How to succeed as a PM in 2016

Projects are done by people for people and through the medium of social media, people power is growing.  Successful project managers know this and use it to their advantage; they create a team culture focused on working with other stakeholders to create success.

Project managers know when they get this right because their project team will challenge, follow and support them, and each other, in order to get the job done. Not only that, but word spreads and other people inside the organisation will want to join the team or be associated with its success. When a PM achieves this, they know they have created something special and paradoxically are under less pressure, can get a good night’s sleep, and as a consequence are fully refreshed each day to keep building the success. This is good for the people and great for the organisation!!

Developing the skills and personal characteristics needed to develop and lead a committed team needs more then technical training. Experience, reflection, coaching and mentoring all help the project manager grow and develop (and it’s a process that never stops). Five signs that they are on the path to becoming a great team leader are:

1. They’re well liked. Great leaders make people feel good about themselves; they speak to people in a way that they like to be spoken to, are clear about what needs to be achieved[1], and are also interested in their lives outside work and display a little vulnerability every now and again to demonstrate that they are human. They’ll always start the day with a ‘good morning’, the evening with a ‘good night’ and every question or interaction will be met with courtesy. When the team picks up on this the project area will be filled with good humour and great productivity.
2. They put effort into building and maintaining teams. Designing great teams takes lots of thought and time – you need the right people ‘on the bus[2]’ and you need to get the wrong people ‘off the bus’. A great project manager doesn’t accept the people who are ‘free’ or ‘on the bench’ unless they’re the right people and they’ll negotiate intensely for the people that they really need, going to great lengths to recruit people into the vision that they have. Once the team is in place, they never stop leading it, building it, encouraging it, performance managing it and celebrating it.
3. They involve everyone in planning. Or at least everyone that matters! The PM identifies the team members and other stakeholders that need to be involved; creates a productive, enjoyable environment, and leads the process. They want to ensure that they get the most out of the time and at the end have a plan that the team has built and believe in.
4. They take the blame and share the credit. Great project managers are like umbrellas. When the criticism is pouring down they ensure that the team is protected from it. They then ensure that the message passed down is presented as an opportunity to improve not a problem to be fixed. Similarly, when the sun is out and the praise is beaming down, they ensure that the people who do the real work bask in it and are rewarded for it. When they talk about how successful a project has been, they talk about the strengths of the team and the qualities they have shown, never about themselves.
5. They manage up well. Stakeholder engagement, particularly senior stakeholder engagement is the key to project success[3]. Great project mangers know they need senior executive support to help clear roadblocks and deliver resources and know how to tap into the organisation’s powerlines for the support they need.

Great project mangers are also good technical managers; they have an adequate understand the technology of the project and they know how the organisation’s management systems and methodologies work. But they also know they can delegate much of this aspect of their work to technologists and administrative experts within their team. And if the team is fully committed to achieving project success, these experts will probably do a better job than the project manager anyway.

Projects are done by people for people and the great project managers know how to lead and motivate[4] ‘their people’ to create a successful team that in turn will work with their stakeholders to create a successful project outcome.

 

[1] For more on delegation see:  http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/WhitePapers/WP1091_Delegation.pdf

[2] In the classic book Good to Great, Jim Collins says, “…to build a successful organization and team you must get the right people on the bus.”

[3] This is the focus of my book Advising Upwards: A Framework for Understanding and Engaging Senior Management Stakeholders, see http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/Book_Sales.html#Adv_Up

[4] For more on leadership see: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/WhitePapers/WP1014_Leadership.pdf

Making Projects Work: Effective Stakeholder and Communication Management

My third book, Making Projects Work is now generally available in hardback and Kindle editions.

Making Projects Work: Effective Stakeholder and Communication Management focuses on the skills needed by project management teams to gather and maintain the support needed from stakeholders to make their project successful.

The underlying premise in the book is that projects are performed by people for people. The key determinants of success are the relationships between people in the project team and between the team and its wider community of stakeholders. This web of relationships will either enable or obstruct the flow of information between people and, as a consequence, will largely determine project success or failure.

Making Projects Work provides a framework for understanding and managing the factors required for achieving successful project and program outcomes. It presents guidelines to help readers develop an understanding of governance and its connection to strategy as the starting point for deciding what work needs to be done. It describes how to craft appropriate communication strategies for developing and maintaining successful relationships with stakeholders. It highlights the strengths and weaknesses of existing project controls and outlines effective communication techniques for managing expectations and acquiring the support required to deliver successful projects on time and under budget.

Features – the book:

• Provides a framework for understanding and managing factors essential for achieving successful project and program outcomes.
• Facilitates an understanding of governance and its connection to strategy as the starting point for decisions on what work needs to be done.
• Describes how to craft appropriate communication strategies to develop and maintain successful relationships with stakeholders.
• Supplies an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of existing project controls.
• Outlines effective communication techniques for managing perceptions and expectations and to acquire the support necessary for successful delivery.

For links to more information on this, and my other two books, start at: http://www.stakeholdermapping.com/stakeholder-management-resources/#Books

If you screw-up, own-up

One of the traits that strong leaders and credible advisers have is the willingness to ‘own up’ to mistakes they’ve made.  No one operating effectively as a project or program manager, or for that matter any type of manager making decisions can expect to be correct 100% of the time.

If you do something new some mistakes are inevitable. If you accept risks, some negative outcomes are inevitable. And time pressures increase the probability of error. And given project management is all about accepting and managing risks to create a ‘new’ product service or result under time and cost pressures – we probably have more opportunity to ‘get it wrong’ than most.

The generally accepted way to deal with ‘your mistake is:

• Acknowledge it (“my mistake”)
• Make restitution if needed (eg apologise)
• Learn from it
• Move on, only people who have never made anything have never made a mistake.

Conversely if someone makes a mistake involving you look for the best outcome rather than blame of revenge. We have discussed these concepts in a couple of posts:

https://mosaicprojects.wordpress.com/2011/10/01/mistakes/

https://mosaicprojects.wordpress.com/2008/12/13/learning-from-your-mistakes/

What is rare is a really good example of the basic steps outlined above being implemented.  This changed with a publication on page one of yesterday’s Age (also reported in the Sydney Morning Herald). What could have been a bitter and dragged out defamation case – you probably cannot be more insulting these days than incorrectly accusing a Muslim of being a terrorist – both The Age and the aggrieve person applied common sense and resolved the issue in a way that would appear to have left everyone ‘feeling good’ and with a sense of closure, not to mention thousands of their readers.

If you missed the item, you can read the story at: http://www.smh.com.au/national/fairfax-media-says-sorry-20150303-13ttpd.html

Mistakes are inevitable – strong people deal with them in an appropriate way, The Age’s example being exemplary.  This is a salient lesson we can all learn from.

Are Sponsors over worked and under effective?

The Institute of Project Management (Ireland)  has published a  survey is based on self-reported information from their course based on nine major position descriptions/levels in reporting the data comparing the expected number of hours to be worked based on their terms of employment and the actual number of hours typically worked. The averaged data from senior management positions is worrying:

• Director of PMO; expected: 39.0 Hrs, actual: 60.0 Hrs
• Portfolio Manager; expected: 37.0 Hrs, actual: 50.0 Hrs
• Project Manager (Senior); expected: 37.9 Hrs, actual: 50.3 Hrs.

Combine these findings with data from PMI on the hours worked by Sponsors (download the PMI report on ‘Executive Sponsor Engagement’) with many reporting working weeks of 50 to 60 hours on their ‘day job’ before taking on the additional responsibilities of sponsoring a project or a program; and, that effective sponsors report that typically they are working on three projects at a time, spending an average of 13 hours per week on each, the problem of over extension of key executives becomes obvious.

Combine these findings with the demonstrated correlation between effective sponsorship and achieving project success, the over extension of senior managers has serious consequences:

• Sponsors have inadequate time to understand the project’s requirements and support the project manager leading to an increased probability of failure;
• Tired managers make poor decisions, and tiredness affects ethical standards (see: Tired workers lose their ethics);
• There is frequently not enough time to train the sponsor in his/her role further reducing their effectiveness; and
• These pressures often lead to a lack of continuity in the sponsorship role, which is another identified source of project failure.

The evidence is clear, organisations that fail to effectively sponsor their projects and programs are making an overt commitment to wasting the organisation’s time, money and resources – there is an 80% greater probability of failure and no amount of effort at the ‘project management’ level can overcome executive management failures.

One simple way to stop the waste is for an organisation to defer any project where it is unable to find a committed, trained sponsor, with adequate time, energy and skills to properly fulfil their role. No sponsor – no project! (See more on the role of a sponsor)  This may sound extreme, but if the executive management team do not see the project as being sufficiently important to the organisation they manage, to reorganise the disposition of executive resources to properly support the work, then the project is probably not that important anyway. The organisation will be better off not spending the money and wasting its resources.

The governance challenge is creating a management culture that on one hand, actively encourages the deferment of projects that are inadequately supported (eg, don’t have a sponsor); and on the other actively encourages the development of the organisation’s capability to excel at the ‘the management of projects’ (see more on the strategic management of projects).

Creating this culture is a critical governance issue (see more on the governance of project management).  If an organisation cannot implement projects and programs efficiently, it cannot adapt and change to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world which will inevitably lead to the organisation becoming obsolete. However, achieving the necessary changes won’t happen if the executive team are already overextended – the situation highlighted in both of the reports referenced in this post! Building the organisational capability to efficiently its projects and programs is itself a major change initiative that needs resourcing and sponsoring at the highest levels.

What is your personal brand?

If you want a stakeholder to ‘buy into’ your ideas, believe your communication or take action on your recommendations they need to recognise you as a credible messenger. Whilst you can build credibility over time, you only ever get one chance to make a good first impression and your personal brand will be a major contributor to the impression created in the mind of the person you are interacting with.

Credibility is a vital element in communication, particularly when delivering bad news, and your credibility is closely linked to a person’s perception of you, which is in part driven by your ‘personal branding’, reinforced by your actions and behaviour. So what is personal branding? And how do you create yours??

The concept of a personal brand was first raised by Tom Peters in 1997, and is defined as the process by which we market or position ourselves to others.  As with commercial brands, it defines and creates a perception of who we are in the minds of anyone exposed to the ‘branding’.

In the past, ‘personal brands’ were reserved for celebrities and ‘important people’. However, the rise of social media has levelled the playing field and made branding not only more available, but also a key to achieving your objectives.  If your next meeting is important, most people will ‘Google’ you before they meet with you, and develop their vital ‘first impression’ of who you are before you even get a chance to speak with them.

From corporate brands to product brands and down to your personal brand, branding is a critical component in a customer’s buying decision – will they ‘buy’ what you have to say or ignore you; will they agree to meet with you or refuse; this decision will be influenced in part by their perception of your ‘brand’.  The question is what sort of brand do you want to create and is it authentic?

Fundamentally, as with every successful brand, your brand needs to be focused on value as opposed to features (previous roles, education, etc) and reflect your credibility, your value proposition and what differentiates you from others.  This means:

• Making sure your digital footprint is integrated. For example, your Twitter and LinkedIn persona should reflect each other. While you may choose to use Facebook for personal connections, you still need to ensure there’s nothing that could damage your professional profile.
• Use sites like LinkedIn to stay in touch with colleagues, alumni, suppliers and other contacts, but avoid requesting contacts with people you don’t know. In such cases, a personal introduction from a shared contact (which you can find on LinkedIn) is better. You can also ask them to provide a “recommendation” for you on your profile.
• Include your career summary (short and sweet) in all of your online bios.
• You may not be ready to start blogging yourself, but you can still add comments and feedback to other commentators in your field of interest. This is the first step in understanding and engaging with your audience.
• Keep your online profiles up-to-date. This includes job moves, but you can also share content, such as interesting articles and links, to keep your online profile fresh and dynamic. These “shares” should reflect your fields of interest and expertise, and help build a picture of your brand.
• Blogs, posts and tweets should be professional, interesting and add value to the reader. Don’t use social media to simply advertise your business. For longer posts, ensure someone else proofs your work; otherwise poor expression could make it counter-productive.
• If you are employed by an organisation, ensure you are familiar with its social media policy and follow it. If it doesn’t have one, it’s something you should suggest as a risk-management tool.
• Remember, once something is online, it’s often there forever. So be sensible about your personal information, monitor your privacy settings and use common sense about what you do and don’t post. And if in doubt, don’t post it!

Whilst your on-line presence should emphasise your strengths and values, it needs to be ‘you’ or your hard work will come undone as soon as someone meets you face-to-face; authenticity is critical.

The next step in building your brand is meeting an important ‘contact’ for the first time.  You need to either make a good ‘first impression’, or if the other person has done their homework, support the brand image created by your on-line presence.  The common sense things to do before any initial meeting with an important person is some simple research, this may include:

• Starting with their company’s website, Google the person you are meeting; look up the person’s bio and also Google the person to get other bios or profiles. With the person’s bio in hand, you should lock in your mind the following facts: where they grew up, where they last worked, and where they went to school. Make sure it is the bio of the person you are meeting; there are a lot of Chris Smith’s out there and sometimes they even work within the same company!
• Find an online image of the person. It is always more comfortable (not to mention easier to spot the person) when you know what he or she looks like before the meeting. Having seen the person’s face lets you go into a meeting feeling like you have met the person before and be more at ease. This is also helpful to do for phone calls.
• Get the latest news or analysis on the company.
• Find out who is connected to the person or firm you are meeting and ask him or her to share as much background as possible.
• Know your top objectives for the meeting and the top one to two questions you would like answered.

Knowing this information is important, but don’t show off. Be armed with the data so that you can answer or direct the conversation appropriately; your goal is not to demonstrate what you know of the person or company but to achieve what you had in mind when you first set up the meeting.

The last element in building your brand is your appearance – you need to look the part and dress appropriately. There is no ‘one right answer’ here, but it never hurts to be a little conservative in both dress and demeanour (unless you are selling wild creativity). Do your research and balance conforming to the other person’s norms of dress and behaviour and staying true to your ‘brand’.

Putting it all together.

In any sales situation you have to sell yourself first and then you can sell your time (work of consulting), product, or ideas (communication).  But remember the ‘sale’ only occurs when the other person decides to buy.  The objective of ‘branding’ is to make the process easier.

Once the other person has decided you are someone they can ‘do business with’, the quality of the message you are communicating cuts in, effective writing skills and presentation skills are still critically important, but they cannot come into play until the ‘other person’ has decided to take the time to read or listen to your message.

The strategic management of projects

One of the clearest messages emerging from a range of sources is that ‘project management’ as defined by the PMBOK® Guide and other similar documents is simply not enough!  As Professor Peter Morris has been advocating for more then a decade, organisations need to be able to effectively manage projects.

The concept of strategically managing projects describes the organisation’s ability to select, nurture and deliver the right projects and programs effectively. This includes an emphasis on the ‘front end’ of the overall process to ensure the right projects and programs are selected and initiated for the right strategic reasons and the ‘back end’ to make sure the outputs from a project are used effectively by the organisation to realise the intended benefits.  Traditional ‘project (or program) management’ deals with the messy bit in the middle – delivering the required scope efficiently.

Project management skills are well defined as are some aspects of the strategic management of projects such as portfolio management and benefits management. What has still to emerge in the executive management and governance layer of an organisation’s hierarchy is an understanding of the integrated nature of the strategic management of projects. At the moment in many organisations the executives and ‘governors’ who allow their organisations to create failure after failure seem to be able to emerge unscathed by blaming the failures on lower level managers within the organisations they have created.  Some of the reasons projects are ‘set up to fail’ are discussed in this post by Patrick Weaver.

From my perspective, this is a systemic failure of governance and the governing bodies should be held accountable for the destruction of stakeholder value associated with systemic project and program failures. The governing body should not be directly accountable for any specific project failure, rather for failing to develop their organisation in a way that enables the effective development of a realistic and achievable strategy, and then strategically managing the right projects and programs needed to implement the strategy. An overall framework for this type of strategic management of projects is outlined in our White Paper.

Implementing the organisational change needed to create the broad range of capabilities needed to implement the strategic management of projects requires sustained senior executive support and a group of determined, enthusiastic and resilient practitioners to develop the organisations ‘project delivery capabilities’.  The biggest challenge is very few practitioners can explain what they are recommending in a language that is meaningful to executives or really understand the type of information executives need to make the best decisions.

Unfortunately complex detailed reports with dozens of RAG traffic lights and a focus on ‘time and budget’ won’t do the job. A different reporting paradigm is needed that looks at strategic alignment and the delivery of benefits to the organisation and its stakeholders.  Some ideas on the best ways to effectively communicate with executives are discussed in my book Advising Upwards.

It is definitely time to move the strategic management of projects to the next level and that is firmly into the ‘C-Suites’ and board rooms of organisations. Once this is accomplished, professional project managers will be better positioned to deliver their part of the value chain effectively.

Gamification – A new way of working

Gamification is discussed in Chapter 7 of my book Advising Upwards: A Framework for Understanding and Engaging Senior Management Stakeholders.  This post takes a closer look at the topic from a more basic level and based on some of the research, and will suggest options for making your next wait at the dentist’s fun!

In my book, Robert Higgins, the author of Ch. 7 – The New Confucian Communication Game: Communicating with the Nintendo® Generation, suggests the way to lead in business is very similar to being a superhero in an on-line game and explains the self-organising networks of communication and status that develop (with plenty of help for non-gamers). But the potential is much wider. Gamification has the potential to revolutionise the way people see work, and how they interact with one another within the workplace.

Gamification is the concept of transferring the positive mechanisms present in games (such as badges, leader boards and other forms of ‘instant feedback’) to mundane work tasks, creating a more dynamic, fun approach to the working environment. Applied effectively, Gamification restructures a typically boring task into something fun, competitive and engaging.

Technology research and advisory company Gartner has identified four principle means of driving employee engagement through the use of gamified techniques:

• Acceleration of feedback cycles to maintain engagement
• Use of clear goals and rules of play
• Allow players to feel empowered to achieve these goals
• The building up of narratives that engages players to participate and achieve the goals of the activity

When used in a positive way, gamification will encourage people’s psychological desires for competition, drive them to engage and participate in a community structure, and increase workplace morale and productivity; it is a great way to motivate and engage the new generation of knowledge worker and reduce attrition.

The key is to develop a meaningful ‘points score’ associated with the performance of the work and then provide effective (and visible) feedback. Built from Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of need’, three key areas to include are:

1. Level 1: Recognition. This first level focuses on highlighting success and engaging novices. The key themes drive personal brand recognition.
2. Level 2: Access. This second level builds demand for association and attracts intermediate users by creating value and scarcity around access to ‘special’ resources, people, and tools for improvement.
3. Level 3: Impact. This third level appeal to power users and advanced users. At this level, bragging rights and incentives align with impact on the growth of the organisation.

Gamification as a concept within business is still in its infancy, but with the energy surrounding its adoption it seems inevitable that in the long term we will all be exposed to this fast growing phenomenon. The statistics certainly suggest there is a potent demand for gamification. Research by Gartner suggests that by 2014 more than 70 per cent of global organisations will have at least one ‘gamified’ application, and by 2015, the research shows that 50% of Global 2000 organisations that manage innovation processes will have gamified those processes. Although this current wave of enthusiasm may be at the ‘peak-of-inflated-expectations’ and about to descend into the ‘trough-of-disillusionment’ on Gartner’s Hype Cycle.

Used effectively, gamification has the potential to improve productivity significantly. Three examples include:

• Using gaming to revitalise ‘lessons learned’, and promote the creation and sustenance of organisational and project knowledge ‘wikis’ rather than boring databases using competitive knowledge ranking systems to encourage increased contributions and improved team engagement (often seen in enthusiast online forums today).
• Using challenges and rewards to track performance against the plan (where the on-time performance for the updating of progress information and the accuracy of the data provided is weighted more heavily than the actual achievement of results – the ‘players’ all have equal control over updating their progress accurately, but may not have control over the pace of work).
• Workflow processes can be visually represented and improved by managers and team members alike, with leader boards in turn highlighting and rewarding the innovative thinkers (see more on process improvement).

The use of feedback mechanisms, such as leader boards, allows the creation of a potent dashboard from which other managers can gauge the health of each project. As well as allowing the day to day monitoring that is essential to ensure on time delivery.

Gamification has the potential to become part of the project managers ‘toolkit’, and when combined with other innovations, to contribute to successful project delivery, but it is not a one size fits all remedy to all project problems and should not be forced upon a workforce without first gauging the level of buy-in amongst individual employees. And, it may just be another business fad, but who could deny that to make work fun is a laudable aspiration? Your next challenge is to make a ‘game’ out of waiting at the dentists…..

Integrity is the key to delivering bad news successfully

Integrity is the result of a combination of virtues, including the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles, supported by ‘soundness’ and completeness in what you do and say. You have to earn a reputation for integrity based on what you are, and more importantly what you are known for by the people you have to deliver the bad news to.

The reason integrity is so important in the world of project management, including PMOs, Portfolio and Program management is that most of the information and decisions we are involved in are based on a future outcome that cannot be proved at this point in time.

Any accountant can tell you a project actually cost $2million six months to a year after it finished; however, when the project estimator has to tell the Sponsor, his pet project will cost double the $1 million the Sponsor is hoping for there is no way of proving the estimates are correct. If the bad news is to be believed, the estimator has to be believed and the Sponsor’s willingness to believe is in part grounded in his impression of the estimator’s integrity.

Integrity should not be confused with ‘never making a mistake’ or the person’s passion for their work, or their producing evidence or calculations others disagree with – integrity is knowing the information produced by the person is the best they can deliver, is soundly based on sensible parameters and both the supporting information and any contra information is openly available (no secrets, and no overt biasing of the results).

In a perfect world, a person would be respected for their integrity and their opinion or information accepted on that basis, and used as the starting point for discussion, particularly if there is an alternative interpretation. In the ‘real world’ there is an unfortunate tendency to ‘shoot the messenger’ if someone in a powerful position dislikes the information.

Whilst being ‘shot at’ is never fun, watching how you are being attacked can provide very good insights into what the attacker really knows or thinks. Some of the current commentary around the climate change debate is a good example.

A couple of weeks ago the recently appointed Chair of the Australian Government’s Business Advisory Council launched an attack against the CSIRO, the weather bureau and the “myth” of anthropological climate change supported by the IPCC reports. He did NOT offer any scientific evidence to support his assertion that all of the world scientific and meteorological bodies were incorrect, rather attacked their integrity and accountability on the grounds of ‘vested interest’.

Just for the record, the primary body looking at climate change is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on which all of the 194 members of the United Nations have a right to be represented, and this body oversees and appoints the scientific panels which in turn engage with 1000s of other scientists world-wide. The work of the IPCC in turn has been reviewed by the Inter Academy Council, a multinational association of scientific academies, and found to be successful. I would suggest integrity, accountability and openness are clearly demonstrated. But this does not mean the science of climate change cannot be attacked, even if less than 2% of the peer reviewed scientific papers published in the last decade doubt the findings in the other 98% that man made greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change. Climate sceptics are happy to accept odds of 49:1 against.

The ‘climate sceptics attacks are being mounted in exactly the same way the tobacco industry attacked the emerging body of scientific evidence in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, that smoking caused damage to people’s health. Some of these lines of attack (which generally mean the attack has no real data) are:

#1 Ask for specific proof. This sounds reasonable but is in fact impossible. You cannot prove a scientific theorem! All science can state is the theorem has not been challenged (yet) Gravity seems obvious and was explained by Newton, then Einstein, then Quantum Mechanics in quite different ways.

#2 Ask for an exact number. Our $2million project cannot be ‘proved’ to actually cost $2,000,0123 in 28 months time when it will be finished. All we can reasonably offer is an estimate, the assumptions it’s based on and a possible range of outcomes. Demanding to know ‘exactly’ what it will cost or exactly how long it will take is asking for the impossible and if a ‘number’ is provided, you can guarantee it will be wrong and that wrongness will be used to attack your credibility in the future

#3 Find one point of contradiction or one ‘change of opinion’ anywhere in the overall presentation and use this ‘one error’ to condemn the whole body of work. This is relatively simple if there is lots of complex information compiled from many sources and the people developing the materials are acting with integrity and making their processes open and transparent. Intelligent people when presented with new facts change their mind and adapt their thinking. It is highly counterproductive to ignore new data that may cause a change in the results of a complex calculation but watch the attackers claim the ‘science is wrong’ because opinions have changed by a few years and a few decimal points of a degree based on better modelling and more accurate data. Changing a forecast from 2.7 degrees of warming to 3 degrees, or a time period from 50 years to 30 does not alter the basic fact of global warming and the reality will be different again (but when you know exactly what the temperature rise was it is too late to stop it occurring). This is the classic project problem do you spend money now to alleviate a potential problem or wait until its too late and you know what the issue is for certain…….

#4 Attack the messenger. If you cannot attack the basic data, discredit the messenger. Claim vested interests, lack of morals, or anything that damages the messenger (in the corporate world fire the person or transfer them – we have a really good posting for you in the Aleutian Islands…) After all, the practice has been in vogue since the times of the Ancient Greeks.

Washington Post

#5 Use obvious facts out of context or in isolation. How can the world be ‘warming’ when the USA is freezing? The cold is obvious, the cause is not. The system that keeps the Arctic weather in the Arctic is the Jet Stream; the Jet Stream is powered by the thermal gradient between the tropics and the Arctic, the Arctic is warming faster than the tropics, reducing the gradient and therefore potentially making the Jet Stream less stable. For more on this see: http://science.time.com/2014/01/06/climate-change-driving-cold-weather/ (then apply #1, #2 and #3 above if you want to ignore the theorem). A counterpoint to the USA freeze is Australia’s record hot year in 2013, see: http://www.climatecouncil.org.au/2014/01/08/offthecharts/. However, neither the USA data not the Australian data alone proves anything used out of context or in isolation, what matters is the overall weight of evidence, not selected facts.

The good news is if your attacker is using any of these relatively cheap tactics, you know they have little real evidence to oppose you. If the attacker is of equal or lesser power to you, name their tactics and use the power of your integrity to counter their arguments, it takes time but there is nothing gained by descending to their level (except the loss of your integrity).

If the attacker has more power then you (the normal project / senior manger situation) more subtlety is required, but that requires a book to cover the options – fortunately there is one…. Treat yourself to a copy of Advising Upwards: A Framework for Understanding and Engaging Senior Management Stakeholders,  it may not solve all of your problems but it will increase my royalties.

Powerful Questions

You can use questions to change peoples thinking, move their thinking to the ‘right answer’, or elicit information. But questions are not neutral

• Asking ‘leading questions’ when you are seeking information closes off options;
• Whereas asking ‘open questions’ when you are intending to move a person towards the conclusion you want them to reach can be counterproductive.

To be effective, you need to know the objectives of the questions you are asking and then design the questions to support the objective. This is a subtle art but well worth the effort of learning, particularly is you need to ‘advise upwards’ and influence the thinking of senior executives, project sponsors and steering committees.

One of the best short demonstrations of the art of leading questions is in this video clip from the UK ‘Yes Prime Minister’ TV series – its an oldie but a goodie…… spend couple of minutes and watch an expert:  http://youtu.be/G0ZZJXw4MTA

You need to be more subtle than ‘Sir Humphrey’ to make this technique work effectively on senior managers but when you need something, asking a few well planned questions can very often lead the person towards the idea and instead of responding to your request, they have an idea of how to help you be more successful. Effectively advising upwards is an art – you really cannot ‘manage you managers’ but you can be an effective advisor. The art of advising upwards is the focus of my book: Advising Upwards: A Framework for Understanding and Engaging Senior Management Stakeholders see: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/Book_Sales.html#Adv_Up

Questioning for effect is a key part of any sales process, including selling ideas such as the desirability of actually working to the project schedule or making the promised resources available on ‘Monday’.

However, when you are seeking information and insight you do not want to sell your ideas to the people being questioned, you want to find out what they know and think. When framing questions to gather information (eg, during requirements gathering) you need to be really careful to ensure they are open and do not predispose the person being questioned towards a particular view point. Unfortunately the art of open questions seems to have disappeared from academic teaching; well over 80% of the research questionnaires I look at have the objective of eliciting the answers wanted by the researcher to support their preconceived hypothesis.

A question like “Do you want to go to Kentucky Fried or McDonald’s for lunch?” presumes:
a) The person wants to go out for lunch, and
b) The person only eats takeaways.

Change the question to “Where would you like to go for lunch?” opens up other possibilities (eg, the really good salad bar down the street), but still assumes the person wants to go out for lunch.

You need two questions to remove all presumption; first “Would you like to go out for lunch?” and assuming a positive response, “Where do you suggest?” Even then the first question has a presumption of ‘with me’ built in.

The art of question has discussed at some length in the past, some useful resources are:

• White Paper 1012: Active Listening and Effective Questions
• Good questions outrank easy answers
• Leading Knowledge Workers

The Art of Networking

Networking is a special form of communication aimed at developing a network of people with a stake in your life and career. Having a strong network is critical to your professional development but you cannot approach this in a selfish way – as with every stakeholder relationship, there needs to be a two way advantage, the only difference is rather then seeking mutually advantageous business or project outcomes, you are looking to your network to help you become more successful. This is achieved by developing a well-rounded network.

Some of the important people to have in a well rounded network include:

Your Mentor: This is the person who has reached the level of success you aspire to have. You can learn from their success as well as their mistakes. Heed their wisdom and experience. Mentors help you discover your solutions to your challenges.

Your Coach: The coach is someone who sets you goals, targets and challenges (think ‘sports coach’). They help with critical decisions and transitions and offer an objective perspective with no strings attached.

Your Industry Insider: This is someone in your chosen field who has expert-level information and who keeps you informed of what’s happening.

A Trendsetter: This is someone outside of your chosen industry who always has the latest buzz on any topic that you find interesting. The goal in having this person in your network is to look for those connections that spark innovation via the unconventional. It will also help you keep your conversations interesting.

Your Connector: This is a person who has access to a vast array of people, resources and information. As soon as they come across something related to you, they send you an e-mail or picking up the phone. Connectors are great at uncovering unique ways to make connections, find opportunities that otherwise would be overlooked.

An Idealist: This is the person in your network you can dream with and brainstorm ways to make the dream come true. Without judgment, they are focused on helping you achieve the impossible.

A Realist: On the flip side, you still need the person who will help you keep it real and challenge you to actually make your dream happen.

The Visionary: Visionary people inspire you by their journey. One personal encounter with this type of person can powerfully change the direction of your thinking and life.

Your Partner: You need to have someone who is in a similar place and on a similar path to share with. This is a person you can share the wins and losses with. Partners will also share resources, opportunities and information.

Your mentee: This is someone you can serve as mentor to. Someone you can help shape and guide based on your experiences.

Building a diverse network that includes people from different industries, backgrounds, age groups, ethnic groups, etc. … that fit into the roles listed above is far more empowering than building a deep network that only includes people from your current profession, limiting potential opportunities.

Achieving a dynamic network requires you to find the right people connect with and through the connections develop a robust relationship.  The balance of this rather long post will look at these two aspects in turn.

Meeting people, or at least being in a room with a lot of other people is fairly easy to achieve, there are professional associations, conferences and a range of other events you can attend, the only real challenge is creating time and picking up the courage to go out and meet people face-to-face.

Unfortunately, virtual networking is only a pale substitute; certainly networking tools such as LinkedIn and others have users that number in the millions, allow professionals to expand their networks to numbers never before possible, and help you connect with colleagues past, present and future from around the world these are largely ‘shallow’ connections. In-person networking, where connections are more personal, builds relationships that are stronger and creates impressions longer lasting. Virtual networking can certainly help feed into personal networking but then you need to make those connections and impressions that count.

The next time you attend a networking event and start a conversation with a stranger (or a virtual contact) you need to be an effective communicator and develop rapport.  These ideas will help:

Never pass up an opportunity to connect. Sometimes even a seemingly random relationship leads to a big payoff.

Make connections from the executive suite on down. Seek contacts are at all levels in a hierarchy and take the time to talk about their hobbies and interests, even at work!

Be prepared. Have a standard set of questions that you can use to begin a discussion; not only will you be ready to approach someone; you won’t do all the talking. The fastest way to build new relationships is to inquire about the other person’s work, and then ask about their biggest challenges or successes. For more on questions see: Active Listening.

Focus on each connection. When you are networking with someone at an event give them your undivided attention. Networking is about building lasting relationships, not about pushing unwanted business cards at strangers. Concentrate on what the person is saying and try to pick up nuances you can leverage later. But don’t ignore the cards – people are impressed when you meet again and you recall their name along with details of your last meeting and most of us need a prop to help remember this key information.

Build rapport. Build rapport by applying these simple steps:

1. Find common ground. When you talk to people try to find out what you have in common with them by asking different questions and listen closely for commonalities. Try to find professional and personal commonalities, just make sure it doesn’t feel like an interrogation!
2. Maintain eye contact. When you’re speaking to someone your eye contact will let them know you are interested and listening. This is a key part of ‘Active Listening’.
3. Use open body language. Face your body toward them and at times even lean in when they are talking, this will show them you’re engaged. Avoid leaning back, facing away from them or crossing your arms, as this can indicate you don’t agree or that you’re uninterested.
4. Be aware of your facial expressions. Be conscious of your facial expressions when people are talking to you. If frowning they may think that you disagree with them and if you’re smiling and nodding they will think you agree or are telling them to go on, but your expression needs to be authentic.
5. Mirror the person you are speaking with.  Mirroring means matching the body language, speech and tone of the person you are talking with, and is a great way to build rapport quickly.
6. Be confident and friendly.  People are naturally attracted to warm, happy and friendly people so make sure you are. Not only will it make you more likeable, you will also help those who are nervous to feel more relaxed around you.
7. Make them feel good about themselves. When the opportunity arises, pay the person you are talking with a genuine compliment. When we make others feel good about themselves, they naturally warm to us and remember us more positively.

Then Follow up right away. Connect with your new contacts on LinkedIn or friend them on Facebook if you use your account for professional purposes. This is where in-person networking and online networking converge, and don’t overlook the potential of e-mails and phone calls to people you know and with whom you’d like to stay in touch.

Effective networking is both fun and valuable all it takes is practice.