Alright! The Black Friday deal on a January cruise is booked (🤩), we are expecting our first real snow this weekend, just in time for hanging at the craft fair and shopping for the Christmas tree. By the end of the weekend the apartment will be filled with the delicious outdoor smell that comes inside for a month and our Christmas shopping will be almost all done (probably a record).
This time of year always swells with momentum for me. The horizon of a fresh start in the New Year; the optimism near the end of December as we swing over into the days once again getting longer and the promise of more sunshine soon; and the opportunity to dust off a blank canvas and fill it with an ambitious plan for the year ahead thrill me.
But this time of year can be tough for many. Pressure as performance reviews load your worry doll with endless questions; financial pressures as you struggle to derive the perfect gift for that special someone; and time together with people who may bring you joy or may just bring you sadness.
Whatever may be going on for you, I hope that you find the something that helps you look ahead into the upcoming year excited to embrace your generalist strengths and put your talent on a new vector in 2024.
And if you need us - I hope you’ll reach out to this community and we will walk beside you into the year ahead with heads held high.
This week I’m loving
Project management is a stressful career and at times can be a lonely island. It is a career that requires self-awareness and self-care just as much as any other item in your toolkit. So for the hard days that you may be enduring, I recommend the inspired writing of Ingrid Fetell Lee author of the book Joyful and a great blog, newsletter and self-directed study about gratitude and joy in everyday moments.
This past week, Ingrid’s weekly note into my inbox included an article about approaches to bad days. What I love about her approach is that it translates well onto a project team. When the team has a setback, it can be easy to get caught up in the negative momentum and this can suck the team into a downward spiral of obsessive focus, and tension, which, left unattended, can permanently alter the trajectory of the team and your project.
Ingrid advocates for the practice of finding the small moments of joy in between the hard times.
These moments might seem small, but they can lead to upward spirals, which can have a strongly positive effect on your overall mental health.
So amidst the hard times you may be feeling - look for the small wins you can celebrate, the small moments you can show your team compassion and care, and the small ways you can lift them into an upward spiral.
And if you are looking for a quick joy break, check out Ingrid’s cheatsheet below for a moment of fleeting fun.
Image credit: The Aesthetics of Joy - Ingrid Fetell Lee
Tool of the week
I wasn’t always an Asana fan. Founded in 2008, I was just getting serious about project management as Asana entered the market and many of us project management snobs thought the whole thing was silly at the time. It was simplistic, unintuitive, and gimmicky.
Now I frequently recommend Asana and have become something of an Asana implementation expert, configuring the tool in many different organizations of various shapes and sizes with success.
One thing I love about Asana is the integration of goal management into the project management space. This is because connecting strategy and execution is critical for organizational success. Reporting on the execution of strategy is often done manually with great investments of time to collect and report data on progress. Having goals within the project management tool solves this problem and allows for automation of progress updates on goals - creating a highly valuable real-time picture of strategy success within your organization.
Goals can be set at the company level, at the team level, and individually. Goals can be private or public and the level the goal is set at will dictate its default visibility within your Asana user pool. Automatically the goal demands not only an outline of the aim but metrics to measure it and a deadline to achieve it by, ensuring that the organization uses consistent goal setting practices.
Image credit: Asana website
Projects and portfolios can be connected to a goal to automate progress updates. As details on the project are updated, the goal progress automatically adjusts to reflect achievement against the chosen metric.
Image credit: Asana website
And goals can be rolled up into customized dashboard reporting so that various oversight stakeholders can get a personalized lens through which they can monitor progress. Gone are the monthly and weekly emails asking for updates. Gone is the doublework of updating project documentation and writing up summaries of progress for department reporting.
This feature might tip the balance to upgrade your Asana subscription for 2024!
An interesting read
As we get ready to close out 2023 and think about what lies ahead for 2024 this week’s interesting article will inspire you to dream big about what could be possible in organizations of the future.
This read was interesting to me because I love when I come across case studies that prove the core of my consulting practice around how high performing organizations are created.
The article covers the journey of members of the Corporate Rebels team traveling in Vietnam to meet Amber Online Education, a company focused on delivering online learning experiences for tech giants.
The initial tone was set by original company CEO The-Anh Nguyen.
He sought a world where employees weren't merely cogs in a corporate machine. In his view, each individual at Amber was a potential entrepreneur, capable of influencing the company’s direction.
To help the transformation that was required, The-Anh actually stepped away from his role for 4 months allowing Thuy Hang Huynh, an experienced transformation leader to guide the organization through reinvention. (Also proof that women are incredible transformational leaders).
Key ingredients to success involved:
Radical transparency
Organizing around value
Financial accountability for all
Team-based rewards
Career paths and compensation based on autonomy, mastery, and purpose through a unique peer-driven model
And they achieved incredible results! Growth in organizational capabilities, employee engagement, and an impressive 266% increase in productivity.
How do you think an organization like this would benefit a generalist?
A tip
As you look ahead to 2024, make this your mantra.
A lesson
A key skill for any project manager is to master your “team whisperer” responsibilities. The truth is that many projects are delivered solely by dedicated team members who refuse to give up in the face of adversity and propel the project to completion through sheer will. Your success is driven by your ability to motivate the team to do this.
It was 2017. I was starting a new role that I had been in for only a few weeks and I was handed a client to manage whose relationship was going backwards. A large formal website overhaul was way behind schedule. The client was super frustrated, the team was demoralized, and creative solutions to the remaining problems were evaporating in the distrust pervading the air of every video call.
I’ve made something of a specialty in my career in what some people term “project rescue”. My employer at the time knew this and told me that they felt that probably if the project could be saved I might be the one to save it. But you know… no pressure.
It started with just listening. I listened as the client vented their frustration with the progress compared to their aims. I took detailed notes about the problems they felt remained in the solution as it stood. I reviewed the contract and statement of work to look at the original scope of the project and found the project to have succumbed to a common mistake of a vague definition up front followed by no change control resulting in a scope that was probably 3 times the size of the original project.
I met with the developers and I listened to their grievances about the client, their confusion on the project goals and remaining needs, and I drew diagrams to add to my notes.
Then I got to work.
With the client I stepped up reporting, spent time investing in the relationship and taking an interest in their business, and told the truth about where the problems lay and offered ideas for how we might solve them.
With the team I told them I believed in them. I put together a plan for how we would get the project to completion and how I would keep the client to that list of expectations and only that list. I asked them to put their faith in me in spite of not knowing me or my abilities whatsoever.
As we neared the deadline, I debugged javascript when they were struggling, and I used my rapport to push back gently on the client’s endless ideas and adjustments.
I probably won’t ever forget the final night. We stayed up until 5 am delivering the final push for the client’s deadline. I dozed in and out of sleep anxiously listening for the buzz of a slack message.
So how do you motivate a team for success even when they are facing the ultimate adversity?
It’s pretty simple actually.
Just believe in them, and be there for them. Walk alongside them as they finalize their efforts. Advocate for their needs and ideas. Fail together. Win together.
Through this you build lasting trust and confidence. Confidence is a key ingredient to resilience. Resilience is a key ingredient to delivery in a VUCA world.
Thanks for reading the newsletter, many of you show up and do this every week which is so appreciated! If you find this newsletter valuable, it would really help me out if you tell other readers about what you enjoy by leaving me a review here.
Yeah Jasper has these kernels that are just great.
Such a good quote, "Dream in decades, strategize in years, plan in quarters, execute in days."