Be objective

"Begin with the end in mind."

Stephen Covey’s brilliant advice in The 7-Habits of Highly Effective People, (1990), Simon & Schuster, New York, sounds as if it were written for project managers. After reading the book, I assume it wasn’t - it was instead developed for all of us and invokes a quality that delivery oriented individuals may naturally have or practise.

I follow Covey’s guidance every day. That…won’t surprise you but perhaps some of the scenarios and ways in which I deploy it may.

1. Business outcomes

Projects are, of course, inherently objective activities: they have a beginning and an end - and a specific purpose. Many SMEs who join programs or projects from their BAU roles notice this and then gravitate towards this style of work in future for this reason. Sure: serving the customer is the ultimate “end” but pursuing a finite scope of activities within a defined timeline can also motivate, plus be uniquely energising.

In this environment, delivering business outcomes - mostly new or improved - is the ambition that gets you out of bed in the morning: your mission. That said, no matter how noble, they don’t “just happen” and you will encounter many challenges along the way. So, remembering why you are doing it is also critical.

Covey’s context was the catalyst. In the project world, this implies getting your scope right up-front and setting delivery up for success with a credible plan. I’ve written here before about what your scope is and isn’t - and both dimensions are important. But my chief counsel is to keep your scope tight to the business outcomes to be effected. And don’t forget to also manage the change well.

When setting your scope at the outset, the business outcome clearly feels like the principal consideration - but that can become dimmed along the journey. Months down the track, and with delivery challenges (particularly competing priorities) emerging, I’ll often say, “Team, let’s step back: what are we trying to achieve here and why?”. So: “beginning with the end in mind” is also your re-calibration tool. This helps you work out what to say “yes” and “no” too along the way - and if you’ve started with a tight scope, the biggest challenge is often simply keeping it that way.

2. Sprint outcomes

Building on the previous theme, let’s now pivot to more tactical use of the guidance over progressively shorter examples.

Assuming sprint cycle lengths of about 2-weeks (which I don’t think is too “old school” - yet! - though I can see them moving down to a day, or even intra-day. You read it here first folks.), each begins with a clear aim of what you are trying to solve for, develop and deliver. One feature of sprints that I’ve always liked is the delivery of “working software” (in the technology world) - you are striving for something that can be tested in real-life use and then further iterated.

But the risk is that progressive business owner and stakeholder feedback slowly takes you off course from the original objective. Your friend here is short-interval check-ins - the daily stand-up meetings - to assimilate user feedback but stay resolutely on track. To me, there is something insightful in this protocol. How do you get fit, or not…? Answer: One day at a time.

If you’re going to run fast - “sprint” - then you must know where you are going. But, once you do, you’ll get there faster and with more surety.

3. Meeting outcomes

Speaking of things you do every day, what about meetings?

Much ink has been spilled on the topic of meeting effectiveness - and particularly ineffectiveness! “Another useless meeting”, “too many meetings” - these are each savagely destructive refrains. They disempower the convenor and the participants.

Meetings need to be led (by you), but also be participative: let the business owners speak. Actions and outcomes need to be captured and made available in an accessible, timely and persistent way - today’s tooling lets you do that increasingly easily. And meetings need to finish on time - I intentionally call out the time remaining in a meeting to evoke the end and effect a consequent transition to the next topic. Pick your moments and don’t over-do it - but try it for yourself.

But all these techniques will fail if you have not set the meeting up for success from the beginning. Meetings need to be purposeful and objective, otherwise they are just chats. Know why you are meeting: to achieve <x> outcomes, collaboratively, with the intention of then doing <y>. Get key participant subscription to it before issuing the invite, then, set an enabling agenda and try to conform to it.

4. Problem solving

Now we’re getting to a situational context. A reminder that I wrote a whole chapter on this topic:

I believe we’re all problem solvers.

Bringing about fundamental and lasting business change is not straightforward or easy: if it were, my clients wouldn’t need me. Even the best-conceived projects will encounter problems in delivery: something will take longer, cost more, not work as expected, trigger a risk to becoming an issue - or not meet with executive or governance approval. Something else you are dependent on will change or fail. And someone senior will want to do more - and / or do it sooner.

But problems nicely force objective thinking! Recall your days camping as a kid: there is a river in-front of us, our destination is on the other side - how do we cross it? That kind of highly situational thinking can help you when problems arise in business too.

In project life, I often find that problems have two sequential “ends”:

1. Making the pain go away.

2. Solving the problem.

Bad news doesn’t age well. Whilst you need to be careful not to see everything as a problem or to over-react (a sure way to lose credibility), once you recognise a problem: take ownership of it. Acknowledgement is the first step and this makes the immediate pain - noise in the system - go away: it gives you some breathing room to act and often also a kernel of goodwill to succeed.

And then there is actually solving it. This is the right people thinking about the problem objectively. The best answers result in benefits for all - but sometimes there are only hard answers: winners and losers, a significant compromise, a broken commitment. Accordingly, being honest with where you find yourself as you meet the problem - and the outcome you are left with - is critical. This is often not the time for spin, but for sober declaration.

5. The why

Let’s zoom out again and finish on a fresh note.

Assuming they have the authority to do so, anyone can tell you what to do - but it’s the ones who can also persuade you of why who you’re likely to respect and well as listen to.

“Why”empowers others to make their own, objective decisions out in the field - well after your original direction to them has faded in their collective conscious. If people uniformly know why they are doing something then they can make good decisions about how to continue to do it - particularly when the inevitable cross-winds start to come into play.

Explaining who benefits, how and when can be another motivator. One of the big, sustained business trends of the last ten years or so has been customer alignment. In this world of instant, democratised information and low-friction choices, we must put our customers first. So, explain how the customer wins.

These are ends worth beginning with.

APW.