Project Engagement

[Terrence Seamon]

David,

You asked: "I would really appreciate some network perspective, ideas, and suggestions. We are focused on employee engagement but many employees are now working on projects or in projects. How do we engage the various stakeholder to ensure project management success? How do we engage the sponsor, the team, and other parties to the project? How does the project manager stay engaged?"

Great question! Especially since projects, project teams, project leaders, project managers, and the field of Project Management have all been booming these past few decades.

I'll start the conversation with a thought... A project is like a voyage.

- There is a destination, a start, a planned route, and an end.

- As with any journey, there will be ups and downs, highs and lows, along the way.

- There will be small wins -- as well as disappointments, storms, unforseen interruptions, delays, side trips -- along the way to the ultimate conclusion.

Looked at this way, projects are journeys with many opportunities for coaching, for recognition, for celebration.

Project managers are often highly schooled in the "PMBOK" (Project Management Body of Knowledge) which helps them to plan and organize and run projects systematically. They also need to develop the leadership capability to motivate and inspire and engage their people for the voyage.

Terry

[Terrence Seamon]

Jeannette,
Great points about PM as a management discipline and "zest factors" that enage people!
And thanks for the link to your article.
Regards,
Terry

[Rob Fox]

Hi,

I sense it is about collaboratively co-creating, with stakeholders, practical ways and means, ideas and exercises that will mark out and create distinction in terms of how you go about engaging people on engagement and change. These don't have to be big ideas or mean grand implementation, but rather novel and apposite and so potent.

There is a lot of useful theory on engagement but actually, studies show it is in the small things that businesses do that mark out their difference, that the source of higher engagement is found.

See www.engagingideas.co.uk

Best,

Rob.

[David Zinger]

Rob,
In our over burdened workplace I think you are so right Rob to say it is the small things that make a difference. It has been my theme for the past couple of months and small seems to be getting a bigger piece of my consciousness, writing, and training.
Davvid

[Terrence Seamon]

"Living the small steps" seems to be the theme this week!

There is a power in small things done each day.

Terry

[Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin]

I couldn't agree more. I've been amazed at how little tools associated with project management have the power to charge up a work environment when they are introduced. A study we did several years ago showed that employee satisfaction improved by a third when PM methodology was implemented. When I interviewed one respondent to the survey, he said, "well, it used to be chaos around here and now we feel like we are all on the same page." In my own experience, in grad school I was working with international development folks--while they all had amazing backgrounds in the field in Africa, Haiti and SE Asia, their meetings were interminable and muddled and it was impossible to get anything done. When I showed up with an agenda and created an action list with deadlines, they acted as though I had invented ice cream. I think people WANT to be effective--but sometimes they are stuck. Introducing the clarifying vision of work as "journey"--as Terence frames it above--can be just enough to get the flow going again.