management

Do you praise your teams enough?

by Erika Flora

Guest post by Erika Flora

Years ago, I heard this great quote that has really stuck with me and become somewhat of a mantra. It is as follows:

There is no limit to the good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.

General of the Army George C. Marshall

Staff Sgt. Conrad Begaye recognized for bravery under fire in Afghanistan - by US Army Africa via Flickr

What a fabulous concept! Often, we are so worried about our own jobs and careers that we don’t take the time to think about those around us and make sure we help them get what they want. Ever since I started making a conscious effort to really “let go” of who gets the credit, my work attitude has completely changed. In addition, the way my team and others around me view my work has completely changed. They realize that I am their champion, and they work hard to perform to the best of their abilities. Rather than spending time worrying about whether executive management sees all the great things I am doing, and position myself accordingly for that next great promotion, I focus on mentoring others and helping those around me get recognized for their hard work. I actually spend part of my work week thinking about how I can bring visibility and kudos to the efforts of my teams.

Too often, when employees are surveyed in their companies, many of them say that they feel their work is not valued or that no one has told them in the last six months that they appreciate them. How terrible! The best thing we can do for our coworkers, direct reports, colleagues, and project teams is to find creative ways to show them our thanks and make sure everyone in our company knows that they are making a valuable contribution. We all love to get praised for our hard work. Make sure you are taking the time to proactively do that for others.

Many companies have put great examples of this concept in place. When I worked with Pfizer, they implemented something called a Pfish program where you could send a Pfish card to a colleague for a variety of reasons (being a team player, going the extra mile, or even just making your day). Every week, the people that had received a Pfish card were entered into a raffle for a gift card. However, the very best thing about the Pfish card program was that the recipient’s boss was copied on the email that they received. It was a really fun program and one that made employees feel special and appreciated.

However, you don’t need a company program to show your appreciation for others. Here are some really easy things you can do to make a big difference in the lives of those around you – Submit your project team for an internal company award, external “Project of the Year”, or other award. There are lots of professional organizations that look for a variety of award submissions and, many times, are excited to get new submissions from companies or people they have not heard from before. Log onto LinkedIn and write unsolicited recommendations for people you have enjoyed working with. Send a short email to a coworker’s boss thanking them for going the extra mile on a difficult project. Start a “Thanks a latte!” newsletter that thanks your team members by name and post it up at work, maybe even leave a small Starbucks gift card on their desk before they get into work. The more creative and silly, the better! You will be surprised by the results. It seems counter-intuitive, but we as project managers end up shining the brightest when our teams shine. What other examples have you seen or done to brighten the day for those you work with and help them get the kudos they richly deserve?

Erika Flora, PMP, ITIL Expert
erika.flora@GoBeyond20.com
www.GoBeyond20.com

{ 9 comments }

Introducing “Critical Chain Project Management”

by Raj Menon

Critical Chain - photo by Ella's Dad via Flickr

CCPM. Have you heard about this project management framework? What about the concept of critical path? If you have ever been exposed to project schedules, the latter would probably ring a bell. Critical path is the shortest distance to project acceptance and completion. If the project has 10 tasks to deliver, and 8 of them are critical for acceptance, the critical path will comprise of those 8 tasks. Makes sense?

CCPM is a framework build around the critical path concept. To me it is an effective scheduling technique that enables project managers to truly plan a project instead of merely stringing tasks together to an end date. True planning calls fot a great deal of thought that should go into executing a project and steer it towards success. But to do that, we need to first understand project failure.

Why do projects fail? According to Allan Elder’s whitepaper (link below), most projects fail to meet deadlines on time, on budget, and on scope (OTOBOS) due to the following 5 reasons or diseases of project management:

(a) We are victims of “Bad Multi-Tasking“. In short, we have too many tasks on our plate mainly due to a lack of planning from the task assignor/delegator – your Manager or ‘You, Inc.’ – thus leading to bad task prioritization to procrastination to burnout.

(b) Parkinson’s Law i.e. Work expands so as to fill the time available for completion. The safety we’ve built into our estimates with an intent to avoid the worst case scenario somehow transforms into being our best case scenario. And we are not incentivized to do otherwise.

(c) The ‘Student Syndrome’ is in us and we cannot escape it. So, lets accept the fact that due to the above 2 reasons we are not going to work on that task until the 11th hour – the time we need just enough to complete the task and meet the deadline. We dont know how we do it but we do.

(d) Task Dependency for the wrong reasons. Project completion is dependent on all its tasks being completed on time (task completion date) and on budget (resource availability) but when tasks are integrated, projects get penalized due to time wastage and resources being under-committed.

(e) Task Completion ? Task Delivery. We tend ignore those sneaky little unplanned and unforeseen events that cause delays in the delivery of completed tasks. Project progress is measured based on the tasks completed and not task hand-offs.

CCPM is based on the ‘Theory Of Constraints’ methodologies and is said to have proven a high rate of project success when implemented right. I have not tried it out yet but am in the process on learning how to. Walk with me on this critical path to success and we’ll find out how to keep our projects OTOBOS.

In my follow-up to this post, I will dive more into how CCPM works. Meanwhile, please do read “The Five Diseases of Project Mangement” (PDF) to understand the above reasons in detail. This whitepaper is a keeper.

{ 12 comments }

Deliverables

by aniekanekah December 3, 2008 Grab Bag

Hi, I’m new to PMstudent and I’m developing my interest in Project Management. Currently, I am involved in a task of trying to identify possible deliverables for an Alternative School Program with an objective to help young people unleash their intelligence and positive energy to rebuild their communities and lives through the program. Can anyone [...]

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Practice Project Management at home

by Jennifer Bedell November 25, 2008 Lessons Learned

As a Mom, it is important to know exactly where everyone is at any given time, how long they are going to be there, and what they are doing while they are there. Other than that, it’s pretty simple.

As a Project Manager, it is important to know exactly what task each project resource is working on at any given time, how long they will be working on that task , what they are doing and why they are doing it. Other than that, it’s pretty simple.

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Avoid the Same Old Mistakes by Focusing on Lessons Learned

by Duncan Haughey October 28, 2008 Lessons Learned

It’s said there are no new project management sins, just old ones repeated. It’s also said that we don’t learn the lessons from past projects and this must be true, otherwise why would we keep making the same old mistakes?

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Point and Shoot Project Management

by Adam.Clark October 19, 2008 Tools

Project management as a whole has paralleled somewhat the changes we have witnessed in photography. Project management also has been a skill for the few, with the barrier to entry being quite high. However, the barriers are being reduced and the chance for abandoning “point and shoot” project management is here!

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