Category: A Project Managers Ramblings

We all go to networking events at times, but how effective is it? And can you only network in networking events, or does it happen elsewhere as well?

Here are my thoughts about it.

1. Every encounter is a chance to network, whether it is with new people you just met, or old acquaintances. Any chance encounter can lead to a lasting discussion and professional relationship. The other day I heard a guy on the next table in a relaxed restaurant talk about project management. That peaked my curiosity. I talked to him after he finished his phone call, apologized for intruding and told him that him talking about project management intrigued me and I would like to know more about his way of doing project management. Even though I actually ambushed him, I did manage to do it in a gentle enough way and we did have a 1 hr discussion about project management and what we are doing in consulting. We are continuing our discussion and are now looking at where we can collaborate in future.
2. You need to be smart about it and patient. Avoid annoying people at any cost. Build a relationship first, before you ask for business or a job…… This takes time and requires you to put yourself into it. Here are 2 examples of how not to do it:
   1. We have all met this person who during a networking event will force a business card on everyone, even interrupting conversations. Not a good idea, these cards will most likely end in a dust bin
   1. We have all met the young (in experience) overeager Networker, who introduces him / herself and in the second sentence says that s/he wants a job or business from you. How do you feel when ambushed like that? Not good isn’t it? Well others feel the same.

What can you do instead?

1. Have business cards with you. Also ask people you meet for business cards. Then follow up the next day and write to those, whose business cards you received. Tell them where you met and thank them for connecting with you. Then talk about, what you would like to discuss with them further. Again, this is too early to ask for business or a job. But you can introduce a topic and suggest that you meet to discuss it further.
2. Connect with your new contacts on LinkedIn
3. During Networking events or Conferences I often sit at an empty table and just simply chance who comes to sit with me. That way you get to know new people and since you are in the same event or conference, you already have a topic to talk about.
4. If you are in a Networking event, discuss with new people about the event topic. Discuss the presentation and add your own experience and points of view. However you need to avoid being negative or rubbishing what was said.
5. Show yourself as knowledgeable and caring about the topic
6. On a second meeting you can talk about your interests and usually you will find common interests or points of interaction. If your new contact is a golf player and you are too, agree for a round of golf. Then you’ll have them for up to 4 hours for more discussions.

If they share the same interest in wildlife you have, then see if you have some common contacts, or are in the same group.

• Most importantly be yourself, do not pretend! So that you do not come across as fake.
• If someone is not interested in talking to you, let them be. You have introduced yourself, that’s enough for now.

Building relationships is work, but in the end it is rewarding work. You will make new friends and often connect deeply with them. Things like jobs or business opportunities will come automatically later. I got invited to co-author a book with someone who coached me during the Leadership Institute Master Class. We did talk deeply during the coaching sessions and we connected on LinkedIn. I wrote her a recommendation, she did the same for me. Then we started following each other. She liked the articles I am writing and thought they touched the topic of the book she is writing. She needed help, so she contacted me.

You see the thread here: I did not ask her for business or for co-authoring with her. We did connect professionally, learned to respect each other. She had a need and she approached me.

Networking is an art, that we all need to learn.

As much as we try to avoid or prevent it, there is always of some conflict emerging in your team or between you and your subcontractor or dependent contractor. As project managers we need to keep an eye open for any emerging conflict. Look out for people rubbing each other wrongly, so that you can douse any conflict before it erupts. If you note one team member keeps contradicting a certain other person, or everyone, sit them down separately and find out what is going on. This is a brewing conflict. Either the person has problems with himself, or serious stress in his life and the behavior is just a symptom. However a symptom, which can cause serious conflict, if the other person gets offended. Or the person is in actual conflict with another. Then you need to drill down into it and convince the person to sort this out. Many insecure people will refuse and claim there is no conflict or no issue. But if the symptoms / the behavior say there is one, then there is a conflict and you better sort it out.

If 2 parties are involved start by encouraging them to sort it out between themselves. However those in denial or with insecurities will often refuse. Then you, as the leader, need to guide. Sometimes it is enough to allocate them to some work together, but supervising closely. Best some work that will force them to talk to each other. But at times you have to sit them down in front of yourself and open the discussion. Ensure that both know that what is to be discussed will stay in the room, but no one will leave until it is resolved. This is not easy, but it is very important!

If you see several people ganging up against one person, or people refusing to work with one particular person, talk to each separately. Get all their views first, and remain neutral. It is essential you remain neutral, just as much as it is essential that you LISTEN to each first without interrupting. Let them have their say. Depending on the situation, you can then either explain to each individually what is going on, where they are going wrong, or you need to sit different groups around a table to discuss and sort their differences out.

Conflict management is very much the responsibility of the project manager and if you fail to do it, your project outcome is at risk. You may also risk shouting matches in front of clients.

If you see tempers rising during a meeting, try and smoothen the situation, change the topic and make sure that everyone knows the issue will be discussed afterwards outside of the meeting. Let tempers cool first, including your own if necessary.

Read up on common conflict management techniques like:

• Collaborating
• Compromising
• Smoothing / Accommodating
• Withdrawal / Avoiding
• Forcing
• Confronting & Problem solving

You will need them and at that point there will be no chance to read up on it.

You also need to know that in the 3 stages of conflict everyone, changes their behavior. However every individual has their own behavior pattern. The 3 stages of conflict are:

Stage 1:There is conflict, but it is not personal

Stage 2:It is now becoming personal, but you can still reason

Stage 3: You are feeling personally attacked, pushed against the wall and only getting out of this counts.

And you need to learn to read the early warning signs and try and arrest any conflict situation in stage 1, while people can still reason. However since every person has their own sequence of behavior it is difficult to analyze.

We all fall into one of the following 7 motivational groups:

• Red – people who are primarily goal oriented – assertive directing
• Blue – people who are primarily people oriented – altruistic nurturing
• Green – people who are primarily process oriented – analytical autonomizing
• Red-blue – assertive nurturing
• Red-green – judicious competing
• Blue-green – cautious supporting
• Hubs – flexible cohering

However we still have elements of the other groups, and even people in the same group have these motivational focus in varying degrees. When we go into conflict, we all show the 3 primary groups in varying degrees. The order and severity in which we experience them may vary as well. For example, someone who usually falls in the blue spectrum will at one conflict stage be red, another more blue and another green. I myself am usually at the border of hub and green-blue, however in conflict I go blue first, then red and finally green. When you hear me insisting on processes and not talking about anything else anymore, be careful, I am in stage 3 of conflict. For someone else the stage 3 will be red or blue.

If you want to learn more about this, check out Total SDI. It is essential to know your own color and the conflict sequence, since you need to know when you are going into conflict. At that point you need to remove yourself from the situation and think it through, before you take any action.

Risk Analysis is in everyone’s mouth and hopefully mind. It is easy to talk about, but is it easy to do? If you have never done one it sounds intimidating. Most also talk about the very detailed and complex risk analysis you need for the kind of rocket science projects. But where do I start with my projects?

It is simple, start where you are! When I first attempted to do risk analysis I wanted to do the rocket science project level and thought that’s what is needed. But I realized 2 things very quickly:

1. I had no idea how to do it
2. My bosses were not ready for this and were not ready to give me all the details I needed, especially information on cost of sales, Opex and “Director cost”

Hence I needed a simpler approach. At that time I was not just trying to come up with all the processes in project management, all templates etc, but I was also trying to figure out which of our Data Infrastructure Projects I need to actually get involved in. We were 2 Project Managers – one trained one not trained in project management – and 4 Technicians who would run about 40-50 projects simultaneously at any given time. These were spread out all over the country and some were simple 1-3 day installations. I could not be involved in all projects, it was physically impossible. I ended up developing a simple scoring sheet with the help of my team, which helped to determine the complexity of a project by scoring 10 areas. All our projects were client projects. However the IT knowledge, the ease to work with them, security considerations and accessibility of the project sites varied widely. In our discussions we realized quickly that scoring a project on monetary value or number of data points alone does not work. Our score sheet ended up with scores for accessibility by public transport, IT knowledge of the client, previous installations, willingness of client counterpart to cooperate with us, number of data points, number of systems to be installed, complexity of integrations etc. We defined for each scoring area 5 different responses which had scores from 0 to 4 attached to them. The reason we used fixed answers was to avoid very subjective responses. We wanted to make it as easy and clear as possible.

Then for the total score possible, we again defined 4 different levels of complexity of projects.

Level 1: Technician handles the project alone, only reports in the weekly meeting and escalates if issues come up.

Level 2: Technician handles project with regular supervision calls by the Project Manager

Level 3: Project Manager handles the project, Technician handles the technical Team on site

Level 4: Project is very complex and needs a dedicated Project Manager – usually our Project Managers handled several projects in parallel.

When we had just developed and implemented the scoring sheet I watched a webinar on a new risk management tool and was surprised. What we had developed was a simplified version of what the speaker had used at NASA and used as the basis if his risk assessment part of the tool. That’s when I started understanding what risk management practically means. You find your risks by analyzing the complexity of the project.

With that risk analysis suddenly became something that was doable. I looked for a suitable risk analysis template on the internet. You find many on www.projectmanagement.com and other places. Then I adjusted it to our needs and we quickly had a usable tool, with which I could do first risk analysis. I concentrated on identifying risks and defining what prevention, mitigation, avoidance, and transfer measures would be used and who would be responsible for each. In our circumstances calculating costs of the risk, wasn’t really possible. But we scored the risks in to low, medium low, medium, medium high, high and very high, again clearly defined in percentages.

Over time I then prepared reports for Senior Management, gave them some workshops where I taught them about the possibilities of Risk Management and slowly sensitized them to the need to be more proactive in this area.

I hope this example shows you how you can start simple, learn as you go along and slowly get to the sophisticated level of risk management you want to reach.

In PMBOK guide you are taught about the standards of project initiation and how this should be spearheaded by the Project Sponsor. It talks about the importance of a project charter and that this document justifies the project. However in the technical field in my environment, all this is often not done for each project.

Often each project is started by the Sales Team and maybe one Director involved. The Project Team is not involved and has little or no influence on the process. The project is jumped at them, when budget and timeframe have already been set. This can be very frustrating. Project Managers often feel left out and helpless.

Here is my 5 cents to this:

This does not have to be this way. Even if you are at or near the bottom of the pecking order, you can still have your influence! As a Project Manager it is very important that you demonstrate your leadership and get things set up the way they should.

You can have your influence! You just need to play your cards well. What does that mean? First you do your projects to the best of your ability, note down all the short comings and all the pain points. Do Lesson’s Learned session with your team. Let them come up with solutions.

Do your reports to the Senior Management and point out the shortcomings as issues faced in the project execution.

Do a Project Management Workshop with the Senior Management, so that they understand where you are coming from. Here you show them the benefits and possibilities proper project management from initiation to closure can bring the company. But don’t hit them with your complaints yet. Just point out that you want the company to reap all the benefits and you will keep them updated. Customize your presentation to what the key people like to hear. In other words map out your stakeholders and know which one you need to win over.

Then you compile your data from a least a couple of months worth of projects. Prepare a presentation, in which you present the issues that come from poor project initiation and budgeting. Then present your solution. Mine usually include the following:

1. Project Managers to do the initial timeline during the Sales Process, write the assumptions and the project management approach. This will help the sales team, but it will also help you! If you have told them the project will take 4 weeks, and they only charge the client 3 weeks labor, then the Sales Team will be to blame. However your Senior Managers will catch on very quickly on your facts.
2. If most of your projects are very similar, do one (Standard Operating Procedure) SOP document, in which you define who the project sponsor is and when. However you need to develop this with your Senior Management, let them define the things. You only put them on paper. That way you can pin a Senior Manager down to be your contact person / Project Sponsor.
3. Prepare workflows from end to end, if possible as Swim Lanes, so that it is very clear who does what.
4. Define the Change Management Process including responsibilities.
5. Define the Lesson’s Learned Process – I usually have a 3 tiered approach, since in very hierarchical companies junior team members will never speak up in front of Directors.
6. Prepare one Project Charter that applies to 80% of your projects.
7. Design a gating process with the Senior Management, where every step of the way there are checks and controls and decisions are made whether a project is worth pursuing / continuing or not. Senior Managers may decide to continue a project that you think of as a loss or failure, but if this has been officially decided, it is not your responsibility. You just do the work to best of your knowledge.
8. Have a “Special Director’s Instruction” Template. A simple form, on which you document any instructions given by Directors or Senior Managers – especially those famous phone instructions – and make them sign. That way you are covered and it becomes an official instruction
9. Keep minutes of every meeting. Yes it is work, but you need to document, what is discussed. And yes, you need to do it yourself. The slowly you can train others to keep meticulous minutes.

If you follow these points and add any other steps your situation may require, you will realize that slowly you are changing internal processes. Your Directors will notice the difference. Voila, you as Junior Manager / Junior Staff have just done a major change in a company.

Main thing to remember is to always remain humble, bring it as a solution and let them discuss it. Include their changes if possible, or convince them with facts that their changes / suggestions wont help.

Slowly slowly you will be able to implement all process groups from the PMBOK Guide and over time you will have a smooth professional end-to-end Project Management Process

Once you have a team assigned to you, the big question is how do I pull my team together. We have all learned about forming – storming – norming – performing – adjourning, but how do I do it.

The answer is: there is no one sure proof way to pull your team together. What you do will depend on:

• The time you have – how many times have you managed projects where the bosses expect you to go on site immediately
• The budget you have – in my environment, there will hardly ever be a budget for any team building activity
• Who is in your team – personality, back ground and maturity plays a role
• Has your team, or at least some of them worked together before
• Is the team virtual or co-located or both

I think you are getting the gist that this is way more complex than we thought. Yet we have to do it.

So what do we do? In my context here, if you are working for a installation company, you will basically never have time to build your team. Your boss may not even understand the need for it, after all we work for the same company…..

In these cases I try to do one or several of the following.

• During the team briefing – not the internal kick-off that is formal – I ensure I schedule a time slot, where people tell each other something personal, like a fun fact about oneself, that is not related to work (I love to climb mountains, I used to run marathon, I am addicted to cappuccino, whatever). Or I make them share a family fact (I have 5 children, I have a baby on the way, My wife is doing her PhD… etc). This loosens up the tension and people have a first laugh together
• During subsequent team meetings we start with a round of achievements. Everyone speaks about what he thinks his biggest work achievement is since the last meeting and we clap for him.
• We celebrate birthdays, religious holidays, graduations, baby births etc with the relevant team member. It does not need to be a big ceremony, a little cake, a bag of chips and a couple of bottles of soda on the construction site can do the job. If there is no budget I often buy them myself, keep the receipts and at the end of the project I ask for the refund. However I don’t always get my money back. Usually these things cost me less than $10.- and the effect on the team is worth it for me. I bake most of the cakes myself, without decorations. The technical teams appreciate them anyway, and on a construction site a fancy cake is out of place.
• If I see or know that 2 people are not working well together, I will either put them on some work together, so they sort themselves out, or try to draw them out one on one. Take them out individually for a cup of tea and get them talking, or go out for a drink together after work. When they are relaxed, get them talking about the project and their opinion. Then if they are not talking about the person who is an issue ask directly, but make sure they know it remains off the record and confidential. Sitting with the person for lunch somewhere separate can also work.
• Address any issues as early as possible.
• Speak to them in their language. This could be talking in Kiswahili instead of English, or speaking at a level they are comfortable at. Don’t try to impress with big words, when the guys you are working with are simple people.
• Ask for their input during meetings, when you are looking for solutions and ensure everyone can have a say. Draw the quiet ones out. Often they have the best suggestions.
• Go watch a movie together, one that the individuals would have watched anyway. Everyone pays their own ticket.
• Go for a drink as the team – each pay their own bill
• Watch a football game together
• Give people a lift in your car, then just talk about fun things
• …. There are endless opportunities to have little bit of informal team building

Team Building is your responsibility, even if the set-up does not allow for more formal team building etc. You can help people relax in your team, which helps in drawing them together as a team. Let everyone have an active part and feel that they can suggest solutions to issues. Listen actively to them.
If any are not performing as usual check up on them. Often they have an issue at home or outside the project and can’t perform due to the stress. Even just being able to talk about it, helps most of them and you can see the relief in their faces. Sometimes you can also give them advise on how to address their issues, no I am not talking about marriage counselling, but a common sense tip, or in case of money issues advice on what the company can do, or where one can get a loan (own experience) can help.