The launch of ChatGPT 3.5 in late 2022 kick-started a wave of AI activity across the globe. Excitement and anxiety ramped up and haven’t really slowed down since. Every new breakthrough pushed us just a bit closer to a reality only dreamed about by the most future-looking thinkers or sci-fi authors.

Fast forward to today and the last few years of debating the tangible disruption AI can cause isn’t theoretical anymore. It has become the default operating environment for fast-moving companies. The probability is high that the rest of the world will follow suit in short order.

A key catalyst that’s really disrupting the world is the move from AI being a chatbot to something much more valuable: agentic operations. Right now, as you read this, there are autonomous agents executing procurement cycles, forecasting resources across global project portfolios, and drafting technical specifications that used to take teams of senior analysts weeks to finalize. The speed of information has reached a point where the question “Do I really need a human performing this task” should be asked to raise the probability for long term survival.

The scary thing is, with AI progression and adoption moving at galactic speeds, the small minority of us looking to adapt are having a difficult time keeping up. What’s worse, the majority of professionals are still running a 2019 playbook in a 2026 world. They’ve limited their personal adoption of AI to its most basic levels (automated note-taking, draft assistance, and basic research). They’re trying to integrate a once-in-a-lifetime technology that will completely overhaul most roles into a workflow that will likely die away into irrelevancy sooner than they think. The skills that keep the paychecks rolling in for these people are already being done better by a non-human.

The bet I’m placing on myself, and the teams I work with, is what I’m about to share with you. Regardless of the role you play in the operations stack, we must begin working in a way that sets us up for the next five years. We need to immerse ourselves in a new way of systems thinking.

If you’re fearful that the value you bring to work is no longer a reality, it’s not because you lack talent or work ethic. It’s because you’re stuck in the role of the Operator when the world is screaming for an Architect.

This is your diagnostic. It’s time to decide which side of the logic gate you’re on.

The Death of Human Middleware

To understand why the Operator function is facing an existential crisis, we have to revisit the playbook that defined traditional project and Ops roles for the last thirty years, A period where office work and technology became synonymous.

As organizations shifted to being project-based, initiatives exploded in complexity year over year. With an ever-growing data set, roles popped up specifically to sort, analyze, and distribute this goldmine of proprietary knowledge. Value was found in the gaps, where knowledge from one team was consumed, executed on, and then manually shuttled down the value chain. Organizations were messy, data was siloed, and teams didn’t talk to each other. The Project Manager or Ops Lead was the human bridge that spanned these siloes.

I call this Human Middleware.

In a pre-Agentic AI world, being the bridge was where the money was. Having subject matter expertise on the execution layer, coupled with a solid set of communication skills, data tracking, and document creation, were the high-value components of the job description.

But in 2026, those same skills are starting to look like a needless bottleneck compared to their glory days. What was once essential is now a static piece of hardware (meaning us) that information is forced to crawl across at the speed of a human conversation.

Let’s accept the fact that the pace of work will leave us behind if we let it. If information has to wait for you to hop on a sync or update a deck before it can move to the next logic gate, you, my friend, are the latency.

Recent data suggests that the shelf life of human latency might even be shorter than we realized. According to Gartner’s latest study, 40% of enterprise apps will feature task specific AI agents, a massive increase from the previous year. Adoption will only grow broadly and with depth from here on out.

You can’t really blame companies either. When you can build a set of agents that can absorb and analyze 10,000 project line items in milliseconds, I would be all-in as well. Especially when your competitors are doing exactly that as well. It’s the only way to keep up.

The Legacy Skill-Stack: Time To Delegate These

Now it’s self-reflection time. I’m going to list out some skills that used to be game changers if included in your toolbox. Now, not so much. Everything listed below are better performed by our non-human counterparts. Your company may still depend on you to run these tasks, but don’t expect them to for much longer.

Manual Data Analysis: It kind of seems silly now thinking about those late nights trying to get a pivot table to display data in the way you think it should. Now, an agent can ingest a year’s worth of details and find the correlation between quantitative and qualitative data in seconds. If you’re still “crunching numbers,” you’re doing so much more slowly and with a smaller data set than what’s possible.

Resource Forecasting: Building complex resource models and pairing them with gut feel and team consensus is a traditional habit that never really worked anyway. How many resource tools are there and how perfectly have they ever fit seamlessly with your human talent? It’s never happened. Modern systems run by AI agents simulate thousands of different allocation scenarios based on historical velocity. They’re delivering something mathematically optimal at light speed with a cost a fraction of what it would have taken for you to do it.

Status Reporting & Deck Building: The "Weekly Status Deck" is a monumental waste of your intellectual capital (and this is coming from someone who loves creating beautiful decks). If decisions have to wait for you whip a presentation together before it reaches leadership, you are the latency (again!). In high-velocity teams, status is an automated byproduct of the work.

Narrow Expertise: Being exceptional at one thing was once the ideal state. With AI acting as a personal assistant for the majority of functions, deep-but-narrow expertise is now table stakes. Being dependent on others performing a different skill set just to move things along is unneeded waste in the value chain. If you're not getting great at adjacent roles to yours in a given process, you are slowly becoming obsolete.

Meeting Facilitation: If the majority of the meetings you run centre around alignment, information transfer, or firefighting, you're still operating in the old way. Architects understand agents are better at synthesizing information and transferring it into summaries and asynchronous context-sharing. Meetings going forward are to add context and vet the options of progress outlined by AI.

Silo Bridging: I used to think the biggest skill a project manager could master was being the "dot connector." In this new world, that is still true but in a different context entirely. Being the centralized hub that connects different functions is no longer relevant. Instead, the Architect looks at things via interconnected systems (think a shared context API). If information can’t be obtained directly and there are middlemen in the way, momentum is lost exponentially.

Manual Risk Logging: Writing risks in a "RAID log" and reviewing them once a month is passive and dangerous. Architects don't wait for a human to spot a risk. We use synthetic prototyping to stress-test our plans against thousands of simulated market shocks. Waiting for a human to raise their hand in a meeting is a strategy for failure.

Budget and Invoice Reconciliation: Reconciling invoices against a project budget is a high-risk, low-reward task for a human. Agentic procurement handles the audit trail and financial telemetry in real time, with incomparable speed and quality.

Delegation: Human middleware in a nutshell. Someone asks you a question or submits a request, and you spend your morning deciding which person or department is the best fit to handle it. You’re acting as a manual router. In an architected system, the intake is a logic gate. An Agentic AI analyzes the request, checks the skill-matrix of the team, audits current bandwidth, and routes the work automatically. If you’re still the one deciding who gets which ticket or email, you’re once again a bottleneck in the value chain.

The "Just Checking In" Follow-up: We’ve all been guilty of this in the past, and it made sense to do so then. In an architected system, the system knows why a feature, initiative or project is stalled and flags the specific logic gate that’s blocked. If you have to manually "check-in" to see why a task is late, you have a visibility leak.

Feeling attacked? Good. That’s a key signal that you’ve been the one doing the heavy lifting for years. It’s natural to feel anxious when your "value-adds" are identified as latency, but it’s better to accept the system audit now before the market forces the upgrade for you. Don’t sweat it; we aren’t ending on a doomer note. We’re refactoring.

This brings us to the new “Spec Sheet” for your career.

The New Skill Stack: Where the Architect Wins

Bulletproofing your roles begins simple enough but might take a while to wrap your head around. You have to stop looking at output as a linear equation of Skill x Effort. Instead, you need to see it as Leverage.

If you have any experience in the markets, it’s the difference between traditional stock investing and trading options. Traditional investing is a slow, where output sits around the 1:1 layer. Options give the investor an order of magnitude increase in potential, if they’re smart and take calculated risks. The same logic applies to the ops world right now. An Operator works in a 1:1 relationship with time. An Architect works in a 1:100 relationship with logic. You build the system once, and it executes at galactic speeds while you govern the results.

Here’s where I see the value living for the next 5 years:

Context Engineering: Architects are obsessive about documenting the best way of doing things. Not only does this offer a clear line of sight into the steps, roles, and responsibilities, but it also allows for seamless onboarding. More importantly, it provides the necessary context for agents (who are insanely fast) to do the right work every time.

Remember, AI agents are strategically blind unless you provide what I call the Minimum Viable Context (MVC). The key value-add here is being the logic anchor. You ensure that the high-speed output of the machine is perfectly aligned with the company’s root logic (its strategy). Essentially, you leave the execution to the agents while you move your focus to the intent.

HITL Governance: Architects continue to manage the companies value chain. The difference moves to overseeing the Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) architecture versus manual processes and people. Architects design the specific logic gates where the AI Agents must pause for human judgment.

The value add here is one of governance, which should be somewhat familiar to you already, just in a different state. The ability to identify high-risk points where an agent might hit political friction or a nuance-heavy decision, and you install yourself (or someone with decision making authority) as the strategic filter. Ultimately becoming the manager of systems risk.

Masters of Data: Architects understand that project status is a legacy concept. To truly measure output, you need to measure against a set of relevant benchmarks in real-time. In an era where AI agents act as your analysts, the architect builds a system where the "Health" of an initiative is a live data stream.

Value is provided by moving away from historical reporting (what happened last week) to predictive governance (what’s about to break). Imagine the leverage a company gains when its systems flag logic leaks the moment they happen, versus a post-mortem a month later.

Synthetic Prototyping: The final skill in the Architect’s stack is the ability to stress-test ideas before they hit the real world. Instead of hoping for the best with a pilot, the architect deploys AI simulated personas to execute your plan.

The win here is the ability to find the fauilure points in a virtual environment in seconds. The architect is able to provide the company with pre-launch confidence that traditional operations functions simply cannot match. This is a real world example of being a fortune teller in your company.

Homework For You

Obtaining the skills to run this stack is probably months away for you versus weeks. This isn’t easy stuff to implement for yourself, not including the hurdles you have to navigate in your company.

What you can do immediately is the following.

Get Exceptional at the LLMs: Learn all about the models available from Chat GPT to Claude. Don’t be afraid to get their paid versions as well and experiment with the cutting edge and their true potential. I recommend every one do this.

Document Everything: Document with the mindset that the AI will be the ultimate audience. Detailed, step-by-step prompts provide context to humans now and AI Agents in the medium term.

Audit Your Handovers: Look at the ciritcal processes your a part of and identify one point where an output moves from your team to another as an input. Instead of a meeting to "hand it over," create a Shared Context API. a single source of truth (Notion, a shared doc, or a live dashboard) that is machine readable. Eliminate the middleman for that one specific seam. This in essence becomes your first MVC document you can use as a benchmark going forward.

I’m closing this article with the reminder that disruption most likely won’t be attacking the work, it’ll be coming for the logic behind it. With machine now with the ability to execute better than a human for most things, the only thing that matters is the architecture.

You can continue to be the bridge that information crawls across, or you can be the one who builds the high-speed rail.

The architect is the future of work.

If you break down a company into its component parts, two things become widely apparent:

1. They are a series of interconnecting processes running from the very top of the sales funnel right down to post-production support.

2. They continuously aspire to be something greater. This is a necessity driven by competition and disruption, but also by that natural human desire to achieve.

Most organizations tackle that second point by setting goals. Unfortunately, they rarely achieve them. If you ask me, companies aren't struggling with "complex goals", they’re suffering from an Alignment Leak. Powering through 60-hour weeks and trying to gain alignment through new Slack channels and endless meetings is a common occurrence. However, when the end of the quarter hits and the needle hasn’t moved, all that’s left are levels of frustration from the boardroom right down to the individual contributor.

This is an Invisible Tax in its most predatory form, and the source is difficult to find for the untrained eye. I’m here to provide clarity for you: When individual goals aren’t hardwired to the company’s core strategy, you’re paying a tax on every hour worked. Meaning noise generation lifts and stays high while the business slows from the collective loss of momentum.

The common reaction to this failure is to blame motivation or culture. We assume our people just didn’t try hard enough or that the team needs another alignment offsite. But as a Strategic Architect, you know better. It’s less about motivation and more of a systemic architecture problem.

Let’s explore how to transform your current goal setting strategy into a bonafide intent funnel.

System Discovery: The Root Logic

Goal setting should never happen in a vacuum. Before writing a single objective, you first need to perform System Discovery. Meaning: you have to understand the broader context of your organization. The Root Logic of the company.

Achieving a goal that doesn’t roll up to something meaningful should from this moment forward been seen as a waste of resources and time. To ensure your build is valid, you need to anchor it in these four discovery points:

1. The Public Record

For public companies, annual reports and quarterly earnings calls should serve as your blueprint in uncovering the root logic of your company. For private ones that don’t have this luxury, town halls and all hands meetings are the signal. When attending these sessions, be sure to read between the lines. What is leadership prioritizing? What are they ignoring? If the CEO spends twenty minutes talking about “Efficiency” and zero minutes on “New Markets,” your goals better be focused on optimization, not expansion.

2. The Candid Sync

Most people ask their manager for feedback. A Strategic Architect asks for telemetry. Ask your manager a high-density question: “What is the one metric that, if hit, makes everything else we do secondary?” This question gets straight to the point and forces them to identify the actual North Star of the department.

3. The Mission Schema

Regardless of how long you’ve worked at your current company, take some time to revisit the mission statement. It may sound cliché, but in a high-velocity company, especially one that’s founder led, the mission statement means something and can be seen as the System Requirement. If your team’s current work doesn’t reflect that mission, you have a structural flaw in your department.

4. Resource Allocation

Nothing reveals a company's true priorities like the way they move their capital and their people. To finish your System Discovery, It’s a good idea to have a look at the org chart and the budget. Strategy is expensive; if the company isn't spending money on it, it isn't the strategy. If the company is hiring fifty engineers and zero sales reps, the root logic is product-led growth. Align your effort with that current.

The Outputs / Capabilities Framework

With your goals aligned to the funnel, you need one final component before execution: a feasibility audit. This framework ensures your goals are challenging but structurally sound. Most importantly, this is your best opportunity to look inward and directly tie it to the North Start you worked so hard to obtain during the system discovery.

• The Landscape (Quantifiable Starting Point): To set an impactful goal, you have to know where you’re standing. Relying on emotions or gut feelings leads to black box decisions. Data is your best friend here. Quantify the pain points before you try to solve them. Be sure to tie what you uncover through data, with the bigger picture. Yes, I’m not going to let you forget that critical piece!

• The Outputs (The Return on Investment): Think of the effort you put into achieving your goal as the journey, and the outputs as the destination. Identify the actual benefits you want to realize and tie them directly to a true return on investment.

• The Capabilities (Resource Audit): While it’s great to shoot for the moon, being overly ambitious without understanding your current hardware leads to burnout. Do you have the skills, budget, and time necessary? It’s better to architect a series of small, high-velocity wins than to launch a project that stalls at the halfway point.

Architect’s Tip: Focusing on the landscape first is critical as it starts you off by questioning reality using real world use cases. It also gives you the opportunity to take an objective approach to goal setting. Your goal is to hard-wire your personal growth to the system’s output; if your win doesn’t trigger a ripple effect upstream and downstream, it’s a localized success with no systemic value.

The Final Linter (SMART Logic)

Goals need structure. There’s no getting away from it. To ensure your goals are executable, we use the framework that is as tried and true as they come: The SMART linter. It’s the final check to ensure your intent is translated into action.

Here is what each acronym in the SMART framework represents, for those that need a reminder.

• Specific: Eliminate generic language. Specificity ensures you are focused on what truly matters.

• Measurable: If you can’t instrument it, you can’t govern it. Use telemetry to celebrate wins and identify leaks in real-time.

• Achievable: Strike the Goldilocks balance. Your goals should be big enough to keep the team engaged but realistic enough to prevent a total system crash.

• Relevant: Goals are the North Star. The most meaningful goals are those that align with a larger purpose or mission.

• Time-Bound: Deadlines are critical as a lack of one becomes a suggestion. Set hard deadlines to create the necessary pressure for velocity.

The Governor’s Perspective: From Doing to Architecting

Moving into leadership means your relationship with goals has changed forever. You are no longer the one turning the gears; you are the one ensuring the gears are actually connected to the engine. Your priority is now alignment governance.

Professionals who are great at strategy do two things better than anyone else: They have an absolute grasp of the company ethos, and they possess the ability to infuse that knowledge into every fibre of the organization.

If your team is struggling to set goals, don’t look at their performance as a starting point. Instead, look at your architecture. Usually, it means the Intent Anchor you provided was too vague. If you provide your people with a high-density MVC (Minimum Viable Context), they won't just hit their targets; they will architect the most efficient route to get there.

Goal setting is systemic. If companies figure out how to align the intent funnel in all areas of the business, watch out.

Looking at the state of the world recently, it’s become a regular occurrence for companies, large and small, to go 'all-in' on an AI-embedded future. This article (and this one as well) further demonstrate a shift where human capital is increasingly viewed as a secondary asset for productivity, while AI becomes the primary driver.

The articles above should paint that picture for you clearly. CEOs are now explicitly calling out AI as the catalyst behind mass layoffs, basically configuring human talent to nothing more than a cost centre.

I do believe the long-term outlook is one where AI, along with a sophisticated stack of autonomous agents, will have ownership of the majority of tasks that drive organizational value. But the near future, the one that’s well underway, looks a little different. A future I feel is where the winners of this decade will be decided.

The truth is that the most successful organizations won’t be the ones that automate everything, they’ll be the ones that mastered the strategic lens for their company. The ones building the systems where AI handles the heavy lifting (such as processing and validation), while humans remain “In-the-Loop” to provide the one thing a large language model cannot at this point: contextual judgment.

This is the blueprint for the Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) architecture.

The Fallacy of the Black Box

In software engineering, a “Black Box” is a system where you can see the inputs and outputs, but the logic in between is opaque. Many leaders pushing AI initiatives are building black box operations. Feeding raw data into an AI agent and waiting for a project plan to spit out the other side.

This works ok for systems that are closed. Operations, on the other hand, are open systems.

Operations for most companies exist in a messy world, where complexities show themselves through human politics, shifting client moods and cultural dynamics. There rarely is a straight line from A to B, regardless of how bullet proof their processes are. For ops leaders going all in on AI and removing the human from the loop, end up removing the only sensor capable of detecting these nuances.

An AI agent can do a wide range of things, such as tell you that a project is 10% over budget or your process didn’t meet the necessary steps of compliance. It cannot however, output the juicy insights that matter, such as the client’s CEO is currently under pressure from their board and that a 5% budget overage (while technically small) will trigger a political firefighting situation that could be an account killer. These are things only humans can bring to the table.

When we automate without a strategic lens, the friction we think we’re eliminating just gets pushed downstream. We pay the trust tax later because our systems were too fast for our own good.

So how do you take that extra step and do a full on investigation on your black box? You need to become exceptional at strategy identification.

The Masters of Strategy

The very best operators do two things better than the competition:

1. They possess an absolute grasp of their strategy, business model, and company ethos.

2. They have the capability to infuse this knowledge into every fiber of the organization.

When these two pillars are in place and actively nurtured, an organization moves at light speed. Decisions are made faster, and every tactical step is aligned with the ultimate objective.

My prediction: for the foreseeable future, this will remain a human-centric asset. The faster an operator can master and own the strategy, the sooner they can unleash truly impactful AI. This creates a system where AI agents work in tandem with humans to offer the perfect mix of automation, quality, and context needed to leave outdated ways of working behind.

To build that system, we next need to learn the fundamental unit of velocity: the decision.

The Decision Quality Formula

To understand why HITL is mandatory for velocity, we have to look at how decisions are actually made. As a strategic operator, you should view every decision as a calculation of data and context.

Where

• Q = Quality of the Decision

• D = Raw Data

• A = AI Processing Power.

• C = Context (Politics, Culture, Timing).

• H = Human Lens (Judgment/Empathy).

In this model, AI is a force multiplier for data. It can process raw data at a scale no human can match. However, if the human lens is zero, the second half of the equation vanishes. You are left with a decision based purely on a static process. Specifically, you’re left at the mercy of a process created in the past, devoid of the context required to make the right decision for the specific moment.

Additionally, the Human lens is ultra valuable as a “stop the line” level of QA in the (hopefully) rare instances the AI agent catches an anomaly of some sort. A human can do a decent job vetting if hallucinations are present, or if the current company/industry landscape is present in the latest rounds of output from the process.

Implementing HITL in Your World

Whether you are knee-deep in AI agent implementation or hesitant to even start for the smallest of processes, taking a step back and looking at your organization holistically with both AI agents and humans in mind should be your next step.

Let’s begin by addressing the foundation: Strategic Mastery. Nothing (and I mean absolutely nothing) of value happens without context. It starts with you, the leader, having a firm grasp of the strategy. It ends with ensuring your team lives and breathes the "Why" behind every move and goals are aligned from the ground up. If the strategy isn't ingrained in the people running the system, your AI agents won’t accomplish much outside of automating low value things.

Once that context is locked in, it’s important to emphasize that transitioning from a “Black Box” operation to a Human-in-the-Loop architecture doesn’t mean rebuilding your entire company or department overnight. You simply need to re-engineer the “seams”, those specific points where information transitions from one state, or one team, to another.

It doesn’t really matter what you’re managing. Overseeing a software development sprint, a global supply chain, or a sales-to-service handover, the minimal implementation of the HITL follows these non-negotiable gates:

Gate 1: Define the Intent Anchor (The MVC)

Automation fails when the “Why” is assumed rather than articulated. In your world, this means every major task or handover must start with a document that provides needed context. What I call the Minimum Viable Context (MVC). The MVC contains all the messy nuances that show how your process really works and how it changes based on various inputs. Ideally, this is done when processes are still fully operated by humans. If you want a refresher, I go into the MVC in greater detail in my previous article.

When you’re ready for AI agent involvement, a human must first double check how this initiative ties to the greater strategy. You want to have AI to generate velocity and the highest value processes first. Attempt to answer such as questions as “What is the specific business driver? What are the political landmines? What does a ‘win’ look like for the end-user?

Architect's Tip: If you can’t summarize the strategic intent in three sentences, you aren’t ready to automate. The machine will only amplify your ambiguity.

Finally, spend some time identifying which phases of the workflow are primed for AI automation versus those where human intuition remains the key driver. Look where the pain is. Whatever causes the biggest time suck or human error, should be the biggest red light for you.

Gate 2: The Validation Sensor (The Logic Check)

This gate takes place after your initial build is in place and AI is doing the “heavy lifting.” Let the agents audit the data, check the budget spreadsheets, and verify that all the required fields are filled. Somewhere prior to the finished output, you must install a validation sensor.

This is a “fail-safe” trigger where the AI is instructed to stop and alert a human if the data is complete but the logic is inconsistent. For example: if the AI detects a project timeline that hits 100% capacity but fails to account for a major holiday or a known client blackout period, the human equipped with the necessary context must intervene.

What’s critical here is to feed the results, regardless if it’s a standard hallucination by the AI or a true anomaly that was captured back into the system. Recursive self improvement gets an additional boost when I human continuously feeds updated data into the machine.

Gate 3: The Velocity Handshake (Trust)

The final stage of implementation is the most human. Once the AI has processed the data and validated the schema, the final handover must be between humans.

The HITL architecture provides the new owner (the next process) with a “Velocity Brief”, an AI-distilled summary of exactly what they need to know. I love this as it eliminates a meeting that can delay things to simply 10 minutes of confirmation. The human lead uses the brief to confirm: “I understand the North Star, I see the risks the AI identified, and I am taking ownership of the execution going forward.”

Simply beginning with gate one, verifying it works as expected and moving to the next gate is an acceptable approach to rolling this out. Each gate provides compounding value as it passes through this unified architecture, but remember: the gates are only as strong as the context you’ve already ingrained in your team.

As friction begins to leave the system, execution becomes significantly less labor-intensive. This is where we really see the future become the present: manual roles transform into architectural ones.

The Architect’s Role in 2026: From Operator to Governor

The fear that AI will replace the Project Manager or the Ops Director is based on an old definition of those roles. If your value was chasing people for updates or being the communication source between teams, then yes, you’re in a pretty bad spot.

But if the value you bring transitions into architecture, your importance has never been higher.

As a Strategic Architect, you’re no longer the one doing the work. You’re the one designing the loop. You’re the one who decides where the AI is allowed to run unencumbered and where the system must slow down to allow for a human lens.

Becoming the role that enables HITL architecture requires a significant shift in your daily skillset. It’s an investment of effort up front that produces exponential dividends in velocity. Here is how you lead that transition:

1. Audit the Black Boxes

• The Skill: Logic Mapping. If AI is already present in your function, you must identify where it is making decisions in a vacuum. A “Black Box” is any point where data goes in and a decision comes out without a verifiable trail of why.

• The Action: Map your current automated (or soon to be automated) workflows. At each step, ask: “If this AI makes a wrong turn, how long would it take us to notice?” If the answer is at the end of the project, you have a black box situation. You must engineer a logic gate where the AI’s reasoning is surfaced for human audit.

2. Define the Seams

• The Skill: Information Architecture. Context is most likely to leak at the hand-off points between teams or agents. Traditional roles see this as a problem to be solved with face-to-face interaction. Architects view this as a system of APIs. This means logic is engrained in the process upfront with simple pass/fail mechanisms. It either passes the baton or it doesn’t.

• The Action: Audit every hand-off. Instead of a Slack thread that has no long-tern structure and traceability, define a rigid MVC (Minimum Viable Context) schema for that seam. You must have the skill to say: “The handover is not complete until these five specific strategic anchors are documented.” This is you being the architect and designing the protocol for it. Learn to codify the MVC so you can pass this off to AI to vetting 99% of this sequence in the future.

3. Appoint the Loop Owners

• The Skill: Strategic Alignment. An agentic system without a “Why” is directionless at best. You must appoint “Loop Owners”, I nifty term for humans responsible for providing the strategic intent to the agents at critical steps.

• The Action: Train your team to move from being the ones doing the work to being editors. Key skills to learn and build off of are prompt engineering and contextual validation, ensuring the “Why” is never lost in the “How.”

4. Calibrate Decision Latency

• The Skill: System Optimization. This is the most critical skill of the architect, ensuring speed maintains a high level of standard as complexity and processing volumes rise.

• The Action: Learn to build latency heat maps. If human involvement is too high at a low-risk seam, velocity will drop. If it’s too light at a high-risk seam, invisible tax will rise. What you’re looking for is the Goldilocks Zone. The perfect calibration where the system moves as fast as possible without losing its strategic integrity.

I could write a deep-dive on every one of these pillars, so I know this isn't a 24 hour transformation. As with any complex system, continuous, iterative progress is the only way forward. Master the first step, then pivot to the next. In time, you’ll possess the architectural lens that is quickly becoming the most coveted skill set in the future of work.

Conclusion: The New Competitive Edge

The world is moving at a pace where predicting anything is impossible, and no one can guarantee exactly what tomorrow’s stack will look like. But I’m certain of this: the tug of war between fully autonomous AI and traditional manual ops won’t have a single winner.

The highest-performing organizations of this decade will build a bridge between the two.

The Human-in-the-Loop architecture is where the world’s most resilient companies will anchor their operations. It’s the only way to move at the speed of light without losing your strategic soul.

Time to buckle up!

In my experience scaling operations for companies, I’ve observed a consistent opportunity cost that (more often than not) creates a staggering profit gap between high-velocity teams and the sleepy giants.

The most insidious of these costs and most difficult to catch are systemic, built into the very DNA of operations. They often live at the seams, the hand-off points where one process meets the next. They attack your most expensive resource: Momentum.

I refer to this as the Invisible Tax of Bad Handovers.

I’m sure you’ve seen this play out in your line of work. Take Sales, for example: Business Development spends three months winning a key client, promising a seamless implementation. Once the deal is closed, they toss a “contract signed” notification over to the project manager and implementation teams. It’s the end of one process where they next one begins.

This is the exact moment the tax is collected.

Here is what usually happens at this point. Over the next week, the implementation teams starts by digging through messy CRM notes. Between back-and-forth Slack messages and a series of internal catch-up meetings, hours are burned just to figure out what was promised regarding timing, scope, and delivery.

Ok great, there’s now some alignment internally. Unfortunately the problems have only begun. Next comes the kickoff with the client, who is forced to repeat the same discovery and brainstorming sessions they just finished with the Sales team. Keep in mind: we haven’t even started the actual work yet.

As you can imagine, this isn’t just a Sales-to-Implementation problem. It happens every time two processes collide and two or more teams are involved in a handover.

In this all-too-common loop, velocity drops to zero, trust evaporates, and morale sinks. While I call it the “Invisible Tax,” it’s actually a bundle of three distinct cost centres:

1. Quantifying the Tax: The Three Cost Centres

When information is lost during the baton pass, you end up paying in three specific ways:

The Re-Work Tax: This is the cost of re-learning what was already known. If a lead spends five hours auditing a discovery call because the notes were incomplete, then you’ve just lost five hours that should have been spent on strategic execution.

The Momentum Tax: Projects are like physical objects: it takes more energy to start them than to keep them moving. A bad handover creates a dead zone (roughly 48-to-72-hours) where a project sits idle while the new owner gets up to speed. In a multi-project organization, these windows stack up to a multi-story building of lost time every year.

The Trust Tax: This is the most expensive one. The moment a stakeholder realizes your The vision presented is out of step with Execution, they stop seeing you as a partner and start seeing you as a vendor. You are now under a microscope with a shrinking margin of error.

Fortunately, eliminating this tax is a straightforward engineering problem. It requires a more rigorous standard between the outgoing owner and the incoming lead. The key is a mindset shift I’ve adopted: treating documentation like code.

2. The Strategic Lens: Documentation as Code

In software engineering, an API (Application Programming Interface) allows two different systems to talk to each other through a rigid, predictable set of rules. If the data sent to the API is messy or missing a field, the request is rejected. Simple as that.

Your handovers should function the same way. We need to treat any documentation that runs through these systems as code. To state this as clearly as possible, your handover documentation must be:

• Standardized: No free-form emails. Use rigid templates where every field is mandatory.

• Version Controlled: You must be able to see when the scope changed and why.

• Executable: The documentation should trigger the next action (i.e. an automated Slack alert or a Jira board creation), essentially eliminating anything sitting in a “General” folder.

As a leader, ensuring the downstream impact of your work is frictionless should be viewed as a requirement for execution. By applying a system-first mindset to these “seams,” you set the next team up for success and maintain the organization’s overall velocity.

To make this practical, let’s look at the specific framework I’ve used in the past to enforce these rules.

3. The Framework: The Zero-Friction Protocol

Over the years, I’ve battle-tested various frameworks to shore up the handover process. And while no single method fits every scenario, there is a universal middle ground that can be reached. What I’ve found works best, regardless of industry, company size, or specific process, is a three-gate system I call the Zero-Friction Protocol. This framework ensures that velocity remains constant as a project transitions from "Vision" into "Execution”.

Let’s look at each further.

Gate 1: Minimum Viable Context (MVC)

Before an initiative is allowed to exit its current phase, it must meet the MVC standard. Think of this as the schema validation for your handover.

As the process owner, you are responsible for certifying this information before the “beneficiary” (the next team) is even notified. This is internal Quality Assurance at the process layer. If you are building your MVC from scratch, these five questions apply to almost any transition:

• The “Why”: What is the high-level strategic objective this work serves? (The Anchor).

• The North Star: What is the specific, measurable outcome that defines a “win” for this transition? (The Target).

• The Won’t Do: What is explicitly not being done? This is your primary defence against scope creep. (The Boundary).

• The Documentation: Does the team taking the baton have the executable playbooks and context needed to run? (The Engine).

• The Landmines: What are the known technical, political, or cultural risks that could stall progress? (The Radar).

Gate 2: The Downstream “Fail-Safe”

In this gate, the receiving team reviews the MVC before the work is officially accepted into the new phase. If you identify the receiver of the process as the client then you can think of this as the UAT for Information.

If the documentation is missing a “North Star” or the “Why,” the handover fails the Build. Just like a software deployment with a critical bug, it is automatically rolled back to the previous owner. You do not move forward, and you do not assign resources, until the data is clean.

Gate 3: The Velocity Handshake

The final gate is about confirmation over interrogation. The first meeting or interaction after the handover shouldn’t be spent asking “What are we doing?” It should be spent confirming “These are the next steps forward.”

Using the MVC, the new owner should be able to articulate their understanding of the strategy, scope and key constraints in short order with verification from the previous owner. This creates an immediate “Handshake” of alignment. It moves the team to an offensive posture (executing on what’s next).

Conclusion

Your job as a leader is to engineer friction out of the system. Careless process optimization is just another form of opportunity cost.

Take a look at your last three project handovers. How much “Invisible Tax” did you pay? If you’re ready to stop paying the tax and start scaling with precision, you need a system.

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Throughout my career, I’ve always been fascinated by the many moving parts within a typical sales cycle. For starters, you have multiple sales reps spending countless weeks, if not months, winning over the attention and eventual interest of their clients on their way to sending over a proposal.

After this marathon level of effort, and the back-and-forth that exists within the proposal process itself, the precious moment of verbal approval finally arrives. At this point, you’d think they were close to the finish line and ready for execution. Instead, we watch the quote bounce around for many more weeks among pricing, legal, and engineering teams, to name a few. By the time the contract is signed, the prospect’s excitement (and sometimes, unfortunately, the budget) has cooled.

If you ask me, Sales, probably more than most departments, would benefit from a healthy dose of Operational Excellence.

This article explains why treating Sales as an OpEx target creates a compounding competitive edge, then lays out the data, mechanics, and playbook you can put to work next quarter.

Why Sales is Ripe for Optimization

In a nutshell, operational excellence should remove friction, reduce variation, and embed continuous improvement across the board. Most organizations aim those tools at the back of the value stream. Think of areas such as implementation, fulfillment and customer support to name a few. Specifically, areas where ideas finally turn into dollars. Yet the front of the flow, the sales cycle itself, almost never receives an OpEx makeover, and that, in my opinion, is a costly oversight.

When Lean thinking is applied to prospecting, quoting, and hand offs, win rate climbs, sales cycle time falls, and delivery teams start each project with clearer scope and fewer surprises, which is exactly what a thriving company wants. In short, Sales thrives on operational discipline because it translates directly into revenue velocity and market share.

Revenue Is a Flow

Many companies treat sales as a quota factory, chasing numbers and stuffing the CRM with prospects. That mindset misses a simple truth: closing deals hinges on stripping friction from every step of the go-to-cash pipeline.

Like any link in the value chain, Sales is a network of processes that interact and feed one another, each carrying its own friction.

When a proposal ricochets among legal, pricing, and engineering for weeks, even the sharpest salesperson loses momentum. And if a client finally signs but the handoff to implementation stumbles, future upsell opportunities disappear.

OpEx shifts the conversation. Instead of asking “How can salespeople sell more?” we should ask:

“Where in the flow is velocity lost, quality diluted, or context dropped? How does that affect win rate, cycle time, and delivery readiness?”

These are the questions Operational Excellence is built to answer. When applied well, every sales KPI becomes reliable and trends in the right direction.

The Three Must-Track KPIs

Speaking of KPIs it’s important to spend a few moments highlighting exactly what should be meticulously tracked to show the full operational status and potential of the sales department. In my experience, the three that follow deliver the clearest 360-degree view of a team’s efficiency and impact.

Win Rate: (Deals Won ÷ Qualified Deals × 100): One of the biggest predictors of future revenue is based on what’s confirmed to pass through the pipeline to the execution area of the business. OpEx can help here by ensuring only clean data is in the pipeline, ensuring days aren’t wasted chasing bad opportunities. Reducing waste in the form of re-quotes is another secondary way we can keep the focus on value and the clients attention high.

Cycle Time (Contract Signed – Initial Opportunity): This one goes without saying and is table-stakes. The faster we can move through the stages in the sales pipeline, the faster we can realize value. OpEx often exposes 60-70 % wait-time in the quote process. If we can figure out specific root cause for this and apply corrective action, you can imagine the amount of value this could bring.

Delivery Handoff Quality (Pass/Fail Checklist Score): One of the biggest areas of friction happens right at the end of the sales cycle and right at the start of brining the sale to life. Issues in scope, timing and product capabilities often delay things significantly and leave a bad first impression with the client. OpEx shines a light on these pain points and offers proactive steps to ensure the delivery teams hit the ground running. As an early mindset shift for sales professionals, they should treat “successful delivery” as the final sales milestone, not the signature.

Your Step-by-Step Lean Playbook

If you’re looking to make small changes now, here is what I do to get started and make meaningful improvements gradulally.

1. Assessing The Maturity Layer

Data must steer every decision, and Sales is no exception. We start by sending a survey with focused questions that expose the maturity of each business process.

For instance, to find pain points in proposal preparation, we make sure the subject-matter experts and frontline staff involved in that stage are targeted to complete the survey.

Their responses create a clear data set that highlights what works and where friction lives. From there, my team and I target our improvement efforts where they will deliver the greatest impact.

Once you have the data from the sales team, the next step is to sort the feedback into clear segments. In my framework, I use segments designed to be scalable, so they apply beyond a single process or even just the sales department.

I find that visualizations have the most impact with the least effort, because they quickly highlight issues without needing lengthy explanations. That’s why I rely on the heat map as my go-to tool here. Next, it’s time to decide what to tackle first. I’m a firm believer in smaller, steady improvements, so I zero in on the two lowest-performing categories (what I call “red zones”).

Those red zones become your sprint targets, ready to be vetted in the next steps.

2. Measuring Baseline Data

With a clear focus, the next step is to check if your existing data supports what the survey respondents flagged. The goal is twofold: first, confirm that these areas are true pain points, and second, establish your baseline KPIs for measurement.

For sales, I expect the team to gather numbers on the following, both individually and as part of the full sales system:

• Qualified Opportunity Count (QO)

• Closed/Won Count (CW)

• Median Cycle Time between “Qualify” to “Closed-Won”

• Re-Quote Rate (opportunities requiring >1 formal revision)

• Kick-Off Delay (days from contract to first implementation meeting)

If we are focusing on portfolio preparation as an example, I would look specifically at the numbers for “Qualify” to “Closed-Won,” and compare them to “Proposal Preparation” to “Closed-Won.” Are there major variances in the data? How does this compare to competitors or industry benchmarks? Validating these findings signals you are ready to move into the improvement phase.

If everything checks out, capture screenshots or record timestamped KPIs. Key metrics we talked about earlier such as sales cycle and win rate are ideal. This will be valuable for tracking progress later in the framework.

3. Rapid & Incremental Rollouts

Over the next nine weeks, the focus shifts to hypothesizing solutions, refining them, and rolling them out in the real world. The rollout schedule is flexible, but I recommend splitting the period into three two-week sprints, leaving one week as a buffer. At the end of each sprint, launch a component of the overall solution. This approach delivers value quickly, with the entire cycle taking about 90 days, enough time to show real improvement without overcommitting.

Be sure to start this cycle by highlighting your expected improvements in KPI performance. This sets the right standard and keeps the team focused on the end goal. Here are some sales-specific examples:

Expected KPI Lift:

• Win Rate: increase by 2 points (24% to 26%)

• Sales Cycle Median: decrease by 9 days

• Kick-Off Delay: decrease by 3 days

4. Re-Assess & Embed Wins

The final two weeks are dedicated to closing the loop by validating both the increase in operational maturity and the corresponding improvement in KPIs. At this stage, pull up the KPIs you recorded at the start and take these steps:

• Compare outputs: Are you seeing real-world improvements? For example, has the time spent in the proposal preparation stage decreased?

• Re-baseline survey: On Day 90, validate progress on the initial pain points by re-administering the survey. The aim is to show measurable gains in the lowest scoring areas from the beginning.

• Add key KPIs to your dashboard: Give executives a clear view of how operational maturity improvements translate directly into greater revenue velocity. This also sets the foundation to potential automation in the future.

• Optional: If the new survey uncovers fresh pain points, launch another sprint to continue the improvement cycle.

Throughout this process, data remains the driving force, and you always have the option to launch another 90-day sprint for further gains. After the first rollout, the sales team should be convinced of the value that OpEx brings.

Next Steps - Quick Wins

If you want to get started right away and demonstrate the value of a Sales department built on operational excellence, consider implementing some or all of the following practices. These items are listed in no particular order.

• Integrated Checklists
  Attach the same acceptance checklist used for executive handovers throughout the early stages of the sales cycle. Use a single, unified document connected to the proposal, scope, and kick-off agenda. When Sales marks an item as complete, Delivery already knows the scope is confirmed.

• Visual Management in Salesforce
  Use a Kanban view by opportunity stage, and apply WIP (work-in-progress) limits to columns like “Pricing Review” or “Proposal Preparation.” This approach makes bottlenecks visible, improves forecasting accuracy, and allows Sales Ops to triage issues instead of letting them pile up.

• “No Surprise” Scorecard at Handover
  Create a one-page scorecard (green, amber, or red) for data completeness, integration feasibility, and legal terms. No handoff meeting should happen without a pass. I have seen this type of scorecard cut post-sale changes by 40 percent in a single quarter. When delivery teams do not have to relearn deal context, implementation times drop and NPS scores rise, fueling a cycle that further boosts win rates.

• Draft a “Definition of Ready” One-Pager: This is for the execution team. Equip Sales with a document outlining exactly what is needed to stay unblocked through to completion. Pilot it with the next five projects, then refine or embed as needed.

• Add More fields During Sales Cycle: Track touches and durations between stages to highlight pain points. Automate alerts for any opportunity that remains in a stage longer than expected.

If even one of these steps eliminates a five day delay, you are already on the path to operational excellence.

Conclusion

When Operational Excellence takes ownership of friction points like dirty data, slow approvals, and sloppy handoffs, Sales closes faster, cycle times shrink, and implementation teams begin with clarity instead of confusion. For any organization looking to scale or prepare for an IPO, boosting win rates through systematic process improvement is the most cost-effective ARR you can get.

One of my favourite business books is Andy Grove’s classic “Only the Paranoid Survive”. The title is quoted so often in the corporate world it risks sounding like a motivational poster at this point, but Grove wasn’t trying to be cute. In the mid‑1980s, complacency almost wiped out Intel’s original business of memory chips. Facing brutal Japanese competition, Grove ignited a culture of productive paranoia that forced his team to ask, “If we were kicked out and the board hired a new CEO tomorrow, what would they do?”

That question led to the pivot into microprocessors that still defines Intel today. And while Intel is a much different company with an ever growing list of challenges, I always admired Grove’s initial viewpoint and it has stuck with me throughout my career. At its core, healthy paranoia swaps fear for a focused, disciplined alertness.

Many operators miss that memo, or maybe never were aware of it in the first place. Too often, I see project leads with unearned confidence run head first into avoidable errors, communication hiccups, and (worst of all) lost chances to improve. Fast‑moving markets, cross‑functional teams and AI‑accelerated competitors have only amplified Grove’s warning. Those that are ill-prepared to lead a landscape that’s constantly changing will be replaced with those that are.

After 15  years leading transformation programs, I’ve learned that the managers who outperform in turbulent environments share one common trait: they are constructively paranoid. They aren’t an overly anxious bunch or take pleasure in micromanagement. Instead they’ve built a disciplined habit of questioning received wisdom, including their own. Below are the five questions they ask most often. Apply them to any initiative you’re running today, and watch your odds of success climb.

1 . They Question “Best Practices”

Companies that are well run love codifying success with playbooks, SOPs and “centre of excellence” wikis. And while I’m a massive advocate for all of this, I know better than to take this information at face value. Especially in every situation. Every playbook is written at a moment in time, by people solving yesterday’s constraints with yesterday’s tool set.

Constructively paranoid managers interrogate that gap between current and optimal. They start by asking (with examples):

• “Does this practice still solve the problem it was designed for?” A quarterly sprint ritual born in a waterfall era may strangle a team now shipping micro‑services weekly.

• “Whose context generated this practice?” Tactics borrowed from a hyper‑growth SaaS firm can misfire in an asset‑heavy retailer.

• “What happens if we invert the principle?” If a process assumes scarcity in generating an output, what would we do if those inputs became abundant?

Asking these questions often surfaces hidden costs such as delays, process variance, and other drags on real performance. Healthy paranoia turns those discoveries into measurable velocity.

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2.   They Question Themselves

Self‑doubt gets a bad rap in leadership literature, but private self‑interrogation builds public credibility. In an HBR study on high‑performing CEOs, researchers labeled this reflex productive paranoia—an ability to stay “hyper‑vigilant about what could hit and damage the business.”

Paranoid managers run an internal audit on three fronts:

1. Bias check. “Am I clinging to a decision because I made it?”

2. Capability check. “Am I truly the best person, by expertise alone, to lead this project, or should I empower someone with deeper mastery/experience?”

3. Rearview Mirror check. “Am I defaulting to an approach just because it worked for me before, or is it still the right fit for today’s context?”

Paranoid managers are comfortable questioning themselves, their past work and their direction before committing. More often than not, they come out well ahead of their over confident, under prepared counterparts.

3.  They Question Historical Data

Dashboards that contain mostly lagging indicators offer a sense of comfort that the landscape has been identified and insights are ready to be uncovered. However, even the cleanest dataset is an outdated record of past conditions. Paranoid managers treat metrics as hypotheses, not absolutes:

• Past vs Future. Revenue shows what already happened; early churn warnings show what’s coming next.

• Missing Lessons. Tossing out “failed” experiments erases the clues that could save you later.

• Data Goes Stale Fast. A sales forecast built on three‑year‑old, pre AI data can be wrong in just six months.

I’m ruthless with my own dashboards, rebuilding their structure at least once a month to be sure the story matches reality. When gaps appear, I redraw the picture.

Because when historical data collides with current reality, great managers side with reality first. Then fix the tool so it stays fit for purpose.

4.  They Question Others (Respectfully)

Paranoia without empathy can be seen as pretty harsh. With empathy, however, it becomes due diligence. Elite managers scrutinize sources as carefully as statements. Here are some examples for you:

• Incentives. A supplier praising “unprecedented lead‑time reduction” could be masking quality trade‑offs.

• Expertise. A celebrated data‑scientist outside of his domain may wow the room with algorithms, yet miss critical criteria of the initiative, such as regulatory constraints. Reason being because they’ve never shipped a live product in that industry before.

• Groupthink. The louder the consensus, the more they dig for disconfirming evidence.

Bill Gates famously kept a “could kill Microsoft” list in the 1990s, meeting weekly with small teams to stress‑test strategic threats. That ritual institutionalized skepticism without personalizing it.

By separating interrogation of ideas from judgment of people, managers build a culture where rigorous debate feels safe.

5.  They Question Success Itself

Perhaps the most counter‑intuitive form of paranoia is scrutinizing your wins. Grove warned that “business success contains the seeds of its own destruction.” Paranoid managers take this to heart, treating every milestone as a snapshot and not the false sense of status. Some examples of wins that would have served a leader well to question:

1. Regression to the Mean. Yesterday’s record‑high sales could just be a one‑off spike; numbers usually slide back toward the average soon after.

2. Complacency Drift. A big win can make teams cling to the old playbook instead of upgrading it for the next challenge.

3. Competitor Magnetism. As soon as one product starts earning serious money, rivals rush in with look‑alikes to grab a slice of the pie.

A company I once worked with built a “Product Decay Review” into every post‑mortem. The team asked one blunt question: “If we shipped nothing new for 12 months, how would competitors chip away at this advantage?” That exercise exposed weak spots and led to additional investments in analytics UX optimizations. These moves helped them stay on top of an ever competitive industry.

Putting Paranoid Principles to Work

Healthy paranoia is both a mindset and a mechanism. Here’s how to put it to work in four quick habits:

1. Daily Doubt Check: Start each stand‑up with a 60‑second lightning round where everyone names one thing “we might be wrong about.” Capture every doubt, turn it into an assumption test, and park the outcome in the documentation of relevance (scope document, action log, risk register, etc.)

2. Two Source Rule: Pause before any material decision and verify the argument with at least two independent sources (data, experts, experiments, etc.) before you pull the trigger.

3. Deliberate Over Communication: Broadcast changes in scope, next steps, and likely impacts early and often. A flood of updates may annoy stakeholders, but silence can sink a project.

4. Mid Project Retros: Schedule a halfway checkpoint to interrogate early wins, expose emerging risks, and spot where reality is drifting from plan while there’s still time to “course correct”.

These micro‑rituals, once operationalized, help surface hidden risks fast, weave vigilance into routine, and keep your initiatives one step ahead of complacency.

The Payoff

I hope I’ve made a convincing case that constructively paranoid managers are the ones you want steering your most complex transformations in an endlessly disrupted world. Grove’s philosophy endures because it captures a powerful paradox: true confidence in leadership is anchored in the humility to doubt. The best managers channel that tension into relentless velocity. Constantly scanning, recalibrating, and staying one move ahead.

So the next time your team congratulates itself on a banner win, do what great managers do: smile, open a fresh page in your notebook, and write three words at the top:

“What could break?”

Then get to work.

It’s no secret that as you progress in your career, the scope of your responsibilities increases. This can range from the number of direct and indirect reports under your organization to the work and processes you are accountable for.

With this increase in accountability comes the need for leaders to broaden their thinking. In many cases, experienced leaders naturally adopt a broader perspective due to ample experience and the lessons learned from navigating the corporate world. But what about new managers or leaders without years of experience facing growing challenges with larger teams?

In my opinion, there's a gap that needs addressing. Managers often lack proper training on how to make high-value decisions, take calculated risks, and align execution with strategy. This ultimately comes down to the way leaders think. Specifically, we need to place greater emphasis on expanding our horizons of thinking to translate strategy into tactical action.

So what do you do in a situation where the scope of accountability is there but not necessarily the experience needed to perform well in your role?

Your next step at this stage is to begin learning and applying a tool I like to call the Integrative Vision Framework.

The Integrative Vision Framework

This framework, which I've compiled piece by piece over the last decade, was created to help me distill learnings from both successful and failed projects and codify them to apply in all facets of my work. At its core, it gently encourages me to think beyond my bubble and instead operate with a 360-degree view in mind.

The beauty of the Integrative Vision Framework lies in its simplicity. It is nothing more than a series of calculated questions covering every angle, mimicking how seasoned managers approach high-impact decisions that result in massive opportunities or dire consequences.

To provide even more focus, the questions in this framework are broken down into four segments, which I have detailed below:

Segment #1: Strategic Alignment - Assesses how well a proposed initiative, situation, or decision aligns with the overall objectives of the company. This segment encourages you to think from the top down, from company objectives right down to your team.

Segment #2: Temporal Analysis - Focuses on analyzing the time-based implications of initiatives, scenarios, and decisions. These questions encourage you to view things from multiple time horizons.

Segment #3: The Value Chain - Explores the effects of actions or events based on your initiatives or decisions on operations and processes. This provides a comprehensive view to help see gaps and mitigate risks cross-functionally.

Segment #4: Data Insights - Dives into qualitative and quantitative data to help with decision making and value-driven predictions. Answering questions in this segment should arm you with making informed decisions and proactively adapting to changing circumstances.

If you’re like me, you enjoy visualizing things to accompany the text you read, so I hope the diagram below helps paint the picture a bit better. In a nutshell, answering each of these questions to the best of your ability should, at the very least, equip you to better align with strategy, execute with excellence, and be prepared for the multitude of risks that come your way. What’s more, you will begin to think beyond the tactical level under your control and enter the unfamiliar zone that spans across functions. This is the zone seasoned leaders constantly inhabit.

The rest of this deep dive will focus on the questions themselves, introducing a few layers of context that will hopefully provide a complete understanding of the material. Let’s start with the questions in segment 1.

Segment #1: Strategic Alignment

Question #1: How does this initiative, decision, or event support and advance our company's strategic goals?

Starting from the top is more often than not the smartest decision you can make. Ideally, every decision you make and everything you work on, once realized, takes the company one micro-step closer to its short, medium, and long-term objectives.

When exploring this question, you want to first understand what those objectives are, including how success and failure are measured. If you’re having trouble figuring out what these goals are, you can leverage annual reports (if your company is public), presentation decks from company meetings, or even have discussions with employees who have this visibility.

With a firm grasp on company goals, shift your focus to your current situation. Will the initiative you’re managing directly (or even indirectly) contribute to these overarching goals? Is the decision you’re debating about centered around any of these objectives? If the answer is an easy no, it certainly raises the question of whether you’re working on the right things.

Question #2: How will this initiative, decision or event affect neighbouring departments?

With an understanding of the business, it’s easy to immediately shift your focus to your team, as that’s where your experience and comfort lie. Instead, I challenge you to first scope out each of the functional groups available at your organization and deeply consider how they can be impacted by your work.

Answering this question is really valuable, as it, when done right, identifies gaps and levels of uncertainty (otherwise known as risks) early in the process, giving you ample time to build plans around them. Thinking of the degree of impact on multiple functions provides exponential value to your company, as it sets them up to have more win-win situations. As you probably know, nothing sets a company up for failure more than a continuous cycle of reactive situations due to unidentified issues cropping up spanning multiple teams.

Question #3: What are the potential impacts of this initiative, decision, or event on my department?

Now, we begin to approach some familiar territory but in an entirely new way, thanks to the work we've done with the first two questions. Putting in the work allows you to think of your department as one of many versus the single source of focus many managers fall prey to today. Looking at it another way, this question encourages leaders to view the organization as an interconnected system rather than a collection of isolated departments.

Looking at your department specifically when asking this question, you may uncover some of the usual suspects, such as resource constraints, team morale, and, if you’re lucky, opportunities for growth. At this stage, you’ve identified some surface level impacts. Try to dig deeper based on what you’ve already learned through this framework by considering how your department fits into the broader organizational puzzle and how it can contribute to overall success. With this, leaders can proactively adjust plans, allocate resources effectively, and collaborate with other departments to achieve shared objectives. This is what the integrated vision framework, at its core, is all about.

Question #4: How can this initiative, decision, or event impact my team?

This final question of the strategic alignment segment should be familiar to you, as it's one of the first skills you must master as a high-performing individual contributor or new manager. At this stage, your primary focus is on the team as you analyze ways they might be positively or negatively impacted by the situation at hand.

When navigating this framework, it's crucial to consider all aspects, including the work itself, the team's overall temperament, and the unique talents of each individual. Avoid fixating solely on potential pitfalls by actively seeking opportunities that could arise from whatever challenges you face.

Segment #2: Temporal Analysis

Question #5: What are the immediate implications of my situation?

The first question of segment 2 shifts the focus from the stakeholders around you to time itself. When paired with the second and final question of this segment, it becomes a powerful combination of executive-level thinking.

I like to look at anything short-term as an opportunity to test your agility, as often short-term events are chock full of urgency and shifts in focus, regardless of whether we’ve planned for it or not. By asking and then answering this question ahead of time, it forces you and your team to collaboratively examine the immediate consequences and outcomes resulting from a specific course of action or scenario. Great managers extend this in any area beyond their circle of influence, from operations, resources, and even stakeholders. This question can be applied as broadly as you want it to.

Properly answering this question also helps you anticipate and prepare for potential challenges, seize immediate opportunities, and make agile adjustments at the team, department, and organizational levels. What’s more, focusing on the short term helps you anticipate and address emerging issues before they escalate, ultimately fostering resilience and adaptability in the face of uncertainty.

Question #6: What are the long-term consequences of this situation?

Many times, an impact that surpasses a certain order of magnitude isn’t something immediately apparent. Instead, a cascading sequence of events takes place over a wide period. This is why you, as a strategic thinker, need to think in the long term.

Let’s try to illustrate this better. Deciding not to focus on an FAQs section and proper UX when launching a brand new mobile app may have low impact in the short term when traffic is low. However, it becomes a different story entirely when popularity begins to rise, and app traffic increases along with it. You may find yourself in a situation where call centers are flooded, resulting in angry users who may take their engagement and attention elsewhere, leaving your app dead in the water.

Planning for long-term impact requires meticulous attention to detail, many eyes reviewing, and the ability to think in systems to come out on top. It’s not easy, but a tip I like to use is to think in multiple levels of impact. In other words, what are the potential scenarios to watch out for if I go with option B versus option A? And for each of those scenarios, what scenarios branch out from that? The bigger the web of impact you can map out, the better prepared you’ll be.

Thinkers who can balance their attention on the short and long term, regardless of the situation, are a rare breed and are highly desirable in the world of work.

Segment #3: The Value Chain

Question #7: What impact can be expected upstream?

Businesses, at their very core, are nothing more than a series of processes. From the people involved to the specific systems at work, the integration of value from one step to the next is what defines a business.

To think broadly and strategically, you will have to compartmentalize processes to not only fully grasp their interrelated parts but also to see where true value lies. For me, breaking down processes into upstream and downstream layers makes the most sense.

The upstream layer looks at everything involved in making a process run. Specifically, this includes the inputs of the process and what makes the process function.

To put this into context, let’s use a real-world example from one of my businesses, Colossal Cookie Co. My company relies on specific ingredients from various suppliers to maintain a consistent level of quality. These ingredients are one of the many inputs in our process of manufacturing our products. If at some point, we’re looking to move warehouses, one of the areas I want to double-check is if our supplier can reliably deliver these key ingredients to our new location with the same level of frequency. If not, I will have to either come up with a solid plan B or abandon the plan altogether.

All the components that make up a process can span in the thousands, and you may not identify everything needed, which is okay. Grasping the core components is usually sufficient, and this exercise becomes easier the more you do it.

Question #8: What impact can be expected downstream?

If upstream focuses on the inputs and the process itself, then downstream speaks to the outputs and the end users of the process.

This question is the easier of the two to answer as your area of focus is narrow. Is your initiative going to impact any of the processes? If so, in what ways? How will this impact the end user and other stakeholders relying on this process? Will they be accepting, or is there friction you have to worry about?

By effectively answering this question, you should have a better understanding of potential impacts on delivery schedules, customer satisfaction, or product quality, to name a few.

Segment #4: Data Insights

Question #9: What insights can historical data provide about the current situation?

More and more businesses are defining themselves as data-driven companies compared to their traditional categorization, and rightfully so. Data is becoming the most valuable resource, accelerating growth based on facts rather than opinions.

Historical data, specifically, offers a wealth of information that can help predict outcomes, identify potential risks, and uncover opportunities for improvement.

For instance, consider an e-commerce company planning to implement multiple languages on its site. Analyzing historical data can provide several key insights, such as existing customer demographics and preferences, sales trends and conversion rates, user behavior, and customer support needs. After reviewing the data, the company notices that users from France, Germany, and Spain have high bounce rates and low conversion rates compared to users from English-speaking countries. Implementing French, German, and Spanish versions of the site could potentially increase engagement and conversion rates, and this can be verified with some well-crafted A/B tests.

Question #10: What can macro-level trends help us anticipate about this situation?

Any key decision needs just as much focus on the external as it does on the internal. One of the best ways, in my opinion, is to monitor and analyze data at the macro level. Examining macro-level trends enables businesses to gain insights into broader economic, social, technological, and environmental shifts that may influence their operations and priorities.

Obtaining external data isn’t very hard but can be expensive. Some examples are industry-specific research reports, government publications, and academic journals. Some free options are annual reports (from a competitor in the industry, for example), reputable news publications, and tech news platforms.

If you're a professional who tends to always look inside the company, broadening your view to the macro level will definitely provide insights missing from your initial findings, resulting in you becoming a much better thinker overall.

Conclusion

Over the years, this framework has helped me expand my thinking and has aided me in leading some of the most transformative initiatives. Like most things, a great framework is dynamic and adaptable to the situation at hand. I encourage you to experiment with the questions and tweak them until you find the perfect fit for you.

Complexity is at an all-time high in the corporate world, and we need a steady increase in leaders who can navigate disruption through expanded thinking. I hope the integrative vision framework will help propel you forward to handle this challenge.

Throughout the last decade, I’ve discovered that the areas of work I’m most passionate about, are those that require me building things. If what I’m building is something that’s never been done before, the more exciting it is for me. During this decade of discovery, I have been fortunate to have led everything from building an entire operations function from the ground up for a growing startup to creating multiple functions for my own company.

However, one of the key highlights of my career up to this point was building a few project management offices from scratch. If you were to ask my why, I would highlight the following reasons:

• PMO’s are loosely defined. And while there are specific types of PMO’s, it’s pretty difficult to find two that are the same.

• PMO’s act as an integrator, with close relationships with the majority of the functions in the business.

• And probably the most important to me personally, PMO’s centre around my passion, taking something that has never been done before and making it reality.

And with the world undergoing all sorts of changes due to disruption, I believe PMOs and their ability to be agents of change will play a more pivotal role in the present and long-term future of companies far and wide. In other words, if your organization doesn’t have an enterprise-level PMO, you can expect that to change.

If you're one of the lucky ones who have the opportunity to kickstart your company's own PMO, I am crafting this deep-dive for you. This guide will look at all facets of setting up a PMO from scratch and offer up some details that you may be overlooking. To keep things somewhat structured, this guide is split up into four chronological parts:

• Step 1: Introduce & Implement Project Management

• Step 2: Understand The Business

• Step 3: Crafting The Pitch

• Step 4: The Rollout

I hope that my track record and passion for project management, in general, will serve as your guide to generating a Project Management Office that acts as an accelerator in accomplishing the goals of your company.

Let’s get started.

Step 1: Introduce & Implement Project Management

Project management and its penetration in an organization should be viewed as an iterative process. Where the initial steps require laying the foundation of project management best practices in general and uncovering the types of projects to manage. To be clear, an organization should first experiment with project management before even thinking about building a PMO.

This step first and foremost requires a series of commitments. A commitment to treat a categorized area of a business as a pipeline of projects, a commitment to act as a project manager to lead these projects or hire an experienced one and finally, a commitment to set the foundation of the tools and processes that make project management so effective.

Let’s go through each one in a bit more detail.

Convert A Category Into A Pipeline Of Projects

Every business has a series of goals and objectives that usually translate into pieces of work. A digital marketing agency has clients they need to service in the form of strategy formulation or the creation of digital products, such as a website built. A Pharmaceutical company may have various products in different phases of the clinical trial journey they’re hoping to get approval on. Both of these companies have very different focus areas but also share one key fact: They have multiple initiatives at play that have start and finish dates and provide value when complete.

Step 1 is to test and eventually gain commitment to treating these initiatives as projects. You don’t need to tackle everything at once. Doing 1 at a time is acceptable at this stage. The aim is to experiment if project management is a viable option worthy of expansion and lay the groundwork to gain acceptance on this approach.

To really gain some traction here, look for areas of the business that tie into strategy or make an impact to key objectives. You’ll learn more about this in step 2.

Assume The Role Of Project Manager Or Hire For The Role

One of the most common ways professionals become full-fledged project managers is through accidental reasons. They are seconded or selected for an opportunity to lead a key project, and through some intense trial and error, they ultimately succeed, resulting in further opportunities to work as a PM.

When first introducing project management to your organization, this may be the situation you find yourself in as you prove its validity to gain some sort of investment. As the eventual leader of the PMO, acting as the PM upfront may be the best option, as it gives you a firsthand view of what the role will entail, how the suite of projects will operate, and gives you a much better sense of what it will take to formalize project management down the road. If you are already a seasoned project manager, this obviously makes things much easier.

If you prefer to start building your team right away and have the budget to do so, bringing in external talent is another great way to kickstart project management at your company. This person will bring with them key experience and, with a bit of a learning curve, give you the ability to take on more projects as a group, hopefully proving out your use cases further.

Whichever way you decide to go, this project manager should be mostly dedicated to their suite of projects rather than being designated a part-time PM. Remember, you want to prove the validity of project management, and encouraging full commitment will get you there faster.

Introduce PM Tools & Processes

Your final commitment will be to take all the initial learnings you’ve gathered, either managing projects yourself or with someone you hired, and begin the initial steps of structuring the execution of these projects.

Remember, the long-term goal is to build out a PMO, but before getting to that stage, you need to prove to yourself (before anyone else) that project management is a value-add to your organization. Adding consistency around communication, the management of risks, and planning are great first steps in creating efficiency and quality.

You can look to traditional tools such as timelines, standardized project kickoffs, etc., but I also challenge you to bring forth items that are unique to your business and the projects you expect to run.

And, in order to do that at the highest levels, you will need a solid grasp of step 2.

Step 2: Understand The Business

A PMO’s ultimate purpose is similar to that of any other function. At its very core, the PMO function must help the business fulfill its underlying mission by supporting the completion of its short-, medium-, and long-term objectives.

With this in mind, it’s easy to see why understanding the business is a core step in setting up a PMO. And for the record, while this is called “step 2,” I consider this step more of a 1b, as the very nature of the PMO leader is to fully grasp the vitals of the business as a whole.

Your task here is to live and breathe the business. In order to do that, you need to focus on four things: 1) Understand the company’s mission, 2) Determine its objectives, 3) Uncover its overarching success metrics, and finally, 4) Identify the key players in strategy and execution.

Again, let’s briefly go through each one.

Understand The Company’s Mission

Every great company has a mission, something that makes the day-to-day operations worth doing. And while most companies believe selling something for profit is the ultimate goal, it doesn’t tell the whole picture.

Selling something for profit won’t give you any additional insights into the characteristics of the company and the people leading it. But the mission statement does.

Let’s take Best Buy, for example, which I’ve covered here before. This is their mission statement:

The above statement is powerful and you can get so much of what Best Buy is trying to do as a company, including where their strengths lie. Outside of the emphasis on enriching the lives of their customers through technology, the text highlighting their tech expertise and multi-channel approach to serving their customers is no accident.

If your company is public, getting this information is as easy as performing a simple Google search. If not, look to your boss, company town halls, and presentation documentation as aids to uncover your company's mission. If all else fails, a neat little trick I use is checking out your company's LinkedIn company profile. Here is Best Buy’s page. Notice anything similar?

Determine The Company’s Key Objectives

Once you have a grasp of your company's mission, you next need to turn your attention to what they are trying to achieve to realize their mission. These key objectives are their strategic priorities that need to be executed on. Some of them will be within the fiscal year, while others much longer.

A key point for you to consider as you begin thinking long-term: Most of the time, key objectives can be converted into portfolios and programs of your PMO, where the strategic objectives are executed by a team of experts familiar with bringing new things to market. In other words, if the areas of the business you decided to focus your project management efforts on in step 1 are not aligned with things that roll up to key objectives, now is the time to pivot. Understanding these objectives will be very important as you make your way into step 3.

Uncover The Overarching Success Metrics

With key objectives mapped out, companies must then decide what success looks like for each of them. Specifically, company leaders want business objectives that are quantifiable to help map out what success looks like and how to measure progress along the way.

As you've probably guessed by now, learning what these metrics are is very important as you begin planning out your PMO. Most success metrics live within execution, meaning a function like the PMO is the perfect candidate to track progress, health, and risks associated with these initiatives and help move the needle for them.

Once you understand what success looks like and how to measure it, begin thinking about the projects you and your team currently run. Is there a way to demonstrate success that roles up to these overarching metrics? If yes, you are on the right track.

Identify The Key Players

Finally, to gain any traction in the following step, you need a pretty good idea of who the key decision-makers are. Most of the time, these people have prominent positions at the company, but they don’t have to. They could very well be an individual contributor who is seen as an expert in the field and has a great deal of influence at the company.

As you enhance the viability of project management at your company, take some time to build relationships with these key people once you identify them. Not only will they be more receptive to buy-in should you find yourself in that position, but you will also gain valuable insight into their challenges and pain points. This should prompt the question in your mind, 'How can a PMO assist this person?'

PMOs are a fluid function that can serve countless areas of a business. The upfront groundwork will provide you with a foundation to build on as early as possible.

Step 3: Crafting The Pitch

For many looking to start a function, regardless of whether it’s a PMO or not, fear this step the most. And honestly, I can’t blame them. Pitching the idea for a new function will either be met with some level of acceptance or flat-out rejection. It’s do or die at this step.

Looking into this further, the real reason this step is so scary is that we tackle it completely wrong. Most professionals start with this step right up front, resulting in a pitch that’s lacklustre and without any substance. There is a reason I put two lengthy steps ahead of it.

In order to improve the odds of a formalized PMO function, what better way than to operate as if the PMO function exists already? Both steps 1 and 2 gradually take you there, and as project management grows in importance at your company, you are also making it known outside of your (hopefully) growing team as well.

As you turn your attention to making the official ask for a PMO function, you want to first make sure you are personally satisfied with the progress you’re seeing up to this point. You have to have the mindset that proving the need for the PMO rests on your shoulders. It’s your job to prove that standing up a PMO is right for the company. And the best way to do that is with key learnings and case studies chock full of data.

Learn, Adapt and Learn Some More

Operating anything new will no doubt come with mistakes, issues, and, if we’re lucky, some wins. Most of the time, professionals don’t put in the effort to take things further. Which, in my opinion, is a massive mistake. Every component surrounding these wins and losses is the opportunity to learn. Intake what happened, get to the root cause, and then offer suggestions to improve. Being a trailblazer in the world of business requires you to act as a seasoned scientist and experiment with the aim of always getting better.

After every learning, create documentation with the right amount of detail to be applicable to a wide audience. You want learnings replicable and easy to digest.

Build Case Studies

Once learnings become wins in their own right, you need to build presentation decks or similar items to highlight them. Being a trailblazer also requires you to be an excellent salesperson, regardless of whether sales is in your title or not. Demonstrating how Project A saved the company money or Process B generated X amount of revenue through issue reduction sounds much better than an opinion-based pitch on why this company should have a PMO.

Once the two items mentioned above are completed and you are satisfied with the results, only then will you be ready to craft your pitch, build your pitch deck, and schedule a meeting with your boss or anyone else relevant. If you have been managing projects up to this point, you should ideally have been reporting on the progress made week-to-week and month-to-month. You want to position your idea as a natural progression of project management rather than a significant shift in direction.

Remember, you don’t need to convince all decision-makers right away. All you really need now is one champion. Regardless of whether it’s your manager or someone else with authority, having buy-in from this person not only proves your use case that a PMO can be a viable addition, but also gives you an ally to help win everyone else over incrementally.

From here on out, your focus should be on continuing to prove the value of project management and how it can accelerate the company's objectives through sound execution. Eventually, the green light will come your way when the costs of not having a PMO become too great.

Step 4: The Rollout

Congratulations on being awarded a PMO function. With some major obstacles overcome you want to take a moment to appreciate what got you to this point, but remember there is still lots of work to be done.

Rolling out a PMO follows 3 key steps: immediate - cement the strategy, Within 3 months - Get a Key Win and long-term - gradually penetrate the business.

Immediate - Cement The Strategy

Whenever I start a PMO, the first thing I do is review the assets that awarded me the function or position to begin with. This has me looking at my findings during the initial steps right up to the pitch deck. Most of the work lives here, and my first goal is to structure it in a way that makes it living, breathing, and catered to the right audience: my team.

I take the first two weeks to create this document, which includes the North Star of the PMO and how it aligns with the organization as a whole. What follows next is my detailed recommendation of what the next 12 months look like to take the PMO closer to its North Star. The key thing to point out is that the above is a recommendation. Leverage your team to fine-tune the roadmap so you have something forward-looking and unified. A powerful combination.

Within 3 Months - Get A Key Win

Following strategy must come sound execution. And it's important to achieve a win within the first 3 months to build the PMO's reputation, boost the team's confidence, and have a foundation to build upon.

Please note that a key win doesn't have to be big or complex. In fact, it's better if it's not. By this time, you should have an idea of where opportunities lie, either through conversations with key players in step 2 or through your own research. Pick something that's easy to implement yet offers real value. Pulling this off in the first three months is an excellent way to get started and build trust within the organization.

Long-Term - Penetrate the Business

All that’s left is to slowly build from here. Managing a PMO in the early stages is definitely a marathon and requires a combination of patience and a keen eye to push the PMO in new directions.

As I started this article, one of my favourite aspects of leading a PMO is the level of ambiguity involved with this function. There is no limit to where your team can get involved and where you can provide value. Build a culture of continuous improvement and always look for pain points within the PMO and outside of it. Over time, taking action on these discoveries will enable the PMO to be the accelerator in business value that it was meant to be.

Conclusion

With project management offices becoming a key cog in the engine of business transformation, the demand for these functions will continue to grow. As you trail-blaze project management in your organization, I hope this guide can serve as your very own instruction manual to minimize turbulence on your journey.

I wanted to first express my gratitude to the 200 of you who have purchased "A.I. For Project Managers" and have shared your experiences with it so far. Keep them coming. I’m currently working on version 1.1, and I plan to release it towards the end of Q1.

If you haven’t purchased this tool yet and are considering it, now would be the best time! I plan on raising the price as the product evolves into something bigger and better.

Now, let’s dive into the article.

The beginning of the year always brings with it a whirlwind of activity. The main culprit? Year-end reviews. As a people manager, this is always an exciting time for me. A time where I get to sit with each of my direct reports in a formalized way and collaboratively measure what worked, what didn’t, and discuss all the learnings that go along with it.

Naturally, this is also the time of year when the topic of annual raises and promotions is brought to the table, either by the manager or, most likely, the employee. For many companies, annual raises via merit are a given, so that ends up being a rather easy discussion to have. Promotions, on the other hand, could be anything but.

I’ve always been fascinated by promotions. Specifically, how they are awarded and how this compares to the expectations of those hoping to get one. From my experience, this gap is absolutely massive.

In my experience leading people for over a decade, this gap is caused by the lack of education on what it actually takes to get a promotion. From when the idea begins to formulate in a person's head and how it eventually becomes reality. Most professionals see this as simply going from point A to B.

However, the process, like most of reality itself, is much more complex than that. More often than not, being considered for a promotion requires a great deal of work on your part, involving multiple steps and touchpoints. It’s the equivalent of completing a Tough Mudder race, which is lengthy and has many obstacles, as opposed to a 100-yard dash.

Regardless of your position, if you have your eyes set on taking that next step in your career, this is the article for you. The writing below is something I wish I had a decade ago as I navigated through my own career. It strips away all the fluff and completely rips the bandaid off, leaving you with the “hard truths” we must become familiar with, accept, and be prepared for to ensure expectations and reality are aligned.

This article wasn't written to discourage you in any way. If anything, it's to prepare you for reality and what your superiors may be too uncomfortable to say to your face. Take any discomfort you may feel and use it as fuel to push forward, because no one really cares about your career. That responsibility lies with you.

Let's get started with number 1.

1. Getting Promoted is Solely Your Responsibility

Many professionals make the grave mistake of thinking that it's someone else's responsibility for their promotion. They believe that if they stay in a position long enough and master the skill set required for that role, it becomes their manager's duty not only to recognize their achievements but also to take proactive steps in promoting them to a new title with greater responsibilities.

Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. The reality is that you, as the professional, are responsible for pushing your career forward. Everything from documenting your biggest wins to highlighting your accumulation of skills rests on your shoulders. Just as importantly, you have to be your own cheerleader. You need to consistently demonstrate to your manager the great work you are doing, and above all else, show how your strengths are actually becoming more of an asset and how your weaknesses are becoming…well… not so weak.

What does this look like in reality? For starters, you have to fight for the toughest and most visible projects when they become available. You need to carve out time in 1:1s with your manager for long-term planning, and you have to report on the quantifiable wins as you accomplish them. Remember, it's very easy to argue with opinions; data is much harder to argue against. Use data to map out your accomplishments and growth.

And while your manager may not play as key of a role as originally thought, they do play a crucial part in being the enabler of your growth. Offering both opportunities to pick up new skills while also putting the spotlight firmly on you. So when you do great work, it will eventually be noticed by the people that matter.

Overall, get in the habit of treating your own career as a living, breathing business. Constantly evaluate yourself, measure and document progress, and build yourself up with a solid marketing campaign. Lots of work, but it's the tried and true way.

2. Promotions Take Careful Planning & Time To Develop

This was an eye-opener for me when I learned it earlier in my career, and it may be a surprise to you as well. When we do good work and start to internally believe we deserve some sort of promotion, or at least greater responsibilities, we tend to stop there, at least for a while. Our desire for a promotion stays stuck in our minds, and we don’t take that extra bit of initiative early on to communicate this to our manager. By the time we do raise it with our boss, our expectations have been set for a while, and our patience is on a short leash. We want a promotion and we want it now!

What professionals often fail to realize is that the moment they bring their promotion request to their boss, it marks the beginning of the process. Consider it a trigger, setting things into motion, albeit at an unbelievably slow pace. We are nowhere near the finish line at this point.

In many companies, promotions are planned out many months in advance, sometimes even years. This is due to various reasons, with some of the most common ones revolving around specific budget allocations, gaining buy-in for a new role, or the employee's growth not being fully demonstrated yet. Each of these aspects, as you can imagine, takes time to develop and nurture into something concrete.

The hard truth is, you need to, more often than not, raise your desire for a promotion and do so consistently with the expectation it won't fully manifest itself for a least 6-12 months in the future. Regardless if you are an exceptional employee or not, sometimes time is a factor you just can’t overcome.

What should your plan be here? It’s relatively simple. Avoid asking for a promotion expecting a yes or no answer, especially if this is your manager's first time hearing about it. Instead, have an open discussion with your boss as early as possible on what you can do to prepare for the next step in your career. Mutually work on a roadmap you can revisit at least quarterly to always keep a steady pace and a laser focus on the goal. This isn’t an ultimatum with your boss; it's a slow, gradual process to get what you both want.

3. Promotions Require Just As Much Luck As Skill

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how much work you put in, how adeptly you navigate office politics, or how exceptional you are in your role. The hard truth is that luck plays a significant role in securing a promotion, sometimes even more so than all of those other factors combined.

Why is that? There are a few reasons for this.

For starters, you can’t secure a promotion unless the right opportunity opens up. It usually isn’t a matter of ticking all the boxes and then seamlessly transitioning into a new role; luck comes into play when the role you’re seeking to be promoted into opens up due to a departure, or something entirely new emerges that matches well with your skills.

Your boss also plays a crucial role here, specifically in terms of their own growth potential. In many cases, I’ve observed employees being promoted earlier than expected simply because they had outstanding bosses who paved the way for them by securing their own promotions. Essentially, it's about riding the wave to more opportunities. Nothing will make you luckier than an exceptional boss who always gets promoted.

To take things even further, promotions are sometimes linked to the strategic direction the company is expected to take. Whether it's expanding globally or creating a new product line, each of these factors could result in one employee being promoted faster than another, simply based on their location or active involvement in the new product line.

In short, being exceptional may lead to consideration for an opportunity when it arises. However, the opportunity itself often depends heavily on luck.

4. Promotions Require Proof of Potential, Not Just Skill

From a manager's point of view, every promotion can be seen as a risk, as it involves not only placing an employee into a new role with new skills but also creating a gap in the position that particular employee is leaving behind. When viewed this way, a manager may find themselves with two roles to fill if the promotion doesn't work out for any reason.

To mitigate this risk to a reasonable level, many managers now expect the employee to not only demonstrate the mastery of skills and relevant experience required for their current role but also exhibit the potential to succeed in whatever comes next.

That's why it's critical to consistently think and play the long game for your career. Volunteering for new challenges, actively participating in highly visible projects, and placing yourself in uncomfortable situations are usually excellent ways for personal growth that demonstrates potential externally.

The question you need to ask yourself is, "What's next?" For instance, if you aspire to take on a managerial role or lead a department, key areas of responsibility will include people management, cross-functional leadership, and conflict resolution. If you currently don't have these responsibilities, how can you demonstrate your ability to handle them to the relevant stakeholders?

And a hard truth within a hard truth, showing potential takes a great deal of effort. It’s hard to master your current role, while slowly adding in tasks of the role your gunning for. However, it’s often necessary to get ahead.

5. Promotions Often Require A Village

Another hiccup I often observe is the perception that your manager has THE key decision-making authority regarding your promotion.

This is far from the truth. Often, there are multiple layers of approval, ranging from your boss's peers to the finance team that controls the budget and ultimately makes the decision to act on your promotion. In other words, two key factors are at play here. First, sometimes coworkers with whom you barely interact with or who have little interest in your career are part of the decision-making process. Second, the people you do work closely with, especially more senior members of the company, are often asked for their opinion of you.

To put this bluntly, every project that you manage and every relationship that you don’t build can come back to haunt you during crunch time. Winning your manager over will, more often than not, just result in a boss who is truly impressed with your skills and speaks highly of you. As I mentioned at the start of this article, no one really cares about your career and if you get promoted, especially if they barely know you or have a bad impression of you. It’s up to you to build those relationships and ensure that you only deliver exceptional work.

Where your manager can play a role on your behalf is by advocating for the promotion and highlighting your capabilities to the key decision-makers. So yes, you initially need to win your boss over by addressing all the hard truths mentioned above, with the understanding that there is still another layer in your way.

So what can you do with all of this? To me, it's simple. Always work on your personal brand by focusing on your capabilities and potential, regardless of the audience. Building relationships across multiple business lines in your company will make that additional layer less of a hurdle than it might otherwise be.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this article sheds a bit more light on what it actually takes to get a promotion and puts you on the path to getting there. Remember, not everything will be under your control, and things will most likely take a turn outside of your favor, but that’s just the reality of the situation. Your job is to keep as many doors open in your favor as possible, so when a few do shut in your face, it’s not as big of a deal.

Lastly, no one is really looking out for your career. The world of work is just too hectic and overloaded with stuff for people to have the time to care. The work rests in your hands, which, in my opinion, is where it should be.

If we were to rewind the clock just a few years, back to 2019, it would be hard to imagine an article like the one you're about to read being taken any more seriously than what your average palm reader might tell you during a visit to predict your future.

Without even considering the events of Covid-19, which caused a tremendous amount of disruption in its own right, what we are experiencing with generative artificial intelligence has the potential to be a game-changer not only for project managers but for the future of work as a whole.

In fact, the way we are beginning to work—only scratching the surface here—is nothing short of pure science fiction, at least for those who haven't been directly working with A.I.

If words prove challenging in putting things into perspective, let's look at what the data is showing us.

Here is the growth in searches for the keyword "A.I. Writing," which is now one of the most common use cases of artificial intelligence's impact in the world of work today. There has been an astonishing 100x growth in the last four years.

Here's another example. The key phrase "AI presentation maker" also surged in popularity in 2022. Even more crazy, before July 2022, the term was virtually nonexistent.

You can explore search terms for similar workflows that have remained consistent throughout the past decades and add AI to them, and you would see similar growth trajectories. Just give “text-to-audio AI,” “graphic design AI,” and “communication AI” a try to see what I mean. Every single one of them has exploded in popularity.

Seeing increased popularity usually means an increase in demand. That, on its own, doesn’t say too much, but when layered with a few other key components, you get the recipe for true disruption.

How Disruption Happens

Large-scale disruption tends to occur in three parts, with demand— which we briefly discussed—sitting right in the middle. Let’s pause here and provide descriptions of all three before proceeding.

Step 1: The Innovation

The initial spark occurs when something entirely new enters the market. This could be a product with new capabilities, a process enhancement that dramatically increases efficiency, or a macro-level technological evolution that changes the game altogether. In simple terms, a product, service, or process that introduces a new and most likely better way of doing, experiencing, and completing things.

Step 2: Soaring Demand

As you've seen already from the charts above, when news spreads about the innovation and there is a true product-market fit, you tend to see an explosion of demand. Customers recognize the value in it, and given there isn't a fair share of competition (yet), demand soars to the skies. During this time, traditional market leaders (the incumbents) are feeling the pressure, and the new entrants are getting pretty wealthy, famous, and gaining market share rapidly.

Step 3: A Flood Of New Entrants

When demand continues to expand, and the data indicates that the innovation is truly wreaking havoc on incumbents and the market they're in, the natural next step is for new products and services to be introduced that directly compete with the new tech. Or even more disruptively, new companies pop up to expand on the capabilities of the innovation, resulting in a flood of new products and services. At this point, you can officially consider disruption to be in full swing and really starting to make an impact.

So, why is the demand for generative AI so high? Simply put, the level of innovation (step 1) we are experiencing with this new wave of technology is quite literally life-changing, especially in the ways in which we work.

Let’s take the art of creating an action log as an example. For those of you who aren’t aware, the action log is spreadsheet or table that stores, tracks, and segments all the action items for a key initiative. This is a project manager's workhorse during the project lifecycle. Creating this tool is easy enough, but depending on the size of the project or the project manager's familiarity with it, it can be tedious and cumbersome to set up. The best-case scenario is the PM has a template of some sort they can work off of, which would eliminate creating a document entirely from scratch.

With A.I., you can create a pretty comprehensive first draft of an action log with some initial bits of data about the project and a few clicks. That’s it. Below is from my tool: A.I. For Project Managers, which completely automates the process. The image is large, so you may need to click on it.

The fact that I was even able to set this up myself is pretty insane in its own right. What's more, it is completely scalable. A project manager could literally create 100 action logs in a working day with this approach, fully automating administrative steps that open them up to a more strategic and creative level of work.

With capabilities that are out of this world and demand to match, you can bet your bottom dollar that companies, developers, and entrepreneurs have quickly come aboard to push this technology forward while capturing some of the value for themselves (step 3).

And what does that look like in the present day? Here is a sample of entirely new companies that have recently emerged or have pivoted to primarily focus on AI, disrupting traditional ways of working that have stood the test of time for generations.

When you put it all together you come up with the following:

1. Since entering the market, Generative A.I. has proven on more than one occasion and with various degrees of conviction that it has the capabilities to change many areas of human life, most notably in the world of work and with increasing velocity in the future.

2. The demand for A.I. tools is reaching levels we haven’t seen since the iPhone.

3. The pie that is A.I. is big enough and valuable enough to support multiple companies, each one attacking a specific use case or workflow, putting immense pressure on the old ways of working and the companies that have benefited from them.

   In other words, we are witnessing one of the largest-scale disruptions happening in our lifetimes right before our eyes.

With disruption at this scale making its way into all areas of work and with an increasing level of velocity, it's more than safe to say our roles, if they haven’t been already, will be going through a shift. What that shift is and how big it will end up being is anyone's guess.

And if you’re in project management, you can expect to be in a world of change. Not only do you have to deal with your role being disrupted, but many of you will also be responsible for leading and navigating this brave new world.

Is this a bad thing? Quite the opposite. I think this is the best opportunity for project managers to date.

How A.I. Is Impacting Project Managers

It doesn't really matter which industry you're in; great project managers all possess a specific set of responsibilities and take action on key components that are widely applicable to any situation.

I prefer to view this within a framework divided into three key components of work:

• Higher-Level Work

• Workhorse Responsibilities

• Administrative Work

Higher-Level Work

The top layer contains what is arguably the project manager's most important work but is also the most under-utilized. In this layer, the project manager spends their time diving deep into company strategy, uncovering the true success criteria for their projects and programs, and building key relationships across the company to eventually become true "dot connectors" for achieving excellence in tasks.

You can think of the Higher-Level layer as the groundwork for everything below. Without proper time spent on seeing the big picture and long-term thinking, the greater the risk that everything done in the layers below is aimless and misguided.

In an ideal world, a project manager should spend at least a third to half of their time on this layer to truly bring value to a company and infuse their role with creativity and strategy. Obviously, a fulfilling situation in its own right.

✨ A.I. Impact - Out of the three layers, higher-level work will be the least impacted by artificial intelligence in the short and medium term. However, there will be some important use cases where A.I. will play a role here as immediately as today if you want it to. One thing I love about the possibilities of large language models is their ability to be your personal coach, sounding board, and assistant all in one. Great PMs leverage A.I. to help fine-tune areas of higher-level thinking, such as segmenting all stakeholders at scale, finding weaknesses in their ability to execute on strategy, and creating concrete and objective ways to score and prioritize opportunities as they come in. Overall, the PM is using artificial intelligence to review their strategy execution framework and make it bulletproof.

Workhorse Responsibilities

The middle layer contains the tasks and items that project managers oversee and actively work on to propel their projects and programs forward. The work and responsibilities in this layer are more intricate and detailed compared to the tasks above, yet they add immense value when taken seriously. Examples of work in this layer include detailed risk assessments, handling constructive conflict, conducting retrospectives, and building productive project teams.

Project managers who excel in the middle layer are perceived as reliable and trustworthy by those they work with. Successfully managing a particular project or program is challenging without getting this area right.

In the present day, project managers should spend roughly half their time in this area.

✨ A.I. Impact - Unlike higher-level work, this layer is currently facing disruption and is expected to experience even more change in the next 2-5 years. With the right context and carefully crafted prompts, entire risk assessments and detailed lessons learned can be created with just a few button clicks. In this layer, artificial intelligence acts as your personal analyst, generating data many times faster than you can, while also surfacing insights you may have never considered.

Administrative Work

The bottom layer contains tasks that are equally important and tedious. Everything from creating and maintaining timelines, scope documents, and meeting minutes falls within this layer. For those less versed in the world of project management, they may only be aware of this layer and erroneously believe it represents the full extent of the responsibilities and capabilities of a project manager (oh, how mistaken they are).

And when I say "equal parts important and tedious," I truly mean it. Since the inception of project management, the ability to keep documentation up-to-date and record/track new information as it comes in has been a crucial aspect of the role. However, in the age of disruption and the natural evolution of the project manager title, roles and responsibilities have expanded, and the lower layer has become more administrative for the skilled worker rather than strategic.

For this layer, outstanding project managers spend 25% or less of their time here.

✨ A.I. Impact - As you have probably guessed by now, this layer is where disruption is most rampant for project managers. In my opinion, the disruption is a welcome addition. Everything from timelines to meeting minutes can now be delegated to non-human intelligence, which should free up the project manager to focus more on the top two layers. For this layer, artificial intelligence becomes your personal project coordinator, taking the tedious work off your hands and, most likely, doing a better job than you ever could.

Long story short, when examining the job role of the project manager within the three layers I've outlined above, it becomes evident that the more basic and tedious tasks will significantly shift away from the project manager (a good thing). This shift not only allows them to handle more responsibilities (also good) but also empowers them to concentrate on the top two levels: higher-level work and workhorse responsibilities (an excellent outcome).

So where do we go from here? Is the role of artificial intelligence just to automate certain workflows for the project manager? For short-term thinkers, this is where it stops, and to be honest, that’s quite a big change on its own. For us, we’re going to take it one step further and look at things that may seem scary and uncertain, and turn them into massive growth opportunities for us as professionals, and the ways we work in general.

The Larger Opportunity For Project Managers

Your company, whether you know it or not, is knee-deep in reviewing the capabilities and implications of artificial intelligence and in the process of planning/executing these findings into its existing business models and workflows. They have to be. It would be pretty unwise not to. It's quite clear to executives in every industry that A.I. is looming in some shape or form, and the impacts of inaction are scary.

All of this is going to trickle down in the form of transformation initiatives. Some of these will be minor, such as transforming a workflow for a medium-sized department, while others will be wider in scale, such as an enterprise change. The immediate downstream impacts from this are equally nerve-wracking and exciting. And with that comes the areas you, as project leaders, should get involved in as early and as much as possible to really reap the benefits.

In a nutshell, the greatest levels of opportunity will show themselves in these three areas the most:

1. Understand and lead A.I. transformation initiatives at scale.

2. Balancing Non-Human and Human Talent Leadership.

3. Crafting and implementing precise A.I. prompts for new workflows.

Let’s spend some time going through each one of these.

Understand & Lead A.I. Transformation Initiatives at Scale

When most people think of change, they believe the hard part is coming up with ideas, building out the solution, and rolling out new processes to support the change effort. All of these, yes, are challenging tasks, but none of them is THE hard thing.

The real challenge of change lies with people. The level of complexity arises from the multitude of personalities, skill sets, and values involved, coupled with the emotional aspect. Emotions such as anger, fear, and even embarrassment all contribute to making managing change anything but easy.

Regardless of the challenges that come with change in the world of AI, the opportunity to successfully lead enterprises through them is more than worth it.

Your goal should be, first, to understand as much about generative AI as you possibly can and how it’s impacting your industry at scale. Second, understand how your organization plans to utilize AI to fend off threats or expand the business. Third, do everything in your power to lead some (or all) of these change initiatives. Regardless of how your company labels or treats these initiatives, change is nothing more than a program or project, which is what you are best at managing.

If you become the bridge that connects the company's transformation strategy with its execution, you will be much better equipped to handle the difficult part: the people. You will be able to shed light on what the benefits of the transformation will bring not just from a short and narrow view but far and wide. You will be well-positioned to comfort stakeholders who fear change, including the threat of job loss, relocation, or any other uncertainty in this new world.

Trust me when I say this: transformation projects of this scale touch everyone. There is nothing you will do that will be more visible and challenging over the next 5 years. The two ingredients necessary to create the type of positive opportunities that will serve you well as you grow as a leader.

Finally, don’t forget you’re human as well. Before you can lead large-scale transformation, you must be comfortable with being disrupted yourself first. Managing change while your very own role is shifting to something new amps up the challenge for sure. The better you look at things objectively, shed things that don’t work, and embrace the new, the better you will be able to lead others through the same transition.

Balancing Non-Human And Human Talent Leadership

With generative AI pushing the boundaries of what's possible in the workforce, leaders across industries will look to recruit non-humans as a talent pool for the first time ever. When looking ahead, it's not unrealistic to envision artificial intelligence moving from supporting humans to taking a leading role across functions. Looking at this positively, this represents an immense enhancement in productivity for businesses.

And while the beauty of artificial intelligence is that it can chug along without human intervention, I see there being a need to manage, fact-check, and course-correct this new side of talent while it gains the knowledge it needs to truly shine. Let’s look at each point to clear the air here.

First, managing artificial intelligence may sound absurd, but there is definitely a value gap here. Right now, A.I. is great at reviewing extremely large sets of data, presenting information, and offering suggestions based on what it collects. It can do all of this faster and in most cases, better than humans can. However, AI will need to ensure it is collecting and presenting information or offering suggestions on the right things. More specifically, is artificial intelligence creating output that’s aligned with the project, program, or company objectives? Project leaders will need to keep a close eye on what the inputs are for AI and continuously ensure it’s something that makes sense for the business.

Even when the outputs from AI align with key objectives, there is still a need to fact-check the data to ensure its accuracy. Currently, large language models are trained on extensive sets of data in the form of text and images. Since this data originates from humans, a wide variance in the levels of truth and accuracy can be expected. Project leaders need to find ways of editing the outputs of AI to ensure the information is viable and correct. I believe those trained in Six Sigma and lean principles have an upper hand here by providing a means to measure variance, just as they would with any process.

With the information gleaned from the previous two points, artificial intelligence will need a way to ingest the errors it produced to learn where variances occurred and course correct for future work. Just like humans, AI can only perform better if it can learn from its mistakes. I'm a firm believer that project management offices and the project teams within should have continuous improvement built into their DNA. Finding a way to extend this from human intelligence to non-human is the first step to managing all levels of talent in the new world effectively.

Which brings us to traditional workers: the humans. While leaders become more and more comfortable managing artificial intelligence, there will also be a need to provide additional leadership to the people in their organization. As you can imagine, the introduction of artificial intelligence into an existing company, department, or group can be intimidating. Project leaders of the future should look for ways to frequently gauge the impact AI is having on the humans in their companies. Searching for signs of emotional anxiety, behavioural issues, or a lack of morale should be early warning signs requiring action from the project leader.

The best way to act on such warning signs? Utilize your newly found expertise in AI, coupled with your experience in navigating change, to guide your people into the new world. In a sense, you should think of yourself as a teacher: educating your teams about the benefits of AI and offering best practices on how to work with this new level of talent. Creating a human/AI partnership is undoubtedly a multiplier effect that will only become more critical in the future. Building a reputation for establishing these cross-intelligence partnerships will be one of the most valuable skills to pick up over the next decade.

Crafting And Implementing Precise A.I. Prompts For New Workflows

All of us in the workforce will have 'prompt generator' as a part of our job description in the future. The ability to experiment with AI ourselves to see what's possible to positively impact our role, function, and, in some cases, the company, will create new levels of productivity and complexity we have never seen before.

To get to this stage, we must go beyond what we are currently seeing with prompt generation now. Most of the prompts I’m seeing project leaders use center around crafting accurate communication or quickly generating meeting notes. In other words, the focus is strictly on speed and freeing up time. And while these are massive steps in the right direction and something we should be exploring, we are missing the point if we feel this is all AI can do for us.

Where AI is expected to be most impactful for project professionals is the ability to create entirely new ways of leading initiatives. From my experience testing AI, here are some of the ways it can become a partner in value generation for your line of work.

• AI can review the way your PMO is structured, including the portfolios you have set up, the staff you have on hand, and the success criteria you’re measuring. With the right level of data as a foundation, AI can be your advisor to ensure your PMO is set up with a broad perspective, which is sometimes hard for us leaders to do working within our own bubbles.

• At their core, all project leaders should be risk managers. AI can provide a full 360 review of the risks you’ve already identified and offer up entirely new ones for you to consider based on the datasets they have. You can start at the project level and scale this all the way up to company-level risks as you learn and improve your prompts.

• If you think of strategy as prioritizing and working on the right things for the business, AI can play a crucial role here too. The ability to review all company opportunities and create detailed scorecards for each will set up a company to make better decisions on project and program prioritization, eliminating most of the emotion that comes with this level of cross-functional interaction.

My suggestion for professionals who lead any new initiatives is to first get extremely comfortable with working with AI prompts and then take it a step further and start seeing how improvements can come beyond just with speed and automation. Those of us that focus instead on value creation will be in a much better spot in a future that’s coming to us faster than we probably expect.

Conclusion

I hope this article has offered you some new things to think about as AI makes its way further into our lives. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say this is a cosmic shift for project professionals and workers at large.

The opportunity is there for all of us to explore, learn, and take charge. Like all instances of change, those who take a positive outlook on the situation and own their own destiny will be the ones who are much better off.

It’s the end of the year, and like most of you, I’m planning on spending some time winding down and reflecting on what I learned. It’s also the perfect time to give my active brain a rest so I can head into 2024 with the right frame of mind.

But before that, I wanted to close out 2023 with something I enjoy doing, perhaps more than anything else as far as “work” is concerned. And that’s looking into the future and taking my chances making some lofty but not totally unreasonable predictions on what 2024 will look like through the lens of project management.

To keep things somewhat structured, I’m making my predictions from a top-down point of view, split up into segments:

• Segment 1: Looking at changes that are happening more broadly and are least in our control. What I call Macro Level Disruption.

• Segment 2: Focuses specifically at the department level. And given these are predictions centred around project management, the focus will be on Project Management Offices.

• Segment 3: And finally, looking at the individual level, the core skills that will be needed by project managers to thrive in what is shaping up to be an exciting year.

Now, let’s move on to those predictions.

Segment 1: Macro Level Disruption

The first segment takes a look at large, overarching factors that can have an impact at companies at scale and the future of work in general. I look to start with a macro level view first as it sets the stage, is the least in our control and also provides a compass to the things that are.

Generative AI Takes Another Leap

When engaging in any discussion about the future of work, it's almost guaranteed that generative AI will be the main topic. And rightly so! Never before have the possibilities been so endless and exciting.

Given this fact, it’s hard to predict where growth is headed when looking at large language models as a whole. There are just so many variables that can play out. So instead of focusing on the growth in capabilities in artificial intelligence itself, I’m going to look at how companies plan on adopting these tools in 2024.

To start right away with a spoiler, it’s going to be massive.

I anticipate that companies in all industries and regions will start implementing the plans they've developed in 2023 (you better believe that's what they've been doing) and transitioning to put them into action. Knowledge work, in particular, can expect to experience changes, from disruptions in their workflows to adjustments in the way we evaluate and prioritize key initiatives.

Companies will increasingly realize that their employees were actively experimenting with AI tools yesterday. Instead of being a force of resistance, which is a losing battle, they will consider a more controlled approach to integration. Expect this shift to occur on a large scale.

Those responsible for managing change can expect an exciting yet challenging year. With change and uncertainty at this scale, people, believe it or not, will be the most significant factor in AI adoption.

Tech Advancements Will Surface At All Levels

With large language models being such a disruptive force on their own, it's easy to lose sight of what other tech is bubbling just beneath the surface.

In 2024, technologies such as extended reality, TuringBots, and genomics will make waves at the enterprise level. While many of these are further proof of the power of disruption from AI, as they are widely enabled by it, each of these will branch out on its own and create its own level of disruption to be prepared for.

Companies will begin exploring these technologies and creating real use cases for them. You can expect to see business models optimized and even new ones created as the benefits realization becomes sizeable enough to warrant further investment in these eventual lines of business.

Transformation Remains The Focus

Disruption will continue to put both large and small companies a bit on their heels, compelling them to double down on implementing wide-scale transformation to survive and/or thrive. The only problem with that is, transformation is as challenging as it is popular. To put this in perspective, a McKinsey research study found that close to 89% of large companies launched some sort of transformation initiative, but only 31% of them achieved increased revenue, and only 25% achieved the cost savings expected of them. When it comes to transforming a business, turning ideas into reality isn’t easy.

In 2024, don't expect companies to shy away in the face of these stats. With the pace of disruption accelerating and in new ways, companies that mobilize their teams best and adapt appropriately will be in the best position to lead the future of work.

Segment 2: Project Management Offices

With project management being a mature field in 2023, it’s no surprise that the number of PMOs continues to rise. Project management is most valuable when there is a centralized location with focus, clarity, and a forward-looking view aligned with the business.

This segment looks at these structures and how I anticipate them leading the way and being disrupted in their own right in 2024.

PMO’s Shed Strict Governance

One thing has been apparent throughout my career: getting initial buy-in for a brand new PMO is tough. Establishing your PMO and having it taken seriously, however, presents a challenge that is magnified tenfold.

While there are several reasons for this, none is more common than creating unnecessary friction in the form of red tape. PMOs in 2024 and beyond will begin to understand this, and instead, they will look to adopt a more collaborative approach focused on best practices.

This self transformation requires a top-down mindset shift for all members of the PMO, followed by crafting a solid roadmap centred around educating employees across the organization on what your PMO is best at and the services it offers. Creating playbooks, widely applicable templates, and centres of education are great ways to draw employees in to the value of your PMO’s offering versus a strict governance model.

PMO’s Become Data Hubs

For as far back as we can think, project management offices have been focused on centralizing tools, templates and processes for project management and leading an overarching governance for how project management should be executed across the organization. While still important elements, PMOs will begin to make data collection, ingestion, and analysis a primary focus in 2024 onward.

In my opinion, no other function in an organization is better equipped to report on data at the highest level. PMOs have all sorts of data at their fingertips, such as risk assessments, prioritization decisions, and lessons learned. The challenge and opportunity for PMOs going forward are determining how to take this data, convert it into solid analysis, and tell a complete and transparent story to stakeholders far and wide.

As a next step, leaders of project management offices should obtain a solid grasp of their organization's mission and longer-term strategy, followed by a solid plan on how to capture all areas of source data. With this, PMO leaders can build various data-driven insights that are grounded in reality and provide value.

PMO’s Flirt With Transformation

It has become apparent that the world is moving in a direction where disruption will be a constant and at an ever-increasing velocity. Companies will need to pivot to stay ahead. One area where I see an acceleration in adoption is transforming project management offices into transformation management offices.

While both functions are quite similar and, in fact, can coexist within the same company, TMOs are the ones best positioned to handle transformation initiatives at scale. The primary difference between both functions is that the TMO makes it a primary focus to lead all areas of the transformation, including its most difficult element: the people (and the emotions and resistance that go along with it).

How to decide if a TMO is right for your company? Like many things, it requires a deep understanding of what you are trying to do and where the world is headed at a macro level. If you can foresee massive disruption on the horizon that may either threaten the existence of your company or, on the flip side, take it in a completely new and positive direction, you will require a flexible, unbiased structure firmly rooted in effective transformation execution to navigate through this uncertainty. TMOs can serve as the mechanism to guide you through such pivotal moments.

Segment 3: Project Management Skills

This final segment examines the role of the project manager itself and what key responsibilities these roles should prepare for as we head into a new year expected to be full of change.

Project managers have a unique opportunity ahead of them. Not only will their role face a certain level of disruption, but they are tasked with leading change themselves. Never before have project managers been in a position to help shape the future of the profession into its next iteration.

Project Managers Become Process Designers

With the anticipated disruption caused by technological advancements and the expected response from companies, our current processes and workflows are poised to quickly become inefficient or outdated. Project managers, leveraging their extensive experience in managing change and demonstrating leadership excellence, will increasingly undertake projects focused on process reengineering.

Utilizing proven tools from lean six sigma, project managers will employ an unbiased and structured approach to process design. This ensures that all stakeholders are heard, the process is built with future needs in mind, and it remains adaptive enough to accommodate changes as they arise.

Project Managers Become Methodology Agnostic

Traditionally, project managers tend to specialize in one way of managing projects. Depending on their training, industry, or geographical area, some project managers focus on waterfall, otherwise known as predictive-level projects, while others have transitioned towards Agile. These are the most popular players, but others have cropped up, and changes to the very dynamics are always in gear.

In 2024 and beyond, the best project managers, and the PMOs that govern them, will take a methodology-agnostic approach. Instead of choosing a methodology and sticking with it, project managers will let the projects themselves be the guide surrounding how they should be managed. This way of working will greatly increase flexibility within the teams and provide the correct mindset that being able to pivot is the best course of action in a world of constant change.

Project Managers Become Master Jugglers

Effective project managers tend to have a firm grasp on controlling what has become known as the triple constraints: Time, Cost and Scope. This in itself is challenging as no two projects are the same and the level of complexity has always been fluid.

In 2024, great project managers will have a broad set of skills to pull from to lead projects that have grown in size, complexity and of strategic performance. Project managers now need to take into account risks, benefits, and the organizations brand as project constraints, among others in order to better navigate their teams to success consistently.

I’ve recently wrote in-depth about the 10 project constraints and how to manage them. Feel free to give it a read if interested.

Project Managers Expand Talent Management Capabilities

Regardless what industry you’re in, software development is having an impact on your organization. From products you sell to servicing your internal teams, businesses are now run by a technological stack.

With TuringBots becoming more prominent at an enterprise level, the combination of human resources and artificial resources will be an additional layer of complexity to manage. Project Mangers in 2024 will be the first to manage a talent pool that is beyond human. With this, project managers will have to alter their mindset and look at utilization, scale and automation in ways they never had to in the past. While complexity is never fun early on, the possibility here to achieve true productivity and efficiency at scale may be the first of its kind.

Project Managers Become Data Driven

As mentioned earlier in segment 2, I foresee PMOs undergoing a transformation into data hubs. If this prediction becomes reality, project managers will need to pick up skills to properly collect, analyze, and report on the right data.

In 2024, the project managers who take a data-driven approach will be the ones to make a meaningful impact on their organizations as a whole. The ability to have a unified approach to key success metrics across all levels will help inform decision-making, identify risks, and seize opportunities as they present themselves.

From quantitative dashboards to leading indicators at the portfolio and program levels, I expect 2024 to be all about data for project managers.

Project Managers Become System Thinkers

When dealing with large-scale transformations, it's quite common for multiple platforms to be involved, and the number of stakeholders can span into the hundreds. Today's project managers are not adequately equipped to handle this level of complexity.

For project managers to thrive in the coming years, they need to develop the ability to think in systems. This means being able to segment large pieces of information and form links between them, even when the relationships between the two aren't so obvious to the untrained eye.

Thinking in systems will unlock the ability to identify new efficiencies, make better decisions, and help uncover the root causes of even the most complex problems. All of these byproducts are a net positive when dealing with transformation initiatives, setting any project manager with these skills apart.

Conclusion

2024 is set to be an exciting year, quite possibly the most thrilling one in recent memory. Never before has there been this level of disruption, with a multitude of potential outcomes on the largest of scales.

Project managers are expected to be right in the midst of things, serving as the catalysts that turn disruption into concrete value. I'll be closely monitoring throughout the year and keeping a close eye on how many of my predictions were accurate or completely off base.

A significant number of ideas featured in the articles of this newsletter originate from case studies and statistics I've come across during my weekly reading. In my most recent review, I stumbled upon an article that truly captivated my attention. The piece was from CEB Global Research, recently acquired by Gartner (one of the best in the business in market research), and it focused on management, especially new managers.

According to the study, 60% of new managers fail within the first 2 years. How they defined failure was around meeting the goals set out for them over a consistent period of time. The main reason for failure? The lack of training and development.

While I agree that the absence of consistent training and growth is a crucial focus area in the development of new managers, I believe the problem lies a little deeper at the core. While training and development do tell the right story, we must also ensure that we are training and developing the right things.

Management, more than almost any other role, requires a different perspective on the world and the employees under their direct management and influence.

Not at all what most new managers think when jumping into the position. Consistently putting others and their goals first may create a picture that is less glamorous than they envisioned. If this is the immediate feeling you get from reading the above, it's a clear-cut indicator that management may not be the right fit for you, or at least not yet.

If what you've read so far sounds exciting, inspiring, and evokes a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, you may have management in your blood.

Now, to be a great supporting character, it’s important to understand who the main character is. First, let’s look towards the manager as the main character (this is not ideal), followed by your employees as the main characters of their own unique stories (this is a much better).

The Bad - The Manager is the Main Character

Managers come in various flavours and have diverse backgrounds. This diversity gives rise to some exceptional managers, but unfortunately, it also results in some extremely poor ones.

I can spend an entire article detailing how bad managers are bred and you would be right in thinking lack of experience, poor training and moving up the ladder too quickly would be key factors in my argument. All of these things, however, are surface level and easy to identify, fix or avoid altogether (i.e. don’t promote someone to a management position who isn’t ready).

Under performing managers, are instead, being plagued by a silent killer, stifling their own growth and productivity along with their teams they have direct influence over, whether they like it or not. This silent killer is much harder to identify (especially self identify!) and even more challenging to correct.

Managers that place themselves as the main character, instead of their teams is the first step on the downward trajectory to underperformance.

This outdated, hierarchical view, doesn’t work in the corporate world today, let alone where the future of work is headed.

So, managers that consider themselves as the main character are actually hurting their performance just as much as their teams. If there ever was a lose-lose situation, this is it.

It’s sometimes easy to spot managers who think it’s all about themselves, and in other instances, it can be tricky. Here is a list of actions and/or behaviours I’ve seen in the past. Let me know if you can spot any that you’ve seen in the wild and (gasp) maybe even from yourself.

• They Create & Encourage Scenarios That Solely Benefit Them - From taking in the most important or highly visible projects to unloading tedious work, main character managers look to create favourable situations that benefit them at the expense of everyone else, even their teams.

• They Become Defensive When Questioned - The main character manager can be a conscious individual. Taking offence to even the most kind form of constructive criticism. There is no objectivity for the main character manager.

• They Go Out Of The Way To Take Credit, Earned or Not - Main character managers know the political game well and, in a way, abuse it. They make sure every success of theirs is broadcasted to the masses, even if they aren't the sole contributors. What's worse, these managers are so focused on themselves that they're completely blind to the great work their teams are doing in parallel, whether it's intentional or not.

• They Are Anything But Transparent - They Are Anything But Transparent - Main character managers love to be in the spotlight and to be recognized as the most knowledgeable person in the room. In maintaining this reputation, these bad managers hoard information from their teams, leaving minimal growth opportunities for them. Even more remarkably, out of fear of being placed in a less than stellar light, this group is known to sugarcoat information to stakeholders far and wide. They paint a rosy picture, even if it doesn't reflect reality at all.

Looking at this list, it's easy to pass judgment on these bad managers as being horrible people. And I would caution you not to judge too quickly. It's worth noting that our very nature as human beings is to be the centre of the universe. In reality, it's all we know. When looking at yourself, everything you touch, feel, hear, and experience is through your eyes, ears, nose, and brain. So, why wouldn’t you consider yourself the main character?

The absolute best managers are able to grasp this very fact. If humans, by nature, treat themselves as the main character in all aspects of their life, including work, managers can tap into this powerful tool to foster a hyper engine of productivity and high morale throughout their teams, which has long-lasting and deep impacts.

This is the power of the supporting character manager, which we will discuss next.

The Good - The Manager is the Supporting Character

The best managers I’ve worked with act as an enabler, guiding and facilitating their teams to new heights through proper mentorship, facilitation and guidance. In other words, the best managers first and foremost are supporting characters to their teams. Instead of looking to benefit themselves in the majority of instances, the supporting character manager places the emphasis where it should be, on the growth and productivity of their teams.

Supporting character managers are not as easy to spot on the surface level as their counterpart, the main character manager. Instead, you will have to look between the lines to spot them. Here are a couple of examples.

• They Encourage Peer-2-Peer Feedback - Great managers don’t always default to a top-down approach for changes and improvements. In fact, the very best managers involve their teams early and often. From process optimization initiatives to discussions on strategies and tactics, managers rely on their teams to provide feedback and shape the direction based on their unique ideas, skills, and experiences. This approach tends to significantly boost creativity, productivity, and morale within the entire team. It also accomplishes something truly special, leading us to our second point.

• Their Teams Are Fully Unified - There’s nothing that creates a multiplier effect quite like a fully aligned team. Supporting character managers who allow their teams to play a part in even the most ambiguous obstacles and take ownership of their solutions help foster a workforce that is passionate about the work they do and aspires to keep getting better. Employees under the umbrella of a supporting character manager are more aligned with the company's goals, ensuring that what they work on directly contributes value.

• Their Teams Are Experimental - In order to be truly creative and, ultimately, truly productive, you need to explore what's possible. Not every improvement you try to implement will work, and that's okay, especially for the supporting character manager. Their teams are encouraged to put their ideas together, try new things, and learn from both their successes and failures.

  This approach will yield many more "big wins" as the ideas that come to fruition will have been battle-tested along the way.

• Individual Contributors Are Visible - Great managers do what they can to highlight the great accomplishments of their teams. From launching transformation initiatives to building an entirely new process that has saved the company millions, the supportive manager knows how to distinguish great work from good work and broadcast this to the right audiences. Supporting character managers also don’t hog all the most important and valuable projects that come their way; instead, they offer the right opportunities to the right candidates on the team—those who are looking for their next challenge or trying to close the gap on a weaker skill.

As you can see, it's not so much about what the supporting character manager does but rather how their teams behave and approach their day-to-day work. This makes perfect sense, given that they are the true stars of the show. Continuously building their own skill set while benefiting the company along the way, they ultimately contribute to a healthy pipeline of future leaders, creating an exponential effect. As a leader, who wouldn't want an outcome like that?

3 Ways To Become A Supporting Character Manager

By this point, I hope you can confidently assert that managers assuming the role of supporting characters, rather than being the main characters themselves, is a much more viable business decision and an overall more attractive choice. For those of you who are managers and feel that you have a ways to go to fully become someone who supports and guides their teams in reaching their true potential, this next part is for you.

I like to frame weaknesses, or at least areas of improvement, as a series of questions. This approach allows me to properly define the problem, and the answer to each question should ultimately take me one step closer to achieving what I want.

The three questions I challenge you to reflect on and eventually gain clarity on are displayed below. Remember, be honest with yourself. You want to uncover the cold, hard truth above all else.

• Question #1: Do I fully grasp the goals, aspirations, and ways of working of each individual team member? - Everything starts with a deep understanding of your employees as individuals and key contributors to your company. Do you know their strengths and weaknesses? Do you understand their role within the team and where they stand in relation to other team members? Furthermore, try to comprehend what excites them, how they handle stress, and what they value. Managers who haven't undertaken this, at least on a surface level, exhibit symptoms of main character syndrome.

If you want a rundown on how to evaluate and manage performance, check out this article I penned a while ago.

• Question #2: Do I have a proper grading of talent within my team? - Whether you like it or not, every team comprises A, B, and C players. A players are your superstars who require less support and crave more challenges. They are on a trajectory of growth towards new or improved roles. B players are meeting their job expectations but might benefit from additional mentorship and support to propel them to the next level, provided it aligns with their goals. On the other hand, C players may be struggling to meet team standards or lagging behind for various reasons, such as a lack of cultural fit. It's crucial to assess whether these team members can become a net positive for the team or if cutting losses is necessary for both the team and the employee. Where am I going with this? Consistently evaluating and grading your employees behind the scenes is a form of investing in them. It places you in the mindset of understanding where they currently stand and figuring out how to guide them toward their desired goals and where you need them to be.

• Question #3 - What’s the ratio of time and effort I spend on my own growth compared to that of my team? - The best managers aim for an even split, or slightly more heavily weighted towards their teams. When reaching the manager level, you’re definitely measured by how capable your team is and how well they can grow into future leaders. So, investing in them is also investing in your career. A true win-win.

When you begin closing the gaps that separate you from becoming a supportive character manager, you will start seeing the positive symptoms we talked about earlier show up. Through experimentation, higher productivity, and much more, the results will begin to speak for themselves, and you will be well on your way to being the manager you are supposed to be.

Conclusion

As you can see, great managers are truly built from the ground up. The thinking and skills that brought you to a managerial position are unlikely to be as effective moving forward. My recommendation is to address the toughest challenge first: your mindset. Before going too far into surface-level improvements, it's crucial to establish a solid foundation. Having a strong foundation will serve as a supporting pillar, providing the necessary grounding to build and lead high-performing teams that consistently adds value and enjoys the process.

For many professionals, the role of a manager is considered the ultimate pursuit. The ability to lead a team, build a department, or provide input on strategy are all exhilarating aspects of the role that ignite that spark of interest.

This interest is made apparent to me every day. When professionals reach out to me on LinkedIn, through these articles, or in person, the most often asked question of me, by far, is how I made the transition into a management role.

I believe there are two key components to effectively address this question. To make this as widely applicable to everyone reading this, it will be less about my specific journey and more about the best practices I gathered along the way. The first part revolves around the roadmap itself, which encompasses the skills acquired and the experience gained during the journey toward a management position. For the second part, it's about grasping a set of unwritten rules a manager is expected to fulfill. These unwritten rules are what I'm going to discuss with you all today, as getting this right is the difference between a good manager and a great one.

Like it or not, you'll have to display potential in these unwritten rules to decision makers even before you become a manager. So, while reading today, pause every now and then and gauge how you measure up in your current role.

But before we begin, I want to clarify one key detail first to ensure that expectations are managed.

It’s A Different Job Entirely

The role of manager is vastly different to what you’ve come to expect in your role as individual contributor. From the day-to-day responsibilities to the mindset needed to excel in the role, it’s best to treat the two as two separate tracks.

To provide some perspective, it's worth noting that not all managers necessarily earn more than individual contributors. In many instances, you'll encounter professions where individuals who do not manage people directly may earn as much or even more than people in managerial roles, including some department heads. This underscores the importance of approaching the managerial role for the right reasons.

Great managers are motivated by the right reasons. They possess a profound passion for and sense of responsibility in guiding and nurturing the growth of their team members, helping them evolve into leaders in their own right. For some, they deeply care about the progress of their company and understand how their department contributes to the larger organizational picture.

The role of a manager can often be a thankless one. Exceptional managers are okay with this and are comfortable with not seeking the limelight when things go well. They willingly accept accountability when things go awry and responsibility is warranted.

5 Key Expectations For Managers

If you have read the above and have fully grasped that management is an entirely different type of animal and feel you have what it takes to pursue it for your career, you're off on the right foot!

Your next step is to avoid the mistakes managers have been making for generations and enter the role with the right skills, experiences, and, most importantly, the correct mindset.

In my opinion, there are five areas you have to hit right out of the park in order to be a great manager. Let's start with one that many find the most challenging to get right.

They Know How To Delegate

New managers often struggle with the idea of letting go of their previous workload. Even after a recent promotion to a managerial position with several direct reports, they may attempt to carry their existing work alongside their new responsibilities.

When seeing this on your screen, I’m hoping you can quickly see why this would be an issue. For one, the new manager is starting their role on the wrong foot by spreading themselves too thin. This approach risks diminishing the quality of their work or, worse, quickly leads to burnout as they strive to maintain their accustomed standards.

Also, the new manager does a significant disservice to their team by restricting their opportunities for growth and the chance to take on new responsibilities. This approach also ingrains bad habits in the manager, slowly pushing them towards becoming a micromanager—a situation that's detrimental both for their team and themselves.

Exceptional managers prioritize the delegation of lower-value tasks that consume a significant portion of their time. They pass these tasks to team members who are not only willing but also capable of handling them effectively.

A good way to test if you’re ready to take on a managerial role is to assess your comfort level when it comes to delegating tasks to your colleagues. If your initial reaction to this idea is defensive or resistant, consider this as a clear signal that there might be a gap in your readiness. One of the most efficient paths to personal and professional growth involves shedding existing responsibilities and embracing newer, more challenging, and strategic ones.

They Know How To Asses Talent

Good managers make it a priority to build relationships with their direct reports, with a key focus on encouraging and motivating them to be productive and keep morale high. Managers who stop here are leaving so much on the table in creating a high-performing team.

Exceptional managers also place an emphasis on these areas but take it a step further by deep-diving into their existing talent pool and evaluating them based on factors relevant to performing at a high level. They use tools such as a skills matrix to measure not only what success looks like for them but also to provide a crystal-clear roadmap for their people.

In my opinion, every team has people who fall under various segments of performance:

• A players - The high performers on the team

• B Players - Average to above average performers on your team

• C Players - People who are not carrying their wait on the team.

Great managers segment their talent and try to correct/weed out C players while relentlessly nurturing their A and B players.

This skill may be even more important when looking to grow your team. Managers tend to treat the hiring process as a chore and don't spend the appropriate amount of time and effort throughout application selection, the interview process, and eventual onboarding. This lack of effort results in a less-than-stellar filtering process, potentially leading to a team without the appropriate skills and a poor fit for the company culture. Great managers start and execute the hiring process as a chance to better their teams. More specifically, they continuously build a pipeline of A and B players. In fact, I would say every new hire, regardless of whether it's a new headcount or a replacement, should be the new benchmark against which all future and existing employees are measured.

They Think More Broadly

Too often, and painfully so, managers tend to focus on controlling the area strictly above and below them. Mostly, this is due to a lack of experience and generally being excited about taking on a role with greater influence and a suite of direct reports.

Why is this a problem? There are a couple of reasons:

1. In an effort to build stronger connections with their direct reports, managers end up assuming the role of a protector. Aggressively negotiating on their behalf to ensure they are not overloaded with work, have the best outcomes, and are continuously happy working for them. While these can be positive things, many managers go overboard, which ends up stifling team growth and, as you might expect, results in a gradually unhappy team.

2. By looking only at the layer of impact directly in front of them, managers end up missing opportunities that can bring forth strong growth, new challenges, and better relationships with adjacent functions. This is not great for the team, and it's not great for the company.

To avoid this from happening to you on your journey as a manager, plan to approach things broadly. Here's a common one to put things into perspective: Don't get defensive around new work or the potential for bigger and more complex assignments coming your team's way. Dissect why this work is important and truly gauge if it makes sense to live with your team. When confronted with any kind of dilemma, your objective should be to seek the larger perspective to identify solutions and challenges that can benefit not only your department but also upstream, downstream, and adjacent functions within the company.

They Think In Systems

It always surprises me to see managers in action who think with an activity-based mindset. They go about their day, working with their teams, completing one task after the next, thinking that a steady stream of completion is a sign of ultimate progress.

These same managers fail to see the bigger picture. Most of the time, this is due to a lack of systems thinking. The function these managers are building can and should be thought of as a system, one of many systems that fit into a greater whole, which is the company.

When thinking in systems as a manager, a few positive things begin to take shape and accelerate:

1. You begin to tackle decisions that impact more than just your team and function. This one is massive. There is nothing that creates a multiplier effect like making decisions that benefit more than one function or team.

2. You avoid missing things by actively looking with a wider scope. How often are requirements missed or risks not properly assessed because a team was looking through only a single perspective? This gets corrected with systems thinking.

3. With the risk of sounding like a broken record, it allows you to see the bigger picture and how your system fits within the whole.

Great managers understand that activity-based thinking is far inferior to systems thinking.

They Offer Unbiased & Direct Feedback

Nothing is more stress-inducing for a new manager than giving feedback to their teams, especially when that feedback is a course correction mechanism for an under performer.

Managers need to confront this fear head-on and become comfortable with providing feedback directly and proactively. Delaying or diluting feedback is not a beneficial approach. Here are the main reasons for this:

1. You're doing your direct report who is underperforming a disservice. Sugarcoating your feedback to them robs them of the ability to be aware of the issue, let alone correct it.

2. Lack of feedback, especially to under performers, will lead to more issues down the line, resulting in you having to focus more of your attention on them. This not only stops you from working on higher-value tasks but also strips you of your ability to work with the high performers on your team. You can only spread yourself so thin.

Remember, when providing any type of feedback, it’s essential to be not only transparent but also unbiased. Using the underperforming employee as an example, present facts regarding the approach the employee took, including the outcomes achieved and why these resulted in their poor performance. Then, follow this up with coaching, offering suggestions for improvement if applicable.

The best way to set the stage for this is by establishing specific performance standards for your team and adhering to them. Use these standards as the guiding principles for giving praise, implementing course corrections, and everything in between.

I discuss setting standards in more detail in this article:

Conclusion

The role of a manager is definitely fulfilling and a worthy pursuit for those looking to make the jump. I hope this article helped provide clarity on what to expect when taking your first management position, and more importantly, what you need to do to thrive in this role.

Remember, being a manager is completely different from that of an individual contributor. If you go in with the right expectations and acquire the necessary skills, the chance you will excel in the role and sustain your passion for it will be much greater.

Today we are once again going to peek into the future. This time, exploring projects themselves and the various aspects we need to think about when managing them.

I’ve outlined 10 project constraints we need to think about in order for us to be successful project leaders of tomorrow. 3 of them should be familiar to you but the other 7 may not be.

If there is interest on this topic, I’ll make an effort in diving deep on each constraint in future articles. Let me know if this is something you’d like to see by commenting below.

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Now, on to the article.

If you were to approach 20 project professionals, transformation leaders, and PMO executives and inquire about their thoughts on the future direction of project management, you would most likely receive 20 distinct responses.

The diversity in viewpoints is entirely expected. Making predictions about the future is an immense undertaking, particularly when confronted with an endless wave of disruptions driven by emerging technologies infiltrating the workforce.

One of the key reasons I created this newsletter was to speak about this topic in-depth. And while predictions are never 100% bulletproof, I feel there is enough data at our fingertips to help guide us on the right path.

I’ve spoken at length about where I feel the project management profession is headed already and even hosted a PMI premium webinar on this topic. I now want to focus on projects themselves. Specifically, how do we manage projects that are becoming more complex, strategic, and chock full of ambiguity?

In my view, we need to change how we think about projects.

Projects are different now. They come with a bunch of challenges that many project leaders aren't ready to deal with. Through my own research and experience with managing transformation level projects, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are 10 constraints that project leaders of tomorrow must contend with and navigate through. This article aims at providing a summary on each of them split into two categories.

• The Original 3

• The New 7

📜 The Original 3: Traditional Project Constraints

A lot has already been written about the traditional project constraints, and many of the elements still apply. While I agree that fixing something that isn't broken comes with some risks, I feel it’s more important to continuously look to optimize something already valid and take it even further. With that in mind, the triple project constraints will be going through a slight makeover to make them more relevant to a world of massive transformation.

Cost

Managing budgets is one of the first skills taught to aspiring project managers, and for a good reason. Capital is a scarce resource and regardless of the size of the company, there is only so much of it to go around. Controlling where money gets spent and how quickly, compared to progress made, is one of the traditional areas of success measurement.

As projects grow bigger and more complex, cost management will continue to play an important role for the projects of the future. Project managers need to balance traditional metrics such as the variance between actual costs versus forecasts, and learn the skills to control some new ones, such as rising/declining exchange rates, the cost of missed opportunities, and sunk costs.

Time

One of the characteristics that defines a project is the fact that they have a start and finish date. This will continue to be the case for projects of the future. However, with projects growing in size and becoming more firmly tied to company strategy, the need to review timing in multiple phases within many programs is the future of time management.

Project managers must be comfortable working with both loosely defined and strict time constraints in parallel to meet the needs of the short and long-term goals of the initiative. This will require project managers of the future to balance multiple critical paths and dependencies to meet the needs of the business.

Scope

I find scope one of the more confusing constraints for project leaders. I feel this is due to confusing requirements for scope. For a refresher, requirements are what the project is expected to deliver. The scope is how you plan to deliver those requirements.

For a very easy to understand example, let’s consider the process of crafting a sandwich for a customer. The customer's requirements include 2 slices of bread, thinly sliced tomatoes, pickles and onions, some lettuce, and turkey. As for the scope? You can consider sourcing the materials, prepping the ingredients (e.g., slicing the tomatoes), and ultimately assembling the sandwich.

Similar to the considerations of time and cost, effective scope management isn't going anywhere. Executing on projects of the future will come with a range of possibilities due to emerging technology and the vast scale of change. This will make keeping scope under control quite challenging, but also highly rewarding. Project leaders and their teams will have various levers to pull, leading to new ways of doing things that are superior, more accurate, and faster.

To make this constraint a strategic advantage, project managers must fully grasp the success criteria for not only their programs but also the organization as a whole. With this level of information, they will have a clear understanding of where they can make adjustments to meet the project's requirements while staying within the scope's boundaries.

Tradeoffs & Opportunity

Before moving on to the new project constraints, I want to touch on how each of the traditional constraints work together and where I feel there is untapped potential for project leaders and the organizations they work for.

Most project leaders start off by reviewing the success criteria of their projects, which allows them to quickly identify the constraints. Based on this, project leaders can make initial assumptions. For example, if the budget is extremely tight, it's likely that the scope will be affected in some way. If there's a firm project deadline, the budget might need to increase or the scope could be impacted. These are just a few examples of the challenges project managers need to address, doing their best to work within the boundaries of all three constraints.

This is where I see an opportunity – with project leaders better connecting strategy with execution. For instance, if the project they're working on is expected to completely transform the company for the better, would going over budget, missing a deadline, or modifying scope be that concerning? Maybe yes, maybe not. The key is to have your eye on the bigger prize that sits beyond your project or program. As future project leaders, bringing up such questions to senior leadership when they arise could instantly increase the value of the entire project management profession let alone you as a leader.

With that said, it’s time to dive deep on the new constraints impacting the projects of tomorrow.

✨ Future-Proof Your Projects: 7 New Constraints

Has there ever been such an exciting time to manage a project? Never before has such scale, influence, and disruption been at our fingertips. With this level of change comes a whole host of new things to control—seven, to be exact. And while what I’m about to explore with you is my very own opinion, I do feel it’s critical, at the very least, to gain a good understanding of each of them and how they fit into your world as a project leader.

Each constraint is dynamic and carries no default weight. You must review each of them yourself and decide how much of a factor they will play in your future projects.

Benefits

The projects of tomorrow will be bigger with a greater level of strategic importance tied to them. These initiatives will be born due to long-term opportunities that were identified or to help secure a few more years of survival in the most competitive of landscapes. In both cases, more often than not, this is due to wide-scale disruption. These expected benefits, as you can imagine, will lead to all sorts of constraints to control. If you need to launch a new product at all costs to save the company from steep revenue declines, what sacrifices need to be made? If your company is migrating its entire platform to a new version, what level of financial risk is the company comfortable taking on to make it happen?

Project leaders, or those thrust into the role, need to have a crystal-clear idea of what the end result (i.e. the benefits) will look like. After doing so, they need to ensure every aspect of their execution is leading to that realization. More importantly, there needs to be a clear and mutually agreed upon definition of the acceptable level of commitment to the project benefits versus everything else of importance. Make no mistake, tradeoffs will need to be made. The benefit constraint is not an easy one to manage as it often conflicts with the traditional constraints. More often than not, this becomes one of the more important constraints given it’s tied to the very essence of the transformation initiative.

Brand

Whenever a new initiative is launched, especially one of ample size, there will ultimately be a first impression tied to it. Sometimes, these initiatives need to meet an extremely high standard right out of the gate to meet the lofty expectations the end user and the general public have developed based on brand perception. While a brand is an intangible asset, it can be immensely valuable and should be strongly considered when executing a strategy. Think of Apple or Coca-Cola as examples of what a strong brand can be.

This can become challenging for the project leader who is managing a host of other constraints, such as tight timelines and inadequate budgets. In situations where brand becomes a constraint, launching a product with only the minimum viable features may not be feasible. Project leaders need to gain a solid understanding early on of what constitutes must-haves in terms of requirements, quality, and more to effectively manage brand expectations.

Culture

Many of us consider culture one of the most vital aspects in fostering a healthy company, and indeed, it is. However, we often falter in effectively managing it when it comes to projects, and this is a significant mistake.

The rationale for dedicating effort to managing culture as a constraint is twofold. Firstly, any new initiative, especially one of large scale, can impact culture, either positively or negatively. If the company has cultivated a healthy culture, it's crucial to ensure that the end result of the project doesn't undermine it in any way. Secondly, the existing culture itself can either bolster or hinder the project's progress. For instance, a culture that places a high premium on work-life balance may not react favorably to a stressful transformation initiative that demands extensive overtime. The future's most adept project leaders will closely oversee both scenarios to maintain the culture while minimizing disruptions to the project itself.

People

A company's culture is nothing more than an amalgamation of its people, each with their own emotions, feelings, and values. It's no surprise that people, not processes or technology, pose the biggest obstacle for large-scale transformation. Resistance, fueled by fear, anxiety, and anger, is a common occurrence, and it's up to the project leader to manage this effectively.

As you can imagine, pushback can and will lead to unnecessary scope creep, missed timelines, and, worst of all, result in a finished product that's nothing like what was intended. So, what is a project leader to do? For starters, open and proactive communication will alleviate some of the uncertainty felt, and in the best cases, provide a sense of ownership for the people undergoing the change. Educate your stakeholders for why things are changing, how it will happen and what the expected benefits will be. Throughout the project, ask the teams for their feedback and truly listen to the suggestions they offer. The best way to manage change is to provide some sense of control to those who are impacted.

Quality

Although quality is a primary focus for project leaders, I believe it's best evaluated as a constraint. Similar to the brand constraint, quality can hold significant importance for certain organizations and should be integrated into the project's overall requirements.

Let's consider the example of launching a new diagnostic tool for a heart monitor. It's evident that this device must maintain an extremely low variance in output, meet a specific threshold for uptime, and consistently deliver a high level of accuracy. Failing to meet these quality standards is simply not an option for a project of this nature. Therefore, project leaders must strike a balance between the demands of other constraints, such as scope, people, and timing, while ensuring that quality standards are maintained at a specific level.

Requirements

Remember, risks are what the project aims to deliver, and scope is how you plan to deliver them. From my perspective, requirements need to be managed as a constraint just as much as scope. A requirement could be a key product feature necessary to outperform a competitor, or it might involve having a specific level of language support to launch in a new market. If both of these requirements are primary reasons for the project's existence, you can bet a substantial amount of money that they will take priority over budget, timing, and scope. Experienced project leaders understand this and highlight any potential risks to meeting mission critical requirements to those that need to know. With this proactive level of communication, they also provide multiple options to lessen the impact to constraints lower in priority based on the trickle down effect.

Risks

Finally, we are left with another familiar area of project management I'm officially marking as a constraint. As projects become larger and more complex than ever before, the level of risk will also increase. Risks associated with organization-wide transformations can pose a significant threat to the business.

Leaders responsible for managing these types of projects need to address risks iteratively, consistently searching for new risks while monitoring those that have already been mitigated. If the need arises, a project leader should establish various stage gates, not only to review project progress but also to assess the level of identified risks. These meetings can serve as go/no-go decisions with all key stakeholders making the decision to proceed with the project or not based on how risky it’s becoming compared to the expected benefits.

One of the most significant value-added aspects of a project leader is their ability to effectively manage risks. This importance will only grow from this point forward.

Just like traditional project constraints, each new one needs to be balanced among each other to have a better chance at project success. It is up to the project leader not only to identify all 10 but also to work with key decision-makers to prioritize them if many are present. Remember, the ultimate goal is to create real value based on strategic ideas, and this is a step in the right direction to make it happen.

Conclusion

If you've read this article and concluded that projects are becoming more complex and harder to manage, you'd be correct. I believe this is a positive development as it solidifies the long-term value of project leaders. Expect me to go deeper into each of these new constraints in future articles. Subscribe now to ensure you don't miss out.

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Today I want to focus on the people side of management. Specifically, how we nurture and grow the talent on our teams.

I’ll be uncovering what works for me as a people leader and share some of the tools I’ve come up with along the way. I hope you enjoy reading it just as much as I did writing it.

And if you’re new here and enjoy what you’re reading, consider subscribing to be notified of new deep-dives when they’re released.

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The transition from being an individual contributor to a manager is an exciting journey that comes with a steep learning curve. Along with the new title comes a multitude of challenges, including a broader range of responsibilities and increased decision-making authority.

A move into management also brings with it an additional layer of responsibility that’s (usually) pretty foreign to those just getting into the game - people management. Managing others can take various forms, ranging from overseeing a single direct report to leading a team of many individuals. As you progress as a leader, the complexity can intensify with multiple layers of hierarchy separating you from those who carry out the day-to-day operations of the business. Not easy to say the least!

Just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean you should shy away from it. In fact, it’s just the opposite. From my point of view, leading and nurturing one's employees should be the highest priority for today's managers, above everything else.

To start, managers who focus on their employees' personal development can do wonders for retaining staff. A noteworthy 2019 study by LinkedIn highlighted this fact. The study found that a remarkable 94% of employees would be inclined to stick with an employer if that employer prioritized their personal growth. This approach is cost effective as well. Based on my own observations, the costs associated with replacing employees tend to exceed the investment required for developing current employees.

Just as important, if not more so, is the strategic advantage companies gain by building and maintaining a healthy pipeline of leaders ready to fill opportunity gaps as the company grows. Building future leaders is now more important than ever. Companies need to pivot many times throughout their existence, and this will only accelerate going forward. As a result, there is no telling what areas of focus will emerge, what new departments will need to be established, or what skills will be required in the world of tomorrow. Having future leaders who are trained and already aligned with the company culture is like a cheat code – an inexpensive one, to be exact – that most companies would kill to have.

If you're a people manager yourself or have your sights set on becoming one, you're stepping into some pretty big shoes. Many managers these days simply aren't equipped to handle the heavy workload thrust upon them AND fulfill the vital responsibility of nurturing and cultivating their teams.

So where do you even begin? After spending some time on this topic, I can say with confidence the biggest gap at the moment is the way we measure employee performance. The approaches we take and the tools we use are incomplete and are in need of a massive overhaul.

Before jumping to solutioning, let’s first look at the pain points. Why is our approach to performance measurement of our employees so ineffective? I feel it comes down to three things.

• It’s systematic, not iterative: Measuring employee performance, much like most things today, needs to be agile. Work output, including interactions, projects, and followed processes, happens every day. Amidst this, employees are in a constant state of learning, even if they don't realize it. They make mistakes, stumble, and then improve. Waiting until the end of the year to highlight a key learning that occurred 6 months ago leaves so much on the table for employee and employer.

• It’s mainly company focused: Companies today, put too much emphasis on hard to measure aspects of performance, such as company values and buzz words. While culture fit is extremely important, gauging an employee's performance through this lens should cap at around 50%. Going beyond this limit not only dampens morale but also smothers creativity by overlooking where employees' genuine passions reside.

• It’s not comprehensive: When assessing our employees' performance, we often do so solely through the perspective of our experience as people leaders. We owe it to our teams to appraise performance from a broader array of viewpoints than what we, as individuals, can provide alone.

People managers who can overcome these hurdles and, instead, learn the ability to measure their teams' performance in a way that breeds hyper productivity, engagement, and happiness among the group will be in high demand – and rightfully so. Having said that, I’m going to share some tools I’ve been experimenting with. These tools have shown significant promise for the businesses I oversee and the global PMO I lead. These are tools that effectively gauge employees' performance today and gradually lay the foundation for their growth into future leaders.

But before we dive into that, we need to start by adjusting the mindset of the people manager. Something I wish I had known when I took on my first role as leader of a team. It’s a simple question to start with: How should one approach being a people manager in the first place?

🌎 Part 1: The People Managers Worldview

Throughout my career, I've worked with people managers who were both my peers and who reported directly to me. While many of them have evolved into highly successful leaders in their own right, they all seemed to encounter a common challenge right from the start.

Do you have a guess as to what this challenge is?

To provide you with a comprehensive perspective, let me illustrate this with a fictional example. Allow me to introduce you to Justin, a senior performance marketer at a rapidly growing tech company. Over his two years with the organization, Justin has undeniably made his mark. He's nurtured crucial relationships across all business domains, achieved a staggering 350% surge in website traffic by introducing novel marketing channels, and significantly enhanced the efficiency of paid search and existing social media campaigns. Moreover, Justin wholeheartedly embraces the company's culture and embodies its core values.

Justin's supervisor and a handful of others have been closely monitoring his progress, and they're truly impressed by his work ethic, collaborative spirit, and notable achievements. Their admiration has reached a point where they believe a promotion is well-deserved, accompanied by a team of direct reports who can learn from his expertise.

Once the decision is finalized and Justin is informed, his elation knows no bounds. This marks a significant milestone in his career, one he views with immense pride. He eagerly anticipates the expanded influence and authority that comes with his new role, as well as the support of a team to propel his initiatives further. His ultimate goal, is to drive the company to even greater success through his leadership. In his eyes, his new team represents not only his accomplishment, but also an extension of himself to get more work done. The burden of an ever-increasing workload will no longer stretch him thin, preventing him from focusing on essential tasks.

However, after a few months of assuming the role of a people manager, Justin finds himself perplexed. Strangely, his team isn't as engaged as he is. Disagreements among his team members have arisen, and Justin can't help but feel a hint of irritation. Doesn't his team realize who the manager is? As these challenges persist for a few more months, Justin's supervisor steps in, needing to intervene—a development that casts a shadow on Justin's initial foray into people leadership.

Looks like things didn’t go according to plan for Justin.

If you didn't quite catch the situation Justin found himself in, he committed the same error that many new people managers stumble upon right from the start.

Adopting this mindset sets you off on the wrong foot immediately. It instinctively narrows the attention away from the genuine asset: the people under your guidance.

For the best people managers, it’s the employees that really matter and dictate their success. Their primary objective, the one that truly ignites their excitement, is the opportunity to play a part in the collective and individual growth of their teams. The influence they wield, the extra responsibilities they take on, and any other perks that comes with being a manager are simply byproducts of this core purpose.

I urge all current people managers reading this to take a moment to assess their current perspective. Ask yourselves whether your teams are the driving force behind what you do and if their accomplishments and growth are connected to your own journey. If your answer is no, it might be worth dedicating some effort to realigning these aspects. This realignment becomes crucial if you have aspirations of pursuing leadership roles in the long term.

So you have a team and your worldview is aligned with the best people managers in the world today. This is great. Now we must do something about the way we measure performance, for the benefit of our teams and to create productivity that can take our companies to the highest peaks. Let’s explore that next.

📊 Part 2: Measuring Employee Performance The Right Way

In my perspective, the most effective approach to tackle employee performance measurement and development is to view it in layers—precisely four layers, as I've outlined below:

• Creating the benchmark

• Crafting the employee roadmap

• Establishing the evaluation feedback loop

• Implementing the milestone marker

For this process to truly succeed, it should kick off from the top, while maintaining a consistent overlap to reap the full benefits. Now, I'm going to look into each layer and lay out the reasoning behind incorporating them.

Creating the Benchmark

In order to effectively assess the individuals on your team, it's essential to initially grasp what greatness looks like across multiple levels. I recommend kickstarting the process by asking yourself a series of reflective questions and taking the time to formulate detailed responses.

• What's required for complete alignment with the company's values and mission?

• What core competencies are necessary to truly thrive in the roles on my team?

• What traits, experiences, and skills will become essential if we intend to scale the department or team beyond its current state?

These questions might be a bit challenging, but they're worth considering! To break it down further, the first question focuses on connecting with the company's values, the second looks at how well the employee fits their role, and the third looks ahead, to predict what's needed for expansion.

With the insights from these questions, you can start creating your first employee performance measurement tool – the skills matrix. Also known as a progression framework, I'm a big fan of this tool because it helps with two main challenges that often trip up new managers:

• It offers a comprehensive overview of the potential career pathway for employees within your department.

• It lays out a clear set of skills and outlines expectations for each role within your team.

That second point is really important as it serves as the foundation to level set expectations across your team. Just as beneficial, it can also be used as your measuring stick through the employee development journey.

I've created a few skills matrices in the past, and we've just initiated a fresh one for the PMO I'm leading. While the specifics of these tools may vary slightly across companies, industries and roles, it is my opinion that they should at least contain the following.

• Roles: Particularly in larger departments, it's optimal to develop distinct skills matrices for each role. To illustrate, let's say your department comprises project coordinator, project manager, and program manager roles. In this case, each of these roles should possess its own skills matrix, with the coordinator role serving as a stepping stone to the project manager role, and so on.

• Core Competencies: These are the overarching themes utilized to assess a specific employee's suitability for a role. They encompass skills such as problem-solving, industry knowledge, and communication.

• Levels: A tiered approach that highlights the amount of competence/experience each employee has for the core competencies of that role. Some examples are 1. Novice, and 4. Master

With the identified structure in place, your job is to fill in the pieces by tying each core competency with its associated level for every role. When you’re complete, it should look something like this.

Keep in mind that the skills matrix acts as your team's compass, allowing them to gauge their present status and find direction for their career journey. It's a tool of immense value for them, just as it will be for you.

Crafting the Employee Roadmap

Every member on your team is a unique human with their own hopes, desires, and expectations. This holds true for their careers, just as it does for every other aspect of their lives.

As a people manager, it should be a priority for you to meet with them and understand what gives them motivation and in return, outline your own expectations for them.

Some questions to as ask are:

• What fuels their drive to deliver exceptional work?

• Where do they envision themselves over the next 3 years?

• What are their aspirations for the upcoming 12 months?

Start a conversation with each of your employees and begin capturing these details. This is the perfect time to leverage the skills matrix to not only align their growth aspirations to the expected progression of the role (and the skill needed) you mapped out, it also allows you to identify exactly where opportunities for improvement lie. With that, you can begin the process of documenting a 1 year development plan, a.k.a. employee roadmap. I'd recommend structuring and documenting this plan using a variation of the template provided below.

• North Star: Where does the employee envision themselves over the next 3 years, finding personal fulfillment while also benefiting the company?

• 1 Year Objective: What is it that the employee should accomplish in the coming year to bring them closer to their North Star?

• Segment 1 - Learning: Which courses, educational programs, and reading materials will the employee commit to in order to meet their one-year goal?

• Segment 2 - Accomplishments: What milestones does the employee intend to reach in the next 12 months to make progress towards their goal?

• Segment 3 - Deliverables: What specific contributions or projects does the employee pledge to undertake in the next year, driving them towards their desired outcome?

• Feedback: What areas are the employee struggling with and may need guidance?

It’s worth noting that this should be a highly collaborative part of the process. The employee needs to take ownership off their own development and the manager has to support growth through learning opportunities, coaching and good old time and effort.

Establishing the Evaluation Feedback Loop

High performing employees welcome feedback. It’s unfair to wait until the end of the year to have meaningful conversations with them on this topic. Instead, a much more impactful way to accelerate the growth of our people is by establishing a feedback loop with our employees.

Rather than waiting for annual performance review season, I incorporate regular, micro-sized evaluations in every 1 on 1 meeting I have with my direct reports. I carve out a specific time during these meetings to relay anything I’ve heard about them through others, positive or negative, including anything I’ve seen through my own observations. With this, I offer suggestions that hopefully generate new learning opportunities. Throughout it all, I’m also continually observing and assessing their progress based on discussions that happened in the past.

In order to make these micro-evaluations effective, you have to measure your employees with a much wider net. The way I do this is through the 360 review. For those of you who are not familiar with this exercise, the 360 review is the act of reaching out to the peers and colleagues of your employees, and capturing valuable feedback by asking them a series of questions. Ideally, these colleagues would have had direct interaction with your employee recently.

For this exercise, I find email works best as it offers the chance for those providing feedback the ability to think through their responses. Just as important, it’s much easier to send feedback surrounding a colleague this way. Holding a 360 in a more interactive format may be too much for some.

I tend to only focus on 4 questions to ensure I get lots of replies and keep things on point. Those questions are:

• Based on your interactions with “employee x”, what would you say their strengths are?

• What are some of the ways “employee x” can improve?

• If you can describe “employee x” in three words, which ones would you use?

• Is there anything else I should know?

After collecting feedback, I compile them in a document and during our next micro-evaluation, have frank conversations around what I learned in the field. To be clear, I don’t constantly hold 360 reviews, as that would be too time consuming. Instead, I try to do them based on milestones reached or to help balance my own findings for the employee in question. Overall, I tend to do them much more frequently than most companies require.

Implementing the Milestone Marker

Now we’re left with the final layer, the milestone marker. I refer to this layer as a modified version of the year end performance review. A great deal of the content is the same, the only real differences are:

• The frequency: Instead of check-ins happening at the end of the year, which measure performance as a whole, it’s focused on specific milestones mapped out at the beginning during the creation of the employee roadmap. The milestone marker can be triggered by completed projects or even the end of the quarter.

• The Outlook: Annual reviews, in my opinion, are 75% reactive and 25% proactive. The milestone marker flips that in reverse. Reviewing small snippets of outcomes more frequently with the ability to steer the ship in new directions if the need arises.

The milestone marker consists of two parts, the document to capture progress and the meetings themselves.

When it comes to collecting data, I like using interactive PDFs. These are shared with my team to fill out over the year, similar to the example below. This is just my personal choice; any spreadsheet or document software works too. When combined with the skills matrix and employee roadmap, team members can easily track their progress toward their goals without stressing about getting off track. This document stays dynamic and serves as a central reference during milestone marker meetings with employees.

The meetings themselves should be similar to your typical year end performance review. The only differences are these are proactive and don’t need to be too formal. it’s simply a matter of focusing on leading indicators of employee performance and growth versus lagging indicators.

Is there also room for the annual review? I believe so. The beauty of the milestone marker layer is it allows you to incrementally accumulate data throughout the year, making the annual review much easier for the manager to put together and more valuable for the employee as it will be accurate and there will be involvement every step of the way.

Conclusion

When you put everything together, it’s easy to see that the way we traditionally manage the performance and growth of our employees is severely lacking. It is now up to all of us, as people managers to push the idea of a more comprehensive and agile approach going forward.

In today's article, we're exploring a communication essential: the status report. I've searched extensively for an in-depth guide on how to craft an exceptional one, but sadly, none hit the mark. With this guide, I aim to fill that gap and establish it as the ultimate resource for producing top-tier status reports for every business leader.

If you’re new here, or received this email from a friend or colleague, I write articles such as this every other Monday. Subscribe for free so you never miss out.

✨ Become a Better Leader ✨

Let's jump into the article.

As project and change leaders, one of the first skills we're often told to master is communication. The ability to speak effectively in front of others, clearly provide accurate and timely information to stakeholders, and capture data through active listening are all crucial components of a project leader who knows how to communicate.

Where we're truly put to the test is through status reports. Among project management tools, none achieve such widespread use yet offer so few best practices for approach, execution, and output. Several reasons contribute to this, and most of them are valid:

• Project managers infuse their own unique skills, experiences, and values into the mix.

• The company may have specific guidelines and governance structures that influence the tools used for reporting.

• The project in question may call for specific details for inclusion into the status report.

• Clients, sponsors, or key stakeholders may have particular requirements regarding information and format.

Even with these points having merit, it’s striking to me how bad many working professionals are in creating something effective, engaging and built to succeed. Yes, we need to continue to be dynamic in how we approach status reports, but the underlying structure of it all needs a revamp.

I have prepared over 100 status reports and reviewed countless more from the teams I've managed. I believe there is a discernible pattern of what works and what doesn't. Interestingly, most of the issues with poorly performing status reports have little to do with the reports themselves. In my opinion, everything starts with how we approach projects and the way we manage them. So that’s what we’ll start with.

🧠 Part 1: Having The Right Mindset

Many project professionals understand what they’re required to do from a roles and responsibilities point of view. Specifically, the need to grasp a host of technical skills (managing timelines, identifying risks, building scope, etc.) as well as the intangibles (dealing with conflict, communication, etc.). But what they sometimes miss is the extra layer that goes beyond these skills.

This top layer consists of 3 parts. Each part is of equal importance but in my opinion, should be focused on in a systematic way, so this is how I’m going to explain it in this deep-dive.

Think Like A Business Owner

I like to view the projects and programs under my belt as individual micro-businesses. Each of them has a client (or sponsor in some cases) and stakeholders who have a vested interest in what we’re building, either throughout the project or after the benefits are realized. There are financial components to most projects, and the need for budget management is crucial to ensure we continuously stay in the black. The list goes on.

As the project leader, I act as the CEO of this "business" and am ultimately responsible for ensuring its success.

By adopting the mindset that your projects are businesses and you are the business owner, you set in motion several subconscious factors that project professionals who don't take this approach lack in their arsenal.

• You start seeing things from a broader perspective. You realize that risks can emerge from unexpected places, and achieving success isn't solely about meeting scope, quality, and budget requirements.

• You make better decisions, rooted in a comprehensive understanding of various perspectives and areas.

• The tone of your communication is more precise and effective. You feel confident in knowing when to apply pressure and create urgency when the need arises.

• Most importantly, with a business owner’s mindset, you balance the needs of the project or program by considering both short-term and long-term outcomes. A far cry from traditional project leaders grounded just in short-term thinking.

Is this an easy one to pick up? Definitely not. However, it's a mindset that, once mastered, enhances all your work outputs and aligns them better with company goals rather than surface-level objectives. If you want to learn more about producing exceptional output, check out my earlier deep-dive here:

Become A Compelling Storyteller

If you were to reflect on the content you've come across during your recent professional journey, you might notice that a good chunk of it falls into the "just okay" category. Whether it's sifting through work presentations, going through status reports, or reading email updates, it's pretty common to find things that are a bit confusing and not very engaging. They don't always seem fully thought out and don't flow quite as smoothly as they could.

If you're lucky, you'll find a few pieces of content that really stand out in a positive way, contrasting with the less engaging material you endlessly sifted through.

I’m willing to bet that the great content you find, regardless if it was a presentation or something written, told a compelling narrative.

This takes us to our next mindset shift. Learning how to communicate like a storyteller that goes through the motions and bring their audience along for the ride the entire way.

Why is this important? Learning the skills of the storyteller will ensure a few key benefits.

• It allows you to clearly articulate the challenges ahead. Pairing your newly acquired business owners mindset to first identify the right obstacles with the ability to explain these upcoming challenges, you're essentially offering a sneak peek into the future – a powerful move when done right.

• A good storyteller knows their audience well. Project and change leaders shouldn't create content for themselves. Instead, we're like narrators, sharing what teams need to know, along with practical insights that bring everyone together.

• A skilled storyteller emphasizes the journey and the array of choices, where decisions come into play. From a project leader point of view, our knack for exploring and conveying risks, challenges, and data-backed solutions is vital for bringing everything together towards a successful outcome.

• Every story finds its fulfillment in an ending. Even though your completion date might seem distant, it's never too early to start envisioning the world that will define that moment. By outlining the steps to shape this envisioned future, you pave the way for a more accurate anticipation of what's to come, resulting in a much more unified team as a result.

It goes without saying that thinking like a business owner is just one piece of the puzzle. When you combine that entrepreneurial mindset with the power to communicate through compelling stories, you'll position yourself ahead of 90% of other project and change professionals. It's not just about understanding the business; it's about crafting narratives that resonate.

We’re not done yet. There’s one more mindset shift we need to work on before diving into the status report itself. Let’s get to it.

Understanding Your Audience

If you’ve been reading my newsletter for awhile now, you will know I’m big on two things.

1. Understanding company strategy

2. Understanding your stakeholders

Number 1 is covered quite well if you adopted the mindset of thinking like an owner. Now it’s time to tackle number 2.

It's easy to imagine your audience as a group who all share a common interest, watching your project or change initiative unfold with a hopeful outcome.

While there's some truth to this, it's just the surface. Your audience is made up of individuals, and we all know how diverse human nature can be. Each person has their own evolving hopes, dreams, and desires.

When you factor in the work dynamic, things get even more intricate. The professional environment adds a new layer of complexity to consider.

If the above statement is true, and I believe in most cases it is, thinking of your audience as a whole is the wrong approach to take.

Instead, your audience should be segmented into like-minded components, facilitating personalized and relevant communication. Just as a marketing professional creates personas for their ideal customers, project professionals should also examine their audience in a similar manner.

Looking at your initiative and the audience associated with it, you will want to spend some time examining how best to segment them. Some ideas are:

• Impact - Which audience members play the biggest roles in your project and which are more low key on the impact scale?

• Influence - Who of your group of stakeholders will be massive cheerleaders for your initiative and which will be detractors? Adding another lens, how likely are they to transition other stakeholders to share that same mindset?

• Interest - Do some of your stakeholders really love what your team is creating? And are there others who just aren't as interested? People's feelings toward your project can vary widely, like different colors on a canvas.

• Fear Index - This happens to be one of my personal favorites, particularly when it comes to business transformation projects. Are there stakeholders who might be feeling a bit apprehensive about the upcoming changes? And conversely, do you have team members who are wholeheartedly championing this change?

• Function - The most fundamental segmentation level involves grouping stakeholders by their functions. Are there any notable disparities when examining one function against another?

• Skill Set - Maybe your project calls for multiple sets of skills that are hard to come by. Are there specific capabilities or experiences amongst your stakeholder group that need to be catered a specific way?

After crafting several sets of segments, the real magic happens when you combine two of them into a matrix. This lets you explore new and unexpected scenarios, almost like stepping into the shoes of a fortune teller.

I describe the matrix format in greater detail in this article:

Adopting all three elements (and getting great at them) is when the true mindset shift happens. Your ability to tackle problems, communicate and execute on strategies should drastically improve from here on out.

Now that we’re in the right frame of mind, we still have to do something about those mediocre status reports we’ve been dishing out. So let’s focus on that next.

📊 Part 2: The Next Level Status Report

The project status report, as I see it, serves as a crucial instrument that drives the project forward. While it's true that generative AI is on the horizon, and there may be a time in the foreseeable future when artificial intelligence will accurately create and distribute such documents, we haven't arrived at that point just yet. Even so, when that moment does arrive, the underlying approach to composing and distributing such reports will continue to hold significance for diverse human endeavours.

The rationale for this is quite simple when you go to the core of what the status report really is.

That’s all there really is to it. All the details that go into this report should serve this purpose.

Where Professionals Go Wrong

It’s safe to say that most status reports don’t accomplish what they set out to do. And from my experience, these are the main reasons behind it.

• Low Value Success Metrics: Many status reports focus on traditional project measures like comparing cost and budgets to initial plans. While these are important, they don't always show how well we're moving toward the company's bigger goals.

• The Amount of Data: Depending on who's reading them, most status reports have too much detail or not enough. It's crucial to find the right balance.

• Sharing Outdated Insights: Status reports that only talk about things that have already happened don't give us much to work with for the future. We need reports that help us take action now.

• Lack Direction: Many status reports of today are just a random set of data and commentary without any flow to it. This is one of the most common reasons status reports often get ignored after a quick look.

• Is The Opposite of Transparent: As someone who’s leading a new initiative, it’s your job to bring to light the good and the bad to enable proactive problem solving. Poor status reports are often full of fear or fulfilling political agenda’s which hurt the project and the company long term.

With the above in mind, here's your top priority: Go through your old and current reports and check to see if any of these problems are present. Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us. If any of them are more than a one-off, fix or remove them going forward. Your reports might end up looking simple and lean, but it will have the most important and value info.

Next Level Status Reports

I mentioned this before, but let's highlight it again: status reports must remain adaptable, tailored to the company's culture, project specifics, and even the project manager's style. I really value creativity, and that won't change. Yet, we want to build a structure to lift how good a status report can be. Considering this, a few key things are a must for a strong status report. To be precise, there are six of these important parts.

• A North Star: Specifically, what is the company trying to achieve and what are its benchmarks? Pay careful attention here. By North Star, I’m not talking about project goals. Projects, once completed should contribute to the north star. The north star can be a statement or presented as forecasted metrics/big rocks.

• Executive Summary: I like this term as it puts you in the mindset of the business owner with the status report as a version of your shareholder report. The executive summary should be brief and list only the important elements between the previous report and the current one. Topics such as an update on progress, the introduction of a new threat or a change in the way things are done are usually value added ones.

• Project/Program KPIs: The goal is to have a very clear grasp of the project success criteria and how do these roll up into the north star for the company. For example if the in-year goal of the company is to bring an additional $10 million in project revenue from new customers, we can measure this in different ways through the lens of our project. Think about speed – the faster we work, the more projects we can handle. Or consider client satisfaction via a sentiment score – nailing the current project might convince a key client to bring more lucrative projects our way. As you can see, there's a lot to track that goes beyond just the Project Management Office, catching the interest of various stakeholders.

• Leading Indicators: Building on project/program KPIs, leading indicators are powerful because they bring potential opportunities or risks to light before they fully materialize. This means you can address them proactively, raising awareness and taking action sooner. That sentiment score I just mentioned? It can be viewed as a valuable leading indicator. If your client isn't satisfied with the project's progress, it doesn't just affect long-term revenue; short-term gains are at stake too! By utilizing the status report, you can swiftly regroup and tackle these issues in their early stages.

• Key Milestones: Often, professionals overload their status reports with excessive details when a simple and clear roadmap would suffice. When you consider your initiative in its entirety, what are the essential upcoming milestones that your audience must know, plan for and agree upon? A status report can offer this insight without drowning everyone in unnecessary information.

• Clear Visibility & Accountability: Imagine your status report as a triple-duty tool: a roadmap, compass, and fortune-teller, all in one. Every part of your report, from charts to the executive summary, should do more than share current progress; it should seamlessly blend in predictive insights. Even better, it needs to spotlight who's in charge of what, and here's why it's golden: first, it guides those responsible, outlining their tasks and deadlines. Second, it keeps everyone else in the loop about the team's roles. Especially for extensive projects, a status report becomes a priceless asset, offering a clear view that enhances overall visibility.

Some Examples

For this final section, let's apply what we've absorbed through two clear examples.

The Standard Version

Our first case revolves around a project with a clear mission: crafting and launching a social media contest. The goal? Amplifying brand recognition, ushering in new followers to fuel the sales pipeline, and potentially reaping remarkable PR rewards. All of this, mind you, while sticking to a $250,000 budget and wrapping up within 90 days (traditional project constraints).

Now, the twist that may surprise you is where the emphasis is placed. The project goals are taking a back seat to those campaign objectives. Give it a second and let it sink in. Imagine discovering a tactic that could potentially unleash a whirlwind of positive PR but might dent the budget and stretch the timeline. Would you walk away from it? Consider it from an executive's vantage point. Odds are, that's a risk worth taking. At the very least, spotlight it. Lay out the pros and cons, like I did in this example.

It’s also worth noting this status update is customized for the company's leadership team. The summary, risk details, and metrics all cater to this audience. If I were leading this effort, I'd create another report for the rest of the team(s) – maybe even multiple versions if needed. Despite seeming like more work upfront, this actually saves time by avoiding questions and meetings to stay aligned.

For the leadership team report, I'd also set up an optional 30-minute recurring call. This quick chat would cover the high-level data and, importantly, leverage their influence for key decisions. Remember, your project decides how much communication keeps things on track.

The Dashboard Version

What do you do when you're tackling a project that transforms the entire company? These projects often involve a multitude of stakeholders. Crafting individual reports for each of them could get overwhelming, especially when the overarching goal impacts everyone.

In these cases, I’m a huge fan of dashboards. The reason I love them is because they do a great job telling a complete story visually through charts, KPI’s and other succinct information. You can target a large audience with little real estate. You can even take it a step further and create drill-down components so stakeholders looking to dive deeper can do so.

Let's explore an example: a company-wide initiative to adopt generative AI in at least 3 business functions. With loads of data points to consider, a dashboard shines by showcasing the big stuff. Some of the ones this dashboard is targeting are employee sentiment, progress in AI integration, and return on investment trends. All potential major levers to look for in a transformation initiative of this type.

Similar to the standard report, there is no mention of the standard RAG metrics (Red, Amber, Green). This is by design. The traditional project scale, for the most part is opinion based. What I consider yellow may be entirely different to someone else on the team. Instead of defining and re-defining these terms, I much rather prefer the data do the talking. After all, it's tough to dispute hard data.

Conclusion

Ultimately, my goal is that this article becomes the most impactful and thought-provoking piece you've encountered on project status reports. Let me know if this was (or wasn’t!) the case. Even more than that, I hope it becomes a reliable resource for all your business communications, whether you're leading a project or not.

With a strategic reporting approach, your company's alignment will undoubtedly improve, paving the way for more excellent execution. This will also establish you as a genuine leader in the process, no doubt.

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I’m always extremely flattered when an employee, a friend or someone in my extended network reaches out to me for career advice. Why I feel this way is for two reasons. One, I get the opportunity to help someone in what I hope is an area I’m passionate about, which usually involves project management, execution or leadership. Two, it signals that something about my body of work makes me worthy enough to offer advice on these subjects.

Doing this enough times, I really started focusing in one that second part. What is it about the quality of my work that has helped me grow in my career, lead a few businesses and put me in the privileged position of helping others?

With that question in the back of my mind, I started to pay more and more attention to the type of asks professionals were reaching out to me for. There’s usually a reason I’m approached for advice but for the most part, it’s a call for help. Some examples being:

• Person #1 - I just started a new job and I want to make a great first impression. I need help!

• Person #2 - I have a major upcoming presentation that I need to nail. I need help!

• Person #3 - I keep getting passed over for job promotions. I need help!

• Person #4 - I’m having trouble standing out from my peers. I need help!

• Person #5 - I’m new to [insert job title] and don’t know where to start. I need help!

And while my advice differs based on each person’s unique situation, it isn’t lost on me that what each of these individuals are asking in there own way is:

It's clear to me that the majority of us want to perform at our best and produce exceptional work. We look up to those who inspire us and eagerly try out new methods as they become available. However, it's surprising that only a few of us succeed in creating work that truly makes us proud AND captivates the attention of others.

Why is that?

Having pondered this question for the last few months, I've come to the realization that most working professionals attempting to produce great work lack a few critical ingredients that the best professionals consistently incorporate.

For today’s deep-dive, I’m going to uncover the recipe and full set of ingredients that has taken me from a traditional project manager to where I am today. Specifically, I’m going to walk you through a formula that will hopefully change your perspective on what’s needed to consistently produce exceptional results.

SAI = Standard / Ability / Improvement

Producing excellent work doesn’t come naturally for everyone. It requires cultivating the right mindset, putting in hard work, and consistently evaluating performance to enhance skills through challenges and experiences.

Wash, rinse and repeat.

While the production of quality might appear unpredictable at times, it ultimately follows a plan. At least, that's been my experience. Whenever my work has been praised for being great, it’s because 3 key ingredients have been in play before, during, and after the entire process.

To achieve consistency, I've taken these three key ingredients, restructured them for better organization, and developed a simple yet highly replicable formula. Allow me to introduce SAI - the solution for achieving exceptional work every time.

Each of these 3 ingredients can often be misinterpreted so let’s spend a moment and put a definition for each of them.

Standard - Your baseline level of expectations for your thoughts, actions, and behaviours, and in this case, your work. To put it simply, it’s what you deem acceptable.

Ability - The set of core competencies you have at your disposal to execute on the work and fulfill the standards set for yourself.

Improvement - The process of relentlessly measuring existing standards and abilities and make improvements accordingly.

Having led direct reports for the past decade, I've noticed a common issue among working professionals: they often encounter roadblocks in crafting their best work because their effort is solely focused on that middle layer - their abilities. They understand their strengths and preferences and use them as their sole approach to work production and eventual output. Unfortunately, this approach is a massive mistake that stifles growth.

In my opinion, the most crucial element is often the least considered: your standards for work output.

Raising Your Standards

Everything you put out into the world has the potential to be measured. When it comes to work, your output can be measured by your boss, cross-functional leads, and clients. Over time, the accumulation of work that was crafted by your hand can build a reliable case around what type of manager, leader, and/or worker you are.

Looking for external validation of the quality of your work is essential, but I would argue it’s secondary to the validation you personally have for the work you do.

The first step to consistently creating exceptional work is to meet the following rule:

It seems easy in theory, but you would be surprised how many working professionals have very low standards of themselves and the work they do. Here are some of the most common reasons for this:

• Lack of Confidence: Have you ever been burned in the past by an assignment, project, or presentation? It only takes 1-2 failures to really knock your confidence levels down to their lowest point. And when confidence is low, it's like adding fuel to the fire of poor work quality.

• The “Good Enough” Mindset: It’s painful to hear, but many working professionals aim to meet the minimum quality of work that’s acceptable externally. The problem with this is two fold. One, not every stakeholder will share this minimum acceptable level of quality and will measure you accordingly. And two, as you climb up in your careers, you will be competing with a larger and larger subset of individuals that have exceedingly high standards set for themselves. Making your average work look less than average.

• Lack of Awareness: This is a big one, and I'm really hoping this deep-dive will set things right. You'd be surprised by how many of today’s managers, leaders, and professionals simply don't think this way. They overlook the importance of measuring themselves, which is actually a foundational step in creating amazing things. It puts them at a big disadvantage in their positions.

If any of this resonates with you, there's room for improvement. Holding yourself to high standards is not just a skill; it's a mindset. Your next challenge will be to shift your thinking.

Let me share some common traits I've observed in employees who consistently deliver exceptional products, services, and processes. Here are some of the most notable ones:

• Pursuit of Greatness: What drives you? For professionals committed to creating greatness, an insatiable internal desire to excel in their craft is what propels them forward. They fearlessly discard drafts that don't meet their exacting standards, willing to start anew. They firmly believe their work reflects who they are and reject anything short of excellence.

• The 10% Threshold: When an exceptional worker receives accolades or positive feedback for the great work they've done, they don't just stop there and pat themselves on the back. Instead, they take this achievement as a new standard of quality, raising it to become their new baseline. Moreover, they set their sights on maintaining a lead of at least 10% above this threshold and continuously strive to push their limits even further.

• Relentless Towards Learning: The very best individuals have a keen eye for observing others, not only to appreciate great moves but also to learn from their mistakes. They grasp that people's standards are dynamic and ever-changing, so they adjust their own expectations accordingly.

• The Power of Passion: Exceptional talent understands that they can only do great work when their focus is on things that engage, excite, and encourage them. When passion reaches its highest levels, nailing the other three traits mentioned above creates a powerful flywheel of greatness that's hard to match.

Now that you have the tools to remove the anchors that have been holding your standards back and the traits to elevate them to new heights, your next step is to put in the work and build a plan for yourself.

Once you feel you've reached a good spot, it's time to shift your focus to the second aspect of the equation. The cultivation of abilities.

Cultivating Abilities

Having high standards for yourself will only take you so far. True exceptional output comes from having the ability to act on those high standards.

If you possess high standards but lack the necessary skills to act on them, you'll find yourself stuck in an endless loop of frustration, never truly satisfied with your work—and rightfully so.

Accumulating and growing abilities is pretty straightforward. All you need is the right set of challenges, earned experience through overcoming and failing those challenges, and then building on them to create your own personal suite of skills that work together seamlessly.

However, the cultivation of skills phase can also be somewhat of a trap if you're not careful. Building skills shouldn't happen at random in the majority of situations. Instead, being laser-focused on excelling in your particular field will require a bit more of a roadmap. Specifically:

• Macro Alignment: Looking at the data, where can you predict the world is heading? Disruption is the new constant so prepping for the reality will make all the difference. More specifically, what direction do you see your industry heading? Answering these questions first will give you a solid shortlist of abilities to prioritize.

• Company Alignment: What are the 1,3,5 year strategies of the company you work for or run? What are the major opportunities and threats that stand in its way in meeting their objectives. Looking at your company this way will offer you a new lens at which to prioritize abilities.

• Current Abilities: Having a clearer understanding of how macro data and company information fit into the big picture, how does this translate to your current abilities? Do you possess a collection of skills that are geared towards the future and can directly add value to your organization? In most cases, you should already possess more than half of the necessary capabilities. The crucial part is uncovering what you might be lacking.

• Ability Gap: The final step in your pursuit of obtaining the right skills to enable exceptional work is uncovering the missing pieces. By now, this should be pretty clear. If not, dig in further by observing other high performers within your organization. What are they doing, and which components are they being praised for? If all else fails, don't hesitate to ask your colleagues, bosses, and team members for their unbiased feedback. Gathering their insights can provide you with a better understanding of your strengths and weaknesses.

Remember, deciding and prioritizing the right skills to ensure the greatest positive impact as early as possible is the hard part—one that most professionals fail to do correctly. Everything else simply comes down to taking on the right challenges and allowing time to do its work.

(Continuous) Improvement

If you want to consistently produce great work that matches your high standards, having the right set of abilities can certainly make you above average. However, to truly stand out among other leaders, you need a secret weapon – continuous improvement.

This is why I've emphasized improvement as a force multiplier in the SAI equation. It acts as the gas pedal, propelling you on an upward trajectory of skill accumulation and ever-increasing expectations of yourself.

Let's take a moment to consider an example—a dedicated working professional named Sarah, who is committed to elevating her standards using the SAI formula.

Let's meet Sarah, someone determined to elevate her presentation capabilities as a project manager. After her last presentation (the output), she invested ample time in evaluating the outcome. This involved gathering external feedback, reviewing engagement data, following up with attendees, and conducting a self-evaluation. From this process, Sarah gained valuable insights into her strengths and areas needing improvement.

For the aspects where she excelled during that presentation, she needs to understand why and embrace them as her new baseline for all future presentations. These successes become her new standard of measurement. On the other hand, Sarah must actively address any shortcomings and work diligently to fill those gaps.

Going through this cycle for her next presentation, she will be starting from a new elevated position. Over time, as her standards build off of each other, her growth will far outpace not only her peers, but also her ability to meet her lofty expectations. This is her cue to transition her focus and upgrade her abilities.

Just like Sarah, you will need to be strategic by being evenly balanced so you never find yourself outpacing one ingredient too far over another.

With all three pieces in place, you now have a workable blueprint that you can use to ensure you are always measuring yourself higher than the external benchmark. You also have the skills to meet those expectations and an improvement mindset that will put you on the fast lane.

Navigating Your Way To The Exceptional

The SAI formula is, as you can expect, a strategy you can implement to transform good work into exceptional output. Like all strategies, the magic lies in execution. As you assess where you currently stand and begin implementing the formula, you'll want to monitor progress and check your position from time to time.

In other words, determine where you currently fit on the Standard/Ability Matrix and identify what you can do to push ahead.

Let’s go through each in a bit of detail starting from the most bleak.

The Poor Performer:

This persona can be identified by having low standards for work and feeling helpless about improving it. If you find yourself in this situation, it's crucial to take action promptly. The first step is a mental one. You need to be honest with yourself and acknowledge that your current work output is unacceptable. Don't wait for your boss or peers to point this out; it should come from your own expectations.

Start by identifying an area of strength within your work and use it as the initial benchmark for the quality of all your skills. Once you are in the right frame of mind, prioritize upgrading your foundational skills. Avoid falling back into the patterns of mediocrity you might have had in the past. Set a higher bar for yourself and begin with a small goal to achieve.

If necessary, seek inspiration and study material from high performers in your field. Learn from those who excel and strive to apply their methods to your own work. Remember, improvement starts with your mindset and dedication.

The Wasted Talent: Here's where the majority of working professionals find themselves: armed with education, experience, and immense talent, they have all the makings of a true trailblazer. Unfortunately, those stuck at this stage set a low bar for themselves, and this shows in their work.

The tricky part at this stage, especially for those not actively seeking improvement, is that they don't realize what's holding them back. They find their work output to be completely acceptable, not realizing the areas that need growth. Recognizing this is crucial, and it's helpful if you have great peers or a supportive boss who can point out those gaps.

For those fortunate enough to acknowledge being in this stage, it's time to once again raise the bar and elevate your standards for work output. Your mindset is the key to making this happen. Embrace a competitor's mindset and refuse to settle for anything less than greatness.

The Imperfect Perfectionist: Having high standards for your work output without the skills to meet those standards can be a frustrating experience. At this stage, you might find yourself constantly scrapping your work due to your dissatisfaction with the results. You don’t need other to tell you to pick up the pace. You are already your toughest critic. The good news is that your standards are in the right place; you just need to upgrade your skills.

It’s very hard for a professional with high standards of work effort to be lagging too far behind on abilities So, your first step is to review what you're doing well. Then, seek out complementary skills that not only expand your toolbox but also enhance your existing abilities as a byproduct.

Embrace continuous improvement to relentlessly upgrade your abilities, and only then will you be able to focus back on taking your high standards even higher. Remember, skill enhancement at this stage is the key to closing the gap between your current output and the level you desire.

The Peak Performer: This is where we all want to be, but only a few actually achieve it, especially consistently. When you have high standards and the skills to meet them, you'll definitely set yourself up for success.

Combine this with a key focus on continuous improvement, and there's honestly no stopping you. You've created a flywheel that will keep accelerating the quality of your work output.

Conclusion

Like most things, creating exceptional work takes time, and the path to greatness is anything but linear. By applying the SAI formula, you gain that slight edge by analyzing your weak points and aligning your mindset with effort. Treat this journey to excellence as an iterative process, and you'll find that the sky is the limit.

Companies that don’t adapt, tend to have a really bad time. Business leaders who grasp this reality and instead, embrace a healthy dose of paranoia are far better equipped to fend off threats and navigate towards promising opportunities.

This deep-dive will be exploring one of my personal favourite examples of a company who adapted in the face of turmoil: Best Buy. Recognizing that their future held potential pitfalls, the company made a remarkable shift in direction by capitalizing on a distinctive asset exclusive to physical retail—their brick-and-mortar stores.

Fast forward to today and Best Buy is chasing some pretty big opportunities that I want to explore in detail, which are the following:

Here, we will look into these new strategic objectives and put on our project management hats to do what we excel at: conduct a risk assessment and identify potential opportunities and threats. In essence, what should the leadership team focus on mitigating or exploiting, and how should these risks be prioritized? Rest assured, there will be plenty to unravel and explore.

But before we dive into the future, let's take a peek at how Best Buy adapted its business in response to the growing threat of e-commerce.

A Looming Threat

In early 2010, with most of the world still recovering from a recession due to the financial collapse and consumers everywhere becoming more and more comfortable with online shopping, the leaders at Best Buy were starting to get worried. in-store sales were at all time lows with no signs of improvement on the horizon. Pair this with a lacklustre online presence and high turnover rates at all levels, it was hard to look for any signs of positivity for the once powerful retail company.

With a few more years of struggle and in desperate need of change, the company sought out a promising CEO who had earned a reputation over the years for successfully taking over companies in profound turmoil and transforming them. That CEO's name was Hubert Joly.

When approached to take on the role of CEO for Best Buy, Hubert admitted that he didn't know much about the retail industry, so he was a bit hesitant. However, he decided to do a deep-dive analysis of his own to uncover whether the pain points he identified were fixable, as he explained in this McKinsey interview.

I got the call from a friend and I told him, “I don’t know anything about retail and the place is a mess.” So, before any interviews with the board’s search committee, I did an outside-in analysis on Best Buy and the sector. I did store visits, I read everything I could, and what I saw was that, of course, this was the all-you-can-eat menu of challenges. You had strategic challenges with Amazon and some of the technology companies vertically integrating. You had operational challenges with the service quality having gone down significantly. You had leadership challenges, since my predecessor had been fired, and you had shareholder challenges with the share price dropping significantly and the company’s founder and lead shareholder, Dick Schulze, trying to take it private.

~Hubert Joly

After his outside-in analysis, Hubert did accept the role at Best Buy and went on to perform one of the greatest business transformations the world has ever seen.

As highlighted by this Forbes article, the performance metrics during this turnaround were truly remarkable.

• Five consecutive years of sales growth 

• A 25.8 percent non-GAAP return on investment, up from 10.5 percent in 2013

•  Achieving GAAP operating income targets two years ahead of schedule

• A doubling of U.S. online sales from 2012, to $6.5 billion (17 percent of all Best Buy revenue)

~ Forbes, April 4, 2021

So how did Hubert and Best Buy do it? There were a few things that came in to play:

• The company went from measuring close to 50 KPIs to just 2: Improving revenue and improving margins

• Significantly revamped and continuously optimized their online store

• Most importantly, converted their most precious asset, the physical store to a vendor showroom, which resulted in key partnerships and additional revenue.

This last point was a masterful stroke of genius by Hubert and the leadership team. For context, Best Buy was noticing a worrying trend. Consumers were going to Best Buy stores with their mobile phones and performing price comparisons in real time with online competitors, mostly Amazon. Shoppers were technically using Best Buy as a testing ground to try out new products and then going home to order said product through Amazon at a cheaper price.

This strategy has made it significantly easier for Best Buy to price match with Amazon. After all, it's hard to beat the satisfaction of walking out of a physical store with the product you've been eyeing.

After leading Best Buy to a much healthier position, Hubert Joly decided to step down as CEO, passing on the reins to Corie Barry, the first female CEO in the company's history. With the company's momentum on their side and the understanding that the current and future landscape will continue to be as disruptive as ever, Corie and Best Buy are determined to stay on the offensive.

Transformation 2.0

Over the past two years, Best Buy has been developing an entirely new strategy to address the challenges posed by major online competitors while also exploring fresh revenue streams. These strategic initiatives can be categorized as follows:

Let’s get into the specifics on why the company feels these two moves will position them well for the future.

Expansion Into Healthcare

One of the added benefits of making a purchase with Best Buy is the inclusion of technical support provided by their Geek Squad team. The service is usually at an additional cost to the customer and a source of additional revenue for Best Buy. The leadership team has come to realize that this service, which was a focal point for consumer electronics specifically for entertainment, should have a much wider scope.

With that in mind, Best Buy made a significant splash into the healthcare industry through the acquisition of Current Health for $400 million. Current Health is a technology-enabled company that facilitates care-at-home by connecting patients with telehealth services, patient monitoring solutions, and various connected devices through technology vendors throughout the USA.

Looking at this from the outside in, it appears that Best Buy is leveraging their expertise in at-home technical support to venture into the realm of at-home healthcare. This strategic move indicates their confidence in extending their existing resources to cater to the healthcare sector.

Deborah Di Sanzo, the President of Best Buy Health, says basically that in their press release announcing the acquisition on the companies website:

“The future of consumer technology is directly connected to the future of healthcare, We have the distinct expertise in helping customers make technology work for them directly in their homes and by combining Current Health’s remote care management platform with our existing health products and services, we can create a holistic care ecosystem that shows up for someone across all of their healthcare needs.” 

~ Best Buy, October 12, 2021

This is an ambitious move by the retail giant and I feel they have a good grasp on what they need to do to win here. Leaving the care to the healthcare professionals and owning the technology in this space that makes care at home possible.

Introduction of a Membership Model (Subscription)

Best Buy acknowledges that it will always face a challenge when competing against Amazon Prime, the world's largest loyalty program. Although they may never develop something as extensive and far-reaching as their competitor, Corie and the leadership team recognized the need to take action and recover some of the lost revenue, particularly during peak periods like Black Friday and the holidays.

And the company has done that with their own membership program called My Best Buy. And while this service has been available for awhile now, just recently they have expanded to offer some additional tiers, as explained in their press release:

My Best Buy Memberships™

• My Best Buy: Our free existing membership plan built for customers who want convenience, including benefits like free shipping with no minimum purchase¹.

• My Best Buy Plus: A membership plan built for customers who want value and access. For $49.99/year², My Best Buy Plus includes everything you get with My Best Buy, plus benefits like exclusive member-only prices; exclusive access to sales, events and products; free 2-day shipping with no minimum purchase³, and more.

• My Best Buy Total: A membership plan built for customers who want protection and support. For $179.99/year², My Best Buy Total includes everything you get with My Best Buy Plus, plus Geek Squad® 24/7 tech support, up to two years of product protection (including AppleCare+) on most new Best Buy purchases while you’re a member⁴, and more.

~ Business Wire, June 27, 2023

Two big things stand out to me, especially after spending some time reviewing this company:

• Their middle tier seems to be a direct move against Amazon. Offering free 2-day shipping for a small annual fee may be a great value add for the more frequent shopper. I’m assuming Best Buy has looked at the data and see the benefits in introducing this segment to the mix.

• Best Buy once again leverages that untapped asset I brought up earlier, their Geek Squad team offering tech support at home. This time, included in the annual fee. While this is a great value add for the customer, I also believe this is a way for the company to scale that team and their operations to better handle the expected load from the new Healthcare unit.

Best Buy continues to make interesting moves, and this time, their approach seems slightly less ambitious when compared to their healthcare push. If you ask me, it's evident that the company is striving to safeguard its core while expanding into new territories. I think this is the right approach.

Only time will reveal the effectiveness of this two-pronged strategy. Meanwhile, let's engage in a bit of fortune-telling ourselves and identify potential risks.

The Risk Assessment

Before diving into this section, I want to clarify that the risks I'm about to discuss are based on my own research and do not represent the risk strategies employed by Best Buy. The purpose of this article is to illustrate the importance of considering a wide range of risks when embarking on a transformation initiative.

I’m also going to limit this deep-dive to 10 risks just for the sake of length. We could probably write an entire book when assessing a companies risks!

I will be breaking down the risks based on the two new strategies presented in this article. one thing to pay special attention to is the way my risks are written. Each risk highlights the cause and potential impact, if realized. This approach not only makes your risks comprehensive and easy to understand the whole picture, but it also helps frame mitigation strategies, as you will already know the root cause.

Let’s dig in.

HealthCare

Risk #1: With a significant focus shifting to the new healthcare business unit, there is a considerable risk that Best Buy will overextend itself beyond capacity, leading to a lack of focus on the core aspects of their business model.

Risk #2: The healthcare industry has highly structured and sometimes restrictive regulations given the nature of the industry. There is a risk that the internal teams will not be fully prepared to meet the demands from these parties, resulting in significant delays in launching new initiatives in this space.

Risk #3: Considering the regulatory bodies in healthcare mentioned in Risk #2, there is a possibility that a feature, initiative, or asset may be released without meeting compliance standards. This situation could lead to financial penalties and adversely affect the company's reputation.

Risk #4: Since the target audience for upcoming healthcare products and services differs significantly from the consumer electronics entertainment segment, there is a potential risk that the collected data can offer a new layer of customer segmentation and upsell opportunities. This would greatly enhance the potential for future financial gain.

Risk #5: Given the current Geek Squad team will be leveraged to offer at home setup of any healthcare products, there is a risk that the current team may not be properly trained to handle this additional workload, resulting in costly errors and potential customer dissatisfaction.

Membership Model

Risk #1: With the introduction of free 2-day shipping, there is a risk that demand may increase faster than available inventory levels, resulting in unnecessary refunds, missed sales, and dissatisfied customers.

Risk #2: Introducing unlimited free 2-day shipping to customers with an annual fee carries the risk of external transportation costs, such as fuel, airfare, and fees from shipping carriers, increasing beyond acceptable levels. This can lead to decreased margins.

Risk #3: With the company offering free technical support for their highest membership tier, there is a risk of achieving economies of scale, utilizing all resources to maximize capacity across business units, which will have a positive impact financially through effective operations.

Risk #4: As the membership layer resides atop their retail segment, there is a potential risk that Best Buy may expand this product to other business units, leading to a substantial enhancement in their competitive advantage.

Risk #5: If the membership program gains in popularity greater than expectations, there is a risk that customer inquiries will flood our call centres, resulting in missed revenue and dissatisfied customers.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Assuming we have crafted a comprehensive list of positive and negative risks, the next step will be for Best Buy's leadership team and transformation task force to begin a prioritization exercise. I have discussed this extensively in the past, but in a nutshell:

• Use a spreadsheet to score each identified risk using criteria such as impact, complexity, and likelihood. Tally these scores to obtain a total risk score.

• Segment the risks to determine which ones are the most critical to build strategies around. The goal here should be to focus on those that will reduce severe negative impacts and those that offer the greatest opportunities.

Most importantly, you will want to regroup with this team at regular intervals to identify, score, and prioritize new risks that may arise or existing ones that may have evolved. Risks are agile, so we will have to be as well to stay on top of them.

After focusing on Best Buy for the last month, I feel pretty positive about the direction they're headed. They have a solid leadership team and understand that staying static is not the approach to take to survive long-term in this new environment.

While exciting, kick-starting two massive initiatives can be quite risky indeed. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I, for one, am looking forward to it.

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Thanks to technology, the world has become a much smaller place. In today's world, it's just as easy to have a conversation with your spouse in the next room as it is to have a virtual brainstorming session with a team spread across every corner of the globe. New products are also popping up at a rapid pace. With artificial intelligence, extended reality devices (XR), and other upcoming technological shifts, the world is set to experience an extraordinary future.

I'm a firm believer that we have only scratched the surface when it comes to the changes in the way we work. Specifically, the management styles we see today are on their way out, and the core principles of leadership are undergoing a massive overhaul.

The more pessimistic and risk-averse side of me is also full of caution, especially when I stop looking at things from a consumer point of view and focus on business. As a leader and someone who manages other leaders, I often ponder what the long-term implications of change at this scale will be. From my perspective, the impact will be significant and constantly evolving. While change always brings forth a bit of worry, I still am taking an optimistic view of things. The opportunities that lie in front of us will be enormous.

In my opinion, the way we lead people, processes, and projects is still in dire need of transformation to keep up with the pace of disruption. The titles of managers and leaders either have outdated skill sets or are too narrowly focused compared to what the workforces of the future require. Looking at the titles themselves, I believe there is a strong case that these roles in the future will merge and not sit at different ends of the spectrum, as many articles today portray them.

To put it simply, the leaders of tomorrow need to shed traditional skills that are easily replicable through other means, such as artificial intelligence, and instead, acquire a new set of core competencies to thrive in the world of tomorrow.

One of the core competencies that has already become critical to acquire is our ability to navigate complexity. The stakeholders we manage, the systems we're building, and the scale of the services we're offering are at an all-time high and steadily climbing. In this deep dive, we're going to identify the six skills that make up the category I refer to as "Complexity Mapping," which are as follows:

1. Systems Thinking

2. Risk Assessment

3. Stakeholder Analysis

4. Problem Solving

5. Resilience Planning

6. Cross-Functional Leadership

Before we jump into each of the 6 skills, let’s first define what complexity is at it pertains to the workforce.

Complexity refers to the multifaceted nature of the modern working environment. It arises from various interconnected and disconnected factors, including globalization, organizational structure, technological advancements, and evolving customer expectations.

Mapping and identifying complexity at this scale requires substantial effort. You won't be able to master all six skills in a day, and I might even dedicate future articles to look deeper into each one in the future. For this deep dive, I’ll only be aiming to introduce each skill and explain why they will be crucial for future leaders.

Now, let's explore the six skills in detail.

#1. Systems Thinking

The projects we're managing today encompass numerous interconnected parts, each with its own set of dependencies. Successfully handling these interdependencies and deriving solutions, efficiencies, and impacts is what’s referred to as systems thinking.

Let's try to put this into context. First, consider a solution you aim to build. It could be a new product, a service, or a shift to a different process. Regardless of the specific solution, its components can number in the thousands. Some parts cannot be built until others are ready, and some rely on vendors you have hired due to their specialized skills. Examining the solution in its entirety and understanding the interconnections can be quite complex.

Now, let's shift our focus to the human aspect: the stakeholders. When assessing each individual stakeholder, you'll notice that they have their own desires, values, and expectations regarding the final deliverables, amongst other things. As you know, there are rarely ever just one or two stakeholders involved in the projects being led today. With project teams, vendors and end users spanning in the hundreds and located across the globe, managing interdependencies can become overwhelming.

Both the solution you’re leading and the stakeholders within can be seen as broad systems. Within them are many multiples of smaller systems that are segmented due to a commonality and are linked to each other in sometimes unique ways.

Leaders of the future will need to take a broad, overarching view of their projects, segment identified components into systems, and then aim to continuously look for links to push further into new areas. Adopting a systems thinking mindset will encourage a deeper understanding of complex problems, allowing the leader to make connections to seemingly disparate areas and help identify unanticipated negative consequences.

#2. Risk Assessment

The true definition of risk revolves around uncertainty, encompassing both negative uncertainties (threats) and potentially positive ones (opportunities). With the world moving into a state of accelerating growth, uncertainty will become a part of your everyday life. In this context, the importance of risk assessments becomes evident, transitioning from being considered a 'good-to-have' skill to an absolutely critical one.

Every new advancement in technology and its impact on the workforce brings about varying levels of uncertainty. These risks can have both short-term and long-term effects and can disrupt different parts of the process.

The traditional method of identifying, scoring, and creating mitigation plans for each risk will no longer suffice for future leaders. Instead, what was once a sequential process must now become highly iterative. Leaders will need to regularly meet with their teams to monitor identified risks, control risks that are materializing, and continuously identify new ones that are bound to arise. This iterative approach to risk management will become essential in navigating the complexities of the evolving landscape.

By adopting this approach, leaders can proactively address risks as they emerge, minimizing their impact on the organization and capitalizing on potential opportunities. It allows for a more agile and responsive approach to risk mitigation, enabling leaders to adapt their strategies and tactics in real-time.

As for the icing on the cake, the iterative risk management process fosters collaboration and knowledge sharing within teams. By regularly meeting and discussing risks, leaders can tap into the collective expertise of their teams, uncovering valuable insights and perspectives that may have otherwise been overlooked.

#3. Stakeholder Analysis

The concept of identifying and analyzing stakeholders should not be new to you. People will continue to play a pivotal role in driving organizations forward, and the need for leaders to guide stakeholders through continuous journeys of disruption will remain highly valuable.

What will change is the depth required to uncover the intricate layers of competing and interconnected forces at play. There are three key elements to effectively analyze stakeholders in this new era of leadership.

1. Understanding the real dynamics of influence: The ability to assess your stakeholders and determine who holds decision-making power, possesses unique expertise, or has the right relationships to make a significant impact.

2. Uncovering multiple layers of impact: In a landscape of constant disruption, different levels of impact come into play. You must identify how changes affect the organization upstream, as well as the stakeholders overseeing it, and downstream, including support staff, end-users, and other individuals involved.

3. Identifying intricate values: The ability to investigate a series of symptoms present within your stakeholder groups (emotions) and extract the underlying values that are causing these symptoms.

Leaders who have a firm grasp of the tools required to gain a comprehensive 360-degree view of their entire suite of stakeholders will possess the superpower to create allies, develop winning products, and achieve buy-in with significantly less friction and waste.

#4. Problem Solving

Keeping up with a constantly evolving landscape is no easy task. To compensate, leaders must view problem-solving through a different lens. While it is important to manage problems that directly impact their teams and functions, equal effort should be dedicated to examining challenges across functions, environments, and business models.

This is a concept that many find challenging to grasp. The most significant adjustment for leaders will involve becoming comfortable with navigating through different levels of uncertainty and ambiguity. Leaders who possess a growth mindset will tackle such challenges with a balanced approach, actively seeking out opportunities as much as they focus on resolving the negative aspects.

Challenge number 2. Leaders must also embrace the art of experimentation. They should treat mistakes made by their teams, as well as their own, as necessary steps towards potentially discovering new opportunities altogether.

Integrating technology as an enabler of problem-solving and solutioning is perhaps the most daunting tasks for leaders. Tools like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics should be leveraged to gain insights, analyze complex data sets, and generate entirely new solutions. Treating the next wave of technology as a stakeholder itself may be the way of the future.

Finally, leaders need to be investigators, working with their teams to uncover the root causes of issues rather than merely identifying symptoms. Having a knack for truly solving problems versus their symptoms will be a game changer for leaders and their organizations, especially those that can teach this skill at scale.

#5. Resilience Planning

Managers may have once gotten away with a reactive approach to challenges, but in today's rapidly evolving landscape, this strategy will prove detrimental to both their personal brand and the entire organization. With the accelerating nature of change, it's imperative for managers to embrace a proactive approach to transformation. Failing to do so not only risks tarnishing their reputation but also undermines the success of the organization as a whole.

The iPhone's rapid disruption of the smartphone market, revolutionizing hardware and contributing to the downfall of Blackberry, serves as a stark reminder that leaders who grow complacent with their current approach are susceptible to similar scenarios in the future.

To thrive in the coming era, future leaders must adopt a mindset of resilience planning. This entails proactively mapping out potential scenarios and developing robust plans to address them. Tomorrow's leaders will weave resiliency into the very fabric of their department and projects.

To start building your skillset in resiliency planning, I recommend adopting a tool known as the "resilience capability canvas." This tool provides a framework for analyzing, strategizing, and planning for resilience under multiple conditions.

Here are the key components of this tool:

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Foundational Assessment: This section serves as the initial step in the process. Here, you compile information on your organization's current resilience levels, focusing on key strengths, potential vulnerabilities (threats), and areas of potential improvement (opportunities).

Scenario Planning: This area enables you to proactively identify potential disruptions that may impact critical aspects of your business. These disruptions can occur at various levels, ranging from department-specific challenges to existential threats to the organization as a whole. Similar to the pre-mortem technique and general risk assessment, it is essential to consider both opportunities and threats. Encourage your teams to think creatively and collaborate in this process.

Adaptive Capacity: I discovered this approach through KPMG and their comprehensive article titled "Building Adaptive Capacity," which dives into handling the implications of Covid-19. Given we’re looking at disruption as a whole, I believe it applies well to the resilience capability canvas. It's crucial to understand that Adaptive Capacity aims to alleviate the emotional strain caused by disruptions and swiftly implement strategies to rectify the situation. When viewed through the lens of the resilience capabilities canvas, it is important to examine the scenarios you have mapped out with your team at the previous step and identify how to address potential problems, strengthen resource allocation, and clarify complex details. Regardless of the methods you choose, the objective is to foster a culture of continuous learning, experimentation, and flexibility to empower your workforce.

Stakeholder Engagement: In Step 4, we revisit and review the first three steps that you compiled with the team. The key question we ask is: 'Which stakeholders will play a crucial role in aiding the execution of our strategy to mitigate disruption and build resilience?' Make a comprehensive list of individuals who possess expertise in the mapped-out scenarios or have relevant influence and experience related to any of the Adaptive Capacity strategies you have identified.

Resilience Metrics: Once you have determined the direction you are headed, you'll need a compass to guide you on your progress and ensure you're heading in the right direction. Spend a substantial amount of time with your teams to uncover how you will measure the success of your resilience plan. You can choose to focus on either leading indicators or lagging indicators. Ultimately, it is recommended to limit the number of metrics to no more than three.

Continuity & Recovery: Finally, plan out how existing operations will continue to run during and after the disruptions you have identified. By having plans A, B, and even C in place ahead of time, you can eliminate emotions from the situation if your anticipated scenarios become a reality.

Resilience planning will no longer be an afterthought but an integral part of leadership, enabling organizations to navigate disruptions with agility, seize opportunities, and emerge stronger than ever.

#6. Cross-Functional Leadership

The boundaries between departments and functions are beginning to blur, and the need for leaders to navigate in this way of working is becoming more and more vital.

While cross-functional leadership will continue to be essential for gaining alignment when working on large-scale projects that touch many areas, in the future, leaders will need to see this skill as a powerful driver of idea generation and bringing them to reality through execution excellence. Viewing the need to harness the collective intelligence across the entire organization as the true value driver for hyper-growth is the best way to thrive in a complex landscape.

Having said that, possessing exceptional leadership skills and the ability to persuade and craft a compelling narrative will be crucial, especially considering that most of this group won't be reporting to you. The greatest leaders embrace diversity in all its forms and leverage it as a source of competitive advantage. Additionally, they are comfortable with constructive conflicts and disagreements because they understand that these are the foundation for true problem-solving.

Conclusion

My aim with this article is to provide a new path in leadership and management for navigating a world where complex projects have become the new normal. More importantly, I want to emphasize that in a world of uncertainty, maintaining a positive outlook is crucial. The opportunities for improvement are greater than ever, and as leaders, it is up to us to guide our teams towards newer and better landscapes of work.

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Current subscribers, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email to gain access to this template.

On to the article.

If you've been watching, listening, or reading the news over the last year, you're well aware of the monumental transformations happening on a global scale. From disruptive shifts in industries to groundbreaking innovations, the world is in a state of relentless evolution. The driving force behind these remarkable changes? Technology.

It comes as no surprise that entire business models are being upended, long-term strategies are being rewritten, and job roles are undergoing radical transformations. In the face of such profound change, it's natural to feel a sense of apprehension and perceive these shifts as inherently risky.

To make matters worse, projects as a whole fail at an alarming rate. Even though there are signs of improvement, over 30% of projects still fail to meet the goals they were intended to at the start of the initiative.

In light of the negative side of change, it's essential to recognize that transformation doesn't have to be a scary endeavour. With meticulous planning, effective leadership, and the right arsenal of tools, change can be navigated with relative ease. And among these tools, one stands out as a true collaborator and fortune teller—a tool capable of illuminating potential pitfalls before they materialize. This formidable ally is none other than the pre-mortem technique.

Created by Gary Klein in the early 2000s, the pre-mortem technique has become a staple for agile projects around the world. While its application in agile has been tremendous, I’m here to show you how the pre-mortem has a worthy seat at the table during the start of any major change initiative as well.

Expect to uncover the following four elements that will revolutionize the way you lead your teams and navigate change:

1. Unlocking the Pre-Mortem Technique: Peer into its essence and unveil the myriad benefits it brings to your projects.

2. Illuminating Use Cases: Learn how to identify the perfect scenarios for pre-mortem sessions and prepare your team for a proactive journey of exploration.

3. Guiding the Pre-Mortem Session: Discover expert techniques to facilitate powerful brainstorming sessions, harnessing the collective wisdom of your team to foresee potential risks and devise effective mitigation strategies.

4. The Path to Success: Embrace a culture of continuous improvement as we explore how to monitor, iterate, and enhance your projects based on the insights gained from the pre-mortem session.

With the stage set, the spotlight is on you as we delve into the heart of the pre-mortem technique and empower you with the knowledge and skills to lead your teams through the transformative landscape that lies ahead.

Unlocking the Pre-Mortem Technique

Most of my readers have a solid understanding of the pre-mortem's more popular cousin, the post-mortem (more widely known as a retrospective). Which is an exercise of reflection that looks back at what worked well for a project and what didn't. Ultimately, the goal is to come to a consensus around what was learned with the hopes this can be applied to future initiatives. History does repeat itself, after all.

The pre-mortem, on the other hand, pivots from reflection to prediction. In a nutshell, the pre-mortem technique is a proactive strategy that brings subject matter experts together to try to identify how this project could fail. It provides a structured framework where all stakeholders anticipate potential risks, challenges, and pitfalls that may befall the initiative. All of this happens before a project begins to pick up steam, giving change leaders the opportunity to get a leg up on any issues that may come their way.

I'm a huge fan of staying lean when it comes to meetings, and I'm usually one of the last to suggest introducing something new. The pre-mortem session is such a valuable addition that even I recommend leading one when you predict the stakes to be high.

Yes, pre-mortem’s are widely beneficial, especially for these reasons:

• Stakeholder Alignment: No one individual has the capacity and the intellect to uncover all potential risks. And as we've come to learn from change, alignment becomes one of the more important elements to get right. The pre-mortem accomplishes this by getting the right people together in a room (virtual or otherwise) to collect a diverse set of risks through transparent and open communication. The approach encourages diverse perspectives and enables stakeholders to voice concerns, insights, and suggestions. This collaborative environment fosters stakeholder alignment and increases the likelihood of shared goals, reducing the chances of misunderstandings or conflicts down the line.

• Improved Decision-Making: The pre-mortem exercise works best when stakeholders collectively pull their experiences together to list out what could go wrong from multiple angles. In essence, the pre-mortem can be thought of as a brainstorming exercise that encourages critical thinking and analysis. This process prompts each stakeholder to consider different perspectives, evaluate various options, and make more informed decisions. By identifying potential pitfalls and developing preventive measures, change leaders and project managers can make proactive choices that steer the project toward success.

• Proactive Risk Management: One of the most powerful aspects of the pre-mortem technique, is it allows the team to plan for mitigation strategies for risks when the stakes are at their lowest. This creates more effective mitigation techniques as emotions are taken out of the equation. By identifying risks early and developing mitigation strategies, teams can minimize the likelihood and severity of risks, ensuring a smoother project execution and higher success rates.

• Adaptability and Flexibility: By exploring failure scenarios in advance, teams are better prepared to adapt and respond to unexpected challenges when they eventually crop up. The pre-mortem exercise promotes flexibility and helps change managers anticipate potential roadblocks, enabling them to adjust project plans, timelines, and resources proactively. This adaptability enhances the initiative's ability to navigate changes and uncertainties effectively.

• Team Ownership: You've heard me mention in the past that ownership is one of the surefire ways to reduce conflict and adopt change. The pre-mortem exercise does just that, by fostering team engagement and ownership over project outcomes. By involving team members in the process of envisioning failure scenarios and brainstorming preventive measures, they feel a sense of responsibility and commitment to project success. This increased engagement leads to higher motivation, collaboration, and accountability among team members, driving project performance

With the definition and benefits outlined, let’s now explore the types of initiatives pre-mortem’s excel at and how to fully prepare for the session that follows.

Illuminating Use Cases

When embarking on a business transformation initiative, it’s crucial to assess the level of risk involved. While it’s impractical to identify every potential risk and develop detailed mitigation plans upfront, having a broad understanding of the risks can help determine whether additional exercises, such as the pre-mortem, are necessary. The objective is to include only meetings that provide direct value to stakeholders and the company as a whole. To assist in this evaluation process, I have developed a simple tool called the project risk evaluator, which can help project managers make informed decisions about conducting a pre-mortem.

The project risk evaluator follows a similar framework as a traditional risk register and consists of the following questions:

1. How important is this initiative to the short to medium-term goals of the company?

2. What is the anticipated level of ambiguity associated with this initiative?

3. What is the level of contribution, influence, and impact that stakeholders will have on this initiative cross-functionally?

4. How severe are the expected constraints for this initiative (cost, timing, quality, brand, etc.)?

5. What are the expected levels of internal and external dependencies for this initiative?

Each question requires a rating on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 indicating minimal risk and 5 representing significant risks with long-term implications. A threshold, typically set around 75%, can be applied, indicating that any score above this threshold signifies a risky endeavour where tools like the pre-mortem should be utilized.

If the project risk evaluator indicates that your initiative carries a substantial level of risk, it is advisable to proceed with a pre-mortem session. Now, let's dive into how to effectively prepare for a pre-mortem.

Preparing for the Pre-Mortem Session

The pre-mortem session itself is meant to foster full collaboration and transparent communication. In other words, the session itself is rather easy, especially if there’s a strong facilitator leading the discussion.

However, as a change leader, you understand the importance of preparation to ensure the success of the pre-mortem session. Before booking that meeting and leading that session, you'll want to ensure a few things are covered first.

• Prepare Background Information: While no two initiatives are ever the same, there are usually some similarities you can find if you dig hard enough. Speak with project leaders, department leads, and subject matter experts to get an inside scoop on how these projects played out in the past. Review contracts, statements of work, and lessons learned to gain a comprehensive view of what lies ahead.

• Identify Your Stakeholders: Stakeholders are diverse and influential in their respective areas. For a comprehensive pre-mortem, gather a broad range of perspectives by involving leaders from similar initiatives, subject matter experts responsible for major deliverables, and department heads. Consider all the areas of the business impacted by the initiative to ensure a holistic representation of viewpoints.

• Establish an Environment for Open Communication: Creating an environment that encourages open, honest, and unbiased communication is vital. Set the tone early on by emphasizing that the pre-mortem exercise aims to proactively mitigate risks before they manifest. Discourage the blame game and instead focus on collective problem-solving. Draft some guidelines that emphasize the importance of candid discussions, and include them in the session invitation.

• Define Clear Objectives & Scope: Before the pre-mortem session commences, dedicate time to clearly articulate your goals. As the change leader spearheading the project, you likely possess more answers than anyone else. Establish a clear vision of success, aligning it with the project's objectives and desired outcomes. This will enable you to frame risks and challenges in relation to achieving this north star.

With all that prep work out of the way, it’s time to get into the good stuff. Let’s spend a bit of time going through the actual pre-mortem session itself.

Guiding the Pre-Mortem Session

If you've never participated in a pre-mortem session of any kind, I can understand the trepidation and anxiety you may be feeling. After all, we're talking about your project, and you're the one leading the charge. No worries. With the right preparation and understanding, conducting a pre-mortem session can be an enlightening and empowering experience. Let's dig into its 4 components and learn how to run one effectively.

1. Set the Stage: At the beginning of the session, take a few minutes to outline the project, its key deliverables, and the expected business outcomes. Then, focus on creating an environment of psychological safety, where team members feel comfortable expressing their thoughts and concerns. Emphasize that the purpose of the pre-mortem session is to proactively identify potential risks and challenges, not to assign blame. Encourage active participation and ensure everyone understands the importance of their insights for a comprehensive analysis.

2. The 3 Key Questions: The meeting facilitator, if you have one, introduces three critical questions to extract a comprehensive list of risks from the stakeholder group. These questions serve as the catalyst for identifying potential failure points:

   1. Looking into the future, imagine that our project has failed to achieve its objectives. What are the primary reasons you believe could have led to this outcome?

   2. Considering the project's key stakeholders, both internal and external, what are the most significant obstacles or roadblocks that could impede its success?

   3. From what we know so far, what are the critical gaps or limitations that could hinder the project's progress and ultimate success?

   Encourage team members to share their perspectives and insights freely. If the initial risk identification seems superficial, dig deeper by asking follow-up questions on key topics such as resource allocation and working capital.

3. Get Alignment: Now that you've collected a series of risks, it's time to derive value from them. Properly segment and prioritize the risks, and most importantly, enable your project teams to take true ownership of them. The facilitator helps the team identify common themes, patterns, and areas of agreement. Foster active listening and constructive dialogue, allowing participants to build upon each other's ideas, refine concepts, and develop a shared understanding of the potential risks and challenges. The goal is to create collective awareness and alignment regarding the failure points that need attention.

4. Brainstorm Preventative Measures: This is where the true value of the pre-mortem session comes to light. Encourage participants to think creatively and suggest practical strategies, actions, and contingency plans that can mitigate the prioritized risks before the project even begins. Be sure to monitor that the atmosphere remains non-judgmental and inclusive, promoting the free flow of ideas. The brainstorming session aims to capture a wide range of preventive measures, leveraging the collective expertise and insights of the team. The outcome is a set of actionable and well-considered preventive measures that enhance the project's resilience and increase the likelihood of success.

These sessions can be meaty and last between 60 to 90 minutes. It's crucial not to lose any of the valuable data generated during the pre-mortem session. Utilize a pre-mortem template during the session to capture all the identified risks and preventive measures uncovered. This template can be monitored and modified throughout the initiative as new risks emerge or existing ones are mitigated.

The Path to Success

Congratulations. You now have a comprehensive view of the future for your initiative, which undoubtedly better prepares you for potential challenges that may arise.

Good leaders often stop at this point, but the very best leaders go a few steps further. In fact, you can consider this just the beginning of your journey.

As your project progresses, you are well aware that things will inevitably change. Risks that were uncovered early on may transition into actual issues, and new challenges may emerge.

This is where you have the opportunity to truly shine. I highly recommend integrating the following components into your approach to managing business transformation projects and change initiatives:

• Capture & Document Findings: As new issues and risks arise, remember to incorporate them into your risk register or any other monitoring system you use. Take the time to compare these new findings with what was identified during the pre-mortem session. Were you on point with your initial assessment? Excellent! If not, dig deep to understand the root cause of any missed risks. Remember, this is not about assigning blame but about learning and continuously improving.

• Communicate Findings: Don't keep all the identified risks and issues to yourself. Share updates with your team and stakeholders as they arise. Transparency and proactive communication are excellent traits of effective change leaders.

• Prioritize and Focus: Collaborate with your teams to identify which risks and issues require special attention. Consider whether these risks pose threats or opportunities to the desired business outcomes of the initiative. Use this assessment as a benchmark for prioritization.

• Foster a Culture of Learning: Embrace the role of both a student and a teacher. By identifying new risks and challenges and developing best practices to navigate through them, you gain valuable knowledge that can improve the organization when similar situations arise in the future.

• Embrace Adaptability: The world is constantly evolving, and so are your projects. Cultivate agile thinking by embracing the ability to pivot your strategy, plans, or roadmap when necessary. The road to success is winding and filled with obstacles, and you are the guiding GPS that can navigate the way.

What Does Your Future Look Like?

I'm a huge fan of the pre-mortem technique, and it has helped me lead some of the toughest transformation projects worldwide. After reading this article, I hope you become a fan too. Give it a try on your next big change initiative and see how it gives you a detailed view of the future.