planning, selling, engaging: gaining buy-in from ideation to delivery
TRANSCRIPT
Planning, Selling, Engaging Gaining Buy-In from Ideation to Delivery
Jerry Manas, PMP
Why Are We Here?
Typical PMO Mission Statement:“To promote best practice standards and methodologies and foster effective project management practices to consistently deliver projects that are on time, on budget, and within scope.”
“Our mission is to continue to efficiently facilitate diverse methods of empowerment and professionally disseminate performance based deliverables to meet our customer’s needs.”
“We need 100% compliance with the new methodology/system we’re
rolling out”
Shut up, I’m having a rhetorical conversation!
• Mandated values / policies / mission statements do not drive behavior
• The more they’re created in a vacuum, the more they will be ignored
Rule #1: Don’t Kid Yourself
How Do You Talk THEIR Language?
How do You Win them Over?
How Do You Become a Trusted Advisor?
Ask these questions: What are we trying to achieve? For whom? When? In what order? What’s the benefit? Why should anyone care?
These answers will help form the communication plan.
Let’s Try This Again: Why Are We Here?
The PlanningStrategies for SuccessGet your initiative off on the right foot
The Message Getting the Point Across…in a way that grabs their attention and interest
The PeopleDriving EngagementGet/Keep People InvolvedRemove Barriers that Cause Resistance
A Structured Approach
The Planning
STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESSGet your initiative off on the right foot
The Planning
The Planning
• Planning for Success• Selling the Message• Engaging the People
Getting Started on the Right Foot
The Planning
Focus on the Problem
The Planning
Typical Executive Expectation“Maximize value from IT investment”
Are we working on the right projects?
Are we making the best use of our resources?
Are we investing wisely in our assets and services?
Are we targeting and tracking benefits?
Are we aware of the impact of project delays on business outcomes?
Are we enabling innovation?
Are we executing our plans quickly? What’s our project throughput?
The Planning
Get the Goals Right
The Planning
• One major goal or theme at a time
• Select only a few metrics and targets
• A singular call to action
Be Narrow Minded
The Planning
What is the Rallying Cry …that defines the next three to six months of focus?
The Planning
VisibilityGovernance
PlanningResource Optimization
…a Roadmap is OK
Alignment
The Planning
Toyota’s “Genchi Genbutsu” approach:
“Go and see for yourself.”
Be an Anthropologist
The Planning
Broaden your View
The Planning
“Look for the risks and drawbacks in what people recommend -- even the best medicine has side effects.” “Avoid basing decisions on untested but strongly held beliefs, what you have done in the past, or on uncritical ‘benchmarking’ of what winners do.”~ Jeff Pfeffer and Bob Sutton
Practice Evidence-based Management
The Planning
• Look for opportunities
• What do they want?
• What do they need?
• Can you create a better way of doing something?
• Can you address a pain point people don’t know they have? “If I asked my customers what they
wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” ~Henry Ford
Explore the Possible
Be an Explorer
The Planning
Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.- Etienne Wenger
Be a Community Builder
The Planning
• Anticipate resistance• Develop strategies to address them• Consider the impact and the influence
IMPA
CT
INFLUENCE
Make targeted visits
Assess concerns &
needs
Assess impact
General communication
Scout the Landscape
“Electronic communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.” ~Charles Dickens
The Planning
Use a small set of priorities to unify people towards a common cause and guide their activities when tradeoff decisions are needed.
The low-cost airline
1. Employee culture2. Customer3. Efficiency
1. Safety2. Courtesy3. Show4. Efficiency
Provide a Compass
The Planning
Throw a Process Party
The Planning
• Provide global change drivers and themes• Consider local/regional nuances• Leverage domain experts• Share good ideas across domains
“A rising tide raises all ships.”
Think Glocal
The Planning
Choose Your Leaders Wisely
The Planning
• Empathize• Sell• Delegate• Influence• Present• Facilitate• Negotiate• Coach• Solve problems• Inspire
Good Leaders…
The Planning
• Visionaries and aficionados who will make sure the job gets done right.
• Interested business members; Passionate team members; etc.
• Don’t be afraid of heroes: Most major accomplishments are driven by a single catalyst or small groups.
Find Champions
The Planning
There is no “I” in team, but there is in “Win.” Michael Jordan
(to coach Phil Jackson)
Find Champions
The Planning
• Aim for quick wins to build confidence
• Start with a small group and limited scope
Napoleon said he’d rather have part of a canal completed every year than have to wait 10 years for a grand canal.
Take Baby Steps
The Planning
The “why” The goal Singular focus Priorities Stakeholder needs The user experience (“close-up” view) Local and regional input Leaders and champions
The Planning: RecapSuccess Strategies developed
The MessageGetting The Point Across …in a way that grabs their attention & interest
Success strategies developed
Communicate your message
“What we have here is a failure to communicate.” ~Cool Hand Luke
The Planning
• Keep asking “why” until you get to the root of the problem
• Once people understand the why, they’ll more easily embrace the how
Articulate the Problem
The Planning
“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” ~ Hans Hoffman
Simplify Your Message
The Message
• Focus on one key message with two or three supporting points.
• “Saying many things usually communicates nothing.”-Harry Beckwith,Selling the Invisible
Simplify Your Message
The Message
“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”- General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army
Pose the Alternative
The Message
They CAN handle the truth!
Ref: A Few Good Men
Be Transparent
The Message
• Some changes bring organizational efficiencies but not necessarily individual efficiencies.
• Get resistance and concerns out in the open; address them publicly.
• Superficial or deceptive messages breed resistance.
Be Transparent
The Message
Ask Them to Help
The Message
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Find a Way to Make them Care
The Message
Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Story
Make your Message Stick
The Message
Ref: Edward Tufte: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
The Challenger Disaster – Pre-launch Presentation
Make it Clear
The Message
Ref: Edward Tufte: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
A Better Way to Present (Edward Tufte)
Make it Clear
The Message
Good data presentation, per Tufte:
• Encourages comparative analysis• Shows clear causality• Explains with annotations• Avoids unnecessary noise• Avoids distortions
Make it Clear
The Message
Unexpected Messages Stand Out
Say Something Different
The Message
• Reinforce in different ways
• Use different media• Repeat, repeat,
repeat
Say it Often
The Message
Avoid abstract concepts andfocus on concrete examples.
Instead of this Say this“That won’t work.” “How can we solve the issue?”
“They’re just being difficult.” “How can we best address their concerns?”
Watch your language…here comes a MONKFISH.
Watch Your LanguageReplace negative language with constructive language.
The Message
Culture Gap: IT & The Business
Watch Your Language
The Message
• Demystify IT – through one-on-ones, lunch and learns, and regular touch-base meetings
• Speak in business language, not acronyms or system-talk• Focus on benefits as opposed to solutions; make this clear in all goal statements• Create a business relationship/analyst role, and have them sit in the business as
opposed to IT• Pair project managers with a subject matter expert to bridge the communication
gaps• Simplify processes (one CFO spoke of a complex registration process that was
reduced to a simple YouTube video)
Integrating IT and the Business: Advice from CFOs*
* Source: CFO/CIO Straight Talk summit at the Harvard Club, NYC, Nov 2009
Watch Your Language
The Message
• The “why”
• Simple, Concrete, & Different
• Transparent: Needs & Benefits
• A Call for Help
• Emotional stories
• Annotated charts that show causality
• Multi-media
The Message: Recap
Success strategies developed
Message communicated
Get/keep them involved
The PeopleDriving Engagement
The Message
“By involving people in the standardization of work, we can remove some of the oppressiveness of it. People are less likely to balk at standards they have devised.”- Peter Scholtes
Don’t Dictate, Co-Create
The People
“Getting to the next level of greatness depends on the quality of the culture, which depends on the quality of relationships, which depends on the qualityof the conversations…
Everything happens through conversation!”
- Judith E. Glaser
Conversational Intelligence™
Don’t Dictate, Co-Create
The People
InformLevel I
PersuadeLevel II
Co-CreateLevel II
TransactionalExchange Information
PositionalExchange Power
TransformationalExchange Energy
Confirmwhat you know
Defend what you believe
Explore what you don’t know
Conversational Intelligence ™
Seek… Give and TakeSeek… Win-Win
Seek… Innovation
Benchmark Communications, Inc./The Creating WE Institute© 2013. All Rights Reserved.
The People
So what do YOU think we should have for dinner?
Don’t Dictate, Co-Create
The People
T.R.U.S.T. ModelT Transparency
(Make threats transparent)
R Relationships(Build mutual respect)
U Understanding(Step into each other’s worlds)
S Shared Success(Experiment and build trust)
T Truth-telling(Speak candidly and co-create)
TR
U S T
EXPECTATIONGAPS
Benchmark Communications, Inc./The Creating WE Institute© 2013. All Rights Reserved.
Don’t Dictate, Co-Create
The People
Choose Your BattlesStandardize Selectively:
Don’t try to take on the world.
The People
• Those who set the norms are rarely senior leadership• In The Big Picture, it was the senior students who brought
about thedesired culture change.
• Who sets the norm? Try tosolicit their help.
Influence the Influencers
The People
• More focused & accountable than individuals or large teams
• Ideal size: 5-9
• Even: allowspartnering
• Odd: eliminates ties
Aim for Small Teams
The People
Pull, Don’t Push: Lead by Example
“A piece of spaghetti or a military unit can only be led from the front end.”~ George S. Patton
The People
• Don’t wait for perfection• Use the output ASAP: Total immersion• Burn the ships
Just Do It!
The People
Institute Checklists• Reduces approval steps• Reinforces the basics• Improves handoffs• Fosters accountability
The People
The Power of Checklists
In just 18 months, a simple 5-step checklist at Johns Hopkins saved 1,500 lives and nearly $200 million.
The People
WHO Pilot Program; 8 hospitals› Major complications down 36%› Deaths down 47%› Infections down ~50%› Patients returning to operating room down ~25%
The Power of Checklists
The People
Do Nothing Useless
• Excessive approvals • Redundant processes• Bad handoffs• Rework due to bad input or
processes• Wasteful forms• Unused data• Lengthy documents• Useless meetings
There’s nothing people hate worse than wasting their time
The People
• Shape behavior, don’t grade it (beware of audits)
• “Nobody ever grew taller by being measured.”~Professor Philip Grammage
• Some need more coaching than others
Be a Coach, Not an Umpire
The People
• Is middle management on board?• Are they acting in line with your desired culture?
Watch for Jell-O
The People
Align People with Their Strengths
“Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.”- Robert Heinlein
The People
• Retention of top employees is vital• Offer incentives and recognition• Do they like their direct supervisor?
Re-Recruit Good People
“An ‘ability to smell fear’ is a quality I’ve never seen listed on a resume before.”
The People
• Identity instills pride• Consider branding your initiative• Make people feel “part of the club”
Brand It
The People
“A soldier will fight long and
hard for a bit of
colored ribbon.”~ Napoleon
Build a WallA wall of success or other public
forum to recognize successes
The People
• Discover what barriers prevent people from collaborating effectively› Inadequate tools, poor working space, policies that
disrupt progress, lack of training, culture gaps, etc.• Remove said barriers!
Tear Down a Wall
The People
• Test the change on a small scale• Don’t be the ship’s captain who’s veering off course but is expecting
the lighthouse to move.
“The Pessimist complains about the wind.The Optimist expects it to change.The Leader adjusts the sails.”~ John Maxwell
Don’t be Afraid to Change Course
The People
Get/Keep them Involved• Collaborative standardization (Co-Creation)• Influencers – one on one• Small teams• Middle Management• Use the data!!!• Process walk-through• Checklists• Branding• Recognition• Training, Support, & Tools
The People: Recap
1. FOCUS: Focus on the problem and a few supporting goals
2. BABY STEPS: Avoid doing everything at once; aim for incremental steps.
3. CHAMPIONS: Pay attention to: Influencers, Domain Experts, & Core Team Leaders
4. SIMPLICITY: Keep messages simple, clear, and focused on the “Why”
5. WHO BENEFITS?: Ask for help and be transparent about who benefits
6. STICKY MESSAGES: Say something different and say it often
7. ENGAGEMENT: Co-Create; don’t dictate
8. THINK LEAN: Eliminate waste: Nobody likes wasting their time
9. DIVE IN!!!: Lead by example and just do it!
9 Key Takeaways
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
~ George Bernard Shaw
