Eyes & Ears: The PM’s Power Tools
Project management tools are abundant. It's easy to find tools for scheduling, team management, project coordination, risk management, and testing control. But the ultimate project management power tool doesn’t need a software license…it’s using your eyes and ears. Being a keen listener and observer can help discover perspectives on the project that aren’t obvious, including:
Hidden problems or opportunities. While the purpose of many projects is well understood, others can have unstated objectives. The PM who listens carefully can hear hints for when this is the case. An example is hearing vague statements like “that will clear things up” where the things ‘needing to be cleared up’ aren’t shared. You might also hear people who are uncomfortable with change refer to keeping the current process when, in fact, new processes would generate improvement.
Senior stakeholder conflicts. Projects can create opportunities for some business areas while creating perceived impacts on others. Listening to stakeholders carefully can reveal conflicts about impacts that aren’t being discussed. Often taking the form of lukewarm endorsements, probing to determine underlying concerns can bring these conflicts to the surface. The resulting discussions can save time and reduce tension later in the project lifecycle.
The project’s mood. Project pathways are rarely linear. Scope changes, issues, resource adjustments, and business pressures can change how stakeholders feel about the project. Because they aren’t always verbalized, listening and watching for behavior changes can reveal these concerns. Enthusiastic participants in meetings can become more reserved, or people who are excited about task completions change their focus to wanting to understand plans in the future. Noting and understanding what’s behind these behavioral changes can help the project manager and sponsor act to restore confidence in the project.
Detecting unspoken fears - I once worked with an outstanding sponsor with an obstacle to overcome. His manager was tough to reason with, affecting his actions as a sponsor. While he would agree that an action was reasonable, he often wasn’t sure he could defend that action to his manager. When facing this situation, his vocabulary would change. By detecting this behavior change, the project team provided extra status details to help our sponsor justify alternatives presented to the difficult senior manager. Listening carefully to pick up fears helped support the sponsor and move the project forward.
New Course
I have been so excited about the release of this course that Christina Charenkova and I have put together. AI-Powered Agile: Strategies for Modern Project Managers
Technology in the age of AI is advancing so quickly it’s hard to keep up. That’s why incorporating agile methods on a project can be so valuable in all the right ways—helping you deliver better, faster, more effective outcomes and boosting engagement across teams. In this course, instructors Bob McGannon and Christina Charenkova show you how to leverage AI and agile in tandem to address and manage agile delivery, team construction, the agile mindset, organizational structures, and successful organizational change. From requirements gathering, staffing a team, and running retrospectives, to ensuring your team has the right skill sets and collaborative tools, this course is ideal for project managers and team leaders who are interested in learning how to integrate the power of agile and AI, using AI-driven strategies for organizational change management.
Check it out! AI-Powered Agile: Strategies for Modern Project Managers
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Additional thoughts can be found in my project management and outsourcing classes on LinkedIn Learning, including:
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This article is part of Bob’s Reflections newsletter series, which discusses project management, outsourcing, and “intelligent disobedience”, a leadership approach. If you want more of this content, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article is posted.
Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library or check out https://intelligentdisobedience.com/
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