Category Archives: 04-Managing a project team

Keeping things moving forward, managing team dynamics, giving & receiving feedback, making sure all the team roles are covered

04-Managing a project team, feedback, team dynamics, team roles

9 Traits of Successful Startup CEOs

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This is an interesting and short article from INC magazine on the traits of successful startup CEOs.  After running a business for about 3 years, a lot of these make good sense.

1. Good at hiring and firing – hiring people is easy and makes you feel good about yourself. But knowing when to cut loses is hard, and delaying can result in bigger problems. It’s not easy to do, I struggled with this for a long time.

2. Builds a culture, not a company – a company cannot grow if it has the wrong culture. Spend time finding employees with the right skill set AND the right culture. The first hires at a startup are crucial to building the right culture.

3. Listens to feedback

4. Resilient – someone said to me early on “sometimes the road is straight and easy, other days you can’t see 10 feet ahead of you.” Keep chugging along.

5. Has a vision – People need to believe that you have a plan and direction.

6. Stay focused – I interpret this as not getting distracted by other things that may pop up. Keep your head clear and focused to the important matter.

7. Speak clearly – When I first started I talked a lot to be friendly, thinking that I could get people to be more willing to do stuff for me.   But all that did was confuse people. Now I know to keep my instructions simple and concise. Explanations may or may not be necessary.

8. Customer advocate – I have to say “the customer is not always right.” Sometimes you have to fire customers. There’s certain customers that I don’t deal with, either because they are cheap, or because I know they will never be happy.

9. Good at convincing people – also related to being concise and clear. Don’t talk yourself into a trap, learn to stop

99-Spreadsheet modeling, charts & graphs, Excel resources, team dynamics

My Challenges with Excel

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C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University, and Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge, was an intellectual giant of the 20th century. In later life, reflecting on challenges he faced in his younger days, Lewis remarked:

“I could never have gone very far in any science, because in the path of every science the lion mathematics lies in wait for you. Even in mathematics whatever could be done by mere reasoning as in simple geometry I did with delight. But the moment calculation came in I was helpless. I grasped the principles but my answers were always wrong. Yet though I never could have been a scientist, I had scientific as well as imaginative impulses and I loved ratiocination*.”

To be candid, I have some apprehension when it comes to Excel . . . made all the more pressing because of how central excel skills are to the practice of finance. So when I consider my excel challenges I draw much encouragement from these thoughts of C.S. Lewis.

Although I have a deep passion for finance, and have worked in investment management for 10 years, my position at work has been more about interpreting and leveraging excel generated data, rather than performing the actual work of creating spreadsheet models myself.

The result is that up till now, my excel skills have languished.  Thus I’m grateful that our MBA program has forced me to improve. In this spirit, (and acting on the advice of professor Noonan) I’ve set out to build my own personal top 10 excel skillset, that will be useful to my financial career.  Some of these may seem rather obvious, but excel is my self-selected focus area and I figured that I could subject my list to public opinion and scrutiny, in the hope that collaborative discussion might occur. I also thought that some of this material might be useful for those considering a financial career.

Rough draft of “Top 10” excel skills for investment management and financial planning for high net worth individuals, families, trusts, and charitable foundations:

  1. Precision tree
  2. Sensitivity analysis, useful for evaluating insurance policies
  3. Goal Seek
  4. Historical market and financial instrument analysis
  5. Excel integration with Word and PowerPoint
  6. Configuring excel for pleasant appearance and functionality
  7. Mortgage / Bond / Annuity amortization schedules
  8. Learning to manipulate and efficiently sort data – this is hugely important for many areas within our business such as ranking client positions, asset allocation decisions, analysis of individual positions, and assessing performance in order to prioritize investment decisions
  9. Graphing portfolio performance vs. relevant market benchmarks
  10. Leveraging excel with proprietary finance software used by major financial enterprises. (our firm uses Advent)

When I reflect on the challenges of the first year of MBA school, I am glad that I have improved in several of theses areas and incorporated them into different assignments and projects. Our cohort has aided much of my improvement.

For example, during first semester, I was fortunate to be on a team with Shehzad Shabuddin, who was quite generous with his time and patient with helping me make progress on excel. Shehzad’s blog post, The Excel trap, reminds us of the dangers of reducing life to data and mathematics. Excel-ing in Real Estate by Bob Caperton and the article by Barry Slaymaker on MBA level excel skills were both particularly helpful. I’m also hopeful that I can persuade Joe Song to give me some Excel lessons between now and graduation.

One of the most powerful lessons I have learned in life (and a “key content” area of MP) is the importance of surrounding yourself with others whose complementary strengths have the capacity to offset your personal areas of weakness.  My next blog post will examine a leader who intimately understood just how powerful this principal is, and became a great, and most unexpected, actor in history.

*Ratiocination, noun. – the process of logical reasoning. [1520-30]

01-Structuring a problem, 03-Planning the work of a team, 04-Managing a project team, work plans

Tips for Leading or Attending Your Next Staff Meeting

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Staff meetings. We know the drill. I think we’ve all had experience with good ones, and ones that are just plain awful.

In my experience, staff meetings have served a number of different purposes: updating others on the progress of projects, decision-making, feedback on work, getting insight from team members, problem-solving etc. The success of those meetings depended on the number of people who attended, how prepared individuals were when they went to the meeting, knowing the purpose of the meeting, and knowing the end goal of the meeting—not be confused with “what” the end goal is going to look like. For example, before you go into the meeting, you know that you want to come out with a solution to your most recent sales issues with a customer—you don’t know what that solution may be until the end of the meeting.

The following tips are from an HBR blog post about the most common mistakes that are made when trying to run a staff meeting. I’ve summarized them below:

  1. There’s no clear objective. To avoid this, make sure the objective of the meeting is clear so that “participants […] know what to expect and how to prepare.”
  2. There’s no focused agenda (despite having a clear meeting objective). This means that the agenda items are unclear (and not detailed enough). Speak to attendees beforehand to determine what exactly they want to discuss and how much time to allot to them.
  3. Not everyone in the room has a chance to speak. Ask directs questions, give “the mic” to them to speak, let the interrupters know they’ll have their time to speak = more engagement from everyone.
  4. Endless debates without a conclusion. This goes back to Mistake #2. If folks have an idea of what the agenda is beforehand, then they can come prepared with data to back potential arguments or provide useful feedback.
  5. Not reaching a consensus on an action item. Before you leave the meeting (or soon after), identify what’s supposed to be done, who is supposed to do it, and when it’s supposed to be done by.
  6. No remembering to give “kudos” to individuals. Towards the end of the meeting, make sure that you still recognize certain individuals or teams for their efforts. Help bring everyone’s efforts and hard work full circle—remind them of the overall goal.

Now I wanted to ask you…

  1. What “mistakes” have you made in a meeting?
  2. Based on your experience, what tips do you have on leading a successful meeting?
  3. What do you do just before a meeting? Right after a meeting?
04-Managing a project team, feedback, team dynamics, team roles

The 7 Things Great Teams Execute Flawlessly

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As business school students, we’ve all had a great deal of team interaction with classmates with a variety of backgrounds and experiences.  Undoubtedly, this has made for a richer experience both inside and outside of the classroom; I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this aspect of the Goizueta program.

Over the tenure of my career, I’ve had to work on teams of various sizes with various backgrounds and skill-sets.  Recently, our team at work has been growing to meet growing business needs.  As one can imagine, the larger the team, the more complex the relationships and the more difficult it is to coordinate all the moving pieces and players.

I came across this article that speaks to how best to maintain a cohesive unit.  I found the list to be not only insightful for me as part of the larger work team, but also beneficial as I lead my own growing team, especially as we prepare to be MBA professionals.

The article uses the San Antonio Spurs NBA championship to illustrate the importance of teamwork and states that, “Teamwork occurs when every member is in the zone, working in unison with one another.”  As we lead our own teams, here are seven points to keep in mind per the article:

1) Remain Poised; Don’t Panic – When things get tense try to keep calm and proactively diffuse any uneasiness.

2) Stay Focused; Execute the Plan – It is important to stay focused on the task at hand.  This is more assured when leaders assign tasks according to their team members’ interests and passions.

3) Accountability; Deliver Your Role – Be accountable to yourself and to members of your team.

4) Trust One Another; Treat Each Other Like Family –  In essence, value each member’s contribution to the team.

5) Support Diversity of Thought; Embrace Differences – This can help challenge status quo and encourage innovation.

6) Expectations are in Alignment; Adjust to Each Other’s Strengths – Strong teams  adjust to the strengths of each team member, evolving as they go.

7) Great Leadership;  Strong Culture and Identity – The team’s leader is ultimately responsible to set the tone for the team. They never stop leading, coaching and teaching. 

As a part of a fast paced work environment, I find item #7 to be the most challenging.  It’s hard to make the time with so many competing priorities.  I’m particularly curious about other’s experiences as it pertains to being “coached” at work.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2014/06/20/the-7-things-great-teams-execute-flawlessly/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

04-Managing a project team, feedback, team dynamics

7 Ways to Build Accountable Organizations

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I believe that my organization needs to change our system of accountability and feedback.  We all walk the halls and complain to each other about how things could be better and that so-and-so department doesn’t do their job properly, but no action is ever taken!  It’s almost as if pointing out someone’s flaw is looked down upon instead of seen as trying to build a weakness into a strength.  We do have annual reviews with our managers but I don’t think any real constructive criticism takes place because we all continue to work in the same manner that we have for the past seven years since I’ve been at this company.  Don’t get me wrong- I really enjoy my company and plan to make a career there, but I think we could definitely be better.

This article I found on Forbes.com expresses some views of how to create a culture of accountability. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccl/2012/02/28/7-ways-to-build-accountable-organizations/2/

My wife is blessed to work in an organization where feedback is constantly provided on an employees performance.  It is amazing to see how efficient her co-workers behave and how well motivated they all seem to be.  Their feedback driven culture echoes the authors sentiments about continuous improvement and constant evaluation.  I need to figure out a way to get my wife’s company’s culture into my company.

I believe that I will soon be in a position to lead one of our three sales teams so I will definitely start with what I can control.  The more challenging task will be to take our model of accountability and spread it into the other departments.  In order for our company to succeed we all need to know that the other groups are performing as well as possible.  To me it all comes down to communicating clear expectations and not being shy to question a process, especially if things could be done better.

Is your company one of constant feedback?  Do you have any interesting methods of enforcing accountability besides compensation structure?  I am all ears . . .

03-Planning the work of a team, 04-Managing a project team

Sink or Swim – Managing my home renovation

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At the beginning of the semester, I decided to work on my project management skills.  I had no idea that I would be managing the most important project of my life.

After this summer semester started, I decided to purchase a home.  While looking at the houses, I found that houses that were move-in ready were 25-50% more expensive than ones that were a similar size in the same neighborhood.  Being a spend-thrift, I convinced myself that it makes more financial sense to buy a house that has not had any updates since it was built (in the early 70’s) and to do all the renovations that I want done.  In the end, I believe that I can have the exact house I want AND not have to pay the markup of the ready-to-go houses.  I had priced out the major materials such as sheetrock, lighting fixtures, bathroom fixtures, kitchen cabinets and appliances.  The total cost, with reasonable labor, for everything appeared to be a fraction of the difference between the cost of my home and the comparable homes with upgrades.  So I bought a fixer upper and the past couple months of my life have been the busiest that I have ever been.

Surprisingly, I do not have very much free time between school and work.  For some odd reason, I overlooked this fact with the excitement to have a house of my own.   This fact presented itself again as soon as I closed.  I realized that my apartment lease ends at the beginning of November and that I want to be ready to move into my new house by then.  This left me with 4 months to do a major remodel that involved demolition of all the existing sheetrock (walls and ceilings), removing floors (tile/wood/and carpet), removing/moving/adding 9 walls,  completely redoing all of the plumbing and electrical, adding ethernet and speaker cabling, rerouting the HVAC ducts, adding new hardwoods and tile, new kitchen cabinets and appliances, painting, trim, door handles, lighting fixtures, and on and on.  The number of decisions that need to be made are almost limitless.

I went looking for a general contractor and found that the prices that I would have to pay for someone to manage and do the entire project for me would be more than if I had just bought a move-in ready house to begin with.  And that I have to pay the contractor cash instead of being able to take a loan for that amount.  I realized that project management had a steep cost.  I had already bought the house and my only option was that I would just have to do it myself (in my huge amount of free time).

This is doing project management to the maximum extent.  I have taken on a project with my entire life savings at stake.  I can not afford delays in this project.  I can not afford for top dollar electricians and laborers.  Yet, I do not have the time to do the majority of this work myself.

I have drawn the floorplan, I have studied the codes, I have navigated the permitting and inspection process, I have done significant amounts of demolition (in an effort to save money), I have taken bids from independent contractors for electrical, HVAC, plumbing, framing, sheetrock, and flooring (but still have so much more to do).  I have created a timeline of activities and am managing progress of each contractor so that there is as little dead time in between.

I am learning the importance of communication and documentation.  Every instruction needs to be clear and every visit needs to be scheduled and confirmed (sometimes multiple times).  Every sub project has its own supplies and materials list and its own budget.  Recently, I have started to dabble into trying to use MS Project to build a Gantt chart as Excel is a bit difficult when I need to add a previously unplanned task in the middle.

So, I said that I would work on my project management skills.  This is about as big of a project as I am ever going to get.

-Fawad

04-Managing a project team

The Gamification of Management?

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In my first semester MP presentation, my team discussed about Gamification and how the Carlos Museum can use those tactics to drive engagement.  In the grand scheme of things, gamification can be used for so much more.

In the article “You Play World of Warcraft? You’re Hired!“, the author discusses the gamification of management.  So, maybe he doesn’t use the word “gamification”, but effectively what he is describing fits into the gamification model.  The primary gamification driver in the MMORPG is competition.  A committed player always wants to have the best items possible to maximize all aspects of their avatar (or “character”).  In World of Warcraft, to acquire the best items you need to work together in a tightly coordinated effort with 25 teammates to attempt to slay giant monsters to gain the chance to acquire powerful items to enhance your character’s capabilities.

A long time go, when I played World of Warcraft, I was a Guild Master.  Thinking back, I realize that I was effectively a company manager.  I was responsible for “hiring” players to the guild — which included an application process, interview process, and trial process.  I was responsible for ensuring that on any given “Raid Night” (of which there were 3 per week) that we would have at least 25 people that properly equipped and specialized into the 3 different roles needed to perform the tasks  needed to slay the monsters.  Then on those nights, I was responsible for ensuring that each and every team member was doing their job well (for 4 hours).

Thinking back, there were many more aspects of Guild Management that are more in line with the tasks that a small business owner would perform.  After reading this article, maybe playing World of Warcraft was not as much a waste of time as I thought when I stopped playing!

-Fawad

team roles

Key Players That Make Your Professional Circle Well Rounded

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http://www.businessinsider.com/the-6-people-you-need-in-your-network-2014-7

I recently attended a professional leadership forum conference with my company focusing on networking and skill building. My biggest take away from the conference was me thinking about how do I keep my network right sized and diversified within my company. I knew that certain skills, whether soft or technical, needed to always get sharpened, but I had never really reflected on how well rounded my network is until after the conference.

This article describes  6 key players that everyone should have in their professional network. This network really applies to a network beyond your workplace. For us, this certainly means our classmates. Here are the 6 key players the article describes:

The Finance Guru 

This is someone who has greater financial literacy than you. They are someone who will encourages you to be savvy with your finances and make good financial decisions.

The Connector

This is the social butterfly. The one who is always interconnected and can introduce you to other people. He/she is the relationship developer.

The Mentor

The article describes this best with a quote from Christine Hassler “It’s important to choose a mentor who is living a life you respect and want to model — not just someone who has a job or career path you would want,”

The Innovator

This is someone that is always up to date with your industry trends and forward thinking

The Leader

This is someone who you look up to the most professionally. They are people that should be picked very selectively and are utilized for the infrequent major work situations you need consultation on.

The Frenemy

This is someone who has the same career path as you. Its good to have that because competition forces use to be better. In this case your antagonist is your helper.

Check out the article and see who is and who isn’t in your network and try to fill those gaps.

 

04-Managing a project team, feedback

How to Give Meaningful Feedback

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Coinciding with much of what Professor Smith taught us Fall semester, Michael J. Maubossin, an investment strategist and author of The Success Equation,  was featured in a video on hbr.org in which he suggests 4 tips to provide meaningful feedback to employees.

  1. Ignore the factors your employees can’t control

    Companies that incent employees with stock prices ignore the fact that stock prices often follow market trends, so it can be an inaccurate measure of a company’s or employee’s success.  Consulting firms  sometimes reward based on days of utilization — a metric dependent not upon performance of the consultant, but upon how many consulting engagements sold by the firm’s salespeople.

  2. Understand the difference between luck and skill

    The author presents a basic rule of thumb: if the person can perform a task poorly on purpose, then the result is likely based on skill. If not, then the result is based on luck. “You can’t lose the lottery on purpose, but you can lose the big sale.”

  3. Pick a metric that is persistent and predictive

    In this context, persistent means that you get the same results time after time, i.e., accountants completing reports accurately and on time. Predictive means if employees do well with that metric, they serve the goal the company is trying to achieve. For example, timely financials correlate with building company value.

  4. Focus on employee behavior and process

    A focus on process ensures the best odds for long term success of the employee and the company and is most conducive to identifying and correcting performance decreasing behavior.

In my experience,  picking a predictive and persistent metric is the most important concept to keep in mind when developing a feedback program. Giving employees clear expectations provides them a means to guide and measure their behavior and allows management to more easily hold employees to the company standard.

04-Managing a project team, feedback, team dynamics, team roles, Uncategorized

How to Give Constructive Feedback

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Giving feedback can be one of the hardest things we do as managers or employees. Somehow the word “feedback” has taken on a negative connotation. But getting or giving feedback doesn’t have to be painful — and it’s a skill we are all going to have to learn.

One of the biggest complaints I’ve heard at my company is the fact we don’t get enough feedback throughout the year.  Many people joke that if they don’t hear any complaints, they just assume they are doing a good job.  But feedback is essential for mitigating problems — and helping employees realize their full potential.

Forbes has a great article on tips to how to make the feedback process better for you and your employees. Here are some of the key tips I got out of it:

1. Be honest. Employees can spot a manager that’s not being straightforward a mile away. Just keep your comments short and sweet.

2. Give real-life examples. Keep track of what the employees is doing wrong or right. It helps you to understand where they’re coming from, and why they’re doing certain things.

3. Lay out a plan of action. Figure out ahead of time how to mitigate negative behavior or reward good work.  It doesn’t help to say “You need to work on this,” or “Great job!”  You and the employee need to put a plan in place that’s actionable, achievable and will help them move forward.

4. Be willing to accept feedback yourself. Employees aren’t perfect. And neither are managers. This helps foster trust between employees and managers if you can take your own advice!

So what’s been your best or worst experience with feedback?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ekaterinawalter/2013/11/19/how-to-foster-employee-trust-and-growth-through-constructive-feedback/