Harnessing the power of the individual contributor
By Dev@Prudence
Most of your project team members will be individual contributors and functional managers.
The functional manager is someone with higher authority and is normally a team, group or business unit leader. They can delegate work to their teams and they can also personally contribute to the project.
The individual contributor is normally someone with limited authority who gets directed by his/her manager to execute specific tasks. The individual contributor is the doer.
Each group has its function; that’s why such a group is needed in the organization. Each group has its own boundaries and specific inputs and outputs; which you should have already found out by following the advice in the previous article.
Each team member exists within a group and his/her work is normally done with close coordination with the team leader. This implies the following:
–A team member may not know of work outside the boundaries of the group.
–A team member may not know of dependencies outside the boundaries of the group
–A team member may not know of project timelines.
In addition to the above, a team member may not be as organized or diligent in documenting work as another one in another group. Different groups can have very different approaches; especially when work standards are absent or not fully fleshed out. Also, a team member may not share the same definition of done as the project manager.
What can you do to ensure project success?
Organizations are different in their cultures. You don’t have to be a genius to immediately recognize whether the organization has a strong execution culture or not. A couple of meetings will immediately make that obvious to you. In addition to the overall organization culture, you will find little pockets of micro or localized cultures in the various silos of the organization. You will see that some groups are more execution oriented than others.
Your goal is:
-to ensure that the team member executes the work on time
-to cultivate good habits around communication and time management.
Timely Execution:
In my view, timely execution of work is a function of four variables:
1-Clarity of assigned work.
2-Clarity of desired outcome.
3-Clarity on when to deliver
4-Successful resolution of mid execution problems or obstacles.
Clarity of assigned work
You must make sure that a member clearly expresses his/her understanding of the situation or problem statement at hand along with any assumptions. In other words, he/she should be able to explain the inputs
Additionally, you must make sure that a member clearly acknowledges that the inputs are clear and sufficient for him/her to being working on the task at hand. Any vagueness or hesitation should prompt you to give the team member a bit of time to closely examine the inputs. Double check with the team member again.
The main goal in fixing this variable is that the team member is ready to start
Clarity of desired outcome
You must make sure that the team member is able to describe the end result. Is his/her definition of done in agreement with the definition of done uncovered when acceptance criteria was determined in the previous chapter? If he/she describes it with little help from others, then he/she knows what completed work looks like
Any vagueness or hesitation here should prompt you to spend time explaining the desired outcome to the team member. Make use of subject matter experts as appropriate. The team member should be able to clearly articulate what the definition of done is.
The main point in fixing this variable is that the team member knows what he/she needs to deliver and what done work looks like.
Clarity on when to deliver the outcome
You must make sure that the team member clearly understands the completion date.
It is a good suggestion that the team member has some visibility into the upcoming tasks so they can see that timely completion of work is a requirement for the project and for other colleagues.
Make sure to frequently reference the completion data, especially if the team member is not very observant of these dates.
Successful resolution of mid execution problems or obstacles:
You must make sure to capture any dependencies or potential obstacles that the team member brings up. This is best done via a discussion where the team member comments on what could potentially go wrong, obstacles he/she may face, any advice or guidance that is needed from others inside or outside their group.
You will never get a complete list upfront. Close communication and follow ups are key to spot obstacles early and resolve them successfully.
Not all team members are the same in their ability to anticipate issues and mange uncertainty. So, use common sense and good judgment in how much effort to put in with each person. Close follow up can come across as you attempting to micromanage the team member.
The main point here is that communication channels and inputs that are needed in the course of executing the work are identified and addressed accordingly.
Notice how I did not ask to check if someone is the right person for the job or not. This is because you have already determined this in the previous chapter by examining the organizational components, the resources and then assigning resources to WBS elements in consultation with subject matter experts and functional leaders.
Keep in mind the following:
–Some team members will require a lot of handholding while others do not. Each person is different. Use judgement in how much effort you should put in with each member.
–You should not interfere with the functional work. Functional team members know their work best. They will always seek guidance from their superiors if they need to. When in doubt, consult and/or escalate through the team leader.
–A lot of businesses utilize productivity tools to track internal work assignment and closure, such as SAP, Atlassian Jira and such tools. Hopefully, your organization is using one. If so, make sure to use it and ensure that others do too. This will make the tracking job easier.
–Make sure to always put a completion date on every request you send out.
–Always follow up and check on work status. Do this more frequently if the task is complex.
–When it comes to requesting meetings and team discussions, always propose dates instead of asking others to share their availability. Let the proposed date bounce back and forth until an appropriate one that is best for everyone emerges.
Cultivating good communication and time management:
As a project manager, you should periodically take a look at your team to assess their performance. This is not to judge who is good and who is bad, but rather to spot any areas of improvements in communication and time management.
Communication across groups:
Communication challenges can broadly be grouped into two big buckets:
1-More often than not, individual contributors may not be able to keep the audience in mind when communicating outside of their groups. Communicating issues or requesting help can get hindered with technical jargon that may not be meaningful to the person being communicated with.
2-Sometimes, individual contributors may not communicate obstacles early enough. They also may shy away from going through the chain of command to escalate an issue or expedite receiving some pending information.
Let’s look into these two buckets.
Bucket 1:
The best approach to help a team member with this bucket of communication challenges is to habitually and non-forcibly guide the discussion with them. This is akin to teaching a man how to fish. It is best done via inquisitive questions during one on one discussions. Remember not to embarrass the team member in front of others with a barrage of questions.
Your goals should be:
–to train the member to talk in terms of facts, discrete and measurable inputs and outputs.
–to reduce noise in the form of babbling, guessing, wishful thinking, and the alike.
-to train the member in phrasing the ideas, problems and technical content in simpler and simpler concepts that another member from an unrelated group would be able to understand and follow.
Progress is achieved if you see the team member shifts his/her communication style to direct, simple, shorter sentences, with clear and almost bullet point like facts.
Bucket 2:
A very effective approach to help the team member with the challenge around communicating obstacles is the following:
–You must establish a nonjudgmental style of communication with him or her. The team member needs to feel that it is safe to bring up problems to you
–You must frequently follow up and explicitly ask for thoughts around problems or obstacle the member may run into or has already faced in similar work before.
Regarding what you can do to help the team member be more comfortable escalating when necessary, you need to shoulder the burden of escalation to obtain any necessary help the team member might need. You will most likely do this via an email or a one on one with a functional manager. When escalating, be sure to include the team member. Ask him/her to chime in with any further feedback so that they have a channel to convey their thoughts up the escalation path. As feedback is received, be sure to ask the team member to comment on whether the feedback is good enough for him or her.
The point here is that the language that goes up the chain of command comes from the team member and that he/she has a say in view of everyone in accepting or rejecting the provided feedback. You are simply the person that opened the doors for him/her and started the dialogue. Over time, this approach will go a long way in empowering the team member to speak up when needed.
Time Management
Time management is an important competency for every professional. It is even more important to have in project team members due to the interdependencies involved in project work.
With some careful observation, you should be able to quickly tell who needs help with time management in your team. You will notice that some members are list oriented and completion focused while others are a little bit all over the place.
For simplicity, let’s group time management challenges into two general categories:
1-internal time management: this is where the team member prioritizes and schedules his/her daily work and executes without losing sight of deadlines
2-external time management: this is where the team member prioritizes and schedules events with other members, groups, clients. Etc.
Internal time management:
There is a fine line between micro managing someone and aiding that someone with prioritizing and scheduling work. Doing the latter is much more time and energy consuming than doing the former. Slipping into micromanagement is incredibly easy because it the path of least resistance from your point of view. It is the authoritarian one-sided approach.
If you determine that a specific team member needs help in prioritizing and scheduling his/her daily work, you need to have a private and one on one feedback session with the person. In this session, I recommend the following approach:
–begin by asking for permission if you could share your feedback with the team member. It is essential that you do not come across as enforcing your feedback.
–Ensure that you are sitting in a relaxed posture and at the same level as the other person; to avoid appearing threatening or dominating. Avoid having a big table in between you and the other person. Big tables create a psychological distance, a clear separation of two sides facing each other. Feedback sharing and constructive criticism can make the other person feel momentarily vulnerable. Your goal is to make the team member feel supported and cared for and not that he is “the other”.
–Being with a positive. Commend the team member on a recent achievement or positive contribution. Acknowledge his/her part.
–Mention the observed challenges around time management. Avoid sweeping statements such as “it is always…” or “a lot of times, I see that you…”. Pick a specific example. Explain the desired result such as timely completion of a particular task. Reference the actual result such as delayed completion by however many days. Clearly communicate your desire to help and assist the team member in having a list of action items, prioritizing the action items, and providing guidance and support.
–For your help to be effective, the team member has to clearly give you permission to provide your help.
–End the session with a positive. Praise the team member on a recent positive contribution or commend a professional aspect that you like about the person, such as attention to details.
The above approach to sharing feedback is applicable to any feedback session that you would like to have on any topic.
What type of help can you offer?
The most effective form of help that you can offer to the team member is the one that has the least overhead. So, daily and lengthy meetings where you go over each item assigned to the team member are not OK. By the same token, daily emails listing all the team member’s action items, status and completion dates are also not OK.
A good compromise is to have a regular 5-10-minute informal meeting where you and the team member talk about the top priority items to reaffirm their priority, emphasize their deadlines and address obstacles. Do not confuse this with a status and planning meeting.
During this 5-10-minute information meeting, resist the temptation to go over all work issues or assigned task. Encourage the team member to only focus on higher priority tasks that are currently ongoing or about to begin.
In the course of the discussion, nudge the team member towards tasks that are more important or higher priority. This is the way to signal the priority of those tasks. If the team member resists, shift the discussion to talk about the impact of those tasks on upcoming work. The goal is to indirectly have the team member expresses which task is higher priority than others or to have him/her at least agree with your assessment. This way you build a priority-focused way of thinking in the mind of the team member and build their confidence.
The real purpose behind the informal meeting is actually opposite to what the team member might think. The meeting is to provide a safe space for the team member away from his/her desk and the daily noise to allow him/her 5-10 minutes to think about what he/she is doing now and what he/she needs to do. In other words, the team member thinks aloud while you are simply listening and indirectly guiding the thinking in an effort to create a thought process.
As you begin to aid someone with his/her daily work, be extra careful of that person’s perception and emotions. The key word in the last sentence is “perception”; your intentions are irrelevant. The perception that a person’s work is being taken over, or dominated, by another is demotivating, morale crushing, and damaging to that person’s sense of self worth and confidence. Be sure to pay attention, listen carefully, observe body language and always be compassionate and helpful.
As you continue to successfully aid someone with his/her work, be extra careful not to inadvertently instill a habit of total reliance on you in that person’s mind. Make sure that the team member does most of the talking during the 5-10-minute meeting. Remember, that the purpose of the meeting is for the team member to think aloud and for you to guide the thinking.
External time management:
A team member with good time management skills should not face problems in prioritizing and scheduling meetings or events with other individuals.
However, you might be able to provide the team member with valuable help if the nature of work mandates a large number of events that are planned and are to be scheduled and coordinated by that team member. An example of such events can be requirements gathering meetings, project site visits, inspection visits and the alike. This becomes even more important if the team member is to coordinate client-facing meetings.
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