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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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?
3. 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.

For example, a painter I know once told me that he routinely needs to step back and look at his paintings from a distance in order to keep the right perspective. He told me it’s easy for an artist to become so focused on the intricate details that they forget the rest of the painting. To avoid doing this, he makes himself step back, walk around the easel and look a the painting every few minutes.

In regards to projects, I think it’s important to step back everyone once in a while and look at the big picture. Here are a few suggestions that might help:

1. Keep the business goals and objectives of the project front and center: It’s sometimes easy to forget that projects are supposed to provide value. Keep them posted on the team white board, or someplace where the team will regularly see them. I know one project managerd that has created templates in their project management software with the goal of each individual project embedded into every task, issue and project page to remind the team why the project is important. This keeps everyone focused on the big picture, while working on the details.
2. As needed, meet with the project team to make sure everyone is still focused on the goal: We may not like it, but project teams are constantly bombarded with work that is unrelated to the project at hand. These distractions make it difficult for team members to stay focused on the project goal. Meeting with the team on a regular basis allows managers to help resolve impediments and keep the team focused. Often, the regular reminder of the project objective is all it takes to keep everyone on target.
3. Step back and look at the big picture: Software tools can help automate the management of many of the minutia associate with a project, so managers have time to step back and see the big picture. It’s important to look at project progress from a broader perspective. Make sure your project management tools help free you from working head down, buried in the weeds that keep you from seeing the forest from the trees.

What are you doing to keep everyone focused on the big picture?

It’s not always about separating the good initiatives from the bad. It’s often choosing the best, the initiatives that provide the most business value, from a list of good potential projects. In a perfect world, there are many worthy initiatives that could, and maybe even should, be pursued. Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world.

That’s why the “get’er done” mentality is such a problem. Particularly in light of the fact that most teams don’t get to choose the projects they work on. That being said, there are many organizations that do project-based work that don’t have formal processes in place to evaluate potential projects. In those organizations, it’s up to project leaders to step up and ask some pointed questions, “Will this project provide the best value to our organization?” or “Does this ‘drive-by’ project provide enough value that someone should drop what he or she is doing to work on it?” Sometimes the answer will be a definite YES, but there are times when the answer should really be NO.

We rely on a lot of established best practice to help us manage projects and other work effectively. Many of those best practices revolve around the concept of identifying projects that meet certain criteria, creating a plan and then executing on the plan. Most of the time, our focus is centered on creating a plan and execution of the project. I wonder if we ignore the importance of evaluating projects based on merit, prioritizing those that provide the most value and aligning the available manpower to  tackle those at the top of the list (we need to realize that there will be some projects that aren’t possible with the resources we have available).

My grandmother used to say, “Well begun is half done.” I agree.

That critical evaluation stage of the project (that happens before it’s ever assigned to a project manager or a project team) is probably the most important for organizations that want to maximize the value of limited resources and encourage profitability.

It isn’t always the catastrophic failure that causes an organization to falter. It’s often the accumulated weight of a thousand insignificant inefficiencies that cause the most damage. Many times it’s wasting time working on marginally valuable work at the expense of incredibly valuable work. Does your organization spend time evaluating and prioritizing the work your teams do? If not, how do they know that what they are working on now and what’s next is the right work?

Most successful project behaviors share some common themes. They address a sound process, they accommodate for prioritization, they facilitate learning and they enable the people on the teams to perform at their best. The following three practices fit into those categories and encourage successful outcomes:

1. Make sure the project has a clearly defined business objective—and that everyone involved in the project understands what it is: It’s important for stakeholders and project teams to understand the business value of what they’re doing. Keeping the project vision visible and accessible enables everyone involved in the project to stay focused on what’s important, and keeps scope creep to a minimum.
2. Make sure the project has executive commitment to see it through: One of the quickest ways to kill a project is to pull its funding out from under it. A committed executive can also help promote the merits of the project to others within the organization to build a broader base of stakeholder support.
3. Make sure there is a shared sense of determination to finish the project: If the only member of the team committed to finish the project is the project manager, it’s not likely the project will every be successfully completed. Individual team members and executive stakeholders need to have the same determination. Without a shared sense of determination to finish, projects languish and eventually fail.

With anything, mastering the fundamentals isn’t very exciting, but it’s often the difference between someone who is able to perform at a higher level and someone who isn’t. With the benefit of hindsight, I certainly would have spent more time working on the fundamentals of baseball if I had little league to do over again.

What are some of the fundamentals you would add to the list?

Girard Hardy, Field Marketing at AtTask, talks about the purpose and benefit of a Work Management Tour (WMT).

Kristyn: What is a Work Management Tour and what’s the purpose?

Girard: The work management tour is an opportunity for people looking for a project management solution as well as current AtTask customers to network together, talk about the way they work and learn from one another on how people use the tool and how it can help you. In the past we only had face-to-face interaction with customers at events such as the AtTask WorkOut User Conference. There, we noticed a lot interests from clients in the customer case study sections where people were able to sit next to other customers and hear the perspective of customers on how they use the tool. From there we wanted to develop the WMT’s to establish similar situations for customers at a local level.

Kristyn: What have you seen to be the biggest benefit?

Girard: Recently we revamped it as a discussion so we get more time with customers and prospects investigating AtTask. It’s a way to take a digital online community and make it live and in person. Being able to facilitate a discussion and host a place where people can talk with one another on how they use the product we’ve often found they solve each other’s problems and learn the new ways to help improve their usability.  After the discussion there is a demo of AtTask on how the tool can address many of the discussion topics. People not only learn how others use the tool, but also can see how it can best fit their company’s needs as well.

Kristyn: What are all the nitty-gritty details? When, where, how do we get information for the next one?

Girard: So far we’ve been to New York, Atlanta, London, San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Houston. We do 1-3 each quarter and of course lunch is provided. Each WMT is announced in emails sent to professionals in the major metropolitan areas of each city where they are held. Information can also be found in the AtTask Newsletter and, as always, available on social media such as twitter, @AtTask, or the AtTask Facebook page. Be sure to watch your inbox for a Work Management Tour near you.

Earlier this month, writing for Inc. Magazine, Jeff Haden wrote, “Forget about raises and better benefits. Those are important—but this is what your staff really wants.”

Reading his article, he shares many of the concepts I’ve come to appreciate as important within a project environment over the years. Monetary compensation is important, but I believe it’s only a concern when we don’t pay people enough for any particular job role to take the “money” conversation off the table. With that said, I’m aware that as project managers we don’t usually have any control over what the members of our project teams are paid, but we are able to do some of the things Haden is suggesting:

1. Freedom: “Autonomy and latitude breed engagement and satisfaction,” he writes. I totally agree. Those closest to the work understand it the best and should be allowed to participate in the project planning process. They should be empowered to make decisions about their work. This is something that takes place every day with Scrum teams, in my opinion, it should be a best practice within all project-based work.
2. Targets: “Targets create a sense of purpose and add a little meaning to even the most repetitive tasks,” argues Haden. Goals help people stay focused on on task. Saying that, I’m an advocate of SMART goals—Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. Unfortunately, organizations often only give lip-service to SMART goals. The mantra for project teams is often, “Get’r done” and “Get’r done now.”
3. Mission: Haden suggests, “Let employees know what you want to achieve, for your business, for customers, and even your company.” People generally want to contribute to something meaningful. When you share the mission of any particular project, people can get behind it and perform at a higher level. Nobody wants to feel that they are doing the meaningless labor of a mindless drone.
4. Expectations: Haden writes, “Few things are more stressful than not knowing what your boss expects from one minute to the next.” I couldn’t agree more. If expectations aren’t clear, it makes it difficult for team members to perform. If I know what is expected of me, I’m more likely to deliver what’s needed than if I’m constantly guessing about what the definition of success might be. Part of being a project manager is leading individuals on the team in such a way that they can succeed.
5. Input: “Make it easy for employees to offer suggestions,” he suggests. When we shut down ideas without consideration or don’t create a project environment where people can freely share ideas and collaborate, we create mindless automatons—which isn’t good for them, it isn’t good for the project and it isn’t good for the organization.
6. Connection: I have long believed that, “Employees don’t want to work for a paycheck; they want to work with and for people.” Business is all personal—whether or not we choose to believe it. I have long felt that a cordial and polite environment is critical to a successful team environment. What’s more, it goes both ways, rude and self-absorbed team members are as detrimental to a well-functioning team as a project manager who is a jerk. A friendly conversation once in a while isn’t a waste of time—people need to make connections to their colleagues on a personal level to perform at their best.
7. Consistency: Haden argues, “While you should treat each employee differently, you must treat each employee fairly. (There is a difference.)” I’ve had to guess which boss showed up for work today before. Haden is right. It’s much easier to work with consistent personalities and consistent expectations. I think everyone should have the opportunity to train a puppy. Consistency is the key to a well-trained adult dog. Being consistent might not come naturally to some people, but both project managers and team members would benefit from bring a consistent demeanor to the workplace.
8. Future: “Every job should have the potential to lead to something more, either within or outside your company,” writes Haden. Giving people an opportunity to learn new skills to help them stretch and grow withing the team or the organization is a good practice. I believe that helping team members advance their careers is important as a leader or manager. People want to know that they are not in a “dead-end” position.

None of Haden’s eight suggestions are really rocket science, but project leaders who take the time and use the right tools to foster this type of environment and are more likely to lead consistently successful projects. Is there anything we should add to the list?

Sometimes it feels that way.

Josh mentioned something I had read about recently in Eric Ries book, The Lean Startup. Ries talks about a technique for root cause analysis called The 5 Whys? The technique  suggests that you so start with the problem and ask why it happened. It’s not about placing blame, it’s about learning.

I’m not going to repeat Josh’s 5 Whys? analysis here, but it’s worth looking at his post.

Basically, asking why isn’t enough.

“The core idea of the Five Whys is to tie investments directly to the prevention of the most problematic symptoms,” writes Ries. “The system takes its name from the investigative method of asking the question ‘Why?’ five times to understand what has happened (the root cause). If you’ve ever had to answer a precocious child who wants to know ‘Why is the sky blue?’ and keeps asking ‘Why?’ after each answer, you’re familiar with it. This technique was developed as a systematic problem-solving tool by Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System…”

When we let our natural tendency to place blame get in the way of solving problems, we aren’t able to get at the root cause and sometimes the wrong event or person takes all the blame. It isn’t very productive and it doesn’t do anything to foster an environment where people learn from mistakes quickly.

“When confronted with a problem, have you ever asked why five times?” asks Ohno. “It is difficult to do even though it sounds easy. For example, suppose a machine stopped functioning:

1. Why did the machine stop? (There was an overload and the fuse blew.)
2. Why was there an overload? (The bearing was not sufficiently lubricated.)
3. Why was it not lubricated sufficiently? (The lubrication pump was not pumping sufficiently.)
4. Why was it not pumping sufficiently? (The shaft of the pump was worn and rattling.)
5. Why was the shaft worn out? (There was no strainer attached and metal scrap got in.)

“Repeating ‘why’ five times, like this, can help uncover the root problem and correct it. If this procedure were not carried through, one might simply replace the fuse or the pump shaft. In that case, the problem would recur within a few months. The Toyota production system has been build on the practice and evolution of this scientific approach. By asking and answering ‘why’ five times, we can get to the real cause of the problem, which is often hidden behind more obvious symptoms.”

Placing blame when things go wrong isn’t the answer to solving problems and avoiding them in the future—however, discovering the root cause of problems helps us improve processes, template and incorporate best practices and ultimately improve the likelihood of successful outcomes.

Thanks Josh.

When change occurs we can become discouraged and look outside of ourselves for something to place the blame on. Or, we have the option to recognize that change is a part of life, accept it, and learn how to leverage it. I have learned a number of things from my professional life about change that have helped me gain a new perspective regarding change.

As a product manager at a small company, one of the things that constantly changes is the availability of development resources to develop new products. When I first started working as a product manager, finding out that there was either less time or fewer resources than we had originally anticipated would throw a pretty big wrench in my plans and it was a painful process to rescope and replan the project. Usually a scope change would involve cutting a few random pieces here and there until the project fit into the bounds that were set. Since then, I have learned a few things that have helped me handle change when it comes. Obviously, there are countless other tactics that can be applied when facing change, but here are 3 that I have found to be most helpful:

1. Focus: One of the things I appreciate the most about changing a project’s scope is a renewed focus on what is most important. Revisiting the original project plan and evaluating each piece of that plan often reveals that things originally thought important are really not. This is one of the benefits of change, it helps us reprioritize and focus on the things that are of most value.
2. Team Work: Another lesson that I have learned about change is that involving other people and their ideas can be essential to making the best out of the current situation. Teamwork brings out better ideas and can lead to the best decisions.
3. Flexibility: Flexibility may be one of the most important aspects of accepting change. A common misconception when someone says they are flexible is that they just don’t care or aren’t really committed. Flexibility is really more about accepting things as they are and being willing and open to consider different courses of action.

Keeping a positive attitude and being willing to do the work that needs to be done to compensate for change can make all the difference when that change comes. And it will, because the only constant in life…is change.

I’ll admit that I’m pretty ambivalent about professional football generally and don’t follow closely either the Patriots or the Giants. I do watch the Super Bowl every year and this game was one of the best in recent memory. It was an exciting game to watch. I found myself alternately rooting for the Giants and the Patriots during different quarters of the game. The outcome would have been very different were it not for an interception and a couple of dropped passes. But that’s the nature of the game, right?

Like many of the people watching the game, the commercials were also of some interest—although most of them didn’t inspire a desire to purchase their products. There were a couple that generated a chuckle though.

Clint Eastwood’s ad about halftime in America got me thinking. Not necessarily about buying American cars (I already own two of them), but the whole concept of gathering the team together in the locker room, evaluating performance, creating a game plan for the second half based upon the mistakes and successes of the first half.

Whether it’s the Super Bowl or the project you’re working on right now, a lot depends upon the ability of the team to perform in crunch time. Sometimes during the course of a project, it makes sense to gather the team, review the game plan and make needed adjustments.

Learning from past experience doesn’t always have to wait until halftime either. I’m convinced that we need to take a consistent approach that can be incorporated into any work management methodology. Here are a few suggestions to help any project team learn from experience:

1. Establish a venue for sharing lessons learned: It doesn’t matter whether you call it a post-mortem, a project review or a halftime chat, most organizations don’t do them—but they should. It’s a real shame that many project teams move from one project to another without even taking a breath; let alone taking the oportunity to capture lessons learned from the last project.
2. Share what has been learned: Although many organizations don’t take the time to do any kind of retrospective, very few of those that do share what they’ve learned. If lessons learned are captured and then tucked away in a file somewhere, the exercise doesn’t do any good. Not only your own team, but other teams within the organization can benefit from a culture that freely shares lessons learned upon the completion of a project.
3. Don’t make learning a one-time activity: Proper learning should be ongoing and interactive. Don’t let it become an isolated activity that happens rarely.

Sometimes it makes sense to gather the team together for a halftime meeting to assess progress, address issues and establish a strategy for improving performance. No two organizations are exactly the same. Regardless of how you approach projects generally, it’s important to foster a culture where project learning can take place. What does your company do to capture best practices and learn from experience?