Tag: Stakeholder

True North PMO leadership

Written by Yasar Ajlouni on January 26, 2021. Posted in Articles. 10 Comments on True North PMO leadership

Bill George wrote a book in 2007 about leaders who have internal compasses that guides them to life success.

The book was called True North. https://www.billgeorge.org/true-north/. True north leadership was described as a fixed point based on one’s values, passions, motivations and satisfaction. If one is detoured out of her true north for any reason, the internal compass puts her back on track. As leadership is about growing others, motivating them and making each team member go for one’s best, true north leadership can be very helpful.

As I have been leading Project Management Offices for quite some time, my catch is about true north and PMO clients. I keep asking every time I have a chance, what is really one of the most important success factors for a PMO to succeed? Almost the majority of the answers I heard revolved around happy PMO clients. These clients maybe organization functions, customers, or sponsors who all have expectations. Now what we as PMO leaders, Subject Matter Experts, consultants or advisors, provide them with; are simply PM benefits that they need to use. This is the reality they perceive, their happiness is simply the ratio between expectations and reality. In a previous post, I have written on LinkedIn about PMO tipping point, I have suggested that probably every PMO has a different and unique tipping point value, the point where you feel, know and can demonstrate that your PMO have gained enough momentum to get support from its clients. This is where your network is growing quicker, this is when you and your team are delivering.

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Satisfaction of PMO clients is however never fixed, it changes with projects outcomes, and relative to the organization culture and in regard to several other factors. Bottom line is we need to keep it going steady regardless of all that change where sometimes the rate of this change is impactful to shake our PMO’s. What really could work here is visualizing and creating true north profiles for our PMO clients, we need to find out how our PMO benefits are sustaining these clients wants and needs, specifically their motivation, satisfaction and happiness. In Other words we need dynamic PMO leadership. Easier said than done , we need to keep prioritizing the PMO functions that deliver those changing PM benefits , so we need to act based on the true north of these clients , simply because their perception of satisfaction is based on how aligned they are with our most recent PMO benefits . Once they become aligned again and again with what our teams deliver, we then get the best out of them, simply put we get to see the “real them” more often. Yes this is demanding, but who said PMOs never fail. Managing the relationship smartly is what I may call true north PMO leadership. It is based on keen stakeholder management related to those changing PMO benefits that we need to deliver. Each client will then speak, listen and act from her true north, this is not a dream, and it is simply working towards those outcomes in dynamic modes that considers nothing is constant. This not only saves time spent on arguments, conflict resolution or politics but boosts efficiency and effectiveness of a PMO.

As humans and In our race with computers and machines, that are equipped with Artificial Intelligence, and “Machines Learning” and other digital technologies, we need to acquire new PMO skills, fresh innovative ideas and team members who can go beyond and to the end, and maybe new tools but most importantly we need to rethink how we think about our clients!

Know Thyself and Others

Written by Anju Aggarwal on November 25, 2020. Posted in Articles. 14 Comments on Know Thyself and Others

Communication is challenging because different people hear different things.

You may think you are making yourself clear, but you run the risk of being misunderstood unless you make a conscious effort to speak in a way that appeals to the way the other person thinks.

The first step to make effective communication is to know what type of communicator you are dealing with. It is important to recognize how someone communicates and to be aware of your own style.

I will be sharing a situation faced by my friend Nisha to talk more about these communication styles. In her workplace, she gives clear instructions to her team members, but they seem unhappy with her, she can’t see what she has done to offend them.

Nisha’s problem seems to be related to different communication styles. Sometimes the problem isn’t what you’re communicating but the way you’re doing it. People have different communication styles. And it might be that yours doesn’t match with your colleague’s.

I decided to solve Nisha’s problem. I took help from the research work done by communication specialist Mark Murphy who breaks down communication into four fundamental styles – Functional, Analytical, Intuitive, and Personal.

I created a questionnaire to identify these 4 communication styles and then tried to map these styles with Nisha and her team members:

The First set of questions are

1. Do you value processes and procedures
2. Do you like to work with timelines and milestones
3. Do you have lot of questions

Nisha jumped up, “Oh, this is Praveen, my database manager” he behaves exactly like this.

So, Praveen has functional communication style

Functional communicator is someone who likes to get deep into the details. Someone who likes to understand how everything works.

How to tailor your communication with a functional communicator? Practice active listening. Be prepared for them to point out something you missed and allow them time to triple-check details. Give specific timelines and milestones for projects.

Nisha admitted her mistake in communicating with Praveen. She was taking Praveen’s criticism and feedback too strongly and thought that he is unnecessarily asking questions and wasting the team’s time. Whereas all this while he was trying to help himself by getting more details about the project.

Next set of questions:

4. Do you often use numbers to support your ideas
5. Do u get frustrated when conversations go off-topic
6. Do u need time to think about decisions

This time Nisha didn’t jump but was smiling mischievously – this one is you Anju

Alright point taken, I have Analytical communication style

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Analytical Communicators like direct conversation. They have little patience for emotional words and feelings when communicating. When you tell them sales are down, they want to know how much, as in a specific percentage.

How to tailor your communication with analytical thinker? Get straight to the point. Make your expectations clear. Give them time to think of the pros and cons of a possible choice.

Don’t get offended when they don’t want to spend time chatting about what they did on the weekend during the work meetings

So, Nisha, let’s not waste time and straightway move to the Next set of questions:

7. Do new ideas and innovation excites you
8. Do you dislike getting into lot of details
9. Do you prefer to use visuals when communicating

Nisha was nodding her head vigorously and taking name “Shruti, my tech lead”

So, Shruti had Intuitive communication style

Intuitive communicators prefer a more casual, big-picture approach to convey their points. Details aren’t as important to them and they prefer out-of-the-box thinking.

How to work with an intuitive communicator? Stay on topic; keep the discussions brief and to the point, Use visual aids if possible. Focus on the end result of the task at hand and leave out any unnecessary details.

Nisha added she was trying to give all the details to Shruti to help her with the tasks, but she observed that Shruti lose interest and focus. And now she understands why this was happening.

Last set of questions:

10. Are you a good listener
11. Do you tend to play a role of mediator in any conflict
12. Do you prioritize people’s feeling when making a decision

We both spoke together, and this is Nisha. She has personal communication style

Personal communicator is a people person. Their goal is to connect with people and understand how they’re feeling – they’re the ones who are always smoothing over workplace disagreements.

How to Work with a personal communicator: Let the conversation flow naturally. Don’t feel too pressured to get to the point. Keep your tone casual and authentic—professional, but not overly formal.

Don’t provide too much of detailed numbers to back up your point. Let them express their emotion and ideas even if they are non-work related

So now we have a good understanding of each of these communication styles as well as how to adapt our communication according to each style.

Murphy says “No one communication style is inherently better than another. But picking the wrong style for a particular audience, shuts down listening and can spell trouble. Learning to build flexibility around your preferred style allows others to more successfully hear the important things you need to communicate.”

This tailored communication with her team members has helped Nisha immensely in setting up a harmonious workplace.

Understanding different communication styles and paying attention to which styles our teammates gravitate toward, can improve our interpersonal skills, build trust, and help us get more done with less frustration.

Remember the first rule of effective communication: The success of the communication is the responsibility of the communicator. And for that you need to Know Thyself and others.

How to Improve the Customer Experience through Digital Transformation

Written by Paul Oppong on October 21, 2020. Posted in Articles. 17 Comments on How to Improve the Customer Experience through Digital Transformation

Digital transformation brings with it many possibilities, but arguably one of the most important is transforming the customer experience.

Yet digital transformation does not always deliver this. One research study demonstrated that only 19% of customers felt they had a significant improvement in their experiences with companies, following $4.7 trillion of investment in digital transformation. A large number of companies (47%) have not even begun with digital transformation. These organisations are fast getting left behind and are missing a trick, when reports show that companies that have transformed digitally are 26% more profitable than those that have not. Given that companies that have undertaken digital transformation report the process taking between two and eight years, it is time to get underway.

What Customers Want

Customers have become increasingly demanding in recent years. Digital technology has driven this change. Shopping online and via mobile has presented customers with the opportunity to get what they want, when they want it, and now they expect this. At the same time, e-commerce, personalisation and new ways of communicating with customers have led to tremendous benefits for customers. In short, customers want instantaneous interactions and experiences and to be able to communicate with the organisation in the way that they prefer. Finding ways to deliver this through digital transformation can bring great benefits.

Why Be Customer-Centric?

Many digital transformation efforts focus too heavily on the opportunities that this brings for lowering costs for the business. This is unlikely to lead to greater customer satisfaction with the company. It is better to put the customer experience central to the process of digital transformation to reap the greatest rewards.

There are many quantifiable benefits to being customer centric in order to engage customers. Customers that are very engaged have been reported to purchase 90% more frequently, and they spend almost two thirds (60%) more per purchase. This presents a massive opportunity for businesses across all industries. Happy customers are much more likely to be retained, and it costs much more to gain a new customer than retain an existing one. This means that focusing on the customer experience with digital transformation efforts makes a lot of sense.

If you aren’t yet convinced consider this statistic: Companies that earn $1 billion a year have the potential to earn an extra $700 million over a three year time frame through investing in delivering an improved customer experience.

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How to Improve the Customer Experience through Digital Transformation

There are a vast number of ways in which companies can have a great impact on the customer experience through digital transformation. One example is the use of chatbots. When implemented thoughtfully, chatbots improve the customer experience by allowing customers to communicate with the business at any hour of the day and on any day of the year and get a rapid response to their question. Studies show that 84% of customers prefer this due to the instant availability of chatbots. It is worth considering what you can do to automate customer communication for greater customer satisfaction through this approach.

Another remarkable benefit of digital transformation is the amount of data that companies can glean about their customers. Digital technology offers the opportunity to capture this data and analyse it, so organisations can learn much more about their customers than ever before. For example, it is possible to get a much better understanding of customer purchasing habits, which can drive improved marketing. This offers a great advantage, but only if it is implemented effectively (as I will explain below).

Digital technology can also be used to integrate the back end and the front end of systems, which can deliver the benefit of streamlining the customer journey. This means customers have a smoother, easier experience and are more likely to come back.

These are just a few of the countless benefits that digital transformation can bring for enhancing the customer experience.

Transforming the Customer Experience

It is important to note that when considering the use of digital transformation to improve the customer experience, the approach that should be taken must be enterprise-wide. An overarching effort like this will help to ensure that all possible customer touchpoints and interactions with the business are taken into account, so that digital transformation can genuinely deliver everything it sets out to for the customer experience. From a cultural perspective, ensuring that the organisation is genuinely customer focused is important from the outset.

On this note, a common mistake in going transforming the customer experience, was revealed in a study which showed that just 25% of respondents had set out to map the digital customer journey before trying to undertake digital transformation in this area. This is indicative of a bigger problem, which is a lack of organisational focus on customers in the first place. The problem is that some companies get tied up with focusing on a narrow approach of only using data to find ways to market to customers. This has the potential to seem robotic in nature, and it can be not particularly warm or welcoming from a customer perspective. Having some empathy with the customer and considering what customers might actually want is critical in the digital transformation process to avoid these types of problems. Taking a human-focused perspective is important, to get it right.

Summary

Digital transformation can bring about a great range of benefits if the customer is placed centrally to the effort. A focus on the customer journey can lead to increased revenues through enhancing customer loyalty and driving additional sales. Benefits of digital transformation for the customer are numerous, and include the ability to get what they want, when they want it – which customers now expect. It is important to take an enterprise-wide approach to improving the customer experience through digital transformation to avoid getting too caught up in a cold and impersonal approach that may end up alienating customers.

Building relationships and managing issues; the keys to effective stakeholder management

Written by Paul Oppong on September 16, 2020. Posted in Articles. 12 Comments on Building relationships and managing issues; the keys to effective stakeholder management

Stakeholders have the ability to make or break projects, if they put their minds to it.

This makes them a risk to the likelihood of the project being completed. For this reason, the stakeholders of any project should be pinpointed, understood and managed, to increase the likelihood of project success. In this article we will look at who stakeholders are, what their interests might be, understanding them and managing them effectively, to give a project the greatest chance of succeeding.

Identifying Stakeholders

Stakeholders may be understood as any person or group that has an interest (or a “stake”) in the project or programme. Within the organisation they might include the board, senior managers, different teams, internal customers and staff, among others. Externally to the organisation they could include customers, suppliers, the media, local or national government, lobby groups, the community and different agencies. One useful method to understand who the stakeholders are for any given project is to brainstorm who they might be with the team.

What are Stakeholders’ Interests?

Stakeholders may have interests in projects for a variety of different reasons, depending on who they are, and their relationship to the project. In a number of cases, interests may be financially motivated. For example, the board may have an interest in an IT automation project succeeding, because it may reduce costs for the organisation. Alternatively, a customer will have an interest in the project not overrunning on budget. Operational interests may also have a role to play, especially with regard to time. Media and community groups may be interested if a project is likely to impact on the public or local environment in some way – if for example, a new supermarket is being built, or a bypass road. Other stakeholder interests might include employees who may resist change, especially if they have not been consulted in any way. Resistance to change can be one of the most detrimental factors impacting on the likely ability for the project to succeed.

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Understanding Stakeholders to Better Manage Them

Best practice stakeholder management requires understanding the interest that stakeholders have in a project, and the power they may have. You can rank stakeholders as either having high or low interest, and high or low power. This categorisation of the different stakeholders helps guide how you should work with them to engage them effectively on the project. Some stakeholders may have a high level of interest but a low level of power, and these should be managed differently from those with high power and high interest, for example. High power and low interest groups need to have an eye kept on them, as they can significantly influence a project’s success if interest is sparked in them.

The most important stakeholders from a stakeholder management perspective are those that have high interest and high power. These groups may be considered key stakeholders, and they need to be carefully managed to drive the success of the project. They have the ability to help the project to succeed, but they can also bring it down if they are not engaged. Key stakeholders will vary depending on the type of project, but in a business, they will typically include the business owner that is eager for project success, and possibly the board too. In public projects the government or local council may very well be a key stakeholder.

While some stakeholders may have high interest and low power, and might therefore not be considered a threat, they still need to be consulted and their interests managed. This is because stakeholder groups can combine with one another to become more powerful – such as community groups working with the media, to influence government, for example.

Managing Stakeholders Effectively

Good stakeholder management is a function of leadership. Stakeholders need to understand what is going on and why, and they need to see projects moving forward with purpose and adding value. Being clear about the vision and direction helps a great deal. Ask yourself what it is that stakeholders want, to help you present messages to them that will be helpful in explaining how you are delivering that to them.

One of the main tools that a programme or project manager can use to work with stakeholders effectively is communicating well with them. This means building relationships with them and discussing their needs with them. Any communication should be two-way, e.g. not just talking, but listening too. It is only through consulting with stakeholders that it is possible to develop solutions that will be palatable to the widest number of stakeholders. Communication needs to be regular, to keep stakeholders up to date on aspects of the project that are of particular interest to them. A common stakeholder complaint is not being kept up to date, and this is easily rectified with good communication.

Another tool is other members of the project, who need to show consistency in the way that they work with stakeholders, to build trust. Employees working on the project are all key representatives of it, in the eyes of the stakeholders. The bottom line is that building and maintaining relationships is critical to effective stakeholder management. Keeping in touch with stakeholders throughout the project, monitoring their power and interest and ensuring that most are kept satisfied as far as possible will give the project the highest chances of achieving its goals and delivering value.

Summary

The reality of project management is that some stakeholders will have the capability to significantly influence whether a project can succeed or not. This means that a key component of a project or programme manager’s job is to understand stakeholder needs, and work with them effectively, building relationships and managing issues, to ensure that they stay on side. Understanding a stakeholder’s level of interest and power with regard to the project is helpful in shaping the way in which the project manager manages the situation with the stakeholder. Both communication and building trust are essential tools in effective stakeholder management.

From the Sponsor’s Desk – 8 Steps to Deliver Your Dream

Written by Drew Davison on May 15, 2020. Posted in Articles. 10 Comments on From the Sponsor’s Desk – 8 Steps to Deliver Your Dream

“Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.”

–Gail Devers, two-time 100 meters Olympic champion

We all have dreams. But, in so many cases, our dreams often go unfulfilled or only partially realized. Some, however, do manage to achieve, even exceed their dreams in business, science, the arts, politics, sports, and medicine. How do they do it? I expect that most apply some form of the lessons learned in this story, the 8 Steps to Deliver Your Dream.

The Situation

Ling Huang is president and CEO of Technology North Corporation (TN), an IT firm in Edmonton, Alberta. TN offers IT infrastructure management for local businesses as well as IT consulting services and custom application development and operations. In 2004, Ling and his wife learned their youngest son, Brian, had severe autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with very low verbal language development. ASD is a developmental disability which can cause significant social, communication, and behavioral challenges. According to Health Canada, approximately 1 in 66 children and youth is diagnosed with ASD in Canada. Brian did not appear to have a good prognosis. Most adults with ASD, up to 85%, remain unemployed or underemployed, and it seemed Brian might never have a job or a career. However, his diagnosis decisively shifted the direction TN would travel and opened not only a job but a career pathway for Brian and millions of people like him.

In 2018, Brian graduated from high school having completed the “normal” stream of education alongside his neurotypical (non-ASD) peers. Ling knew that if Brian was to gain and retain employment, he would need to work in a unique setting which would take into consideration his ASD. When Ling’s son joined TN as a junior IT helper, it became clear to Ling why over 85% of the autism population is unemployed or underemployed—verbal communication and employer satisfaction barriers essentially eliminate the opportunity before it can even get started.

To overcome these and other limitations to ASD employment, Ling developed a unique socio-technological solution, “RoboCoach”.

The Goal

Ling’s long term goal has not been mere employment for individuals with ASD. He says, “Employment is not the end goal. Rather, it is a cornerstone of my dream—a sustainable live-and-work model for high-functioning individuals with autism.” Employment is a feature of a thriving community of individuals with ASD, each with opportunities to grow, and networks of helpful, caring people around them with whom to work and socialize.

The Project

In early 2019, Ling started a project called “RoboCoach”, an assistive technology platform to overcome employment barriers faced by youth with ASD. The project was partially funded by the Canadian Federal Industry Research Assistance Program (IRAP). RoboCoach is built on several ASD-focused building blocks developed by TN over the years such as TN ActiveCare (TNAC).

TNAC is an enabling platform and infrastructure for ASD service providers, schools, and parents. It was initiated in 2010 and implemented in the spring of 2011 in response to a request from the Excel Society and the Centre for Autism Services Alberta. These not-for-profit organizations provide support and advocacy for people with mental, physical, and development disabilities in Alberta. Prior to the development of TNAC, their growth to serve additional clients cost-effectively and efficiently was being impeded by their manual paper-based client progress and service delivery tracking processes. TNAC’s tools greatly improved their efficiencies, allowing web-based technologies to provide the logistical heavy lifting. Over the past decade since its adoption by social service providers, TNAC has improved the treatment outcomes of thousands of children in Canada, USA, and Mexico.

RoboCoach is also reliant on joint venture research conducted in 2014 through 2016 with a partner in Mexico called Hydralab. This TN-Hydralab research produced the masBility Framework (see figures 1 and 2, below) aimed at providing employers with tools to enable ASD employment in their establishments. The name, masBility, is a portmanteau from the Spanish word for “more”, mas, plus the English word “ability”. The masBility Framework has at its heart the philosophy that specific easy-to-fulfil actions and states can enable a stable, fulfilling, and profitable employment scenario for youth with ASD, enabling employers to deploy visible talents and unlock many latent capacities of this valuable segment of the Canadian employment pool.

In 2018, after Brian graduated from high school, TN took him on as a junior IT helper. Ling tested the masBility framework with an in-house pilot. The pilot assessed to what degree youth with ASD could successfully complete tasks in a typical IT employment environment. The pilot discovered that when unsupported, the work-task success of youth with ASD was 5% to 15%. When supported by assistive technologies, work-task success increased to between 80% and 90%. A parallel pilot conducted in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico by TN’s partner organization, Hydralab, delivered similar results and has validated the masBility framework.

The masBility pilot resulted in three developments:

The initial assistive technology stack later developed into RoboCoach;
The masBility Stakeholder Satisfaction Framework, which has become the foundation of RoboCoach; and
Enhancement of the masBility Inclusion Framework and Stakeholder Satisfaction Framework.

Figure 1: masBility Key Stakeholder Satisfaction Management Matrix

The masBility Stakeholder Satisfaction Framework (above) identifies the significant outcomes and the elements which can make or break the employment scenario for a particular stakeholder. The masBility Inclusion Framework (below) describes the steps to be taken and the required elements to be in place for employers to reshape their employment contexts to enable inclusiveness in hiring and supporting youth with ASD.

Figure 2: masBility Inclusion Framework

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With these fundamental components in place and adding value each day, Ling launched the RoboCoach project in 2019. One of the significant barriers to employing youth with ASD is the cost of job coaches. Job coaches provide the social-empathic bridge between youth with ASD and their line managers in addition to job skills and social skills training. In most ASD employment scenarios, job coaches are typically assigned to work 1:1 with individuals with ASD. With RoboCoach, job coaches can work with a higher number of individuals with ASD, helping keep the work performance of up to 10+ employees at a predetermined level.

RoboCoach provides workers with ASD, their team (job coach, line manager, and guardians) with:

Multiple tools and channels for team communication;
Task calendars for family and work to keep track of important events to remember;
A built-in wiki providing task instruction;
An incorporated RoboCoach AI chat bot to understand wellbeing.

RoboCoach ensures workers with ASD and their line managers, or paying employers, have many opportunities to strengthen the employment opportunity, enabling satisfaction in performance.

RoboCoach is configurable to tie into work process channels and determine performance in real-time, allowing job coaches and line managers to compare different task performance metrics across timeframes and individuals. When attention wanders, as determined by lengthening time periods between task signposts, RoboCoach redirects attention to the task at hand. Further, TN’s vision is evolving RoboCoach as the enabling infrastructure for independent living. According to Ling, “Independent at work is the same as independent at home.”

The RoboCoach project had a mixed team of part-time senior and full-time junior staff, using open source technologies including Linux, Docker, NoSQL DB and a mixed framework including JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3.

In August 2019, Ling started Digital Services (TNDS). Their first offering was a focused autism employment program that hires youth with ASD to perform document digitization using RoboCoach software. TNDS demonstrates how these technologies can assist youth with autism to succeed in the workplace and to achieve the goal of scalable, repeatable, and sustainable employment of youth with ASD.

For most firms, document digitization is a task assigned to a company’s staff on a one-off basis. It suffers from several key challenges. The work is typically approached unsystematically and off the side of workers’ desks. It is frequently perceived as difficult, dull, and endless and it can easily break the spirit of the typical worker. And then there are the staples, the eventual lost pages, the receipts of assorted tiny sizes, and the overall perception that the digitization job was left in an incomplete state and an absolute mess. TNDS resolves all these issues through a well-designed, systematic, scalable approach employing youth with ASD managed through RoboCoach.

TNDS digitizer teams composed of a job coach, an assistant job coach, and four youth with ASD work together to transform physical documents into digital ones. Digitization is an excellent type of work for youth with ASD. Its repetitive nature, requirements for attention to detail, moderate task complexity, and task staging allow youth with ASD to perform high calibre work in a short space of time with very few to no errors and with a minimal of training. TNDS document digitization engages job coaches as team leads who can catch and resolve challenges to ensure team work quality remains at the highest levels.

The Results

The quality and speed of service provided by TNDS employees with ASD has positively surprised the social service and business communities in Edmonton. In a few short months, TNDS has started to take off. Law firms, accounting firms, and government agencies are either already signed up or are in the process of signing up to have their documents digitized by the TNDS team. TNDS customers have been showing their appreciation of the teams’ skills with their dollars. TNDS revenue has rocketed from $2,000 in December 2019 to $20,000 in February 2020—evidence that autism employment is not only feasible, but very beneficial for business.

Perhaps the greatest testament to RoboCoach’s impact comes from the parents of one of the document digitization team’s members:

“Our son is a higher functioning young adult with autism and has been employed with TNDS since December 2019. He got introduced to TNDS and this employment opportunity after completing a work place experience program sponsored by the Alberta Autism Society and Employment Works Canada in the summer of 2019. The results of him integrating into and thriving in this position have been nothing short of fantastic! TNDS has created a supportive and nurturing environment for these young adults to complete their work efficiently and competently. For our son, this is his opportunity to engage in meaningful employment and truly have a long term career with TNDS. The mechanism for him to earn money, have a daily purpose, learn team work skills and support his goal of living independently is beyond measure. We are so blessed to have him involved with TNDS and can’t thank the management and staff at TNDS enough in providing him this opportunity!”

Through word-of-mouth, parents have been calling TNDS from as far away as Calgary, Ottawa, British Columbia, and California. The challenges for creating sustainable employment for youth with ASD are universal. TN’s solution is designed to be scalable, repeatable and sustainable with significantly reduced support costs. It offers the promise of placing a very large group of youths with ASD into a respectable employment environment in the digital economy. Critically, however, TNDS employees are not merely thrust into an employment scenario with wishes and hopes for good fortune. They are trained, mentored and supported from the moment they enter the doors of TNDS. They are guided through each step of the digitization process with the RoboCoach platform built upon the masBility frameworks.

TNDS started with document digitization to clearly illustrate the many employable skills of youth with ASD, to open space for these youth to proudly stand next to their neurotypical colleagues, and to address an immediate business need. In the future, TNDS plans to offer other digital services under the same business model and brand, including software QA testing and junior IT management. The opportunities, in fact, are endless! And my family doctor, with her rows and rows of paper files, could sure use TNDS’s services right about now! I would say Ling and his team have come a long way towards delivering his dream!

How a Great Leader Delivered

Mark Cuban, the American billionaire, entrepreneur and owner of the National Basketball Association’s Dallas Mavericks, once said, “It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. You only have to be right once and then everyone can tell you that you are an overnight success.”

Ling’s TNDS looks like an overnight success doesn’t it? In reality, it is based on years of passion and perseverance. Ling had a dream. He has pursued that dream over more than a decade to address a need in the ASD community. As a by-product, he is also addressing a societal need and a business need. How did he deliver his dream? The following factors were major contributors:

We know what we know and we don’t know what we don’t know – Remember Donald Rumsfeld’s speech in 2002 about the purported weapons of mass destruction leading up to the Iraq war? “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know”. Ling and his team dealt with those uncertainties beautifully to arrive at the current state. They leveraged what they knew. They learned what they needed to learn. They built expertise incrementally, finding out what they didn’t know along the way and plugging those knowledge gaps while delivering real value.
The best way to predict the future is to create it – Ling Huang could have said that. Instead, it was Abraham Lincoln. Ling just modelled the behaviour. Repeatedly. Driven by his dream and his unwavering passion.
It’s a journey, not a destination –The road to the current state was a path filled with potholes and pitfalls, continuous learning on a multitude of fronts and enough successes to keep the fire burning. Persistence was the glue that kept Ling and his team stuck to the vision.
Know your subject matter – Ling was a business owner and technologist. He became knowledgeable about ASD though research, analysis, synthesis and action. He and his firm have become a continuous learning machine.
Collaborate – Look at the masBility frameworks and the players and perspectives involved. TN has collaborated with their clients, among clients, and across organizations and industries. They have reused extensively, including proven processes, practices, ideas, templates, frameworks, reports, and whatever else can improve quality, accelerate results and reduce costs.
Do it fast – It is better to deliver something of value, quickly, learn from the experience and incrementally build a solution that fits. Ling connected his dream to market reality and pursued the low-hanging fruit. RoboCoach is a perfect example. The initial implementation is yielding value now. Three more releases are planned for this year to take further advantage of what has been learned.
Know your stakeholders – The success of the RoboCoach initiative is directly attributable to the embedded knowledge and awareness of all relevant stakeholders in the TNDS DNA. They live and breathe stakeholder engagement to the fullest.
Build an amazing team – TNDS would not have been successful with the RoboCoach initiative without an amazing team of passionate participants, a diverse array of critical skills, and the resolute commitment of all involved.

So, if you have a dream, do as Ling has been doing: leveraging his passion and the lessons he has learned on his journey. Also remember, use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks covering the key stakeholder group, the decision management process and the Decision Framework right up front so you don’t overlook these key success factors.

Finally, thanks to everyone who has willingly shared their experiences for presentation in this blog. Everyone benefits. First time contributors get a copy of one of my books. Readers get insights they can apply to their own unique circumstances. So, if you have a project experience, a favorite best practice, or an interesting insight that can make a PM or change manager’s life easier, send me the details and we’ll chat. I’ll write it up, and, when you’re happy with the results, Project Times will post it so others can learn from your insights.