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.

PMO Agility: Business case to operate as a Profit center

In a recent networking event that I hosted on Effective Agile Transformation, a question came up from interested attendees on whether a Project Management Office or Program Management Office (PMO) should have different metrics to measure projects. An example of a metric that was tossed around was that projects in a traditional waterfall approach may use schedule variance whereas agile projects may measure velocity.

I believe these questions are rooted in traditional thinking where people look up to Agile as a radical way of doing projects differently only to arrive at the same results. Stacey’s diagram that Agile principles promote call out that not all projects will benefit from applying agile principles of iterative and incremental delivery. So, all types of projects should be evaluated based on value generation. Any type of key performance indicator basically evaluates this value generation as evidenced by Michael Porter’s value chain theory where project management is an indispensable support management activity.

First, PMO (sometimes called Value Management Office, Value Delivery Office, Centers of Excellence), is a portfolio function (which means there is no end date, and any project/program may or may not be related). The goal of the PMO is a governance function rather than management function. The PMO should continuously review seismic changes in the market and its impact on the organization (external influences) and plan to build capability and capacity. So, PMO functions are not just metrics driven. In my opinion, PMO is responsible for the following so that the organization's strategy and goals are supported sometimes by allowing to take on projects never taken by the organization before laying the foundations of profit center.

1. 3C: Capability, Capacity, Change Planning (e.g., EEF/OPA support)
2. 3R: Resources, Risks, Reporting
3. Knowledge Management is supported by focusing on both 3Cs and 3Rs through ongoing training and evaluation.

As some organizations are in the emerging stages with five different levels (like supportive, controlling, directive, mature, and optimizing), it is possible that the PMO focus takes on some levels of measures of performance and metrics to monitor these measures.  From that angle, let us explore profit center thoughts from a measure's perspective. 

For instance, let us consider “Time to market.” This metric measures the elapsed time from the onset of the project to its delivery. Measured from the start date to the end date in the baseline may go for, say 8 weeks. Now, an experienced project manager may use the “80-hour” productivity rule to mark a milestone introducing checkpoints for incremental value delivery. This milestone may be a requirement freeze, delivery of a certain development, receipt of assets from a client, procurement of a vendor contract, etc.  This 80-hour commitment is already making a project manager think agile in a project that need not lend itself for agile implementation. Unlike an agile project, this 80-hour duration need not be equated to a certain number of story points to establish a team velocity.

Therefore, while every PMO needs to be formed based on business needs and not all metrics may be equally extended to all PMOs, I believe and challenge all business driven PMOs to think and act like Profit Centers instead of cost centers while measuring value generation. This value generation underscores project managers to become skilled at proactively managing the projects by becoming subject matter experts in the domain skills relevant to the project, master organizational skills to mitigate risks, learn negotiation skills to control the project scope but allowing changes, and understand empowerment skills in energizing and motivating the team.

As an example, let us take the “Time to market.” Let us say, if two similar projects that focus on developing a website are developed by two different project managers. Now, if on a consistent basis one project manager can deliver projects of similar complexity in 6 weeks while the other project manager takes 8 weeks to deliver, then, the skilled project manager has shown the organization that the cost savings for 2 weeks on a consistent basis from the agreed project baseline duration of 8 weeks. If PMOs operate as profit centers, then, the PMO can look for increasing the skills of the PM in project management areas to think and be agile. 

What are your thoughts?