Wow it has been an exciting week!
I’m not that into podcasts, which is strange for someone who loves to learn by listening, but this week there is exciting news for the generalist community! Milly Tamati of Generalist World has teamed up with a few folks and the team at Boom Pop to launch “Generally Curious” a podcast just for us folks with wide ranges.
And so I bit the bullet and subscribed, and you probably should too.
Thank you to all the new subscribers joining this newsletter! I hope you’ll reach out and connect to let me know what brought you here and how I can help.
This newsletter will arrive in your inbox every Friday. In each issue you can expect to read about something I’m loving that week, a useful tool, my favorite read, one tip and one lesson.
If you received this newsletter as a forward from someone, or you’ve arrived here via a social media link I hope you’ll subscribe!
This week I’m loving
We have talked often about how a key skill to cultivate as a generalist is the skill of adaptability.
In biology we think of adaptability as the ability to adjust to new conditions. But a definition I love more is “the capacity to be modified for a new use or purpose”. As generalists this is our superpower, our ability to change our shape and be modified to fit into a new organization, a new industry, a new team, or a new role. Having done this many times in my career I know that the journey is not easy.
Tossed carelessly into the same sentence as adaptability on a frequent basis is the concept of “agility”. When most people think of agility they first think of physical agility - the ability to move quickly and easily. More useful in an organizational context is mental agility, and this is a skill that many generalists are born with - the ability to think and understand quickly. But another concept that is critical for success is emotional agility.
Emotional agility is the ability to acknowledge emotions and inner experiences and use them as information to guide your decision-making alongside your values, as opposed to trying to change how you feel. There is no better authority on this topic than Susan David.
And this week, Susan’s newsletter, which I look forward to in my inbox every week, had a great discussion on 3 topics that are often confused for each other and which may be more important in the world today than ever. So, as you cultivate your skills in emotional agility, I thought you might like to review Susan’s very simple and powerful explanation about sympathy, empathy and compassion.
Image credit: Susan David - susandavid.com
As project managers we are constantly navigating project team dynamics. As generalists, our natural empathy may often be our preferred and default response. It can be useful to cultivate and intentionally use compassion and sympathy as alternates to this default response.
Compassion isn’t about rushing in to fix. It’s about offering whatever the other needs, whether that’s holding space, active listening, or choosing to see someone for who they truly are.
But more importantly, Susan points out that the true way to maximize our ability to exercise compassion is by showing compassion to ourselves. I have spoken with many generalists who hold themselves to incredibly high standards; who struggle, and who feel defeated at times by the struggle. My hope is that on your journey to be modified for a new purpose that you can show yourself compassion as you navigate the murky waters of reinvention.
Our community is holding space for you while you find your way!
Tool of the week
The Christmas season is arriving.
My in-laws have already started their Secret Santa draw so that everyone has time to shop the best deals.
So this week I was inspired to share a tool I’m coveting for Christmas - one I’ve bought a few clients here and there as a very well received gift.
The Rocketbook.
Image credit: Rocketbook website
As a Xennial, I admittedly have some small hangups in adopting ways of working that fully give up paper and pen.
As a scientist, a key gap in digital tools is the ability to diagram and graph. Being able to sketch out an idea is tough with a trackpad or a mouse.
No more friends!
The Rocketbook is the last notebook you will ever buy. One that is saving thousands of sheets of paper and helping you better track your notes in a digital world.
How does it work?
Write something down using an erasable pen on the physical page
Take a scan with your phone in the Rocketbook app
Wipe the page clean for the next great idea with a damp cloth
Organize your notes in the cloud using naming conventions and a file destination in the cloud repository of your choice
Graph paper, dot grids, planning templates, meeting note templates, and even an OKR template come in the various notebook editions on offer.
Like it so much you want your team to have it? You can bulk order custom notebooks as gifts.
You can also share your notebook via “Snapcast” while hanging out virtually with your team making that sketch or diagram you are dying to share a reality in your remote world.
And to make all the project managers in the world believe in Santa again - it also works with Trello and Slack.
An interesting read
This week’s interesting read comes from Rene Schroeder, author of Panda Story, a great blog for agile transformation enthusiasts.
In a LinkedIn article Rene unravels the dilemma of the first product. Specifically, the nuances of Prototypes vs Minimum Viable Products vs Proof of Concept efforts.
As a project manager, this is a critical understanding if you do any work with product teams.
And these terms are frequently used interchangeably when they shouldn’t be, so being able to voice the correct choice and help stakeholders understand it could be a skill that will make or break your project.
Let me summarize by just saying - this is one of the best explanations I have ever read. I hope you enjoy!
A tip
Why is creating interest and alignment before you make your pitch important?
Because it builds emotional investment, and it is much harder to say no to something you have an emotional investment in.
Try it out and let me know how it goes!
A lesson
This week I had the pleasure of participating in a panel session on “the PMO Journey” at the PMO Leader Conference.
We had an incredibly clarifying discussion about portfolios and projects in the context of a journey that I thought I would share with you here.
We often define portfolios as a strategic tool - designed to collect up projects that relate to a given strategic aim and deliver them. But this definition, might be selling a portfolio short and certainly it makes the real value of a portfolio pretty unclear to someone who isn’t already an expert in portfolio management.
The panel discussed that a portfolio represents the journey the organization will go on to arrive at a given strategic destination. The projects and programs within the portfolio are steps along the journey and this helps us to understand how we might undertake both projects that succeed and projects that may fail (and could be considered missteps) as a result.
Even more importantly, it helps us to understand the way that portfolios contribute to project management maturity. Instead of simply having a steady straggle of lessons learned, that let’s face it, hardly anybody keeps track of let alone learns from; a portfolio can also become the home for the learning required along the journey. Lessons learned in individual projects can be understood and interpreted within a broader and more meaningful context.
In this light, portfolios when structured correctly might become one of the most important tools for project management success in an organization.
Stay tuned for next week where we will unveil a little something that will help us grow and reward those of you interested in helping with this.
And if you really love reading the newsletter each week I’d love if you would tell me why by dropping a note here.