Art Petty on Management

Art Petty on Management Has Changed and Moved

I don't like to do things small or simple, so in what I sincerely hope is the absolute last time I put myself and you through this, I have moved and changed the name of my blog. 

You will now find me at www.artpetty.com and the new name of the blog is Management Excellence.

As I'm writing this and realizing that most people that have moved blogs have basically had to start over from zero to build traffic, this seems like taking two steps in the wrong direction.  However, sometimes you have to step back to grow, and I've got some compelling reasons for making the move, including:

• Integrating my former corporate web site and my blog under one content management system.

• Creating a simpler url (artpetty.com...12 characters versus the almost 40 for this site).

• Gaining the tools and the control through a hosted blog so that I can easily add planned podcasts, webcasts, forums and other tools that I will roll out this year.

• Aligning my blog's name: Management Excellence with my personal mission to promote high performance, great leadership and the pursuit of excellence in business.  

All of the posts and hopefully, all of the comments have been moved to the new site, so 14 months,  160 plus essays and a tremendous number of thoughtful comments on best practices in leadership and strategy, project management, product management and marketing and sales, all remain part of the library. 

For those of you that subscribe via your favorite Reader or happen across this post via Search, please take the opportunity to visit the new Management Excellence site and click on the site's feed.  And don't forget to check out some of the new tools, including the live polls, free down-loadable tools and links and references to many other great resources.

Thanks so much for reading and referencing Art Petty on Management, and I hope to earn your confidence many times over in my new home at the Management Excellence blog!

Improve Strategy and Execution Planning with Project Management Practices

I’ve danced with this topic before (Struggling with Strategy? Think Project Management), and the more experience that I gain helping clients improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their strategic planning and execution program development activities through project management practices, the more sold I am on the approach.

In my experience, many of the biggest gaffes in strategy and execution planning processes occur because the common-sense steps of the Project Manager are ignored, often because a functional leader or worse yet, an executive is charged with running the project. 

Just a few areas where I’ve observed complete strategy project derailment because good project management practices were ignored:

• The meetings grind down in a never-ending sea of fact-finding, debate and then more debate.

• Instead of focusing on strategic issues, the discussions quickly shift to short-term operational issues.

• Tools are misapplied.

• The deliverables are a powerpoint deck and a bunch of disgruntled participants that realize that they will never get the time that they just wasted back again.

• Insular groups that practice strategic planning like it is a combination of Voodoo and a secret language, complete with a secret handshake for entry into meetings. 

• Ideas are generated, but there is no mechanism to turn them into actions.

• Actions take place but there are no mechanisms to evaluate relative success and gain lessons learned

• A strategy is created but the organization’s employees are not tuned in to the strategy well-enough to understand how to connect their priorities to the strategic objectives of the firm.

• The Voice of the Customer is never heard.

And so on…

Enter the Project Manager armed with skills required to improve the odds of success.  I encourage management teams to treat a strategic planning cycle as a series of projects, and to engage a senior-level project manager to run the process.

Suggestions to Improve Strategy and Execution Program Effectiveness include:

• Creation of a Charter and the assignment of an executive sponsor that is responsible for the success of the initiative.

• Identification of core Strategy Team members, and their responsibilities/accountabilities in the process.

• Development of a clear scope document that defines priorities and deliverables.

• Communication of the Charter and Scope materials by the Executive Sponsor and Project Manager to the broader organization to promote understanding and to gain support for involvement in data gathering and brainstorming as well as future sessions on execution.

• Project Manager working with the core strategy team to define up-front data needs, to help identify the project’s work breakdown structure and to coordinate scheduling and resources for upfront data gathering.

• On-going monitoring of work teams that are handling early phase data gathering, market assessments, customer interviews and competitor analysis.

• Monitoring and control of the project to ensure that it moves relatively smoothly through the phases from definition to data gathering, assessment, options identification, options analysis, options selection and execution program definition.

• Once options are identified and selected, these define logical projects, and the Project Manager and PM team are already in-place to hit the ground running in helping to move ideas into actions.

The Bottom-line for Now

The application of professional project management practices to the strategic planning and execution program development cycles of an organization can eliminate many of the common pitfalls that derail these programs. 

While the Project Manager cannot guarantee that the insights and actions developed during strategy are the right ones, he/she can take away the organizational-risk that so often rears its head to doom the best intended initiatives.  Instead of shooting yourself in both feet while running a footrace, let the Project Manager shoulder the weapon and leave you free to run fast and hard towards creating value for your customers and stakeholders. 

What's A Good Meeting Anyway?

I’ve heard the phrase “We had a good meeting,” or some derivative of it so many times that I’ve lost count.   Whenever I hear this meeting review or it’s ugly stepchild, “We talked about a lot at that meeting,” alarm bells start ringing, my spider sense tingles and I have to resist the sudden urge to scream. 

As best as I can tell, my visceral reaction(s) to “the good meeting” verbiage has a lot to do with the fact that when I politely inquire as to what made it good, I receive wishy-washy, touchy-feely kind of answers like: “ we reached a common understanding,” or, “we got on the same page,” or something else that tells me that there was no point to the meeting. 

With a bit more probing about the meeting outcome, I can usually satisfy my hypothesis that not only was there no point to the meeting and, there was no action-oriented outcome that when realized will move us one step closer to executing on a key strategy.  Last and not least, the “good meeting” vernacular is generally put forth by people that I view as Professional Meeting Attendees.  You know the type…an outlook calendar so full that it’s a lock there’s no time to do any work other than to show up at the next meeting. 

I’ve posted on my perspective about meetings before and offered some reasonable advice for ensuring productivity if you absolutely have to have a meeting.  (See: Leaders Are Your Meetings Straight Out of A Dilbert Comic Strip and How to Improve A Dysfunctional Meeting Culture Without Removing the Chairs.)  While not interested in repeating myself I feel duty bound to raise the flag on this rampant productivity killer that infects so many cultures. 

People grow accustomed to the comfort of the meeting room.  In most cultures, there is little accountability for meeting output, so it is at least in part a paid social experience.  People saunter in, crack jokes, catch up with colleagues and then ten minutes after the hour, the person that called the meeting pulls people to order.  Everyone gets serious for a few minutes, an issue is highlighted and then it is fascinating to watch the meeting masters at work.  A Professional Meeting Attendee knows that if he or she raises some sticky questions everyone will marvel at how on-top-of the issue that they are.  The Pro also knows that a few good questions will ensure that there will need to be a follow-up meeting, thus perpetuating their existence.  It’s Darwinian survival right in front of your eyes. 

The Bottom-Line for Now:

OK, I will end my rave with a few reminders for leaders everywhere:

• Strive to run meetings that have a purpose and a clear, action-oriented outcome.  (Brainstorming meetings are a separate issue..and they still need a purpose.)

• Teach by example with your own meetings.  Your rigor and discipline in managing meetings for productive information exchange and pointed outcome will serve as a model of meeting behavior for your subordinates to follow.

• Show up at the meetings that your subordinates meetings and provide coaching feedback soon after the meeting.  Your goal with the coaching feedback is to elicit behavioral change, so remember that you need to show up again (and again) in the future to monitor and provide feedback on progress.

• High-level executives are some of the biggest abusers of good meeting protocol.  This starts at the top. 

• Always tie meeting topics to strategic objectives.  If you cannot, consider killing the meeting.

• Beware recurring meetings on your calendar.  After a few sessions they tend to degrade.

• Take pride in running great, productive, action-oriented, strategically focused meetings.

• Never ever give up trying to promote effective meeting management!  It's an insidious productivity killer that requires constant vigilance.