Category: Tips

How to Be a People First Project Manager

8/16/2023

By Kelly Fumiko Weiss

In this blog post you will…

Learn what questions to ask to ensure you are putting people first on projects
Learn that 90% of a Project Manager’s job is communication
Learn about how Allize can help you train your project managers and/or run your projects

Any time I’m training Project Managers, I start by asking them what it means to be a good project manager. What are the duties and responsibilities? What does success look like?

Inevitably, the first answers are always administrative:

“Having all the paperwork in order, invoices, contracts, Gantt charts, etc.”

“Creating the project plan and keeping it updated.”

“Sending out weekly status reports. Scheduling meetings. Tracking milestones.”

While these are all tasks that a Project Manager has to do, none of them are what makes a person a good project manager. And they certainly don’t make someone a People First Project Manager.

My answer?

Project Management is about communication. 90% of a Project Manager’s job is communication.

You could have the best project management in the world and never see a Gantt chart. You could have the worst project management in the world and have all your paperwork in order.

What makes the difference?

The key is making sure the PEOPLE on the project are taken care of and that they know what’s going on.

What does this look like?

Here are some of the key components to being a People First Project Manager:

To start the project off:

Does everyone know why the project is important?
Does everyone know why the project will help people?
Does everyone know their role on the project?
Does everyone know everyone else’s role on the project?
Does everyone understand what’s expected of them and when?
Does everyone have the tools, skills, and access they need to succeed?
Does the project have a shared, open, transparent space to post project information?
Does everyone know how to use collaboration tools? And understand why open, transparent work is important and impactful?
Does everyone know what to expect of you? What are your SLAs and are they shared with the project team? For example do they know:
- When you will post status updates
- How long it will take you to follow-up after meetings
- How long it will take you to answer questions
- How often you will update project documentation
- What format your posts will come in
- What you will be using to document the work

During the project:

Does every meeting have an agenda?
Does anyone need extra support prior to a meeting?
Is it clear who is leading each meeting and why?
Do meetings include what questions need to be answered, and record what those answers are?
Is every meeting followed up with a meeting summary AND clear action items
- Clear action items include who is to do the work and by when
Are status reports easy to read?
Do status reports convey the most important information? (outstanding items, action items, blockers)
Are RAID logs actively used to guide conversations and track progress?
Are project plans reviewed in internal stand-ups and external client meetings?
- And by reviewed, we mean are changes discussed? Updates verified? Is the work to update the project plan collaborative and not done in a silo?
Are stakeholders asked if their needs are being met?
Are needed changes being communicated effectively?
Is there a clear escalation path for issues?
Are milestones being celebrated?
Is there a mechanism for sharing praise and/or success stories?
If mistakes are made and solutions created, is that being celebrated as well?

To end the project:

Is it clear what constitutes the project’s end?
Is the end of the project being celebrated?
Is it clear who does what after the project ends, aka that the project has a clear path to operationalization?
Is a Lessons Learned session conducted? And are those results shared out?

I could go on and on here, but we hope the theme is clear. Every bullet point on these lists is about making sure:

expectations are clear
information is readily shared
people’s needs are considered and met
work is done collaboratively

There is no mention on this list of administrative work being the sign of quality project management. Sure, we need RAID logs and project plans and invoices need to be paid. But those are just artifacts. The COMMUNICATION around project artifacts is what’s key. What difference does a RAID log make if people don’t talk about the Risks, Actions, Issues, and Decisions that are critical to a project? What difference to project plans make if people are not working together to adjust them and agreeing to the project’s course? What difference does invoicing make if there isn’t agreement as to how the invoices are being sent, at what points, for what milestones, and what to expect?

90% of a Project Manager’s job is communication.

And being a People First Project Manager means using the tools of project management to facilitate conversations that will ensure everyone has what they need and knows what they are meant to do.

Project Managers are meant to serve. And the best way to serve is to put the people’s needs first.

To help, Allize offers a variety of Project Management capabilities that are effective in the short and long term. We can help train your project management teams on how to run effective projects OR we can help lead by example and serve as the project manager for initiatives starting or in flight.

Project management is at the heart and soul of what we do, and we want to share our skills with you!

Blog post follow-up…

Find out more about our Project Management services, including leading and management projects, project evaluation, PMO set-up, and training Project Managers on our website
Check out our past blog posts on
- Lessons I’ve Learned from Managers I’ve Loved
- The Employee Experience: What Different Markets Have in Common and How We Can All Make the Employee Experience Better
Contact Us if you have any questions about Project Management or our Project Management Services

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The Employee Experience: What Different Markets Have In Common and How We Can All Make the Employee Experience Better

7/12/2023

1 Comment

By Kelly Fumiko Weiss

Over the course of my career I’ve had the privilege of working in multiple markets.

Throughout high school and college I worked exclusively at nonprofit organizations, ranging from helping children with special needs to social service agencies to immigration advocacy organizations. I am currently on the Board of a local food pantry.

After receiving my graduate degree in social service administration I worked in municipal government and later worked for many years in a large public sector school district.

Twice I have worked at religious organizations, including a Christian school in Hong Kong and an Archdiocese Pastoral Center.

And I’ve also worked in the private sector. Most recently at two different large IT consulting firms.

I’m not sure how many other people have crossed markets as much as I have, so I wanted to share some employee experience commonalities that I’ve seen. Spoiler alert: what these markets have in common FAR outweigh their differences.

I know the urge to think the grass is greener can be strong. If you are feeling the constraints of the nonprofit market and think maybe the private sector would be better - I can tell you, there is NO market that has figured out how to prioritize their employees well.

First, let’s talk about what drives these markets. These are oversimplifications, but they paint a broad picture and give us a starting point.

Core Motivations:

Nonprofit Organizations

Fundraising
Mission
Awareness

Public Sector Organizations

Compliance & Reporting
Taxpayer accountability
The press

Religious Organizations

What I call “butts in seats” - increasing participation (and therefore donations)
Mission
For larger religious organizations, the press can also be a huge motivator

Private Companies

Revenue
Image
Client satisfaction
Accolades

Notice something missing from all of these lists?

I do.

What’s missing is the employees. The people doing the work. Without fail, across markets, even at companies that really care about their employees, companies that are a true delight to work at, the employees will come second (or third, or last) to their larger drivers.

Let’s talk about some other similarities in the employee experience across these four markets:

Employees are the most expensive part of any organization. Therefore pay raises, bonuses, cost of living increases, etc. become harder to justify and expertise, longevity, and institutional knowledge become less attractive than “new” (aka less expensive) talent
Because there’s never enough money for all the people an organization needs, people often wear multiple hats, doing two or three people’s jobs at once
Salary and benefits are often seen as perk enough and therefore all other employee considerations are either on the chopping block or have already been stripped away
If employee considerations are in place, and money gets tight, those are the first things to go
HR departments are there to protect the company and rarely have enough (if anything) in place to support employees
Fear of what a business choice may look like to others, to the press, or to leadership will often trump doing what’s right AND often what’s best for employees, in favor of what will outwardly play better
Learning management systems are rarely used, and if they are, training is poorly tracked. Training that is well tracked is training that is legally required
Employees are not trained for management positions; most employees are promoted to management because they are good at their jobs, not because they will be good managers
Employee professional development has to be done off-hours / on top of current work instead of being built in as a part of the 40 hour work week
Paying for professional development opportunities often comes with strings attached - like agreeing to stay at the organization a certain amount of time afterwards and if you don’t, paying the money back
Flexibility in work (reduced hours, schedule shifts, accommodations for disabilities, children, or sick family members) rarely comes with a reduced workload
People that opt to go on FMLA are more likely to be on layoff lists once their FMLA is over
Expenses relating to employees are seen as “off mission” and can and will be excoriated as wasteful spending
Leaders rarely take the time to talk to the “boots on the ground” workers
Communication across departments is rare
There can be a lot of “us vs them” mentalities within the organizations themselves and/or the organizations they support
Performance review processes typically feel icky (yes, that’s my professional term for it) and are often unorganized and more often change from year to year
Job descriptions are not updated
Job expectations are unclear
Company communications come in one modality - usually email

I’m guessing that regardless of what market you are currently working in, most if not all of these bullet points resonate with you.

So, why is it that we don’t put our employees first?

Why is there cognitive dissonance around the idea that if employees are well taken care of, they will be able to better do the jobs they were hired to do?

When did we stop valuing expertise?

Why do we think we can get work for free?

Why isn’t a well taken care of workforce seen as the better business decision?

Let’s face it, we are all complicit in this because we all need our jobs. So none of us rock the boat too much. Being a disruptor can lead to being unemployed.

And if we are in leadership, we are beholden to the constraints of how much money we have and therefore how much money we can spend. These things are real.

It’s easy to say that the employee experience should be better when you’re in the vacuum of an aggrandizing blog post. It’s much harder to push back on the tide of poor employee experiences when you need to get your paycheck and your health insurance OR you are the one that needs to keep the company books balanced.

So, what are we to do?

How do we make employees feel seen and respected at work in the face of immovable institutional barriers?

Here are some suggestions that do not require institutional change, cost no money, AND if enough people do them, intrinsic change may follow. At Allize, we have about a million more of these suggestions, so look out for future blog posts where we will continue to talk about these and other topics.

For employers:

Have language at the ready that backs up your decisions. Worried about how investments in your employees will play out in the press? Curate an answer that supports your employees and justifies investing in them when you are calm and collected. Have it at the ready if/when you get pushback. Don’t leave it to the moment when you may be emotionally triggered to try and craft your response. And make sure it demonstrates how much you value the people that work for you (and therefore the people they are serving.)
Even out what you do. Take a look at who is busy and who isn’t. Who is doing two or three jobs at once? Who has less to do that can help someone with more to do? What work isn’t getting done because you don’t have people to do it? People and jobs are NOT interchangeable. But with some attention and training, the workload can be more evenly distributed.
Scale down what you do. If everyone is overloaded and there’s no money to hire more people, it’s time to scale down what you do. It’s classic project management. Triple constraint of scope, time, cost. If you cannot increase cost, you have to reduce scope. This will carry pains in and of itself, but doing less can often be the better choice. Take the extraneous work off of people’s plates so they aren’t overloaded and can focus on your core services.
Communicate to employees in multiple formats. If you have something important to say, don’t just email it out. To start, email is fine, but make sure to email it out multiple times. Then also post it to shared spaces. Then tell department heads and managers they need to share the message in team meetings and 1:1s. Record a quick video of leadership’s message and post it to the company. Make sure your message is heard. All you need is a smartphone!
Make management training mandatory for anyone who is a manager. I know your first thought is, how do I do this with no cost? There are a lot of ways to do this internally. You can have an experienced manager within your company lead a workshop. You can leverage free resources online. You can curate a list of books that can be checked out from the library. You can curate a list of podcasts to listen to. Create the to do’s your managers must do and then make sure there’s space for them to discuss what they learned AND how they are going to incorporate what they learned into their jobs. The important part is to demonstrate that being a manager is a unique skill that must be learned, supported, and nurtured.
Make sure your employees are part of client project user personas. When working on projects for clients, we often create user personas, creating different buckets for the employees and stakeholders of our clients. BUT when was the last time you saw a user story for your own employees? The people working on the projects are affected by the work too! How does this project impact the team working on it? This is particularly important for long term projects. I know it can seem counterintuitive. And it feels like breaking the proverbial 4th wall to introduce yourself into the equation. BUT there are a million ways you want the client to interact with you. You have needs that need to be met. The project will impact how much time you have to work on other things. The stakeholders will impact the efficiency of your work. Don’t forget about yourself and your team!
Create change management plans for your teams that are just as robust as they would be for your clients. We all know from working with clients, that even the smallest process change will be addressed and incorporated into our change plans. Why not do the same for our employees?
Praise and celebrate. We are too quick at work to breeze past the wins. Milestones hit. Difficult tasks completed. Bids won. We often only celebrate on holidays or at the end of big projects. But there are tiny victories each and every day. We should acknowledge, celebrate and share. Celebrations don’t have to come at a cost. They can be a potluck. They can be a praise post in a shared space. They can be a group walk to a local park. Enjoy the creativity of creating ways to celebrate your people.

For employees:

Document your own job. Keep a running list of the things that you do for your company. Every few months, compare that to your job description. If you see the scope start to drift, bring this to the attention of your boss. Ask for clarification. BUT you must have specifics. It can’t just be a feeling. Use your documentation to make expectations clear.
Be kind. This may seem trite, but it could not be a bigger deal. If you are kind to everyone in your interactions, not only will you feel better but they will feel better too. Being kind does not mean being a pushover. Kind does not equal weak. But showing genuine care, taking a moment to acknowledge we are all human, smiling, paying attention to your tone… it will all go a long way. If everyone is kind, the workplace automatically feels better.
Be communicative. What are your needs? Does your boss know them? What have you learned this week? Have you shared that with anyone? What are the expectations for the project you're working on? Are they clear to everyone? All the questions you have, other people probably have them too. Be proactive and answer them for yourself and others. The key to this is picking the right time and place. Constantly bombarding collaborative spaces with questions will burn people out. Start with 1:1s with your boss. Bundle some thoughts together into one post instead of several. Put the thoughts in the correct channel/shared space. Be communicative, but also thoughtful.
Present problems WITH solutions. If you have a problem at work, don’t just complain about it. Take time to collect your thoughts. What is the problem? Why is it a problem? What is the impact of the problem? What are specific examples of the problem? AND most importantly, what are potential solutions. Leadership may not take your specific solutions up, but it will get their wheels turning on what solutions can be AND it will show them you are a team player, looking to make things better, and not someone who has the potential to lower team morale.
Praise and celebrate. (Yes, this is so important, I’m putting it in twice) Don’t just leave it up to leadership to create praise and to celebrate work. Lead by example and celebrate the moments you see and praise the coworkers that are doing well. Build a positive culture from the ground up.

Like I said, this list doesn’t solve the institutional problems. And there are a million more ideas we could share. But if you enacted even half of this list, what a difference it could make.

We’d like to hear from you on ways you’ve discovered to improve the employee experience at little or no cost. It doesn’t matter what market you are in. The problems are often the same. Please share your ideas in the comments below. We can’t wait to hear from you!

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How to Be a People First Project Manager

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