Change Through Action

The Human Face of Transition

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:17:00 +0000

One of the people I’ve connected with through Twitter is Bas de Baar. He’s The Project Shrink and in his own words he makes ‘complex people stuff less complex’. I like the way Bas writes and I particularly like the way he uses hand drawn images to simplify difficult problems without trivialising their importance. In a recent post The Project Story Circle. Talking About Transitions he’s used a simple yet very effective drawing. A circle as the cycle of a project and through the centre of it a horizontal line representing the project itself. The two halves can then be viewed as project and non-project time. Read his post for all the details because here I’m picking up on one particular bullet point he makes:

This will focus attention on the transitions organization-project and project-organization.

What Bas suggests is that the shape can be used when discussing projects and where in the circle people join, become active, and where they expect problems to occur. As a delivery specialist I see companies and their people struggle repeatedly with transition from project to organisation and believe the struggle can be simplified by using this drawing. Let’s take a look at an approach to change management and transition that most will be familiar with then see how this simple drawing could help.

First, what resembles a fairly typical approach?

A company embarks on a change programme and include in their project organisation a workstream responsible for change management. Primarily that group is tasked with delivering Culture (shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that form the work environment) and People (organisation structure and charts, roles and responsibilities, governance, FTE [full time employee] changes etc) change. Bottom line they tend to have an HR and organisation structure focus. The workstream responsible for developing and deploying the solution works with business representatives or subject matter experts (SME’s) to ensure the receiving organisation has the right people in the right place at the right time with the right training and skill competencies in order to receive and operate the deployed solution.

It sounds good and should work, right? On paper yes but in practice it's a bit hit and miss. Why? Because the change management team is concerned with form, structure, and control mechanisms and the solution team is concerned with well, the solution. Yet the big challenge in transition is operational acceptance and uptake, ie: the human bit that uses the solution. It’s this gap in the organisation-project / project-organisation flow where I see Bas’ drawing creating opportunities for increased value-add and cost savings.

If the project manager, business owner and change manager actually worked together ego, methodology and agenda free for the good of the business, they could use this drawing to jointly and objectively uncover, plot and properly address all the human related capabilities, needs, issues, and challenges likely to occur in the project lifecycle. Result? An instant visual of the gaps usually left unattended until they hit the proverbial fan during training or, worse still, on deployment weekend.

Beware, this isn’t a one off exercise. Successful transitions need more than hard skills alone. By the various workstreams approaching this with a different mind set then really working together they will create sound transition plans that combine both the hard and soft skills necessary to deliver successful change programmes. Remember an intelligent transition begins early and continues to evolve throughout the project lifecycle, shifting and morphing as the business and its operations respond to market conditions.

My advice and approach is to use the tools and techniques that make sense rather than those dictated by a method. Simple is often best.

Season's Greetings Everyone

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:29:00 +0000

Christmas is that time of year when there is lots to do and no time in which to do it. Even so it's important to say thank you so I would like to take this opportunity to extend my personal thanks for your support over the course of 2011. It is genuinely appreciated.

I wish you and your organisation a very Merry Christmas and look forward to helping you achieve continued success throughout 2012.

Talking Expectations on #PMChat's Pre-Game Show

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 13:30:00 +0000

I've mentioned #PMChat before in an earlier blog post but for those of you yet to participate Project Management Chat (#PMChat) is a weekly Twitter chat hosted by Robert Kelly and Rob Prinzo where topics focus on Project Management, Leadership techniques, and best practices etc. The two Rob's have been named in the Top 10 Up and Coming Project Managers on Twitter and their partnership offers nearly 30 years of diverse experience to the #PMChat participants.

How does #PMChat work?

Each Friday at 11.30am (EST), that's 4.30pm GMT or 5.30pm CET, #PMChat kicks off with the #PMChat Pre-Game show. Using BlogTalkRadio the Pre-Game show is appropriately described as a 15-minute power session that adds tremendous value to your day. The Rob's invite thought leaders from a range of project management and leadership arenas to discuss the topic of the week. All Pre-Game shows are recorded live and can be replayed on demand.

Then from 12noon-1pm (EST), that's 5-6pm GMT or 6-7pm CET, participants use the hashtag #PMChat to continue the discussion on Twitter. Knowledge, experience, learnings and opinions are shared as the Rob's prompt interaction through a series of questions. As well as the obvious benefits that come with learning from a knowledgable and geographically-spread peer group, PMP’s are eligible to earn PDU's. A welcome bonus from an hour that's both useful and fun.

Last week I had the honour of being the guest on #PMChat. The topic of discussion - Expectations. First up was a guest blog post entitled "A Mantra - Never Confuse Sales With Implementation", quickly followed by a live appearance on the Pre-Game Show. After a few early technical difficulties the content of the show has subsequently been described as 'awesome', 'great', 'everything resonated' and 'excellent'.

Before you listen to the replay I'd like to say a special thank you to the hosts Robert and Rob for without their initiative there would be no #PMChat.

Listen to internet radio with KellyProjectSolutions on Blog Talk Radio

Book Review: Rescue the Problem Project

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:37:00 +0000

After reading Todd Williams’ book Rescue the Problem Project: A Complete Guide to Identifying, Preventing, and Recovering from Project Failure it couldn’t be clearer - to recover a failing project strong teams are required.

People are projects and Williams shows this time and again as he provides real-life examples of project problems and how-to resolve them. Having spent his career dealing primarily with red projects, his experience is palpable and his knowledge extensive. Reading his book is like being paired with the best mentor around and I read it like I do good fiction; totally absorbed. Drawn in by his experiences, and seeing the parallels to my own, I consolidated what I already know and practise while learning more from those 260 pages of text than I thought possible.

Why? Well because this book contains little about the theory of project management. Instead Rescue the Problem Project is jam-packed full of how the fundamental principals of good management supported by the practical and pragmatic use of solid project management techniques and tools helps everyone on the team, regardless of their position in the hierarchy, led by an experienced project leader can identify the root cause of project failure while maintaining objectivity.

5 Steps to Recovery

Williams achieves this by clearly setting out and describing each step of the recovery process. He takes the reader through each individual step, refers constantly to real-life case studies, and provides key questions to ask along with options for dealing with difficult or challenging situations. Williams makes sure to reiterate Step 0 in the process as without management genuinely answering this there is little or no chance of recovery. His 5 Steps to Recovery are:

Step 0 – Realisation: Management must realise and acknowledge there is a problem to solve before doing anything.
Step 1 – Audit: Objectively audit the entire project to determine all the problems.

Step 2 – Analysis: Look at the data gathered to determine root causes and develop a solution.
Step 3 – Negotiation: Mediate an acceptable solution between the supplier and customer.
Step 4 – Execution: Do it. Implement the corrective actions and agreed plan.

Once you’ve read the book through it is very easy to dip in and out of the various sections. This definitely helps where expertise is stronger in one area than another. Identifying and managing Risk is a perfect example.

The Role of Risk

“Most project managers have a poor understanding of how to quantify risk or how risk analysis can benefit the project. For that reason, they create a risk register at the beginning of a project to fulfil a PMO requirement, but then never update or review it. In fact, frustration is so high that they fail to fully identify risk items or generate reasonable mitigations. To exacerbate the problem, their managers have an equally poor understanding.”

Williams is straight to the point: a cornerstone of risk management is a basic understanding of statistics. He then proceeds to deliver just that by providing a real scenario to improve understanding supported by an example of a risk register, how to determine the odds of each risk happening then quantifying that risk, differentiating between quantifiable and unquantifiable risk and between risks and issues. He also describes how to budget for and determine probability and impact of the risks. It’s simple, straightforward and a thorough introduction to the huge underestimated area that is risk.

If all that wasn’t enough Williams provides the reader with:

A chapter relationship chart that lets the reader see quickly where related subject matter can be found.
Takeaways at the end of each chapter. Key messages and reminders in bullet point form as quick memory-joggers.
Process flows and tables.
Access to an on-line appendix full of templates, process descriptions and tools. Free registration required.
A list of recommended reading.

Anyone interested in recovering a failing project or putting in place strategies to avoid failure in the first place, will benefit from this book. Whether CEO, Project Sponsor, Project Manager or Line Management, buy it, read it and keep it by your side. It’s a book to be used and will dog-ear quickly as you refer to it time and again.

Find out more about Todd Williams at his website and follow him on Twitter

Purchase direct from the Author

Purchase from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.it

Lessons Learned - Best when Transitioned to Organisational Knowledge

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:10:00 +0000

Project people everywhere are constantly on the lookout for ways to improve or add additional value to their projects. Twitter is one resource being used and recently a new Twitter hash-tag (hash-tags allow the user to directly participate in a specific topic of conversation) was created for Project Management Chat (#PMChat). A weekly discussion hosted by Robert Kelly and Rob Prinzo each Friday from 6-7pm (CET), its topics focus on Project Management and Leadership techniques, best practices, and so on.
But this isn’t a blog post about #PMChat. No, this post picks up on a response to one of the questions posed during Friday 30 Sept’s #PMChat topic: Project Closure and Lessons Learned. The question was…

Q2 – How can you assure that lessons learned are actually ‘learned’?

Good question. Why? Because the lessons learned exercise forms a key part of the project management process. But just doing the process alone won’t stop problems repeating. There must be action.

Take for example the kid who falls when attempting a complicated move on the jungle-bars at school. If successful they’d do it again and get better with practise. But when the result is what they’d expect (ie: falling off) or a downright failure (ie: breaking something) they’d naturally do something different next time. The same logic applies to projects, eg: our review has shown that the project organisation we put in place failed us in these 3 critical areas. We must make these specific changes immediately to avoid the same problems next time.

Great the lessons and action necessary have been identified, now who’s responsible?

PM’s are responsible for doing the lessons learned process. They also have a responsibility for learning from those lessons. When a permanent part of an organisation PM’s may have the luxury of continuity. Moving from one project to another they get a clear opportunity to apply changes to how they work, lead and interact with others. But in today’s projects where external PM’s augment in-house teams for short periods of time that learning is likely to disappear with the PM leaving the organisation to learn those same lessons all over again. Lesson 1: identifying and learning lessons is not sole responsibility of the PM.

Often the lessons captured by the process point back to areas outside the PM’s sphere of influence, eg: project hierarchy or organisation, executive/management support and decision making, investment levels and resource allocation. Where that’s the case learning must go beyond the PM. Organisation and project cultures with top-down management influences means those holding senior roles including the PMO (project management office) are ultimately responsible for ensuring changes are made and that they stick. Only those people who make the decisions that trigger projects and set the scene from which all project related support structures, budgets, knowledge and communication emanates have the ability to directly impact the way things are done next time. Lesson 2: senior management / the executive are responsible for a culture that encourages change and takes action.

Lessons however are best learned when they’re transitioned to organisational knowledge. This means not only learning from what has happened before but incorporating them at project start making learning part of ‘the way we do things around here’. We hear about continuous improvement in manufacturing in order to increase production and quality and reduce lead times and costs so why not apply the same logic to projects. After all a project is not an island or a mystery. Its sole purpose is to deliver benefits to the business. Therefore lessons learned are an opportunity for continuous improvement and the nucleus that is a project gives the wider organisation a platform from which to positively leverage them. Lesson 3: Close the gap between projects and the organisation by not isolating one from the other.

For more on how to incorporate lessons learned as you transition from initial implementation to the next phase or operations download a copy of the Whitepaper Principles for Intelligent Transition.

For more on the process to support project closure and lessons learned check out this guest post on the #PMChat Blog by Michael Greer.

Project Past Due - Could be Time to Stop It, Now!

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 09:16:00 +0000

When a project is past its use-by date or looks unlikely to deliver the desired benefits in the agreed timeframe, tough decisions need to be made. Often a company will push on determined to see this thing through, following the kind of philosophy as described in Dead Horse Management. But throwing more money at it or changing the people involved doesn’t always work.

To end or not to end, that is the question but what on earth is the answer? The answer is, quite simply, to do what is best for your organisation and that could be to Stop It, Now!

Let’s take a look at a common example many of you will recognise…

An organisation intends to rollout a new standardised application across its many sites. It establishes a large global programme. It then sets about spending months and large sums of money pulling subject matter experts (SME’s) together to define a global template the business units can all agree on and sign-up to. Global deployment begins. Some sites move forward successfully implementing with little or no change to the template. Other sites make good progress initially but soon struggle to correlate template processes to their business model. Not until well into the project is it obvious many of their business critical processes will not work under the template. Process discussions ensue within the project and quickly escalate to the programme office. The said business critical processes are dissected and what is uncovered falls into two broad categories:

Valid, ie: country specific, often requirements that are legislated; and
Invalid, ie: an historical process that needs reengineering to the template.

Now what? The valid ones move forward and the invalid ones move to parked. Someone with more authority must make a decision. Change the template? Change the business? Invest more money and change the software? Time passes, deadlines slip, other work streams feel the effects and pressure build on the programme office as other sites agitate to get underway.

What’s happening during this time?

The project carries on where it can
Budgets are haemorrhaging
Timelines are slipping
There are conflicts and uncertainty of responsibility and decision making between project and programme
Continued discussion about differing or undiscovered requirements locally vs the global template
Any opportunity for early benefits realisation is lost
Distinct lack of willingness to enforce or accept change
Perpetual delays in decision making
etc

What can we forecast will happen next?

Costs will continue to increase
Project completion date will continue to be pushed out
Power plays, politics and leveraging personal agendas will shift focus away from the original issue
Changes to the previously agreed global template will be inevitable
More individual projects will spring up devaluing the benefits of a global programme
The ongoing opportunity for global benefits realisation will further reduce
etc

Projects are only as good as the people on them and solid quality decision making when it counts. If a project is flagged as amber, pay attention and be in action. Give direction clearly and early. You might have money to burn but at least burn it where it makes sense. Once it’s red communicate decisions to key people directly removing the trickle down effect and the possibility for ambiguity. Leave no room for misunderstanding about why you’re allowing the project to continue, the conditions that must be met and the timeframe for meeting them. Otherwise don’t delay the inevitable and Stop It, Now!

Has Leadership lost all Accountability?

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:15:00 +0000

I’ve just finished reading Chapter 14 of William Tate’s book “The Search for Leadership – An Organisational Perspective”. As the phone hacking scandal at News of the World was exposed and continues to explode across all forms of media, my timing couldn’t have been better. You see Chapter 14 focuses on Leadership and Accountability and as more and more details come out about News of the World and News International the more William Tate’s writings make sense.

He starts Chapter 14 by attempting to define ‘accountability’ and is quick to point out that:

“While accountability ought to be a key factor in the management of any organisation, in practice it is unimaginatively conceived, poorly understood, relatively neglected and badly executed.”

He goes on to say that the familiar things we all associate with accountability, ie: lists of principle accountabilities and reporting lines, actually don’t contribute much to improving leadership effectiveness within an organisation. Why? Because those things are not an adequate means of holding senior people to account before a disaster strikes.

What’s struck me most about all this are the parallels between what I’ve read against the management and leadership of what continues to unfold at News of the World, News International and quite possibly within the wider global-reaching News Corp organisation. Other than shutting down an old and widely read English newspaper in one foul swoop, what is the actual process through which News Corp will hold News International and its executive(s) to account? Will it continue to hold its business units to account through this same process going forward? Does it even have a process? Regardless of whether a process exists or not, where have those most basic human behaviours of morality, ethical work practices, decency and sense of doing the right thing gone?

But these questions are not isolated to News Corp. They’re questions that can be asked of all organisations whether small, medium, or large multi-national corporations. Regardless of our role we’ve all, at one time or other, experienced the manager or senior executive who, to those observing or on the receiving end of their leadership, fails to be held accountable for their actions (or lack of). What on earth has to happen before someone is held accountable? Through these experiences we can have empathy for what those who have lost their jobs at News of the World have been thinking.

Company owners, executives and HR people will do well to look beyond this latest leadership scandal and consider whether they have a process in place for holding senior managers to account. As William Tate says and I paraphrase, “one that runs continuously as part of their company’s ongoing performance management framework”. Even portfolio, programme and project managers need to look closely at how they view and challenge accountability in their areas of responsibility.

Someone on Twitter recently shared a quote by Alfred A. Montapert, American motivational author famous for The Supreme Philosophy of Man, that said “All lasting business is built on friendship”. I don’t really agree and would stick my neck out to say others in business today may not either. You can be friendly but friendship suggests something more. For business to be lasting it must have the confidence and belief of the people it serves and the employees it hires, with integrity and trust at its core. Without that leadership roles are open to abuse and friendship can muddy the processes necessary to ensure proper and full accountability exists. Is this what we're seeing manifest itself within News Corp?

While there’ll always be scoundrels and scandalous behaviour in business there are changes that can be made to improve not only individual leadership but also that necessary to make an organisation better led. Look at the system itself not just the people within it and if you don’t have William Tate’s book, buy it.

Principles for Intelligent Transition

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:10:00 +0000

If you want your IT project to be embraced as business as usual operations you must go through a transition process. But you can't be random about it and still expect great results. You need to consistently apply some logical and proven principles.

Read on to discover the principles that give project owners the knowledge to transition their projects with less difficulty and disruption. Or register now for instructions on how to download the full "Principles for Intelligent Transition" guide.

1. Transitioning a project is straightforward

Few Companies find IT projects easy to transition across to operations. They see the transition process as difficult and disruptive. But it’s only difficult because they’re not aware of all the gaps and how to bridge those gaps. With the skills in place to identify, bridge and fill those gaps transition from project to operations is less disruptive and more straightforward.

2. Gathering External Intelligence

IT projects are not islands but they can be very isolated and isolating. The bubble of an IT project often creates more and bigger gaps. Simply talking to the people in operations can benefit a project in two ways:

the project has access to an external source of information
operations are more informed and, more importantly, engaged.

3. Understanding Human Behaviours

People are projects and wherever there are people there will always be variations in behaviour. If you understand the factors that influence human behaviour you'll have more success transitioning your project across to business as usual operations.

4. Determining Transition Success

When a company initiates a project they expect to gain some sort of operational or organisational benefit, preferably financial. But project owners and business stakeholders stand on different sides of a gap and have different views of what transition success is. In order to work together with the same understanding both management and leadership are necessary to bridge that gap.

5. Identifying Opportunities for Transformation

Transition does not automatically result in Transformation but with the principles for intelligent transition in place you are more aware of what's to come and can identify opportunities for transformation.

6. Creating an Intelligent Transition Plan

You might think this is obvious and part of a standard project handover process. Fundamentally it is, yet so many projects seem to finish with end user training and cutover. An intelligent transition plan evolves as you think outside the project bubble, always working to bridge and fill the gaps for transition to be more straightforward.

Putting these 6 Intelligent Transition Principles into practise

These principles have been practised successfuly on many different IT projects across the globe in a variety of industry sectors. They are a proven way by which projects can be intelligently transitioned.

Further information on these principles can be found in our "Principles for Intelligent Transition" guide. They give project owners the key to transitioning their projects with less difficulty and disruption. The key to achieving success lies with you and your application of the principles.

Accessing a complete copy of "Principles for Intelligent Transition" is easy – just register here first to receive download instructions.

Announcement - 2011 IPMA Awards

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Mon, 16 May 2011 15:03:00 +0000

IPMA Young Crew has opened nominations for the 2011 IPMA Young Project Manager Award.

Unlike Before is thrilled to be participating, for the 2nd year running as a member of the esteemed award jury assisting to select the finalists for this award.

“This is an excellent opportunity for Project Leaders to gain acknowledgement and recognition for their successes to-date”, says Deanne Earle, Director of Unlike Before Ltd. “We’re certain the candidates will be stronger than ever and are thrilled to be involved once again.”

Introduced in 2006 at the IPMA Young Crew conference in Shanghai, China, the IPMA Young Project Manager Award recognises rising talent in the project and program management industries by honouring young project managers for their accomplishments early in their careers. These honourees have demonstrated invaluable impact to both their profession and their companies, and are on the fast track to becoming influential project leaders on an international scale.

Initial applications for the 2011 IPMA Young Project Manager Award will be accepted until midnight, June 17, 2011 EST. If you know someone whose expertise and contribution are worthy of recognition why not encourage them to submit an application. The application process for this year's award can be found here. Better still, if you meet the criteria why not apply yourself?

The full press announcement has been published on the PM Forum blog and can be accessed here.

About IPMA Young Crew: IPMA Young Crew is a key component of IPMA’s growth and development of the leaders of tomorrow. We are an active network of young project management professionals and students aged 25 to 35 who believe in community and the building of a worldwide young professional project management family. With over 20 member countries, IPMA Young Crew strives to provide experiential learning through interaction and information exchange with young project managers.

Email Emancipation

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:09:00 +0000

Remember the days of typewriters and memo’s, internal mail deliveries and the excitement that came with the introduction of word processors? Your desk had a work space, an in- and an out-tray, and your secretary would make sure the out-tray was emptied regularly in line with internal mail and the in-tray was organised with post-it instructions like ‘sign here’, ‘urgent’, or ‘for your attention’. You had time to ‘do’ work.

And then email arrived...

Thanks to Mr Ray Tomlinson, the man who originally invented sending and receiving messages in this manner way back in 1971, email was agreat leap forward in communication. In an interview with Datamation in 2002 he was asked what he thought email would look like in 10 years. His response and I quote was “You may see it more closely integrated with other forms of communication, though, like instant messaging”.

But back to email proper. How much time do you spend every day, not just business hours, in front of your computer reading, responding and attempting to manage your email? Where on your desk do you do your ‘real’ work? In the centre or is that where your computer sits? Is email still email in its own right or has it done what Ray Tomlinson thought and become closely integrated with other forms of communication?

As more global organisations do more global projects there’s a tendency to conduct every facet of their business via email, completely replacing the need for any human contact or interaction. Take Instant Messaging, a great tool that’s fast, efficient, and effective. Quick questions get quick responses. But what’s happening to work? Once we’ve got through our “insert the number of emails you get in a day here” and those that haven’t been addressed from yesterday, the day before or last week, the time to do work has gone.

A reader of the Unlike Before blog Bob, made a comment on an earlier blog post about urgency. While the topic was different his comment is absolutely valid here too: “A great example of the fast-food, instant gratification and the "if I want it today, I'll ask for it tomorrow" mindset that is so pervasive today. I think people are equating/confusing the speed of communication with actual reaction time, which clearly can't keep up. This then gets tied to the conduit vs filter mentality, ie just pass the info along, don't look at it to see if it makes sense or is well-defined, and voila, urgency without accountability = paralysis.”

Somehow email has created behaviour where we anticipate and almost expect some form of instant gratification via fast turnaround. As Bob said it looks like speed of communication is being confused with actual reaction time. Sending, forwarding and exchanging emails can actually result in more delays than helping get any work done. People still have meetings to attend, documents to review, feedback to give, make decisions, talk to other people and the million other things that makes a business successful.

We need to be smarter about how we manage our email. We need to liberate ourselves from this dependency. Think about setting aside certain blocks of time in the calendar to focus on email leaving the rest of the time for meetings and doing work. Read our 5 Rules for Email Emancipation and add any others that work for you.

Above all, let’s get some real work done.

5 Rules for Email Emancipation

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 15:52:00 +0000

Is email managing you or are you managing your email? Meetings used to take up every spare minute of the day and now there's email to contend with before, during and after all those meetings. The amount of time we spend in front of our computers has taken the personal out of almost all our interactions and we're probably still not getting any real work done.

Here are 5 Rules or suggestions on how to take control back and liberate yourself from the burden of email, bring some personal back into play and become the IT Managers new best friend.

Addressing – if you’re going to ask someone to do something in the body of the email make sure they are addressed correctly in the email by putting them in the ‘To’ box. Cc’ing people says this is for their info / to keep them in the loop/up to date. Just as meeting etiquette says don’t assign actions to someone who wasn’t in the meeting, email etiquette says you use the To and CC boxes correctly.
Rules – reduce the volume in your Inbox through rules. Creating a cc rule for example is a great way to sort the wheat from the chaff. When emails arrive with your address in the cc box the cc rule will shift them straight into your cc box on arrival. You can then focus on those emails addressed to you that need your action or attention (refer Rule 1 above) and get up to speed on those cc ones at a time you’ve allocated for clearing your cc box.
Attachments – remember the last 10mb file attachment you received that ground your system to a complete halt? It’s easy to click that attachment button sending huge files to multiple people without thinking of the consequences but don’t be surprised the next time your IT Manager tells you how much the extra disk space is going to cost for the overloaded email server. 1 x 10mb file x 10 people on your distribution list is a reasonable chunk of storage in one foul swoop. Think before you click! Try using something like box.net – share files securely on-line for free!
Folders – Anyone can create a folder and drag and drop emails into it. Keep your sent and deleted files by using an Archive. Move decisions and agreements or emails about budgets or pricing off into separate folders. There’s no rule regarding naming conventions or structures just as there are no rules for your paper filing cabinets. Figure out what works for you and add / adjust over time based on purpose and project. Then create rules (refer 2 above) and voila, your email filing system is working for you.
Salutations and Content – both need to be appropriate for the audience, your relationship with them and the subject matter. It’s non-sensicle to use ‘Dear’ when ‘Hi’ is more appropriate. We can all type content we read to be non-contentious, clear and concise. Problem is we’re not the receiver and the receiver reads it with their own interpretation and meaning. There’s no magic wand for this problem because where there are people there is personal interpretation. So perhaps keeping to the point and laying out the facts is a good starting place, then pick up the phone or go and see the receiver in person for anything else.

Footnote: If the person is sitting next to you, down the hall, or somewhere within coo-ee of your timezone pick up the phone and call them. It may turn out that email you were going to write was going to be sent barking up the wrong tree.

Empowerment - Yeah Right!

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 12:18:00 +0000

“We empower our employees.” The sentiment and intent of this statement reverberates through the air and bounces off walls. Commendable as it may sound, how often it really happens and to what extent is questionable.

This post sets about challenging the hype and supposed rocket science that seems to embody the process of empowering others. When will all leaders be prepared to achieve more by simply getting out of the way?

Empowerment like many other leadership activities is often hindered by the hype and buzz that builds up around such an intangible statement. They somehow become a thing that has to be done rather than something that just is. Maybe employers are scared. Scared because they perceive they’ll lose control, be overtaken by their employees, become redundant.

In my opinion when employers talk about empowerment what they’re really saying is they seek to encourage their staff to think for themselves, to come up with ideas, participate, and generally show initiative within a set of controls and after specific direction. But isn’t that why employees are hired in the first place? Permitting them to do what they’re hired to isn’t empowerment no matter what fancy ribbon or consultant-speak it’s tied up with. Writing about empowerment in his book “The Search for Leadership”, William Tate refers to Henry Mintzberg. He writes and I quote “Henry Mintzberg (1999) offers the view that real empowerment is the most natural state of affairs: people know what they have to do and simply get on with it. If an organisation exhibits real empowerment, it doesn’t need to talk about it.”

Trouble is people usually just hear and experience ‘talk’ and let’s face it talk is easy. Walking that talk is harder and can be complicated by a need for control. If you want a job done properly, do it yourself – right? Well no actually. If that was the case why hire anyone? Think micro-management. It still exists in various forms and when it does empowerment cannot. It’s not possible to empower people when looking over their shoulder all the time. Giving someone specific instructions means they don’t have to turn on any brain cells in order to do what they’re told.

In an organisation where control is king, telling people they’re empowered is contradictory and nonsensical. People aren’t stupid so insulting their intelligence in this way is dis-empowering. They know this type of culture doesn’t permit let alone support empowerment. Any such edict, because that’s what it is, will be met with ‘Yeah right! Like that's going to be possible.’ People need to believe they are empowered otherwise they cannot operate in an empowered way. It doesn’t matter what the talk is, if the perception is one of disbelief they will not feel empowered.

It’s time to stop the talk and make the change; out with control freaks and in with awe-inspiring, respected, intelligent leaders who bring about cultural changes and know that empowerment happens naturally when given half a chance. Leaders can go from good to great on the empowerment scale; they just need to get out of the way.

Great leaders trust their people and their people trust them. They can set the scene, describe the challenge, and share any information that gives context or builds understanding. People need to be aware of any other agendas, expectations or objectives too. Real empowerment will not happen if there’s a perception of prescribed or predetermined outcomes.

All leaders regardless of their position of power are responsible for and have a responsibility to empower others. Like many characteristics of a great leader, empowerment isn’t rocket science. It just is so let it be.

Festive Greetings to All

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:06:00 +0000

Best Wishes for a very Happy Christmas.

May 2011 encourage everyone to Change Through Action.

Winner Announced - 2010 IPMA Young Project Manager Award

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:37:00 +0000

Congratulations to Shailesh Nepal who won the IPMA Young Project Manager Award for 2010.

Mr. Nepal was presented with the prestigious award at the IPMA Global Young Crew Workshop and Gala Dinner on October 30, 2010 in Istanbul, Turkey. He was honored for his contributions to the China Engineering Railway Corporation Project as the Deputy Contract Manager and Senior Construction Engineer.

“Shailesh Nepal embodies the traits of a dynamic emerging leader that is dedicated to advancing project management” says Jhaymee S. Wilson, IPMA Young Crew Board Member and coordinator for the 2010 award. “We are excited to honor Mr. Nepal and all of our finalists on their accomplishments in the field. Their dedication and impact to the project management profession proves that our finalists are leaders and influencers on a global scale.”

The 2011 IPMA Young Project Manager Award application will be available online in the Spring of 2011. The award will be presented at the 2011 IPMA Global Young Crew Workshop in Brisbane, Australia, 8-9 October 2011. For more information about this award and others sponsored by IPMA and the IPMA Young Crew, visit http://www.ipma.ch/.

"We were honoured to participate on the Jury Panel for the 2010 Award" said Deanne Earle, "and are very honoured to have been asked to participate again in 2011. The calibre of the finalists this year was outstanding setting an exceptionally high standard for those applying in 2011. Congratulations again to Shailesh and the other finalists."

About IPMA Young Crew: IPMA Young Crew is a key component of IPMA’s growth and development of the leaders of tomorrow. It is an active network of young project management professionals and students aged 25 to 35 who believe in community and the building of a worldwide young professional project management family. More information about the 2010 Young Project Manager Award is available at http://www.ipma.ch/crew/Pages/YoungProjectManagerAward.aspx.

The Importance of R&R

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 12:33:00 +0000

A new project and what it could mean for an organisation is exciting. It’s very easy to get caught up in that excitement and forget that a project is the sum of many parts and people. Companies don’t operate as isolated instances so why would projects. Start introducing global programmes and company portfolios and the hierarchy necessary to manage that work effort for a joined-up solution increases exponentially.

Delivering successful projects relies on an approach that’s robust and mature enough to set clear terms of reference and give everyone the instruction, information and support they need in order to succeed.

How do you shape up?

The definition and assignment of roles and responsibilities are critical aspects to this. Take the role of project manager as an example. They have responsibility for overall delivery of the project yet their role includes many sub-responsibilities. They’re expected to have sufficient knowledge and experience to juggle, prioritise, lead, drive, and manage every one of them. The role of a project manager isn’t easy; it takes guts, courage, dogged determination and a combination of carrot and stick to manage and coordinate the multitude of tasks running in parallel. And let’s not forget the people management skills necessary to understand all the different personalities and characteristics of everyone involved.

Managers, whether project or line, come in a range of shapes, sizes and experience levels. There are good, bad and lost ones. I’m sure we could debate and come up with many more categories but it’s the lost ones who I think need some special focus. Project managers can be lost for many reasons. Maybe they bit off more than they thought they could chew. Sometimes they’re lost because the person hiring them was also lost and made a poor hiring decision that’s resulted in a square peg in round-hole scenario. Perhaps they interpreted the role as something other than what it is.

How could someone misinterpret a role? It’s surprisingly easy actually. Long-ago I attended a communications course where we learned how messages are relayed between people. It went something like this... The speaker decides what they want to say (thought), they formulate the words for the message (meaning), they send the message (speak). The listener hears the message (hearing), interprets the message (meaning) and adds it to their information bank (knowledge). Whether the listener has received the same message as the speaker intended is up for debate. Hence misunderstanding and misinterpretation, also known as Chinese whispers. Feedback is very important here to check understanding.

If someone appears confused about their role and responsibilities or is not delivering against them as expected, those who put them in that position must own up, be accountable and take action to change the situation both now and in the future. Project management methodologies have a term for this - ‘Lessons Learned’. They’re an objective review of what’s happened, what went well and what didn’t, and what actions need to be taken for continuous improvement. But, they're absolutely useless unless action is taken (read a well written blog post about this by Todd Williams of Back From Red).

The following steps form a guide for taking action for clearer roles and responsibilities:

Are the terms of reference clear? This includes scope, boundaries, goals, objectives, and the relationship to the wider programme or organisation.
Are the roles and responsibilities well defined and documented? This is necessary for all project roles not just the ‘management’ ones. People need clarity around expectations and how to work or interact with others.
What is the process for communicating 1 and 2 to those appointed? Face-to-face is ideal unless there are virtual teams of course. Then it’s best to get on the phone and walk through everything. Email communication doesn’t cut the mustard with this except to circulate the definitions.
What is the mechanism for checking understanding? There must be feedback whether it’s verbal or by watching body language. Body language is difficult with virtual teams unless video-conferencing is available. Even without video it’s possible to check understanding using active listening skills and checking for what’s not being said and everything being positive.
How is performance monitored, assessed, kept on track? What is the feedback loop? If something or someone isn’t working how will you know about it? Again virtual teams make this more difficult however virtualisation is an acceptable way to deliver projects now. Virtual or not, the human factor cannot be excluded. Talk to people, build trust, and open the way for people to feel able to say ‘I don’t understand’ or ‘I’m confused’. This ensures problems are addressed quickly rather than building into a much larger problem with wide-reaching implications.

It’s not enough to address the immediate problem. To really create change, the overall approach must be revisited. Only once it can expand and contract to the size of the project, programme or portfolio can you say that it’s reached a high level of maturity. Don’t be fooled though as any approach along with the definition of all roles and responsibilities must continue to adapt as organisations and projects evolve.

What are you doing to provide clear terms of reference and ensure both parties share a common meaning of a role and its responsibilities?

Age doesn't equal Maturity

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 10:20:00 +0000

Some things do improve as they age – fine wines or certain cheeses are prime examples. Unfortunately age is no guarantee that either will deliver excellent results to the consumer. The wine may be from a poor vintage or not be stored properly for good maturation, and the cheese well, the less said about rank cheese the better.

Organisations and how they deliver projects or services are a bit like good wine and cheese; successful quality outcomes depend on many inputs. In an organisations case those inputs can be identified as the maturity of people, process, technology and the organisation itself.

What is maturity if it’s not about age?

For me it’s about how developed the inputs are at a point in time to deliver the expected results. The following grid is simple yet illustrates my theory:

Level 1 = Low maturity over a short period
Level 2 = Low maturity sustained over a long period
Level 3 = High maturity gained over a short period
Level 4 = High maturity gained over a long period

Categorising inputs on this basis is, as we all know, not as simple as it seems. Like most things it’s subject to risk and variability. People for example may be young biologically yet mature in their approach, their ability to provide leadership, and have the attributes to work at a level that far surpasses their peers. Should they automatically be categorised into Level 1? Probably not. What about the person with a long and successful career who is, in certain situations, unable to effectively handle difficult stakeholders and decision inertia? Where do they go – Level 2 or 4? It depends - on the situation and how that situation is likely to evolve over time.

Regardless of how the inputs are evaluated let’s be honest and acknowledge that even if all the stars are aligned there will be pain during a projects life cycle. It would be utterly dishonest to say otherwise. But it takes two to tango and the project is just a vehicle, something created for a given purpose and specific time frame to deliver against a particular set of objectives. The organisation needs to make sure the people and processes assigned are mature enough to deliver. It’s simply not good enough for a business or vendor to say ‘the processes are in place and we have good people’ if those processes are new or over-engineered and the people involved are unable to differentiate between process for process sake and what makes sense. Personally I don’t buy those trust-me conversations.

What can be done to improve maturity levels? Unfortunately there is no magic-wand. Benchmarking is an obvious choice and there are many tools, techniques and consultants ready to help perform comparisons for high fees – some sophisticated and others not. A quick search on google UK for “Project Management Maturity Model” returns over 1 million results in the blink of an eye. Other options are more obvious and pragmatic yet perhaps not as attractive or popular against high-cost acronym-toting methodologies. That’s not to say an industry-standard globally-recognised approach that measures maturity against the big-guns isn’t worth the effort or investment. All I’m suggesting is maturing anything can sometimes get lost as the methodology takes over.

Why not look at what’s physically happening? What are people saying? What are they experiencing? Where are additional processes being introduced because the existing ones don’t work, can’t cope, take too long, or are too bureaucratic? What is being done with or to the technology because ‘it doesn’t meet our needs’, ie: it doesn’t fit with our old outdated processes that our people are too immature in their understanding to recognise. Then make decisions and take action – the two most important attributes of change. Remove people from projects who are clearly out of their depth. Help them find a mentor and give them time to develop. Stop insisting a process is used when it clearly adds no value. Check it out and change or get rid of it. Focus on improving and streamlining those that are imperative to customer satisfaction not internal justification.

In today’s ever changing business environment where the drive is for leaner, faster, more and all cheaper than it was last week, it’s untrue to say that nothing will ever reach maturity. Things do, they just don’t have to be old first.

Finalists Announced - 2010 IPMA Young Project Manager Award

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 11:36:00 +0000

IPMA Young Crew Announces Finalists for the 2010 Young Project Manager Award

On September 24th the finalists for the 2010 IPMA Young Project Manager Award were announced. The winner of the award will be announced at the 2010 IPMA Young Crew Workshop Gala Dinner being held at the Hilton Istanbul Hotel in Istanbul, Turkey as part of the IPMA World Congress from 1-3 November 2010.

Introduced in 2006 the IPMA Young Project Manager Award recognizes rising talent in the project and program management industries by honouring young project managers that have demonstrated invaluable impact to the profession and for the companies for whom they work, and are on the fast track to becoming project leaders and influencers on an international scale.

"We received the largest number of applications ever for this year’s award." says Jhaymee S. Wilson, IPMA Young Crew Management Board Member and Coordinator for the award. "We are inspired by the high caliber of our candidates, and we have no doubts that among these names are some of our next great leaders."

The finalists for the 2010 IPMA Young Project Manager Award are:

Anne Hoffman, Siemens Wind Power A/S
Saad Hegazy, United Expert
Shailesh Nepal, China Engineering Railway Corporation, China and Tundi Construction Pvt. Ltd. Nepal JV

Deanne Earle said "As one of 5 on the jury panel I found it both interesting and challenging to judge the short-listed applicants for this years Award. The standards were high and each persons contribution to their project was outstanding. I congratulate the 3 finalists and wish them every success for this Award and their future careers."

About IPMA Young Crew: IPMA Young Crew is a key component of IPMA’s growth and development of the leaders of tomorrow. It is an active network of young project management professionals and students aged 25 to 35 who believe in community and the building of a worldwide young professional project management family. More information about the 2010 Young Project Manager Award is available at http://www.ipma.ch/crew/Pages/YoungProjectManagerAward.aspx.

Interview with Commsabilities

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:54:00 +0000

A couple of months ago I had the honour of being asked by Jo Ann Sweeney of Sweeney Communications Ltd to participate in an interview. She was interviewing a number of project management practitioners across the globe for a series of articles on communication skills. The group she chose to interview were all highly skilled individuals with many years of project experience in different parts of the globe and I was delighted to be included on her list. The result of her efforts is an excellent series of blog posts covering the top 5 communication skills for project managers - active listening, building relationships based on trust, setting clear priorities and enabling collaboration.

Not only was being interviewed by Jo Ann a great opportunity to share my thoughts and experiences in a different forum, it was also very interesting to read the finished articles and see just how similar the combined groups opinions, beliefs and ideas actually were. So while our project and organisational challenges may come in various shapes and sizes, underneath it all they're really not that different.

As well as her series of blog posts Jo Ann wrote a summary article called “5 Essential Rules for Project Leaders”, which was published on the PMI (Project Management Institute) website. To keep up with her latest publications subscribe to her RSS feed and if you're part of the Twitter world add her to your follow list. I have!

Thanks again Jo Ann.

Busting the Myth of 'It's different here'

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:37:00 +0000

Companies, Projects, are they really any different from one country to another? I say NO! and having recently returned from foreign shores I thought it might be time to bust the myth that exists with ‘but it’s different here’.

Let’s go on a small journey and take a look at you, the company.

You have:

A structure – depending on your size there may be a Board, some Directors, a Chief, some bosses and a bunch of worker bees.
A strategy – you know where you’re going, how you’re going to get there over the next however many months or years, what you’ll make/do/provide along the way, where you’ll sell it and how much you’ll earn from it. You might even buy someone else or sell yourself at some stage.
A workforce – again your size will determine your need for worker bees. If you have some you’ll have a raft of HR related things to support; salaries to pay, holidays to give, and gifts and bonuses for those who achieve targets or greatness through hard work.
A plan of work – with work to do you’ll have processes to support your product or service, whether you promote, buy, sell, make or deliver.
A culture – the way you work. The behaviours exhibited that makes your company a GREAT place to work; respected in the market by customers and competitors alike. This is what irritates your competitors, makes your customers love you and people desperate to work for you.

You’re also busy doing every day business as usual tasks that are all standard business practice; market analysis, risk assessment and control, promotion, staff training and development, improvements, upgrades, hiring/firing, investment, expansion, mergers, acquisitions, sales, and R&D to name a few.

One thing you find really useful is to setup projects so you can handle change to business as usual in bite sized chunks. Projects are an accepted way of bringing structure, formality and control to something that is:

Business critical or at least big enough to require formalisation and control
Going to cost money
Dependent on informed decision making
Going to take time, which can’t be wasted as time = money

All projects have issues, risks, schedules, budgets, people, resources, controls, reporting, milestones, deliverables; that’s why project management exists and project management is a process. So when you break it down an entity called a project is structured the same regardless of where you are in the world.

On my far away project colleagues would cry in moments of frustration “Well that’s (co. name) for you!” to which I felt compelled to respond with “Sorry that’s not actually true. It’s the same everywhere and I mean everywhere!” The thing that frustrated them so much was not unique to their company. It’s the same thing that happens everywhere – the words didn’t match the actions and values were being compromised.

Back to our myth; it’s not different ‘here’, it’s actually the same shit in a different country. Even with a different wrapping and different people involved who may or may not speak the same language or have the same cultural beliefs, it doesn’t matter. All those differences create are new challenges and a learning curve that your processes will handle.

So while you Mr/Mrs/Ms Company may offer something unique to the market, you and your projects are I’m afraid, not unique. You have the same issues, processes, and challenges just like everyone else. Deal with them, celebrate resolving them and move on to the next pile. Go be a great company where people want to work. They believe in you because what you say matches what you do.

The Value of Values

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:40:00 +0000

Values, everyone has them whether they’re written down or not. Some are negative and some are positive. It’s belief in them that gives them credibility and establishes their value. Where a mission statement defines a company’s purpose, it is the values that help define the behaviours it wants exhibited in order to achieve the mission. Companies can spend ridiculously large sums of money defining, documenting and displaying their values. They’re often quick to capitalise both internally to staff and externally to their market, when they (usually senior management or executives) are displaying those carefully crafted values. Yet it’s interesting to observe how much faster they are to minimise, possibly even ignore, when they’re not. Dare I suggest these often very expensive values only have value when it suits?

Some readers may be quick to point out a touch of cynicism and I’m not about to deny that may be the case, just as I always say ‘No’ as my starting position when negotiating a scope change to a project. Seriously though, how many times have you seen a list of values so lovingly laminated and proudly displayed in the corridors, inconsistently applied? What of those unwritten and unacknowledged values? Those that support ‘when it suits me’ or ‘subject to my agenda being satisfied’. Why aren’t they included on the list? If values are, and I quote “judgements about what is important” and “along with worldview and personality, they generate behaviour”, then surely along with the positive we should also include the more negative or perhaps controversial ones. After all one persons negative could be another’s positive and not everything can be fabulous all the time.

A recent discussion about a company that changed one of their value statements from openness and integrity to honesty with integrity suggested a need to change behaviours. Basically everyone was being far too open and there was potential for people to know too much. I can see how this can be a bit dangerous for a company, particularly when it comes to moles or leaks who like nothing better than to pass information on to those who shouldn’t have it. The change they made may have meant ‘we’ll be honest about the stuff we do say, we just won’t say everything’. Well, at least that’s honest and tells everyone where things stand.

Values are about creating a culture and environment of desired behaviours and the value comes when they are believed by those on the receiving end. Rosabeth Moss Kanter writes in her blog post “Ten Essentials for Getting Value from Values” for the Harvard Business Review, “it's not the words that make a difference; it's the conversation”. The behaviours experienced consistently every single day without exception must support a company’s defined values, be part of all conversations and generate belief.

If that leads to values being listed along the lines of:

Keeping everyone in the dark, ie: Fear
Expecting loyalty while giving none in return, ie: Selfishness
Following the 'do as I say' model, not the 'do as I do' one, ie: Double-standards
Always being unavailable particularly when difficult decisions are required, ie: Invisible

at least be honest about it. Look at what is on the values list and challenge it. Make the list real. If an organisation wants to:

Change the culture
Be a great place to work
Develop loyal customers

spending mega-bucks to refresh the values list is probably not the answer and will likely cost a packet. Far more can be achieved by simply matching the spoken and written word with everyday actions. Take a leaf out of The Undercover Boss TV program – get out of the office, mix with the troops on the ground, and find out how those beautifully branded and laminated lists are really being applied. Whether the experience results in personnel changes, training, coaching, or the type of wobbly only a 4 year old in a supermarket can have, it’d be worth it. Employees are the ones who will vote with their feet when a company’s values don’t match their own. They lose faith, stop believing and feel they’re compromising their personal values.

Don’t run the risk of losing excellent, dedicated, knowledgeable employees. Value the values and whatever makes the list, be honest about them and in action with them at all times!

Podcast with Guerrilla Project Management

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:46:00 +0000

Earlier this year I was absolutely delighted to be interviewed by Samad Aidane for his Guerrilla Project Management podcast. Samad is not only a genuine and generous guy who I'm honoured to know, he's also a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with over 15 years of IT experience. His Guerrilla Project Management blog is the place for "conversations about the mindset that Project Managers must adopt to be able to effectively manage today’s complex projects".

An experienced and good PM is always prepared and Samad proved this 10 fold with his prep work. He didn't just flick a few questions through on an email, oh no; Samad had absolutely done his homework and identified exactly the pieces from my articles he thought would interest his audience. I'm just glad he forwarded them to me so I had sufficient time to get my responses into some semblance of order!

Figuring out our time zones was probably the most difficult part as Samad made our interview together feel like we were having a normal conversation. Go listen and while you're there subscribe to his RSS feed, listen to his other podcasts and read through his various blog posts. You won't regret it.

International Young Project Manager Award 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Sun, 23 May 2010 02:27:00 +0000

Nominations are now open for the 2010 IPMA Young Project Manager Award. Introduced in 2006 at the IPMA Young Crew conference in Shanghai, China, the IPMA Young Project Manager Award recognizes rising talent in the project and program management industries by honoring young project managers for their accomplishments early in their careers. These honorees have demonstrated invaluable impact to both their profession and their companies, and are on the fast track to becoming influential project leaders on an international scale.

Unlike Before is thrilled to be a member of the esteemed award jury who will be assisting with selecting the finalists for this award. ”Being asked to participate in the selection process for the 2010 IPMA Young Project Manager Award is an enormous honour.” says Deanne Earle, Director of Unlike Before Ltd, ”It’s critically important to recognise talented project managers early in their careers as through their success we can sustain strong project leadership into the future.”

All prospective applicants should complete the online application. Initial applications will be accepted by the Award Committee until midnight, 30 June 2010 Eastern Standard Time (EST). Details about the application procedure, assessment criteria and award jury can be found on the IPMA website.

Read more or submit your application here.

When Urgent isn't Urgent at all

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:43:00 +0000

In January I was chatting with someone I know who asked if I knew anyone who could ‘operationalise a project’. What he meant was that his company needs help with business readiness and handover of what has been a very long project. Of course I reminded him who he was talking to and started asking questions about what was needed and the timeframe. Our conversation concluded with a mutual understanding that the need was urgent.

Now urgent to me means that the situation is important enough to require immediate attention; straight-away, no mucking about, decision made, let’s get on with it. Even the online Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as:

urgent adjective 1) requiring immediate action or attention 2) earnest and insistent

Pretty clear really isn't it? Apparently not...

Almost a month later and having touched base regularly we are both still waiting for a decision as to who will fill this apparently urgent need. Now to me this need can’t be urgent even if he’s adamant it is and the organisation cannot afford a delay.

However frustrating this is for both of us the delay is creating cost – directly and indirectly. Leaving aside the fact that I know this project is years (yes, years) overdue and understand the quality of the product expected to go live is substandard; the amount of time and money wasted in the last month is not something to be sniffed at and just adds to the waste that’s already occurred.

Let’s say for example the cost of each person involved in discussing this urgent need is £100 per hour and to date there have been 8 people that I know of involved in various discussions about involving an experienced external person who can, without any agenda, accelerate the pace of readiness then strengthen and deliver the handover process. If each of these 8 people has spent on average 12 hours or 1.5 days during the past month in ad hoc conversations, emails and phone calls, the cost of this alone is £9600. Now that may not seem like a lot of money to many in the corporate world and could be written off as business as usual, but remember I’m only allowing for the 8 people I know of. You still need to add on top the opportunity cost lost in that month. The longer the company takes to sort out their urgent need the more time is lost, which incidentally cannot be regained due to unmoveable deadlines, the less likely they are to gain any traction with business readiness and they continue to spend more on repeat workshops, other vendor / 3rd party involvement, and re-scoping requirements for what could well end up being a product that’s unfit for purpose and unsupportable by operations. It will add up to a very large number though I’d bet a packet of chocolate biscuits that no one is thinking about it like this.

Even though these 8 people are primarily internal and therefore paid for their time as part of their job, it is still incredibly inefficient, financially wasteful, frustrating and results in unnecessary pressure and stress for those expected to deliver regardless of decision makers not being able to make decisions, which brings us back to urgent.

It is very obvious that one person’s urgent is not the same as another’s. When you think you have an urgent requirement take a moment and do a reality check with those around you:

Urgent according to whom?
What other agendas support or refute this urgency?
Who’s actually interested in giving what you think is urgent immediate attention? What’s in it for them?
Perhaps more importantly, who’s not interested and how could that impact the situation?
What’s the cost from a delay or no action at all?
What are the savings or benefits from immediate action?

It seems that urgent has become another overused term and no longer reflects reality. Have we lost the ability to properly categorise and prioritise anything? Is operational urgency less important than strategic? Is nothing really urgent until customer retention diminishes, market share shrinks and profit margins are squeezed?

Perhaps it’s time to take another look at what urgent really means.

Mind the Gap – Where emotional intelligence rules

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:10:00 +0000

Anyone who’s been on London’s Underground will have heard the world famous warning for passengers. “Mind the Gap” was introduced in 1969 to warn passengers about the space between the train carriage and the platform. Just like passengers in a hurry or who think they know best run the risk of falling between the two, businesses need to maintain conscious awareness of the very real and tangible gap existing between their strategy and desire to achieve effective operational change.

Business Strategies are specific when it comes to the organisation's mission, vision and objectives; Direction is clear, ROI specified, and growth expectations and market share targets listed to support both. Now the challenge starts. This beautifully constructed well thought out strategy must be turned into operational reality and if the strategy is one that sees the business moving through previously uncharted waters, there will be the inevitable changes along the way to operational practises.

What's all this got to do with emotional intelligence?

In order to successfully translate the strategy, disseminate it through to operations and minimise the pain experienced during times of change, leadership is paramount. In his book “High Flyers – Developing the next generation of leaders”, Morgan W. McCall, Jr talks about linking business strategy and executive development. He suggests an “organisations ability to achieve strategic objectives will depend in large part on the leadership ability of executive leaders.” This makes perfect sense but what makes an effective leader and how can they reduce this very real gap?

Really good quality effective leaders are generally recognised as those who have developed a high degree of emotional intelligence. William Tate references emotional intelligence in his book “The Search for Leadership – An Organisational Perspective” when he discusses the two halves of organisation life. I’ve referred to William Tate in previous posts and will continue to do so because I see how his ‘Systems Thinking’ approach will transform leadership within organisations. His discussion about the two halves of organisation life sees him refer to what he calls the rational half and the non-rational half. The rational side holds all those elements we fully expect to be associated with a business and its strategy: Strategic plans, Directives, Job Titles, Policies, Organisation Charts, etc. These are if you like, tangible things you can physically touch or at least see pinned up on a wall somewhere; they are documents and diagrams that are reference points along with targets that can be measured as time progresses. Then there’s the non-rational half, which is where I firmly believe much more can be achieved at a much faster rate, particularly during times of change. These non-rational factors form the heart of an organisation and are where the gold nuggets are to be found: trust, friendship, power, culture, ambition, fears and insecurities, the corridor conversation and grapevine etc.

These non-rational factors are more implicit and concern the “who” rather than the “how”. It’s these things that effective leaders really understand and act upon. They are tuned-in to emotions, feelings, behaviours and motivations in both themselves and those around them. They can answer the ‘what’s in it for me’ question, which is just one of many employees ask when they’re expected to buy-in to the strategy, work for the good of the company and achieve the objectives set to maximise the ROI to ultimately make the shareholders or investors happy.

So here’s my call to action for you. Pull out that strategy and take another look at it. Don’t just look at the how, put effort into considering the who and consider all the non-rational factors as it’s these that will play a far larger part in delivering a well defined strategy. Only once they are understood will you have the solid foundation to be more effective in closing the gap.

Close the Gap

noreply@blogger.com (Deanne Earle, Owner of Unlike Before Ltd) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:27:00 +0000

Readers Survey - Results

There are very few instances in fact I struggle to think of even one example, where an IT-led project will not impact the organisation through some sort of structure, people or process change. Time and again I see a gap existing between the delivery of a project and the organisational change it inevitably creates. Often companies will engage expensive consultants to help with the organisations cultural and process changes; sometimes they do this at the same time as running an IT project, however even if the two are running in parallel they’re generally tracking along their own path and seldom if ever come together.

Because I specialise in this area I wanted to understand if the critical success factors and challenges this gap presents to a business have changed with the global economic climate. I was also interested in the actions or processes you are taking or putting in place to reduce this gap. Hence the December Survey - Organisational Change and IT-led Project Management Processes.

So what did the survey tell me? Well, some very interesting things actually but you'll have to read on to find out.

With all the doom and gloom in the media about redundancies, business closures, and budget cuts I expected the survey to reflect this with no investment being made in organisation and project process improvement. How wrong was I?!

40% of our respondents are conducting significant reviews of their organisational change and IT-led project management processes right now. What are the main drivers for doing this? 60% said they’re doing it to improve their internal services. This is great news as it shows companies remain focused on process improvement, productivity and of course the cost savings streamlining processes always brings. This is even more critical in times of economic gloom as it readies the business for the good times to come.

If 40% is actively reviewing their processes now, what are the other 60% doing? Well 30% had just reviewed everything a year or more ago (excellent though might be time to revisit again), but more concerning is the 30% who didn’t know when their company had last conducted a significant review. Imagine the productivity increases and cost savings they’re missing out on by doing the same thing in the same way in completely different economic and market conditions?

Only 20% of our respondents said their current organisational change and project management processes met their requirements well. That’s a very small number. 30% said their requirements were adequately met while a larger 40% said their needs were NOT adequately met. How can a business expect to achieve its objectives and profit margins if the organisation is not supporting it through ‘fit-for-purpose’ processes and projects? Thankfully 50% of respondents say their organisational change activities and projects are either already aligned or they have plans to align them, but it’s the 20% who don’t know how to go about doing this that would do well to ask for some help.

And what did our respondents say were the main barriers to aligning organisational change activities with projects? Of the items listed Departmental Agendas, Understanding and Culture presented high or significant barriers. You might be surprised to know that Cost, Timing and Stakeholder buy-in all rated average – so while they exist as barriers they are areas that can be managed and coordinated. You told me the areas that bring the most benefit were Reduced Costs, Empowerment of individuals or teams, Increased buy-in of all stakeholders, and Reduced time to profitability. This suggests the effort involved in closing the gap will provide clearer sense of purpose, everyone will understand more about who has to do what, where, when and how, and overall processes will be more streamlined making execution and delivery faster, with higher quality and less cost. Exactly what you want!

How then are you going about achieving this? Do you have lots of high-calibre expertise in-house able to take on this work in addition to their already stretched roles? Apparently not! 50% of you already use or are considering using skilled external resources. Why? Again 50% of you say you use external resource to “Gain access to best practice knowledge not available in house”. This is a wise and cost-effective approach as it allows you to augment your existing team with specialist skills for the time you need them. If you choose your external resources well they’ll come in, quickly understand what it is you want to achieve, maybe challenge your thinking a bit so you’ll achieve even more, get things done while working alongside your people to transfer skills and knowledge so they gain new ideas and work methods to be self-sufficient going forward. At least that’s how I help clients…

The investment areas for processes have 40% of you focused on improving integration with other core systems. The rest of you are pretty evenly spread across integration with suppliers and customers throughout the supply chain and unlocking existing functionality that is not being used. With all the hype around SEO technologies and the use of tools such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter it was surprising to see only 20% of you are considering investment in processes for SEO enabling technologies, systems and functions. With regards business focused system or service purchases a staggering 0% of you are considering SEO, 50% e-Commerce or CRM, and 30% don’t plan to make any purchases at all. Does that suggest there is still a lot of battening down the hatches and budget cuts?

Aside from everything else only 20% of you are considering business focused system or service purchases in the PMO (Portfolio/Program Management Office) area. Perhaps this suggests your projects are all delivering what, when and how they should and it’s just that gap of alignment with the organisation that’s letting the side down. Regardless there appears to be an unaltered requirement amongst our readers to continually improve processes, make use of the right people with the right skills on the right activities at the right time, and invest where it will bring the most benefit to the business overall.

This is a satisfying outcome however the results show there’s still a long way to go to truly close the gap.