Wednesday, August 6, 2014
When to escalate:
From One Of the Best Project Managers You'll Ever Meet
"Some Project Managers believe that bringing issues to the attention of high-level stakeholders makes the Project Manager seem incapable, so they’ll only escalate issues when they have no choice but to do so. This makes high-level stakeholders worry that unseen problems are constantly mounting within the project, and they dread that at any moment a Project Manager will suddenly appear to tell them about a problem that requires their immediate attention.
In truth, most major issues spring from minor issues that have been overlooked or ignored for a long period of time, until they grow to the point that people are forced to deal with them. When this finally occurs few options to mitigate the problem remain, so project teams hold long, stressful emergency meetings and desperately scramble about trying to resolve it.
I believe Project Managers have a duty to immediately escalate all issues that might significantly impact the project if it appears those issues might be realized. I do this by simply including a “Potential Issues” section in my online project dashboard and in my written reports; I describe an issue and its expected impacts, as well as the steps my team is taking to monitor and resolve it. I also employ a simple color-coding system as follows:
Green – The issue isn’t causing any problems yet, and the project team has it under control and is working to resolve it.
Yellow – The issue has grown beyond the project team’s ability to control or resolve it, and high-level stakeholder assistance will be required if the issue continues to grow.
Red – The issue is currently causing or will inevitably cause problems for the project, and high-level stakeholder assistance is needed to resolve it.
This methodology gives high-level stakeholders plenty of time to consider and formulate responses to an issue, so when an issue goes from yellow to red no one is surprised and everyone is amply prepared to resolve it. Also, it’s clear to high-level stakeholders that the project team is actively seeking out and remedying issues instead of concealing them, and this greatly increases their confidence in the project’s success.
Lastly, this methodology enables stakeholders to monitor issues as much or as little as they wish. Some review all the issues, while many just glance at the green issues and focus instead on the yellows and reds. I have used this methodology with high-level stakeholders including CIOs, and no one has yet complained that I was wasting their time with needless information."
- Eric Simms, PMP
"Some Project Managers believe that bringing issues to the attention of high-level stakeholders makes the Project Manager seem incapable, so they’ll only escalate issues when they have no choice but to do so. This makes high-level stakeholders worry that unseen problems are constantly mounting within the project, and they dread that at any moment a Project Manager will suddenly appear to tell them about a problem that requires their immediate attention.
In truth, most major issues spring from minor issues that have been overlooked or ignored for a long period of time, until they grow to the point that people are forced to deal with them. When this finally occurs few options to mitigate the problem remain, so project teams hold long, stressful emergency meetings and desperately scramble about trying to resolve it.
I believe Project Managers have a duty to immediately escalate all issues that might significantly impact the project if it appears those issues might be realized. I do this by simply including a “Potential Issues” section in my online project dashboard and in my written reports; I describe an issue and its expected impacts, as well as the steps my team is taking to monitor and resolve it. I also employ a simple color-coding system as follows:
Green – The issue isn’t causing any problems yet, and the project team has it under control and is working to resolve it.
Yellow – The issue has grown beyond the project team’s ability to control or resolve it, and high-level stakeholder assistance will be required if the issue continues to grow.
Red – The issue is currently causing or will inevitably cause problems for the project, and high-level stakeholder assistance is needed to resolve it.
This methodology gives high-level stakeholders plenty of time to consider and formulate responses to an issue, so when an issue goes from yellow to red no one is surprised and everyone is amply prepared to resolve it. Also, it’s clear to high-level stakeholders that the project team is actively seeking out and remedying issues instead of concealing them, and this greatly increases their confidence in the project’s success.
Lastly, this methodology enables stakeholders to monitor issues as much or as little as they wish. Some review all the issues, while many just glance at the green issues and focus instead on the yellows and reds. I have used this methodology with high-level stakeholders including CIOs, and no one has yet complained that I was wasting their time with needless information."
- Eric Simms, PMP
Scientific Management revisited
1. Fred Taylor - general concept is "one best way"
2. Henry Fayol - administrative approach
1: use scientific method to determine "one best way"
- harmony, not discord
- cooperation, not indvidualism (synergy)
techniques: method study - ex. assembly line
time study - determine # of workers to employ
motion study - eliminate unnecessary movement
fatigue study -
- applies standardization, simplification, differential wage system
2: Fayol's principles of management (some of the 14)
- division of work
- unity of command
- unity of direction
- centralization & decentralization
- focuses on concentration o decision-making authority
- scalar chain - subordinates should follow chain of command and only report to immediate senior
- stability of personnel - (minimize employee turnover for overall org efficiency)
- espirit de corps - team spirit to meet objectives
2. Henry Fayol - administrative approach
1: use scientific method to determine "one best way"
- harmony, not discord
- cooperation, not indvidualism (synergy)
techniques: method study - ex. assembly line
time study - determine # of workers to employ
motion study - eliminate unnecessary movement
fatigue study -
- applies standardization, simplification, differential wage system
2: Fayol's principles of management (some of the 14)
- division of work
- unity of command
- unity of direction
- centralization & decentralization
- focuses on concentration o decision-making authority
- scalar chain - subordinates should follow chain of command and only report to immediate senior
- stability of personnel - (minimize employee turnover for overall org efficiency)
- espirit de corps - team spirit to meet objectives
Management function: Leadership
Leadership - the process of inspiring others to accomplish important tasks
Leader and Manager are not equivalent terms b/c of varying personal power.
Power: Personal vs Position power
Personal - Expert or Referent - dev by expertise or likable personality
Position - Reward or Coercion or Legitimacy
Empowerment: the process through which managers enable others to gain power and achieve influence within the org
3 Historical historical approaches to studying Leadership:
1. Trait theory - "leadership traits" - but they're only a precondition. Understanding how they behave is the best determinant of their leadership success.
2. Behavioural
3. Contingency - understand how conditions for leadership success vary with the situation
Fiedler's contingency model looks at:
Leadership style:
task/goal-oriented vs relationship-oriented (measured on LPC scale), where LPC stands for least preferred co-worker
Diagnosing situational control, (or situational favourableness):
member relations, task structure, positional power (high or low)
Hersey-Blanchard situational leadership model:
- Leaders adjust their styles depending on followers' readiness
- 4 leaderships styles: delegating, participating, selling, and telling. Each varies in required relationship and task behaviour.
- Followers may either be high or low in able-ness, willingness, (secure vs insecure), high or low -> mature or immature
- Leaders become Delegating when he has mature followers
- Leaders must become Tellers when he has immature followers
House's path-goal theory:
Establish clear path for followers to goal achievement.
Leadership styles should contribute to missing/weak in situation. They include:
Directive - giving specific advice, clarifying expectations, assigning tasks
Supportive - fosters good relations between managers & employees
Participative - shares information
Achievement-oriented - set high goals, high expectations, and have high confidence in employee's ability to achieve goals
Critique in approaches:
The good - Moving beyond trait and behavioural approaches to consider the role of context/situation in leader effectiveness.
The bad - Endless contingencies
Type of Contemporary Leaders:
Charismatic - unify and motivate people around a grand vision; inspire people toward change
Transformational - they have the visionary power of charismatic leaders but also have the staying power and energy to see change through to completion
Transactional - they are methodical and keeps others focused and progressing towards goal accomplishment
Leader and Manager are not equivalent terms b/c of varying personal power.
Power: Personal vs Position power
Personal - Expert or Referent - dev by expertise or likable personality
Position - Reward or Coercion or Legitimacy
Empowerment: the process through which managers enable others to gain power and achieve influence within the org
3 Historical historical approaches to studying Leadership:
1. Trait theory - "leadership traits" - but they're only a precondition. Understanding how they behave is the best determinant of their leadership success.
2. Behavioural
3. Contingency - understand how conditions for leadership success vary with the situation
Fiedler's contingency model looks at:
Leadership style:
task/goal-oriented vs relationship-oriented (measured on LPC scale), where LPC stands for least preferred co-worker
Diagnosing situational control, (or situational favourableness):
member relations, task structure, positional power (high or low)
Hersey-Blanchard situational leadership model:
- Leaders adjust their styles depending on followers' readiness
- 4 leaderships styles: delegating, participating, selling, and telling. Each varies in required relationship and task behaviour.
- Followers may either be high or low in able-ness, willingness, (secure vs insecure), high or low -> mature or immature
- Leaders become Delegating when he has mature followers
- Leaders must become Tellers when he has immature followers
House's path-goal theory:
Establish clear path for followers to goal achievement.
Leadership styles should contribute to missing/weak in situation. They include:
Directive - giving specific advice, clarifying expectations, assigning tasks
Supportive - fosters good relations between managers & employees
Participative - shares information
Achievement-oriented - set high goals, high expectations, and have high confidence in employee's ability to achieve goals
Critique in approaches:
The good - Moving beyond trait and behavioural approaches to consider the role of context/situation in leader effectiveness.
The bad - Endless contingencies
Type of Contemporary Leaders:
Charismatic - unify and motivate people around a grand vision; inspire people toward change
Transformational - they have the visionary power of charismatic leaders but also have the staying power and energy to see change through to completion
Transactional - they are methodical and keeps others focused and progressing towards goal accomplishment
Management function: Controlling
Chapter 16: Controlling
Gary Loveman
- Currently CEO of Ceasar's (Harrah's) Entertainment
- Pace: PhD Econ MIT + 7 years
Associate Professor Harvard + 9 years
COO to CEO of Harrah's Entertainment + 5 years
- Normally, to get from BS/BA to CEO, it takes +20-30 years
Definitions:
Controlling - standards for performance of people & processes are set, communicated, and applied
Six Sigma - highly disciplined control process, helps companies improve productivity & quality of products & services
Control Process - 4-step process 1. Establish performance standard
2. Measure performance
3. Compare 1 & 2
4. Corrective Action
(Feed-forward, Concurrent, Feedback) Controls - (before, during, after) process. All are parts of an effective control system
Concepts:
Controls - established to monitor progress (and resources used) toward goals
Loose vs Tight Control
- loose may reduced incentives for managers to meet their goals
- tight requires additional reporting (more cost & inconvenience)
- tight restricts lower-level managers from taking initiatives due to heavy monitoring
- middle ground: managers must value honesty and integrity
How to make controls more effective?
- They must be timely, economically feasible, accurate, comprehensible, acceptable, and seamlessly integrable. To break some parts down, by acceptable we mean the controls enhance all parties involved, and by integrable we mean they must align w/ corporate values.
- They focus on critical control points, where failures cannot be tolerated, where time & money costs are greater, that directly affect the survival of the corporation.
- Monitor them to ensure they remain effective
1. before and after organizational environmental assessment
2. survey employees affected by controls
3. run controlled experiments
- Controls themselves need to be controlled
ex. subsystem controls (finance, marketing, HR, etc.)
Gary Loveman
- Currently CEO of Ceasar's (Harrah's) Entertainment
- Pace: PhD Econ MIT + 7 years
Associate Professor Harvard + 9 years
COO to CEO of Harrah's Entertainment + 5 years
- Normally, to get from BS/BA to CEO, it takes +20-30 years
Definitions:
Controlling - standards for performance of people & processes are set, communicated, and applied
Six Sigma - highly disciplined control process, helps companies improve productivity & quality of products & services
Control Process - 4-step process 1. Establish performance standard
2. Measure performance
3. Compare 1 & 2
4. Corrective Action
(Feed-forward, Concurrent, Feedback) Controls - (before, during, after) process. All are parts of an effective control system
Concepts:
Controls - established to monitor progress (and resources used) toward goals
Loose vs Tight Control
- loose may reduced incentives for managers to meet their goals
- tight requires additional reporting (more cost & inconvenience)
- tight restricts lower-level managers from taking initiatives due to heavy monitoring
- middle ground: managers must value honesty and integrity
How to make controls more effective?
- They must be timely, economically feasible, accurate, comprehensible, acceptable, and seamlessly integrable. To break some parts down, by acceptable we mean the controls enhance all parties involved, and by integrable we mean they must align w/ corporate values.
- They focus on critical control points, where failures cannot be tolerated, where time & money costs are greater, that directly affect the survival of the corporation.
- Monitor them to ensure they remain effective
1. before and after organizational environmental assessment
2. survey employees affected by controls
3. run controlled experiments
- Controls themselves need to be controlled
ex. subsystem controls (finance, marketing, HR, etc.)
Management Decision Making
Ch 7: Decision Making Process
Concepts:
If issue has been made in past, use programmed decisions;
If not, use 7-step decision making process (non programmed decision):
Decision making process:
1 - define problem / opportunity
2 - identify limiting factors (ex. resources)
3 - develop potential alternatives
4 - analysing the alternatives
5 - selecting the best of the alternatives
6 - implementing the decision (apply visual thinking; know exactly what to do, how to do it, why, when)
7 - establishing a control & evaluation system
In step 2, we deal with environmental factors and limiting factors. We can use the Vroom-Yetton-Jago Decision Tree to extract and model knowledge to effectively make decisions. In that model, we identify and use internal and external env factors to help make decisions.
Group Decision making:
brainstorming
- nominal group technique - (ideas round-robin, voting, evaluate list, final voting)
- Delphi technique - two rounds of questionnaires and summaries, (one w/o interaction and one w/ interaction with experts)
The disadvantages to the above include group-think, accountability, and they're good for editing docs but bad for making procedures.
Concepts:
If issue has been made in past, use programmed decisions;
If not, use 7-step decision making process (non programmed decision):
Decision making process:
1 - define problem / opportunity
2 - identify limiting factors (ex. resources)
3 - develop potential alternatives
4 - analysing the alternatives
5 - selecting the best of the alternatives
6 - implementing the decision (apply visual thinking; know exactly what to do, how to do it, why, when)
7 - establishing a control & evaluation system
In step 2, we deal with environmental factors and limiting factors. We can use the Vroom-Yetton-Jago Decision Tree to extract and model knowledge to effectively make decisions. In that model, we identify and use internal and external env factors to help make decisions.
Group Decision making:
brainstorming
- nominal group technique - (ideas round-robin, voting, evaluate list, final voting)
- Delphi technique - two rounds of questionnaires and summaries, (one w/o interaction and one w/ interaction with experts)
The disadvantages to the above include group-think, accountability, and they're good for editing docs but bad for making procedures.
Management Ethics
2 broad ethical theories
consequential principles
non-consequential principles
Business Ethics applies the above theories in context of for-profit organizations
Organizational (neg) influence on employee ethics is caused by:
- unusually high rewards
- unusually severe punishments
- overemphasis on results
Approaches to social responsibility, (ie. societal demands made on companies)
- resistance approach - eliminate, delay, fend off demands
- reactive approach - companies wait for demands and respond accordingly
- proactive approach - companies look for needs and find ways to meet them
definitions:
Morality - core values and beliefs that act as guide for actions
SOX - Sarbanes-Oxley Act - CEO, CFO of public companies must accurately report financial reports
ethical dilemma - all course of actions are unethical
What do people want from their jobs? How do we motivate them?
We take a look at Herzberg's Motivational-Hygiene Theory, aka Herzberg's Two Factor Theory, to answer these questions about employee satisfaction.
consequential principles
non-consequential principles
Business Ethics applies the above theories in context of for-profit organizations
Organizational (neg) influence on employee ethics is caused by:
- unusually high rewards
- unusually severe punishments
- overemphasis on results
Approaches to social responsibility, (ie. societal demands made on companies)
- resistance approach - eliminate, delay, fend off demands
- reactive approach - companies wait for demands and respond accordingly
- proactive approach - companies look for needs and find ways to meet them
definitions:
Morality - core values and beliefs that act as guide for actions
SOX - Sarbanes-Oxley Act - CEO, CFO of public companies must accurately report financial reports
ethical dilemma - all course of actions are unethical
What do people want from their jobs? How do we motivate them?
We take a look at Herzberg's Motivational-Hygiene Theory, aka Herzberg's Two Factor Theory, to answer these questions about employee satisfaction.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)