When you work for someone else, that can be as simple as not taking work home on the weekend, or taking a two week vacation. When you work for yourself, it gets a bit more complicated. You need to find the opportunities between client needs to refresh yourself.

I’ve found myself thinking lately about all the things I have to do. The problem is  I work better at things I get to do. My blinking alarm was telling me that it was time to take a break. But I still had all these things I had to do.

When I get in this cycle I find it works to look at when I think I can take a break – next week, after a milestone/deadline has passed, whatever works.

Then I plan what I’ll do with my time off and as the day approaches I let people know I am taking a day off.

I find the planning helps me feel like I’m taking a bit of time off because I’m thinking of what I want to do. Not only what I have to do.

I planned my day off for last Thursday and protected the day by letting clients and my business partner know I would not be available. And, it worked.

I not only got Thursday off, but I have been doing more reading and relaxing since Thursday than I’ve done for a couple of months. The added bonus is when I think about the work on my plate, and getting more work, it feels like something I get to do again.

What do you do to fill your buckets?

Happy PMing

Perry

I would say, it can be both. An inexperienced PM can get lucky, and experience PM can be using their knowledge and wisdom to work the methodology without having to openly use all the tools. The challenge is, it’s not always about experience.

How do you know which one you are dealing with?

A lucky PM will eventually run out of luck. At best, when things go off track after the luck runs out, the lucky PM will be scrambling to figure out how to show what happened and figure out what the team will do. At worst, the lucky PM will struggle to figure out who to blame.

For sponsors and clients, you can ask a few questions along the way. A lucky PM will not be able to easily answer specific questions that start with what, when, and how. “How is it going?” is too easy to answer with “great!”, but “What are the current issues (there are always some issues)” is harder to answer if you don’t have a handle on the project.

A ‘good’ PM will have their finger on the project, they will produce the documentation you need but they will be able to answer the hard questions. Or, will be comfortable with saying they will need to check.

The challenges is it’s not about experience all the time. You can find highly experienced PMs who work by the methodology, they run successful projects, they can tell you exactly where in the Project Management Life Cycle the project is. You can also find inexperienced PMs who will successfully manage teams through challenging projects without referencing any methodology.

Why does this matter? PMs will bring to the project what they have: experience, people skills, communication skills, any combination of these. By understanding where your PM fits on the scale of lucky to good, you can understand how work with them.

For an internal PM, you know how to develop their skills. For a contractor or consulting PM, you can work with these concepts to hire the right type of PM for your project.

Have a great project week.

Perry

Initiation. In November of every year novelists around the world participate in 30 days of writing madness. The goal 50,000 words – totally self imposed, no prize but a button on your site and the feeling of accomplishment you get as you type the last few words. This year, more than 150,000 people are attempting the challenge.

From a project management approach, here is how I initiated.

The time line is set. November 1 local time, to November 30 midnight local time.

My personal goal = 80,000 words written in that time period

success measurement – the first draft of the book is complete.

Approach:

Create fully fleshed out characters and a minimum of 60 scene outlines before November 1.

November 1 – 30

Write daily until complete.

Motivation and team building:

• Participate in challenges.
• Participate in regional word war with New Zealand – and kick their kiwi butts.
• Participate in word wars in the IRC

Status reporting:

• Daily word count posting to NaNoWriMo
• Maintain spreadsheet with minimum and expected word counts and progress charts

Risks:

1 – will run out of ideas – mitigate with a fully fleshed out outline

2 – characters will take over (did happen in 2008 is happening now) – mitigate with periodic reoutlining of plot.

3 – priorities will change throughout month – mitigate by exceeding word count in early days.

Communications plan:

Tell everyone so I will be too chicken to admit I failed.

Next post  will talk about issue management.

Happy National Novel Writing Month

Let’s look at this from the team, then the stakeholders, and finally the sponsor.

The project manager is responsible to ensure the project team has the information they need to successfully deliver on the project objectives. The other side of that coin is that the project team needs to make sure the PM knows everything they need to know to successfully manage the budget, schedule and scope of the project.

What happens when the team starts cranking the sunshine pump? Let’s say there’s a deadline coming up and it’s a key decision point. The PM follows up on the progress half way through the work package. The team states everything is on track, they’ll make the deadline. Well, great news! Except, the team knows that they might be on time but the next task needs to be completed by a person who isn’t dedicated to the project and is known for being late with deliverables.

As the PM, you need to know what issues are coming up so you can handle them. As the team, they may not want to get the other person in trouble, or may have spoken up in the past and been ignored. Your job is to dig a bit deeper. You don’t ask how the team is doing and leave it at that; it’s too easy for them to dodge the hard message. What you do is ask the next question, too; do you see anything coming up that might change the status of the deliverable? Or, you can try to challenge them by asking what could we do to come in early?

The trick is to ask more questions until you are sure there’s nothing hidden, without interrogating your team.  Don’t worry; over time you can build a level of trust with your team that will reduce their need to protect you from the truth.

Moving on to stakeholders; you may not get the truth you need from the stakeholders if there is something happening in their functional area that is considered confidential. This can slow down your project, or even put it off track.  How does this look? Often stakeholders will lose interest, or suddenly become more interested in your project. Or, they will question the goals of your project all over again. These behaviours should make your spidey senses tingle. I’ve had mixed success in dealing with this type of ‘untruthiness’. The most effective approach I’ve found is to take the helpful route; ask what you can do to help them deal with their concerns.. Unfortunately, I have sometimes found myself plugging ahead with the project knowing something is about to go sideways but not having anything to hang a risk or issue on.

Finally, your sponsor may not give you the information you need. It seems counter intuitive that your sponsor, the person you are doing the project for, would not provide you with what you need to be successful. Believe me, it happens. In my experience, it is usually politics underlying this behaviour. The only effective way I’ve found to deal with this is to accept that the sponsor has information they can’t share, and keep the project as on track as you can. The politics maybe temporary, or it may be the first steps towards closing your project. The important thing to remember is that it is not within your control. Unless you are given other directions from your sponsor, you have to assume nothing has changed. You are still expected to deliver on your project.

One of the underlying causes of sunshine pumping is simply organizational behaviour. No one wants to seem negative, or finger pointing. No one wants to get someone in trouble. I’m sure you’ve all worked with the team member who consistently gets things wrong, or causes problems on the team. Did anyone try to get the problem resolved, or did they just work around it.

Another cause of, is lack of trust.  People may have been burned in the past when they raised an issue and don’t want to risk the fall out again.

The important tip this week, handle what you can. You are responsible for ensuring the project is successful. You are not responsible for changing the organizational culture of the company – except if that’s what your project is supposed to accomplish.

This site has some good tips on questioning

Here’s another site with tips on questioning

Good luck out in project management world this week.

So, what did I do wrong? Everything; and I should have known better. I didn’t plan; I used what I call the enthusiasm process – fire, aim, ready.

When you apply for a contract position, people treat you like a potential employee.  I have something like 20 versions of my resume – is that what a consultant does? I talked to my contacts, I had a lot in the small community of credit unions, and everyone was happy to point me to jobs that were available. It just didn’t seem to fit properly with what I envisioned.  So, taking a step back I had a ‘duh’ moment and realized I needed to build a plan to start a business.

I treated the process like a project. I built a 1^st quarter goal. I thought long and hard about what business I was in. If I were a project management consultant, I would need to find out what projects were in the early stages. I needed to find a second line of business to minimize the risk of dry periods, and I needed to get some income coming in fast.

I learned that there’s a big difference between a consultant, who gives advice, and a contractor, who does a job. I knew I wanted to be a consultant. As I built my pitch and thought about marketing myself, I found that there are many small business people who don’t know what project management is, they are used to just getting things done. If I was going to target that market, I needed to explain project management and my differentiator, hard to do in a 2-minute pitch.  I had determined that small and medium companies were where I could add value, and my differentiator was that I would build capability in the business as I worked with them.  I wanted to grow my business through training and mentoring, not necessarily project managing.  And, I knew if I was going to be successful as a consultant I would have to be able to explain what benefit the client would receive.

The hardest part for me, and I’m guessing a lot of people who became free from the corporate bonds in the last year, was navigating the passage from employee to advisor. The best step I took was going online and finding business meet up groups.  Find one and go, you’ll meet with people who are in the same boat as you and people who’ve been there. I was amazed by how much free and graciously offered help was available. I had the good luck to join in with a group of people working to create a marketing process bible. Working with this great group of people has helped me refine my understanding of what business I have chosen to be in.  Each time I answer that question, it gets a little clearer and I get a step closer to being able to identify and attract the client I can help.

How have I done with my first quarter goal? I missed it by a week. If I hadn’t written down my goals, I don’t think I would have achieved it at all. Because of it, I’ve started on my first engagement and I’ve made progress in developing my training and mentoring business line. I know there will be difficult times ahead; I know I’ve been very lucky so far. More importantly, I know I’ve made the right decision.

My tip of the week is for those of you who are still trying to figure out what you want to do when you grow up.

Get out there and try different things. Join groups. Talk to people. Keep working on your vision. Make a list of four things you want to accomplish this quarter and start figuring out how to accomplish them.

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

This blog posting will touch on the theory of hierarchical needs, from Abraham Maslow. There are links below to a few other theories for thought. In short Abraham Maslow theorized that people have certain basic needs that must be met before they can move on.  Here’s what it looks like.

A graphic representation of the priority of needs

Looking at this from the top down – just to be different. One day you are sitting there, enjoying the day, thinking big generous trusting thoughts. The world is everyone’s oyster, peace on earth, etc. Suddenly you need to pee; no problem, you go to the bathroom. Problem,  the door is jammed shut. Your priority drops to the next layer, what will people think if you have to go to a neighbor asking to use their bathroom? You shake the door handle again, no luck, drop another level as you start the pee dance. Where are your family, why is the door locked. Drop down again, what the heck are you going to do, why are you living in such a crappy house, isn’t there some kind of standard for bathroom doors? Drop down another level, to heck with the rules, you kick in the door and solve your basic problem.

So, think about how this relates to your project teams. Are you making sure their basic needs are met? Do they have to work overtime to meet deadlines? If so, where do you think their minds are as stomachs start to growl, and they enter work hour thirteen? Once the basic needs are taken care of, you need to ask about the work environment. Is it conducive to work; are your team members confined in stuffy rooms? Do they have a place where they can go to think? Is there enough trust to allow people to take a risk?

At belongingness and love – you don’t have to hug everyone – you need to make sure there’s social interaction; chatting around the coffee station, a football pool, these make for a feeling of camaraderie.  Satisfying the need for esteem comes from recognition activities, interesting assignments, and leadership opportunities.

Getting to the top is a bit different, I believe people take themselves to the top, that’s why it’s called self-actualization; you can’t take them. What you can do as the leader is help take care of the rest of the pyramid and create the possibility for people to get there.

So how does this impact your project? When people are in the lower levels of the pyramid, you tend to get crisis management. People are unsure of the safety and security of their basic needs to do the job – maybe it’s as simple as they don’t understand what the project is trying to accomplish – they take actions to create stability and security. In the belongingness and esteem areas, you have team members helping each other to succeed, and making sure there’s spotlight to share.

It’s well worth reviewing some of the fundamentals of people management theory – I think you’ll recognize so of the aspects of current people management trends there.

Tip, check some of these links out.

Maslow

Herzberg – an interesting idea that explains why money doesn’t always motivate people

McGregor – theory X and theory Y management, different styles work in different environments

Hawthorn – sometimes just paying attention helps