Leaders Do Not Complain

by: stacey - February 7th, 2012   Filed under: Leadership Add Comment

Project Management is often a thankless task.  You often are the leader of a project, expected to get it done, but you may not have the authority to get it done yourself.  You may not even have any staff of your own.  You’re strapped for resources.  You often feel like you’re begging for everything.  You work long hours.  You get things done that usually end up credited to the business owner or your project sponsor, not to you.   We as PMs have plenty to complain about.  The thing is, if we complain, we are ruining our ability to lead.

Complaining is one of the most dangerous things a leader can do.  When you complain, you do all of the following and more:

  1. You deny your responsibility for the situation.  After all, if you were responsible, you would fix it.  You are the leader, right?
  2. You reduce your own authority.  See item 1- if you are complaining about it, obviously you don’t have the authority to fix it.
  3. A complaint is an excuse.  Again, see item 1.
  4. You blame, even if you don’t name names.  If you aren’t responsible for a situation, someone else is.
  5. You give others permission to emulate your behavior- when something makes them unhappy, they have the option to either solve the problem or just complain about it.

Leaders take action.  They also inspire action in others.  Complaining does neither of these things.  In fact, it does the opposite.  It fosters negative attitudes.  If fosters an image that you point out problems, not solve them.  It gives permission to others to not solve problems.

That said, project managers, and technical people in general, often are very critical thinkers.  Critical thinkers have a tendency to see fault in a lot of things, to get overwhelmed by all the faults, to complain and get trapped in negativity.

So what can you do?  Learn how to deal with what’s bothering you in a positive way.  Here is a great article by Steve Pavlina on how to stop complaining.  I also recommend this method below, which is my personal method:

  1. Write down all of your complaints in a list.
  2. Treat this list as a business problems list- do a root problem analysis of each.
  3. From here, simply handle it as any other project plan- develop a list of requirements, then a task list, ordered task list, project plan, etc.
  4. Execute your plan to solve your problems!

Why do I like this method?  Quite simply, it’s plays to my strengths.  I turn my problems into an actionable list, then I do something about them, and I do it in a way that plays to my analysis and project management capabilities.

You can use this same methodology to deal with complaints from your team.  Talk to them.  Get their complaints out in the open.  Write them down on a big whiteboard.  Lead your team through creating the list, getting buy-in that solving these problems matters, then use the process above.  Turn solving the team’s problems into a team project.  Not only do you gain their buy-in during the process, you exhibit leadership, you gain their buy-in into your leadership, you solve their problems, and, most importantly, you are teaching and leading by example:  by watching how you help them solve their problems, you help teach them how to stop complaining and get more done.

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DIY projects

by: stacey - January 31st, 2012   Filed under: Leadership, Management Add Comment

There’s been a lot of buzz in the last year about Do-it-yourself IT folks.  Business people bringing their own bits and pieces of IT functions into the workplace, circumventing the traditional IT department.  CIO magazine even did a big article on it (a copy of the article made the rounds around our business departments, in fact).  While organizations are starting to address this issue, I see a bigger one brewing:  DIY projects.

There are business units at companies all over the world right now circumventing their Project Management Offices and/or Project Managers.  Sometimes they just form projects within their departments and try to do it themselves; other times it’s more radical.  I have actually been involved as a vendor to a Fortune 100 where a business unit cut IT out of a million-dollar software project by outsourcing the bulk of the work to us and hiring us to manage it.  This wasn’t done as outsourcing, per se- just a complete and outright circumvention of IT.  The reasons given behind the scenes were that IT’s standards were too strict and that IT took too long.

Given the number of projects out there that overrun budgets and/or timelines, the idea of business units cutting out the Project Management Office, IT, or any other subject matter experts within your company are frightening.  Even if the project succeeds, consider that the vast majority of projects require maintenance and management once they ‘go live’.  This will either be done by the very staff that was cut out of the original project (if the business unit turns to IT), by business team folks whose jobs are actually to be doing something else (if the business unit tries to run it themselves), or by the vendor (thus setting you up with a permanent dependency on the vendor- your business unit did know to check out the vendor’s long-term viability, right?).

This kind of thing is just trouble in so many ways its not funny for any business out there.  Usually this sort of thing going on in your organization is a result of some problems you haven’t been paying attention to.   The question is, how do you quell these things?  First, I recommend addressing your problems leading to this practice, for one, and providing strong vision and leadership can help as well.  Vision and leadership will inspire trust, and a lack of trust in the status quo that others can meet the business unit’s needs is always what leads to these sort of rogue ops.  Second, find a way to embrace the project.  Instead of shutting them down, say “How can I help?”  Get involved. Don’t get in their way; that’s why they are circumventing you in the first place.  When you need to do course correction to get things more supportable or compliant with your corporate regulations (or any legal regulations you must comply with), communicate.  Help them understand why the extra bits are necessary.  Be a partner, not a roadblock.  If you can help people understand that you are there to help, and you show that you can be a help, they’re more likely to come through the right channels next time.

Still, I’d love to hear what other folks thoughts on this.  Any comments?  Can anyone comment on how their organizations are handling this problem?

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Three Ways to Destroy Morale

by: stacey - January 25th, 2012   Filed under: Leadership Add Comment

Motivation is a big deal in modern management principles.  Anyone can hire workers, assign them tasks and wait for results. It takes a leader to motivate and get people to want to be assigned tasks and produce results.

Sometimes in our quest to get those who are not motivated to do their jobs, we can destroy the motivation of our loyal employees, those who does want to do their jobs. Here’s three big mistakes people make:

1) Big Brother is watching
The power of IT has made monitoring both popular and easy- monitoring web traffic, email, putting in cameras for physical security, guard stations, badges, biometrics… the list of things we do to watch our employees and protect our assets goes on and on.  There is a fine line you must walk, however.  When you watch your employees, they feel untrusted.  Showing a lack of trust in others usually leads them not to trust you in return.  They will suspect your motives.  What are you up to?  Why do you keep watching them?  Why don’t you trust them?  If you don’t trust them, why don’t you just fire them?  Are you looking for reasons to fire them?  Going overboard with monitoring is a quick way to an unhappy, high-turnover workforce.

2) Which way does the wind blow today?
Consistency is a key in leadership.  People only follow people they trust.  They must believe in your competency and ability to achieve goals.  This includes having the self-assuredness to stay the path.  If you took a cab, and the driver kept changing his mind on which way to go to get to your destination, you’d quickly suspect something was wrong, wouldn’t you?  Would you even trust him to get you there?  Even if you did, would you think he was getting you there the best way possible?

Inconsistency in logic, goals, rules, or even just daily behavior can undermine people’s trust in your leadership.  If a leader appears not to be leading consistently towards a single goal, odds are that the leader’s followers think he doesn’t know how to get to that goal.

3) Forgetting the little people
If you have hired well, your staff probably has a lot of knowledge on board.  Some of the people you hire to be specific experts in an area, like developers, systems admins, and such, while others have knowledge because of their experience.  Customer service personnel often hear things about what the customers think of a product that your business analysts will never get the customer to say in a focus group.  The people in the trenches will always have perspectives that can’t be found in amongst your design teams.  Always include the perspective of others in decisions, especially if it is their job to know something about what you are deciding.  Excluding experts makes them feel like their opinions are not valued and question their value to the company.  If your job is to be an expert in a subject, and you feel that your opinion is not valued, then you feel like you are not valued.

If you do not show your employees that you value them, they will quickly lose respect for you. How can you lead people effectively if you have no respect for them? How can they trust you to look out for them and the things they want to accomplish?

All three of these things boil down to one thing: achieving credibility and respect with your employees.  You cannot lead them without their respect.  You cannot motivate them without credibility with them.  Protect and nurture the respect of your employees. Work to earn it.  If they will respect you, they will follow.

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