Systematic desensitization (Part II)

Developing high-performance teams

at PMI Croatia Chapter PMI Forum 2024 November 13-15th, Zagreb

What's going on?

ROM is going on. Return on Management, as professors Robert Simons and Antonio Davila called it in their article: https://hbr.org/1998/01/how-high-is-your-return-on-management. They defined ROM as “productive organizational energy released” divided by “management?time and attention invested.” And it doesn’t matter whether we talk about general management or project management. The focus is on assessing management effectiveness and its impact on organizational or project performance. In thermodynamics for dummies, we would be talking about exergy which represents how much work can be extracted from a manager as an energy source and anergy, waste energy that can’t be converted into manager’s useful (productive) work.

What's it all about?

It’s about triage. The term commonly used in emergency care, to determine which patients need immediate attention and which can wait for treatment. It’s about your bandwidth and we’ll divide it into your cognitive and your emotional bandwidth. The first one refers to your ability to process and manage information, solve problems, and think critically. The second one to your capacity to manage emotions, both your own and people around you. And both are under ‘constant attack’ from you and your environment, eating away your attention, working memory, speed, and agility as well as your emotional regulation and resilience. And it’s about opportunity costs when you direct your attention, your bandwidth towards “non-urgent care”. The value or benefits of the next best alternative can be so high that you must become aware of your decision-making process.

What's next?

Look, I am all about the people. That’s what I do. I mentor, coach, train, educate, and facilitate learning. My job is to cut the branch on which I am sitting in as little time as possible. If mentees continue to come with leading people conundrums, I failed to equip them for their journey of development. You have so many other responsibilities that you just can’t afford to carry your people issues in your mind all the time. Also, it’s not fair to you and you not taking care of your own well-being. So, understand your ‘mental triage’. Which business and people problems do you see as an immediate care, which as an urgent care, and which as non-urgent? Would your peers agree with you? If not, ‘back to the board’ please. When you finish this, we’ll move on to your “management?time and attention invested.”