The Stories We Weave

How many data points does it take to shape a story, so the client walks away from a meeting with confidence in you, the project team, and the project? Is this a trick question? I’ve seen stories put together with vaporware, twine, string, and a grain of fact. In my experience, a client is looking for the evidence they want to see. If a project is important to them to succeed (i.e., their career is riding on the success of the project they have agreed to) then they will want to see success and will view data markers from that perspective. If, on the other hand, the client has been brought in to review where a project stands and whether it should proceed, they may view the same data points from an entirely different perspective. Glass half empty or glass half full.

The drivers to putting together a story for the client are the questions the client will ask. Understanding what motivates the client is critical to being able to put together the explanation of what is happening in the project in a way to gain client confidence. How can you learn what is important to the client? Asking them seems easy enough and I’ve discovered that doesn’t always get the responses needed. There are usually hidden truths not shared, not out of malice, out of a belief that boundaries are important, or out of a desire to share only pertinent information. An example would be a client who is reluctant to share that the last three projects they’ve led have been over budget and that leadership has been clear that another project over budget would be harmful to their career. To discover what is important to the client it is important to listen not only to what the client is saying, it is important to understand their actions and those things they are not saying.

What is the trick? No trick, well, not really. The idea is to listen. Not listening thinking of your response, not listening wondering why they aren’t getting what you are trying to say, and not listening while thinking that we’ve talked the same topic repeatedly. The trick? Caring about the client and what the client is saying. No, this isn’t altruistic mumbo jumbo. This is nuts and bolts caring about other people, making them more important that what you have to say. Making it your job to understand first and then, after understanding fully, asking questions from a caring and listening perspective, being curious what the client means and what they are looking for, only then is it possible to begin to weave the story, paint the picture, and provide the information that the client desires.

This isn’t a “The customer is always right” perspective. To meet the client where they are, putting the data points, as factually put together as possible, into a language they understand, in a manner where they will understand it.

As a project manager I am responsible for providing information in a manner that explains the health of a project so that the client understands. I am responsible for get the data to show the client that the project is proceeding, not necessarily as planned because that isn’t always possible, but as near to plan as possible. I am responsible for providing the ebb and flow narrative, the explanations, the heads up, and the good, bad, and yes, potentially ugly information associated with a project. I am responsible for sharing the news that is uncomfortable to share without causing more undue stress than necessary.

To make that happen, I must approach every communication with the client with an intentional message, a context for the message, and clear data points that back that up. That means I get to be clear in my own head and think through what I want to the client to walk away from every meeting with. Context, intention, data points, and walk away with. When I set up my meetings with a clear context for the meeting, I set a clear intention for the meeting, I gather the data points that support the context, the intention, and the walk away with, I have a successful meeting. It is when I am unprepared that meetings go off the rails.

By the way, the context, intention, data points, walk away with are successful in all meetings, not only client meetings. Practicing these things, no matter what conversations you want to have, work or personal, provides a formula where relationships can be healthy, and outcomes can be progressive. Workshops, meetings, conversations of any type can reap a benefit from a little preparation. Context, intention, data points and clear outcomes (walk away with) makes a difference. What are you practicing today?

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The Happy Project Manager

The more time I spend in studying personal wellbeing, the more I understand that, for many, career success is influenced by an individual’s wellbeing. I want to qualify that since there are examples of those who are successful in one area of life while challenged in another (think career and personal relationships). There have been times in my own life when my career was going quite well while my personal life was, well, a mess. Creating a life that is balanced and successful in every dimension will increase the opportunities for success. There is a saying, the way we do one thing is the way we do everything. While a huge generalization, there are elements of truth in that statement. While we may be successful in career and be challenged in personal relationships, those challenges bleed into our work relationships and will, in the long run, show up and hold our careers back. Fundamentally, creating balance, increasing our personal wellbeing, and focusing inward will increase the likelihood for personal success in all domains.

What are these dimensions, areas, or domains? Well, the list could be quite extensive. In my research I discovered anywhere from 3 to 8 different areas. As I was considering my own personal search, my focus was largely on the physical aspects of wellbeing. As I continued to read, study, and be curious, I discovered that the dimensions (3 or 8) are intertwined and cannot be untangled. What I found is that focusing on one dimension without focusing on another slowed my personal progress in all areas. What that means is, focusing on work at the expense of our social wellbeing will, over time, cause issues for our work life. While there is some intuitive alignment to that logic, when it comes to making choices in the moment, if we haven’t taken the time to step back and determine our personal needs and desires for our lives and each dimension of our life, our choices may or may not align to what will be best for our personal wellbeing. Does that mean we have to plan out our lives and live an inflexible plan? Of course not. What it means is that our choices, whatever they are, are best made with awareness of what is important to us and those we surround ourselves with. Creating our personal wellbeing allows us to be aware, to show up, to be present, and to fully experience life. It doesn’t guarantee our decisions and choices will be exceptional, it means we are not making choices blindly.

You may be wondering what this has to do with project management. Leading by example is the best way possible to lead. If you are stepping into every day filled with possibility, so will your team. Your team is a direct reflection of who you are showing up as. If you show up slow, dull, unable to find the possibilities in situations, so will your team. If you show up like it matters, every day giving your best to every situation, so will your team. Your personal wellbeing is the biggest influence you will have on your team. Being unwell doesn’t support your project, not taking care of yourself personally will not support your team, and it is impossible to hide your way of being, by that I mean your fundamental attitude, from your colleagues. It matters how you show up.

Practicing personal wellbeing, finding balance and harmony in all aspects of your life, will increase your ability to deal with the daily circumstances of your life. Your overall wellbeing is dependent upon the health of your intellectual, physical, financial, career, social, spiritual, environmental, and emotional dimensions. Practicing habits that foster a balanced life will create opportunities in your life that will surprise you. It has surprised me. I think the biggest reward is, no matter the circumstances, I am filled with wonderment at the possibilities that life offers. Working with that kind of attitude rubs off on others and makes a difference in the workplace for everyone. Imagine if we all started our days filled with joy. What a world it would be. What are you practicing today?

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It’s Magic

Project success can seem like a magic trick, the audience isn’t quite sure what happened and, even if they know how the trick works, it can still appear magical. So, it is with project success. The number of books written, methodologies identified, and the number of diplomas and certifications available suggest that project management is an extremely complex, challenging, and potentially rewarding career. The interesting thing is, we manage projects as a normal part of our lives. From getting a job to cooking a meal, taking care of a lawn to painting a room, taking a vacation to going to college. Almost everything we do requires creating a plan to obtain a specific outcome and then executing that plan which is what project management is in its simplest form. What are the inherent challenges of creating a successful project? Where do these challenges come from? Where in the project life cycle do projects begin to fail? While failure is frequently discovered towards the end of a project, it rarely starts where it is discovered. Intrinsically, we sense that it isn’t the end where failure occurs, it is simply where it is noticed. How do we, with all the education, knowledge, historical information, and brain power available still find ourselves pushing hard toward the end line, sacrificing our personal lives for a work project?

Where and why do projects fail? Projects fail because we fail to practice the due diligence and rigor necessary at the very beginning. They fail before the project start date, prior to anyone beginning the work associated with the plan. Failure occurs when we begin work before we consider where the end line is, what it will take to get there, and why we are doing the work. Failure occurs every step along the project plan when we do work that is unplanned, unscheduled, and out of scope. Failure occurs when we start work prior to clearly defining the work. Failure occurs when assumptions are made without writing them down or eliminating the assumption and gathering the necessary details. Failure occurs when we fail to audit the work done through reviews or other means of verification and validation. It isn’t the big things that create project failure, it is a myriad of small details missed along the way.

Knowing the answer to where and why projects fail hasn’t seemed to prevent projects from failing. That would imply that project failure is always one of the possible outcomes for every project started. It is always possible that we won’t get a job, cook a delightful meal, have a beautiful lawn, or have a delightful vacation. Failure can always occur. Instead of avoiding that possible outcome, what if we embraced that as one of the many possibilities? What constructs would we put in place, what guard rails would be available, what exit strategies would be manifest, and what conversations would we have if we discussed the possibility of failure and discovered the opportunities available? What if we documented the myriad of small things that could go wrong, the failures that could occur along the way, and that could occur, and built our plan around those items? Yes, this does sound like risk analysis and mitigation, mostly because it is that very tool that could be used to embrace failure as a possibility.

The biggest barrier to project success is us. It isn’t as if we don’t know how to have a successful project, it is as if we believe nothing will go wrong if we push on, move forward, and ignore the warning signs. The cautionary flags of wrong resource for the job, work taking more effort, an increase in error rates, or the number of hours we are putting in continues to climb without an end in sight. It is as if the warning signs are invisible to us, like knowing the magic trick and not seeing the slight of hand. We know what is necessary to create a successful project. We fail to hold ourselves to the rigor and due diligence necessary and we fail to hold every project team member to the same level of rigor and due diligence, especially the client.

Take a moment, do a quick inventory of where you are in the project, review the current health of the project you are managing and ask yourself one question. What am I practicing today? If you find that you are spending more hours than the agreed upon amount (and if there isn’t an agreement you may want to create one), if you find that there are more mistakes being made than expected or than what had been occurring a month ago, if you are discovering a higher level of resource turn over, if your client meetings are filled with additional documentation requests, you may be in the midst of or at the beginning of the signs of project failure occurring. This is the time to ask, what do we need to do in this moment to capture what is occurring and then create a go to green plan. A plan to get the unhealthy into a healthier state. The issues will be in the details, and it would be best to identify and create a plan to resolve those issues, even if it requires moving the date and cost additional capital. It is better to be clear about where you are, only then can you plan the path to where you are going.

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Mindful Project Management

What is mindfulness and what bearing does it have on project management? Put simply, mindfulness has a bearing on every aspect of our lives and therefore, is significant to project management. Mindfulness is defined by Merriam-Webster as the practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of one's thoughts, emotions, or experiences on a moment-to-moment basis. What project wouldn’t benefit from a project manager being in that state of mind? What friend, husband, wife, child, or parent wouldn’t benefit from being in that state of mind? Greater Good Berkley goes a bit further by defining mindfulness as maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, through a gentle, nurturing lens. In other words, being in the present, being self-aware, and being open to possibility (the nonjudgmental part). When we manage or lead any effort, being mindful of our state of being is beneficial to us, our team, and the project.

There have been studies that have shown great benefits to mindfulness including decreased stress, improved focus and efficiency, improved sleep, improved relationship quality, and improved general health. Those benefits directly impact our responses to issues we uncover while delivering a project and how we engage the team in resolving those issues. It also allows us to be less biased and increases our objectivity which allows increased critical thinking skills. Mindfulness allows to move urgently, without stress, without bias, and with an open mind to look for the resolution of what is standing in the way of completing a project. It supports us in shifting when our plans have been changed due to unforeseen circumstances. While it isn’t a miracle cure, it allows us to create an environment where failure, mistakes, and unforeseen circumstances no longer disrupts us for days. Simply put, it increases our resilience and flexibility when things go “wrong” on our projects, which can happen frequently. The pandemic has showed all of us that nothing is predictable, and things can change without warning. Mindfulness allows us to move through the changes that occur.

How do you achieve a state of mindfulness? Well, that’s where ancient practices come to play. Interestingly enough, mindfulness has been practiced for thousands of years. It can be found in both eastern and western teachings, although literature suggests that Buddhist and Hindu practices are the true origins. Whether that is true or not, suffice it to say, the practice has been around for a very long time. I can tell you that, when I was in college, there wasn’t a course on Mindfulness. Of course, there wasn’t a course on Well-Being either and one exists at Yale today. The practice of mindfulness, in my experience, is best achieved through meditation. Meditation twice daily creates a focused effort of being in the present moment, connecting with mind and body, and settling into cohesion. Being in a meditative state allows awareness to come alive. While there are other ways to practice mindfulness such as yoga or through heightened awareness of everyday activities, the awareness that meditation provides is extremely effective. In my experience, meditation accelerates the learning of mindfulness.

There are several apps such as Headspace, Insight Timer, and Calm that support in meditation practices. If you are new to meditation those should be supportive. The key, as always, is consistency in the practice itself. When I started practicing meditation, I noticed (as did my wife), a shift in how I handled circumstances, in my driving, and in my general calmness in less than one month. Continuing the practice has continued to allow me to respond, rather than react, to belay judgment and stay open to possibilities, and to bring a sense of level-headedness to stressful situations. Oh, and my resting heart rate has dropped. Mindfulness matters, what are you practicing today? 

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Curiosity and Project Management

I was part of a team meeting working to resolve an issue. Two teams were focused on their position regarding the issue. The team with the technical expertise was clear that what was being asked should not be implemented. The other team required the technical team to implement the change for their portion of the project to progress. It was a good choice vs bad choice, right choice vs wrong choice conversation. Both sides were clear about their position and we were not moving forward. When faced with this type of dilemma, maintaining a curious mindset becomes important. Being able to ask probing questions to move teams away from positions and beginning to look for potential solutions requires that both teams begin to focus on the outcomes and move away from their respective positions.

To move most issues forward rather than staying locked in circular conversations, back and forth dialogue, or other time-wasting meeting discussions, framing the end goal and gaining alignment by the people involved is required. Documenting what the end goal and the associated drivers of success will allow the teams involved to focus together on a single topic rather than continue to hold their positions. If the teams are moving toward different end goals agreement is unlikely. The first step is creating the end goal and the drivers. The end goal could be to complete testing with the primary drivers being maintaining a short timeline and keeping the cost low. Once that information has been established and everyone involved is aligned, the teams are able to move forward. I am using the term alignment versus agreement. It is an important distinction. When seeking agreement, there is room for disagreement. Disagreement means that something small can stand in the way. Alignment suggests I may not agree, and I can move forward with the chosen direction because I can align my behavior to that goal. If I cannot align, then a change must be made to move forward. Agreement is a 100% and can cause an all or nothing barrier. Alignment allows for wiggle room.

Once aligned on the goal and the associated drivers, the teams can begin to bring forward the ideas to move forward toward the goal. Brainstorming is an ideal way to create as many possibilities as possible. Brainstorming requires that everyone involved sustains their judgement. No idea is skipped or shot down. All ideas are welcome, expanding ideas is a thrill, and all are kept while brainstorming. Once there is a laundry list of possibilities they can be discussed, combined, removed, and cleansed until there is a smaller subset of possibilities. That subset of possibilities is then ranked so that there is an order in which everyone aligns that they are further analyzed. Again, alignment matters as there will always be disagreement amongst the teams as to what should be tackled first. Most of the time, the teams can align on an order.

The Next step is to analyze the ideas, gathering data points for the primary drivers, in this case time and cost. Once the data is available the viable and most likely candidates are available. Since the teams came up with the ideas together, there is generally a stronger team bond, all parties are aligned on how to move forward, and the issues has an identified resolution. These steps can be applied to almost any situation where there is conflict, positions, and polarized teams. The primary ingredient that the project manager brings to the meeting is curiosity. Staying away from solutioning and allowing the teams to work together while asking the probing questions is the most valuable tool a project manager can learn. Being able to draw out the ideas of others, focused on a common understanding of the issue, the goal, and the primary drivers will bring issues to a close as quickly as possible. Practicing these tools in our every day lives will allow us to sharpen our project management skill sets. Project management skills are applicable every where in life. What are you practicing today?

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