Curtis, author of Vision to Reality, has helped dozens of small businesses accomplish their vision. | cljassoc.com | Jenkins & Associates.
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The main resource in project management is the people who either perform the tasks needed or make the decisions to help the project move along. Here are five easy-to-follow tips to help you better manage your stakeholders and deliver business-improving projects that make you the go-to leader for the most critical projects in your company or business!
1. Apply lessons learned and train your leadership to do the same.
My boss once told me, “We don’t manage projects well!” and I was floored. All my track records, data and experiences proved otherwise. Why would he say that? I found out the leadership of the company provided this feedback and I needed to find out why. I asked them why they felt this way, and they mentioned a few specific projects that failed. I realized there were reasons this happened and their roles in these failures. I put together a presentation and highlighted the following points that contributed to their beliefs that became lessons learned:
• Their direct reports tried to manage the projects themselves without having a trained project manager leading the project. No shortcuts—you must have a trained project manager to get the results you expect!
• Their priorities changed without adjustments such as scope changes to the new goal(s), stopping projects or putting projects on hold until it is relevant to continue. A trained project manager will know to facilitate these adjustments.
• They were held accountable for delivering projects on a specific date in their annual goals. However, the resources, funding and a fully defined scope didn’t occur until the end dates were nearly passed. After pointing this out, annual goals were set to complete within a calendar quarter and adjusted when projects completed their approval processes.
2. Focus on the speed of delivery, not your methodology.
Don’t bore your stakeholders with talk of how you will employ your methodology and project management speak—wow them with speed! Stakeholders only care about how fast they benefit from projects. Most projects are tied to productivity or financial benefit. Therefore, the faster a project is completed, the faster the benefit is received. Take these three actions to deliver quickly on projects:
• Crash the plan by looking at the critical path (the longest path from start to finish) and challenge each part. One way to do this is to take the estimate someone gave you in a critical path and reduce it by 30-50% in duration. It's amazing how creative you can become. It is very uncomfortable at first, but after doing this over and over, you can begin to develop a knack for it.
• Focus on the deliverables that can be done now instead of waiting. At the beginning of each project, ask for or give resources for deliverables. If documents require completion for design, configuration or testing, say let’s do them now! Create workshops and collaborative gatherings to complete items in chunks versus doing everything through weekly meetings.
• Negotiate the minimal viable product—where the focus is on the components that deliver the most value. For example, if the project has three components, agree with your sponsors to do the component(s) that delivers the most value at 60-80%.
3. Tools and templates are great—but what are you communicating?
To get stakeholders to partner with you, they need the ability to decipher information quickly for understanding and making decisions. I once provided a template to a new project manager without teaching them how to use it. The meeting was a disaster because they only filled out the template without consideration of how the audience would react. Every project artifact is a form of communication. Here are a couple of actions for better communication:
• Before developing a presentation, ask yourself or your team about the story you want to share and how you want people to behave. The visuals should tell the story without many words. Invest in storytelling with your teams collectively through books, videos and storytelling sessions. A good story tells your audience what they need to know and what they need to do!
• Change your project management tool to something that works for you. Leaders and teams should be able to easily know where projects are in their respective phases. Involve your stakeholders in your tool selection and see what resonates with them. Experiment with a few “friendlies” who have the influence and patience to work with you to strike the right chord with the leadership culture.
4. Create a diverse team and listen to them.
People want to do the best they can for their careers and the company. It is very important leaders foster an inclusive environment and help each member of the team flourish.
Create a global team of various nationalities, cultures, genders and gender identities—an environment of fun and inclusiveness. Ensure everyone has a voice. Here are a few ways you can do that:
• Work with the team to develop the values that embody them as an organization. Use these values when interviewing new project managers.
• Use team meetings to foster collaboration, and possibly a bit of conflict, to help develop the best solutions.
• Incorporate these three principles of managing teams:
1. Protection: They should feel safe and have a voice.
2. Direction: Encourage team members to follow their dreams—inside and outside their careers.
3. Correction: Be quick to help a team member understand the impact of a decision made or a mistake made that had a large negative impact. This type of correction fosters loyalty, even when a major mistake was made.
I developed this approach over the years, and it has been very helpful to create a “can do” positive culture for getting things done in a safe and fun environment.
5. Be an inspirational leader.
Use stories to inspire others with tales of past successes and a positive outlook on the future. This can help inspire stakeholders to want to work with you and your team. This is best done in a serving style, always asking, "How can I help? What can I do to help you get what you want?"
You can have a lot of fun leading projects and people if you focus your time and talents on managing stakeholders versus projects. Incorporate these five tips and see how they can help you develop stronger relationships with all your stakeholders.
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