Tag: BPM

Finish What You Start

Written by Brad Egeland on December 1, 2015. Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on Finish What You Start

I think I speak for most or all of us when I say it’s more or less part of our human nature that we like to finish what we start. Please tell me if you disagree.

I get frustrated at home when I get called away from a task that I’m in the middle of or interrupted on a complicated project and then try to go back a week later and try to pick up where I left off. All of that forward momentum…all of the job well-done enthusiasm…all of that teaching my kids a step by step approach to completing that specific task is gone. And it’s very hard to resume with the same accuracy, efficiency and enthusiasm that was there previously.

The same holds true – in my opinion – on the projects we are managing. To start with a fresh new project with a new client and a formal kickoff that you prepare and plan for and then conduct is great. To bring that long project to completion and rollout no matter how many ups and downs and bumps and issues there were is relieving, rewarding, priceless and very fulfilling all at the same time. To have to hand off that project you’ve owned since its inception at any point short of completion sucks. It just plain sucks.

It’s not always going to work, but if you really want to finish the project you’ve started, and management is pushing you to jump to another new project, here are ‘x’ steps to take to try to hang on to the special project that you don’t want to let go of.

Formulate reasons why you need to stay on the current project. Do you want to keep your project that you’ve successfully walked your team and project client halfway through? Then fight for it. You may not be successful, but you’ll be sincere and probably respected for it. How do you fight for it? Well, you’re likely being pulled for something that your senior leadership feels is either a better fit or that they need your experience or leadership to take on. It may be a project for a very important new or past customer, and they want your expertise to lead it. So you may not have a choice, but you can explain you appreciate the vote of confidence, and state that you’d really like to figure out a way – jointly with management – to keep your current project as well.

Justify keeping the project showing your ability to handle the workload. Once you’ve expressed your desire to hang on to your current project, and if it appears you are going to be obligated to take on the newly assigned project, then you’re going to have to show how you can handle both projects. That’s probably only going to fly if you are at a slower point on the project that you want to see through until the end. If it’s going smoothly, then you may win your battle. But if your project that management wants offloaded to someone else is going strong and taking considerable PM time, then you’re not likely to get very far. That’s when you move on to the next argument.

Suggest other projects to offload. If you can’t get management to leave you off the new project, and you can’t get them to agree to let you have both projects, then you must approach them with the concept of offloading another project to some other project manager, assuming you’re managing more than just one project currently. This may sound logical, and it may even sound easy, but getting management to change their mind about strategic plans they’ve already formulated, thought through and were in the process of acting upon is difficult at best. They can be as stubborn as you when they feel they’ve made wise plans and wise decisions. You’ll need to do the dirty work. You will need to be the one to select which project or projects could be offloaded – possibly even suggesting how to offload one or more projects to and why. You’ll need to do the legwork on this because they already have and their mind is made up.

Related Article: 5 Goals of a Project Manager

Next, sit down with management have a discussion, going through your justification of why it makes more sense to offload project ‘y’ than project ‘x’…the one you want to keep. Look at dollars, the team, and mainly the customer. If you can get any statements from clients supporting how much they want you to stay on the project or how satisfied they are with you and your team’s performance, that will only help you in your cause.

Summary / call for input

The bottom line is this, if you’re passionate about project management, owning your project and the high-level of customer service that goes along with it, then you probably want to see your projects through to the end. Whether the project is going great and you want to bring it home or it’s going poorly and you don’t want to be that project manager who abandoned his customer and handed off a stinking mess of issues to another project manager to clean up, you want to keep it. You have your reasons. If so, then you’ll need to fight for it – not obnoxiously, but logically. And you’ll need to state your case – you’ll need to reason with your senior management and convince them that your way is the best way. Like the starting pitcher who doesn’t want to be removed from the game, you’ll have to convince that pitching coach that you shouldn’t have to turn the ball in just yet.

What about our readers? Is it common for you to not be able to see your projects through to the end? I think we see this more often when organizations are understocked with reliable, experienced project managers, and they often need to reach out to the most experienced to take on the new and more complex projects they start to acquire as they grow their business and PM practice. What are your thoughts? What are your own potential solutions or suggestions?

Project Management is All About Trust

Written by Kiron Bondale on November 3, 2015. Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Project Management is All About Trust

I’ve written previously that a key benefit of project management is predictability. Without the benefit of project management, the range of possible outcomes is likely to be quite large and most sponsors would have insufficient confidence to invest in even moderately complex projects.

Communication is frequently cited as being the activity which consumes most of a Project Manager’s time and poor communication has been identified as a key contributor to project failure.

While project success is predicated on effective communication, the must-have requirement for achieving predictable project outcomes is trust. This comes as no surprise when we consider that projects require the cooperation and willing participation from multiple people to achieve success, and trust is crucial to developing positive, productive working relationships with these stakeholders.

What happens when there are low levels of trust on a project?

Morale issues are just the tip of the iceberg. The main impacts of low trust are the waste and opportunity costs resulting from non-value add activities such as:

Excessive follow-up and verification of status updates and other routine information provided by team members and other stakeholders
Procrastination when making decisions until all underlying assumptions and rationale have been validated
Increased scrutiny or micromanagement of the Project Manager by their sponsor or of team members by the Project Manager
Increases in the level of detail or expected frequency of status updates
Finger-pointing or other forms of assignment of blame instead of alignment towards resolving the root causes for issues
Inefficient meetings resulting from participants inviting others to bolster or protect their interests

These behaviors further reduce trust and the vicious cycle continues.

On the other hand, when there are high levels of trust between key stakeholders, there is greater willingness to accept recommendations and updates at face value, risks and issues are managed quicker and more effectively, and micromanagement gets replaced with management by exception.

So what helps to cultivate trust, especially in those situations where team members or other key stakeholders haven’t worked together previously?

Trust usually begins with competence or familiarity.

When a sponsor wants to hire a Project Manager who has significant domain expertise or when a Project Manager requests team members who have worked on multiple similar projects in the past, they are trying to bootstrap those relationships with a high degree of trust. With more junior team members, there is a greater likelihood of close monitoring and follow-up. Once expertise is demonstrated and proven on the current project, trust grows.

However, when those that we perceive as being highly competent let us down, the sense of betrayal resulting from expectation gaps is significant and it will take them that much longer for them to regain our trust.

This is why vulnerability is so important.

Being open about one’s weaknesses in front of others is one of the best ways to gain trust and secure support. Most people want to be perceived as being helpful and vulnerability on the part of someone they work closely with provides them with the opportunity to highlight their strengths and to provide assistance. In the same way as proven expertise increases trust, honest expressions of vulnerability cultivates confidence in the observer that there will be similar openness in the future.

Vulnerability has to be authentic. We have limited tolerance for false modesty or for excessive self-critique and such behaviors will quickly be perceived as self-serving or duplicitous.
The close cousin of vulnerability is transparency.

Taking the time to understand the information needs of your key stakeholders and then meeting those needs in a reliable manner in spite of how good or bad things are going earns trust. Working with the sponsor and key stakeholders early in the life of a project to define criteria for escalation and communication can help to ensure that when a problem or action is needing their engagement arises, it is presented in a consistent, objective manner.

Transparency with team members is equally critical – if a recommendation they have developed is not accepted or if a decision is made which isn’t in the organization or their best interests, help them understand why.

The final elements in establishing trust are warmth and empathy.

Recognizing other’s efforts, showing an interest in their lives and aspirations, or providing support when they require assistance will all help gain their trust. Listen actively and focus on them – the more you demonstrate through your actions that you are paying attention to what they are saying, the more appreciated they will feel. Giving stakeholders the benefit of the doubt unless they’ve given you reason to judge them otherwise also helps to generate trust reciprocity.

Henry L. Stimson – “The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him.”

Build a Ladder

Written by George Konstantopoulos on October 13, 2015. Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Build a Ladder

Over the last seventeen years, I have been blessed to work with some of the most talented people in the Canadian and US banking, energy, high tech, retail and real estate industries. As I moved through these experiences, I realized that success is not easy and involves both hard work and others occasionally opening and holding the door for you. I learned that a true leader internalizes the obligation to spend a good portion of their time building a ladder so that they may help those who are travelling with them climb the next rung in their career.

If you’ve done well, please remember to pass the good sentiment to those coming up behind you.

For all those senior leaders who took the time to listen, understand, coach and mentor me – I am truly grateful and forever indebted.

To all aspiring professionals – the tips included within this article are intended to help you climb that ladder.

Speak Powerfully

The words of your voice represent your brand – the values that are important to you. How you will think, feel, and act are all proven through the words and tone you select. The words out of your mouth have both the power to open and close doors for you. Be conscious of the effects they may have. Your accompanying body language, tone, and aura are critical so that when you speak people will listen.

To speak so that people will listen, one must speak powerfully. Speaking powerfully requires avoiding the trap of conforming to negative communication traits. Such traits include gossiping, judging, complaining, and confusing opinions for facts. Avoid these at all costs.

Speaking powerfully also requires adopting positive communication traits such as being concise, clear, laconic, authentic, honest, and kind.

Related Article: Leadership Lessons: 5 Ways to Build a Box

Build Social Connectivity

Social connectivity is truly an organizational asset. It is the foundation of an open and transparent work environment that helps build a culture of helpfulness and avoids competitive rivalry and ill will. Social connectivity allows protectionism to be abandoned, and ideas to be shared, connected and eventually transformed into masterpieces.

Positive and direct human interactions breed social connectivity. When engaged in work activities with others you must demonstrate a high degree of social sensitivity. To do so you must believe that everyone has value and something useful to offer. You must also exhibit empathy and understanding for all opinions. One way to do this is to ensure equal time is given to all individuals to express their views and knowledge.

Social connectivity is the capital that enables a united group of individuals to challenge and motivate one another. Most importantly it avoids group think and allows a collection of people to truly make change possible. It is imperative that you are seen as a creator and promoter of social capital.

Form Thinking Partnerships

A few years ago, while working as an independent consultant, I was fortunate to work on closing a large acquisition made by a Canadian firm. I was paired with an individual named Tim. Tim was also an independent consultant. The scope of our assignment included day one operational readiness and regulatory deal approval. Tim and I were each assigned different work packages. The scope of work was estimated to take 20 weeks – we were given 12 weeks. Tim was assigned the technology work package and everything non-technical was assigned to me.

Immediately I wanted to build a bond with Tim. I knew that together we were much stronger than two separate entities working against each other and in a silo. Cultural norms between the technology team and the other business segments at this firm can best be described as a competitive rivalry. As Tim represented the technology team and I every other business segment, we decided to challenge the establishment and collaborate.

Tim and I shared our work package objectives and needs and immediately reached consensus on how best to meet and exceed them. We decided to be mutually accountable for both work packages and the success of one another. We understood that this was not a zero sum game. We could both win.

Openness and collaboration within a fiercely opposing culture were not the only great thing we accomplished. Tim and I used conscious conflict to ensure we stretched our cognitive abilities needed to exceed expectations. We challenged each other and looked for ways to break each other’s models, code, analysis, and conclusions. We were thinking partners.

Our thinking partnership meant that we constantly questioned one another with the intent to improve the quality of our outputs. Because it was an open and accepted system of conflict with a clearly understood altruistic intent there was no competitive rivalry or ill will.

Dedication and an intense desire to help one another succeed and solve this seemingly insurmountable task was the fuel we needed. Our thinking partnership helped us deliver our mandate in 10 weeks. Tim and I were rewarded for our success and understood that had we worked in silos or not formed a thinking partnership that we would never have accomplished what we did.

Tim and I enabled each other to do our best thinking – and achieve one of our greatest successes.

Thinking partnerships allow the discovery of more insight and progress. Ensure you actively seek to form as many as you can.

May you all achieve success.

Five Really Good Reasons to Map Business Processes

Written by Chelsea Gaillard on October 6, 2015. Posted in Articles. 8 Comments on Five Really Good Reasons to Map Business Processes

Process Mapping is a group activity performed by teams of subject matter experts that gather to draw step-by-step diagrams to document how work is processed (see Figure 1). This invaluable tool is mostly used by consultants and business professionals to capture the current state of business operations in preparation for business improvement initiatives.

However, process mapping can also be very beneficial in helping to increase productivity among staff, implementing or decommissioning systems, streamlining processes, and protecting knowledge capital. Let’s take a look at how process mapping is used in business improvement initiatives as well as how it can be used to help in other areas of a business.

Figure 1 – Cross-functional Process Map Example

1.Launch Business Improvement Initiatives

The strategic plans and goals of a company often drive the need for change. But before making changes it is prudent to establish a baseline from which to make improvements. Taking the time to understand how a process is currently working allows you to:

Leverage best practices from existing processes
Capture lessons learned – learn what not to repeat
Measure the effectiveness of improvements
Ensure that you are fixing not shifting or creating problems
Optimize existing processes rather than creating new processes from scratch

Look at process maps as an investigative tool helping you to understand the root causes of problems. It also supports the transparency needed to learn about how work is completed and encourages team innovation from an “all-in” stakeholder perspective for improving processes. If you take the time to understand what is and what is not working, you will be less likely to repeat mistakes of old.

2.Increase Staff Productivity

Process mapping can help organizations eliminate confusion and chaos among staff helping to increase productivity. A properly trained staff that operates like a well-oiled machine increases the type of productivity that leads to profits. However, in many organizations poor processes and a lack of training and communication leads to chaos that produces poor performance and low employee morale.

Process mapping requires a “parley” of sorts that brings all interested parties to the table to hash out how work is done. At the table stakeholders are identified, roles and responsibilities of each group are clarified, and sequential steps of the process are documented and then ultimately negotiated to optimize work processes.

Process maps can also be used as training aids for employees and easily converted into standard operating procedures that describe step-by-step details on how to perform each task identified.

3.Implement New or Decommission Old Systems

Technology changes as frequently as our need for it. Staying competitive requires that we use the latest technology to maintain a competitive advantage and carry out the strategic goals of the company. This frequent change requires a constant need to assess the systems being used in production and to perform administrative duties. System updates, installations, and the decommissioning of systems can be very costly if impacts to groups and processes are not considered. Implementing a new system without first identifying all user groups and how they use it may fail to meet the needs of the business. Decommissioning systems prematurely can leave user groups without a way to process or produce data that could cause operations to come to a grinding halt.

Detailed process maps can provide a deep and wide understanding of how businesses us their systems. As processes are described, and systems identified you are inadvertently collecting an inventory of all systems used, as well as learning about who uses them and how they are used. This information provides IT with the pertinent information necessary to meet the technology needs of a business.

4.Quickly Streamline Business Processes

You can also use process mapping to identify “pain points” experienced throughout a business process. Tagging steps in a process about the problems that occur can help you focus on specific areas for improvement.

“Lean” tools can be applied when analyzing maps to seek ways to streamline the process. Lean is a business methodology that involves using a set of tools that assists in the identification and steady elimination of waste in processes. Manual processes, redundant work, bottlenecks, and rework are just a few activities that can be classified as waste. Process maps make it easy to identify these activities because each step in the process is documented clearly with notes and symbols of how the process is being performed. Consideration for elimination should be given to steps that are considered waste and do not add value to the development or production of the end product

5.Protect Knowledge Capital

Knowledge capital is an intangible asset but is just as valuable as the physical assets of a company. The definition of knowledge capital is the skill set shared by employees on how to perform tasks or steps necessary for the support of production. Often the details of how tasks are performed between and within groups are not documented. Losing this vital information due to turnover or other absences could lead to work stoppages, slow production, or lead to chaos damaging the effectiveness of operations.

Process maps capture all the vital information necessary to keep operations functional. Functional areas, roles, responsibilities, systems and inputs and outputs of a process are documented providing clarity on how the critical processes to the operations of a business occur. The process maps also serve as a communication tool educating staff from a 360-degree view of how things work increasing the value of the knowledge capital thus providing a competitive advantage. In the absence of critical staff, these process maps are available to backup staff to keep operations running smoothly.

Process mapping has many effective uses, but they are most effective when used as living documents that can be reviewed and updated regularly to monitor and improve business operations. Best practice is to learn the universal standards on how to develop process maps, document critical core and supportive processes that keep the business operational, and establish a “continuous improvement” team that can meet quarterly to continually improve processes. This will ensure that your business is optimized at every possible level. Happy mapping!