It Is Always The Season For Gray

“Shades of grey wherever I go
The more I find out the less that I know
Black and white is how it should be
But shades of grey are the colors I see.” – Billy Joel, Shades Of Gray

Have you ever worked on a project where the lines of responsibility were extremely clear?  Projects on which there was never any doubt as to who was responsible for every different part of the project and exactly who would accomplish which task.  If you have, it was probably because you were the only one on that project.  But in real life, that never happens.

We can start with the project plan.  Everyone on the project needs to contribute to that, but the amount of each person’s contribution will not be clear until it is done.  As you go forward, decisions will need to be about tasks needing to be accomplished.  Some or most of them will be very clear who has responsibility and who is accountable.  But any time there is work that crosses a boundary from one person to another or one team to another, then the project has entered the grays zone.

If you have read earlier posts, like this one about team interactions, or this one about handoffs, you will see that the gray zone is a happy, powerful place to be.  You’ll also see that it is a potentially dangerous place to be.  These are the places where your communication skills are most needed and the place where you need to make sure your team members are communicating and collaborating fully.  This is where you need to get involved in the details, the follow-up, and all the things that you do to help your team members in your project manager role.  You may not be writing the process documentation or the work plan, but you are reviewing it very thoroughly.  This means you need to have enough knowledge to do that intelligently.  This might mean there is a  research burden on you here.

With a good team, the people working in the gray areas will work together and figure out their individual roles and tasks.  Everyone involved will accept responsibility for those areas.  With a newer team, or one that is not used to sharing as well, it is going to be up to you to work with them to turn them into a good team and make sure everything is getting done, reviewed, and cleaned up.  You have more communication responsibility, but that is just part of the zest of being a project manager.

Don’t be afraid of gray areas.  Dive right into them.  They are a big reason why you are involved, and this is where a project rocks or fails.  Yours will rock!

Decision Time!

Dr. Egon Spengler: I have a radical idea. The door swings both ways, we could reverse the particle flow through the gate.
Dr. Peter Venkman: How?
Dr. Egon Spengler: [hesitates] We’ll cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: ‘Scuse me Egon? You said crossing the streams was bad!
Dr Ray Stantz: Cross the streams…
Dr. Peter Venkman: You’re gonna endanger us, you’re gonna endanger our client – the nice lady, who paid us in advance, before she became a dog…
Dr. Egon Spengler: Not necessarily. There’s definitely a *very slim* chance we’ll survive.
[pause while they consider this]
Dr. Peter Venkman: [slaps Ray] I love this plan! I’m excited to be a part of it! LET’S DO IT!

(Ghostbusters)

You have gotten together with your team, presented and discussed all the options.  Now you need to decide what to do.  There are basically for ways to go about this:

1. Authoritatively – the person in charge makes a decision.
2. Consultatively –  everyone contributes and then the person in charge makes the decision.
3. Democratically – the options are presented and everyone votes.  The most votes wins.
4. By consensus – everyone discusses the issue and provides input.  The decision is something that everyone agrees on.

I am going to focus on consensus in this post.  The other three decision-making processes have their place but my preference in a project settings is to use consensus as much as possible.  The advantage of making decisions by consensus have two big advantages:

1. Everyone’s opinion and as much data as possible are included in the decision
2. Everyone has ownership of that decision.

But there can be disadvantages to decision-making by consensus as well, including the fact that it takes more time to come to consensus, and it may be difficult or even impossible to reach consensus on all issues.  But there are strategies to mitigate the disadvantages while maximizing your damages.

First, as the team leader or project manager, you need to make sure everyone is included in the process.  I have touched on that in previous posts but it is incumbent on you to make sure there is the free and open exchange of ideas.

Second, if you cannot reach consensus on everything, try to reach consensus on smaller things and chip away at the big goals.  If you can reach consensus on 75% of your goals than finalize them and you can focus on the last 25%.  It is OK to arrive at solutions in pieces.

Third, you can establish a fallback position that is either temporary or permanent, but it is an agreed-to outcome in the case that members of the group cannot come to full consensus.

Fourth, you can establish ground rules, like if the group cannot make a decision in a certain amount of time the person with authority will make the decision based on the group’s input.  That would be falling back to the consultation model.

Any and all of these are acceptable alternatives give in the situation.

Decision-making by consensus is not for all situations.  For relatively minor issues, like what order to discuss things, or table an issue for later, then a democratic method is fine, because the outcomes of those decisions are not that important and you want to move along.

There are situations also where the consultation or authoritative model makes more sense than as well.  The executive in charge of a project often has more information often has a different scope of information involving a the areas of the business which may have to be taken into account without time to discuss them.  In that case a consultation of model would be of great benefit.

But in terms of getting the decision right, that consensus model is almost always your best bet.  I have done the math in a previous post and it is very clear.  So in the absence of a compelling reason to make a decision by some other method, strive for consensus.  You’ll have a happy, engaged team and the best odds of doing the right thing.

Huddle Up!

Have you ever watched a football game where the offense did not huddle before each play?  At least long enough for the quarterback to call a new play?  If you did, you probably a watching your kids play in the backyard.

The reason for the huddle is that the players all want to be running the same play.  You don’t want them running back to think he is getting the ball when he is not and have two receivers going to the same spot.  That is a recipe for failure.

If this method of communication is good enough, even necessary, for the best athletes in the world, why are you doing it?

It is really easy.

Every morning, yes, every morning, whether you work in a software company, a service industry, a factory, or anywhere else, this will benefit you.  Gather your team together for as little as two minutes, go around the group and ask people to contribute two things.

The first thing is what they will be working on that day, if there will be challenges, any impacts from their work that might affect others, or any assistance they might need.  This is a great way to prevent duplicate work and to make sure people are not working at cross purposes.  It is amazing how often those both happen, from a simple lack of communication.

The second thing is any news they have that might affect the rest of the team.  If they were talking to someone in a different departments, a customer, or heard some big news events that they think might affect their coworkers, the group, or work, this is the time to bring it up.  This is not the time to discuss rumors.

Other things people might mention is if they are going to have an unusual schedule, like they have a lot of meetings or will be gone for part of the day, or will be out of the office on subsequent days.  This can be grouped under news that will affect the team.

There does not have to be a lot of discussion, but if you should encourage your team to ask questions of each other to clarify issues.  If it looks like a longer discussion is needed for a subset of your team, ask them to handle it after the huddle.

Huddles are not meant to cover strategic, long-term goals, but rather immediate issues facing your group.  Discussion of bigger issues should be the topic of more structured team meetings.

And one more thing about this meeting.  Don’t call it a meeting.  Call it a huddle, a stand up, a daily status brief, call it anything except meeting.  For some reason, maybe because people have been to too many bad ones, there is a negative stigma attached if you say you’re going to have a meeting every day.  And if you are facilitating them, make sure they are quick and that people stick to important topics.

These are great for any kind of team whether you are a manager or a project manager.

So make sure everyone is on the same page of the playbook, clear away any short-term issues, go out there and score a touchdown every day.

Do The Dirty Work

Sometimes there are parts of a project you just don’t want to do.  They are stressful, tedious, or in some other way, no fun.  Pitch in and help with them.  At least the ones you can.

There is a story related in Google Rules by Laszlo Bock about Gerald Ford.  “Ron Nesson, who served as press secretary for President Gerald Ford, shared a story about his boss’s leadership style: ‘He had a dog, Liberty.  Liberty had an accident on the run in the Oval Office and one of the Navy stewards rushes in to clean it up.  Jerry Ford says, “I’ll do that.  Get out of the way, I’ll do that.  No man ought to have to clean up after another man’s dog.” ‘ ”

So when something comes along that you know is going to be painful for one or more of your project team members, find a way to help out.  No, it is probably not in your job description, but it is part of being on a team.  Even if you cannot help with the actual work, find a way to help with coordination, documentation, providing support, even just showing up with coffee, snacks, a gift certificate, or some type of recognition.  If it is a very time consuming job, talk to that person’s boss about how to make life easier for that person.  Find a way to help out.

The benefits to this are many:

• You help out a colleague, which is always appreciated
• You will probably learn something new or get a new appreciation of that role
• You earn points with your team, showing you have their backs
• The project will get done faster

This does not mean you have to take on everything, because you also have limited time, but lend a hand wherever you can and it make sense.  Getting your hands a little dirty is showing everyone that you care about them and the project.

Strengthening Your Team By Pushing Them (A Little)

A successful project is not just about the processes, but it is about people and how they work together to do it.  The people are more than just roles and positions.  Find their strengths and weaknesses.  Find ways to enhance their strengths and nudge them to address some of their weaknesses.

After all, you are doing great.  You have put together a mighty project full of fantastic ideas and you are ready to implement them and, just possibly, change the world.

That is half of what you need to do.  Now comes the implementation.

The team that you are managing is full of individuals who will be responsible for that implementation and the future processes and changes and derive from it. Over the time that you work with them, you are going to see how their personalities work, their strengths and weaknesses, their passions and the things that they are more ambivalent about.  You probably don’t have the authority to determine exactly how the team will be structured when the process or project is complete, but you do have a lot of influence in the beginning.  You should take the opportunity to examine these personnel issues and see what you can do to add strength and resiliency to the people, not just the process.

For instance, you may have someone who is the fantastic leader and whom you think will do a great job keeping things moving after the implementation phase.  This person may just emerge or need to be nominated. But when you see it happen, something that
you do have influence over is addressing areas where this person may not have much experience or strength. For instance they may not be a great organizer. You can help address that by making them making that person the note taker for your meetings or in charge of some phase of the project that is very detail oriented.

You might have someone who is the opposite, who is very detailed but absolutely does not want to be in a leadership role. It is highly likely that if they are involved on the project team that they will have that leadership role thrust upon them sooner or later, even if it is just in a small way. So, put them in charge of some phase of the implementation or get them to lead meetings or work with them in some ways to enhance and develop their leadership abilities of the top of their other skills.

This means extra work for you, because you’ll have to be more aware of how things are being handled. But, when you are ready to move on and assign that project to the project team, you are going to have a much stronger team.  That will correspond to a higher rate of success.  And you personally will benefit as well, from a well run project to being responsible for projects that keep working well.

How Do You Determine The Good Ideas?

I can come up with a lot of ideas.  A lot.  But, unfortunately, not all of them are good ones.  So I need a way to separate the winners from the, well, non-winners.  Here are a couple of ways to do that.

College researchers (I am sorry, I don’t have the reference to who came up with this) ran an experiment where they presented a series of logic problems to a group of people. What they found was most people missed most people answered one or more questions incorrectly. But when they grouped people into groups of three or more, they answered all the questions correctly, even if they had all previously answered the one or more of the same problems wrong wrong.

This shows the power of teams. That simple discussion in the group was the edge needed. When everyone is working together for a common goal it lead to marked increases in the ability to get the right answer, not just in logic problems, but in everything.

That is the first way to determine if ideas are good ideas. If you have nodding in agreement and discussion that further refines an idea, it is probably ready to be implemented and released to your test group.

Be alert, too.  Through this process of simple discussion, the idea may even morph into something radically different than it was when it was initially proposed, and that is great too. As long as at the end of the discussion you have a group consensus on that idea,  you can be pretty sure you have a winner.

When you have a list of ideas and are trying to figure out which to start on, a second way you can evaluate them is to just put them on some type of grid. This is commonly used in
Kaizen events and an example is shown below.

The grid is really easy to make.  The Y-axis denotes the ease of implementation and the X-axis denotes the anticipated benefit.  All you need to do then is to take the team’s list of ideas and plot them on the grid in relative terms of ease of implementation and projected benefit. Once you have this will give you a very nice graphical representation of your proposed ideas. It can help you to determine which ones you want to implement first and which ones will be most effective.

You may see ideas that look like they will be very effective but will take a long time or a lot of effort to implement. That doesn’t mean you ignore those ideas.  This is just a tool
to get an idea of the relative cost to benefit.  Depending on your project, you might find that this is all you need to do or you may also find that this is just a first step in organizing ideas in order to implement improvements.

The use of discussion is a great way to refine ideas. The second way is a quiet great way to rank ideas.

The third way, combining these two ways, will lead to places you can only dream of in the beginning of a project.

Ownership – Encourage It

When there is something you really want to do, did the idea usually come from yourself or somebody else?

I am talking about those super are exciting projects that you think will change the world. Or at least change your world.  If you are going to be honest with yourself, the idea most likely came from you.  Maybe you are adapting someone else’s idea, but most people tend to get a far more excited about something they have thought of themselves than by following advice from someone else.

You can use this to your advantage.

One thing that is very important is that when you are managing a project is that you want the people involved to feel like they are owners. You want them to have pride in and feel responsibility for the outcome. In short you want them to feel like it is their process or project.  The more people feel like something is theirs, the more they want to see it taken care of and handled correctly.

So here it is a key.

When you are brainstorming for ideas of how to build projects or improve processes,
try not to be the one that comes up with the solutions, but rather the person who has the leads others to the answers.  Even if you have what you think is a breakthrough idea, try
to lead the the group there. If it really is a breakthrough idea, they will probably get there on their own and because they are the experts, will probably improve upon it. Be subtle and give nudges in that direction. But don’t be hyper focus on the idea.  Allow that beautiful group dynamic to blossom.

Use leading questions.

The questions can be very simple:

• I have already written about asking “Why?”
• “How else would you/we do this?”
• “Where is the weak point?”
• “Where are we strongest?  How do we utilize that strength?”
• “What would you do differently?”
• “In a perfect world how would you design this?”

As the project manager, you already own the project. Whether it succeeds or fails, your name is attached and you have some responsibility, just like everyone else on the project team.   You want the team members to take that ownership.

As the team that has works through the project or the process, the more each person contributes and the more of their ideas that are implemented, the more ownership that person is going to take. They are going to be more committed and more involved.  You want all of that.

Remember, you are the project manager. At the end of this project you are likely going to move on to other initiatives leaving the other members of the team to carry forward with the results of their project.  Let them take ownership up front and then is very easy for them to keep it running when you are done. In fact, if they get to the point where they think your participation is superfluous (in a good way), you have really done your job.

Meetings – What Are They Good For

Oh, meetings, I despise
‘Cause it means the waste of precious time

Meetings means tears to thousands of employees
When they go off to sleep and lose their lives

I said, meetings, huh good god, y’all

What are they good for?  Absolutely nothin’.  (Sing to War, by Edwin Starr)

 

Our meetings necessary evil?

I believe that they are necessary and that you can take the evil out and make them good.

The first thing to think about before having a meeting is what you want to accomplish.  If it requires a meeting or would strongly benefit from a meeting, then the meeting is going to inherently be a good thing, if it is well run.  There can be a thousand good reasons for having a meeting, so just make sure it is one of those.

Make sure you have a goal and that you make sure to meet that goal during your meeting.  Your goals can can range from simple discussion and sharing of ideas all of the way to making a conclusive decision or completing a task.  Everyone attending the meeting should know what the goal of the meeting is before the meeting even starts.  That will enable you to all share it from the beginning and work towards the same end point.

When you hold your meeting you need to be flexible.  As I have alluded to in earlier posts about teamwork, you may have a group that is very focused on a topic that moves forward in a very linear fashion.  You might have a group that likes to make a lot of side comments and laugh a lot.  You might even have a group that seems like they are being a bit belligerent to each other.  They key is to know your group and run your meeting accordingly.  As long as everyone is OK with that, then it is your job to work with that dynamic.  Just keep your hand on the tiller so that you keep going in the general direction of the goal.

That seems like pretty vague advice, but it works.  If you try to force your model of a meeting onto a group, it is not going to work as well as if you can flexibly provide the structure, the outline, and set the goal that is relevant to the team.  Then watch to see how your team works within that framework, nudging here and there as needed, and allow them the flexibility they need to accomplish their task.

I get it, it complicates your life, but you become known as the person whose meetings people want to attend.

Célébrez La Différence

Dr. Egon Spengler: I have a radical idea. The door swings both ways, we could reverse the polarity flow through the gate.
Dr. Peter Venkman: How?
Dr. Egon Spengler: [hesitates] We’ll cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: ‘Scuse me Egon? You said crossing the streams was bad!
Dr Ray Stantz: Cross the streams…
Dr. Peter Venkman: You’re gonna endanger us, you’re gonna endanger our client – the nice lady, *who paid us in advance*, before she became a dog…
Dr. Egon Spengler: Not necessarily. There’s definitely a *very slim* chance we’ll survive.
[pause while they consider this]
Dr. Peter Venkman: [slaps Ray] I love this plan! I’m excited it could work! LET’S DO IT! – Ghostbusters (1984)

You have an idea.

No!

You have a great idea!  It is revolutionary.  It will change the way things are done.  It will stand your existing processes on their heads, make them do one of those super complicated yoga poses, and bring enlightenment.

You present your idea to your team, coworkers, friends and their response is…meh.  But you know in your heart that this is a great idea.  What is going on?

Something to remember when talking with others is that, just like I mentioned in a previous post, no two people think the same way.  No two people will do things the exact same way.   And the ability to harness these differences in thoughts and actions is a tremendous skill for a project leader or team leader to have.  But just like any other thing in life, there is a potential downside, which is that that if you explain something in a way that makes sense to you, there is only a certain probability that’ll make sense to others.  Depending on background and the concept being discussed, this could be very high or a could be very low.

We all remember teachers in school who were very good at explaining concepts and others who sometimes spoke or taught at a level that was the students were not ready for.  You probably think back on the first group with more fondness.

It is the same thing that you need to be as a project or team leader.  You need to break down concepts into pieces that are easy to understand and look at them from the point of view of your audience.  It is great to have a computer infrastructure solution that saves hundreds of thousands of dollars, but if you cannot explain to your front line users how this actually helps them, they are going to be lukewarm on the idea at best.

On thing that I find, along with making sure you introduce relevance for your audience, is that using analogies is a great way to impart understanding.  Your analogy is don’t have to be perfect but a close analogy can really help.  I used the the flow of customers in a bank lobby to describe why users are getting slow response times from their computers.  I have compared triage nursing to database indexing.  You can probably guess is that I was trying to explain technical concepts to a nontechnical audience.  And it worked!

The second challenge you have with people thinking differently is that the members of your team all think differently.  And you as a project manager are responsible for making sure people understand each other.  This is more people management.  You need to be scanning the roomm, asking questions, making sure people are involved and responding, and generally making sure that the level of communications is as high as it can be.  This is much easier if you are all together in one place than if you are on a conference call.  But even then, there are tricks to make sure that communication is good.

So, remember, differences in how people think about things are a huge, huge asset to your team.  But it is very easy for that to become a problem as well.  Stay alert to make sure that understanding is happening and watch your team crush it.

Project Management Means People Management

When you are managing a project, your responsibility is not to find a solution and meet all the goals of the project.  Surprising, right?

Your problem is making sure that the project team meets all the goals and finds solutions.

Yes, you have to put together schedules and keep documentation and do the myriad of tasks that a project manager is responsible for.  But your huge, secret, overarching task is to make sure your project team is exactly that, a team.  And that means always paying attention to team a group dynamics.

For instance, in a meeting you are going to have a different types of people with different ideas about how to do things.  That can lead to friction.  And that is OK.  In fact, that is great.  You need to keep those ideas flowing and make sure people are discussing things openly and honestly.  But this can be trickier than it seems.  You have to watch for several things that can either derail your project or limit the effectiveness of your team.

• Lack of open and honest communication – This can stem from many issues and is probably the root of all of the issues you might have.  You may have a loud group, or you may have a quiet group, but you need to make sure that everyone is participating, contributing, and respecting each other.  I am not going to go into all the potential causes is in this post,  but there has to be an air of respect and openness in your team.
• Group think – It seems like it would be good enough for everyone agreed on everything.  Because then you can make great progress getting things done.  If you find your team is being too agreeable, that is a big warning sign.  There should be a lot of discussion of alternatives and potential issues.  You may have to push people by asking probing questions.
• Endless discussion/ Inaction – You want open and honest discussion but you don’t want it to go on forever.  At some point you need to tell people to end the talk and make decisions.  Ideally, at the beginning of a project you will have set up ground rules around how you will make decisions, break ties, will determine when it is time to move on to a new topic or a new task.  If you set those expectations at the beginning of the project, this becomes much easier to avoid.
• Bad team members – Let’s be honest, sometimes you have someone on your team who does not work well with others, even if they are good people.  Maybe they don’t share or they don’t do anything.  I believe that efforts should be made to work with this person, talking to them about what you need and expect from them, but don’t be afraid to talk with your project sponsor about replacing them, if it comes to that.

In comprehensive data analysis at Google, among other places, it has been demonstrated that the biggest key to a successful project is not who is on your team but how that team works together.

So, think of teams like the A-Team.  They might bicker occasionally, but they make their plan and (with a lot of help from special effects) work together to get things done.