This year's Web of Change conference included a session with Rob Purdie of Important Projects on values-based project management. Here are my notes on the session, which focused on collaboratively sharing tactics for boosting the various aspects of organizational culture that support effective project work.
Success of any project can be judged by 2 criteria:
1. were the objectives met?
2. did the team find the work itself rewarding?
Projects not going well has to do with not having a project friendly environment
What is a project?
A project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to produce a unique product, service or result.
ALL PROJECTS HAVE:
– objectives: the things the project is unertaken to achieve
– deliverables: what project will produce in order to achieve objectives:
– requirements: qualities deliverables must have/criteria deliverables must meet in order to achieve objectives
– constraints: that project must be delivered within [time/scope/cost] (the iron triangle) [scope=quality]
Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project objectives.
On good projects, people take the time to define objectives.
ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
Org culture is the river; the project is the boat.
If org culture is flowing smoothly, you just have to steer the boat; otherwise you're driving upstream
Projects involve risks, so risk-averse organizations will have trouble
With problematic culture you need more money, and more authority as project manager
Build a project-friendly environment, at least within the project team.
Build a culture of personal empowerment and risk-taking.
WHY PROJECTS DON'T GO WELL….
b/c of a set of assumptions that turn out not to be accurate
confusing the politics of anti-hierarchy with the need to get shit done
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WHAT MAKES A GOOD PROJECT MANAGER?
– people skills: being able to listen and communicate well; need to manage expectations and explain things clearly so all sides understand; integrating into project culture is all about people skills
– they need to be bright and flexible and quick and adaptable and know how to talk to people
– persistence: keep coming back for the piece of info they need
– do they need to be values aligned?
Need balance between outputs and processes (ends and means)
Don't burn people out.
Cross-functional integration is valued
Risk taking is supported
High conflict tolerance; need to be able to engage in healthy conflict; a meeting with no conflict is not valuable
Value open and honest communication; respect for one another
5 groups: (how to build each)
Personal empowerment — grow our teams so people feel empowered. Everyone wants to contribute their best work (whether they know it or not). When people feel frustrated it's b/c they feel blocked. How can we remove things that get in way of allowing people to contribute their best work?
Trust — need closure in communications as pro-active way of building trust. Whenever I have a conversation with anyone about anything i want to know who is doing what by when. If you can do that with every conversation, nobody is going back to their desk wondering if the other person is going to be doing the thing that needs to be done for me to do my work.
Respect — what are some specific tactics for instilling this in group. Being late is disrespectful.
Commitment:
- Buy-in. Are you going to stick with the project through hard times?
- What is everybody's standard of excellence?
- Commitment is a great quality for organizers, but it's different in a project context.
- Can't focus on the meta-level of commitment at every project level — objective of producing the brochure can't be saving the world.
- Project has a beginning and an end.
- Commitment can be to doing a great job, to saving the world….but need a long-term theory of change.
- Need to make sure we continue to find projects that the team finds meaningful. Team wants to be happy as well as paid.
- Make sure that the projects speak to the values of the people I'm working with.
- What projects you're choosing — projects can be aligned with a range of values. When does choice of project become strategic — not just about feeling good about the projects you're doing.
- Can someone who's not values aligned authentically serve the role of supporting other people's values.
- Think of this as irrigation: project manager is irrigating the growing plants — the people who are trying to get the job done.
- You are serving a group of people who really care about this —
- How can you transform someone into excitement about this value of promoting social change?
- Ask them: are you interested in transforming?
- Commitment builds trust.
- If you do what you say you're going to do — you make a commitment — that builds trust. If you can't fulfill a commitment you've made, you go back to people and tell them you can't make it and tell them when you can meet them.
- Staff commit to timelines but then don't meet it. People commit to overly amibitious timelines as a way of proving their commitment.
- PMs need to ASK, rather than tell, when something can be completed.
- Time estimates should be offered by the person doing the work.
- Need to create a culture of honesty about how long things will take.
- Projects are always in a longer/larger context.
- Overcommitment — working overtime — as a sign of commitment. Burn-out as a sign of commitment.
- Sometimes the culture can be great, but people are just wrong about how long something will take.
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PERSONAL EMPOWERMENT:
– need to be engaged in planning
– how to embed project into longterm goals of org — creating a culture
TRUST:
– establishing groundrules; closure on all conversations — who is doing what by when; clearly defining roles & responsibilities; including play in project activities to build trust
– project debriefs to make transparent what was broken
– Quakers: creating formats for appreciation — framing contributions in ways that are around appreciating fellow team members' work
– book: The art of possibilities
RESPECT:
– tied to trust, communication and accountability
– clear expectations about individual expectations
– what everyone is responsible for as a team member
– groundrules for ccing people, lateness
– here are the ground rules we're going to stick by
– issues board: every specific period — if you're feeling disrespected , there's a way to bring that up
– respecting what client brings, client respecting what shop brings
CONFLICT:
– proactively handle team by getting to know how they handle conflict
– establish ground rules
– separate problem from person — give people a sense that the objectives are the enemy, not the people on the team
ACCOUNTABILITY:
– clarity of objectives
– remember that decision-makers aren't the same as the implementers
– create culture with open feedback channel
– bilateral clarity of expectations — client needs to be accountable for their inputs
FUTURE CONVERSATIONS:
– bioteaming manifestos
– distributed teams
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I’ve tried a lot of financial management programs, but nothing beats the simplicity of an excel spreadsheet.
How do you create a site that keeps people on your pages? By creating a site that's easy to leave.
OK, I'm cheating a little here — I already love my work a lot of the time. But recently I connected with someone who is helping our company bring its work into even closer alignment with our values and our goals.
Alanna Fero is a career consultant and personal coach who helps people figure out how they can bring their work into alignment with their values. She knows how to bring a values-aligned career or business to life — to get from aspiration to vision to the nuts-and-bolts of how to get yourself from here to there.
And now she's launching a book that will make her approach accessible to a wider audience. Love Made Visible will be released on August 15. Launch details below:
LOVE MADE VISIBLE RELEASE PARTY
5:30 – 7:30pm August 15th
The Royal Vancouver Yacht Club
3811 Point Grey Road Vancouver BC (at Highbury, just west of Alma)
Book Signing, Light Refreshments & Great Networking
Please RSVP by August 12 to launch@alannafero.com
Web 2.0 and Your Organization
July 24 & 25th, 2007
Centre for Social Innovation
215 Spadina Avenue, Toronto
How can your organization use social media tools to deepen your relationships with supporters, reach new audiences and raise more money? More than twenty people discovered the power of social media tools like blogs and wikis through a workshop I co-taught with Jason Mogus on Web 2.0 and Your Organization. Jason and I had so much fun teaching that March workshop in Vancouver, and got such a positive response from participants, that we will be offering the same workshop in Toronto this summer.
Here's the skinny:
Are you interested in how online communities like Flickr, MySpace, and YouTube can empower your members and customers to carry your message out into the world? Could your organization benefit from deeper collaboration among your team members, clients, partners or the public? Could better knowledge-sharing, stronger relationships and closer communications inside your organization and with your core supporters foster more efficiency, insight and effectiveness?
The latest generation of "Web 2.0" or social web strategies and tools offer powerful opportunities for organizations to improve the way they work, communicate their messages, empower others, and serve the public. In this workshop you will learn how the latest tools for online collaboration and community building can make your organization smarter and more effective.
This workshop is designed for communications strategists, marketing managers, and webmasters who are interested in how this evolution of the web can help evolve your organization's online strategy. We will give you the tools, knowledge, and most crucially, the vision for how your organization can use the web as a stronger agent of change. We’ll also cover the nuts-and-bolts, introducing the latest tools so that you know which options are most promising for your needs.
This workshop will take place from 6pm to 9pm on July 24th, and from 9am to 5pm (with lunch break) on July 25th.
Follow this link to register today — space is limited.
For more information, please contact sarahfelicity@gmail.com.
Rob and I are spending the next two days at NetSquared, in the company of 21 outstanding teams working on projects that harness social media tools for social change. We met many of these folks for the first time yesterday, in a pre-conference session that brought the projects together for an afternoon of collaborative idea-sharing and relationship building, and we were incredibly impressed by the commitment and creativity that these folks are bringing to their respective projects. As part of the NetSquared Innovators Support Network we will choose to work with one of these projects on a pro bono basis, providing them with their choice of a customized community participation plan, a recommended community feature set, or complete specifications for a new custom Drupal module.
But one of the themes that emerged in yesterday’s conversation was the desire to foster collaboration not only among the 21 finalist projects here in San Jose, but among the more than 150 projects who participated in this year’s call for Innovation Fund submissions. Like a lot of the folks here, we got really excited about quite a few of the projects that didn’t end up in the top 21, and we started thinking about how we might support their work.
That’s why we’ve decided to extend the same offer of pro bono support to one of the projects that isn’t in the room today. Next month, we’ll start working with Newscloud, an open source media platform that combines news sharing and social networking. Jodie Tonita of ONE/Northwest recently introduced us to Newscloud’s founder and driving force, Jeff Reifman, and we immediately saw Jeff’s work as exactly the kind of technology innovation that non-profits need now.
Using Newscloud, an organization’s members and supporters can identify the news stories that matter to them, annotate those stories with their own reflections, and collaboratively create a window on the day’s issues that reflect their interests and priorities. Individual users may find Newscloud compelling too — quite apart from the social benefits of collaboratively surfacing interesting stories, it’s got a great interface for reading blogs and news sites that displays stories as they appear on the originating site, rather than as plain or reformatted text. The best way to understand Newscloud’s value is to visit the Newscloud site, sign up for an account (it’s very quick!) and take it for a spin yourself.
Our clients and colleagues in the non-profit sector often ask us to help them integrate news into their online communities. They want a way to bring their members and supporters the news that is relevant to their issues and interests, and ideally, they want a way for their audience to interact with those stories and engage in meaningful conversation around the latest news. Newscloud offers that potential, but right now organizations need to either convene on the Newscloud site itself, or install their own version of the Newscloud platform.
We’re going to work with Jeff to make it easier for non-profits to integrate Newscloud’s features directly into their own web sites. Working from our own experience developing non-profit sites on the Drupal platform, we’re going to help Jeff develop a Newscloud Drupal module, so that the thousands of community sites now running Drupal can integrate Newscloud-enabled news sharing directly into their sites. We’ll use our own clients’ needs as the basis for developing the module’s specifications, but we’d love to hear from other organizations about their own needs for news sharing and commenting, so that our specifications can reflect the needs of as many organizations as possible — just leave your comments on this post, or e-mail me directly (alex at socialsignal dot com) to get involved.
We’ll keep the NetSquared community posted on how this experiment evolves. And we hope that other members of the NetSquared community — technology assistance providers, developers, funders, and participating projects — will think about how they might help or collaborate with one or more of the 150 projects that have profiled their needs on the NetSquared sites. The time, advice and support of this community can help each and every one of these projects move forward, and advance the state-of-the-art in using social media for social change.
