The Vargas Group

During the holiday season it seems many hearts soften and we experience “kinder, gentler” attitudes in our surroundings. Even in the workplace our attention is divided between what we need to do to stay on top of our projects while trying to juggle parties, children’s programs, shopping and preparations. We’re all, more or less, in the same boat and that commonality tends to bring about more collaborative attitudes. It’s nice. It feels good to work together instead of against one another. So let’s keep it up! Here are 3 tips to continue this pattern into the New Year:

1. Assume the best. Give those you work with the benefit of the doubt. Rather than attributing their behavior to a desire to sabotage you, make your job harder or sink your battleship, assume they meant no harm. We all can be myopic and thoughtless. Maybe they were simply clueless.

2. Slow down. Before you jump to conclusions, send that email or loudly object in a meeting, give it a second thought.  Maybe you really don’t know everything – it’s possible others have more information than you do.

3. Collaborate. No one has to lose so you can win. We shouldn’t be in competition with those we work side by side with. Ask for input, share your ideas or questions, don’t be afraid to ask for help and guidance. It’s much easier when you’re not trying to save the world all by yourself. (Not to mention the world will be a safer place!)

Three simple tips – few enough to write on the palm of your hand to help you remember. Assume the best, slow down and collaborate. I think we might be on to something here….

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Work Year to all!

“A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”  John Burroughs

I recently returned from a conference where I was able to both present and attend sessions – the best kind of speaking gig! As a student I was challenged to examine old ways of thinking and I trust I had the same effect on those who attended my session. Interestingly enough, I found that in each session, and in conversations with other attendees later on, I kept coming back to a central theme, the theme of Accountability.

Now, I personally feel that accountability has gotten a bad rap over the years. Accountability is not synonymous with blame. Blame is an outward action – how can I best deflect this to be sure it doesn’t spill over on me? Accountability is just the opposite – an inward focus. Accountability asks, what actions can I take to improve this situation? It means that we hold something in such high regard that we will give our very best to ensure success.

I recently read that our Western culture is the only one that blames, rather than honors, our ancestors. It has become the easy way out to blame our parents, who either ignored us or coddled us, pushed us or held us back, set bad examples, abandoned or over-protected us. While I think it is wise to examine our parent’s behavior – or anyone else who may have had an impact on our personal development – it should not be used as a way to avoid taking responsibility for our own lives, for holding ourselves accountable.

I am sure that you have met the individual who is forever stuck in the victim cycle, recounting in vivid detail the evils done to them, the litany of misdeeds, the reasons why they are unable to live the life they were meant to live. Not a very attractive picture is it? Sadly, they have handed over control of their life to the person or persons who perpetrated this great injustice on them. Did you hear me?  They have handed over control of their life. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “No one can make you a victim without your permission.“

Accountability challenges us to hold our lives in such high regard that we will not hand over that control to another. This is not to say that our hurts are not real, that injuries were not unjust, that sometimes outcomes were just not fair. But we can take steps to be sure that we do not give away our power to heal and to rise above our circumstances and live that life we were meant to live.

Imagine a world where every individual took personal responsibility for themselves and for their actions. Instead of looking for ways to deflect – an outward action – we constantly looked inward to see how we could improve the situation. I picture a kinder world – one where we could pull together instead of splitting apart!

“Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to the right people … worse, it can drive away the right people.” – Jim Collins

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what it means to manage the stakeholders on our projects. Of course it means to understand what their needs and expectations are. It means we must determine how to communicate effectively based on their style preferences. This is nothing new – all good managers should practice this already.

I will be presenting a workshop on Stakeholder Management for the PMI San Diego Conference in May so this topic has been on my mind. And I’ve come to realize that there is an important component of serving the needs of our stakeholders that may be overlooked: managing the performance of team members.

Managers should look out for their employees; they should fight for appropriate compensation, remove barriers, provide tools and resources and ensure their teams are recognized for the good work they produce. But what about those who are not producing? Good stakeholder management seems to indicate that we, as leaders, are responsible for providing the best resources possible and making adjustments where necessary. It’s great to manage top performers and lead a project where everyone is going the extra mile and is fully committed to achieving the goal. We love leading those teams! It isn’t so much fun when we have team members who aren’t pulling their weight and are turning in sub-par work and, if we do nothing to correct this behavior, we are not serving our stakeholders.

It is just as important to address poor performers as it is to ensure recognition for top performers. Project and people managers owe it to the collective stakeholder community to identify issues and address them quickly. We do a disservice to the other team members when we tolerate mediocre work. We are shortchanging our customers when we retain low-quality producers. And we are not serving the good of the organization overall when we shuffle resources around to accommodate those who just aren’t cutting it and have no desire to improve.

Managing our Stakeholders – serving our Stakeholders – means doing the right things and the hard things.

Depending on what you read, we are either deep in the recession, on our way out of the recession or, my personal favorite, the recession ended last October. It’s true that some statistics would indicate that jobless rates are dropping and companies are hiring again – that’s little consolation to those who are still out of work and simply fell off the unemployment rolls. It also doesn’t count those who are still employed and hating every minute of it but fear a job change at this time. Those are the folks I believe managers should be worrying about.

During economic trials, companies do all they can to stay in business – understandable. If they were strategic about it, they considered all manner of waste and redundancy before ultimately looking at labor costs and downsizing. If they were truly forward thinking, they put methods in place to measure job satisfaction, stress, and employee effectiveness once the workforce was reduced. Because – as we all know – downsizing simply means “do more with less.” Projects seldom get cancelled, work doesn’t go away. We can reframe, reposition, and repurpose all we want but, ultimately, that’s what it means.

It’s in everyone’s best interest for the company to remain viable and to achieve its’ financial goals. So performance management is more important than ever with little room for error. And that includes employee retention – how committed are your remaining employees to the future of your organization? Are they bitter about a reduction in pay? About eliminated benefits? How about having to do the work of two people? Are your project deadlines and scope reasonable with a reduced workforce? Do you know? If you don’t, an economic turnaround could initiate unexpected attrition.

There’s an old saying, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” We may have convinced our team members they had no choice but to ride the storm out with us. That doesn’t mean they like it – and it certainly doesn’t mean they feel obligated to stay once the storm passes. Now would be a good time to do a pulse check – take a survey – and be prepared to deal with what comes back. (Caveat – if you have no intentions of making any adjustments based on the feedback, don’t bother.  Just start lining up recruiters.)

Its 2011 – are you sure you know where your employees are?

I’ve always known I’m somewhat of a control freak. I like to think I’ve mellowed with age but there are still some areas where I am definitely less flexible than others. During a recent business trip, my connecting flight was delayed due to a small storm (tornadoes, winds, etc – San Diego girls don’t know what this means…) I was relatively calm and accepting until day two when I was still wearing the same clothes and same makeup and the airline was less than communicative. I learned very fast how much I hate to be out of control.

Every negative situation has to provide a life lesson, otherwise, what is the point? Some of what I learned during this experience reinforced what I learned during the San Diego wildfires of 2007:

1) loss is all relative

2) people are generous in their willingness to help

In addition to these life lessons, you also learn how to prioritize very quickly. During the time I was without my suitcase we were to attend a retirement luncheon in honor of the organization’s CEO. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to pay respects to a woman I greatly admire – but in my jeans? And without my flat iron? Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t dream of it. But miss it because I wasn’t dressed appropriately? Unthinkable! And at the end of the day, what difference did it make? No one criticized me – we had a great time and the focus remained where it should have – on our Woman of the Hour.

I wasn’t the only person who was in this predicament and in the days it took for the airline to unravel the problem we shared clothes, toiletries, shoes and pajamas. We made accommodations for one another so we could still accomplish what we were there to do, and carried on. No one was injured (other than our pride) and we all eventually got our luggage, although much of it damaged and contents ruined. (That will be for another column regarding customer service!)

So while my profession requires that I maintain control over schedules, budgets and deliverables, there is great freedom in learning three things: what I can control and should, what I can control and shouldn’t, and what I can’t control so just deal with it. Look for the lesson to be learned so the experience isn’t a total waste of time, ride it out and wait for the next opportunity to learn a new lesson. Don’t worry, it won’t be long. In fact, I just heard over the airport loud speaker my flight is delayed.

“Try not to become a success, but rather try to become a man of value.” Albert Einstein

In my management development program, “The New Management Reality,” I lead participants through a simple exercise. I ask them to name:

• The highest paid CEO’s of the past 3 years
• The winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature over the past 3 years
• The last 3 winners of the The Academy Award for Best Actor 

No one has ever gotten them all right. In fact, they can seldom name even one in each category and, if they do, they get the year wrong! Few of us can remember yesterday’s famous (or infamous!) people past their 15 minutes of fame. What was reported on all the news channels and featured in full-color entertainment magazines quickly becomes yesterday’s news.

The second part of the exercise is to create a different list altogether. I ask them to name:

• 3 teachers who had a positive impact during your school years
• 3 people who have been there for you during difficult times
• 3 people who make you feel valued, loved and appreciated

Ah, this is a much easier task; one we all have a wealth of experience and knowledge to draw from. The reason is very simple: the people who have the most profound and lasting impact in our lives are rarely the ones with the most money, the biggest names or the largest entourage. Instead they are those who saw something of value in us and made it their responsibility to bring it to fruition.

Great leaders have the ability to bring out the best in the people around them. They know that no one succeeds alone, that the journey, task or project is greatly enhanced with collaboration and mutual benefit. Rather than settling for infamy, they count the cost of the quick win or a sullied reputation and consider that cost too high. The greatest leaders are those who both provide value to and derive value from those they serve.

“Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have—and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving that up.” James Belasco and Ralph Stayer, Flight of the Buffalo (1994)

There is a difference between change and transition. And some companies begin with one and never make it to the other.

Change involves disruption and often frustration, confusion and anger. Transition is an internal human process – a gradual reorientation to the change. The goal is to not get stuck in the world of change but to move into transition where the real work can begin.

However, that is optional!

Author Steven Denning has a new book coming out in fall of 2010, titled: The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Re-inventing the Workplace for the 21st Century.  I can’t wait. I got a hold of some pre-release notes where he discusses why it is so hard to make organizational change stick. Personally, I think the primary cause for the failure of change initiatives is a lack of commitment on the part of management. Organizational change is difficult and often the challenges are more than they anticipated. When bad behavior erupts or the process just seems to take too long, I’ve seen managers or sponsors be the first to lead the charge back to the status quo.

Decisions, decisions ...

Change management experts caution against that lack of commitment. When an initiative is launched, move quickly, swiftly and decisively. As Denning puts it, “Once organizational change takes off, it will happen rapidly. The process is viral in nature. The idea is a virus that is either growing and spreading and propagating itself; or dying and de-energizing people and spawning new constraints.”    

What appropriate symbolism. Organizational Change that is well planned and actively managed leads to a workplace transition that is truly viral in nature. It’s energizing, even to those who may not have agreed in the beginning. There is nothing worse than launching a change initiative and then losing your nerve – but continue to slog through it year after year, inflicting pain and suffering on everyone involved. Well, maybe there is something worse – to abandon it altogether and then launch the “flavor of the month” change initiative a year or so later.

Moving from change to that place of transition, where those involved in the process evolve from observers to active participants, is the sign of success – the sign that the change has taken hold and will spread to other parts of the organization.

Make a plan, make the commitment and move!

Welcome to my blog. I know, I know, why in the world would anyone want to read yet another blog …. well, here’s why. I’m a gud riter. No seriously, I’ll not inundate you with a daily update of my comings and goings. At best, I’ll write once a month – maybe every few weeks. And my topics are usually centered around the workplace – what’s working, what isn’t, and what we can reasonably do about it.

Here’s what’s on my mind today. I heard an essay on NPR last week during the “This I Believe” segment. It was titled “Work is a Blessing” and the writer was talking about the lessons he learned from his father and grandfather about the virtues of hard work and self-support. I found it very inspiring and so in line with my own thinking.

As I continue to pour though the stimulus package (http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/PressSummary01-15-09.pdf) I find myself becoming more concerned. You see, I truly believe that people are better than we give them credit for. I don’t think most Americans need a bailout plan. I don’t believe the government needs to take care of me. I believe that, left to our own devices, we are brilliant – talented, hard-working, able to address serious issues and hardships. Somewhere along the way, the government has become too interested in MY business.

What does this have to do with business? If you can’t run your business like you would if the money was coming directly out of your pocket – then step aside and let those more responsible than you have a hand at it. You simply cannot spend more than you make. (Hmmm… that goes for the government, too.) Didn’t we learn this as kids? Or, at least, that first hard lesson as young adults when you realized credit had to be paid back????

We are better than this. But with a “stimulus” bailout like this, we’ll not find out anytime soon.

Today’s rant has come to an end. The next one will be more focused, I promise.