conversation about project management tools come up, it’s really easy to get derailed by the features of individual solutions. Because we’ve become accustomed to comparing tools that way (not unlike “Does it have wheels? Check.”) most of the time we tend to move down a punch-list of features—which hasn’t helped us much over the last fifty years. In my opinion, any conversation about project management tools shouldn’t revolve around Gantt charts or how they address capacity planning—those are basic features that are included in any project management solution.

Don’t get me wrong. Any software that doesn’t offer the fundamental feature set required to actively manage a project portfolio shouldn’t even be considered. However, when we start talking about collaborative work management (which I believe is the next evolution in project management) determining whether or not your solution provides real business value boils down to a few very important considerations:

Does the solution help me capture, prioritize and execute on project requests that emanate from throughout the organization?
Does it help me ensure that every potential project is evaluated by the same criteria so only those that meet the criteria will be pushed forward?
Will I be able to drill down into real-time data to validate that the business initiatives worked on by teams are those that have been determined to provide the greatest value?
Does it make the process accessible to everyone on the project team? If it’s easy for teams to use, project leaders will have the timely and accurate information they need to inform decisions.
Does it facilitate collaboration among everyone on the team?
Will it successfully integrate with my other business-critical systems?

Add these criteria to your evaluation and you might be surprised at how you will look at things a little differently. Does it have wheels? Check. Will it get me where I need to go? Now that’s another question entirely.

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Vegas and Visibility

22 February 2012 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

I’m spending the next few days in Las Vegas (or as my wife likes to call it, “Lost Wages”) for a conference this week. I’m speaking at Pink Elephant’s ITIL conference at the Bellagio—I digress. After arriving last night I went on a walk around town and wound up sitting at a blackjack table. I’m not a big gambler, but I was waiting to meet up with some colleagues and thought I’d sit in for a few hands.

Visibility into what the dealer’s holding would be a real benefit at the blackjack table.

I’m really not any good at counting cards, but I’ve been taught a pretty commonsense way to make a best guess about what the dealer’s holding. Last night it worked. I walked away with a few extra bucks in my pocket and don’t have to admit to my wife that I lost my wages in Lost Wages.

Business leaders make decisions everyday, sometimes on reliable information, sometimes on hunches and sometimes on a best guess based upon less than complete information. In organizations that rely on projects or project-like work, this can be very challenging. Particularly, when business leaders know that they can have more accurate information with the right tools and the right management approach.

There are as many different project management tools available as there are opinions about the best way to manage work. Some work very well, some do not. Over the years, I’ve noticed a number of things that some collaborative work management tools employ that seem to make a difference in how project teams work and collaborate that positively impacts the type of information business leaders have to make decisions:

They help people work they way they naturally work: This really makes sense to me, however most project management solutions are so hard for individual contributors to use—that they don’t. The reason this is a problem is because if they don’t use it, the information pulled out of it isn’t accurate and decision-makers can’t trust it. Making it simple may be a step in the right direction, but I don’t think that’s enough. I think we should take a cue from social media and incorporate those things that encourage the same people who won’t update their project status in the office to update their personal status on tools such as Facebook and Twitter. Make it look and feel like the same tools they use on their smartphones and personal computers.
Give people the tools that will help them do their jobs the best: If you’re like me, simple things like a wonky email client or an unreliable phone system can really get in the way of me doing my best. After interviewing, observing and listening to project teams over the last few years, most project team members look at the PM software they use as something that gets in the way, rather than helps them do their job. Whatever project management tools you use, if it’s easy to update status, enables easy collaboration and provides some value to the people on the front line using it, you’ll find more success.
Recognize accomplishment: This is one area where individuals on a project team can see value in their PM software. Most of us are generally proud of what we do and want to succeed and excel. When your project management solution and methodology allow for recognizing accomplishments or exceptional performance, your team will start to see value. That’s one of the reasons I think social media is such a powerful metaphor for collaboration. When you post an update in Facebook, for example, you’ll usually see a response. If the only time a project manager recognizes what’s happening with someone on the team is when they fall behind or something goes wrong, they’ve missed the boat.
Make sure everyone knows what’s expected of them: I look at this in two parts. One is unrelated to any software and simply requires that a project leader accurately articulate what is expected and what is considered a success. The other is related to tools and methodology. People should never have to guess about what they should be doing now and what they should be doing next. If people have to waste time trying to figure out what’s next on their plate, projects struggle.

Although these four suggestions aren’t going to give me any more visibility into what the dealer is holding at the blackjack table, they will help give executives more visibility into the work being done by project teams.

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Does Social Media Work for Project Communication?

16 February 2012 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

If you’re talking about incorporating something like Twitter, Jabber or Facebook into the project communication mix, the short answer is no. Let me explain.

Of course this is only my opinion, but Twitter et al have the same challenges as email for project collaboration, they lack context. By that I mean, you have to follow the whole thread from beginning to end to understand what anyone is talking about. Have you ever been invited into an email string that has been going on for a while? It’s difficult to wrap your head around the context of the conversation (I’ll come back to this).

I’m a very big fan of the social media metaphor within the project and work management environment—I just don’t think disparate conversation threads add to the conversation. I think they contribute extra noise.

Social media does a couple of things very well. In fact, in collaborative work environments, we can learn a lot from social media:

It encourages natural and regular conversations: Collecting feedback and status is an important part of a team member’s interaction with the project management process. I doubt that there would be much argument with the fact that most project management solutions (whether they be spreadsheets, white boards or project management software) don’t do a very good job of encouraging communication among the team. I can’t count the amount of time I’ve spent in previous lives going from cube to cube asking, nay begging, for the team to update their project status so I could report on progress up the chain. However many of those same people will go home, login to Facebook “updating status” with their network of friends and tweet or check-in from their smart phone—wherever they are.
Social media isn’t really very complicated: I think my introduction to Facebook took less than five minutes and Twitter was even less than that. It certainly didn’t require two or three days of intensive training to learn how to collaborate with my personal network of family and friends. Project management software could learn a thing or two in that regard. Most team members aren’t project managers and shouldn’t be required to become such to update their task status. I have colleagues who have spent countless hours interviewing project teams who tell me that the most common feeling among team members is, “Tell me what I need to do, make it easy to report on progress and then get out of the way and let me do my job.” Does that sound familiar?
Are you paying attention to me? Social media like Facebook feeds the need of many people to get a little recognition for what they do. Let’s face it, most people are proud of what they do and appreciate a little recognition for a job well done, for accomplishing a particularly difficult challenge and sometimes for just showing up. I read recently that the worst thing a manager can do to an employee is ignore them. It’s worse than even chewing them out. People crave recognition (some more than others). Almost every time I post a personal status on Facebook, one of my friends will make a comment—sometimes they’re even sincere.

Why does this matter?

Project leaders and other managers that work in collaborative environments need to facilitate conversations around tasks, issues and work. Leveraging the social media metaphor to channel social media-like conversations around work is a very powerful way to encourage teams to interact. This is particularly true of distributed teams. Creating an environment where the conversations can be focused on the task, or tasks, at hand can help people accomplish more and ultimately help organizations be more profitable.

The benefits of keeping it simple should be pretty obvious. The social media metaphor is easy to learn, easy to use and very intuitive, particularly for all the millennials in the workforce now. We should be working to make it easy for teams to participate in the project and work management process. That is, if we really want them to participate in the process.

The real benefit of making it easy to collaborate and update status is that business leaders will have accurate and timely information to make decisions. They’ll have context and color around status updates—giving them the real story. I know people who are always 75 percent complete regardless of what they really are. Those types of status updates don’t really do anyone any good. We need real information, filled with context, to understand the real story.

The social media metaphor is a great approach. We just need to make sure that we implement it correctly and invest in the right tools.

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