Hippo Center: Solving Resource Problems

The Danger of Perception in Project Management Teams

Mark K — Wed, 23 May 2012 11:54:50 -0500

How we perceive the project reality directly influences our decision making processes. Read this post on the danger of perception on our sister blog for insight into how we process information in the project management team environment.

Read the post here.

Why Teams Fail

Mark K — Tue, 22 May 2012 11:50:01 -0500

FastCompany produced a short, 30 second video by Simon Hayward on why teams fail. Watch the video here.

Simon states that teams fail because of one of three reasons:

Lack of a clear purpose (what we are trying to achieve together)
Lack of a clear identity (who we are as a team beyond individuals)
Lack of clear communications (how we work together)

Would you change or add anything to this list?

Performance Metrics vs. Desired Behavior in Project Management Teams

Mark K — Mon, 21 May 2012 14:42:39 -0500

Read this interesting post on performance metrics vs. desired behavior in project management teams by one of our sister blogs, Flying Into Project Management.

Read the post here.

Being Assertive in Project Management Teams - Part 2

Mark K — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:44:31 -0500

In part 1, we discussed the importance of and some barriers to assertiveness in your project management teams. You want your team to express their opinions and observations, and speak up when something isn't right. Otherwise you have false agreement and consensus.

It takes a proactive, continual effort to remove these barriers. It is not a temporary campaign. It is not something where you announce in a meeting that you want everyone to be assertive. It must become part of your team culture. You have to cultivate it…for a long time.

You can cultivate it by applying the same common sense, practical methods that other disciplines, such as aviation and healthcare, have used to make assertiveness a part of their culture:

Include assertiveness as part of a formal or informal required training curriculum. Teach them how to properly be assertive and why it is important.
Talk about it in every meeting. You may need to draw people out and specifically ask for their opinions on a controversial topic in meetings.
Reward individuals whose assertiveness prevented an error or mistake from becoming a costly issue.
Hold your managers accountable for the culture in their groups.
Never give consequences for someone speaking up, even if they are observing an error or mistake that you made personally. Set the example.
Provide a clear mission and focus for the team.
Create and follow a policy of no reprisals for individuals being assertive.
Set the expectation that assertiveness is not rude or cutting down, but the constructive communication of one's honest opinion and observation.

Make this a tangible, continuous part of your overall team strategy. It will take time for it to seed and take root, but it will if you continue to cultivate it. And your team’s will have a ceiling if you do not.

Being Assertive in Project Management Teams - Part 1

Mark K — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:20:55 -0500

Effective communication is critical for good project management team performance. Everyone would agree with that statement, but you may not equate that with the need for assertiveness. Assertiveness simply means that each team member is empowered to speak up and communicate with good intentions when something doesn’t seem right (or their opinion on a key decision). When assertiveness does not happen, errors and mistakes fester, good ideas never see the light of day, frustration builds, and an invisible divider is created between the different levels and areas of the organization.

Assertiveness is a trait that is proactively included in training for team-critical disciplines, including aviation cockpits, firefighting, and health care. These disciplines have discovered built-in barriers that prevent assertiveness. These barriers are also present in project teams and include:

Different levels of authority
Different levels of experience
A fear of reprisals
Not wanting to upset a colleague
Lack of a clear mission and focus

Different levels of authority simply means that the farther apart two individuals are in the organizational hierarchy, the more reluctant the lower level individual is to be assertive. This can be especially challenging in cultures rooted in a chain of command, such as the military. This factor has been proven in other disciplines. For example, the Naval Safety Center found that the highest Navy / Marine Corps helicopter mishap rate existed when the pilot and copilot were two or more ranks apart.

Different levels of experience means that individuals with a lower level of experience will tend to defer to someone with a higher level of experience. There is an assumption that the person with the higher level of experience must know what they are talking about or be aware of a particular issue.

Related to that is the fact that an individual will not be assertive if they believe there will be some sort of formal or subtle reprisal (especially about an error or mistake on the part of someone else). This could be a reprisal by someone with a higher authority or experience level.

Sometimes a person simply does not want to upset the status quo and risk upsetting a colleague. They would rather just keep their opinion to themselves.

Finally, the lack of a clear focus and mission for the team or organization often translates into a lack of assertiveness. If people are focused on achieving a clear objective, they will be more apt to be assertive when they observe something that could compromise the objective. Or if they have an idea that they believe will help. If people are unclear or unsure of the mission, they will be less likely to be assertive if for no other reason than they do not know how the observed issue will impact it, or they don't care.

Next, we'll discuss some practical steps to encourage assertiveness.

Book Review: The Mission, The Men, and Me

Mark K — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:00:45 -0500

The Misssion, The Men, and Me is a book by Pete Blaber, a former Delta Force commander who worked in Afghanistan (among other locations). It is a very interesting, easy read with a lot of real world stories, but it also provides some very good insight and practical application that can be applied to leading teams. Blaber shares insights into leadership, teams, and organizations and develops those insights through relevant stories from his experience at Delta Force. By the time he makes his point, you know exactly what he means and how the insight applies.

Blaber communicates five of these insights in the book. I will list them below with relevant application to project management teams:

Don't get treed by a chihuahua: don't make decisions without context (you have to know the reality of the situation around you).
Imagine the unimaginable, humor your imagination: don't underestimate the power of humor and imagination.
When in doubt, develop the situation: actively build context, recognize patterns, discover options, and master the future as it unfolds.
Always listen to the guy on the ground: don't assume you know what to do, listen to the person that is already there that has done it before.
It's not reality unless it's shared: your perceived reality is not relevant if you don't share it with others.

There were some other key points that I came away with:

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the plan that we become stuck and unwilling to deviate from the plan. Thinking outside the box, being willing to shelve the plan when new information becomes available, and using your imagination all help to make a team great. While I am a big proponent of planning ahead of time, there are times when not being willing to deviate from the plan is our own worst enemy (especially if the plan took a lot of work to get approval).

It is very easy to assume we know what is happening and how we should do something, so we develop a false perception of reality (what is really happening). We need to swallow our pride and ego, ask questions, and actively seek out those who have done it before. That opens up our minds to new options for what will really work.

Everyone has a different view of the current reality. An executive, the project manager, a team lead, a team member, and a stakeholder may all have a different perceived reality of the work of a particular project team. It is important that everyone shares their perceived reality to get a solid understanding of the actual reality.

The mission is very important. Every project management team should have a clearly articulated mission - they should know exactly what they are supposed to do and deliver, and even why. The why may even be the motivating factor.

Teaching Good Workload Management to Increase Performance in Project Teams

Mark K — Fri, 11 May 2012 16:42:29 -0500

In this era of more work being performed by fewer people, individual and team workload management is more important than ever. Workload management refers to how an individual manages their work demand. This has a direct bearing on the overall productivity and efficiency of the project management team. If individuals do not do a good job of managing their work demands, productivity will go down and inefficiency will go up. Further, it does no good to have a workforce trimmed without proper training and guidance on how to manage the overall workload.

People operate below peak levels when their workload management is poor. This can be the result of several factors. An individual may be fatigued or stressed when their workload exceeds their ability to cope over time. There may be personal circumstances contributing to the drop in peak work levels. Often it is because they do not properly manage their workloads over the periods of high and lower activity. It is important to train people on how to do this.

The following practical suggestions can be used by both individuals and teams to improve their workload management:

Take the time to prepare and plan for project (and other) work thoroughly. Anticipate what could go wrong. A major source of unneeded stress is the failure to take the time to plan well.
Distribute any possible tasks from periods of high workload to low workload periods. Get them done before crunch time.
Continuously look at workloads to ensure that they are balanced. Plan so that there are not radical workload spikes.
Develop strategies for team members to support and back each other up so that you are not over-relying on a single person or resource.
Distribute tasks among team members.
Prioritize the work so that primary tasks always have sufficient resources. You will rarely be able to accomplish everything. A lack of prioritization results in individuals not knowing where to focus their time.
Allocate enough time to complete tasks. Time pressure is inevitable and can sometimes be stimulating, but excessive or continuous time pressure reduces effectiveness.
Encourage good personal stress reduction practices, including adequate sleep, a good diet, and regular physical exercise.
Offload tasks to automation technology where appropriate.
Encourage team members to develop hobbies or other pursuits outside of the project environment.

This is obviously just the tip of the iceberg, but it is a good starting point to begin to think about the impact of workload on our teams. There is a tendency to just push, but if we manage workloads well, our teams will operate at a much higher level over time.

Using Acronyms for Better Team Decision Making

Mark K — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:26:08 -0500

Decisions are made all the time, and they are made by people. Individual team members make decisions about their work. Project management teams may try to develop consensus to make decisions. Project managers make decisions about their projects. Managers make decisions about their staff. Senior management and directors make decisions about the entire organization.

The problem is that there is usually no framework for decision making. When a problem arises or a decision is necessitated, it is based on subjective factors. It may be based on the current feeling, emotions, or experience level of the person making the decision. In addition, the average individual is deluged with information throughout the day (twitter, emails) that makes it difficult to process the information that is truly relevant to make a good decision. This leads to decisions that may or may not be appropriate for the given situation and the objectives of the organization.

In addition, individuals often experience confirmation bias. Confirmation bias refers to our tendency to look for information that confirms our pre-existing hypothesis and to ignore information that contradicts it. For example, we may ignore warning signs of impending project issues because we truly believe, need, or desire that the project will be completed successfully on time.

A good, practical tool for instilling better decision making in the team culture of your organization is to use an acronym. A simple acronym can be adopted and instituted more easily than a complex training program. A decision making acronym is really a process to follow to arrive at a good decision. It provides an individual or a team with a semi-formal structure to develop a good decision instead of relying on subjective factors. Emphasizing this over time makes this part of the overall team culture.

One such acronym is derived from aviation cockpits. This is an interesting adaptation because in the aviation environment, things can happen suddenly and unexpectedly, and bad decisions can have negative consequences. Good decision making is one of the most important parts of the job. There is an acronym taught to pilots based on the word PILOT:

P - Pool the facts

I - Identify the problem

L - Look for solutions

O - Operate (take action)

T - Take stock (review)

Another acronym in the business world uses the word GREAT

G - Give thought to the problem

R - Review your choices

E - Evaluate the consequences

A - Assess and choose the best one

T - Think it over afterward.

These acronyms encourage individuals and teams to collect information and go through a defined process instead of making a subjective decision. You could make up your own acronym to accomplish the same objective.

An acronym in and of itself will not produce better results. It needs to become part of your team culture. That means that you need to train team members to use the acronym, review the acronym in meetings, reinforce it, and of course...use it yourself.

Hippo Solutions launches 360° Team Works at the DISA Mission Partner Conference AFCEA Technology Showcase

Mark K — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:57:11 -0500

360° Team Works to be launched during the DISA Mission Partner Conference AFCEA Technology Showcase.

NASHVILLE, Tennessee, May 3, 2012- Hippo Solutions announces the launch of 360° Team Works, a new set of solutions to make project management teams better, at the DISA Mission Partner Conference AFCEA Technology Showcase in Tampa, Florida from May 7 through 10.

Attendees of the four day conference will be introduced to new and updated tools, training, and consulting offerings that complement their existing tools and capabilities, and help project management teams work better by focusing on the most important part of a project organization: its people.

Offerings in the 360° Team Works solution set include tools to fill in the gaps of a client’s existing offerings (such as by adding tools for project analytics, labor resource management reporting, or a full project work platform), training to teach teams to work better together instead of simply learning a skill or a tool, and consulting to provide the resources and expertise to break through nagging team-related barriers.

Mark Kenny, President of Hippo Solutions, states “We are on a mission to help organizations make their project management teams better. This is so much more than installing a new tool or implementing a new process. It’s an integrated approach that focuses on people: the most important part of their project organization. The focus on people working in teams is the real catalyst to improve performance, increase efficiency, break through barriers, and even make life better for everyone involved.”

Visit Hippo Solutions in booth 1409 at the AFCEA Technology Showcase at the DISA Mission Partner Conference.

To learn more about Hippo Solutions and 360° Team Works visit http://www.hipposolutions.com.

About Hippo Solutions:

Hippo Solutions offers 360° Team Works: a custom blend of training, tools, and consulting that complements your existing tools and capabilities and helps your project management teams work better. Whether it’s labor resource management tools, analytics, team-focused training or innovative process consulting, achieve your mission by focusing on the most important part of your project organization: your people.

Contact: http://www.hipposolutions.com

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Using Acronyms to Instill Better Decision Making in Your Team Culture

Mark K — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:10:11 -0500

Decisions are made all the time, and they are made by people. Individual team members make decisions about their work. Project management teams sometimes try to develop consensus to make decisions. Project managers make decisions about their projects. Managers make decisions about their staff. Senior management and directors make decisions about the entire organization.

The problem is that there is usually no framework for decision making. When a problem arises or a decision is necessitated, it is based on subjective factors. In addition, the average individual is deluged with information throughout the day (think twitter, emails) that makes it difficult to process the information that is truly relevant to make a good decision. This leads to bad decisions.

In addition, individuals often experience confirmation bias. Confirmation bias refers to our tendency to look for information that confirms our pre-existing hypothesis and ignore information that contradicts it. For example, we may ignore warning signs of impending project issues because we truly believe, need, and desire that the project will be completed successfully on time.

A good tool for instilling better decision making in the team culture of your organization is to use an acronym. A simple framework such as an acronym can be adopted and instituted more easily than a complex training program. A decision making acronym or framework is really a process to follow to arrive at a good decision. It provides an individual or a team with a semi-formal structure to develop a good decision instead of relying on subjective factors.

One of these acronyms comes from aviation cockpits. This is an interesting adaptation because in the aviation environment, things can happen suddenly and quickly, and bad decisions can have very negative consequences. Good decision making is one of the most important parts of the job. There is an acronym taught to pilots based on the word PILOT: