Jaeger Consultants Ltd

ith that were#leadership #documentation #lean #Agileworking

 

We grew up in a traditions of elaborate project documentation. So we were updating lots of documents and artefacts. somehow we also got into believing that the longer a report is the better it is. But quite frankly, don’t we groan when we see yet another 30 page report we are supposed to go through? Haven’t we caught ourselves to only do minimal basics when updating a report? Resulting in a lot of reports with repeat outdated information. I am not diminishing project documents. They are necessary and give us important information. I am just saying it is time for a change.

Let’s rethink out documentation

Here are a few ideas:

• When setting up your project, think of what you really need. Which document or report do you need? What is gained by preparing them? What is the key information needed here?
• Try and create project templates that are only 1 page long. Yes, you can capture all the information in 1 page!
• Rethink your reports. And that has to happen in 2 ways
  • How can you reduce it to 4 pages tops, including cover page, graphs and pictures? Do you really need a picture of every pillar you built, or is one that is representative enough? Do you really need a graph for every aspect of the project, or is the one that is off enough? Think of sharing some things online in a dashboard? Your existing office tools and software definitely has a took available
  • Who is being addressed by this report? What is this persons reporting preference? What is there character and their motivational value focus? In other words what do they want to hear in the report?
• If you prepare weekly and monthly reports, then the weekly reports should feed into the monthly report. But the monthly report should only be a high level summary and then conclusions. In Strategy implementation with long term projects reporting often actually only happens quarterly.
• Do you need daily reports? Could the daily report just be an internal record that is then an input in weekly or monthly reports?
• Make a difference between small, medium and large projects. Not all need the same documentation and templates. For example if you are starting a 1 week project installing 20 data points and a cabinet, you do not need the same level of documentation and elaborate planning, like you would for the Mars Rover project. Often fewer documents and simplified versions of templates are sufficient for short small projects.
• Always ask yourself why you are preparing the document. Ask the 5 Whys. Every time you get an answer to the why, ask why again. This way you will identify the core of the situation and you will be able to decide if this document is really needed in this particular project. So don’t cut out the document, because you do not like it or are too lazy to prepare it, but because you are sure it is not of benefit to prepare it.

The Result

Ask yourself these questions regularly and for every project, then discuss with your team and your supervisor / sponsor. You will find you are lightening the load of your team, reducing wastage of time & paper and are starting to prepare valuable project reports, plans and templates that share the important information and only the important information. Shorter reports will actually be read fully.

What if you don’t change?

I worked once in a company, where the project managers involved in infrastructure projects for clients would prepare elaborate daily reports, weekly reports, bi-weekly reports, monthly lookaheads and elaborate monthly reports, that would take 2 weeks to prepare. Do you think these project managers had time to meet their team and lead their team? Did they have time to engage their teams? Do you think these reports were actually read word by word? I highly doubt it!

Last year Peter Taylor, also known as the Lazy Project Manager and the Project Manager who smiled, gave a talk in the PMI Kenya Chapter. He stressed on exactly this point! Make your documentation more productive and don’t waste time on overelaborate essays that only would make your English teacher happy.

Keep yourself, your Team and your Stakeholders Happy!

Yes, it is possible, with short effective and professional reports and documents. This takes practice, especially if you tend to be as wordy as I am. I once reported to 2 brothers, who owned the company I worked for. They gave me a big challenge, since they did not like my lengthy reports. One said he wants reports that are exactly 3 bullet points. Not more and not less. The other said he wants a 2 page report with graphs and pictures where applicable. And they wanted the same report.

It took me a while to figure that out. What I came up with was that I send the 2 page report attached to an email. In the email body I put the 3 bullet points that summarized the most important points. With the report attached, they could then get more information if they wanted. We kept tweaking the format of the report until they were comfortable with it.

Let’s keep working on improving our documents, artefacts and reports. They should be easy to read, easy to understand and easy on the eye. With short documents that are to the point and sorted in an eye catching way, you will win the game. Good templates will free your time.

 

 

#leadership #mentalhealth #servantleadership #emotionalintelligence

Work-Life Balance is difficult and in our time an age we have lost the ability to really relax. We rush from work to home, to the bar, to the shops and to any entertainment place. Rarely do we ever slow down and just breath.

Especially during the working from home times of the pandemic many did not manage to find the balance. Life seemed to be reduced to eat, work & sleep. Yet we had thought we will have more time since there will be no commute. The result was that even more people were worn out and exhausted, depression is/was lurking.  And this was not just caused by the lack of interactions with other people. What went wrong?

Too much Screen Time

When you work from home it is even more difficult to set boundaries, the laptop is constantly open and it is so easy to just have another quick look at emails or work on that urgent document. Then we switch on the TV, during dinner we are glued to our phone and since there is a pandemic out there we do not even go out much. The relaxing of our eyes, who were finally off the screen during the commute, do not even get that reprieve any more.

Staring at screens almost all our waking times is not only strenuous for our eyes, but the constant flickering, the radiation and the things popping up do something to our brain. You find yourself mentally exhausted. That’s why we need to set boundaries and schedule time without screens.

Make conscious decisions

By setting screen boundaries and boundaries for when it is work time and when it is time to play, we help ourselves maintain our mental health and stay sane. In my article 5 practical tips for working from home  I wrote in 2019 about my experiences learning how to work from home. I started by having the laptop on my dining table and that did not work! Then I realized, I actually had to clear off my desk and start using it as my office space. So that the dining table was for dining only. Then I also had to set clear boundaries and time intervals. My online calendar has many slots for even fun things, which usually include carefully planned off screen time. I schedule time for:

• Walks / gym
• Golf
• Shopping
• Hanging out with friends
• Volunteering
• Work
• Rest / Reading

If you schedule time for all these and block the time for the things that are important for you, you will not miss out. You will have enough time to do your work, but you are getting your priorities right.

If you schedule purposefully time for all 4, work, rest, play & live, you will have a balanced live and will be much happier and healthier.

Take it another notch higher.

Once you have sorted your own work-life balance, you now need to look at your team, Who is struggling with it? Reach out to them individually and help them get the right balance. Otherwise your team members will burn out.

Your kindness and caring will help them excel and help your team as a whole perform better. By setting the example yourself you are already starting them off on the right path. But make sure you talk to all individuals as well.

Let’s make a difference today!

#Leadership #simplicity #easytounderstand #professionalism

Templates can make life easier and ensure that you compile the same data every time. However, if templates become too elaborate they can complicate your life and cover up the message you want to convey. An old German saying translates into

Brevity is the soul of wit

The more Agile our environment is getting, the more we need to strip down our templates and the total quantity to the mere essential.  Also always consider the audience that will read and use the document you have prepared. Who are you addressing? Are they subject matter experts? I have seen very elaborate project reports that may look very impressive but the question is, do they meet these standards:

• Easy too read
• Don’t take too much time to read
• Is the language used appropriate for all readers, or is it too much technical language
• Does it focus on the main message, or is it going into too much detail?
• Does it meet the information requirements of the audience, or is there too much detail?
• Is it customized to the audience? There preferences and their character?

Preparing a brief, efficient and easy to understand project report is not easy. It takes practice and diligence in the preparation. The one-fits-all solutions DOES NOT WORK!!!

So what can we do?

The first thing you need to realize is that any project report that is longer than 5 pages is too long. That is including pictures, graphs, front page etc, In an Agile environment you actually condense all reports and document into 1 page.

The second thing to realize is that not every report works for everyone. Throw those one-fits-all solutions out of the window! We all have different characters and different preferences, while of course different stakeholders have different information need. The end user needs different information than the engineer, the sponsor needs different information than the client representative. I think you get the gist.

Here are a few tips:

1. Prepare a simple template that captures the main 3 things you want to get across. For a project report for example you can reduce it to these:
   • Work planned for this week / reporting period
   • work achieved for this week / reporting period
   • Issues encountered
2. When adding pictures be selective. You do not need to put pictures of each item. So for example if you want to  put pictures of for example data points installed, then don’t put pictures of each, but put one that is representative. If you put 100 pictures, no one will look at each in detail and if someone needs a particular one, they will ask
3. Customize your report. Ask the audience what their preference is and how much time they have to read reports. The work with that, while ensuring you include the essential information. I reported once to 2 directors who had different preferences. One wanted 3 bullet points, not more, not less, exactly 3. The other wanted a report with graphs and figures. But they wanted the same report. It took us a while to figure out how to do this. We ended up putting the 3 bullet points in the text of the email and then I attached a more elaborate report with graphs and figures, After I prepared the first report that way, I went to them for comment and input.
4. Introduce all acronyms and technical words you tend to use in the beginning. Don’t ever assume the other person understands them the same as you do. A quick check on acronym websites can show you how many different meanings an acronym can have.
5. Remember your client and the end users are usually not subject matter experts and they do not need to be.
6. KISS – Keep it simple stupid, the easier to understand your documents are the better they are

Let’s keep working on simplifying our documents and reducing the total number!

#leadership #servantleadership #pmbok

Over the years the PMBOK Guide and with that the project management standards as per PMI have been focusing more and more on the leadership role of the project manager. The project manager is no longer the subject matter expert and the deciding person who allocates work. He is the leader who gets his team to work and plan together. In the 7th edition of the PMBOK Guide you find several direct and some overt references to Servant Leadership.

What PMBOK Guide says

1. In Section 2.17 the focus is on the team, understanding the team, growing the team, helping individuals grow and increasing the performance by bringing them closer together.
2. Chapter 2.2.1 Talks about Project Team Management and Leadership and in section 2.2.1.2 it introduces servant leadership as a tool to understand the team, addressing the team needs and developing team members in order to enable the highest team performance.
3. It further stresses that servant leaders allow project teams to self-organize when possible and increasing autonomy by passing appropriate decision making to the team. This approach removes obstacles, acts as a diversion shield and enables encouragement and development opportunities. All elements of servant leadership
4.  PMBOK guide also clearly states in section 2.3.7 “Interactions with other performance domains” that any Agile approach requires servant leadership style to allow for self-managing teams.

What to do?

I think the first step is to realize the days of the all powerful directing project manager who tells everyone what to do and understands everything are long over. The new project managers are people managers.

Read up on Servant leadership and really understand it.

In order to be a real servant leader you need to become humble and step back. You need to allow your team to shine and give them all the praise. At the same time accept responsibility when things go wrong. Instead of leading conversations, learn to stir them.

Grow the team spirit and cheer your team on from the side.

Celebrate together

Bring out the Best in your team by applying the 5 practices of exemplary leadership.

1. Model the way
2. Inspire a shared Vision
3. Challenge the Process
4. Enable other to act
5. Encourage the heart

None of us is a perfect servant leader, but we all continue learning. It is a journey! To become a true leader I believe we need to embrace servant leadership,

Let’s do another step today to get closer to becoming a Servant Leader!

#leadership #time #timemanagement #servantleadership

We have all seen Senior Managers who seem to be running around like headless chicken never catching up with their work. Yet we have seen others who have time for their family and are out playing golf. What is the difference?

Often we wish we could push back time a bit to make us meet that deadline, make it to that meeting in time, stop being stressed and have time to catch up on work.

Why do some people seem to have so much more time in their day to get things done?

The difference is Time Management!

How do they do it?

Here are a few practical tips I know work well:

1. Plan & plan with buffers
2. You need to plan for things that are important to you and block time for them in the calendar. If Golf is important, schedule time for it. When your son or daughter is having a school event, schedule time for it. Should you want to be part of a women’s group, or a Networking group, then block that time in your calendar.
3. For every meeting you attend, you need to schedule time to prepare for it. Have fixed times for your meetings and do not schedule more than 2 in a day.
4. If a meeting will leave you with lots of action points then schedule time for these the next day.
5. Learn to delegate – build up a trustworthy team and delegate things to them. Then don’t micromanage them.
6. It is essential to learn to say “No”. Just because someone wants a meeting with you tomorrow, does not mean you have to agree. If your schedule is packed for that day, politely decline and please suggest 2 alternative days & time.
7. Use either a calendar / diary you carry with you, or any of the many online tools available. I currently use Google Calendar, but may change to MS To Do or Calendly soon, so that my mentees can book their own appointments in. Such tools allow you to block out timings and only avail timeslots that are convenient to you. People know that you have other commitments, don’t force yourself to please them and then throw your schedule into chaos. Actually for many someone who is too available does not look professional.
8. Schedule weekly 1-2 hrs for thinking – Dorie Clark explains this in her book “The Long Game”. You need to analyze how things are going, what is going well and what not. What do you need to change etc. Then of course you also schedule time to strategize regularly, maybe quarterly and then the main planning annually.

If you overload yourself you will not be able to meet your own promises to your clients. You will miss important deadlines and come across as disorganized and unreliable.

Find the Balance

The trick is to find the balance between things that are important to you, things that are important for your business and work commitments. This is not something we learn over night. We all need to keep learning and re-learning this over time. Take one of the points mentioned above and start with it. Once it has become a habit, you can then take the next one.

Let’s all work on improving our time management!