DYER PREDICTIONS

Building Project Team Relationships

Hal Macomber just posted a great article on the Reforming Project Management online Magazine entitled Ten New Rules for Project Mangers. One of item on his list caught my eye:

6. Build relationships intentionally.
 Project teams come together as strangers. To do great work…innovation, learning, and collaboration…all take people who like and care for each other. Don't leave that to chance. Start your projects by building relationships among team members.

Here are ten tips for developing relationships among team members.

1. 80% of your results will come from 20% of your effort. This is known as the Praeto principle. Try and stay focused on that important 20% of your work that will lead you to 80% of your results.
2. Nothing will change until you act. If, while standing in the middle of the road, you see a truck coming at you and you fail to get off the road you will get run over. This is known as the prominent outcome. How often do we see project issues coming at us yet fail to do anything? You must take action; it is easy to predict what will happen if you don’t.
3. Create solutions, not winners/losers. Don’t worry about winning or losing when you are trying to negotiate. Instead, focus on creating solutions that work for everyone. Winning and losing is old baggage from our adversarial relationships.
4. Agree on the problem. If one person sees the problem as X, and the other person sees it as Y, then naturally they aren’t going to agree on a solution. It is critical that you talk to each other enough to agree on the problem, and then you are likely to be able to find a solution.
5. Allow people closest to the problem to resolve the issue. Quality decisions come from those closest to the issue. Quality goes down as issues move away from the project level and issues tend to grow in cost and time.
6. Keep perspective. Too often we see our job as putting out fires. Everyday there is the problem-of-the-day or moment to contend with. Over time, we begin to lose perspective. Remember that 90+% of the project is running along fine; it’s only a small part that has problems.
7. Celebrate successes. It is important to celebrate your successes along the way and to have fun. It will help diffuse the stress level and open up communication within the project team. After all, we’re just people who’ve come together to build a project.
8. Build on common ground. When creating project objectives, focus on those things that you all have in common: quality, safety, being on time and on budget. All of these things make for a successful project and are common goals for everyone. Keep focused on those things you have in common, NOT on your differences.
9. Make conflict constructive NOT destructive. Conflict need not be destructive, destroying relationships and communication. Conflict can be constructive, spurring discussions and pointing out areas in need of work, helping the project to improve. It’s all a matter of attitude and approach.
10. Always put fairness on the negotiating table. Start every negotiation or issue resolution session by first putting fairness on the table. Always ask, “What is a fair way to resolve this issue?” You will never be too far apart.

Project Conflict?

I’ve been reading Dr. Tammy Lenski’s blog “I Can’t Say That!” Her blog focuses on how to talk things out in relationships that matter. It seems that whenever two or more people have a relationship, whether it be personal or business, conflict inevitably pops up.

Project Managers face this kind of conflict on a daily basis. One way to avoid conflict during your project is to set up some ground rules for discussing project issues. The first rule should be that you focus on the present and not rehash the past. When you bring your problems into the present you have the ability to solve them. Spending time talking about what happened in the past makes us powerless because no one can change the past.

Another idea is to have team members begin by only discussing technical solutions to project problems. When this has been completed they can assign costs to the best technical solution. Once the technical solution is agreed upon, the discussion of related or potential costs is much easier – you only have to allocate who will be responsible for what. This approach will diffuse the most intense project conflicts that tend to get caught up in a jumble of costs and blame.

Finally, when you see (or feel compelled to write) threatening letters to project team members, your project is in trouble. This is a sign that communication has broken down, and that people are retiring to their respective corners. They are likely to come out punching. The entire project is moved into a defensive, blame seeking, finger-pointing mode. It is next to impossible to solve problems in this mode. You might consider bringing the team members together to discuss their frustrations and problems, and to work them out. This meeting is best lead by a third party, one who can “neutralize” any power imbalances that might occur. A skilled facilitator, acting as a neutral, can help the team to discuss and resolve issues and to truly turn the project around.

How to Get What You Want

I was just perusing Seth Grodin’s Blog and came across something he posted on Friday, December 29th, What waiters can teach marketers. The point of this blog is that people tell you things for a reason, and if you want repeat customers or to provide excellent service, then, while you don’t have to do what they ask, you do need to acknowledge and respond to it. How you respond does make a difference.

A research project on persuasion I came across showed that specific requests get better results. When students posing as beggars simply asked people for “small change” they got something 44% of the time. But, when they asked for a specific, singe-coin amount, like a quarter, they were successful 64% of the time. When they asked for arbitrary amounts, like 37 cents, they got what they asked for 75% of the time. The more precise and unusual the request, the more likely people are willing to comply.

So, how do you get people to respond to your needs? You make your requests specific, and, if possible, a bit unusual or unique.