Am I Ready to Manage? Lessons from Risk Management

One of the people I was mentoring mentioned to me that there is a possible promotion with the expectation of managing people. Having been a project manager for some time, the person asked me if the person is ready to manage people. I have always felt that "P" in "Project" is all about managing "People" (Rajagopalan, 2015). So, naturally I felt that this person had the capabilities, skills, and competencies. The larger question is not being ready but being good enough to manage people. There are things about managing people's performance and having responsibility for their career, some of which can be known. Then, there are areas about equal employment opportunity, diversity and harassment considerations, and many other human resources related concepts. The lack of knowledge about unknowns morphs the question of being ready. 

I reasoned with the concepts of risk management discipline that this person was confident about. In my mind, Risk Management is about using change management principles to balance chaos and control. The risk management discipline promotes the notion of risks that we know about and the risks that we know about their impact on objectives. Consequently, extending the risks that we don't know, or we don't know the impact of, we come up with four categories of known-known, known Unknown, Unknown-Known, and Unknown-Unknown. 

I view the unknown-unknown as a category of risks that belong to chaos. Due to the unpredictable nature and the unknown impact on our objectives, we need to be diligent. Regardless of how diligent we are, we can never be prepared enough. So, this is where we connect with probing for what happened, analyze what we could have done, and we can sense them better in the future. As you can see, the more we do this type of probe-analyze-sense, the more we are becoming of the impact and so moving them towards the right to establish chaotic control.  So, when such similar risks hover on the horizon, we can now probe but our prior knowledge helps to categorize (risk breakdown structure) and sense the preemptive treatments. So, although it is somewhat chaotic, we are establishing some level of chaotic control. 

On the other hand, if we can study the chaos and understand its root cause, we know more about its existence but require more understanding of these risks manifest. These types of risks are then becoming controlled chaos requiring us to sense-analyze and then categorize. The more we analyze both these chaotic control and controlled chaos, the more we are controlling the influence (both their likelihood and impact) of risks on the project objectives. I am sure some of you can relate to the similarities of categorizing projects like the Fog (Unknown-Unknown), Quest (Known-Unknown), Movie (Unknown-Known) and Paint by Numbers (Known-Known) (Rajagopalan, 2018) based on risk management discipline. These concepts are illustrated below.

Dr. Sriram Rajagopalan's synthesis of Emotional Intelligence Concepts with Risk Management

So, how does this risk management discipline help with our questions of assessing if we are ready to manage or lead? The important thing in managing people is to illustrate to ourselves that we are good leaders. This means that we use ourselves as the instrument of emulating the behaviors we want in the people we manage. That thought borrows from emotional intelligence by first becoming consciously aware of us (self-awareness is rooted in known-known) and then engaging in self-management (known-unknown). Consequently, we move on to Unknown-Unknows (social skills) and work with people instilling trust to get them to known-known (relationship). 

I recall an excellent article by Hill & Lineback (2011) guiding us in this space. They recommend that we ask ourselves questions relating to how we manage ourselves, how we manage the network, and how we manage our team (Hill & Lineback, 2011). The list of questions they promote in this area are as follows:

Manage Oneself [Known-Known]

1. Do you use your formal authority effectively?
2. Do you create thoughtful but not overly personal relationships?
3. Do others trust you as a manager?
4. Do you exercise your influence ethically?

Manage Network [Unknown-Known]

1. Do you systematically identify those who should be in your network?
2. Do you proactively build and maintain your network?
3. Do you use your network to provide the protection and resources your team needs?
4. Do you use your network to accomplish your team's goals?

Manage Team [Known-Unknown]

1. Do you define and constantly refine your team's visions for the future?
2. Do you clarify roles, work rules, team culture, and feedback about performance for your team?
3. Do you know and manage your people as individuals as well as team members?
4. Do you use your daily activities and problems to pursue the three imperatives?

All these questions are exactly from Hill & Lineback (2011). As you engage in this experiment, you are consciously using your network and team to elevate unknown-unknown (blind spots). So, instead of being complacent that you know everything or sometimes even overdoing the strengths, you use humility and trust to let your team. I recall Barbara Trautlein's change intelligence concepts here as she asked people to ask themselves the following four questions:

1. What is your primary change leadership style - Using Hearts (People), Head (Purpose), or Hands (Process)?
2. What are the strengths of your style as a change leader?
3. How do you sometimes overdo your strengths making you less effective as a change leader?
4. What are the blind spots of your styles making you miss or neglect elements as a change leader? 

The more we become complacent or comfortable as a manager without continuous improvement on ourselves, the more we turn our strengths into weaknesses. As the recommended strategy is to always lead with your strengths, the less you sharpen your skills as Stephen Covey (1987) says, the more you are not ready. As my Chief Operating Officer once told, a good manager lets the team manage the manager. When we rate each of these questions on a scale of 1-5 and get 3 or more in each question, we are just ready. If any section is <=12, then, we must evaluate improvement opportunities. Check with a better mentor or coach and a good manager will sometimes find them in their own people they manage! 

References

Covey, S. (1987). The 7 habits of highly effective people. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Kent, L.A. & Lineback, K. (2011). Are you a good boss - or a great one? Harvard Business Review, January-February, 3-8.

Rajagopalan, S. (2015). Project is a verb in Project Management. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2015/10/project-is-verb-in-project-management.html

Rajagopalan, S. (2018). Organized Common Sense. Outskirts Press.

Trautlein, B. (2016). Communicating Change: Tell your story (Handout). Distributed in the PMI MassBay Professional Development Day 2016.

Self-Promotion: How to blow your horn correctly?

I was following up with a few people that I had attended my 2-day corporate training workshop on Agile Project Management with Scrum. A discussion came up regarding writing personal self-reflection for annual performance and how that is aligned with Scrum. I view Scrum as an opportunity for the team to ask powerful questions. So, I felt like the team resonated reasonably in asking whether the performance review process fitted within a Scrum process.

However, Scrum is also a collection of cross-functional teams with a working agreement experimenting with value creation and delivery. Such a focused value creation also means there are other organizational commitments like capacity planning, transition planning, and succession planning based on sensing the external and market conditions, legal and regulatory compliance, etc. Within the Human Resources and Employment considerations, several confidentiality requirements exist that are not part of the transparency consideration of Scrum. So, performance assessment for individuals' career growth based on the personal development plan is required and doesn't fit within the Scrum (or Agile, Project Management) considerations. 

The discussion followed further into guidelines on self-promotion in the performance review. Now, based on my experience managing the PMO, I gave some suggestions as follows. 

Any self-promotion should be objective and not be blowing the horn so much that it emphasizes no opportunity for continuous improvement. In fact, the more modest one is in stating the facts, the better the others will blow your horn! I feel that self-promotion should focus on perspective thoughts, purposeful actions, projection of behaviors that can be emulated, and the poise one takes on maintaining emotional connections. 

1. For instance, the thoughts should not only focus on short term deliverable orientation but also long-term scalability. So, talking about how the definition of done was adhered to alone is not sufficient. Instead, the types of documentation created, training promoted, operational excellence addressed, risks treated, and technical debt minimized are all examples of bringing industry practices. Everyone can start thinking in terms of the functions adjacent to their roles and responsibilities and see how they are better off because of their work. 
2. Now, this perspective can also focus on motives that connect with the larger organizational goals. For instance, connecting with upstream value stream activities and evaluate how multiple departments outside of our core work could be benefitting or what organizational processes can be better modified and incorporated are creative and systemic activities. Inviting other business unit leaders to talk about their daily challenges and what we can do to address these challenges builds bridges. 
3. Combined with perspectives and purpose is the behaviors that we would like others to follow. Here is where 'influence' comes in as we model leadership behaviors (Northouse, 2007). Engaging in powerful questions, becoming a mentor, advisor, or coach, and taking on stretch goals beyond what our job responsibilities call for making us allies for other business and trustworthy comrades for others. As you can see, we are projecting our leadership image. 
4. Losing connection to the people's emotion is a downward spiraling path even if we do all the above correctly. Here is where we go back to applying the emotional intelligence, multiple intelligence, and cultural intelligence that differentiate us further. 

How can we practice frequently all the above perspectives, purpose, projection, and poise? The best way to address them is, as I always say, "Don't count the days but make the days count." Consistency is the key to continuously grooming oneself in all these areas so that when it comes to writing this annual reflection, it is a simple consolidation activity. My approaches to doing this consistency are as follows:

1. Use a calendar system effectively to manage yourself. It may be challenging with our multiple roles (worker, parent, student, social commitments) that one calendar can't avoid schedule conflicts. So, use a consolidated calendar to manage "all" your commitments. Let the system be your reminder!
2. In today’s world, there are several tools available. One can use your project management tools to manage your own career promotion as a project as a product tracking your 1:1 meeting, learning, work objectives, and stretch goals. I used SpiraTeam (Inflectra, n.d.) that I had access to in my company to manage my individual self-agility (Rajagopalan, 2012) and my PMO performance objectives based on balance score card using the system to track my commitments.
3. I start every day with "What is a successful today?" Be relentlessly positive and committed to delivering on each day! I am sure a thing or two will slip but recognize it so that you can become better if that is in your control. 
4. Focus on one or two important things. a) Avoid multitasking please, and create routines that work for you. b) Create value, eliminate non-value activities, reduce stress, raise your awareness. These ideas emerge from Blue Ocean Leadership (Kim & Mauborgne, 2017) where you can think of each day as a fresh start to make a difference.
5. Remember to be modest every day! This ensures that others write your performance review each day, week, month to tell the story for your annual performance. If you are not tracking your performance more frequently against the value drivers such as measuring against your commitments or tracked in the balance score card tracking tools, then, your annual performance review should not be a monumental activity! 
6. Celebrate the wins frequently. In managing the teams, the leadership principles advocate "recognize more". The leadership practices approach even value "recognition" (Kouzes and Posner, 1987) through encouraging the heart more than "reward" (Herzberg, Mausner, Snydermann, 1959) as part of the motivation much needed. So, share the team's wins. Spread your love in the status meetings. Don't wait for the lessons learned to recognize others. Recognizing people for their contribution is a boomerang. It comes back to you with sincere appreciation.

References

Herzberg, F., Mausner, B., & Snydermann, B. (1959). The motivation to work. New York: Wiley

Inflectra (n.d.). SpiraTeam. Retrieved from https://www.inflectra.com/Products/SpiraTeam/

Kim, W.C. & Mauborgne, R.A. (2017). Blue Ocean Leadership. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing.

Kouses, J.M. & Posner, B.Z. (1987). The Leadership Challenge. San Francisco, CA: Josey-Boss.

Northouse, G. (2007). Leadership theory and practice. 3rd Edition. Thousand Oak, Londan: Sage Publications.

Rajagopalan, S. (2012). Leading Change: Remote Teams can collocate on the right ALM tools. Retrieved from https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2012/04/leading-change-remote-teams-can.html

Career Management starts with managing oneself for competencies required for the new role

We must all recognize that time has moved well past the industrial revolution into digital explosion. Let us all look around and we can see that new industries have surfaced, and new business models have evolved. Yet, how often can we all say we have developed new skills and competencies to compete not obsoleting ourselves. We are all still looking for promotion and increased pay but has anyone refused a promotion because they need to sharpen themselves for the new competencies required to succeed in the new role. I would like to share in this blog a few simple techniques that I have found working well as well as observed others do to managing the career.

1. Establish your brand by thinking strategically big

Simply put, in your absence when people think of a new structure for the organization, a new venture to consider, or a bigger problem to solve, will many people think positively of you to be the ombudsman? Here are a few powerful questions to establish your brand.

·         What quantifiable results have you consistently produced in the current organization?

·         How much does your organization remember of your previous work experience when a challenge arises?

·         What references can the customers internal and external to the organization provide consistently that elevates the perception of you?

2. Come to terms that you are a salesperson for your unit, product, and organization

This was difficult for me to relate to! Evolving from being a software engineer to a project and program management career, I never conceived myself to be a salesperson until I heard in a networking event on how I was referring attendees to a local restaurant that I have frequented! We may not know that we are not a salesperson but when we interface with the other units within the organization, we are selling the quality in code, good design in the architecture, positive returns on the product features, and solutions through out products for customers! Some questions to ask ourselves to expand our competencies are:

·         What new business problems will your existing skills solve for the organization or customers?

·         How much do you know what new competencies are required for your growing organization?

·         Given the same pay and terms and conditions, are your skills on par with the consultants in your discipline?

·         What business value have you added beyond your current role to stretch yourself out of the comfort zone?

·         How much reputation precedes you among your peers, customers, and employees in your problem-solving skills?

3. Continuously focus on becoming an expert

Too often, people rest in their comfort zone because they have a job or just got one! This is an expectation mirage as what we know is frequently replaced by new information, business paradigms, changes in technology, or tools used in their chosen professional discipline. Every year fresh graduates come to the candidate pool and experienced candidates that amass new knowledge come to the job market. It is inexorable for individuals and management to ignore the competencies required of themselves and of their team. A few ideas to take a pulse check are as follows:

·         What outside organizations are you actively involved in to learn new concepts?

·         What new team management skills have you gained if you are a manager in a balanced or functional organization?

·         What additional skills and competencies have you developed to further your knowledge of your own discipline?

·         Have you been asked to speak or write in journals, trade events, or conferences in your field of interest?

·         What specific challenges does your organization face where you bring expertise to the table from your previous experience without depending on on-the-job-training?

·         Have you been proactively able to challenge the status quo where customers and peers recognize your voice and instituting changes?

·         What opportunities have you explored moving laterally within the organization expanding your cross-functional knowledge and expertise on products, processes, and people in your own organization?

4. Bringing out the best in others

I once heard a definition of success that read, “My success is defined by how soon I eliminate myself.” It struck me so much that I never focus on job security by staying in the comfort zone of siloed expertise. Instead, I focus on employability where I develop others to expand on the paths that I have found or allow them to find a new paths to make things even more productive. This succession planning is critical for one to be unplugged from one’s current responsibilities and be available for the next opportunity that may knock. A few suggestions to consider at this point on this forefront are below.

·         Do you have a mentor yourself to help you see beyond your own blind spots?

·         Do you have succession planning in your individual development plan where you have identified someone and mentoring them to be where they can be?

·         Have you helped someone see the long-term impact of the project that they are working on, the challenge they are solving, or the opportunity they are resolving and its relationship to their own career through the eyes of the customers and organization?

·         What’s your professional life’s mission or philosophy?

No one can entirely predict what fluctuations can change the way businesses operate or technologies evolve. Just like financial institutions say past performance is not an indicator of current or future performance, the skills and competencies that got an entry into an existing role or maintain the existing role is not an indicator of what the organization or industry is demanding. The longer these skills and competencies are not on par with the industry, the deeper the experience gained will lose its significance. So, develop a quest to do your own assessment and wake up to the competition. 

What are your thoughts on these observations? Please share.

Ignorance is not an excuse: Continuous Learning and Risk Management

In late 1989, I was doing a project as part of practical training required to complete my degree requirements for my Engineering degree. My project was on "Forward Error Correcting Codes" at Vikram Sarabai Space Center (VSCC).  The project required me to work with a small subset of errors arising due to the noise generated during shuttle noises and come up with codes that can make course correcting adjustments. Granted, I was working on a small simulation scenario. Well, my program didn't address about 10% of the scenario and I needed more time. My unit manager authorized an extension of a week when I have my program working. 

When I returned to the VSCC, I needed to get the entry card from the plant manager, who refused to give me the card without which I can't get to any facility. I had forgotten to turn in the card the previous time. When I mentioned that I didn't know I should return the card, he read the fine print on the card itself and said, "Ignorance is not an excuse!" Those words still ring in my ears as that was probably the best practical introduction to risk management in my life. Since then, I have done my best to read the details, understand as much as I can, and follow up when I don't understand. 

As I was heading the PMO, I asked about the risks that the project managers have identified for their projects. Even though some projects are simple cookie-cutter type of email campaigns, every assumption made on those projects is a risk. Working with a new client is a risk. Working on newer initiatives is a risk. Leveraging newer technologies, techniques, and tools is a risk. Therefore, in today's rapidly evolving world, the adage "ignorance is not an excuse" holds more weight than ever before. As individuals and professionals, we are constantly faced with new challenges, technologies, and potential risks that can impact our lives and work. It is our responsibility to stay informed and proactively seek knowledge to navigate these complexities effectively.

Continuous learning is no longer a luxury but a necessity. The risks we face, whether in cybersecurity, financial management, or environmental concerns, are constantly shifting and expanding. By committing to ongoing education and staying abreast of developments in our fields, we equip ourselves with the tools to identify and mitigate potential threats before they become critical issues.

Moreover, the modern workplace demands a more holistic approach to roles and responsibilities. Project managers are now expected to think like account managers (Think of the clients rather than focus on deliverable), understanding client needs and business implications. Developers must adopt the mindset of testers (Test Driven Development), anticipating potential issues and edge cases in their code. Similarly, development teams need to consider operational concerns, embracing DevOps principles for smoother deployments and maintenance. I see these trends towards the hybrid roles and cross-functional skills are applicable in my current organization to improve productivity. This is a powerful tool for comprehensive risk identification, analysis, and treatment. By understanding multiple perspectives, professionals can anticipate and address potential issues that might otherwise fall through the cracks of siloed thinking.

Ultimately, the pursuit of knowledge is a personal responsibility with collective benefits. By continuously expanding our understanding of potential risks, staying informed about best practices, and developing cross-functional skills, we not only protect ourselves but also contribute to a more resilient and informed society. In this context, ignorance is not just an inadequate excuse—it's a preventable liability that we all have the power and duty to address, both individually and as part of our professional teams.

The best way to address risks in products, projects, and programs and in our personal and professional lives is by continuous learning! Learning is a lifelong process and the more we learn the more we have the responsibility to teach others to learn. Learning therefore is also a leadership practice. Wouldn't you agree?