Author: George Pitagorsky

George Pitagorsky, integrates core disciplines and applies people centric systems and process thinking to achieve sustainable optimal performance. He is a coach, teacher and consultant. George authored The Zen Approach to Project Management, Managing Conflict and Managing Expectations and IIL’s PM Fundamentals™. He taught meditation at NY Insight Meditation Center for twenty-plus years and created the Conscious Living/Conscious Working and Wisdom in Relationships courses. Until recently, he worked as a CIO at the NYC Department of Education.

Mindfully Managing Senior Stakeholder Relationships

Written by George Pitagorsky on March 31, 2017. Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Mindfully Managing Senior Stakeholder Relationships

Managing relationships with all stakeholders are critical to project success. Particularly important, and often challenging, is managing the relationship with senior stakeholders – sponsors and clients.

Managing Relationships

Relationships are dynamic. They involve communication on multiple levels – explicit and implied, oral, in writing and implied. Relationships are based on expectations and responses. They are influenced by culture, perceptions, emotional and social intelligence, intentions and hierarchies.

Recognizing your individual power to influence your relationships is the starting point for effective relationship management. Everything you do or say is taken in by those around you. They interpret it based on their perspective and respond. The response may be overtly or subtly observable or not. It is often the non-observable responses that are most important to the long-term health of the relationship.

Senior stakeholders are sponsors and clients in executive or senior management positions. What makes managing relationships with them challenging is a combination of hierarchies and the fear and power issues related to them, limited attention span and limited access, as well as your individual ability to manage these factors.

The Situation

Imagine a situation in which a very senior executive mandates a significant change in the way your organization interacts with its customers and vendors. He expresses a strong desire to get it done within a year. The work required to make it happen involves procurement of facilities, goods and services, software development to change existing systems and/or acquire and integrate new ones, development and implementation of new procedures, hiring and training several hundred people and communicating with all of the stakeholders. You are pretty sure that the procurement process alone could take several months or more.

You are faced with what you may perceive as a command from your project sponsor or senior client, often delivered to you by an intermediary who may be your direct boss or the senior stakeholder’s representative.

If you meekly accept it while exhibiting a subtle doubt that you can fulfill expectations, you may be seen as fearful and untrustworthy. You could be setting yourself up for failure by not saying what you think and giving the senior stakeholder a false confidence in getting the result he or she wants.

At the same time, if you push back by bringing up the risks and uncertainties that would keep you from delivering, you could be seen as a ‘naysayer,’ someone that is not committed to plowing through barriers to make things happen.

The way you read your sponsor and craft your responses makes all the difference.

Managing Senior Stakeholders and Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence – the ability to discern and manage one’s own emotions and to discern and manage the emotional responses of others – is a critical factor. When hierarchies are encountered and the person in the superior position is emotionally intelligent, he or she can make it easier for subordinates to present their case with objectivity by explicitly promoting candid feedback.

As project managers, you are subordinate to senior stakeholders. It is important to identify your feelings when in direct contact with your boss or boss’ boss. As fear arises, you can accept it and find the right way to behave – responding as opposed to reacting. To find the right way it is necessary to read your senior stakeholder’s feelings and style.

As you get a sense of the stakeholder’s openness to hearing what you have to say, you may choose to be completely candid or more diplomatic. You might even choose to say nothing, reconciling yourself to yet another forced march to a dismal end. Of course, avoiding confrontation by not pushing back is a last resort. It is only an option when you have tried over and over again to be rational, objective and candid only to be faced with command and threats like “Get it done or we’ll get someone else who can.”

Cut Through the Hierarchy by Treating the Superior as a Peer

As you become more comfortable with accepting any discomfort that comes with pushing back in the face of power you can begin to play with the idea of leveling the playing field from your side. In other words, treating your senior stakeholder as a peer.

This shift in your perception frees you from unnecessary self-imposed constraints. It does not mean that you should go in and slap him or her on the back or get overly familiar. It means recognizing that the senior stakeholder is just another one of us, who, like everyone else, has strengths, desires, needs, stresses, weakness, biases, mental models and preconceived beliefs that influence what they say and do.

Since you are treating them as peers, you can interpret their commands as questions. For example, “We need the full organizational change to be done by September 2018.” becomes “Do you think it is possible to have the full change done by September 2018?”

With that perspective, you can mindfully and objectively come up with the optimal way to communicate, convince and generally relate.

Attention and Access

In addition to hierarchy and its impact in obstructing effective relationships, the ability to get the time and attention required to build and sustain a healthy relationship gets in the way. You need to be able to state your position and manage the relationship. In our example, setting reasonable expectations requires that you explain the risk and realities that might keep you from delivering a satisfactory outcome. You might find that as you are explaining your position your senior stakeholder abruptly cuts you off to answer a call or text, impatiently dismisses you, or just zones out.

Senior stakeholders are busy. They have many things going on simultaneously and may feel that the issue they have with you is low on their priority list. Their time is limited, as is, in most cases, their interest in details. To manage a healthy relationship with senior stakeholders, you must make sure that your message is delivered succinctly (brief, to the point and clear). if you are trying to get across the message that there is uncertainty about your ability to deliver the desired results in the desired time frame, start with an engaging statement like “I’d love to be able to say that we can absolutely commit to delivering, but in good conscience I can’t.”

Let him ask “Why?” Then he’s hooked. To reel him in, you need to avoid long detailed explanations. Identify from one to five high-level reasons and state them as if they were bullet points in a presentation. Pause and ask whether he wants to go into further detail and carry on from there.

The point is to engage and give your stakeholder choices. Respect her time and need and interest in detail.

When you show someone that you care about them and their needs, are candid and can express yourself clearly and succinctly it is likely that they will be open to an effective professional relationship.

Self-Awareness a Critical Capability for Project Managers

Written by George Pitagorsky on March 1, 2017. Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on Self-Awareness a Critical Capability for Project Managers

As a project manager, your ability to monitor your behavior is the foundation for your ability to excel.

This article defines self-awareness, explores its importance to effective performance and identifies ways to increase your self-awareness.

Definition

Self-awareness is the ability to “step back” and observe yourself objectively to know your behavior, motivations, feelings, values and desires. It is knowing your personality and the way you display it in your life.

Self-awareness goes beyond intellectual understanding. It includes the ability to know from the inside the emotional states – happiness, depression, anger, disappointment, etc. – that are integral parts of our lives. It includes the awareness that even the attempt to intellectually understand the causes of those emotional states may be a way of avoiding or suppressing those emotions.

Why It Is Important

As a project manager, you are charged with getting goals and objectives met through the efforts of other people. Often you are faced with challenges like stakeholders with conflicting views and motives and conditions that are out of your control and get in the way of accomplishing your objectives within time and cost constraints.

There are many examples, and for those who have taken any role in any project you have your own. Some of my “favorites” are:

Stakeholders who are not available when it comes time for them to define requirements and who then complain about project delays
Executives or bureaucrats who restrict or delay hiring or procurement of tools and other resources after having approved project budgets, schedules, and objectives
Performers and functional managers who say one thing and do another
Loss of a key resource with little or no time for replacement and turnover.

Let’s not stop with the challenges caused by external factors. Project managers are also faced with what we can call ego issues – a leader who has narcissistic tendencies will see things as if they are all about him or her; a perfectionist with anger issues will react badly when faced with poor quality deliverables.

Emotional Intelligence and Self-awareness

Emotional Intelligence is the capability to manage emotions and to handle interpersonal relationships effectively. It is considered a principle quality that underlies effective leadership and the ability to operate effectively when working with others in any role. There are five components of emotional intelligence at work: Self-awareness, Self-regulation, Motivation, Empathy and Social Skill.

Self-awareness is a primary factor in emotional intelligence. When faced with challenges, for many, emotions will arise. If you are not self-aware you will be more likely to act out your emotions reflexively – yell, blame, rant, withdraw, become increasingly rigid, etc. Anger may lead to depression or outburst. Your affect, the way others perceive you, and your behavior, will impact the way they feel and that will impact their performance.

For example, if you take your anger over what you consider to be a dumb decision by your management out on a team member, the team member will likely come away less motivated to perform well. If you become depressed and lose your zeal for the project, you will fail to motivate the team. In other words, your mood is contagious, particularly if you are in a leadership position, though the demeanor of a team member can influence the entire team.

Self-Regulation

Self-awareness enables you to self-regulate your thoughts, speech and action. It gives you the opportunity to think before you speak or act and thereby control and redirect your impulses and moods. Self-awareness promotes self-confidence because it gives you the clear realization that you can control yourself.

Control in this context is not meant to imply some rigid tension. It simply means that you can see what is happening and take a breath before you react. It entails responding rather than reacting. It implies the ability to choose what you think, what you say and how you behave.

Motivation, Empathy, and Social Skill

Motivation is enabled by self-awareness. Self-awareness provides the ability to know that everything you think, do or say be influenced by what drives you -your values and goals. Knowing your motivations and seeing your emotional responses to them – whether passion or lethargy – gives you the opportunity to question and fine tune your motivations so that your response will be more likely to be passion.

Self-awareness is a prerequisite for empathy. It is difficult if not impossible to understand how others may be feeling without having a foundation in the awareness of your own feelings.

Social skill, the ability to manage relationships, come to agreements, build rapport and establish networks, emerges as the other components come together. The self-aware person will be able to self-regulate. Self-regulation provides the space needed to know your motives and to have the sense of others that allows you to create trust and motivate others.

Making Better Decisions – Overcoming Bias

Cognitive bias is the tendency to be swayed by culture and personal psychology to make poor decisions based on illogical inferences about other people or situations. It is a systematic error in thinking. Self-awareness is an important ingredient to help to overcome cognitive biases and therefore to make more effective decisions.

Self-awareness gives you the sense that your intuition is driving you towards a decision, lets you see whether that is a habitual response to the situation and to question it. By testing your intuition, it leads to uncovering the cause which may be an unconscious bias.

Becoming More Self-Aware

Becoming more self-aware is a double-edged sword. In addition to the benefits of increasing emotional intelligence and clearer, unbiased thinking, it also forces you to confront the parts of your personality that you might find disturbing and hard to take. “Ignorance is bliss.”

If you are oblivious to the impact an angry style of pointing out flaws in other people’s performance, you can just happily continue to do so. Once you become aware of it and of the impact it has are now faced with the challenge to change. Your style is deeply embedded and hard to change. As self-awareness increases, you have a greater need to accept your flaws and the courage to work to overcome them.

To increase your self-awareness, start with being fed-up with being reactive and distracted by random thoughts triggered by external and internal events. There is a Catch-22 here. To be fed up with being reactive, you need to be self-aware. Often this initial level of self-awareness comes in the form of a shock of some kind – for example, a valued team member quits and gives the reason as your style of management.

The principle way to increase self-awareness is to cultivate a mindfulness practice. You may take on a formal meditation practice or decide to informally increase your mindfulness by purposefully taking greater notice of the things you think, say and do. You can question your intuition driven decisions and your basic beliefs. You can promote feedback form your peers, superiors, and subordinates to see yourself as others see you.

As you increase your mindfulness, awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations will increase. You will be more likely to be tuned into your surroundings, including the way others are behaving. You will become more objective in your thinking.

As you get feedback from those around you, your eyes will open to the you that you have not been seeing clearly.

Make Effective Decisions: Cease to Cherish Opinions

Written by George Pitagorsky on December 23, 2016. Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Make Effective Decisions: Cease to Cherish Opinions

Making decisions is an integral part of project management and performance. Decisions are made by everyone from the executive sponsor to the individual performer.

Executives decide whether to fund or not fund a project. Steering groups decide whether to make or buy, to authorize changes and more. Project managers decide who to assign to what tasks, how much autonomy to give them, what approach to use, what to communicate and when to communicate it, how closely to follow standards and procedures, etc. Business analysts decide on what techniques to use to extract requirements and process definitions from their business partners. Among the decisions Individual performers make are how best to navigate their relationships, do their work, and accurately communicate their status and progress.

Ideally, all decisions would be based on a rational assessment of options based on prioritized decision criteria. Intuition as well as the results of detailed analysis are used in decision making. Unfortunately, many do not experience the ideal. There are numerous instances of decisions made based on unfounded opinions and biases.

Definitions

Cognitive biases are inclinations to think in a certain way. They are prejudices that override rational thinking and lead to distorted perceptions and, ultimately, to poor decisions. Cognitive biases arise out of a variety of causes – the desire to avoid uncertainty, anchoring on a single factor to the expense of others, belief that automation solves all problems, mental shortcuts that have been burned in over years of use, having limited meaningful information, wishful thinking, self-serving attachment to getting one’s way, everyone else who matters thinks so, etc.

Opinions are beliefs, positions or views that may be value judgments or interpretations. For example, there is the opinion that a governing body – say a PMO – should define and police compliance to rules, policies and procedures. Another opinion is that each project manager should have the freedom to choose within broad guidelines. Other examples are the opinion that it is better to buy a product rather than build it yourself and the opinion that outsourcing non-central functions is better than performing them internally. Of course, there are many very interesting examples of opinions in the political, theological and socio-economic reals ranging from opinions regarding creation and evolution, freedom to choose, the relationship between religion and government, and the cause of global warming. While the same principles apply to all opinions and decisions, we will stick to the realm of projects.

Facts can be proven based on observation or objective proof. It is a fact that the earth is round – go up high enough off the ground or circumnavigate the globe and you can see for yourself. Alternatively, you can rely on the findings of others, for example photos of the earth from space or Magellan’s log book. The shape of the earth used to be an opinion, a theory. Some thought the earth to be flat and were convinced that their opinion was a fact. Today, it is widely accepted that the roundness of the earth is a fact. Though, there may be some deniers who, not having seen it for themselves, do not believe the witnesses and documents that prove that the earth is round.

Note that the collective belief that something is true does NOT make it a fact. A bias based on the repetition of a belief over and over again by an ever growing number of people is a bias that has often led to irrational decisions. For example, the collective belief that the current way of performing a task or business process is the best way, leads to a lack of motivation to improve. The collective belief that one group or one way of thinking is superior or inferior to another is a source of misery for many.

Validate Opinions

Opinions abound. Everyone has them. They can be quite useful. They reflect individual perceptions and can be good starting points for decision making – if the parties involved differentiate between opinion and fact, understand the source of their opinions and are open to the reality that while multiple opinions can be “right” some opinions are “wrong” – biased and foundation-less.

Opinions may be biased or not. Some opinions are based on an impartial assessment of the available information. While still opinions, they can be substantiated and supported by viable theories, facts and observations. Others are based on unfounded beliefs – biases.

Often people mistake opinions for facts or become so identified with their opinions that they lose the ability to communicate and work effectively with others. In projects, this becomes a serious problem because it makes decision making more difficult than it needs to be and because it increases the frequency and intensity of conflict, dysfunctional relationships and poor decisions.

It is a best practice to be mindfully aware of whether or not your opinions and the opinions of others are rational – based on fact, objective data and sound logic.

Ancient wisdom advises us to “Cease to cherish opinions”¹This does not equate to not having opinions – if you are human and involved in the material world you will have opinions. Cherishing them is an add-on. Cherishiung your opinions means that you are so identified and attached to them that your mind is closed to any alternative – you are treating your opinion as if it were fact; your mind is closed.

Open Minded

An open mind is the key to effective decision making. Being open minded means assessing your opinion objectively, assessing other people’s opinions objectively, and changing your opinion considering facts and alternative perceptions. It means recognizing that all opinions are not equal and that those that are biased should be discarded to come to effective decisions.

Let’s be clear. Being open minded is a challenge. It means that you must question your dearest beliefs and be open to dropping them when they are shown to be without solid foundation.

At the same time, it is necessary to state and advocate for your opinion or to be satisfied that someone else is advocating for it in a way that does it justice. Sometimes, in a decision making process, it is useful to have people with opposing opinions advocate for the other parties’ opinions. But, in any event each opinion must be respected, analyzed objectively and either accepted or rejected based on its merits. If it is accepted as a viable opinion then it can be an option to be considered in making the decision at hand.

Options and Decisions

This conversion of an opinion to an option makes the opinion concrete as a reference point in the analysis that leads to a decision. The decision may be to choose one option over another or to merging options to come up with alternatives that might share the best parts of others or present compromise positions.

For example, if an opinion is that buying is better than building, that opinion is translated into a specific option – acquire product X and make it work for a given business process. The option is compared to alternative options based on criteria like cost, time to implementation, product flexibility, user experience, risk, supportability, etc.

It is through objective assessment of opinions that teams and organizations can cut through divisive arguments and reach effective decisions that, to the degree possible, satisfies all stakeholders’ needs.

Are you ready to question your beliefs and seek to cherish your opinions?

References
1 http://fakebuddhaquotes.com/dont-keep-searching-for-the-truth-just-let-go-of-your-opinions/, The Third Zen Patriarch, Hsin Hsin Ming by Seng-T’san, Verses on the Faith Mind.

Losing A Key Player Can Derail Your Project

Written by George Pitagorsky on December 2, 2016. Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on Losing A Key Player Can Derail Your Project

Key players are great to have but, when a key player leaves, there is bound to be disruption. Cultivate and acknowledge key players and be prepared for the time when they will leave to minimize the impact and reduce the likelihood of occurrence.

What is a Key Player?

A key player is a stakeholder who has an important influence on the outcome. They can be a performer, subject matter expert or manager at any level – an integral part of the project team or a sponsor, functional manager or client. According to the Business Dictionary, a key player is an “Individual whose knowledge, creativity, inspiration, reputation, and/or skills are critical to the viability or growth of an organization, and whose loss may cripple it.” [http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/key-person.html]

In an organizational change project focused on performance improvement, a key player would be:

a knowledge holder of the organization culture and environment, its procedures, constraints, people and history
able to see both the big picture and the tactical details and the way they are interdependent
able to lead stakeholders to make smart decisions that consider all the angles and factors at play while being neutral and non-threatening
committed to making the project and all of those working on it successful
self-managing and able to run their team with a minimal need for management and supervision from above
reliable to competently do what they say they’ll do
personable, a good communicator in writing and orally and able to work with minimal authority.

In a more general sense, a key player is an individual who brings an array of skills, knowledge and personal characteristics that are hard to find and which make the individual almost indispensable.

The Impact of Losing a Key Player

Of course, no one is entirely indispensable, and everyone is important to the project outcome. However, a key players’ impact is often proportionally greater than the average stakeholder’s, and they are much harder to replace.

For example, if there are 6 programmers on a software development project, all with roughly equal capabilities and working on well-defined functions, the loss of one of them would impact the schedule, but they would be fairly easy to replace. It is much more difficult to manage the loss of the team-lead who has been onboard for several years, has comprehensive knowledge of the entire product, a sense of where the software fits in the business context, the ability to translate computer-ese into non-technical language, knows the technology intimately and is a strong influencer of how team members relate to the project and one another.

The impact of the loss of this key player will affect the schedule as well as the momentum and direction of the project. This player may be impossible to replace during the course of the project and, maybe, for years to come.

Alternatively, the key player may be a senior executive with vision and a sense of where the project is headed on a strategic level and is willing and able to exercise the will to keep the project funded, staffed and moving in the right direction as things change. Their replacement could take the project in a new direction, re-prioritize the project or add confusion based on a lack of understanding of organizational goals and how they are affected by the project. The replacement could change a healthy dynamic into an unhealthy one if they came to a collaboration-based organization with an authoritarian rather than collaborative approach.

The impact of the loss of a key player is a disruption. Loss of a key player can derail the project. It affects morale, the ability to make the right decisions and the efficiency of having a team member who can cut through with decisive thinking, ask the right questions and motivate the staff.

Be Prepared

As I point out in my forthcoming book on Managing Expectations, don’t expect things to work out exactly the way that you want them to. Change is inevitable. It is wise to expect change and, particularly, disruptive change.

Expecting it doesn’t mean it will happen. It means that you will at least consider it as part of your risk management process and can avoid or minimize the impact of changes, like the loss of a key player, that can disrupt you project.

Being prepared for the loss of a key player involves making sure that there is back up and that key decisions and their rationale are memorialized – written down in easy to retrieve documents. As much as possible, transform tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge.

In addition, it is wise to have a backup – one or two people to work in parallel with the key player and who can pick up the work quickly and effectively if the key player leaves.

However, documentation and backup are not cure-alls. They moderate the impact but do not eliminate it. The key player usually brings more to the table than concrete skills and decisions. Documentation is limited and often falls short of being a true reflection of the decision it is meant to memorialize. Backup people are often not as skilled, not as knowledgeable and not as emotionally and socially competent to do the magic that the key player often does.

Being prepared means having realistic expectations – the loss of a key player is a major and hard to manage event. It will likely impact the schedule, lead to higher costs and can impact the level of the quality of the result.

If you lose a key player, be sure to step back and reassess your plan forward. Manage the change on the people involved through effective communication.

Cultivate and Retain Key Players

Key players are valuable. They are “are critical to the viability or growth of an organization, and whose loss may cripple it.”

When you are fortunate enough to have a key player, make sure you recognize and acknowledge their contribution and value. Sometimes you can do it with money and promotions; often it is done through clearly communicating the message. That communication is not just limited to the individual. Everyone on the team needs to be made aware of the contribution that this person is making and its importance.

Often it is obvious, and everyone knows. However, be aware that there may be denial, resistance or simply a lack of conscious recognition. Some key players may be so good at what they do that they make it seems as if everyone is doing the work themselves. Other key players may be less transparent. Some stakeholders may be threatened by or be jealous of a key player. Relationships must be managed.

You cultivate key players by recognizing the people who have that relatively rare capacity to see the big picture and the details, can manage the work, communicate effectively, have good judgment and can work well with others. Once recognized these people must be put in positions that enable them to learn and fine tune their skills. Put them on a fast track and let them know that you appreciate them and their contribution.

Avoid the workings of the Peter Principle – the idea that people in organizations are promoted until they reach a level of incompetence and that marginally competent managers fail to recognize and promote talented junior people to preserve the hierarchy and the status quo.

At the same time, teach your highly competent people that emotional intelligence, humility and patience with “lesser beings” are at least as important as analytical capability, IQ and content knowledge.

In the end, you want to cultivate and recognize your key players and their value while keeping in mind the risks and challenges they bring.

Project Performance Review: The Power of Recognizing What’s Going On

Written by George Pitagorsky on October 31, 2016. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on Project Performance Review: The Power of Recognizing What’s Going On

“Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what’s going on.”

This line from Pema Chodron’s The Places That Scare You set me to thinking about how much it applies to team work and projects.

Related Article: The Importance of Process Thinking

The commitment to continuous improvement and optimal performance requires that we confront the imperfections that get in the way. This is not so easy. One of the more difficult things in life is confronting our own imperfections. This individual trait is magnified in teams and in organizations in general. As a group becomes bonded and individuals identify with it, the resistance of its members to confront their group’s dysfunction and their own responsibility for it increases.

Project performance reviews, held frequently during the life of a project, are the primary means to continuous improvement. Project performance reviews acknowledge and uncover positive accomplishments, and valued parts of the process and they confront the flaws in our performance and processes.

Warriors

“Warrior-ship here does not refer to making war on others. Aggression is the source of our problems, not the solution. Here the word “warrior” … literally means, “one who is brave.” ¹
It takes a wise warrior to confront his or her own imperfections. It takes a team of warriors to step back to objectively and compassionately review their process and behavior. It takes more than a procedure for post project process reviews to create a team of warriors.

A warrior is a person who is seriously engaged in an activity or cause, particularly a struggle. The spiritual warrior is one who is dedicated to the cultivation of his or her own clarity and compassion, with the ultimate goal of being of service. A Samurai, Japanese warrior, commits to serve – the word Samurai literally means “those who serve.”

It takes courage to struggle against the tendency to hide from critical confrontations. This tendency is often “invisible to the eye.” it is deeply embedded in culture and psychology. To first acknowledge and then do something about the resistance to confrontation begins with oneself as an individual. If you can’t face your own shortfalls how can you expect others to face theirs?

Individual Awareness

Can you simply be present with the uncomfortable emotional feelings that come up when confronted with your shortfalls – your dark side? Being present with the feelings means being non-reactive; not trying to throw them off by ignoring, making excuses, blaming others or disparaging yourself and your own competencies. None of these strategies enables you to objectively address the issue at hand – the perceived shortfall, imperfection or dysfunction.

Acknowledge the common difficulty in facing criticism, even if you are not personally afflicted by it. It enables you to be more understanding of where you and others may be coming from when criticism is avoided or met with defensiveness and aggression. This acknowledgement is an important step towards applying your courage and skill to confront the issues in your projects to enable continuous improvement.

Team Awareness

Starting with individuals who are aware of the need for confronting the “dark side”, bring this awareness to the group level. It takes a team to evaluate its performance and avoid repeating unskillful behavior.

In an enlightened environment, everyone is self-aware and motivated. The process of performance reviews is well integrated into the fabric of how work gets done. There is sensitivity to the needs of individuals at various stages in their ability to take criticism without becoming reactive.

It is my experience that enlightened environments are few and far between. More often we find teams and departments that avoid meaningful performance reviews.

Team awareness begins with communication and the recognition that

Negative criticism is something positive – a means to the end of improvement
It is normal to be averse to it and
Whether averse to it or not, it is necessary to invite, accept and thrive on criticism.

It’s the Process Not the Person

Enlightened leadership stresses the understanding that most errors and omissions occur because of broken processes – fix the process and the dysfunction goes away. They move beyond blaming to enable real cause analysis – not who caused it but what caused it.

If individual performance caused a problem, then what in the process allowed that dysfunctional individual performance? Was it lack of training, inadequate tools and procedures, poor direction, impossible expectations, laziness, stupidity or a deep seated character disorder? Depending on the answer, the right way forward can be identified and applied.

Readiness

Not everyone on the team will be ready for confrontation. There are organizations that do not hold process reviews because they are not ready on an enterprise level. Some of them monitor performance through metrics and adjust on the fly without confronting the root cause of chronic dysfunctional behavior. Others don’t bother with the metrics. Some know it is the right thing to do but are afraid of what will happen if they change the culture to a process oriented, self-reflective one.

I am reminded of an organization in which senior executives regularly come up with ideas for new initiatives and require operational groups to jump on them to achieve a half understood goal with impossible time and cost expectations. In this organization, the operational groups, are criticized for not moving fast enough or dropping the ball in their operational activities. Without a critical analysis of the dynamic at play, the scenario will be repeated.

What does it take to get that organization ready to change? It takes either a serious failure or an aware warrior with sufficient clout to get the right peoples’ attention.

Leadership’s Role

I am also reminded of a program in which two functional teams responsible for closely related work streams found themselves in squabbles and finger pointing caused by a combination of silo thinking and less than full commitment to following mutually agreed upon change and project control procedures. Some team members were open to objective and critical process analysis while others were into adversarial finger pointing and blaming.

In this situation, at this level of the organization, the need is for someone in authority to set the ground rules for effective process review with the goal of improving collaboration. In situations like this patience, strength and compassion are needed to make the points that need to be made while not offending. Here the warrior must have the authority and respect of the team to set a healthy direction and the skill to work through the resistance that is likely to come from those who are not ready for healthy criticism and change.

In any event, it is necessary for the organization, the team and the individuals that make them up to recognize the importance of going beyond the habitual resistance to criticism to embracing it as a critical success factor. It is leadership’s responsibility to make sure that happens.

1 Chogyam Trungpa Trungpa, Chogyam, “True Perception: The Path of Dharma Art”, Shambhala, November 11, 2008, ISBN 1-59030-588-4 [3]