What motivates people? As a project manager, it’s very important to understand what motivates your team members for high performance and satisfaction.  If you understand these intrinsic motivating factors, the best you can do is to create the environment where such a person can motivate him/herself.

What really motivates us

Most of us believe that the best way to motivate ourselves and others is with external rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That’s a mistake, Daniel H. Pink says in, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, his persuasive new book. The secret to high performance and satisfaction is the deep human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

According to Dan Pink there is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. Looking at the results from scientific research on human motivation, the carrot and sticks methods worked successfully in the 20^th century, but it’s the wrong way to motivate people for today’s challenges. Extrinsic motivators may still work as a motivator for many kinds of simpler tasks with a simple set of rules and a clear destination to reach. But it certainly doesn’t work for most project tasks and for creative solutions type of work.

Research has proven that financial incentives can cause poorer performance. Rewards narrow our focus and concentrate the mind. Rewards also restrict our potential and harms creative thinking.

I’m sure you can see the problem here. But what is the solution?

Intrinsic motivation

There is a whole new approach built around intrinsic motivation. This relates to the desire to do things because they matter, because we like it, because they’re interesting and because they’re part of something important.

According to Dan Pink the three elements of true motivation are:

1. Autonomy: the urge to direct our own lives
2. Mastery: the desire to get better and better at something that matters
3. Purpose: the yearning to do what we do in service of something larger than ourselves.

An example of these motivators in action is ROWE (results only work environment).

People show up when they want and they don’t need to be in the office at a certain time. They just have to get the work done. How, where and when they do it, is totally up to them.

Where ROWE is implemented, the results are interesting.  Productivity goes up, worker engagement goes up, worker satisfaction goes up and turnover goes down.

In projects it could be called DBOE (Deliverable-based only environment). This means that team members are managed based on their output.

I have been part of this type of work environments and I can testify that it works. Working in an autonomous environment allows the worker to draw on internal motivation to perform well. In this environment I also manage project team members based on their deliverables and the quality of the output.  I fulfil the role of a facilitator and a leader more than a manager. Motivated workers really manage themselves.

A good real life example of this is at Google where workers may spend 20% of their time per week, usually Fridays, to work on anything they want. They have autonomy over their time, their task, their team and their techniques. About half of Google’s new products are birthed during the 20% time, e.g. Gmail, Orkut.

If high performance and job satisfaction is what you are after for your team in 2010, it is best to create the environment where intrinsic motivating factors drive teams’ performance and creates a sense of satisfaction.

About the author: Linky Van Der Merwe is a Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager with 15 years IT industry experience and 12 years Project Management experience.

Video: The surprising truth about what motivates us – adapted from a talk by Dan Pink.

With a wide array of proprietary project management software available, it can be overwhelming for small to medium businesses to decide which project management software is right for them and what they can afford.

I recently discovered this information relating to Google applications that can be used to supplement the project management function in your business.

Google Applications provides a less expensive, Web-based alternative to traditional proprietary software. In addition to the standard Gmail, Calendar and Doc features, there are a wide variety of integrated apps available that add functionality to Google Apps. These integrated apps also include single sign-on capability, thereby limiting the number of passwords users must remember.

This slideshow features 10 of the highest-rated applications for project management from the Google Apps Marketplace.

When you finish watching the presentation, please return to this page and tell us in the comments which Google Applications you are using already or which you plan to use in future.

Today I would like to make a comparison of different project management software that is out there. I must admit that being in the corporate environment for most of my career, I am an expert at using Microsoft Project as a project management software, but I have little experience with any other project management software.

I would like to encourage the reader to contribute to this article by making a comment about your favourite project management software and tell us why you prefer that software.

Wikipedia list

I have discovered this article on Wikipedia about a “comparison of notable project management software“. As an experienced project manager, I found it interesting to compare the software, that I use most often with every noteworthy software available.

The comparison is made based on collaboration, issue tracking, scheduling, project portfolio management, resource management, document management and if it’s web based.

If you are using any of the project management software on the list, please share with us your experience with that software and what you like about it in the comments section. I look forward to receiving your input.

Project Management Methodologies

I would also like to refer you to an article that I did in December 2009 about project management methodologies and standards. There you will find a short description of a number of project management methodologies which you may find interesting. You are also welcome to contribute in that comments section about project management methodologies that are not mentioned in the post or comments yet.

For future project management related blog posts, please subscribe to my RSS feed.

Recently I discovered an expert, Don Crowther, whose specialty is social media and how to make money for your business by using social media marketing.

Two Types of Social Media

His first video is about two types of social media:

• Social media that makes you money

• Social media that only makes you friends

He starts out explaining some of the social media statistics.  He continues to talk about the different types of social media users and how to attract them.

Keeping a clear division between the social media you use just for friendships and what you do to build business relationships to make money is absolutely critical.

Making money from social media requires a much more strategic approach which he explains very well in his videos. This goes way beyond just setting up a business page in Facebook. This is about what type of content to produce and where to put it. He also covers when and how to ask for money, when and how to give content and when and how to be personal.

Your social media efforts need to add value. Your social media engagement must portray you as an expert in your business and a trusted source of information.

The big lesson I received from watching the video was that the quality of your posts on social media platforms directly relates to the quality of your audience and that will create a following of people more likely to buy from you.

I can really recommend the presentation, as well as the videos that follow on to that.

For a powerful social media tool that provides guidelines to identifying your social media marketing goals and objectives, shares tactics for sharing content on top social media tools, strategies for monitoring and measuring and time estimates, download the free social media strategy template!

Link to Don Crowther’s social media videos. An opt-in is required.

Blogging will attract potential clients

For your Business Blog you can create a 6-step plan that will turn your blog into an effective tool that will drive potential clients to your business 24/7.

1.Define goals for your blog

Your goal for a business blog could be to become more known to your target market and attract clients to your business. To assist with goal setting, here are a few questions to answer about your business blog:

a) What is your blog’s purpose?

b) What are the goals for your blog?

c) Who is your ideal audience?

d) What is your core message?

2. Pick good blogging software

Blogging software starts with choosing blogging software that’s right for you. There are several choices out there like Typepad, Blogger and WordPress.org, but I prefer to use WordPress on my own domain for its ease of use. For a blog post on recommendations for choosing a platform:

Buildabetterblog.com

3. Find topics that your target market wants to read about

Do research through online social networks and search engines to find topics. Also check out Technorati.com to find blogs on topics related to your niche market.

4. Always write blog posts that are of interest to your target market.

Once you know who your audience is and what their needs and interests are, it becomes easier to write content that is relevant for your readers. However, it is important to keep your content topical, informative and non-promotional. A blog post should be 400-600 words. Interactive media like images, videos or even polls and surveys will enrich your content.

5. Bring traffic to your blog

To get benefits from blogging, you need to create a strategy to bring traffic to your blog. One traffic strategy that works well for me is to use social media. My blog posts are syndicated to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as to other Social Bookmarking sites by using a WordPress plugin called OnlyWire. See a post I did about using Social Bookmarking for generating traffic and how to automate the process.

6. Convert blog traffic into clients

In addition to bringing traffic to your blog you need to have a procedure in place for turning your blog readers into clients. Remember that you want readers to return to your blog. Make it easy for them by providing RSS or email subscription on your blog. Also use opt-in forms to capture leads (name and email) in order to continue communicating with potential clients. Once they get to know, like and trust you, they won’t think twice to become your clients when you have something good to offer.

Please comment on what else works for your blog and why…

After all the Soccer excitement from the FIFA World Cup passed and things were returning to normal again in South Africa, I came across this very interesting article by Romin Irani where he shared his views about what the FIFA World Cup 2010 teaches us about Project Management.

For those of you who are soccer supporters and who can appreciate the art of project management, will certainly enjoy his interesting perspectives and comparisons.  Here are some highlights:

• do not depend on a star performer in your team
• an effective technical person does not necessarily make a great (project) manager
• there is no substitute for planning
• to err is human
• address the root cause of the problems and not the symptoms
• every-one needs to perform and know their role
• past performance is no guarantee of future performance
• you need to have luck on your side sometimes
• early setbacks can be a blessing in disguise
• respect your opponent (competitors)
• you need support from all levels
• play to your strengths

When I started the series of project management posts relating to the Soccer World Cup in South Africa, I didn’t realise that there would be so many lessons to learn from one of the biggest sport tournaments in existence.

Click here to read the full article on What the FIFA World Cup 2010 teaches us about project management.

To ensure that you don’t miss follow-up project management articles, please subscribe to the Virtual Project Consulting RSS feed.

Take Project Management Out-of-the-box

This post is aimed at existing project managers. There is a growing trend worldwide, where children are encouraged to take their parents in to school to talk about their jobs. I have never been asked to go in to my children’s school!

They have had a policeman in who no doubt talked about road safety and not talking to strangers, they have had a nurse in who talked about healthcare issues and how to look after yourself, and they have had a fireman in to explain about the dangers of fires and what to do if you are in such danger. These are all important and seemingly (to children) exciting jobs. But project management is neither apparently exciting nor does it have a uniform (something I note that the people who have gone in to school have in common).

How do we make some-one with authority, accountability and responsibility for managing a project to achieve specific objectives, sound exciting?

Should we perhaps design a uniform for project managers? We know we are exciting already. We can easily state that “doctors make people better”, that “policemen catch bad people”, but we can’t say: “project managers manage projects” because that doesn’t tell people anything. We all know what it means but my children don’t and my friends don’t know either.

The current situation of project managers

Project managers can be summarised as follows:

• We are generally good at what we do
• We are generally successful in our endeavours
• We are getting better all the time
• We do deliver “exciting things”
• (We are mostly nice people I‟m sure)

So how can we get “out of that box” and be exciting to the world in general so that they can understand us and appreciate what we do?

Be proud and be happy

All in all we have a lot to be both proud and happy about. The role of a project manager is a great job, whether you intend on pursuing a project management career or whether you intend to move in to a business role within a project based business. Projects should never bore you, they are all different and each day will bring new challenges and interests. You will never stop learning those lessons and building those relationships.

Finally reach out with what you do

Consider doing some or all of the following in order to help yourself (and project management in general) out of the box:

• Tell people you are a project manager. Don’t be shy; be brave and come clean about your job, that you should be loud and proud of.
• Have that ’elevator’ speech ready when people ask you what you do. But don’t say “I’m a project manager, I manage projects”. I recently asked the question “How would you explain project management to an Alien from outer space” and one of my favourite answers came from Penny Pullman “Getting something new and exciting done with a group of people!”
• Speak at non-Project Management events. People like what they hear about projects, project management and project managers.
• Network with a broad group of people, again outside project management.
• Start some LinkedIn discussions and get some great interaction with people from all over the world.
• Twitter and Blog and Facebook and any and every social networking mechanism that works for you.
• Offer your services outside of your work, you will find that many volunteer organisations are crying out for your projects skills – even if they don’t know what they are.
• And finally why not scare your kids and go to that school or college day and talk about your exciting role of being a project manager. Make sure children know what project management is by the time that they leave school and that they had some exposure to projects being done.

“Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I’ll understand” Chinese Proverb

Source: “Getting Project Management ‘Out of the Box’” by Peter Taylor, Author of ‘The Lazy Project Manager’.

About the author: Linky Van Der Merwe is a Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager with 15 years IT industry experience and 12 years Project Management experience. She consults with small-medium business owners and service professionals about project management processes and tools, best practices and successful delivery through projects. She can be reached at linky@virtualprojectconsulting.com

Recently I came across a good presentation about taking project management ‘out of the box’. What this means, is to spread the word outside our project management community about what a great bunch of people we are and how project management is a valuable skill to pretty much everybody. It is about telling people what you do and what the typical working day of a project manager looks like.

Thinking back at how I ended up becoming a project manager, I remember landing in project management by accident, but staying here on purpose. It is because it is such a good fit for my personal strengths and skills. But I never grew up thinking that I wanted to become a project manager. I didn’t know of the existence of such a career choice and much less of what was expected of such a person.  So it is to this day. How many young people, school leavers, know what are the duties and qualities of a good project manager?

Also, project management is not a typical career choice. It is usually part of many advanced management courses that are offered at universities and colleges all over the world.  Typically, you would study to become something else. Then by portraying the qualities that would make you fit for an effective and efficient project manager in your industry, often project opportunities would come your way. Before you know it, you would have transformed to become a professional project manager. Read about my journey to project management in my blog: About Project Management Passion.

How important is project management in today’s world?

With one-fifth of the world’s GDP being spent on projects this year clearly business isn’t just about operations anymore. Competitiveness and innovation is what drives projects in this world.

We are part of a dynamic, resourceful and ever evolving world that demands change as part of its survival. And change demands projects and projects demand project managers. So it seems we, the project managers of the world, are pretty important in the scheme of things. Mostly not “life or death” important but still important enough.

Now is the time that it is even more critical to succeed, and succeed with a higher level of certainty than seen before since those projects that will be commissioned in the future, as well as the ones that are allowed to continue in the current climate, will be expected to deliver higher business impact, be under closer scrutiny from senior management and be under far more pressure to succeed.

And guess what, who will be the one that is under the most pressure, the project manager!

To ensure that you don’t miss follow-up project management articles, please subscribe to the Virtual Project Consulting RSS feed.

Source: “Getting Project Management ‘Out of the Box’” by Peter Taylor, Author of ‘The Lazy Project Manager’.

About the author: Linky Van Der Merwe is a Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager with 15 years IT industry experience and 12 years Project Management experience. She consults with small-medium business owners and service professionals about project management processes and tools, best practices and successful delivery through projects. She can be reached at linky@virtualprojectconsulting.com

Jo Ann Sweeney,  a communications consultant based in London, wrote an article about one of the essential communication skills for project managers, namely Active Listening.

Active Listening

I was one of the project managers in March that was interviewed by Jo Ann Sweeney. She did research about the top five communication skills project managers need to lead their teams. An extract from her research was published on Five Essential Rules for Project Leaders on the PMI Career Central website.

“Active listening is the most important leadership skill for any project,” said South African Linky Van Der Merwe PMP. “We need to listen so we can understand requirements and needs, especially with regard to stakeholders.This should happen throughout the project, not just at the beginning.”

Read the rest of her article here.

The challenges of project learning

Learning from project experience is an essential function that the project manager needs to facilitate during project management closure.

The philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

This is sometimes referred to as Santayana’s Law of Repetitive Consequences; and is nowhere more evident than in project based work.   The increasing pace of change in the workplace often makes it difficult to learn from experience as processes and personnel are constantly changing.

I have experienced this fast paced phenomenon while doing project management work for a corporate client recently. Following standard best practice in project management closure, I always schedule a proper project closure workshop at the end of projects. For many of my project teams this was their first experience of doing project reviews of any kind. Yet they derived so much value from revisiting the original project goal and objectives, the scope, milestones and deliverables that were achieved. By the time we discussed Lessons Learned, all team members were actively participating.

Project Reviews

I enjoy these project reviews as it confirms a sense of achievement, pride and satisfaction from project completion for all team members. The lessons learned are then logged and archived with other project documentation for future reference. I usually distribute the project close-out reports with the lessons learned to the wider departmental teams in recognition of the project team’s efforts and to make their colleagues aware of their project achievements.

In my opinion, to successfully learn from project experience requires a regular and consistent approach that can be incorporated into any project management methodology.  Here are a few suggestions to help any project team learn from experience:

1. Establish a venue for sharing lessons-learned: It doesn’t matter whether you call it a post-mortem, a project review, or a project closure workshop, most organizations don’t do them—but they should.
2. Share what has been learned: Although most organizations don’t bother with a project review, those that do don’t always create an environment that encourages real learning—and even fewer share what was learned.
3. Don’t make learning the next corporate initiative: It’s natural for organizations to try to formalize the learning process into the next corporate project.  The natural learning process should be encouraged and lessons learned can and should even be part of project progress discussions.

Don’t make learning from projects a one-time activity or something to be done when time permits: Project learning should be ongoing and interactive—with all project team members actively participating.

Every organization has different needs.  Some rely on their project software and methodology to help facilitate the learning process.  I think that’s good, but even organizations that don’t use any specific project management tools need to create an environment where project learning can regularly take place.

To ensure that you don’t miss follow-up project management articles, please subscribe to the Virtual Project Consulting RSS feed.

If you liked this article, please subscribe to my blog (to the right) and receive more project management tips and articles.

About the author: Linky Van Der Merwe is a Microsoft Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager with 15 years IT industry experience and 12 years Project Management experience. She consults with small-medium business owners and service professionals about project management processes and tools, best practices and successful delivery through projects. She can be reached at linky@virtualprojectconsulting.com