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?

“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.