Personal and Organizational Growth

Taking the time to understand your organization's project management maturity level offers a helpful corollary effect: it allows you to see your own personal development within a broader context, rather than seeing yourself as an isolated entity. You can't really begin to pursue your larger professional goals until you understand where you fit into the big picture. If you find yourself working for a company with only the lowest level of project management maturity, you will likely have to lead the way to more effective project management processes, educating yourself in the process. If you work at a company with a well-established project management infrastructure, you will have more opportunities to learn from colleagues and upper management.

Advice from a Microsoft Engineering Manager

Ashwini Varma, principal group engineering manager at Microsoft, credits her desire to solve problems as a key to her success as a project manager. In an interview with Craig Lee, principal engineering manager at Microsoft, she shared some advice for maturing into an effective project manager.

 Whatever your situation, you need to commit to your own personal development. Here are some tips to help you pursue growth as a confident, competent project manager, and a leader in your organization.

• Commit to the following practices you have learned about throughout this book:
• Embracing living order tactics, using them whenever they are appropriate
• Making reliable promises
• Implementing Lean principles whenever they are appropriate
• Maintaining a clear, sustained focus on value
• Providing meaningful, current, and accurate information
• Engaging constructively in difficult discussions and being willing to share bad news
• Cultivating a culture of learning and adaptation on your project teams
• Use pull planning instead of push planning whenever appropriate
• Take advantage of formal and informal learning opportunities
  

• Read the appendix to High Flyers: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders, by Morgan W. McCall: In the book's appendix, "Taking Charge of your Development," McCall includes a host of useful suggestions, checklists, and questionnaires. He also offers practical yet inspiring advice, such as the following:

• Write a "lessons learned" summary for each project: The post-course self-assessment and key take-aways document that you are assigned to complete at the end of this class are your opportunities to write the kind of reflective "lessons learned" summary that you should continue to create throughout your career. Even if your organization doesn't require it, take the time to compile such an assessment at the end of each project or phase. Don't waste time trying to write polished prose - just make notes about what did and didn't work. As suggested in Lesson 13, you could make a short video or audio recording instead if that would be easier than putting your thoughts in writing.
• Tell stories: Sharing stories with colleagues about past work experiences is an important part of professional development. Sometimes one well-told tale - perhaps shared over lunch or in an elevator on the way to a meeting - can teach more about how a company works than a week of classroom training. Take the time to listen to the stories your coworkers have to share. Consider keeping a list of insights gleaned from casual conversations over the course of a month. You'll be surprised how much you learned when you thought you were doing something else. 
• Cultivate a relationship with a trusted mentor: Having an external point of reference for honest feedback can be invaluable. When you think you have enough experience, offer to serve as a mentor for other people, sharing what you have learned, and staying alert to what you can learn from their experiences.
  
  

Three Types of Mentorship

In Becoming a Project Leader, Terry Little describes three types of mentorship. First is formal mentoring programs within organizations, which almost never work. As Terry explains, "Many so-called leaders fail to recognize that mentoring is as important as anything they do and more important than most of what they do". The larger problem with formal mentoring, however, is the fact that mentees "are incentivized by external reward rather than a desire to improve and grow". Next is informal mentoring, in which someone more senior in the company chooses mid-level managers. Terry's approach: "I meet with each person I mentor regularly - nominally once a quarter. I also meet with everyone I mentor as a group once each six months. In between, I send articles or suggested readings, as well as some words of counsel that come to me. To me and to them it's critical that these things be predictable and personal - something they can count on and that means something to them as diverse individuals".

The final type of mentorship is informal-informal mentoring. Terry explains: "As we progress up the career chain, our behaviors become more and more visible to an increasingly larger number of people. We are not conscious of it, but others take their cues from those higher up the bureaucratic pyramid than they are. They observe our behavior and make judgments about it. Is it something worth emulating? If so, how can I adapt that behavior to my unique personality? Is it something to avoid? If so, how do I sensitize myself so that I don't do it unconsciously? Much of what we turn out to be as individuals derives from what we have learned from observing others - not from what others have told us, what we have read and so forth. When others seek to emulate us, we have mentoring at its finest. But when one sees basic leadership principles working effectively in real life, it can have a profound effect".

• Seek professional and personal experiences that broaden your skills: You can't expect to learn much from familiar experiences, so look for things that take you a few steps outside your normal comfort zone. For example, direct, face-to-face interactions with customers and colleagues you don't normally interact with will teach you volumes about how your organization works (and doesn't work).
• Don't shy away from leadership roles: Leading projects is often the first step in the development path for a new manager. A project, whether big or small, offers a unique opportunity to enhance leadership skills without necessarily having direct authority over all team members.
• Embrace challenges: Don't shy away from difficult challenges just because you think they'll make your life complicated. Think of new job assignments as opportunities for growth and development. This is especially true of new job assignments outside of engineering, in sales, marketing, or other areas.
• Cultivate grit: Best-selling author Angela Duckworth argues that the secret to success is grit - that is, passion and perseverance in pursuit of very long-term goals. Gritty people display extraordinary stamina, work extremely hard, and are willing to pick themselves up after failure and try again.
• Be prepared to make the ethical choice: In Lesson 8 you read about the many factors affecting our perceptions of right and wrong. Often moral grey areas can make it hard to decide on the right course of action, so you have to lay the groundwork for ethical behavior ahead of time. Do your personal values align with the goals of your organization? Do they align with your individual projects? Take some time to discuss these questions with colleagues who have experience with similar situations. Also make sure you are familiar with the Code of Ethics for Engineers, published by the National Society of Professional Engineers, Consider making a list of things you absolutely will never do. Then you can refer back to it in the future, when you're wondering if a particular choice is the ethical one. This can be surprisingly effective in keeping you on the high moral ground.
  

Protecting the Creative Process

In his book Creativity, Inc., Ed Catmull, president of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation, describes the project management techniques that brought to life animation classics like Toy Story and The Incredibles. It all comes down to embracing the risks and uncertainties that allow true creativity to flourish.

It might seem obvious that creativity is essential to entertainment companies like Pixar and Disney. But Catmull argues that protecting the creative process is essential in all types of organizations. He encourages managers to actively safeguard their teams' creative abilities, thereby creating a safe space for team members to take risks, by doing the following: