Your name is Ethan Hunt. You are a x-PMO agent who is working for a top secret agency.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to deliver a project on-time on-budget and on-scope, codenamed Project: Impossible.

I’ve already dispatched a team from your usual force – your undercover business liaison, your technical guru, your hacker developers, and a surveillance expert/coordinator to monitor and cover your tracks. Your preferred virtual assistants will be available to you 24/7 to handle all administration needs including transportation and paper work. As always, you know how to reach me if you need to cut through any red tape that is critical for mission success.

In case you are wondering, that was a rip-off from the Mission Impossible TV series that I grew up watching, which was made into a very successful movie series. I think there is a fourth and final installment coming out this year and it’s going to be awesome. Obviously, I am a fan.

But this post is not about the movie. It is about project management.

What if your next assignment to a project was a project initiation email from your boss that read like the message above? Your PM life would get a lot more exciting, especially if it is perceived as impossible to begin with and a question of survival is the undertone. Would you take up the challenge?

What if you had the option to work with your usual team? I am talking about the people with whom you have worked in past projects. They trust you and they work well under your leadership; and you trust them because they’ve always got your back. What if projects in real life would allow Managers to form a team of their liking? Do you think it will lower your chances of failure?

Think about it and now let’s get back to your mission.

Should you or any member of your force be caught or killed during the mission, we will disavow all knowledge of your actions.

This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds.

Good luck, Ethan.

I am born in the month of May and I consider myself a classic Taurean personality – mentally strong, very stubborn, mostly supportive, sometimes stupid… Generally, I have a high tolerance level but there is a tipping point beyond which all hell can break lose. It’s rare, but it happens. I am the bull. When I see red, I charge.

I used to lose my cool a lot in my school and college days, and even during the early years of my job. I remember the time when my Manager’s reference to me as a resource blew off my lid and I charged at him with my words. The R word still does wipe off my smile as I feel it is wrong to de-humanize your team (Related post: Humanize your team) but lessons in life have taught me not to react instantly in such situations. I learned to let such moments pass by.

There are times when unauthorized thoughts slips through and enter a world of nasty words or rude actions or both on a self-destructive path. It’s happened before and it will happen again. The reality is that no matter how much we try, there are going to be bad days. When blood rushes into the brain we can’t always take a deep breath and make sensible choices. We are only human. We make mistakes. But what matters the most really is what we do next. Can we muster enough of those reactionary impulses to take necessary steps to make amends? How quickly can we free our sensible mind from the grip of guilt and remorse?

It’s tough. Recovering from a bad row with someone and setting things right means that we have to let go of our ego, admit our mistakes, focus on the larger picture and initiate a discussion of what went down and negotiate an agreement to what needs to be done. But it can be done and its effective. Even a simple apology (Related post: The Power of Apologies) goes a long way sometimes. No matter what approach we take or how long it takes, the point is that Managers need to take the first step even in the worst of situations. We are not bulls, not always.

What is your tolerance level to issues, inconsistencies, incompetence, incapabilities, and irritable actions? How much of your personality plays into the level of patience you show towards your team?

Have you seen your Manager lose it? Tell me, what happened next?

People leave Managers, not companies.

The effectiveness and success to managing people lies in the leadership skills, sense and style of the Managers. When done right, people stay motivated and bend over backwards without complain or regret. The Manager and the Team Member builds a relationship fueled by trust.

According to an article by Business News Daily, a 2010 survey conducted by a career-management agency called Right Management revealed that “84% of workers want to quit jobs, find new gigs in 2011“. The article also quoted the company’s President who said that “Employees’ trust has been seriously shaken and there is a general lack of confidence in leaders.” Almost all the top reasons for why employees leave seem to point towards ineffective Managers and broken trust. If we look beyond the obvious reasons for why that is so, we start to see the trail that leads to a much bigger issue.

A Manager who is mis-managed is almost always likely to mis-manage his team.

Leadership is infectious. Good leadership has a positive impact on the team whereas bad leadership impacts negatively. Whatever the effects of leadership, it surely trickles down from the top honcho to many levels down.

A friend recently told me about his Manager who had begun to show signs of maturity causing a positive change in his leadership ways. Such incidents give me hope that a transition from bad to good leadership is not an impossibility. When experience teaches us how to adopt as well as adapt to changing times and situations, it is not uncommon to see such drastic changes in leadership styles. Most leaders I know strive for that continuous improvement. However, in my friend’s situation, there was one compelling factor that could not be dismissed. The change that he noticed occurred only after a leadership change at a level above his i.e. his Manager’s Manager had changed. So if we were to believe that this is not a lone one-off incident, that mis-management is also infectious, then what next?

We have the power to choose.

Change happes when we are dissatisfied with the status quo. But choosing to change is not the only choice we have. We have the power to choose who we work for. So let’s circle back to the beginning. People leave Managers, not companies. In other words, we change Managers, not companies. And there lies the choice, a rather difficult one because unlike companies the value and worth of a Manager cannot be googled.

But there is an easier choice available to us now, every minute of every day, a choice to strengthen our relationship as a Manager with our Team, and vice versa.  Let’s choose to prepare ourselves for the time when we become ready to leave a company to work for a Manager.

Of the 10 years of my experience in the software services industry, I have spent more than half of that time onsite interacting with customers. I am the onsite Lead – the face of the vendor, the contractor, the consulant. It’s a key role – a complex mix of delivery and client services.

You are a leader in your domain and you are embarking on your first or repeat onsite trip. Your proven communication skills, your success in your domain, your high “like-factor” with the customer during the many phone/email communication, and your team coordination abilities… these are the skills that undoubtedly makes you the ideal candidate to perform the very crucial role of the onsite Lead. You tell yourself, “I am ready!”.

I have been in an Onsite Lead/Manager role for nearly 8 years now, intially on rotational stints before becoming a permanent face for the customer. I have worked in the Middle East and the USA; with the Qataris, Palestenians, Jordanians, Germans, Brits, Koreans, Americans and ofcourse the NRIs. Cultural etiquettes to cuisines to movies – my understanding and most importantly my adaptability to these cultural differences became a key factor to help me build key relationships.

Do you understand your customers culture? Are your confident of changing your customer mindsets to accepting your own culture? Can you bridge that cultural gap? Now ask yourself “Am I ready?”.

To be successful at your onsite mission, you need to develop this underlying, yet not often talked about, skill that will prove to be critical. You need to be able to bridge the cultural gap between the onsite and the offshore teams because in our line of work, it is important to understand and respect cultures.

To build that bridge, a simple thought process might help:

At the beginning, you have “Your Way” of doing things and your customer has “Their Way” of doing things. As an oniste Lead, your job is to work your way towards forming a mutual understanding and acceptance of the two different ways of doing things. This takes time and this is where you will struggle but if you have the right attitude, focus and some patience, you will get through this stage. In the end, when “Your Way” and “Their Way” becomes “Our Way”, you know you have succeeded. Until then, keep trying.

I don’t attend a lot of webinars. Let’s just say that I have been unlucky with my selection. What lures me to webinars is usually the attractive topic that almost always sounds/seems interesting and intriguing but the content is what ultimately lets me down. There is either too much info or too little, sometimes even a little too “advanced” for my taste.

When I saw Robert’s tweets popping on my TweetDeck inviting one and all for a virtual front row seat to his webinar on SCRUM for Managers, I was quick to accept. So did many others and it was worth every minute spent.

Robert Dempsey is a Certified Scrum Practitioner, Agile Trainer, MBA, and the CEO & Founder of the Atlantic Dominion Solutions. He introduces SCRUM to the new age Managers who are faced with a unique challenge these days - agile management. In order to manage a team in an agile environment, it is important to understand the basics of SCRUM. Robert does that wonderfully in his online presentation.

He was more than willing to share his deck with me for the 13apples readers, one which I think is one of the best SCRUM primers I have seen in recent times. So, sit back and enjoy the slideshow. Then post your questions as comments and Robert will be here to answer our questions.

CCPM. Have you heard about this project management framework? What about the concept of critical path? If you have ever been exposed to project schedules, the latter would probably ring a bell. Critical path is the shortest distance to project acceptance and completion. If the project has 10 tasks to deliver, and 8 of them are critical for acceptance, the critical path will comprise of those 8 tasks. Makes sense?

CCPM is a framework build around the critical path concept. To me it is an effective scheduling technique that enables project managers to truly plan a project instead of merely stringing tasks together to an end date. True planning calls fot a great deal of thought that should go into executing a project and steer it towards success. But to do that, we need to first understand project failure.

Why do projects fail? According to Allan Elder’s whitepaper (link below), most projects fail to meet deadlines on time, on budget, and on scope (OTOBOS) due to the following 5 reasons or diseases of project management:

(a) We are victims of “Bad Multi-Tasking“. In short, we have too many tasks on our plate mainly due to a lack of planning from the task assignor/delegator – your Manager or ‘You, Inc.’ – thus leading to bad task prioritization to procrastination to burnout.

(b) Parkinson’s Law i.e. Work expands so as to fill the time available for completion. The safety we’ve built into our estimates with an intent to avoid the worst case scenario somehow transforms into being our best case scenario. And we are not incentivized to do otherwise.

(c) The ‘Student Syndrome’ is in us and we cannot escape it. So, lets accept the fact that due to the above 2 reasons we are not going to work on that task until the 11th hour – the time we need just enough to complete the task and meet the deadline. We dont know how we do it but we do.

(d) Task Dependency for the wrong reasons. Project completion is dependent on all its tasks being completed on time (task completion date) and on budget (resource availability) but when tasks are integrated, projects get penalized due to time wastage and resources being under-committed.

(e) Task Completion != Task Delivery. We tend ignore those sneaky little unplanned and unforeseen events that cause delays in the delivery of completed tasks. Project progress is measured based on the tasks completed and not task hand-offs.

CCPM is based on the ‘Theory Of Constraints’ methodologies and is said to have proven a high rate of project success when implemented right. I have not tried it out yet but am in the process on learning how to. Walk with me on this critical path to success and we’ll find out how to keep our projects OTOBOS.

In my follow-up to this post, I will dive more into how CCPM works. Meanwhile, please do read “The Five Diseases of Project Mangement” (PDF) to understand the above reasons in detail. This whitepaper is a keeper.

Part 1 of 2

STRESS – You hear this word a lot lately; so much so that it seems to be an excuse for everything that goes wrong in life. Take this sample conversation:

“Hey there, how’s it going?”
“Oh, okay I guess. I had a pretty stressful week at work, and I’m just really tired.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I had several stressful things happen this week and it seems like my mind is always thinking about something. And even when I’m finally able to rest, I still worry that there is something I forgot to do!”
“Wow, I can relate to that completely! It’s so frustrating too, because I slept 10 hours last night and still feel tired this morning…”

Sound familiar? If you are a leader of an organization, whether at work, home, sports, volunteer activities, etc. you probably have learned to accept stress as a necessary evil in your daily routine. But does this have to be the case? A recent article published by the American Heart Association says that more research evidence suggests a relationship between the risk of cardiovascular disease and environmental/psychosocial factors. Factors contributing to stress may include job strain, social isolation and personality traits. While there is not conclusive evidence identifying stress as an “independent” risk factor for cardiovascular disease, it can contribute to high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, smoking, physical inactivity and overeating. Even with rapid advancements in medical care, cardiovascular disease still remains in the top three causes for death worldwide according to statistics from the World Health Organization.

Understanding the problems related to stress is pretty straightforward, but how do you find a simple solution for reducing stress in your life? Go to the self-help section of the bookstore and you will find a plethora of how-to-reduce-stress-in-your-life books. While most of these books present good tips based on quality research, you often end up adding more stress to your day just finding time to sit down and read the book! Unfortunately there are very few things in life under your complete control, mainly the actions of people and events that happen to you. You can however, control to an extent some of the people and events you allow to affect daily life.

Open up your PDA or personal calendar and take a look at all the people, places and times that you have willingly entered into your schedule for this week. Being a strong and effective leader requires careful time management. Since you have become so skilled at managing your schedule, why not take the same approach for managing stress?

To make it easy to remember, take the word S-T-R-E-S-S and develop an acronym:

S – Sleep, T – Turn-down, R – Relax, E – Exercise, S – Sleep, S – Sleep

SLEEP

Notice that the word “stress” has three S’s followed by the same word – sleep. Why? If you can learn to conquer this step, you are half-way toward winning the battle against stress. The hardest part about this step is that sleep and stress affect each other in a cyclic pattern. Worry from stress causes sleep loss, and lost sleep increases stress levels and the cycle continues. How do you break it? Try putting it into practical terms. You typically work five days a week for eight hours a day at the office, and you receive compensation for your time spent. If you must take off work for personal time, you compensate those hours in some other way, such as using sick/vacation hours or working overtime. Why not take the same approach with sleep? Most studies show that adults need about 8 hours of sleep per night, depending on age and gender. A daily work schedule might be 8am to 5pm with lunch break between 12 and 1pm. In the same way, develop a daily sleep schedule for eight hours (ex. 10pm to 6am on weekdays) and enforce it. Now let’s say you have a project deadline that requires more time outside of your normal 40-hour/week work schedule to complete. Your supervisor may ask you to stay overtime until the project is complete, and take off early that Friday. In the same way, tailor your sleep schedule accordingly to make room for unexpected activities (ex. 9pm to 5am or 11pm to 7am). Finally, one day you start feeling some stress-induced symptoms: headaches, fatigue, higher blood pressure, etc. Imagine that these symptoms are the body’s way of saying, “You have an important project that will require extra stress management. You need to sleep overtime this week.” Which part of your schedule will you cut to get those overtime hours in?

Part 2: Stress in Leadership Roles – Defeat It

“What do you think?” I asked.

“Looks professional. Nice work.” She said.

Basically, that’s the response I got from all those who I asked about the new and improved lap31. It just goes to show that looks do make a difference.

But it is not the look that really made the difference. It is the feel, which is an outcome of the WordPress theme I’ve chosen. That’s right! lap31 is no longer powered by Drupal. Why? Well, Drupal is great but it was a nightmare upgrading to newer versions. Or maybe that’s just me. Anyway, I believe WordPress makes it very easy for me to manage the site. I am impressed. Also, the new lap31 will enable a lot more wannabe writers/bloggers/collaborators to contribute. WordPress makes it so easy. All you’ve got to do is reach out to me at lazymale@lap31.com. Overcome that laziness and Just type away. That’s what I do.

I had only one main objective in mind when I was redesigning the site and evaluating layouts – to make it easier for You (the reader) or You (the contributor), to find your space on lap31. That’s why the new layout is sectioned into the following broad categories: Leadership, Project Management, Productivity and Motivate Me. It also helps me focus my writing to these specific interest areas.

I am excited about this new phase for lap31. There are many articles lined up for this month. My interview of Andrew Filev, the founder and CEO of Wrike, a leading online project management software. My chat with a friend who shares his experience of handling project team members and motivating them. These are just a few of the upcoming attractions. I hope you are as excited as I am. So, be sure to tune in.

Thank you.

Anyone can be a manager but not many are effective managers. So, what are the qualities that make an effective manager?

An effective manager…

-> knows his client

-> is accountable

-> is a good communicator

-> is a born fire-fighter

-> is a good delegator

-> is confident but not over-confident

-> builds relationships easily

-> thinks & talks process

The skills or qualities I have listed above are purely based on my own experiences. It is incomplete and I will keep adding to it but this is good enough for a start. I strongly believe in these simply because I am a walking talking proof of it. Well, most of it. While it took me 5 yrs of my work life to fine tune and master some of them, I know I have more to learn.

What is your secret of being an effective manager?