CIO.com just published a great article entitled, “13 Tips for Keeping IT Projects Under Control

All 13 ideas make lots of sense. Yet I wonder if we are looking in the wrong place for our fixes. E.g., a recent study on ERP project outcomes reports that:

  • 53% had cost overruns
  • 61% had duration overruns
  • 60% delivered less than half the expected business benefits.

I addressed over 100 IT managers on project management at ITRoadMap in DC last December. I asked how many of them believed that a large percentage of IT projects met or exceeded expectations. Only 3 people raised their hands.

Remember the old joke about a man on his hands and knees under a streetlamp at night?

A policeman approaches him and asks what he’s doing. He replies, “I dropped my car keys.” The policeman looks around and doesn’t see any parked cars nearby, so asks if this is where the man thinks he dropped them. “Oh no…” the man replies, “I dropped them by my car around the corner, but there’s no street light there.”

Many of our project managers today use many of the techniques identified in the article. And many also have training and certification in effective project management practices.

With all our focus on managing projects, are we too focused on managing “work “, and not paying enough attention to how we engage all the individuals on whose day-to-day performance the project depends?

Are we paying more attention to “what” needs to be done, and less attention to “how” people need to engage with one another? I.e., are we focusing too much on the tools and techniques, and not enough on the “soft” skills of leadership?

 

{ 0 comments }

What's Your Strategy? - Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg

What’s Your Strategy? – Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg

Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg - What's your strategy?

The new book, Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, has generated a lot of heated discussion in the media and corporations about the hugely important issue of gender equality, which does not get enough attention even today.

In the book, Sandberg writes about how similar behavior by men and women results in very different outcomes in how they are liked and succeed:

When a woman excels at her job, both men and women will comment that she is accomplishing a lot but is “not as well liked by her peers.” She is probably also “too aggressive,” “not a team player,” “a bit political”; she “can’t be trusted” or is “difficult.” Those are all things that have been said about me and almost every senior woman I know.

Several of my clients are working on developing strategies for dealing with this challenge in their current roles. One critical success factor that they address is being authentic in how they approach it. That is, they do so in a way that is true to who they are, reflecting their core values and key strengths.

For example, one client was thinking that she needed to become “rough and tough” to hold her own with the five men on her peer leadership team. The issue was she was not by nature a rough and tough kind of person. She was in fact caring and committed to realizing he best in people, and was a great listener and synthesizer of information.

Her strategy focused on engaging her peers in exploring multiple angles of the complex problems they needed to address. With her quiet demeanor and insightful probing questions, she was very effective at drawing this high-energy and sometimes contentious group into constructive and collaborative conversations.

Over the first several weeks of applying this strategy, her peers came to rely upon her to lead them in problem solving. She quickly earned their respect and trust as a key enabler of their team’s effectiveness as leaders. She was in effect leading this leadership team.

If you want more practices on how to be an authentic leader, listen to the CIO talkradio event “Are you an authentic leader?”

Regards,
Bob

{ 1 comment }

Is Your Relationship Stuck?

My friend Dr. Karen, with a radio show on relationships, recently wrote and asked me if my Simple Leadership Life CycleTM could help her audience when their relationships got stuck, as much as it helped leaders and managers in business. Since many of us have just celebrated Valentines Day, I thought I’d share my reply [...]

Read the full article →

A Time to Reflect

I was preparing to send out an end of year Notes on Leadership post with two tips for how to hit the ground running in 2013. Then the tragic events in an elementary school in Newtown, CT occurred. Now it does not feel right to post a note with a positive, upbeat tone. It seems [...]

Read the full article →

Two Tips for Leaders of IT Transformation

I frequently offer two simple thoughts to IT managers who are leading their organizations through transformational change. Each of the ideas comes from a book I recommend to go along with it. The first idea is, "It's not enough to be right, we also need to be helpful." This is from David Maister in his [...]

Read the full article →

My Leadership Lesson from a Recent Funeral

I was at a funeral this week for the father of a very close friend. My friend delivered a beautiful and moving eulogy, for a very fine man.   Several times as he delivered his remarks, he broke down in tears and  needed a couple of minutes to collect himself. Each time, we waited quietly and [...]

Read the full article →

Is your leadership blind spot tripping you up?

A recent article in the WSJ demonstrates how common it is for executives to have blind spots that severely limit their career progression and success. It points out how difficult it can be to get reliable feedback on our performance, which reinforces these blind spots. Read it Here. It's my experience that this does not [...]

Read the full article →

Manage your focus, not your time

As all my business coaching clients know, I believe that most issues with "time management" are really about our focus and prioritization. The blog post at the link below offers solid advice on both, and is consistent with my "3 & 20 List" tool and my recent blog post titled, "Increase Your Productivity 400% in [...]

Read the full article →

Increase Your Productivity 400% in 15 Minutes per Day

Good prioritization can increase your effectiveness by 400%! That’s improving the value you deliver by four times what you may be delivering today – without working any harder or longer. In fact, the approach we describe below can reduce the time you spend and the stress you feel at the same time that in ramps [...]

Read the full article →

The Power of a Self-Coaching Plan

Very often with my clients, as we get towards the end of our coaching time together, I invite them to create a self-coaching plan. The reason that we do this is because, just like any other project that we try to execute, we are much more likely to be successful when we have a written [...]

Read the full article →