The Gorilla in the Midst

Sometime we, the project managers, get so much into the nitty-gritty of the daily working of our projects that we forget to take the 10,000-feet view of the project.

There is a famous experiment from the seventies that shows what happens when you place too much attention on the details of a project and too little on the big picture view. The experiment goes something like this: There is a group of people tossing balls among themselves. Some of them are wearing white tee shirts and the rest are in black tee shirts. Your job is to count the number of throws that happen between the white tee shirt wearing people only. Go ahead, try it.

So, did you see it?

For some of us, especially for those coming from the roles of supervisors and the executors of the actual activities, getting into the fine details of how each activity should be carried out is almost ingrained in our brains. Whenever we see something that we think is not the right way of doing it, we jump into the fray to correct it. We start giving instructions to the workers on what to do and how to do it. But that, I believe, is not the right way to go about managing your project. Unless you are the only one in the team, you have supervisors and area managers for that level of involvement. Your job is to look at the overall picture and be aware of all the factors that might impact the success of the project.

When you become too involved in the minutiae and the step-by-step details of how tasks should be performed it becomes harder to spot the gorilla (something unexpected) wandering by and either taking advantage of an opportunity or deal with an unforeseen risk.

15 Ways to Demoralize and Demolish Your Team

1. Be unpredictable. Unpredictability breeds confusion and insecurity in people. 
2. Change responsibilities at random. Not being clear on what you required them to do to perform their job is like applying a powerful brake to productivity. 
3. Make the work environment uncomfortable - windows are overrated, screaming is good. Discomfort in the work environment is a surefire way to make your team lose any desire to do their jobs. 
4. Give instructions and then change them after some time. Make your team members feel that they are idiots for doing what they believe they were told earlier. 
5. Do not communicate the stakeholders' wishes to the team and, later, berate the team members for not divining and producing desired results. 
6. Play favorites. There is nothing like knowing that the boss likes some more than others, especially if the feeling is based on personality more than on knowledge and competence. 
7. Ignore your team members. Ignoring people can be infuriating and disempowering at the same time. 
8. Make people responsible for something but then withhold their power to demand inputs from other team members. You’ll be able to claim incompetence when they find themselves unable to comply with your instructions. 
9. Be stingy with praise. Praise is a valuable commodity; do not waste it on everybody. 
10. Praise someone but then criticize them behind their backs to others. This way people will know that if you praise them you will be plunging your knife in their backs as soon as they turn away. 
11. Earn their fear, not their respect. Fear is one of the greatest demotivators that exist. 
12. Show emotional outbursts and don't follow through on your pronouncements. 
13. Schedule maintenance work on their equipment just when they need it most. 
14. Make sure to let them know that their works are worthless pieces of junk and that their knowledge counts for nothing when compared to your years of vast experience in the industry. 
15. Put a lock on your door - you do not need to talk to all the riffraff working under you. 

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How to be Proactive in Managing Stress at Work

I firmly believe that stress originates as a result of poor management skill. A project manager I once met used to say, “If there are people in your organization that are regularly working overtime it means that either they don’t know how to do their jobs or you don’t know how to distribute the work.” An inadequate resource or an unbalanced work distribution cause poor performance. Poor performance by one or more of your resources usually has a ripple effect, degrading performance downstream when their badly worked product forms the basis of someone else’s job. This, in turn, leads to unhappy clients, unhappy bosses, unhappy coworkers and an overall stressful work environment.

So, as a project manager you have several ways to proactively limit stress resulting from poor performance.

• Best Fit. First and foremost, try to organize the work resources on the basis of who is the best fit for what activity. Shuffle and reshuffle the organization till you find this best fit. Of course, a never ending shuffling process is not good either, so a couple of cycles is the limit.
• Time management is another important step in the fight against stress - managing your own as well as helping everyone else on your team manages their times. Never bite off more than you can chew! Learn what the limit of everyone is and assign tasks based on what each can do.
• Assign achievable targets to your team members. And follow up on the progress - especially if have any weak team members. You cannot afford to wait till the dead to find out that one of your team members was not able to deliver and so will hold the rest of the team up.
• Separation of work and personal life. I try to keep the two separate. Unless it is absolutely necessary, I never let work intrude on my personal life. And vice versa! Of course, not everyone is able to do this so be ready to lend a helping hand to your team members while they resolve their personal crisis. Just remind them that, should this be a frequent occurrence, a permanent state of crisis is not a desirable trait either.
• Know your team's limits. If you are assigned a task that your team is not equipped to handle, raise the issue with your boss before it becomes a problem.
• Limit multitasking. Although some managers view the ability to multitask as a productive asset, it is actually a myth. Research shows that brain loses valuable time while shifting focus from one task to another, especially if the tasks are complex or unfamiliar. So, have your team members work on a timetable, focusing on one task at a time.
• Optimize Resources and Increase Efficiency. Check if there are multiple points of information logging or if the data is being registered/processed in an efficient manner. Multiple data entry points increases chances of mistakes and thus increasing confusion at a later stage. Inefficiency in processing information wastes time, causing unnecessary delays.

There are many other things that a project manager may do as they accumulate experience in resolving problems - these are some that I have learned in my professional career. I'll welcome your comments on what preventive steps you take to avoid and reduce stress in your work environment.