GBMC News

Spring 2024

Can AI cancel “Noise”?  By George Merguerian, Senior Partner

I have just finished reading “Noise” a formidable book published in 2021 by authors Daniel

Kahneman (who unfortunately passed away recently) Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein. The

book discusses thoroughly how biases create flows in human decision-making and therefore

perfectly relevant to stakeholders involved in projects.

What do we mean by biases? Psychologists categorize this as decisions that are made based on instincts rather than rational thinking. The 2011 book “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Kahneman – explains this very well. The main idea of that book is that we have two modes of thought:

"System 1" which is fast, instinctive and emotional and "System 2" which is slower, more

deliberative and logical. This is also a great book that project managers can read to enhance the quality of their work. Project managers deal with and resolve issues, make decisions on choices on a daily basis to facilitate the advancement of their projects.

To read the full article click here:

Autumn 2023

Using Project Management to Achieve Personal Goals - Tony Eve

At 41,000 feet the warmth from the early morning sun’s rays is non-existent. It has long been a
personal goal of mine to make a skydive from above 30000’, something referred to as a HALO jump (High Altitude Low Opening). It’s 1st July 2023 and I’m about to realize that goal. 
Six of us are about to leave the relative warmth of a modified Piper Cheyenne 400LS aircraft: its metal walls; its landing gear; its safe supply of oxygen. The world outside that door is 54 degrees below freezing, and nearly airless.  I’m keenly aware of that fact when my personal oxygen bottle is switched on and, as part of the handover effect, it suddenly becomes almost impossible to exhale. We’d been warned about that alarming “HALO waterboard” effect —that it would only last a moment, and that it meant that it was officially time to get out into the big, bright, cold world outside the plane.  So I did.

It’s on reflection that I see how my years of project management experience, quite intuitively, helped enormously in facilitating this experience.

To read Tony's story click here

Spring 2023

Have you ever wondered what the different names and acronyms mean when people talk about training delivery?

An overview of the following 4 different modes of virtual training delivery.

1. ViLT

2. CBT On Demand Learning

3. Webinars

4. Hybrid

Click here to download the overview.

Autumn 2022

The Art of Project Management® 6 things to help you advance your project management career

1. Choose to lead projects that you believe in. This will help you better motivate the team as well as, provide the gist for the project to progress with urgency.
2. Being given authority on a project does not mean that you are a good leader nor the best decision-maker. Listen well to your colleagues and do not be judgmental. They may see better where things are going wrong in your project.
3. Do not get stuck by methodologies and standards – use what is needed to get the work done. I hear some project managers make statements like agile is the way forward, classical is old etc. The method you select should best fit the project.
4. Tailor your approach to planning and managing the project – don’t just use a method bluntly. All methods need to fit the particularities that a project requires.
5. Certification is great but mainly for you – it shows that you have made the effort to review latest thinking and learned it – not just read it. But beware, certification does not guarantee that you will be a successful project manager.
6. Be part of a peer group and expand your knowledge. Informal forums are good exchanges of knowledge. Peer meetings organised by project management associations frequently lack the informality to make the flow of information fluid.

The Art of Project Management® is a registered Trademark of The Global Business Management Consultants (www.bmc-global.com).

Spring 2022

How to Motivate Virtual Project Teams

Many say work will never be the same as it was pre-pandemic.  With many PMs spending more of their week working from home how do you motivate your virtual team?

Screen fatigue! Constant disruptions! Feelings of isolation! We are bombarded by the media about the downside of working from home (WFH) or working remotely on projects. We may also have evidence from our own employees and team members about how difficult it is to stay focused and productive. Your project management (PM) organization probably believes that it is the responsibility of the PM to motivate project team members. We at GBMC whole-heartedly concur.  In fact, we have trained hundreds of PMs on that very skill.

Now, it’s time to offer up some suggestions on how you can prepare your PMs to motivate and sustain motivation from afar.  Migrate principles of human motivation from the physical office to the virtual world. Some principles remain the same: Most non-supervisory, individual contributors are motivated by:

1. Full appreciation of the work being done;
2. Feeling of “being in” on things;
3. Help with personal problems;
4. Job security.

So, remind your PMs that frequent check-ins and short status meetings are great opportunities to show appreciation and give team members a sense of “being in on things” or at least, not missing out on too much. We might not have opportunities to stop in the hall, socialize at the coffee bar or copier/printer room. Give PMs permission to coach, and perhaps counsel employees who seem to be struggling with personal problems or job anxiety. Provide your PMs with relevant details about the company’s Employee Assistance Program.  Encourage PMs to get creative about how they engage their teams – both collectively and as individuals.

Pay attention to WFH ergonomics.  By now, we all may have heard the saying that sitting is the new smoking. Give your PMs some training on how to encourage employees to optimize their WFH workstation. Empower them to remind team members to take stretch breaks and quick “mini vacations” during the work day. Make stress reduction ideas available to them. Convince your PMs that caring about team members’ well-being is motivating. 

Watch for burn out. The lament of WFH burnout is real. Workers complain of too many meetings, and if your organization is international, meetings when their time zones are out of synch. Since travel is limited, a 5-day visit to a location / site, can turn into several meetings in what might be called “the middle of the night!” Help PMs set aside connection zones and use time swapping so only one set of team members has to get up super early or stay online super late each week. Remind your PMs that it’s OK to have a meeting-free day every once in a while. 

Autumn 2021

Training Project Managers Virtually

What is the most frequent excuse given for NOT training your project managers (PMs) virtually? Here are a few:

• “Upskilling in turbulent times is too difficult.
• We’re too busy trying to stay afloat.
• We just don’t have the technology.
• We have to undertake reductions in force, so we really don’t know right now who should be trained.”

We will concede that if your organization hasn’t kept up with instructional technology, when turbulence hits, it may seem too difficult. Advancements in digital technology may be outpacing your ability to convert existing training programs to new platforms or your ability to design for the virtual world.

No matter if your organization is keeping up, or seems behind the digital curve, here are some tips for training project managers when face-to-face training is not feasible.

Use existing technology. Most organizations have some type of remote meeting technology. Find a tech savvy instructional designer and let them use some creativity to repurpose meeting technology for delivery of awareness and knowledge transfer training. Skill-building training may be difficult, unless the trainer/instructor can use video to observe a learner demonstrate the new skill. Alternatively, skills can be developed if the trainer can examine a deliverable the learner produces. Many polls and studies reveal that lack of training is a major reason for employee flight.  Show your PMs you care about keeping them up to date and are willing to invest, even though virtual training may have to start out on a shoestring budget.

Invest in instructional technology. Upskilling your PMs is a bona fide way to improve project performance. Don’t let your PMs repeat the same mistakes on their projects because there’s nothing going on to advance their careers. Try some of these suggestions:

1. If you have a learning management system, seek out existing courses or catalogues that you can purchase and “push” to your PMs.
2. Consider using virtual reality as a training delivery mechanism. Virtual reality hardware is much more affordable and transportable these days.
3. Leverage features on existing platforms such as chat, virtual labs, screen sharing.
4. Consider using open source software to deliver training remotely. Investment can be minimal and incremental. If you don’t already have one, there’s no need to roll out an upscale, enterprise-wide technology suite. 

Leverage micro learning. Designing and developing a 5 to 7-minute mini tutorial is low effort and high return. PMs can access a relevant lesson on demand that is focused on one topic only, and available though a good search engine. For awareness training (you want the PMs to recall a few key concepts) podcasts are a good way to engage learners. Gather up a decent microphone and user-friendly recording hardware with audio editing software. Install them in a small room with some sound-proofing, add a knowledgeable expert willing to share, and you have a recipe for fast development of PM training. Be creative with the scope and scale of virtual training. 

We’re not recommending you interrupt what your business needs to be doing to weather turbulent times, but GBMC is suggesting that training your PMs virtually can be a modest investment with a good return. You will see benefits in employee retention and satisfaction. Now, more than ever, employees need to know you value their skills and career advancement.

Spring 2021

Emotional Intelligence and Motivation

What do you do when your project managers (PMs) discover the carrot and stick isn’t working? Your employees may be saying, “I don’t want to work with that PM. His/her projects are always so____” (fill in an adjective that indicates poor motivation).

When we hear this at GBMC, we suspect it may be something closely related to EI: your PMs are not in touch with what motivates their team members. Although current research indicates that the ability to motivate others is not specifically part of the EI construct, it is a related leadership skill.

So, here are some tips to help your PMs motivate their teams.

Relate self-motivation to motivating teams. When training PMs on how to motivate others, challenge them to look inside themselves first. The EI construct does include self-motivation. Similar to the notion that you have to lead yourself well before you can lead others, we propose that PMs have to know what motivates themselves, first. When asked, PMs usually come up with a list that resembles what the motivational gurus have been telling us for years. So why the disconnect? Self-awareness seems to be the culprit. Help your PMs reflect inward, and then expose them to the latest thinking in team motivation.

Reward PMs who model self-motivation. Here’s how to spot them. They say and do things that demonstrate they are driven to improve and achieve. They know how to create a compelling vision about the goals of the project and build team commitment. They take the initiative to solve problems and remove road blocks for their team. They exude optimism about their project and their team. When adversity hits, they bounce right back.

Pay attention to extrinsic motivators. Use existing people processes like performance evaluations, professional development planning, or talent reviews to identify and put in place those external factors that support or increase the motivation of your workforce. Ensure your PMs are aware of these processes and external motivators, and make it easy and desirable for PMs to take advantage of them.

Autumn 2020

Leading Virtual Teams

The perils of overdue action items! They eat away at your budget and schedule.

Project managers who follow the good practice of tracking and closing action items may find this difficult to do remotely. It takes more effort and it’s harder to engender team-driven accountability without the peer pressure, normally associated with social interactions. It’s even harder if the PM doesn’t have a method for monitoring and controlling action items.

This month, we continue our exploration of virtual project leadership. Here are some tips for identifying, tracking and closing project action items in a virtual world, assuming PMs already use a tracking system for action items.

Closing action items begins with accountability.  Improve your PM’s leadership skills in the area of accountability. Very often, action items don’t get closed on time due to a lack of accountability in the team, and this can be traced to how the leader behaves. The team should hear and see the leader model accountability for him/herself and others. When leadership takes ownership for an action item, and admits (without blaming others or circumstances) that it didn’t get done, the PM sets an environment where it’s safe to be transparent about missing deadlines and asking for help. The PM needs to be explicit in holding team members accountable. Ask those who are tardy what support or resource is needed to get an action item closed. Give recognition to those who close on time. Set up an early warning system for those who know they may be late, so they can get help early.

Instill a sense of caring. Teach PMs to ask about team members’ well-being, and in particular, about their work/life experience working remotely. Coach them to ask about their plans, problems and aspirations. For some team members, virtual work is less stressful, less costly and provides more autonomy. For others, it may result in opposite outcomes. In the latter case, find out and help with a remedy if you can. Team members who are shown care, tend to work more effectively with and for their PMs. (Lominger, 2010)¹. This can be a boost to closing action items. In most instances, when action items are closed on time—and meet the performance standard—the team is actively involved in project control. Encourage PMs to promote team-based project control through caring.

Teach PMs Effective Virtual Meeting skills.  In the virtual world, planning and conducting meetings can be challenging. Ensure your PMs have the basic skills to plan, facilitate and follow up meetings and provide tutorials or coaching on how to succeed leading online meetings. In virtual meetings, some good practices may need to be exaggerated slightly. For example, have all or part of the meeting standing up, use an online timer (visible to everyone) to monitor the agenda timing, or put a walk around break in the middle of the meeting. Consider having two or three short meetings rather than one long one. Keep the action item status visible and dynamic. Promote innovation in good meeting practices so action items are respected. 

¹ Lominger (2010). For Your Improvement: A Guide for Development and Coaching. Minneapolis: Lominger International: A Korn/Ferry Company.

Spring 2020

The value of training in the midst of a downturn

You probably read the headline of this newsletter and shook your head. GBMC cannot really be recommending an investment in training when the economics for my organization are grim.

Yes. This is an unabashed attempt to convince our readers that investing in your workforce, even in an economic trough, is one of the best ways to prepare your organization for the future. And we always recommend that any investment in your people be aligned with business strategy.

Here are some tips for how to align training with three different strategies for weathering the downturn.

• Reduction in Work Force – In addition to the toll it takes on those who leave, research has demonstrated that it also takes a huge toll on those who stay. Reassure those who remain that the organization has a plan, and their ability to take on additional duties, or switch duties, is being supported by training. This investment signals confidence which, in turn, can improve motivation, which leads to per­­­­form­­­­ance. Show your resources they are valued and worth the investment.

• Change Over in Products or Services – If your strategy is to focus on markets
  that have greater need or potential, you’ll need a capable and willing workforce to execute that strategy. Re-tooling takes care of the operational system, but our experience shows that if the human system is not re-tooled, most change strategies falter. Throwing your workforce “into the deep end” with no floaties is counter­­productive. Communicate and train for change.

• Ride it Out – If your strategy is to hold tight and stay the course, you can still reap benefits from investing in training. Perhaps the downturn means a reduced workload. It’s a perfect time to have your workforce catch up on the training they’ve been putting off. Provide positive incentives, and push some personal and professional development training to their training plans. Deeds, not just words, communicate confidence in the future.

Now comes the harsh reality.

How do we pay for training when the organization’s economics are so poor? Money-saving solutions are readily available:  online, on demand, micro learning, royalty-free training, and so on. We all know the real cost is seat time. How do you fund your workforce on an already stressed overhead?

Autumn 2019

Achieving Measurable Value – Tailored PMO Framework

Leading organizations are adaptive in response to increasing complexity and disruptors in their industry. A tailored PMO Framework can be implemented quickly and with low cost. It drives focus and agility through proactive decision making based on an integrated, consistent, data-driven approach.  GBMC worked with a publicly traded, multinational cloud-computing and software company that needed to undertake a strategically important transformation project.

The Challenge:

The project’s complexity was driven by the high number of international stakeholders involved and the risk to business continuity of the Inside Sales and Tech Support functions. Key stakeholders included valued sales team employees across multiple countries and regions whose work directly impact the company’s bottom line.

Unlike typical technical, IT and finance functions, sales and marketing team culture is often less structured with lower adoption of project management practices. This business transformation project would require a highly diverse, cross-functional matrixed project team coupled with a consistent integrated approach, underlying structure, and common language for measuring and communicating progress.

The Approach – Measure Benefits and Realize Value in a Sustainable Way:

GBMC was engaged to establish a PMO framework for the geographically dispersed, cross-functional project team. The scalable PMO framework approach provided the foundation for streamlining the flow of project critical information, exception-based reporting and progress tracking against deliverables tied to milestones, and a dashboard for multiple levels of key stakeholder reporting.

Project Dashboard: The heart of the effective PMO framework is a dashboard driven by an exception-based reporting approach, with progress tracked against an agreed plan of deliverables and completion dates linked to key project milestones. The dashboard forms a ‘bridge’ between the high-level view of the project work-streams and milestones created as part of the initial project creation process, and the detailed schedule. This high-level view was adapted to include progress updates from the detailed schedule and utilized by the Steering Committee for monitoring overall performance.

The dashboard was used in two ways, for briefing the team, and as further back-up information for the Steering Committee when dealing with exceptions.

The dashboard was designed to provide an integrated view and communicate both overall project “health” and at the work-stream level to:

1. Show progress consistently, using tangible metrics
2. Focus on what matters, in terms of exceptions to plan via Red-Amber-Green indicators
3. Highlight key inter-dependencies, with emphasis on impacting risks, issues, and scope changes
4. Make key decisions and address assumptions

The Impact – Measurable Benefits and Realized Value

The timely execution of strategy via the sales transformation initiative directly impacted organizational performance. The investment made in the PMO framework reduced the complexity risk from the large number of international stakeholders (external and internal) and potential disruption in business continuity ultimately contributing to fewer delays.

Key intangible benefits attributed to the tailored PMO framework included:

1. Increased engagement of the Executive Steering Committee
2. Ongoing alignment with the project business case and evolving business needs
3. Clarified ownership and accountability across stakeholders
4. Clear, proactive communication of project priorities, changes, risk, and actionable feedback from key stakeholders
5. Timely risk identification, mitigation, and resolution through visibility of project risks and interdependencies
6. Effective transfer of knowledge and consistent progress tracking behavior (cadence) across the project team

Key tangible benefits from increased effectiveness (through reduced progress update meeting time and better alignment with jointly accountable stakeholders) included:

1. 4 days per month time saved for Senior Project Manager
2. 2 days per month time saved for Work-stream Managers
3. The PMO Framework was implemented into the business practices well ahead of schedule, at 40% less cost than the forecasted budget

Conclusion

The tailored PMO Framework was implemented within two months, had a low administrative burden, and drove focus on what is important. Project execution became more effective by shifting from reactive to proactive behavior and applying an integrated, consistent, data-driven approach.

This timely, actionable information for proactive decision making by the Executive Steering Committee, the Project Manager, and the team ensured alignment with business needs, reduced risks and increased benefits realized.