Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

A Brief History of Goal Setting

n this this two-part post, we’ll highlight three of the most common goal-setting methodologies present in organizations today and will discuss the pros and cons of each.

Management by Objectives (MBO)

If you’ve worked in an American organization in the last several decades, you probably have experience with the MBO approach to goal setting.

While the American corporation was in its formative stages, journalist Peter Drucker was invited to take a close peek inside General Motors. Drucker recognized that corporate environments tend to operate in silos in which employees get stuck in an “activity trap” – they’re so focused on what they’re doing that they forget why they’re doing it. These silos can’t be effective unless hierarchies are integrated from the top down. Leaders and their employees must decide on and commit to a common challenge that then cascades through the organization.

In The Practice of Management, which was based on Drucker’s leadership observations at GE, he first described his Management by Objectives (MBO) theory. In MBO, employees participate in setting goals and are then evaluated on the fulfillment of those goals. Managers focus on what employees are achieving rather than exactly how they are achieving it.

In the MBO model, every level of management participates in an organizational goal setting process so that the plan can be implemented with maximum buy-in. Early on, managers agree on the system by which performance will be evaluated and rewarded. Next, managers identify goals in every area for which they are responsible and share these goals with their teams. Once teams understand their targets, each manager works with individual employees to transfer knowledge of the bigger picture and set goals that are aligned with organizational and team objectives. The manager then steps into the role of monitor, checking progress often and assessing if and how well goals have been achieved.

In their 2014 book 100+ Management Models: How to Understand and Apply the World’s Most Powerful Business Tools, Fons Trompenaars and Piet Hein Coebergh said that an important aspect of the MBO approach is that when employees are involved with goal setting, they are more likely to fulfill their responsibilities. In the MBO system, employees are more self-directed than boss-directed – a shift from the industrial age of work in which employees simply did what their managers told them without asking questions or providing input on the best course of action.

Although Drucker was undoubtedly a genius, he did not discover the panacea for all things ailing corporate management. The MBO approach has well-documented advantages and disadvantages. A chief advantage, of course, is its egalitarianism. Several research studies, including the recent Gallup State of the American Manager Report, have indicated that employees who have a say in their goals and the best way to achieve results are more engaged in their jobs. MBO also forces management layers to align on a common vision and actively communicate that vision from top to bottom. Promotion and compensation decisions can be made more objectively and micromanagement is less of a problem. And best of all, the model can be used in any organization regardless of type or size.

Over the years, though, drawbacks to the approach have emerged. MBO requires a systematic, rigorous process that not all organizations have the discipline to undertake. Secondly, the emphasis on process sometimes overshadows meaningful actions and outcomes. Goals may be overly idealistic, failing to take into real account hurdles (like financial resources) that teams or individuals may face. MBO may also lead to competition instead of collaboration as teams focus narrowly on their objectives and put them above the greater good of the organization. This can result in actions that achieve results by whatever means necessary, and quality and the integrity of reporting can be compromised.

For more on the history of goal setting, head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Meet Your 21st Century Customer

We are now closer to 2020 than 2010. Whether you are a business owner or one employee out of thousands, and whether your job title is IT director or call center specialist, everyone today is in customer service. Here are eight mandates of modern customers you must heed if you want to remain competitive.

Customization

The era of mass production of goods and services is over. Your customer wants a certain style of shirt in a certain color and a certain size and he wants it today. Be prepared to adapt your current offerings to whatever your customers have identified they need, and think about how to price accordingly.

Human contact

Some automation is to be expected, but when your customer decides she needs to talk to a person, give her a person. Companies that force customers to push “0” a million times to no avail are losing business, guaranteed. This will be harder to do, but even more important, as machines take over more and more business functions.

Social media responsiveness

Whether they’ve had a good experience or a bad one, your customers will share it over Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Put a system in place to manage your properties every day so you can show them you’re listening to feedback and that you care, and so that you can put out small fires before they turn into a conflagration.

Mobility

Any piece of information you provide to a customer has to be mobile-accessible. That means she can do anything, anywhere, on any device. Mobility is no longer a “nice to have” but an imperative. At the same time, don’t forget the late adopters and keep your standard device support around for a while.

Multiple touch points

Some customers like Live Chat while others prefer to email. Some might even prefer to wait 45 minutes on the phone. I personally love when companies let me schedule the time for the customer rep to call me back. The point is, give people options and don’t limit them to getting in touch during 9-5 business hours.

Self-service

When it comes to simple activities like placing an order, canceling a subscription or updating an address, provide mechanisms so customers don’t have to bother you or waste their time. If you’re doing this right, your customers shouldn’t need you most of the time.

For the rest of the article, visit Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Essential Qualities of the Best Project Managers

Over at the American Management Association, Tom Kendrick, author of 101 Project Management Problems and How to Solve Them, asked readers how to assess if they have what it takes to be successful project managers. We’ve been talking a lot about certification here, but Tom approached the issue from another angle: what qualities do the best PMs most frequently display? Here are the top ten.

Extroverted

The best project managers are people-oriented and quickly establish effective working relationships with their team members. Introverted PMs, on the other hand, may find their projects wandering out of control because they are insufficiently engaged with the people responsible for the work.

Analytical

Great PMs have a preference for observable data over intuitive information. Projects are usually best managed using facts that can be verified and tested, and they tend to proceed most smoothly when decisions are based on consistent, data-driven criteria.

Organized

The best PMs are detail-oriented and can keep straight many disparate activities at a time. Individuals who are more flexible and spontaneous are important for innovation, but as PMs they may lack a perspective on the big picture and projects may be chaotic and directionless.

“Technical Enough”

Tom commented that for large programs, project managers are seldom masters of every technical detail, but generally are knowledgeable enough to ensure that communications are clear and status can be verified. Unless a project is particularly small and technical, it requires an effective leader who can motivate people and delegate the work to those who understand the nuances.

Pragmatic

Great PMs understand that striving for perfection is fruitless. Instead, they focus on how to most efficiently deliver business value, recognizing that there will be trade-offs between time, scope, and cost.

For the rest of the list, check out Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Sustaining Enthusiasm for a Long-Term Project

In 2001, a team led by NASA principal investigator Alan Stern crafted the proposal for the New Horizons mission. Five years later in 2006, NASA launched an unmanned probe, a spacecraft weighing over 1,000 pounds, on the first-ever route to Pluto.

Less than a year later, the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto to the status of “dwarf planet,” but that didn’t mean anything as far as the epic New Horizons mission was concerned.

Fast Company recently shared an article detailing the muscle behind New Horizon’s formidable planning process, which spanned 14 years (9 if you start counting at launch) and more than 3 billion miles. The team relied on strong leadership, rigorous risk assessment, and of course, endless patience.

A huge part of the mission’s success was the team’s Longevity document, a list of requirements for ensuring the probe’s successful 2015 encounter with Pluto. The document detailed the uses of the probe’s spare parts and listed every New Horizons team member so they could be reached if their expertise was needed.

The team also compiled a spreadsheet of contingencies for when things didn’t proceed as planned, listing 249 items that might go wrong with either the spacecraft or ground-based operations. This document turned out to be critical when ground control temporarily lost communications with the probe earlier this summer.

Although the Fast Company piece didn’t directly address it, Stern and Chris Hersman, the lead engineer on the New Horizons project, had another intimidating task. How could they bolster their team’s excitement about a project where no immediate payoff was an understatement? Not everyone on the original team stayed on board through the 14 years between proposal and today, but many did. Here’s four ways Stern and Hersman kept them interested.

Communicate the Big Picture

According to Hersman, New Horizons is now flying through Pluto’s shadow, taking measurements from its atmosphere and probing to learn about the temperature, pressure, and composition of its surface. After hearing NASA publicly claim that the probe’s job is crucial to expanding humanity’s scant understanding of the outer reaches of the solar system, the New Horizons team was invigorated by the opportunity to participate in the making of history.

Play the Politics

Stern and Hersman likely reminded their people that the National Academy of Sciences ranked New Horizons as the space agency’s top priority during an every-10-years survey of its projects. The importance of the project and expectations were continually reinforced from above, making it easier for team members to keep their attention on the end game and the upward career mobility that would result from a successful mission.

For the rest, visit Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Do You Know Your Sales Terms?

You know the feeling. You’re meeting with someone from sales or marketing and you’re listening attentively as they passionately describe their project. You want to understand what they’re talking about, but you don’t have an MBA and some of the vocabulary is just lost on you. However, you don’t want to sound clueless, so you don’t ask. We hope this post with common sales terms definitions offers some relief and can serve as a handy reference in the future!

AIDA

An acronym that stands for Attention/Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. These are the individual steps of the sales funnel (see below), in which your pool of potential customers moves from large to small as prospects get closer to a sale.

BANT

An acronym used for qualifying leads, which stands for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline. Salespeople use this to assess whether a prospect has the money and the decision-making power to result in a sale, and also whether your product or service solves a critical customer problem in the right timeframe. In other words, BANT helps salespeople determine if all the stars are aligned for a deal to take place.

Buyer Persona

Based on research and outlining what, where, when, why, and how a customer buys. Buyer personas are often provided to salespeople to educate them about the ideal prospect and about the most effective way to approach that prospect.

Churn Rate

A metric based on the value of the customers you retain. To calculate churn rate, you take the number of customers you lost in a given time period and divide it by the total number of customers you had at the very beginning of the period. For example, if you had 100 customers at the start of the year and only 80 customers at the end of January(discounting brand new customers), your churn rate would be: (100-80)/100 = 20/100 = 20%.

Closing Ratio

The percentage of prospects that a salesperson closes successfully. This ratio is used for all sorts of things, including individual salesperson performance, evaluation of profits, and sales forecasting. The better qualified a salesperson’s leads are, the less likely they are to be turned down (and the higher their closing ratio generally is).

Qualified Lead

A prospect that learned about your product or service, was interested, and contacted your organization to receive additional information. This kind of lead is most likely to result in a sale because half of the work is already done!

For more where these came from, head on over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Are You Ready for Life in the Swarm?

Mid-century work teams will be temporary in addition to virtual. The growth of contract work and the specialization of organizations will spell the end for stable groups that work together a long time. Teamwork will still be valued and rewarded, but the teams themselves will form and disband with lightning speed. Industry analyst firm Gartner calls this phenomenon swarming.

Pros and Cons of Life in the Swarm

A swarm is a group that comes together for a short-term project and quickly disbands when the project has been completed. It’s characterized by a flurry of collective activity from everyone available and able to pitch in. Employees in a swarm will barely know each other, so in order to gain influence with colleagues and partners, professionals will have to leverage larger networks rather than smaller ones.

In the near future, reporting relationships will get confusing since work will cross department and company lines and people will have an ever-changing array of formal and informal managers. Employees will have to be more spontaneous, proactively creating new designs and models to deal with the issues at hand.

Working on a new team every month (or week) is likely to be challenging and exciting, and you won’t ever be bored. But because your path is your own and everyone you work with is going in a slightly different direction, you are likely to struggle finding suitable long-term mentors and solidifying work relationships. Networking will be more complex as you attempt to manage an army of weaker ties, calling on people you may have interacted with only once or twice about a project or opportunity.

You won’t always understand the culture or perspective your new colleagues are coming from. Unfortunately, considering the speed and intensity of swarms, you usually won’t have time for icebreakers. You’ll simply have to accelerate your efforts to get to know swarm-mates, and accept that a common work goal may be all that binds you at times.

For more on life in the swarm, check out Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How to Become a Project Manager

PM certifications increase your earning potential and differentiate you on the job market. The Project Management Institute offers six certifications, and here are some details about each so you can assess which one is most applicable.

Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)

The CAPM certification recognizes a demonstrated understanding of the fundamental knowledge, processes and terminology that are needed for effective project management performance. It is designed for project team members who provide subject matter expertise (e.g., marketing, finance, customer care, processing, fulfillment) and serve as project sponsors, facilitators, liaisons or coordinators.

The CAPM requires a high school diploma, associate’s degree, or the global equivalent, as well as 23 hours of PM education (without work experience) or 1,500 hours of professional experience on a project team (without project management education). You will need to take a three-hour, 150-question, multiple-choice examination and the cost for non-PMI members is $300 (discounted for PMI members).

If you can answer “yes” to more than one of these questions, you might want to pursue the CAPM certification.

• Have you been in project management for less than two years or are you new to project management?
• Do you participate on a project team?

Project Management Professional (PMP)

The PMP certification recognizes competence of an individual to perform in the role of a project manager, specifically experience in leading and directing projects. It is meant for those who are responsible for all aspects of a project for the life of a project, and who lead and direct cross-functional teams to deliver projects within the constraints of time, budget and scope.

The PMP requires a high school degree, an associate’s degree, or a bachelor’s degree – or their global equivalents. You must have 35 hours of PM education, and if you have obtained a bachelor’s degree within the last eight years, you must have a minimum of three years of non-overlapping professional experience, during which at least 4500 hours were spent leading and directing projects.

If you have obtained only a high school degree within the last eight years, you must have a minimum of five years of non-overlapping professional experience, during which at least 7500 hours were spent leading and directing projects.

You will need to take a four-hour, 200-question multiple-choice examination and the cost for non-PMI members is $465 (discounted for PMI members).

If you can answer “yes” to more than one of these questions, you might want to pursue the PMP certification.

• Are you responsible for all aspects of a project for the life of the project?
• Do you lead and direct cross-functional teams to deliver projects within the constraints of schedule, budget and scope?
• Do you demonstrate sufficient knowledge and experience to appropriately apply a methodology to projects that have reasonably well-defined requirements and deliverables?

For additional PM career options, head on over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How to Increase Your Learning Agility

An old manager once told me I had the ability to quickly assimilate information, that he could tell me how to do something and I would then apply that knowledge to a variety of different situations. I now see this feedback as the ultimate compliment, for my manager felt I had learning agility, and apparently, learning agility is critical to success.

Learning agility is openness to information and the ability to gain and apply insights. People with this trait often follow a non-traditional path and are able to develop professionally from an array of diverse experiences. Learning agile people aren’t perturbed by shifts in direction. They are focused on the end state and are willing to put themselves out there. When they fall, they get back up. They take risks and often receive commensurate rewards.

Consulting firm Green Peak Partners recently collaborated with researchers from Teachers College at Columbia University to assess the value that learning agile individuals bring to their organizations. Their study found that private equity-backed C-suite leaders who ranked high for learning agility on an assessment test also outperformed less-agile peers as measured by revenue growth and “boss ratings” issued by their Boards.

Learning Agility Can Be, Well, Learned

As project team leaders or project managers, there is much you can do to foster learning agility in yourself and in your organization. Here are five tips from Green Peak Partners.

Innovate: Repeatedly ask, “What else? What are 10 different ways I could approach this? What are several radical things I could try here?” You might not actually execute all the ideas you come up with, but you shouldn’t dismiss anything out of hand.

Trust your intuition: Always look for a pattern. For instance, think through the similarities between current and past projects and the common thread that ties various aspects of your business together. Cultivate calm through meditation, and learn to listen before immediately reacting in a stressful situation.

Become more reflective: Explore “what-ifs” and alternative histories for projects with which you’ve been involved. Never pass up and opportunity for genuine feedback, asking: “What are three or four things I could have done better?” Make sure the question is open-ended but specific so that you can take action on what you learn.

Take more risks: Look for stretch assignments where success isn’t a given. These might involve new roles, new parts of the company, or new geographies. Learning and exploration, rather than positive business outcomes, should be the main goal.

For the rest of the article, visit Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Prepare for the Rise of the Versatilists

As the data age marches on, IT and business become even further intertwined. Where do project managers fit in the radically new IT ecosystem that will be a reality by 2020? On his recent Project Management in 2020 webinar, Gartner research VP Michael Hanford, discussed what we can expect in the profession in the years to come. Here are eight of his most pertinent observations.

Decentralized IT Spend

Approximately 37 percent of IT-related spending now takes place outside the IT organization. As more projects leave IT to reside with line of business managers, the percentage breakdown will increase to 50/50 (50 percent IT, 50 percent line of business) within the next few years.

Disappearing Professions

As machine capabilities continue to advance and automation becomes more sophisticated, more jobs based on pattern recognition will go to robots instead of humans. By 2050, about one-third of current white collar jobs will be gone.

Alliance Building

Enterprise IT has evolved in three stages. The first was IT craftsmanship with a focus on technology, operating systems, and hardware. The second was IT industrialization with a focus on repeatable processes, standards, and certifications. We are on the cusp of the third stage, platformization, which will focus on business models, markets, and alliances. The desired outcome during this stage is innovation and frenemy collaborations will be everywhere.

Movement from Software Delivery to Business Change

Once upon a time, project management was solely about planning and coordination. Many artifacts of this era, including PM-specific skills, linear thinking, and “best” practices, haven’t survived. Today, the name of the game is driving change and cutting complexity. “I got new software” is not a solution. Meaningful change is.

Rise of the Versatilists

Specialists with a deep bench of specific knowledge will not be able to learn and change quickly enough to address business requirements. Increasingly, PM success will be about versatility, or possessing good leadership skills, strong relationships, and the right contacts.

For more of Gartner's tips, check out Intuit's Fast Track blog.