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Project Management Skills

Recently I moderated a panel discussion for my local PMI® (Project Management Institute) chapter.  I wanted the questions to be engaging for both the speakers and the audience.  Of course, we started with the prerequisite “Who are you?” and “How did you get here?” questions.  The other questions, I hoped, inspired learning – especially for new project and portfolio managers.

In no particular order, here are the questions the project management panel in Coastal Bend Texas addressed.

Lessons From Failed Projects

Projects fail.  For many different reasons, projects fail.  Product innovation professionals know more about failure than other project managers because there are a lot of uncertainties in new product development (NPD).  The best view, I think, is to treat failure as a learning opportunity.

Projects fail – normally – in several arenas.  Poor planning results in too few resources committed to the project.  Not enough money can result in poor quality outputs.  Not assigning the right people to do the work can result in delays.  Not understanding the final product of the project yields a mismatch between technologies and markets.

Effective project planning requires addressing the triple constraint upfront, regardless of your preferred project management system.  The scope of the project must be achievable, while the budget and timeline (schedule) must align with the stated goals and objectives of the project.  For NPD projects, the scope must also align with the innovation strategy.  (Read more about strategy here.)

Living Life Backwards

Another question for the project management panelists was to think about what they would change in their younger selves if they lived life backwards.  This is a bit of a rift on my presentation to the University of Washington graduate students earlier this year (read more here).  We gain wisdom with years and (hopefully) would advise our younger selves against stupid mistakes.

One area of importance to project managers and portfolio managers is communication.  Wisdom brings clarity to our communications.  Project managers must communicate to several different groups of stakeholders with different needs.  Team members need to know what to do and when.  Some inexperienced team members might need to learn “how” to do certain tasks.   The project management leader serves as a mentor for the team.

Other stakeholders are interested in the overall progress of the project, the money spent, and expected completion.  In product innovation, our customers are involved in testing a product features and marketing collateral.  Yet other stakeholders are internal customers, needing manufacturing specifications and quality standards.  Communicating with each group necessitates a different level of detail.

In addition, communications may be synchronous or asynchronous, meaning some information must be discussed and debated face-to-face while other data can be provided without a lot of explanation.  High performing project managers and portfolio managers utilize the type (synchronous or asynchronous) and format of communications to match the needs of their stakeholders.  This is learned only through wisdom that we gain by experience.

Certification

Finally, another question for the panelists was how their various firms view certification.  Since they were speaking at a PMI meeting, support for the PMP® (Project Management Professional) certification was high.  However, product innovation professionals also benefit from New Product Development Professional (NPDP) certification, which is more encompassing of innovation than PMP.  Learn more here.

My personal belief is that certifications have become almost as important as university degrees.  However, there are a lot of different certifications from which to choose.  What’s important in certification is to have an educational component to validate knowledge and understanding of the field.  Another important component is testing and continuing education.  All industrial fields are continuously changing with emerging best practices.  Having a continuous education component ensures that industry practices overlay academic theories.

Summary

Many project management skills are strategic and relational.  Of course, it’s important to know how to create a balanced and integrated schedule and budget.  But it’s also important to value learning and communication, especially for portfolio managers.  Oftentimes we miss opportunities to learn from failure yet project managers, especially those working on innovation projects, must be willing to learn to grow.

Wishing you all the best in the new year.  Please contact me at info at globalnpsolutions.com if you want to learn more about managing new product development projects.  We are also offering our limited, once per year course on portfolio management – 100 days to Effective Product Portfolio Management.  Learn more here.

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Project Controls in Innovation

Controlling is often a misunderstood management function.  In everyday use, we use the term “controlling” to mean manipulating or limiting other’s behavior.  Yet in engineering management, project management, and new product development (NPD), controlling is an important process that helps the team leader assess the performance of a project and of his or her team. 

Definition of Controlling

Let’s define controlling as follows, consistent with the American Society of Engineering Management (ASEM). 

“A management function of measuring performance and comparing the results with established standards to ensure that the work conforms to requirements and brings a desired outcome.” 

Defined in this way, controlling is a critical function that assures work meets expectations.  If at any time, the project outcomes are not meeting expectations, we make adjustments to bring the product or project work into alignment with the plan. 

Steps in Controlling

There are typically four steps that product and project managers follow in controlling. 

  1. Set a baseline,
  2. Measure performance,
  3. Compare the baseline against performance measures, and
  4. Take corrective action as necessary. 

Set a Baseline

In project management and NPD, setting baselines for performance should be easy.  In reality, however, setting baselines requires substantial planning effort on behalf of the project leader.  The baseline must reflect the best outcome of project planning.  Principles of project management dictate that during the initiation phase, the project leader and team members identify requirements from all project stakeholders.  Gathering and documenting project requirements ensures that stakeholder expectations can be met. 

In innovation projects, customer needs are documented in the PIC (product innovation charter).  During all stages of the structured NPD process, the innovation project team will test customer needs to ensure alignment with the product design.  One way in which to map customer needs to engineering design specs is to use the QFD tool (quality function deployment).  Read more about process design here. 

Measure Performance

In Step 2 of controlling, we measure the performance of engineering and project teams.  Here, both individual and team member performance are assessed as well as the project requirements.  For example, if a new product development project had a customer requirement to increase battery life by 50%, the engineering team would measure all new battery designs against the performance standard.  A new battery with just 20% increase in lifetime would be inadequate, while a battery with a life that is 48% longer is considered a successful technology.  The project is approved when it meets the technical hurdles and would move along in the NPD process. 

image from creative commons with free to share and use

Compare Baseline Against Performance

In Step 3 of controlling, the project leader and project team members assess the project performance by comparing current design elements against the baseline set forth in the project plan.  It is important to ensure that the baseline and product performance requirements are measurable so that this comparison is meaningful.  Objectives are stated in measurable terms and metrics are gathered without difficulty or subject to opinion or interpretation. 

Again, for instance, battery life extension of 50% is measurable.  The initial battery in the current product demonstrates an average of 3-hour life before requiring a recharge.  Sample batteries in lab tests demonstrate 4-hour, 4.2-hours and 4.4-hours.  These data points are easy to compare to the initial product performance level.  The product development and innovation teams strive for measurable goals and objectives to improve customer satisfaction. 

Take Corrective Action

At the heart of the controlling process is the idea that correcting errors early leads to higher quality products and that the development effort will be less expensive overall.  Thus, the final step in the controlling function is to take action based on analysis of the data from Step 3.  In the case where performance matches expectations and baseline plans, no action is required. 

Frequently, controlling will reveal that a project is over-budget and/or behind schedule.  In these situations, the project manager and sponsor must work with the customer to modify the plan.  Some tools are available to help accomplish the work within the required time frame, but these schedule adaptations normally require additional costs (e.g. crashing and compression).  Further, missing the timeline for a new product launch can impact the overall profitability of an innovative new product. 

Controlling Function

In engineering management, project management and new product development, controlling is an important management function.  The four steps in controlling are: (1) set a baseline, (2) measure performance, (3) compare the baseline against performance, and (4) take corrective action as appropriate.  To learn more about the controlling function and other ways to improve new product project execution, you must earn your New Product Development Professional (NPDP) certification.  Check out our training and speaking schedule for innovation and project management here. 

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Innovation Project Scheduling

Time.  It is the only resource for which there is no true price and the only resource that cannot be recovered.  Once we spend a minute, an hour, or a day, it is gone.  We cannot re-use the time or re-purpose it. 

image from creative commons with free to use and share designation

Yet, time is a resource that is often wasted.  Personally, I can waste time by watching television or chasing rabbit trails on the Internet.  On a recent evening, for instance, I watched a re-run of “I Dream of Jeannie” and then spent several minutes looking at the Wikipedia histories of Larry Hagman and Barbara Eden.  While I might guess a trivia question correctly in the future, I probably did not use my time to my highest productive ability. 

Innovation Project activities

Likewise, we do not always use our project time effectively when we develop new products.  Innovation can present a lot of “rabbit trails” from both the technology and market perspectives.  When a lab test looks interesting, organizations often devote all their resources (including time) to duplicating and validating the result.  Similarly, when a focus group gives positive feedback on a feature, our innovation focus narrows, and we dedicate more time to understanding that particular customer need.  In retrospect, these might be the right (or wrong) decisions.  Only time will tell.

Dedicated innovation project resources are the hallmark of a successful new product development (NPD) strategy.  However, a singular focus can lead us to miss alternate approaches or business models.  Not only do we have to be aware of our natural biases as an organization, we also must be aware of competitor actions in the field. 

One way to counter a narrow innovation focus is to conduct parallel product development activities.  Especially in the early phases of NPD project work, innovation teams can – and should – investigate multiple ideas, concepts, and feature sets.  Some key activities in early phase new product development are as follows. 

  • Ideation
  • Concept Trials
  • Customer Shadowing
  • Needs Assessment
  • Strategy Alignment
  • Competitive analysis
  • Prototype Testing
  • Pilot Testing
  • Quality validation
  • Market Tests
  • Performance Verification

Roadmapping

At the highest level, scheduling of innovation activities occurs through roadmapping.  A roadmap is a visual representation of key product development activities and milestones that guide the product innovation team to an expected outcome.  For example, if we know we need to launch a new product at a specific trade show in December, then we can draw a roadmap of activities that will allow us to meet that deadline. 

Example of a Simple Product Roadmap

Backward Pass Scheduling

In formal project management “language,” the term backward pass scheduling is used to describe building a roadmap (or schedule) from the required end date to our current date.  So, if we must have a new product ready in December, we will have to do prototype testing in September.  To have a realistic prototype in September, we will need to have a feature list by July period to have a list of critical features in July, we need to conduct focus groups on different concepts by May.  And that means we need to hold ideation and design thinking workshops in March.  We plot our key innovation activities on the roadmap which gives us a rough schedule for the project. 

Detailed Scheduling

Once we have generated a roadmap of activities for the new product project, we will undertake detailed scheduling.  Software tools are invaluable for both roadmapping and detailed scheduling.  All project development tasks are input along with the required resources (by name and position) and activity duration.  Capacity management is key to success at this stage.  Some tasks include dependencies with other tasks and resources cannot be used twice in the same period.  A typical output of scheduling software is a Gantt chart, which we overlay on the roadmap. 

Innovation Project Scheduling

In this post, we’ve only touched on a few of the important elements in creating an innovation project schedule.  The figure below summarizes these steps.  (Note that monitoring and controlling a project is a separate topic.)

While getting the details right is important, the most crucial element for successful innovation leaders is getting the process right.  This includes understanding customer needs and required innovation activities.  Join me on 22 and 23 April 2021 for the WAGILE Product Development workshop.  In this interactive online class, you will tackle your biggest innovation scheduling challenges, streamline customer feedback processes, and improve speed-to-market.  If you find you are launching ho-hum products too late in a crowded marketplace, you must learn WAGILE now!  Register here.

Learn how to make your innovation process flexible!

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Lessons for Creative Leadership

I love to travel.  I enjoy seeing new places and trying different foods.  It is fun for me to learn what is unique about a city or town.  I also enjoy visiting familiar places – in Seattle, I have a favorite coffee shop and in Phoenix, I must go to a special place for tacos!

Travel incorporates the lessons of creative leadership.  As innovation professionals we trial, test, and enjoy both the new and the familiar.  The three common themes between travel and innovation are:  vision, learning, and decision. 

Vision

When you visit a new place, you see it differently than if it is familiar.  You may notice that street names change every few blocks or that the city has a lot of billboards.  When you are familiar with the town, these elements fade into the background. 

As an innovation leader, you must envision your products and services with fresh eyes.  Imagine that you have never considered buying your own product.  Does the packaging strike you as interesting or is it boring?  Does the product name describe what it does?  Is the product unique or are there lots of competitors? 

A drawback of working within one brand or category is that we become too familiar with our products and services.  We need to see features and benefits as if we’ve never seen the product before.  One way to get a fresh vision for your products and services is through a focus group or lead user group.  Real customers provide the feedback that an internal new product development (NPD) team may miss. 

Learning

And with vision comes learning.  When I first visit a new place, I like to get a road map.  I’m old fashioned and like to have a paper street map.  It gives me the whole view of a town or city instead of turn-by-turn directions.  I get a sense of what is to the north or east, as well as how far away different attractions are. 

But as I walk around for a few hours (or days), I find that I don’t need the map anymore.  I have learned where to turn and how long it takes to get somewhere. 

Innovation leaders also focus on learning – not simply to transfer a vision into the boring and familiar.  Yet, learning as a method of transforming customer needs into features and attributes brings satisfaction to consumers and profits to companies. 

Learning, in innovation, is crucial.  They say that whoever is not innovating is dying.  A harsh statement.  What it means is that successful leaders are constantly identifying needs and pain points while working to resolve them.  It is easier and quicker to navigate without a street map – when the route is familiar.  Our job, as innovation leaders, is to make product selection and use as quick and as easy as possible for our customers. 

Decision

Vision and learning are important, yet without action you don’t go anywhere.  I often daydream about where I want to go on vacation.  I research places on the internet and buy travel books to learn about parks and attractions in a new area.  But, until I buy an airline ticket, I have not committed to the travel.  When I book my air travel, I demonstrate a decision to visit one place over another.  Effective decisions are crucial for innovation leadership.  One arena in which I see a lot of failure in NPD is a failure to make a decision.  Many, low-value projects linger on the books.  These projects consume valuable (and scarce) resources.  Worst, ho-hum projects do not invigorate your customers or your team members. 

The best way to make new product decisions is through portfolio management.  Join me in 2021 for a special hands-on, interactive course to streamline your product innovation portfolio – 100 Days to PPM.  You will learn to make the critically important decisions necessary to compete effectively.  Join as an individual leader or bring your whole team!

The Traveling Innovator

Whether you love to travel (like me), or you’d rather be a hermit, innovation professionals must practice the three critical skills:  vision, learning, and decision.  With vision, you view a product or service from your customer’s perspective.  You learn what is easy, or difficult, for consumers so you can improve new product designs.  And, finally, you act by making prudent and efficient decisions with product portfolio management. 

Don’t forget to register here for 100 Days to Effective Product Portfolio Management.  Space is limited. 

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching.  I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith.   It brings me joy to help you build innovation leaders.  Teresa Jurgens-Kowal is an experienced innovation professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making.  My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator.  Contact me at [email protected] or area code 281 + phone 787-3979 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

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Mixed Skills for Work Today

Watch the short summary (less than 1 minute) and then read the full article below.

At the Fall 2019 AIChE conference for chemical engineers, keynote speaker Matt Sigelman presented the importance of developing and supplementing skills forproduct development and leadership.  He made the distinction of “jobs” as doing tasks while “work” is renting a set of skills.  To succeed in a changing workplace, Sigelman puts forth that we must continue to grow and enhance our skills.  I agree!

What are Skills?

Formal education gives us knowledge and some skills.  As a chemical engineer, I have learned theories of math, chemistry, and physics.  This knowledge is measurable in a quantitative way.  There is a “right” answer to a calculus problem or to balancing heat and energy in a standard chemical stoichiometry. 

Skills we learn in school or with work experience include analytical capability, writing, research, and creativity.  These skills are not necessarily measurable but do differentiate success as innovation leaders.  For example, the demand for team collaboration skills at work is in high demand for at least one-third of jobs today.

Mixed Skills

Sigleman defined “hybrid jobs” as work activities that require both specialized technical skills (e.g. math, chemistry, physics) and critical skills (e.g. people and processes).  Job growth and education experience change at 1-2% per year, but skills change as much as 40% per years.  Successful new product development (NPD) practitioners and product managers must not only maintain current knowledge in their field of specialization but also grow and enhance their leadership skills.  This means learning and practicing sound project management protocols while also adopting and sustaining team development practices.

Today’s most important jobs require mixed skills.  Data scientists cannot be content with analyzing a set of numbers.  They must translate that data into information on which to base technology and market growth activities.  Technical skills must balance against communication and decision-making skills.  New Product Development Professionals (NPDP) use quantitative market data to estimate pricing and market capacity for product innovations.  Yet, it is qualitative interpretation of customer knowledge that leads innovation leaders to product development decisions, profitability, and improved market share.

Building Mixed Skills

Lifelong learning and a commitment to growth are the fuel to build mixed skills for today’s job market.  As noted at the AIChE conference, credential demonstrate expertise and mastery of mixed skills.  Innovation leaders use NPDP certification as a stepping stone for product management career growth illustrating experience with product portfolio management and NPD processes as well as team management and leadership development.

You can learn more about NPDP certification here.  Benchmark your own innovation maturity with the Innovation Health Assessment™.  Take the complimentary Innovation Health Assessment here.  Contact me at [email protected] for more information on developing your skills for a rewarding career in product innovation.

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Changing Innovation Performance

Innovation has a dark side.  While everyone wants to be “more innovative”, new products fail at alarming rates.  When your business is to create new ideas, new technologies, and new markets, failing more than half the time is troubling indeed. 

On the bright side, however, innovation is more accessible today than ever.  Industries share their product development processes openly and companies partner with suppliers, distributors, and even competitors.  We have learned to integrate customers into the development cycle with open innovation and Design Thinking.  How do organizations continue to move forward, making progress with speed-to-market and changing internal performance?

The Purpose for Change

Read on or watch the 20-second summary to learn how you can change your innovation performance.

As senior managers present an argument to increase innovation performance, we have to explain the need for change.  Many people in the organization see only a narrow slice of the business.  R&D professionals, for instance, view their daily work and can see frequent, small gains in knowledge.  Marketers identify new insights from customer focus groups when they are held.  Project management professionals view small successes in meeting deadlines and milestones.  From each individual or functional perspective, things appear okay. 

Leaders inspire innovation and significant performance improvements must first demonstrate that a change is needed.  Teams build cohesion around a common purpose in the threat of competition.  New product development (NPD) teams can accelerate performance in time-to-market by uniting behind a common goal with a tight deadline.  This is especially important for virtual teams. 

Simplify Work Processes

A friend was recently telling me a story of bureaucracy.  She didn’t call it bureaucracy, but her frustration was obvious.  To implement a change that sped up the process and was a change that operations desired, she had to obtain approvals from her boss’ boss, the operator’s boss, and a person in the IT department.  To submit the change order, she needed to get access to an antiquated computer system for which the organization had no internal training. 

If you want to improve innovation performance, you need to simplify your processes and procedures.  Agile processes, like Scrum, offer the advantage of focused teamwork and quick feedback from customers.  The Agile Manifesto, commands us to emphasize people and interactions over paperwork and bureaucracy.  Let your NPD teams work on what they do best – designing and developing new features and technologies. 

Measure What Matters

Human beings are programmed to perform our best against the metrics by which our behavior is measured.  If your dad gave you a dollar for every hour you were quiet on a road trip, you could manage to be silent for hours on end.  If your boss measures efficiency to award your bonus, you will strive to eliminate waste. 

Innovations take time to pay off.  Short-term metrics drive short-term performance resulting in mundane, incremental products.  Developing new technologies and new markets are long-term investments and innovation rewards must recognize learning and growth as a purpose of new product development research, as well as product profitability.  Building effective, cross-functional teams is a stepping stone in the journey of improving innovation performance. 

Improving Innovation Performance

Innovation is important in every organization.  They say if businesses don’t innovate, they die.  Customers demand new and better products and services, and companies no longer have the advantage of geographical or technological monopolies.  To improve innovation performance, we must share the driving purpose and strategy.  Innovation requires change and as flagship innovation leaders, we must communicate the need for change. 

Next, innovation succeeds when creativity is unhindered.  Simplify your processes and procedures and let the NPD teams be free to do their work without complicated bureaucracy or reporting authority.  Finally, measure what matters.  Innovation is a long-term adventure where learning is paramount.  Experimentation often results in short-term failure yet innovation leaders value knowledge above short-term stock prices. 

Do You Want to Improve Your Innovation Performance?

If so, what are you waiting for?  Check out our 20 Days of Innovation in 2020 to receive a fresh innovation tip in your inbox daily during the month of January.  It’s not spammy and it’s free – sign up here.

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching.    I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith.    It brings me joy to help you build innovation leaders.    I am an experienced professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making.    My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator.    Contact me at [email protected] or area code 281 + phone 280-8717 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

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A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Study.            Learn.            Earn.            Simple.

Innovation Team Trust

Innovation is naturally risky.  We are not sure of the technology, markets, or product design – especially at the outset of a project.  Then, we throw people into the mix and it might seem that we are lucky to ever see new products make it to market.

Successful innovation teams share several characteristics.  Companies like Google and 3M offer unstructured time-on-the-job for individuals to pursue ideas.  Other firms focus on improved project management skills to manage the scope, schedule, and budget.  In my experience, it really is the people that make the difference between a successful innovation project and one that is so-so.

Read on or watch the short summary video!

Trust

Successful, high-performance teams build on a foundation of trust.  Trust is essential to communication and it is communication that allows us to share ideas for new product development (NPD). 

Trust means being not afraid to share an opposing view but also being open and receptive to listening to new ideas or concepts.  There’s a story that President John F. Kennedy nearly went to war in Cuba over the Bay of Pigs because his advisors were afraid to offer alternate ideas.  Everyone on the team, regardless of status, must trust one another in order to openly and honestly communicate.

Intellectual and Emotional Trust

For innovation teams we must manage both intellectual trust and emotional trust.  Intellectual trust is established when we recognize the credentials and experience of a colleague.  Knowing that a team member was an accounting degree establishes intellectual trust that he can conduct the financial analysis accurately.

Emotional trust, on the other hand, is established when we know someone else will support our position and stand up for us.  We can only build emotional trust when we have built relationships with others.  It is emotional trust that allows us to take risks – especially important for radical innovation.

Leadership

Of course, intra-team trust is built only if the leader is trustworthy.  But what makes a trustworthy leader?  A person keeps her commitments, treats others fairly, and asks questions makes a good leader.  My philosophy as a first-time pilot plant supervisor was that I’d never ask my technicians to do something I wouldn’t do.  That included staying after hours (even though I was salaried and they were paid hourly).  It meant watching gauges and monitoring process variables in the sweltering heat or cold, rainy winters of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  It meant building a relationship and building emotional trust.

Stability

Successful innovations often follow a tortuous path of development – starting with one technology and target market and ending with different technical specifications and customers.  While it might feel chaotic to change direction in the middle of a project, the best innovation leaders and teams draw stability from processes throughout the NPD life cycle.  Understanding the mission and strategy of the project is foundational to success. 

Senior executives and project leaders demonstrate trust during a project by offering tools for stability.  Project team members should be aware of expectations in their work assignments, anticipated deadlines and milestones, and follow standardized design and development processes.  By establishing stable and predictable steps in the innovation process, leaders demonstrated capability to build relationships and emotional trust.

Trust for Innovation Teams

Innovation teams need foundational trust to create risky new technologies and products. Without trust, organizations are limited to incremental innovations that suffer from intense competition and low profit margins.  Accepting risk, by building trust within a team, leads to more radical innovations and longer-term profitability.

Intellectual trust is enough if you want to fight competitors on the incremental innovation front.  But, to take new risks, teams need to build cohesive teams founded on emotional trust.  Leaders demonstrate the characteristics for successful NPD by being open and honest in communication, treating all stakeholders fairly, and listening to all perspectives.  Furthermore, leaders generate a trustworthy reputation by providing stability and predictability for the team.  Creating a project charter with roles and responsibilities, deadlines, and expectations allows a risky innovation project to follow a more predictable path to commercialization.

Learn more

There are lots of ways to learn more about building successful teams and leaders for innovation. Here are few.  Give me a call at area code 281 phone 280.8717 for more information or send me an email at [email protected].  Enjoy your innovation journey!

Act now to improve the effectiveness of your cross-functional innovation teams.  Space is limited in our complimentary Q&A webinars on Building Effective Cross-Functional NPD Teams.  Part 2 is 28 August at 12:00 noon CDT covering Steps 3 through 5 in the process:  team processes, team charters, and virtual teams.  If you missed Part 1 (self-awareness and team trust), please join us on 6 September 2019.

Learn firsthand how establishing trust can improve cross-functional NPD team effectiveness.  REGISTER NOW – spaces are filling fast!

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A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Study.     Learn.     Earn.     Simple.

3 Team Lessons from Biking

I like to bicycle.  I enjoy riding either my mountain bike or road bike.  Since I recently bought a new road bike, I’ve been riding it as much as I can – and as fast as I can!

But I have a few pet peeves about cycling that have analogies in the work world.  Specifically, I observe that what bugs me when I’m cycling are traits and characteristics that drive people away from effective teamwork.  Watch the video for the 30-second solution or read on.

Use Your Indicator

A lot of people driving cars fail to use their indicators.  This is bad enough when you’re in another car, but it can truly be dangerous when you’re on a bicycle.  It takes a little longer for a cyclist to accelerate, so we use a car’s turn signal (or lack of) to help us judge when to enter or cross traffic.

On teams, you also need to use your indicator.  Other team members might know you well and hold expectations about your part of the project, but they can’t read your mind.  On top of that, each of us has a preferred work style and we project certain images and personalities to others.  One way to ensure proper communication on a team is to raise your self-awareness of your own behaviors and of your teammates’ behaviors.

In Step 1 of Building Effective Cross-Functional Teams, we will describe how the DiSC® work style assessment helps to raise self-awareness.  Once you understand your own preferred working style and those of your teammates, you can change work patterns and vocabularies to improve intra-team communications.

Keep Your Dog Leashed

I’m not afraid of dogs generally, but the other day, two large dogs chased me on my bike for two or three blocks.  I knew I could win on endurance (and probably speed), yet it still raised my blood pressure to have loud barking dogs pursuing me.  And just yesterday, a small dog ran into the road, dragging his leash behind him as his owner made no attempt to control him.  In both situations, the dogs and I could have been hurt badly.  Their humans were not managing them.

Teams need management and leadership.  For successful innovation, team leaders need to integrate different functional viewpoints as well as different work styles.  Marketing uses one jargon and R&D another set of terms.  Teams must overcome these biases to work together effectively.  Instead of using different perspectives as constraints, innovation succeeds when using varied viewpoints as strengths.

In our complimentary webinar on 31 July, you’ll learn Step 2 – team management – of Building an Effective Cross-Functional Team.  Team management starts with trust and healthy conflict.  When teams assemble tools and strategies for trust and conflict, they can commit to actions and hold each other mutually accountable for project goals.  This yields results.  Effective cross-functional teams understand and appreciate different work styles, different functional perspectives, and different approaches.  Ultimately, these teams outperform in innovation by producing more creative and customer-focused products and services.

Kamikaze Squirrels

When I was growing up, my dad constantly complained about the squirrels in our yard.  They stole the walnuts off the giant tree in our backyard and buried them in the grass, the garden, and the flower beds.  At the time, I didn’t care because I didn’t much care for my after-school chores of picking up and cleaning the walnuts anyway.

But, as a cyclist, I join my dad in disliking squirrels.  The little devils run right in front of your path, dance around, and turn back to cross your path again.  It seems like they have a death wish, and I have nearly wrecked my bike more than a few times trying to avoid these kamikaze squirrels.

Some teams have kamikaze team members.  They will never be happy and often refuse to do their assigned work.  The reasons vary.  They don’t agree with the approach, their idea is better, they are stubborn, and so on.  Effective teams, just like cyclists must watch out for these people who have self-destructive behaviors that can contaminate the team culture. 

In Step 3 of Building Effective, Cross-Functional Teams, we learn processes for working through the life cycle of a project.  The Team Dimensions Profile helps team members and leaders to understand strengths of different work styles during different phases of a project.  Creatives, for example, are great at generating ideas during the initiation phase of a project, and executors are needed to efficiently conduct the work of the project.  An individual who has a work style tendency to plan and schedule detailed tasks may identify the creatives as kamikazes trying to interrupt the workflow.

However, just as the kamikaze squirrels are trying to get back to their “home” tree, different team personalities are focusing on their “home” strengths.  We move from identifying team processes in Step 3 of Building Effective, Cross-Functional Teams to Step 4 which involves setting up team processes, like the team charter.  Finally, in Step 5, we address how to work with dispersed or virtual teams.  You will learn Steps 3 through 5 in Part 2 of our complimentary webinar and will be automatically registered for Part 2 (28 August) when you register for Part 1 (31 July) covering Steps 1 and 2.

Team Lessons from Cycling

Effective innovation teams need guidance and guardrails, just like we do on the road as cyclists.  Riding a bike means you must watch out for cars without indicators, dogs without leashes, and squirrels without direction.  Effective teams use indicators starting with work style preferences, managing their team relationships, and are wary of kamikaze behaviors. 

You can learn more about building and managing successful team behaviors at our complimentary, one-hour webinar on Wednesday, 31 July 2019 at noon CDT.  Everyone who attends Building Effective Cross-Functional Teams will receive a free work style assessment ($75 value) and you’ll be automatically registered for Part 2 on Wednesday, 28 August 2019 at noon CDT.  Space is limited!  Register now!

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A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Study.  Learn.  Earn.  Simple.

Three Perspectives in Goal-Setting

Research teaches us that people are more successful when they set goals.  That’s why we religiously make new year’s resolutions; despite the fact that a resolution is different than a goal.  Most resolutions fail in less than a month.  Goals, unlike resolutions, are specific and measurable, and we target our achievement within a specific time frame.

In addition, goals fit within three categories:  strategic, tactical, and operational.  As new product development (NPD) managers and innovation practitioners, our goals – both professional and personal – must straddle the three categories to ensure success and creativity in building new knowledge.  We’ll next discuss what these three types of goals are and how you can apply them to renew your joy in practicing innovation.

Strategic Goals

Strategy is the overarching mission and vision of a firm.  It encompasses the why we are in business and the values or characteristics we apply to differentiate our business from competitors.  As has been said, it is far easier to compose a strategy statement than to execute the strategy.  That’s were goals come in.

Strategic goals, therefore, are the highest-level objectives we have.  They are visionary yet practical at the same time.  Achieving our strategy cannot be accomplished with the flip of a switch so we must parse our overall vision into smaller chunks, or goals, because strategy is also long-term.

For example, a company may wish to grow by accessing the South American market.  That is both visionary and practical since economic data demonstrates an untapped market for products and services in this region.  However, implementing this strategy requires more thought and consideration than simply opening a pop-up store in Asunción (the capital of Paraguay).  Strategic growth goals for the initiative may include the following.

  • Complete a consumer market research study in Paraguay.
  • Evaluate competitive product solutions in place today.
  • Coordinate Spanish-speaking resources within the company.
  • Pilot test brands and packaging.
  • Conduct pricing studies.
  • Create technology and product roadmaps.

Of course, a detailed NPD project would follow the innovation strategy, but high-level strategic goals will frame the effort into specific deliverables.  Steps taken to meet significant milestones are also steps along the strategic journey.

Tactical Goals

Tactics are shorter range than strategies and often involve previously tested market approaches.  Strategic goals should be translated into tactical objectives that are clear, concise, and measurable.  Each tactical goal supports an overall strategic thrust.

So, for example, if we focus on the strategic goal of growth in South America for our fictional company, we know that we need to gather customer insights.  Some tactical goals to support this strategic objective are:

  • Identify target customers by demographic categories,
  • Gather ethnographic data for the product within at least three different regions,
  • Conduct product solution focus groups in at least three different regions, and
  • Define customer personas for future design thinking and NPD work.

Operational Goals

Tactical goals are supported by specific action steps, which we call organizational goals.  Some operational goals are necessary in the short-term to maintain manufacturing, distribution, or functional arenas.  Whereas strategic goals might take years to achieve and tactical goals are completed in weeks or months, operational goals are often day-to-day achievements.  Operational goals directly support specific tactics and are the heart of successful innovation implementation.  It is the little things that add up to overall success.

Continuing our example, then, some operational goals follow to support a tactical objective of holding a focus group to understand customer solutions.

  • Locate and rent an appropriate facility,
  • Recruit 12 potential customers,
  • Establish confidentiality agreements,
  • Prepare customer feedback checklists, and
  • Record and translate the focus group session(s).

Thus, operational goals get at the nitty-gritty details required to meet the tactical objectives, while tactics ultimately support the strategic goals.  Each action is necessary, in its own time and with its own scope, to achieve the corporate mission.

How to Implement Goal-Setting

Setting goals is an exercise in strategic thinking since we first must understand the overall mission and vision.  Brainstorming is a common technique to elicit both strategic and tactical goals.  You will want to use a cross-functional team to establish tactical and organizational goals as the people that do the work will have the most experience knowing how to implement tasks and activities to support specific objectives.

In our Life Design Master Mind and Innovation Master Mind groups, we discuss goal-setting from these three perspectives.  An easy way to ensure you are balancing life across the work, health, play, and love arenas is to assign goal categories to your work lists.  For instance, I place an “S”, “T”, or “O” by each of my daily “To Do” list items.  Bookkeeping gets an “O” because it’s a required activity to keep my business running but it is not a high-level mission-critical activity.  Printing handouts for a speaking engagement is assigned a “T” since the handout includes thought leadership content and my marketing information.  This will support my strategic goal of helping others become proficient at converting ideas into commercial reality through an integrated innovation ecosystem.

To Learn More

To learn more about setting goals that will help you achieve your strategic vision, please join us in Life Design Master Mind (LDMM), Innovation Master Mind (IMM), or New Product Development Professional (NPDP) certification.  LDMM is designed for your personal growth by applying design thinking tools to finding the next step in life.  IMM is a 6-month peer coaching group that allows you to extend your NPD knowledge beyond NPDP certification and to collaborate with other CIOs and innovation managers.  You will realize improved efficiency and growth from LDMM, IMM, or through NPDP certification which entails a deep dive into strategy and NPD processes, including design thinking.  Feel free to contact me at [email protected] or 281-280-8717.  At Simple-PDH.com where we want to help you gain and maintain your professional certifications.  You can study, learn, and earn – it’s simple!

Speaking on Design Thinking

  • 7 September 2018 at Texas Association of Change Management Professionals Conference

 

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

© Simple-PDH.com

A division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Using Design Thinking to Manage Your Time

A recent article in Harvard Business Review details that CEOs work, on average, 9.7 hours per day, conduct business on about 80% of weekend days, and work for almost 3 hours per day on 70% of their vacation days (1).  Yet, numerous other publications describe burnout as a major factor in declining performance of all workers.  Burnout results in decreased motivation, lower productivity, and poor-quality work.  Burnout manifests itself in lost time due to illness, poor health, and destabilized personal relationships.  All of us, not just CEOs, need to better manage our time so that we can sustain deep engagement with our work and live happy, joy-filled lives.

How Do You Spend Your Time?

As product, project, and engineering managers, we know that we cannot find a solution to a problem until we fully understand the problem.  Closing a budget or schedule gap first involves gathering data on the costs to-date and evaluating the work accomplished thus far.  Once we have historical data in hand, we can interpret the size of the gap as well as begin to formulate changes and corrective actions to keep the project on plan.

Managing time in our professional and personal lives is much the same.  First, we need to gather data on how we currently spend our time and then analyze that data to diagnose the need for change.  There are two elements to tracking how you spend your time.

Task Time-Tracking

First, it’s important to know how much time you spend on various tasks throughout the day.  In the HBR study discussed previously, the researchers used the CEOs’ executive assistants to track the CEOs time in 15-minute blocks.  If you have staff support that can help you with time tracking of your various work tasks, by all means, take advantage of this service.

Since I don’t have full-time, in-office administrative support, I use a cloud-based time-tracking app.  You can find dozens of free apps to help you track how much time you spend on which activities throughout the day.  Many corporations also have available the Microsoft “My Analytics” time-tracking tool to analyze your Outlook calendar for time spent in meetings, etc.

Regardless of the tool you choose, make sure the application is easy to use (no more than one or two clicks) and can later expand if you want to track higher degrees of granularity of how you spend your time.  However, make sure that you start with very simple task analysis.  We don’t want time-tracking to become an extra job in itself!  For example, I track teaching time, writing, specific client projects, and volunteer activities.  I can also match each category to related income streams as part of evaluation and gap analysis.

Design Thinking Time Tracking

In our Life Design Master Mind Group, we follow the advice of Bill Burnett and Dave Evans in Designing Your Life.  Here, we track our “flow” in different activities.  Whereas tracking the minutes or hours spent on various tasks allows us to evaluate cost-benefit, tracking “flow” gives us a sense of what work we enjoy and what activities motivate us to do more.

“Flow” is a concept in which are working on tasks or activities that are so motivation and engaging that we don’t even notice the passage of time.  These are often the activities we daydream about or find ourselves planning for free or quiet time.  Flow is “being in the zone,” sort of like Steph Curry hitting dozens of consecutive three-pointers from the half-court-line.  You feel connected to and inspired by the work.  You are so embedded in your work, you might forget to stop and eat a meal.  And while it is hard to describe “flow,” we’ve all been there and recognize the positive and rewarding feelings that come from “being in the zone”.

Therefore, in Life Design Master Mind, we want to identify the time we spend in flow.  A separate time-tracking exercise using design thinking will follow the tasks on which you work, the energy you apply to the activity, and your feelings of engagement with the task.

For example, when I look at my journal from about a year ago, I recorded “doing email” with energy of 10% and engagement of 10%.  Not surprising, as the CEO study by HBR described previously also noted that these senior executives preferred face-to-face contact with direct reports and customers.

During the same month, I recorded my energy level at 75% and engagement at 85% while developing new course materials for one of the university classes I teach.  And I recorded working out at the gym with 100% energy and 75% engagement.  (As a side note, my husband thinks I can get a bit too fanatical about my fitness regime sometimes…)

You’ll want to keep a Flow Journal for a few weeks so that you can capture the broadest set of activities in which you engage as well as to average out any anomalies.  During a week when I had a head cold, my energy level was low for all tasks.  But, again, that’s understandable when I move to interpreting how I spent my time and what I enjoy.

Next Steps to Manage Your Time

Once you’ve collected data on how you spend your time, you need to evaluate where the gaps exist between the current stat and desired future state.  In Life Design Master Mind, we delve into understanding the core of flow for each individual and use more design thinking tools to frame the context for prototyping and testing new paths in our careers and lives.

You also can use the detailed task time-tracking to eliminate or minimize the least value-added tasks.  For instance, we all have to “do email,” yet there is little profit gained in this task.  Based on Cal Newport’s advice in “Deep Work,” I typically check email only two or three times per day, and at times of the day when my motivational energy is already low (like after lunch).  In this way, I can preserve times of the day when my inspiration is high for “flow” activities (e.g. I do a lot of writing first thing in the morning).

How Do You Manage Your Time?

A lot of how we spend our day is rooted in habit.  Some of these are good habits and some are not-so-good.  We can only expect to change our lives and strive for the next highest level in our careers if we understand where we’re at right now.  Start today with a task time-tracking app.  Then, later add a Flow Journal to learn which of these tasks give you energy, engagement, and an acceptable cost-benefit ratio.  (You can download a template for your Flow Journal as part of the Life Design Master Mind Group.)

 

(1)      Porter, Michael E. and Nitin Nohria, “How CEOs Manager Their Time,” Harvard Business Review July/Aug 2018, pg. 42-51.

 

To Learn More

Join us in an introductory Life Design Master Mind group in Houston where we start with how you spend your time today.  Over the next 6 months, we will use design thinking tools to take a deep dive into professional and personal motivation to frame and test what next steps you can take to live a joy-filled life.  Check out our on-line tutorial on Design Thinking, too.  Feel free to contact me at [email protected] or 281-280-8717.  At Simple-PDH.com where we want to help you gain and maintain your professional certifications.  You can study, learn, and earn – it’s simple!

 

Reading Recommendation

We discuss different project team structures in NPDP Certification Prep:  A 24-Hour Study Guide, and you can find additional references at https://globalnpsolutions.com/services/npd-resources/.   Some other books you might enjoy:

 

Speaking on Design Thinking

  • 15 August 2018 at Houston Organizational Development Network Meeting
  • 7 September 2018 at Texas Association of Change Management Professionals Conference

 

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

© Simple-PDH.com

A division of Global NP Solutions, LLC