Tag: Training

How to say no, without saying no.

Written by Richard Yarnold on November 25, 2019. Posted in Articles. 9 Comments on How to say no, without saying no.

Saying no, without saying no.

We’ve all been there. You’ve got loads on and something else hits your inbox or gets passed to you by your manager that needs urgent attention. Or someone drops by your desk while you’re in trying to finish all the user stories for the next sprint and they need your help to resolve an issue.

Deep down, you want to say no. You feel you’re already past full capacity and you don’t have the time or mental space for another task or issue to resolve. Rather than saying no, you do the opposite. You agree to take on the work required or entertain your new visitor’s issues.

Why do we do this?

We are hardwired to yes. We want to help our peers and please our superiors. We want to be seen as someone who is approachable and the go to person to get things done and build our profiles within the organization we operate. We feel that is the best way to advance in the company. Saying no to a peer and particularly a superior feels uncomfortable and would be detrimental to our careers.

The ironic thing is, by saying yes when we’re already overloaded, we could be setting ourselves up for failure. Having too much on means something will slip. A deadline will be missed, a mistake will be made and ultimately someone’s expectations are not going to be met. The result? The exact opposite of what we hoped to achieve by saying yes – a profile within the organization that you don’t meet expectations, or you can’t meet deadlines.

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A good manager would recognize that you’re already at full capacity, or they’d at least ask you if you had capacity to take on a task before they gave it to you. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with all managers, and even less so with peers who have less insight into your current workloads.

So what’s the answer? Can you say no, without actually saying no? Of course you can.

Next time you’re in the situation where you need to say no, why not say

“I’d like to help. At the moment I am at full capacity so if you can wait for it to be done then I can pick it up when I’ve finished my current task. If not, and you want me to pick this up now, then I’m going to have to stop something else. Can you help me agree a way forward please?”

Or,

“I’ve got a few things on at the moment so could you help me understand where this sits in terms of priorities because I want to make sure I’m working on the most important things.”

Both of these approaches puts the ball back in the requestors court and makes it clear you’re at full capacity therefore something has to give. It’s a much more constructive way that saying ‘Sorry I can’t do that, I don’t have the time.’

I’d love to hear how you get on. Please leave a comment below, or get in touch via LinkedIn, Twitter.

Psychology Tips to Get Honest Feedback from Your Employees

Written by Daniela McVicker on November 6, 2019. Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Psychology Tips to Get Honest Feedback from Your Employees

How do your employees feel about your recruiting and onboarding processes?

Are they satisfied with the training they’re receiving? What about their work environment?

It would be best if you had honest feedback to be confident that your organization is doing what it takes to hire, onboard, train, and retain great professionals. The problem is that many employees don’t feel comfortable being forthcoming. A good HR team understands this and will use psychology, not to be manipulative but to encourage honest feedback.

In this article, we’re going to look into four essential tips that employers and HR departments should consider when trying to get honest input from their employees. Let’s dive right in, shall we?

Show That You Will Follow Through

It goes without saying that asking your coworkers for feedback just for the sake of it is a destructive practice that may end up harming your personnel’s morale. It’s much more important to act upon the feedback you received from your employees, rather than choosing more intricate ways of collecting that information.

People care about being heard. If feedback sessions don’t lead to anything but platitudes, they have no reason to continue being open with you. Therefore, it’s important to stress that even if you won’t be able to satisfy an employee’s request, it’s imperative to provide them with a detailed explanation regarding why that decision was made.

In order to ensure your staff that their voices have been heard, it’s vital to follow up with a summary of the issues they voiced. By ensuring that your staff’s feedback is heard and addressed, you’ll be able to considerably improve employee engagement and build a corporate culture that honors commitments.

To even better understand the issues that the employee may be facing, it’s also a good idea to have a set of follow-up questions to better calibrate the problem. Here are a few examples:

How do you think this issue can be resolved?
How do you think this will affect the company and its culture?
What can we do to avoid such issues in the future?
What can your managers do to better support you?
What do you recommend that your managers/peers keep doing?

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Seek Feedback Across Departments and Managerial Levels

An excellent practice for receiving more detailed and honest feedback is employing the so-called “skip-level” principle when it comes to giving feedback. The vast majority of employees might find it uncomfortable to report to their immediate managers or supervisors, which can defeat the purpose of capturing the workers’ honest opinions.

Allowing employees to deliver feedback to their upper management will enable them to be more open and honest while giving people higher up in the hierarchy the opportunity to get a better understanding of the potential problems the business may be facing. That is especially the case if the company has a very vertical organizational structure, which will often leave the higher-ups oblivious to the issues of their subordinates two or three levels below.”

This allows upper management to have an in-depth understanding of how their decisions impact everyone in the organization.

However, this approach has one crucial precondition — higher management needs to be approachable. Employees will be eager to share their honest opinion on things and events only if there’s a genuine interest that they can sense from their interviewers.

Therefore, it’s critical to create an open-door environment, where workers aren’t intimidated or demotivated to communicate their feedback to higher management.

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Create an Online System for Providing Quick Feedback

To have a holistic approach towards collecting feedback, it’s essential to ensure that employees can express their opinion on important matters at all times. Good feedback is ongoing, and employers need to ensure that there’s a channel for it.

Photo by Marek Levak from Pexels

Instead of receiving feedback from your employees once or twice a year, it’s better to have an online system where they can provide you with input and do it anonymously if they feel that it’s necessary. An online system of this type will allow you to address issues as they arise, acknowledge important problems that the organization is facing, and test new ideas forwarded by your workers.

There are six different types of online employee feedback channels that businesses should consider. They range from short and ad-hoc to rigorous and lengthy:

Always-on
Ad hoc
Pulse surveys
Employee lifecycle
Multi-rater assessments
Census engagement surveys

If you’re looking to normalize and facilitate feedback exchange, you should consider integrating Always-On and Ad Hoc surveys in your work design.

Be Honest About Your Struggles

There is a common trend among businesses to humanize their online presence. Organizations try hard to be as transparent and authentic as possible with their customers. There’s nothing wrong with doing the same in regards to your employees.

Being honest with your workers about the struggles you and the company are facing is a great way to stimulate them to be honest with you in return. Underline how valuable their honest input is to solve some critical issues the organization is dealing with. In effect, this will enable your personnel to identify important issues, but also try to search for possible solutions.

Keeping your employees in the dark regarding budget concerns, competition, hiring needs, and other significant problems will only dissuade them from contributing with honest feedback. If they won’t feel that they are a part of this company, there’s no reason they would want to help it out by providing it with their recommendations.

It is only by ensuring your coworkers that you’re forthcoming, will you persuade them to share their needs and challenges as well.

Conclusion

Motivating your employees to provide you with regular and, more importantly, honest feedback is not an easy task, by any stretch of the imagination. However, we are confident that by implementing these four psychology tips, you’ll enable your coworkers to tell you what’s on their mind.

A healthy and regular exchange in feedback will allow your company to grow and overcome issues while improving your employees’ morale. Good luck!

Think Project Management is boring? Here’s how it doesn’t have to be

Written by Fred Wilson on October 4, 2019. Posted in Articles. 6 Comments on Think Project Management is boring? Here’s how it doesn’t have to be

The role of a project manager is no less than critical for any industry and for any organization – big or small.

Some of the traits this role requires in depth insight to technicalities, team building and management skills, discipline and effective time management.

Although many responsibilities fall under the umbrella of project management, the project manager is chiefly responsible for two things: to get a quality product delivered on time and to keep the team in sync while working towards success. While this role juggles between technical requirements to provide the customer with a satisfactory result, it has to deal with the human aspect by steering the team clear of politics, bias and uncertainty towards integrity, collaboration and confidence.

To many, this role may embody a serious persona that embodies an “all work, no play” attitude –eyes set on optimising the project at hand with little or no time for anything else. However, project management does not have to be dry and stressful. There are many ways to make work fun, interesting and create a surrounding where teams look forward to coming every day.

Here are three ways you can enjoy being a project manager without compromising on quality of project and efficiency of your team. Let’s begin.

Give autonomy to your team

Autonomy means the space and discretion to carry out a responsibility. By giving your team the freedom to complete activities on their own, you can instil a sense of ownership and encourage innovation. This will not only help you in getting better work performance on the project but teams also show innovative ways of achieving goals faster without the need to micromanage them.

According to Joan F. Cheverie, manager of professional development programs at the higher education and IT non-profit EDUCAUSE, autonomy is the antithesis of micromanagement and it may be the best way to ensure your employees are happy at work. [2]

A 2013 Workplace Survey by Harvard Business Review shows that the choice and autonomy not only keep employees happy, but also motivate and boost performance. They are also more likely to be satisfied with their jobs. [3]

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Make it cooler with technology

Who doesn’t like cool apps and gadgets? It’s downright delighting when a new app helps you identify pending issues in a project in half the time or that gives you the power to manage multiple teams without going back and forth between software tools.

Did you know that a survey by The Economist Intelligence Unit finds that employees that believe their workplace effectively makes use of mobile technology have more satisfaction, creativity well as show more productivity at work.

As a project manager, you constantly have to identify issues and come up with possible solutions or better yet, identify risks beforehand and have back up plans devised. Using a tool to structure your tasks and projects, helping your team collaborate better and that can give you more control on your project timeline can save you a lot of time and money. It definitely takes the stress out and lets you enjoy the creative aspects of the project taking care of the monotonous and repetitive activities.

Get more involved

Although project management comprises managing projects and teams, however, as a project manager, you can feel more connected by actively getting involved in team tasks and activities. This does not mean you have to micromanage your team. However, you can do a lot more by working on small tasks with your team such as attending the daily scrum, holding informative sessions on how to present projects better or simply by testing out the software module yourself via the newly purchased QA tool with the rest of the team.

Would you believe that about one in three projects fail because of a lack of involvement from senior management?

Divan Dave is the CEO of OmniMD, a leading healthcare IT company. According to Dave, a good project manager stays aware and alert about potential problems. He recommends that a project manager should hold frequent status meetings with team members. This ensures that the tasks and objectives are met on time, the issues that are being faced and ways to solve them and also, discuss if any of the activities in the project plan needs to be revisited.

Your involvement in the project’s workflow on different levels diminishes the chances of feeling disconnected and you can look forward to new accomplishments in each team. These little achievements can help you go a long way and the collaboration with your team can help keep things light and stress free.

Use Colours!

You don’t have to settle for dry and monotonous documentation and presentations. Instead, give your workplace a boost of energy with vibrant colours. From your user stories to presentations in the meeting room, give it a fizz of creativity.

Use coloured markers, post-its, stickers and props to design and plan a project. Colour code tasks by priority.

Deciphering the Project Management Office

Written by Barbara Nicholas on September 18, 2019. Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on Deciphering the Project Management Office

In the world of project management, the Project Management Office (PMO) has become a highly valued necessity.

In some industries, such as wireless telecommunications construction, the PMO is an exception rather than the rule. Its role and purpose are often misunderstood, and even challenged by the very project managers the PMO exists to serve and support.

The primary reason for PMO scarcity is that few organizations understand what a PMO brings to an organization. The functions of the PMO and Project Managers are often conflated, and since Project Managers are already in-place, a PMO seems redundant and unnecessary.

In fact, Project Managers may be the most outspoken opponent of the PMO – until they learn how the PMO supports them and their projects. Within a healthy PMO, the primary responsibility for managing the project rests with the Project Manager while the PMO provides support, tools, and governance that allow them to perform at their best.

What Does the PMO Do?

The PMO is so much more than an administrative function. It manages, supports, and develops standards, education, and continuous improvement. These standards and educational opportunities improve the efficiency and effectiveness of every Project Manager.

Many Project Managers spend their days in the field, jumping between field sites, vendors, suppliers, and customers, all to keep projects running smoothly by removing roadblocks and facilitating task completion.

It can be challenging to get all of the information gathered in the field back to the home office and receive feedback. The PMO bridges the space between remote Project Managers and the home office by providing communication and collaboration support and linking those in the field with those in the office.

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How Does the PMO Support Project Managers?

The PMO provides Project Managers with support, mentorship, education, guidance, and governance.
Project Managers often have extensive reporting requirements that may keep them tied to a desk when they should be in the field. The PMO can step in to alleviate some of this burden by sharing knowledge and getting requests from the field to the right person in the office.

Project Managers also rely on the PMO to provide reporting and documentation support, which enables them to do more of the work they love.

Getting Project Managers Acclimated with the PMO

From their first day on the job, Project Managers should spend time in the PMO to learn about all of the resources that are available and ensure that they are thoroughly trained on all of the tools the company uses, ensuring that they are educated and ready to go from day one.

As the PM starts in the field, the PMO provides constant check-in and support for the first 90 days, after which the PM can be assigned a local mentor who provides support and guides the project manager past potential pitfalls.

The PMO also has the ability to provide Project Managers with required certified training in the first 30 days of employment – more than many might receive in a year of employment. The scalable, flexible design of the PMO allows Project Managers to access industry standards and best practices from anywhere in the field or the office. With the backing of the PMO, Project Managers have the resources they need to implement and adhere to the highest quality standards.

Realizing New Efficiencies

Implementing a PMO has the capacity to bring in both expected and unexpected efficiencies.

While more efficient project management can certainly be expected from the additional reporting support, PMOs can also prompt an overwhelming change in the atmosphere of everyday work, spurring a greater sense of connection between the home office and remote workers. The PMO can give field workers a renewed passion for growth that allows the project management teams to tap into existing staff and allocate more bandwidth to mentoring co-workers and building relationships within and increasing the overall capacity of teams.

What Does the PMO Mean to Customers?

The PMO has dramatic, positive implications for customers as well, as they experience increased communication on individual projects and better understanding of overall priorities and project status updates. Since the PMO provides reporting support, customers can expect to receive project updates that include their specific metrics, requirements, and measures of success, leading to increased transparency and greater customer satisfaction.

Hey Project Managers: Got BA?

Written by Andrea Brockmeier on September 4, 2019. Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on Hey Project Managers: Got BA?

The tempo of change and level of uncertainty on many levels keeps organizations constantly having to strategize to sustain their customers’ interest and remain competitive.

Similarly, project professionals have to strategize to keep their organizations’ interest in keeping them on board. It’s an effort that constantly requires learning new tools and developing new skills to remain competitive in the workforce.

For project managers these days, this can be a little angsty as it often seems that interest in projects, per se, is yielding to a focus on products and product delivery. Indeed, PMs today can feel a bit adrift trying to find their place in a product-driven world.

Obviously, agile is a key driver to how organizations orient themselves and their team members to achieving organizational goals. If my students are any indication, nearly all organizations are on some kind of agile journey in at least some parts of the organization. At the very least, an agile mindset is resonating with people at all levels of the business, inspiring them to rethink how they respond to change and uncertainty, and informing the decisions about how to apply resources to achieve business goals.

So what is the best investment of time and money for a project manager, particularly one who may have grown up professionally in traditional, project-driven, plan-driven environments? Projects and the skills and tools employed to manage them aren’t going away. Certainly PM training and certification are always good options. And it goes without saying that any training or skills development related to agile is time well spent.

The other discipline that savvy project managers are wise to invest in today is business analysis. Rather than trying to figure out how to be a project manager in an agile, product-oriented environment, PMs serve themselves and their organizations well by evolving their skills and knowledge to include business analysis.

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Business analysis, the activities done to support solution delivery, alignment to business goals, and continuous value delivery, has long been a domain distinct and yet inextricably integrated with project management. The BA role that does those activities typically works closely with the PM, but they are separate efforts; the PM is the custodian of the project and the BA is the custodian of the product. Typically, much BA work is done in the context of projects or programs, so it can get messy as to where the boundaries are, as many hybrid PM-BA practitioners can attest.

A key incentive for PMs to develop BA skills is that those skills and tools are heavily used in agile environments. The various agile frameworks used to handle uncertainty and solve complex problems are customer and product-centered, as opposed to project-centered. PMs struggling to figure out how they fit into agile environments often frustrate themselves and others because they are looking through a different, project-oriented lens. The more organizations mature in their agile practice, the more frustrating this can become.

Business analysis, on the other hand, is used ubiquitously in agile environments and is more fundamentally agile than is project management. BA skills and tools are largely about discovery, facilitating conversations, establishing alignment, and getting to consensus. Project management tools and techniques are, of course, employed in agile environments, but the translation of the role is not as simple and clean. BAs don’t have to figure out how they fit in agile environments like PMs do. The work of business analysis is needed everywhere.

Further, and for a variety of reasons, business case development and pre-project activities, as well as solution evaluation and post-project activities, are often done superficially. PMs who can actively engage in these extra-project activities elevate their value proposition for their organizations.

PMs who are paying attention recognize that a top core competency for just about anyone working in organizations today is business analysis. If you are a PM and don’t know much about business analysis, or if you have not had an opportunity to do BA work in your environment, do yourself a favor and explore how you can develop those skills and get experience doing more BA work. The more you learn, the more likely you will be to see where your PM work has included BA activities. Bonus: Refining your understanding of business analysis will make the distinction between the BA and PM roles clearer and make you better at both!

PMs trying to keep their bearings on how they fit into an increasingly agile world must be looking to develop their skills and knowledge in business analysis. If your organization isn’t specifically on an agile journey yet, they are certainly being affected by it. As agile approaches become normalized and less of something everyone is trying to figure out, so too will the need for business analysis skills.