the smart pms blog http://thesmartpms.posterous.com Most recent posts at the smart pms blog posterous.com Mon, 25 Jun 2012 17:04:00 -0700 Work to Live or Live to Work? http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/work-to-live-or-live-to-work http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/work-to-live-or-live-to-work

Working with multigenerational project teams has taught me that commitment is a common attribute for team members of every generation. 

But every team member approaches commitment in a different way. Different generations place different values on pursuing work-life balance. 

A strong work ethic is a characteristic of the older members of the project team, part of the silent generation. Members of this generation tend to want to work a reduced number of hours to be able to devote time to personal activities.

Baby boomers, the generation referred to as workaholics, consider work a high priority and greatly value teamwork. In my opinion, they are focused on their achievements and are willing to work long hours to achieve project success. 

Generation X is good at controlling their time. This generation has a desire to control and set a career path, personal ambitions and work time. 

Generation Y is driven by a strong preference for work-life balance. Many Gen Yers look for jobs that provide them great personal fulfillment.

In my opinion, one of our tasks as project managers is to find ways to shed the stress in our project team members' lives. Part of that is to better understand the work-life balance needs of team members from different generations. 

To bring a better work-life balance to any generation, define more accurate project schedules based on flexibility, telecommuting and time off.

Tell us about actions you have adopted to meet project goals and still accommodate team members' work-life balance needs.

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Tue, 22 May 2012 15:25:00 -0700 Overcoming a Significant Age Difference http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/overcoming-a-significant-age-difference http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/overcoming-a-significant-age-difference

As a project management professional for 20 years, I've managed IT projects in a variety of industries and regions, including North America, Latin America and Europe. Most of the projects were regional or global, and the project teams included members from different nationalities, cultures and generations.

Although complexity was a common denominator in these projects, it wasn't because of technology. It was because the people had what I call the "multi" factor: multinational, multicultural or multigenerational project teams.

The "multi" factor plays an important role in projects, and project managers must be prepared to address team issues related to this phenomenon.

The multigenerational work force has created what I call the "21st Century Organizational Ecosystem." Many organizations may find themselves dealing with generational clashes between a 60-something program manager, a 50-something project manager, a 30-something project team leader and a 20-something project team member. This could just be one facet of this ecosystem.

Project managers should understand the significant age difference among team members at the outset of a project. Age differences will be translated in generational gaps and identifying those gaps at the beginning enables the project manager to discern the preferred communication methods, interpretation of hierarchy and authority, as well as the perception of personal and work time.

In addition to technical skills, project managers must master interpersonal skills in order to analyze situations and interact appropriately, since the project team environment has evolved over the last 10 years a new interpersonal skill is required, not only for project managers but also for team members and stakeholders: multigenerational awareness.

Generations as cultures are based on invisible values, beliefs, attitudes and assumptions created by shared experiences and events. These differ across generations, and each will likely feel or behave differently in the same situation. The lack of cultural awareness may lead to a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the situation.

With the inclusion of Generation Y to the workplace will experience a significant age difference. As the children of baby boomers, Generation Y may not always fit the behavior you see in many organizations, but that shouldn't impede how you leverage their talents and competences when working as team members on a project.

These 20-something new graduates, or "millennials," have lived in a technologically ubiquitous world. They've always been recognized independently of their abilities and have mastered virtual collaboration skills.

Their attraction to technology may cause some project managers to find it challenging to communicate with millennials who don't follow traditional business formalities. For example, those that favor sending task and project status via text message rather than standard report templates.

In the project environment, millennials are closer in temperament and outlook to baby boomers. They look for smart mentors who don't talk down to them. When these types of relationships mature, boomers will show millennials how their wants can align with an organization's needs.

Millennials bring much to project environment: the ability to rapidly adapt to change, the ease with which they embrace diversity and a strong collaborative spirit. They've grown up in a changing and diverse world and have mastered many abilities that are important to projects.

Leading a multigenerational project team can be like riding a roller coaster or a day at the beach. It depends on how quickly project managers can enhance their multigenerational behaviors and values to creating the synergy required to have a successful project team.

How have you experienced the multigenerational factor in project teams? How has working with different generations affected your projects?

 

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Sun, 20 May 2012 07:54:00 -0700 Managing Multicultural Teams http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/managing-multicultural-teams http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/managing-multicultural-teams


Having the opportunity to work for a company that operates in more than two hundred countries

Having the opportunity to work for a company that operates in more than two hundred countries and territories and is a global leader in logistics has given me the opportunity to lead large global and regional information-technology projects. While technology made the work complex, the element of culture, both national and organizational, amplified the complexity.

A Global Project

The objectives of my first assignment were to lead the convergence of existing invoicing applications hosted and managed by country IT teams to a centrally managed single platform hosted in one of the regional data centers, and to standardize operations and processes. The new invoicing platform would be used by all countries in the Americas region; changes would follow a formal change-request process.

Although the existing invoicing applications shared core functionality, IT departments in individual companies had customized them by adding nonstandard functions that often did not comply with regional guidelines. This uncontrolled behavior led to new functions and processes that disrupted the standard operations at country and regional levels.

The technical team supporting the countries was challenged by reported incidents that often related to the customized functions, not core functionality. This was a source of conflict between the country IT teams and the technical support team, which many times was unable to address the issue. Business users did not produce invoices on time and their level of satisfaction was low. All this affected country and regional cash flow.

The Americas management board sponsored the project and mandated that all countries stop using any feature or function not aligned with the regional invoicing standards.

The Project Team

The project team consisted of stakeholders, the deployment team, and a technical support team. Stakeholders were the permanent regional management board and rotating country officials, including general manager, finance officer, and IT officer, who joined when the new platform was deployed in their particular country. The core deployment team was the same from project inception through completion and consisted of a project manager, technical-support team lead, and subject-matter experts in technology and invoicing. The rotating team members included country resources, both technical and end users. The technical support team, remotely located in Asia, supported day-to-day operation during the Americas business hours.

During team formation, team management became complex as some stakeholders and members of the deployment team changed when a new deployment started. New members came on board and others departed as the deployment in their countries was completed. I had to understand how to integrate new members into the team smoothly, convincing them to accept change and promptly collaborate with the project.

I learned that I needed to develop cultural competencies to manage the project team effectively and establish connections with team members when they came on board. A kick-off meeting to explain the purpose and benefits of the project helped establish the bond between new team members and the project. The most important part of connecting was stressing the importance of their roles and how their local experience would enrich the project, as this created a sense of belonging that translated into engagement. But the connection was strengthened by understanding and respecting the different communication styles and preferences of the national cultures involved.

There are many books about national cultures, but few resources explain how to deal with national cultures in project teams. While attending project management congresses, I was able to connect with other project management professionals who had faced similar challenges and learn from their experiences. I also learned from my own mistakes. During my first visit to Asia, I met with the technical-support team lead and his team and inadvertently broke the local meeting protocol when I started asking direct questions of team members. After catching the nonverbal cues of team members that showed they were asking the team lead for permission to answer, I switched to directing questions to the lead. He then selected the person to answer the question. At the end of the meeting, I apologized to the team lead and team members for my oversight and made it clear that my intention was not to make them uncomfortable or violate local meeting standards. I quickly shared what I learned with the rest of the deployment team.

Speaking foreign languages is a must in a global project environment, but language skill alone does not make a cross-cultural expert. It is necessary to understand other cultures’ values, beliefs, and communication preferences. Knowing how they manage and resolve conflict is essential, for obvious reasons.

During my first visit to Asia, I met with the technical-support team lead and his team and inadvertently broke the local meeting protocol when I started asking direct questions of team members.

It is also important to understand your own culture’s norms and behaviors. That knowledge helps guard against interpreting other cultures’ behaviors in terms of your own unexamined expectations. Reflecting on your own culture helps you understand and interpret why people from other cultures act the way they do.

With those recommendations in mind, I looked for ways to improve my cultural awareness in order to better understand my team members. As the project progressed and my cultural awareness improved, my connection with international team members became closer and more robust. When I had to spend more than two weeks in a country, I usually spent my weekends visiting popular spots where locals met: restaurants, farmers’ markets, coffee shops, and occasional sporting events where I observed people’s customs, traditions, and behaviors. My observations in those settings helped answer my questions about culture. When in doubt, I asked questions either of the locals or my colleagues.

Intracompany Networking

I often met with country management boards during the course of the project; these meetings offered good opportunities to establish long-lasting business relationships. I learned the importance of doing “my homework,” gathering all the relevant information prior to any meeting and knowing the audience in advance. Having established strong relationships in the initial phase of the project helped me get insight into country officials from people who had already dealt with them. Knowing the preferences and sometimes the opinions of a country’s management board about the project helped me to build the right deployment strategy and know what to expect from meetings.

In every meeting with country management boards, my team and I wore business attire and arrived on time. Board members arrived gradually and the general manager usually arrived late, demonstrating his status. The meeting started with preliminary discussions that helped build rapport. Deployment discussions occurred only after rapport was established. Usually, the first meeting exceeded the original allotted time and a second meeting was required to make the final decisions.

In this kind of project, it is important to have a well-defined circle of people who can influence the outcome. It can be like having “invisible” team members who support important functions and contribute to project performance.

Relationships should span all levels of the organization and not be limited to the higher ranks. Establishing a good relationship with users gives you feedback regarding the operation of the application and how it can be enhanced. For instance, Costa Rican users helped solve a common problem: end-of-day activities that involved several steps that required constant attention and, often, work after regular business hours. They suggested assessing the feasibility of automating these tasks. The assessment was positive and the tasks were automated, enabling Costa Rica and the other countries to avoid overtime payment.

A New Project Manager’s Role

In an environment where organizations depend on global projects for benefits that contribute to strategic objectives, the project management professional needs to explore new ways to lead, execute, and deliver projects supported by dispersed and diverse teams. Technical expertise is not enough. Project managers must adopt a business-oriented approach and cultural awareness and other soft skills. The most important knowledge and skills include the following:

  • Strategic Management. Understanding an organization’s strategy will provide the backdrop for future assignments and an understanding of project selection criteria. Only projects that help the organization fulfill its intended purpose should be selected.
  • Mindful Communication. Communication is crucial to project success. Communication needs to be customized to the specific cultures involved in a diverse project team. Good communication influences and inspires project teams and helps build strong relationships across the organization.
  • Adaptability. New leadership styles that fit the global project are required when working with diverse and dispersed teams located across time zones.
  • Resilience. Realigning or repairing projects facing unexpected hardship because of miscommunication and problematic behaviors as well as cross-cultural issues and conflicts will be a regular part of the project manager’s task.
  • Transparency. Adherence to an organization’s values and culture as well as professional codes of ethics is mandatory in global projects. The state of the global project needs to be shared promptly with relevant parties whether the project is in good shape or facing hardships.

In this new role, the project manager will turn into a perennial learner striving toward excellence, a great communicator, and a business partner who ensures that projects will produce the benefits the organization is seeking.

Key Questions

  • As a global project manager, how do you deal with cultural issues in your project team?
  • What is your strategy to deal with conflict in a cross-cultural team?
  • Do you enjoy the challenge of being a global project manager?

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Wed, 01 Jun 2011 18:46:00 -0700 Cultural Competence http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/55230941 http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/55230941

The magazine  "Strategic Diversity & Inclusion Management" published the article co-authored by Mercedes Martin & Billy Vaughn in 2007 where cultural competence was discussed.

"Cultural competence refers to an ability to interact effectively with people of different cultures. Cultural competence comprises four components: (a) Awareness of one's own cultural worldview, (b) Attitude towards cultural differences, (c) Knowledge of different cultural practices and worldviews, and (d) cross-cultural skills. Developing cultural competence results in an ability to understand, communicate with, and effectively interact with people across cultures."

As projects reach globalization, culture plays a critical role during the project execution. In our role as project managers, the cultural risk needs to be identified as well as its associated mitigation plan. Developing cross cultural competences in today's world is a must and should include the understanding and adapting to different, communication properly across cultures and avoiding stereotypes. 

Project managers should prepare in advance and know the cultural environment that they will be facing to avoid odd situations.

In recent weeks. President Barack Obama suffered an awkward moment during a banquet at Buckingham Palace when he broke royal protocol by speaking over the national anthem. President Obama has been criticized by many TV talk shows and news anchors across the United States and perhaps around the world.

This is a good lesson for those project managers leading global teams who still doubt the usefulness of the cultural competence.

 

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Sat, 23 Oct 2010 17:46:00 -0700 Managing a Multicultural Team - Part 2 http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/managing-a-multicultural-team-part-2 http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/managing-a-multicultural-team-part-2

Haptics studies the physical contact in nonverbal communications.
For humans touch is an extremely important sense since it provides information about surfaces and textures and is an important component of nonverbal communications in interpersonal relationships.
Touching varies in cultures and range from low/moderate to high contact cultures (i.e. Latin countries are high contact)
Not any area of the body can be touched and this also varies depending on the culture. It's common to identify non vulnerable body parts (NVBP) and vulnerable body parts, which would be inappropriate to touch in any social setting.
In this segment the call center manager wonders why he cannot "connect" with his team.
Is appropriate for him touch his team members in the office environment?
Is appropriate to keep his "American office environment" behavior with his Indian team mates?
Check the video and decide.

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Sat, 23 Oct 2010 17:26:00 -0700 Managing a Multicultural Team - Part 1 http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/managing-a-multicultural-team-part-1 http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/managing-a-multicultural-team-part-1

NBC is broadcasting the sitcom "Outsourced" in which an American call center manager is transferred to India to run the call center. 
The new manager's cultural intelligence is very low and he does not know how to approach his new team formed by locals from different geographic areas from India. 
In the sitcom some cultural situations are shown and due to the lack of cultural background may seem funny but this is a real issue that project managers face when managing a multicultural team.

Note the call center manager's "first impression" of India and how he greets the call center team members. In some cultures the "touching" for some cultures may be misunderstood and may be a source of conflict.

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Fri, 22 Oct 2010 18:02:00 -0700 Project Management Meets the World http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/project-management-meets-the-world http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/project-management-meets-the-world

In the last four weeks I had the opportunity to attend two PMI congresses. One was the 5th Central American and Caribbean Project Management Congress held in San Jose Costa Rica and the PMI Global Congress 2010 – North America.

In both congresses, I had the opportunity to interact with project management professionals from different latitudes and continents. I tried to learn from those interactions and identify the personality treats which set a difference for the project management professionals from around the world.

We manage projects, follow project management guidelines and apply methodologies to their day to day work. In a way we “play by the book”. But in a multicultural environment the project manager professional needs to adapt because an expression, a word or a gesture can be interpreted in multiple ways.

Interacting with project managers I was able to identify different communication styles which were tied to their cultural background among them:  different ways of greeting each other, table manners, personal space, perception of time and many others. All this elements of communication have a great impact on the project execution.

 Multicultural teams should pay particular attention to the risk of miscommunication. Recommendations to the XXI century project managers are described in the article http://bit.ly/9gmJdP.

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Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:01:00 -0700 The Risk of Miscommunication in a Global Project Team http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/the-risk-of-miscommunication-in-a-global-proj http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/the-risk-of-miscommunication-in-a-global-proj

The Risk of Miscommunication in a Global Project Team

by Jamie B. Gelbtuch, MBA, PMP, and Conrado Morlan, PMP, PgMP

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8:30 a.m. Members of your global project team are all in town and you arrive at your office for the 9:00 a.m. meeting, which by your U.S. standards should begin promptly at 8:55 a.m.

Agenda? Check. Technology working? Check. Breakfast on its way? Check.

At 8:50 a.m., you head to the meeting room and find Lucy, who arrived five minutes earlier and is casually preparing with her feet up on the table, but nonetheless ready to go.

8:55 a.m. Vijaykumar from India, Abdul Azim from the Middle East, and Masao from Japan arrive engrossed in a conversation that you cannot really understand due to the different English accents.

It’s 8:59 a.m (you are already four minutes behind schedule, you think to yourself) and Fatima from Brazil arrives.

In what seems like an eternity, 20 minutes pass, and you receive a phone call from reception asking permission to allow your last colleague Iván, from Argentina, permission to come upstairs.

Before the meeting even begins, the obvious question starts to percolate in your head: How will this team finish the project on time when they cannot even agree on the meaning of “9:00 a.m.”?

Project managers should count risk identification and prevention among their most important activities. In a global project context, risk management becomes more complex. Multicultural teams should pay particular attention to the risk of miscommunication.

Here are three ways to mitigate this risk:

Timing is everything
For some cultures, time is money, and each minute can be assigned a value of loss or gain. Other cultures are more comfortable with less-structured senses of time.

The realities of life across the world impact how people’s time is used: Traffic makes arriving on time a near-impossibility in one location, but efficient transportation networks make that a non-issue in another.

It is essential to be cognizant of other cultures’ theoretical views and daily realties concerning time. As a project leader, you need to suspend judgment when the members of your project team seem to be operating not only across different time zones, but also different time realities.

Is that a “yes – yes” or a “yes – no”?
 When lacking the advantage of a shared language, a common tactic is to boil communications down to simplistic levels, often resulting in an excessive amount of yes/no questions. However, many cultures, in order to avoid conflict, tend to use a “yes” response to indicate that they hear you, even when the answer to the question is “no.”

The “yes” may be accompanied by subtle contextual cues (tone of voice/silence, eye contact/avoidance, facial expressions) that indicate that it is, in fact, a “no.” Keep yes/no questions to a minimum and opt for more open-ended questions instead.

“You can say you to me”
There is a famous account of former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl meeting the late U.S. President Ronald Reagan for the first time and proclaiming, “You can say you to me.”

In order to understand the humor of this statement, consider that many languages distinguish between formal and informal words, titles and grammatical constructions for “you.” Chancellor Kohl was implying a friendly relationship and demonstrating it through the “informal you” that gets lost in translation to English—where there is only one “you.” 

While learning the language of every colleague is neither a viable option nor a necessity for most, knowing whether a language includes elements such as this will provide insight into how that person might view working relationships with others.

Today's project managers need to not only focus on how to mitigate risks associated with project requirements, but also the risk of miscommunicating within the global project team. As Einstein said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

As part of the plan for your next project that includes a global team, integrate a cultural awareness component to mitigate communication risks stemming from different cultural attitudes, experiences and behaviors. If you treat the risk of miscommunication in your project as "one size fits all", you might soon find yourself without a project to manage.

Jamie B. Gelbtuch, MBA, PMPJamie B. Gelbtuch, MBA, PMP, is founder and principal consultant of Cultural Mixology, which designs, delivers and facilitates cross-cultural and language training programs in academic, business, and expatriate environments. She is fluent in English, Spanish and French, with a working knowledge of Portuguese. She has particular expertise in working with Latin American cultures and French-speaking countries. For questions, comments, or feedback, please contact Ms. Gelbtuch.

 

Conrado Morlan, PMP, PgMPConrado Morlan, PMP, PgMP, is the regional program delivery director at the global market leader of the international express and logistics industry. He has more than 15 years of experience managing programs in the Americas, Europe and Asia and has led multigenerational and multicultural project teams. He is a contributor to INyES Latino and thesmartpms blog as well as an avid PMI volunteer. For questions, comments or your feedback, please contact Mr. Morlan.

 

Project managers should count risk identification and prevention among their most important activities. In a global project context, risk management becomes more complex. Multicultural teams should pay particular attention to the risk of miscommunication.

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Sun, 17 Oct 2010 12:18:00 -0700 Time Constrains, Schedule and Other Issues Impacting Projects #pmot #pmp #pm #leadership http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/time-constrains-schedule-and-other-issues-imp http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/time-constrains-schedule-and-other-issues-imp

Project Management professionals still consider meeting the schedule as one of the critical success factors of their projects. Although meeting the schedule is important, nowadays projects may be considered successful if they bring the expected incremental benefits to the community, employees and the organization that pay for the proyect. 

In a global team, the concept of time may differ and the "interpretation" of the schedule may vary from country to country. Among it's main functions project managers need to consider the cultural factor in their project teams to ensure that milestones will be completed as planned.

How would you deal with a team member in which his/hers language or dialect there is no words to describe the future? Would this be a roadblock for your project? Phil Zimbardo describes on his video "The secret Powers of Time" the different concepts of time across different geographies and religions views.

This video is a must for all those project manager that have not consider the time perception impact on their projects teams.  

Enjoy!!

 

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Wed, 13 Oct 2010 20:58:00 -0700 PMI Global Congress 2010-North America "A Taste of Washington" #pminac http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/pmi-global-congress-2010-north-america-a-tast http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/pmi-global-congress-2010-north-america-a-tast

Project Management professionals want to have fun too!!!

The Monday evening networking evening "A Taste of Washington" was the perfect opportunity to network, relax and have some fun with colleagues from around the world.

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