Who's and why's of Feedback?
There is a saying - 'No Man is an Island', which means no one, absolutely no one can survive without others (On second thought, i take that back, i know a few people who do!!!).
We interact with people, we work, play, argue, fight etc.
So overall, in the personal and professional conundrum of life, people 'interact' with each other.
In our personal and professional dealings, there are times when we act or react in a certain way that is unacceptable to others - Alas, 'We cannot please everyone all the time'.
Always remember, every person follows some thought process and the golden rule is 'Everyone of us does what he/she thinks is right, in that situation'. Be he/she the CEO of a Corporation or Super villian in a comic book.
So when we observe this sort of behavior in our Project Team, what do we do, how do we react as Project Managers? and most importantly, if we are ones on the receiving end, how do we take the feedback that others give us.
Let us take a real life situation that happened with me many years back. I was a rookie in a IT Large Firm and was working on a big multi million dollar Project. It was my first project right out of college. A large size manufacturing Company had hired our IT Vendor services to Automate one of their new plants. I was part of the development and installation team onsite with other 40 resources (Client and Vendors included) working dedicatedly on various aspects.
Then just a week before go live, my Project Manager had to go on a Personal leave for a Family emegency. I was the only available backup on that short notice. I was representing our Develpoment and Testing Groups now. Things were going fine with the dry runs, system tests etc till the day of go live.
On the night of go live, we started our deployment, things were going by the book for the first few hours then suddenly all hell broke lose, hardware starting failing, drives, switches, programs were not working, networking issues developed. This being a commercial Manufacturing plant which was being controlled by our PLC (Programmable Logic controller) programs, all the Silos, drives and Switches started malfunctioning. It was also a continuous process plant and a break in the process would have meant raw materials losses worth millions and indirect impacts in terms of Go Live date delays, commited dates and other dependencies.
Everyone in the plant started to panic, right from the half asleep Janitor to the Top C-level executives. Since we were the service providers and i was the only highest sitting mark representing our corporation's totem pole, guess who received the flak for all this....me!!!...Yes, and that too in no soft words or even in private...you get the rough idea.....
Finally, the situation was salvaged and we started resolving the issues one by one and things started running fine again.
After nearly 20 years that incident still gives me cold sweats, not so much the things that failed or the soup we were in, but the verbal lashings i got...
What went wrong here? Absolutely everything....How could it have been handled...definitely in a more professional manner...
Even in our Day to day IT Projects, we come across similar situations about our Team members, colleagues etc who needs to be repriminded or think annual appraisal sessions of your team members.
Feedback Process handling
So coming to - How to handle this situation>
Approach 1>
Plain and simple - Speak your mind.
Approach 2>
Provide feedback with a little preparation and technique. I call it the 'AGES' approach.
It needs a little Homework. Follow the below 4 steps -
1> A - Assess
Assess the Situation. Understand the problem
2> G - Good
Quantify other positive contributions of the person in focus. Think what value he provides to the Team, project and the corporation in general.
3> E - Empathize
Empathize with the person and elaborate the negative impacts of his/her actions, understanding that he/she was not doing it on purpose.
4> S - Solution
Think about ways to help the person.
Now let's analyze a Situation with the help of above 2 approaches
e.g. Situation is - We are in midst of an Agile project for which there are daily 9 AM Sprint meetings and all Team members are present except Mark. Mark is consistently late for the sprint stand-ups past few days.
Approach 1>
I approach Mark and reprimind him (Openly or in private).
'Mark, your behavior is unacceptable. You are always late for the stand ups. Make sure this does not happen again'
What happens during/after this? Mark immediately shuts off. He thinks of me as a rude, negative and inconsiderate person. This impacts his work, interactions with the Team and finally his work deliverable or the project as a whole.
Now this is not a very Leader like behavior. A Leader has to motivate and lead by guiding his team on the journey. Help them in their issues, understanding and Guiding them when and wherever possible.
So now let's try approach 2>
A - Assess
I analyze the situation and prepare my response. I focus on Mark's contributions and the current 'glitch' that is being observed for past few days. I also work out a few practical ways this can be resolved. Then i talk to Mark one on one.
G - Good
'Listen Mark, I know the project is in full flow and i see you are working very hard - day and night and especially your work on the ISO webservice solution was extremely well received by the client and it had zero defects too'
E - Empathize
'To continue the same trend of success, we as a Team have to focus on the project. That is why the daily sprint attendance is important, so everyone can understand the current Project progress, work dependencies, issues, project announcements, if any'
'Now i understand everyone has a personal life and sometimes there are some things that have to take a priority'
S - Solution
'So if there is anything there i can do to help you here, like changing your Office timings for a while or there is something you want to share, let's talk about it'
Which conversion do you think will have more impact.
So to summarize, to provide feeback, Keep your mind open, unbiased and clear, understand the situation or focus on the problem at hand not the person, understand the circumstances and behavior of the other person and help him/her resolve it positively. When you leave your feedback meeting, make sure neither one of you leaves with a bitter taste in his mouth, leave with a positie mark. After all, projects are a Team work.
Showing posts with label Feedback. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Feedback. Show all posts
Friday, July 27, 2012
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Manage Stakeholder Expectations
Many things have been written and said about Managing Stakeholder Expectations. This is one of the most difficult tasks a project manager has to perform throughout the life cycle of the project depending upon the type and number of stakeholders involved. Essentially what may mean as a 'perfect and successful' project to the project manager, may turn out to be a complete disaster in the eyes of the stakeholders.
During Concept Phase:
A Project is conceptualized when the stakeholders or project sponsors meet and layout the project idea. Objectives and goals are set at this stage and a project is born. Once it has taken a definite shape and the ball has started rolling and the project progresses from the concept or initiation phase to design, construction, testing and finally delivery and closure. At every stage, we, as Project Managers have to manage stakeholder expectations.
Every stakeholder comes from a different arena or a different functional area and therefore has different definition of success. Hence it is very important at the onset, to make sure all stakeholders are on the same page and are driving towards a common goal. This is achieved in the Project Kick off meeting. The project sponsors or the ones who had laid the project high level objectives may not be the only ones who are the actual stakeholders that are involved with the project, as the project progresses you will find the number of stakeholders and actual representatives may also vary.
So, from the initial requirement sessions you may find that the stakeholders that get involved are deviating from the ground rule and are asking for something that is not in project scope or not inline with the general project agenda.
This may happen due to various reasons,
1> Stakeholders not clear on the Project Objectives
2> Need some understanding wrt different project areas or how projects are executed.
It is the job of the Project Manager to make sure these risks are addressed at proper time by proper planning.
Example:
Coming to an insurance industry example of this scenario,
say the project deals with integrating your Policy-Claims administration system with a Contacts management software and during the stakeholder meetings, the discussions lean towards tweaking and tuning of another dependant 3rd party interface - CMS upload for medicare.
Agreed, the 2 items may be related, but that does not definitely mean that the other interface is to be handled in this project scope (Unless that is the way the project has been scoped out).
To handle this situation make sure the project objectives are strongly and succintly communicated to the stakeholders that we are integrating to a new contact management software and this may mean some changes associated to some middleware bridge to make the other contact dependent interfaces work as expected, with minimal to no impacts. This lays a ground rule and restricts the deviations that may otherwise happen.
How to:
Major steps to stakeholder management in any project large or small are,
Step 1:
Conduct Stakeholder interviews:
- Study your stakeholders - their roles, who they are - organizational positions, their project roles - e.g. sponsors, end users, business SMEs, what they do? How would they influence the project outcome - completely understand their 'needs' and 'beliefs'? All this can be managed by having a 'Stakeholder map'.
- Know them wrt likes, dislikes, project expectation etc
Step 2:
Stakeholder Communication:
This is the most important thing in any project. I cannot stress on how important is this factor to guarantee a project success.
- Involve your stakeholders in all stages of the project right from initiation.
- Try to understand the project objectives from the stakeholders perspective. What does it mean to them by project success/failures/key painpoints etc? Let them define this in their own terms.
- Familiarize them with project financials, give them an overall project picture by having regular project status report meetings. In these meetings, make sure you concentrate on areas that are important to the stakeholders rather than delving into your project management methodologies and bravado stories.
- By effective communication and holding them accountable to project realities in times of project changes we can definitely and successfully manage stakeholder expectations. Remember Stakeholders and Project Sponsors have as much vested interest in project success as everyone.
During Concept Phase:
A Project is conceptualized when the stakeholders or project sponsors meet and layout the project idea. Objectives and goals are set at this stage and a project is born. Once it has taken a definite shape and the ball has started rolling and the project progresses from the concept or initiation phase to design, construction, testing and finally delivery and closure. At every stage, we, as Project Managers have to manage stakeholder expectations.
Every stakeholder comes from a different arena or a different functional area and therefore has different definition of success. Hence it is very important at the onset, to make sure all stakeholders are on the same page and are driving towards a common goal. This is achieved in the Project Kick off meeting. The project sponsors or the ones who had laid the project high level objectives may not be the only ones who are the actual stakeholders that are involved with the project, as the project progresses you will find the number of stakeholders and actual representatives may also vary.
So, from the initial requirement sessions you may find that the stakeholders that get involved are deviating from the ground rule and are asking for something that is not in project scope or not inline with the general project agenda.
This may happen due to various reasons,
1> Stakeholders not clear on the Project Objectives
2> Need some understanding wrt different project areas or how projects are executed.
It is the job of the Project Manager to make sure these risks are addressed at proper time by proper planning.
Example:
Coming to an insurance industry example of this scenario,
say the project deals with integrating your Policy-Claims administration system with a Contacts management software and during the stakeholder meetings, the discussions lean towards tweaking and tuning of another dependant 3rd party interface - CMS upload for medicare.
Agreed, the 2 items may be related, but that does not definitely mean that the other interface is to be handled in this project scope (Unless that is the way the project has been scoped out).
To handle this situation make sure the project objectives are strongly and succintly communicated to the stakeholders that we are integrating to a new contact management software and this may mean some changes associated to some middleware bridge to make the other contact dependent interfaces work as expected, with minimal to no impacts. This lays a ground rule and restricts the deviations that may otherwise happen.
How to:
Major steps to stakeholder management in any project large or small are,
Step 1:
Conduct Stakeholder interviews:
- Study your stakeholders - their roles, who they are - organizational positions, their project roles - e.g. sponsors, end users, business SMEs, what they do? How would they influence the project outcome - completely understand their 'needs' and 'beliefs'? All this can be managed by having a 'Stakeholder map'.
- Know them wrt likes, dislikes, project expectation etc
Step 2:
Stakeholder Communication:
This is the most important thing in any project. I cannot stress on how important is this factor to guarantee a project success.
- Involve your stakeholders in all stages of the project right from initiation.
- Try to understand the project objectives from the stakeholders perspective. What does it mean to them by project success/failures/key painpoints etc? Let them define this in their own terms.
- Familiarize them with project financials, give them an overall project picture by having regular project status report meetings. In these meetings, make sure you concentrate on areas that are important to the stakeholders rather than delving into your project management methodologies and bravado stories.
- By effective communication and holding them accountable to project realities in times of project changes we can definitely and successfully manage stakeholder expectations. Remember Stakeholders and Project Sponsors have as much vested interest in project success as everyone.
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