Tag: Harvard Business Review

« Summing up: a professional memoir» by Bertram Fields

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Why is this book on a project management blog? you might ask. Well, I am a believer in learning from every trade.

First about the book. As its title says, you’ll find there the mémoires of a prominent US entertainment lawyer, who is also a writer and teacher. He is also famous for having fired Trump (before his tenure).

His writing style is brilliant, soft and tender, balanced, honest, humorous and slightly ironic. The reader is not exhausted with legalistic tournure de phrase and is treated with care and friendliness. Which makes it inspirational for other lines of business.

There are numerous reasons for featuring this book review on this blog. It has many valuable insights into relationship and stakeholders management, the cornerstone of any project. Project managers can get tips here on negotiations and deals making along with contracts management, intrinsic to the management of any project. I absorbed the parts on his work ethics and the ways he dealt with dilemmas, some of which we also encounter in project management dealings. Never compromise your values regardless of the potential financial loss (see the firing of Trump).

Finally, the graciousness with which the author refers to his numerous opposing counselors and the other parties is worth following as an example in projects and beyond. And just one more – give credit where credit is due, especially to those who work behind the scenes.

«Can you hear me? How to connect with people in the virtual world» by Nick Morgan

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This is a book I find to be appealing to different audiences in the same clear and friendly language. If you are looking for advice on your online and social medial presence, this is the book. Equally, if you work in a virtual working environment, this is the book. It is written by Nick Morgan – one of America’s top communication speakers, theorists, and coaches. He also did lots of research for the book and offered us a product of collective wisdom.

The author is tranchant – “ the virtual work is not working”. He brings compelling arguments as to why. “Here’s the main lesson: If you can possibly begin a relationship of any importance in person, you should do so. Period, full stop, end of discussion.” I am fully with him on this.

I found an abundance of great advice and tools here: a revealing empathy quiz, how to create and manage your online persona, where to get started with your remote team, temperature taking at the start of virtual meetings, tips for business email writing, how to manage audioconferences etc.

The webinar got a separate chapter. I was bothered by this new form of “communication” and the author articulated it so well all that was nagging me: “ The webinar is simply a disembodied voice from a relative stranger, emotions stripped out, leaking out of a computer or phone. Or worse—a computer phone.” He calls webinars a “form of torture”. So next time you want to plan a webinar, think twice. I will, definitely.

The book was a page-turner for me. On every page I found tips and valuable advice which is gold for a project manager with remote teams spread on different continents.

Unethical Behavior? The psychology behind

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“Playing with the numbers “just this once” may well be the CEO’s intent; it’s seldom the end result. And if it’s okay for the boss to cheat a little, it’s easy for subordinates to rationalize similar behavior.” (Warren Buffet, Letter to Shareholders, 2018).

Paraphrasing the above in the project management context: playing with the numbers “just this once” may well be the project manager’s intent; it’s seldom the end result. And if it’s okay for the project manager to cheat a little, it’s easy for team members to rationalise similar behaviour.

Merete Wedell-Wedellsbort explains the psychology behind unethical behaviour in her article published in Harvard Business Review (12 April 2019). I very much recommend to read the article. It raises the awareness of own behaviour and explains others’ behaviour next time you find yourself in an environment prone to unethical démarches.

As Merete Wedell-Wedellsbort puts it “three psychological dynamics  lead to crossing ethical lines. First, there’s omnipotence: when someone feels so aggrandized and entitled that they believe the rules of decent behavior don’t apply to them. Second, we have cultural numbness: when others play along and gradually begin to accept and embody deviant norms. Finally, we see justified neglect: when people don’t speak up about ethical breaches because they are thinking of more immediate rewards such as staying on a good footing with the powerful.”

In project management, your “audience” is neither experts of any sorts nor politicians/commentators. Your audience are the tax-payers (in development management) or the shareholders. The numbers that flow up to you as a project manager should be the ones you send on to those who gave you the money to implement the project. They send auditors to attest to that. The above applies not only to money. It also applies to relationships with stakeholders; communication with the public; rewards for team members and many other aspects of project management.

Case in point:

Upon arrival on the team as a new project manager, Avril (not real name) learns that the donor will send an audit in two months. The last financial report raised a number of questions. She realised the report was made to match the numbers and did not reflect accurately the actual spending. Avril knew the report was done to please the previous project manager, who believed the rules of accountability do not apply to him (omnipotence). After discussing it with the financial assistant, it became clear that the later admired the project manager (cultural numbness) and played along (justified neglect).

Avril prepared all the supporting documents required by the auditors in advance. Upon the arrival of the auditors in the morning of the appointed day, she acknowledged the mistakes made in calculations, exchange rates and the like. There was nothing to hide and the numbers had to be corrected before the final financial report. The auditor tuned in Avril’s readiness to correct it with “you are glad we are here”.

As a result, the implementing organisation was spared of the need to repay a six figure amount and the reputation of the project was restored.

Ivan/Getty Images

A project manager on vacation

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I wrote this piece in August 2016. I fully subscribe to each word to this day. I have also accumulated in the meantime a number of additional useful tips.

***

– Will the sky fall if I take a two week leave, boss? I asked my former programme manager some years ago.

– Yes, he responded abruptly.

He still let me go. I suspect it was because I mentioned I am traveling to France, his home country.

And the sky did not fall. To the contrary, stars were brighter upon my return as I came back refreshed. My happy brain and the creativity inspired by new sites renewed my vows. My productivity increased. It lasted for a good half a year, a critical time for the change management we were implementing.

In 14 days we travelled 2000 km from Paris to San Remo and back, visiting 3 countries, stopping overnight in locations on our route, enjoying the hospitality of new hosts every evening. It was a travel in time, as our itinerary included the Pont du Gard, an ancient Roman aqueduct that crosses the Gardon River in southern France and Arena of Nîmes, a Roman amphitheatre, built around AD 70. Visiting ancients sites puts things into perspective. For example, is that internal chatter about the perfection of the new marketing strategy important in the big scheme of things of giving to the clients the good product they expect? These lasting monuments reiterate what we know and tend to forget: things that last are not build in one day and not by one person.

A change of scenery uncluttered my busy brain. Colours took over numbers. Scents and sounds put office chatter to sleep. Deadlines surrendered to sunrises and sunsets.

Research shows that a busy mind requires a busy vacation. Project managers do have a busy work life, no doubt about it. So, why not get passionate and be a good project manager of your vacation? Apply the best of your planning skills and bring it to a successful completion, with satisfactions to last. And make it on budget, if possible. If not, it’s no trouble. Your recharged batteries will soon repay it in full.

Here are a few tips I collected throughout years:

I run into this article and gladly share it: 5 Rules for a Vacation that’s Truly Worth It by Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, Harvard Business Review June 05, 2015, https://hbr.org/2015/06/5-rules-for-a-vacation-thats-truly-worth-it

Training: here we come again

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We learned from Harvard Business Review, that in 2018 U.S. companies spent roughly USD 90 Billion on learning and development. Some entire countries only aspire to reach that amount of GDP. According to the same source, the average American employee received training at a cost of around USD 1,000 per person. For a company of 50,000 employees, that’s an annual USD 50 million per year.

In development projects, capacity building and training are often an intrinsic part of the intervention. Question about the efficiency and effectiveness of the investment in training  are not new. Yet, the answers continue to come with delay or in part only. Tax- payers want to know what changes are brought by development money. What changed for victims of violence after police officers or social workers were trained in country X?

Back to the private sector, a survey in the U.S. among 1,500 executives found that one in five organisations do nothing to measure the impact of trainings.  Of those that do, only 13% calculate quantifiable results. I have yet to see similar data on development projects.

Measuring the impact of trainings is often seen as an extra activity, which is not part of the scope of the project. There are reasons for that. There are also good arguments for revisiting that view. Measuring the impact of the training will show where, when and what kind of training is needed in the context the project works in. This will maximise the effect and support the sustainability of the capacity building.

To measure the impact of trainings in projects, specific activities can be introduced at a number of levels at certain intervals. The Kirkpatrick model of training evaluation is a useful tool. According to this model, the training can be evaluated at four levels:

  1. reaction (post-training evaluation by participants);
  2. learning (knowledge and skills acquired at the training);
  3. behavior and job performance changes after the training;
  4. impact on the performance of the entity/organization.

For 1 and 2 pre and post-training questionnaires are appropriate. For 3 and 4, co-operation with the client’s organisation will be necessary. Some organisations have performance management systems, where recommendations for training and post-training follow-up on skills’ upgrade are included.

For further inspiration:

Data based on “You learn best when you learn less” by Laszlo Bock, 17 June 2019, Harvard Business Review.

“An investigation into the relationship between training evaluation and the transfer of training” by Alan M. Saks and Lisa A. Burke, in International Journal of Training and Development 16:2

Nr 1 ability of a project manager

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If there would be only one ability of a project manager I would choose from it would be resourcefulness. Resourcefulness is the ability to explore options, connect dots, step outside the comfort zone and think outside the box. It is to find water in a place others call “desert”.

Yes, projects are resources based. They have human and financial resources, and they are often seen as scarce. You know the story: not enough budget, not enough people, not enough time, not enough of something else …

Resourcefulness is connected to the mind set. The mindset is usually of scarcity or abundance. Some call it a “growth mindset”. See also “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” from Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2018/05/what-it-takes-to-think-deeply-about-complex-problems. 

In Romanian, we say “Fa rai din ce ai” – make haven from what you have. Sure, there can be times when you genuinely think things through and still can’t find a solution. Yet, often just taking a step back, changing the perspective, will open the road to the solution. There is always a source of information to access, a door to knock on, a dormant budget line, a collaborative hand, an expertise to reach, even a chance remark by someone we value. It might be as simple as saying STOP to excuses and justifications, for a start.

If you need a change of perspective, there are a number of techniques in the world of psychology to acknowledge, validate and reframe how you see a situation. You can take a break and watch “Sing” – the part in which Buster Moon turned the ruins of his theater into the greatest show in the town.

Case in point

When I started working on a project, it was at month 18 and had 6 more months to end date. It had of number of symptoms of a troubled project. The delivery rate was 50%. A number of milestones were not achieved and unfinished tasks “rejoiced” in the backlog.

The organisation had only a national consultant on the ground and no other support staff in the country the project had to be implemented, 6000 km away from headquarters. Each deliverable was painful for those who organized it before me. At that rate, we could have as well closed the project upfront.

A quick review of the modus operandi made me realise the biggest bottleneck was linked to the organisation of events in the country. Each activity required a venue, transportation, catering, interpretation, translation, printing, accommodation for consultants. Performed individually, these tasks ate up all of the previous project managers’ time and efforts.

The solution was an events management company to deal with all the logistics on the ground. A tender was organised to choose the best value for money on the market. Once the contract with the winner was signed, the project team was able to fully focus on the content and milestones of the project.

As a result, the delivery rate increased in 5 months to 85 percent of the budget, all products were delivered and the project’s objective – achieved. All – to the clients and donor’s satisfaction.

Re-post: The Feedback Fallacy

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“The way we give and receive feedback is all wrong. We need to focus on strengths — not dwell on what we perceive as shortcomings” from The Feedback Fallacy by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, March–April 2019 Issue of the Harvard Business Review.

https://hbr.org/2019/03/the-feedback-fallacy?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=hbr&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR1T73OA8iiarlJAYJ5zKRjpaYU3jXyKPuCqkC3p0-puqaOjXi8cjMj1ruY

7 Tricky Work Situations, and How to Respond to Them by Alicia Bassuk – Re-post

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We tend to be poised after holidays and cheerful as we start delving into the new year plans.  As work proceeds, I find the article by Alicia Bassuk “7 Tricky Work Situations, and How to Respond to Them” by Alicia Bassuk (Harvard Business Review, October 11, 2017) a good reminder at the start of the year. Link here https://hbr.org/2017/10/7-tricky-work-situations-and-how-to-respond-to-them?utm_campaign=hbr&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

Alicia Bassuk analyses seven work situations and offers a few phrases to keep in your sleeve, when you have to say “no” or someone takes credit for your work/idea or you need to push back on a decision you believe is wrong.

I would like to add a situation from my experience: when someone is giving you credit for something you/your colleagues did not do. They might be misinformed or trying to add to your workload.

Response: Thank you for giving credit to me/my colleague for this, which we cannot accept. As it stands, … (bring in facts, numbers). Then, depending on the reason behind, say We all learned from it. Can we work through it together? (if their aim is to unload the work on your team) Or direct the person to the team in charge (if they were misinformed).