What is Excellence in Leadership?

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The leadership theme continues — mainly because I attended the 2012 PMI Mile Hi Spring Symposium, whose theme was “Leadership: Winning strategies for achieving project success.” I didn’t yawn once, not even after the great lunch buffet. In fact, I got goose bumps a couple of times.

Pat Williams, Senior VP for the Orlando Magic, gave an inspiring keynote speech about leadership based on his book, Leadership Excellence: The Seven Sides of Leadership in the 21st Century. Although I can take or leave watching professional sports, I admire performers of all ilk — from actors to Cirque du Soleil acrobats to professional athletes. These folks have to perform their best no matter whether they’re injured, didn’t get enough sleep, or face crises in their lives. In team sports as in projects, the team has to perform as a, um, team and that means someone has to lead.

Now, I’m pretty good at getting myself motivated, unstuck, out of ruts, past obstacles. Which is pretty important for someone who’s self-employed. I have had some success motivating teams as I mentioned in an earlier post. However, I am in awe of leaders who can inspire teams to beat overwhelming odds, come back from demoralizing setbacks, and achieve more than they even dreamed possible. I’m getting goose bumps just thinking about it.

So I thought I’d summarize what Mr. Williams says are the seven things that leaders in the 21st century must do to excel.

What are these characteristics of leadership excellence?

1. Vision. No surprise there. What is surprising is how often vision is missing. Vision helps everyone focus. It gives you energy, enthusiasm, and passion for the project at hand. Vision helps you finish, because you know what you’re trying to achieve.

2. Communication. A leader doesn’t have an ice cube’s chance in hell of succeeding if he or she doesn’t communicate well with everyone involved. One of Mr. Williams recommendations is a favorite of mine: Speak to an audience in their language. (If I want my dog Maia to do something, I better be talking duck jerky.) Be clear, concise, and correct. Leaders must be motivational and inspirational. They communicate optimism and hope.

3. People skills. Some people think leaders are in charge. In reality, leaders work for the teams they lead. Leaders must be visible and available. They listen, ask questions, and do what they must to empower people to deliver.

4. Character. Integrity and honesty are crucial. Leaders with character build up their emotional bank accounts (a Stephen Covey concept) with their people. When the going gets tough, teams are willing to work through the issues. Another aspect of character is humility. To me, this links to the idea that leaders work for their teams. Excellent leaders make sure their teams shine.

5. Competence. Although leaders are humble, they must be good at what they do. They build teams, solve problems, sell themselves, and sell their ideas. They are life-long teachers and– so they don’t run out of material– are also life-long learners. Mr. Williams talked about being a life-long reader. He talked about how much reading you can do simply by reading an hour a day.

6. Boldness. Lots of people make decisions. Leaders make the best decisions they can and don’t look back.

7. A serving heart. Leaders gave authority in order to serve. You’ve heard the saying “Power corrupts.” Excellent leaders have power, but don’t fall into using if for their personal gain. They use it to achieve others’ goals, to better the world around them.

Learning Lessons on Leadership

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The first thing I think of when I think about leadership: I was a bad employee. I wasn’t a bad employee because I did bad work. On the contrary, I did great work and customers loved me. But I always had problems with the management in the companies I worked for. I was told I had a bad attitude — and I did. (Since I’m a terrible follower, I had better learn to be a good leader.) Then, I read Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and realized the source of my “problems.” Many (not all) of the managers and executives I knew didn’t think win-win. They focused on making sales and making money, not on making sure customers got what they needed. Covey talked about treating employees the way you want them to treat customers and I typically don’t see that happening in companies either.

A long story shortened, I have had my own business since 1997. When I quit, a good friend said “Well, now, your boss is an *$$hole, but at least you know what to do about it.” He was right. But I digress.

I used a quote on leadership from Dwight Eisenhower in my book, Successful Project Management:

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

How do you get people to do something you want because they want to? My two cents, give them something to believe in: a mission, if you will.

Not long before I quit to start my company, I was promoted to manage a customer support group. Making the company a success wasn’t exactly something I could believe in. But making our customers successful so they would remain our customers was. So, without really thinking about it, I worked on a win-win with customers and my team to deliver a win for the company.

I fought for training and raises for my people. My previously demoralized team became re-energized and customer support improved. As it turns out, the training also helped the members of my team keep their jobs or find new ones. And the raises set them up to obtain higher salaries at their new jobs. The company didn’t survive, but I couldn’t do anything to turn that around. Having something to believe in seems to work.

Jumping ahead to my writing career: It is a success, but my leadership style hasn’t been. My standards are very high. My clients love my work. But I have taken to warning potential co-workers about my great expectations. Pushing too hard reminds me of another great Eisenhower quote:

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

I still have something to believe in: providing engaging, clear guidance and instruction to my readers. So why have I failed to lead people who work with me on writing projects? My first thought is deadlines. Books, articles, and other writing projects are rife with tough deadlines. But all projects have deadlines. With my writing, I willingly flog myself to meet deadlines because I’m the one who accepts them. (See what my friend meant about my boss being an *$$hole?) I turn to other people for help only when I have deadlines I can’t possibly achieve by myself — when I’m stressed, when I’m at my least nurturing. It isn’t pretty.

I won’t change my high expectations. But instead of beating people over the head with them, I’ll set those expectations as a goal. I’ll use projects with less challenging deadlines as a training ground. That way, I have the time to train, guide, coach, and support to my teammates, just as the end result is a book or course that provides training, guidance, coaching, and support to my readers.

Project Conference 2012: Drinking from the Firehose

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drinking from the fire hoseMy first experience with  “drinking from a fire hose” was in college. The three days I spent in Phoenix at Project Conference 2012 brought back those memories. For me, the conference was a whirlwind of attending presentations, meeting exhibitors, catching up with old friends, and meeting new ones. I had good intentions of blogging during the conference, but each night when I got back to my room, I was so exhausted that the pillow won out. Here’s my PC12 memoir:

Monday: Travel ran as if it were managed by a project manager with unlimited resources, Project Server, and an administrator with a Starbucks IV hookup. My flight landed early and I hopped on the light rail right to the convention center just in time for the Microsoft Project Users Group reception.

The MPUG award presentation with Matt Davis and John Riopel from MPUG Project Talk and Ludovic Hauduc, GM of the Microsoft Project business unit, kicked things off perfectly. When I chatted with Matt and John during the conference, they boasted that they could answer any Project question. We’ll have to see about that. The MPUG event was the catalyst for me to meet one of the award winners, Gerald Leonard, who presented a session on critical chain project management. I’m a big fan of critical chain and the theory of constraints and now I’m psyched to try out ProChain, an add-in for Microsoft Project that offers critical chain features.

Gantthead’s welcome reception was a few hours of sipping cocktails, nibbling tasty snacks, and swapping business cards…..uh, doh! I knew I forgot something.

Tuesday: I walked over to the convention center in unseasonably cool air. Lucky me! A quick breakfast and caffeination and I was ready for the conference to begin. By the end of the opening keynote, I was pretty jazzed and it wasn’t the coffee talking.

christopheThe presentations and demos that Microsoft delivered during the Tuesday and Wednesday keynotes were awesome. As a former demo jockey, I know how tough it is to design demos that make people crave your products and then have those demos actually work — with one glitch left in to prove that the demo’s running in real time. The Microsoft folks did all that. I collaborate with a lot of people and I thought I was geekily adept with my collaboration tools. After I saw Keshav Puttaswamy, Christophe Feissinger, and a few others share info from Project to Project Web App to Visio to OneNote to Office 365 from desktop to laptop to Windows tablet to Windows phone to — um, I don’t even remember the rest — I’m ready to play and share well with others. I was also impressed that Microsoft even did a demo with an iPhone! Boy, have times changed.

clouseauChristophe put up with some good-natured razzing over his moustache. Ludo compared it to The Artist, but I had hoped Christophe would slip into an Inspector Clouseau persona.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday:

It was tough to choose which presentations to attend. The content and quality were overwhelmingly good. Danny Smith from Marquette University talked about project portfolio management that works. Marquette has set up a sweet-sounding environment. However, Danny’s unflappable character seems like it would help any system run smoothly. (I also liked his comment about how shiny things pull focus away from the important stuff. So true.)

Mary Ellen Kliethermes and Sharon Harness from Ameren talked about how to implement Project Server with little or no consulting money. The bottom line on that presentation: use virtual servers (VMWare) to eliminate hardware cost, tackle the implementation in chunks to see what does or doesn’t work, and be prepared to really work at it.

Speaking of Project Server and project portfolio management, hosted Project Server in the cloud, in some cases, pre-built environments should make this technology more accessible to organizations. Lots of companies don’t have the hardware, people, or money to put together their own Project Server environment. Hosted systems offered by Project Hosts, Bemo, or Shar;’kPro could be the answer. For example, subscribe for the length of time and number of users you need; or get a ready-made configuration; or expand without having to line up more hardware, software, or system administrators.

On Wednesday I enjoyed a half hour of fame signing books for a long line of patient fans. Because my book partner, Teresa Stover, couldn’t attend, I signed my book, Successful Project Management, and Teresa’s Microsoft Project 2010 Inside Out. I also signed a few copies of Your Project Management Coach, a book co-authored by Teresa and me and published by Wiley. (Thanks to Microsoft for putting the book signing together.) During my book signing slot, I was lucky enough to finally meet Carl Chatfield in person. Carl’s and my books, Project Step By Step and On Time! On Track! On Target!, were paired for several years as a project management kit. His Step by Step book is one of my favorites. People told me he is recommending my updated and improved edition, Successful Project Management. Thanks Carl!

That close encounter with Carl spawned an idea. I felt honored to have people stand in line to shake my hand. But several other of my favorite Project authors were present, so I did the paparazzi thing and snagged some pictures with yours truly. Sadly, the photo with Eric Verzuh of Fast Forward MBA in Project Management fame was too blurry to include.

eric_uHowever, here I am with Eric Uyttewaal who wrote Forecast Scheduling, a great book on scheduling with Project. I did catch up with Gary Chevetz and Dale Howard from ProjectExperts (but didn’t remember to take a picture). And I also finally met Larry Christofaro in person. He has written some incredible articles over the years.

Now I’m home and back to work. Since you’re reading this post, I obviously finished my #1 priority. Next up is emailing and sending LinkedIn invitations to the people whose business cards I gathered at the conference. (Bonnie’s project management tip of the day: If you promise to do something for someone, do it!)

From Peep Show to Full Monty

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I’ve never been to a peep show. Really. But I imagine they’re a lot like authoring a book (or other projects for that matter).

A peep at a book coverOf course, a peep show costs a few bucks whereas the price I pay to write a book is hundreds of hours of my life and a savage brain pummeling. During the “show” I get unsatisfying looks at the work in progress. A paragraph here. A screenshot there. (And those are not even close to as titillating as a scantily clad person.)

As time goes on, the view improves, or, at least with some projects, becomes clearer. (Sometimes, progress and results don’t quite live up to expectations, which means some course correction is in order.) For a book, the page proofs begin to expose what the final book will really look like. When I see the cover art from the graphics folks, I begin to get excited. That cover art means the book (and my torment) is almost over.

One day, I head out to my driveway and find a box from my publisher sitting on the steps. I rip open the cardboard box, ruffle through the packing material, and extract a copy. Finally, the book version of the full monty! I turn the book this way and that to appreciate the view from all angles. I flip through the pages. As quickly as it appeared, the exhilaration goes away. About fifteen seconds have passed. I stow the box of books, put a copy on the book shelf with the other books I’ve written, and get on with the next thing.

That isn’t the end of the story–or the project. I document the lessons I learned so things go better the next time. And I deposit the final advance payment to wrap up the pesky financial details. A book project delivers a product, the printed book. Like other product-oriented projects, the final product triggers a handoff from me to… me. I go from book writing to book marketing, which is a new project.

From time to time, readers email questions. I might get the satisfaction of hearing how much they like the book. I get to answer whatever question is on the table and enjoy the feeling of helping someone, which is a fulfilling reminder of the goal of the book project that began so long ago.