Leadership Caffeine-Learning to Lead in the Project-Focused World
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Management Education, Performance, Project Management, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
The rise of “the project” as an important means of competing and creating value has profound implications for those in leadership roles. Unfortunately, in many cases, the evolution in leadership practices has not kept pace with the needs of project teams or the needs of organizations struggling to develop competence at executing on projects.
Our traditional models of leadership emphasize the development of skills and practices that focus on individuals and teams generally operating under the umbrella of a single functional leader. However, firms moving towards a project-focused culture tend to start by overlaying a matrix form project management structure on top of the traditional functional orientation. This new and non-traditional environment offers a host of new problems and challenges for leaders used to being masters of their own domains.
As a sidebar, while the project management discipline is well established and the role of the formal project manager is growing in importance and popularity, both my own anecdotal evidence and the many reports and studies on project performance indicate that we’ve not yet cracked the code on managing projects for success. In my work as a consultant and as a project management educator at the graduate level, I have few qualms in suggesting that the majority of the organizations that attempt what I’ve described above…imposing a matrix format on a functional orientation, struggle and flounder with their projects. Leadership or the lack of appropriate leadership support is a key issue in project failure.
8 Suggestions for Leading and Succeeding Inside the Project Matrix
- First, recognize that the rules of the game have changed. Your mission is no longer about optimizing results within your functional boundaries. Your emphasis is on providing resources and support for teams that aren’t yours.
- You enhance your position by supplying the strongest possible talent for work on project teams, not by hoarding this talent for your own purposes. Pony up.
- Your talent development efforts must now incorporate the development of skills and experience working within the matrix. Translation: you need to help teach and develop individuals that are comfortable and competent working on multiple initiatives for multiple teams.
- From time to time, complex project challenges will require your functional area’s direct support for resolution. This is a time for you and your colleagues to shine. Run, don’t walk and offer your help.
- Be aware of fluctuations and perturbations in the matrix. The brunt of the stress and complexity falls on the people doing the work. Communication, problem-solving, negotiation and prioritization are all complex in a matrix environment, and you can help by stepping in and facilitating solution development. Your efforts to reduce stress and complexity will pay off in the form of increased team performance and improved project execution.
- Hug a project manager today. OK, maybe not literally, but it’s a great practice to reach out and cultivate a relationship with your firm’s project managers. These busy individuals are at the epicenter of a firm’s key initiatives and have a unique view on the challenges, opportunities and the organization’s talent pool. Plus, develop a good reputation for supporting the project managers and this will pay dividends when you are looking for support for initiatives that impact your area of responsibility.
- Leverage the emerging project environment to expand your reach and grow your career. Top management is looking for leaders that understand how to help make things happen in an increasingly complex and hostile global marketplace. Your active involvement and contribution to project team success will highlight that you’ve moved beyond yesterday’s approaches to leading.
- Master the role of project sponsor. If you are at the level where you are eligible to serve as a project sponsor, sign-on and do everything possible to help the project succeed. Don’t make the common mistake of viewing this role as a token or honorary position. Good sponsors work hard to support their project teams. And don’t forget the Kevlar vest for others outside your project team that will have plenty of reason to take aim should things go wrong. This is the time when great sponsors shine.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Never turn down an opportunity to enhance your leadership skills. The increasingly important project-orientation of organizations offers a myriad of opportunities for you to develop new skills and try on new approaches. You can remain stubborn and insist on leading from a functional view-point, but in this case, your view might just be from the back of the unemployment line. It’s time to enter the matrix.
This Marine Fights-Life and Leadership Lessons from a Family Hero
A fair number of the people that follow this blog and my twitter feed are familiar with the events surrounding my father-in-law’s open heart surgery during the past week. Your many thoughts and prayers and the work of the skilled and dedicated medical professionals have all combined to give my father-in-law, Bob, a good chance of sharing his great stories and corny jokes and infectious belly laugh with us for years to come. Of course, continued good thoughts, prayers and karma are all appreciated as we move day by day to get Bob healthy and back on his feet. Thank you.
Bob is a true American classic, a U.S. Marine (retired, Korea) and the loving and heroic father of his daughters and of his 4 grandchildren and 1 great-grandson. He’s been a part of my life since I met his beautiful daughter 31 years ago in high school.
After 9 hours of open heart surgery on Monday, Bob started coming around in the past day and while he’s not himself yet, even the post surgery affects of anesthetic and the various drugs can’t keep him from rasping out a string of corny jokes and one-liners with surprising frequency. Like everyone else that this man touches, the medical staff adore Bob and they laugh with him as they help him through the early recovery process.
In fact, everywhere we go, we are discovering how deeply this kind, gentle giant of a Marine touches people. From his brothers to his good friends and neighbors to the service providers…bankers, doctors, restaurant managers that have learned that Bob is fighting, their concern is genuine and their thoughts immediately on their wishes for his recovery. His calling cards…an ever-present smile, good humor and his kind soul create friends everywhere.
Bob has a lot left to do. There’s the countless number of barbecues (he’ll be eating lean meats, chicken and vegetables); the marriage of his granddaughter next fall and the growth of my sons into young men that Bob must be around to observe and enjoy. And yes, he’s got people to meet and smiles to pass along and of course, those stories need to be heard many, many more times by all involved. I’ve not yet memorized the history of most of the twentieth century that Bob lived, and I remain his student.
I’ve learned much from Bob, but perhaps the most important reminder that he serves up is for us all to touch everyone that we come in contact with in a positive way. And while much of this blog focuses on dealing with the tough issues of leading and managing, even the tough issues offer opportunities for positive touches. Bob was a Marine Drill Instructor, and I’m fairly certain that there was nothing fun about the experience that he subjected his recruits to during basic training. However, even those tough touches were intended to help people fight and win and most of all, survive to pass the lessons along.
Bob’s in-process lesson for all of us is crystal clear: touch everyone that you come in contact with in a good way. And while the touch cannot always be with a joke or even a smile, you need to go out of your way to make that touch. You might save a life, impact a career or offer a fresh start to someone that needs it.
Keep fighting, Bob. We’ve got more to learn from you.
Leadership Caffeine: Teach, Don’t Tell
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Leadership Skills, Performance, Talent Management, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
I discovered a long time ago that I was much more effective as a leader and as a father (a much harder job to get right!) if I adopted an approach that emphasized teaching over telling.
While there are circumstances where telling is appropriate…the battlefield, the operating room, perhaps the football field and a few others that I’m sure that I would think of if given enough time, most people prefer to learn, not to carry out orders.
Learning engages the senses, opens the mind, creates new neural connections and challenges us to push beyond our routine thoughts and actions.
Good leaders develop an approach that incorporates teaching while emphasizing performance. The two are not only, not mutually exclusive, they are complementary.
Consider:
- The sales manager that observes and coaches her sales representatives will win out every year over the manager that berates poor performers and then demands performance at the end of a metaphorical gun barrel.
- The CEO that consistently and respectfully asks tough strategic and execution questions is teaching his team members how to focus on the important issues of value creation and performance.
- The shop floor supervisor that asks for input on solving quality problems is teaching people that their ideas count when it comes to making improvements.
- The journeyman carpenter that teaches by showing and then leaving the apprentice alone to try the same task, is inspiring by showing confidence and encouraging independent effort.
5 Rules for Teaching Leaders to Live By:
- Recognize that the additional time investment that you make in teaching will come back to you in dividends many times over.
- Resist the urge to bark an order even if you know exactly what needs to be done.
- Use questions as powerful teaching tools.
- If you must “Tell,” provide an explanation. Proper context for a “do this” ensures that some learning takes place.
- Mistakes are teachable moments. Resist the urge to pounce and strive to help all parties extract the lessons.
And as a parent, try doubling or tripling the amount of time that you spend teaching and please resist the urge to pull out the infamous, “Because I said so.”
The Bottom-Line for Now:
The old model of command and control leadership falls on rebellious and increasingly deaf ears in a workplace of boomers reinventing themselves, millennials finding their way and all of us striving to deal with the new complexity that is our world. It’s time to step up and teach.
I am reminded of a comment attributed to the late and great jazz trumpeter and band leader, Maynard Ferguson, who devoted an incredible amount of time to teaching and inspiring aspiring band students around the country. While I’m certain that I’m grossly paraphrasing his comment, it went something like, Why would you do anything else, when you can teach? His band members of course referred to him as The Boss.
It’s time to quit telling and start teaching. Why not start today?
Personal Responsibility and Success: Quit Shooting Yourself in the Foot!
Filed under: Career, Life and Business, Making Decisions, Performance, Professional Growth, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
I’ve been harping on personal responsibility at least once per week recently, and can’t quite get it out of my system. I’m bombarded daily with too many examples of people that fail to take responsibility for their actions and in the process, often stop one step short of success.
One of my as yet unresolved points of personal inquiry (and wonder), involves those individuals in businesses and in graduate and undergraduate classes that are seemingly armed with their fair share of intellectual gifts and raw capabilities, but that still manage to metaphorically shoot themselves in one or both feet with alarming regularity. Or, if you prefer this visual, they regularly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!
My question: “What’s up with you people?”
My advice: “Cut it out!”
Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great and most recently, How the Mighty Fall, suggests that greatness is not a function of circumstances, but rather the result of a series of conscious choices. While Collins is referencing organizations in his point, the same shoe fits for individuals. Or at least the shoe would fit, if people didn’t have their feet wrapped in bandages from all of the foot-shooting going on in the workplace and in classrooms.
All Too-Common Examples:
- Adult students everywhere that don’t show up on time, don’t complete work and don’t participate. What are you paying for? What do you hope to get out of the experience? Jump in, do the work, participate and you’ll learn a lot more and you actually might find the experience enjoyable.
- Individuals that believe that bigger forces are working against them. I hear some remarkable excuses from otherwise smart people. The excuses generally have nothing to do with their own personal failings, and everything to do with a series of events that conspired to defeat them for the task in question. You sound like an idiot making these excuses. Give it up.
- Everyone in the business environment that has 20:20 vision that allows them to see with remarkable clarity the faults of their team members and colleagues. It seems like a big mirror is in order here. If these people don’t start looking in it first before looking around for those to blame, perhaps someone should “metaphorically” hit them over the head with it.
- The Apologists that actually seem to accept personal responsibility and apologize profusely for their transgressions. Every week. Over and over again. And again. Hey, guess what. After the first apology, we all know that we’re dealing with a serial apologizer who uses this tool as part of their survival strategy. Given a little time, you become transparent to all of us.
The Bottom-Line:
You are in control of your own actions. You decide every day and with every activity to be successful or to fail. I respect your right to decide to fail, but don’t blame fate, the forces, everyone else and for crying out loud, quit apologizing every time you decide to fail. And if the failure track is getting old, why don’t you decide to succeed next time…and then do what it takes to make it happen. It actually takes less energy and feels a lot better than all of the other failure-coping approaches that you apply.
Embrace Ambiguity and Grow With It
Filed under: Career, Innovation, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Performance, Professional Growth, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Another one of my nearly endless and on-going leadership experiments deals with ambiguity in all of its forms and fashions. Many of my exchanges sound like the following, where I annoyingly (to the questioner) dodge giving the answer.
“What do you think I should do?”
Me: “I don’t know, what do you think?”
“How do you want the presentation formatted?”
Me: “Format it so that it clearly communicates your key points.”
Same person: “How many pages should the report be?”
Me: “I don’t know. How many will it take to concisely and clearly communicate your key points?”
What should we do?”
Me: “I’m going to go get a cup of coffee. What are you going to do?”
My wife: “Where should we go out to eat?”
Me: “I don’t know honey, where would you like to go.”
OK, the last one usually doesn’t fly, but the other ones are all valid. These questions come from students and direct reports, and I’m willing to be that you hear variations of these from time to time as well.
Many people fear ambiguity and/or they don’t trust their own ability to create or solve a problem, so they respond with a question that delegates the thinking to someone else. That’s a bad habit, and if the workplace or college classrooms were refereed events, those “you do my thinking for me so I don’t have to be creative or take a risk” questions would be infractions.
The Power of Silence as a Teaching Tool:
One of my own favorite lessons in ambiguity occurred a few years ago in an executive workshop at Kellogg. It was day one of the program on “Reinventing Leadership,” and a group of executives ranging from Director to CEO had just concluded presenting the results of our first breakout and case. I noticed that the two instructors were fairly critical of the less than creative problem-solving and uninspired presentations, and after some coaching with an edge, they proceeded to the next case. We broke back out into our work groups and came back in the room to run the teach-backs, and this is where everything changed.
After the first few report-backs, the instructors quit responding. They sat there and glowered at the room in silence. No other groups were called and you can imagine the fidgeting and palpable increase in tension in the room. Several people tried asking questions and were met with stern, stone-faced glares.
After what seemed like an eternity, one CEO stood up and said, “This is B.S., I’ve got better things to do,” and grabbed his papers and jacket and started to leave. Another participant stopped him and said, “Let’s figure this out…don’t let these guys beat you.” That statement was the turning point.
Slowly people came to life and recognized that we were being played…deservedly so, for delivering uninspiring solutions to vexing issues in our cases, and that the message here was dig deeper and do better.
Instead of reverting to our prior work groups, a new social order emerged with several people taking charge, organizing work teams, clarifying the problems and objectives and others joined in to facilitate solutions. Before you know it, the room was humming with creativity as the instructors continued glaring at no one in particular. Basically, we ignored them.
The exercise continued as each new work group presented suggestions and through another round of integration of ideas, we came up with what we all agreed was an inspired, novel set of do-able solutions for the problems at hand. No instructor involvement required.
Now it was our turn. We all sat down and silently stared back at the instructors. And finally of course, they broke their vow of silence with big grins, apologies and their heartfelt praise. The lessons were powerful and plentiful from that example, not the least of which was how to turn brutal, crushing ambiguity (the silence) into a creative outcome. This week-long program continued with other powerful exercises, but none that left such a strong impression as the few hours of silence.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Whether you are a leader or a contributor, recognize that ambiguity is an invitation to pursue creativity. If you are fortunate enough to work for a boss that encourages free-thinking and that doesn’t mandate explicit compliance on tasks, take advantage of this environment to see what you are capable of creating. If you are the manager, quit answering these questions and teach people to think for themselves.
One of the joys of working is the opportunity to create and the benefits derived from the powerful learning experiences that accrue in the process. Quit asking, start thinking and you’ll surprise yourself.
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