It doesn’t always translate off the screen…

A common circumstance in creative and technical production environments is that the overall coordination between the various functional teams doing the work usually ranges from haphazard to chaotic.  Between account, creative, copy, tech – let alone BA, SEO and other niche specialists – there is often an overall sense that no one really knows what’s going on. Ironically, even teams dedicated to user centered design are often unable to create systems of information sharing and group collaboration that are user friendly and effective for themselves.

Many believe that the harnessing of team chaos is the project manager’s job, and if the team is out of synch, the PM is largely to blame. The underlying premise is “no matter how dysfunctional we are, you need to make it work for all of us.”  Admittedly, there is truth to this sentiment – after all, it is what we signed up for. However, there is an underlying factor that often contributes to the original dysfunction, and bringing it to light might help teams solve the issues of low coordination, low productivity and low morale.

The prototypical agency model is a matrix organization that has a warp and a weft of functional and project operations.  Team members like art directors and technical developers are pulled side to side by project managers, as well as up and down by their own department managers. This dynamic creates tension and ambiguity in terms of priorities and procedures.  Management will often take a top-down approach – speaking to all groups individually, shuttling complaints and issues back and forth, and mandating new “processes” that are disjointed, out of context and only nominally useful.

The key, IMHO, is to recognize the challenge of the agency matrix environment and solve coordination issues as if it were a UX design challenge (which it is…). The project managers can not figure out on their own how everyone else wants to communicate and collaborate, just like a they would not decide where to place information and links on a web page.  Determinations of meeting schedules, status updates, project plan formats, etc. should be made with the user (AKA team members) needs in mind, and not just what the PM states is “the process.”

The discovery into the user needs must take into account that the users, in this case, are simultaneously members of a project team and functional department, and sometimes those roles might carry contradictory preferences and requirements. While simpler to do, ignoring this fact only creates more imbalance and disharmony.  Getting functional leadership and project management onto the same page to create a holistic salve for agency dynamics is easier said than done, but recognizing the implications of being in a matrix structure is a good place to start.

Putting the “Fun” in Fundamentals

One of the things that separates types of people is how they relate to process, both individually and as part of larger work teams. Even more so how people react differently to the  adoption of new processes that may be personally inconvenient in some circumstances, but promise “soon to be realized” improvements in other areas for themselves, team members and business owners.

I believe it is safe to assume that most people have been part of some effort during their careers to improve internal process, maybe kicked off with a team-building offsite retreat or a 30 slide power-point presentation by an outside expert brought in to fix performance and morale issues.  I also assume that many  people who have experienced such efforts are incredulous about their value and effectiveness. In many cross-functional organizations, optimized team performance (vis-a-vis better processes) is an elusive holy grail that everyone yearns for but few can actually find.

There is an oft quoted adage that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over yet expecting different results. People want processes  to fill the gaps that make their work lives difficult, even when they themselves are resistant to giving up autonomy of their own work patterns. The trick is not coming up with new and improved processes; rather it is getting people to embrace them.

Organizational leaders and change catalysts face a daunting challenge when deciding to invest time and resources in process upgrades.  Here are a few things to keep in mind that can help improve the process of improving process.

1. Mandated from the Top – Don’t excuse top leadership from conforming to newly defined best practices. Busy C-types are some of the first to eschew inconvenient, time consuming practices in favor of the personal ways of doing things that got them where they are, even if it means recording new sales contacts on the back of napkins and not directly in the new CRM system.  Employees hate double standards and will lose interest in anything that is not taken seriously by their superiors at the company. Leaders should not only play along, but publicly demonstrate their commitment to the chosen improvements.
2. Be Proactive, Not Reactive – Do what you can to determine a cohesive vision of what you are trying to accomplish. The actualization of something positive will eliminate the negative. Responding only to a list of broken processes can lead to disassociated initiatives and unmet expectations that things aren’t noticeably better right away.
3. Timeboxing Change – If process roll-outs are too small and frequent, they will come off as meaningless. If the vision is too broad and idealistic, it will seem unattainable. Take a chapter from agile project management and think about 2-4 week sprints that focus on addressing specific needs and issues.
4. Careful with Pilots – It is far to easy to tolerate ambiguous objectives and solutions when “its only a pilot.” The last thing you want is a bunch of people spending time on a half initiatives that never really get anywhere, but seem real enough to breed complacency that things are actually happening.  While there is a time and place for limited implementations of new processes, make sure that decision is driven by the clear need for phases and not a muddled sense that “we have to do something.”
5. Put the “Fun” in Fundamentals – Getting staff to embrace change, even when it can be inconvenient, is the key to success. They must be given time to adapt to new processes, and they must feel part of the shared vision of why its being done. This is beyond getting early adapters on board. It is about bringing the team together in ways that are engaging and forward thinking. Project management and team collaboration fundamentals are not overly complex, and there are ways of surfacing core concepts so that people of all types can understand and relate to them. This is probably the most ambiguous of my recommendations, but also perhaps the most important. For more information, please be in touch.

This list is by no means exhaustive, and I welcome posted responses with other ideas for leading internal process improvements in work-place environments.

To the Cloud, Gently

As a member of Generation X (born in the early 70’s), and as the middle child of three, I have come to accept, perhaps even embrace, my  professional positioning between the Baby Boomers and the Millennials – the two that really matter (IMHO) in the socio-economic dynamics of the day. The spending power of corporate leading and actively retired boomers, coupled with the almost innate “wiredness” of today’s young adults, bodes for a future of even more integrated technological experiences across platforms and devices that actually do make life easier and better.

I am in-between. I have a certain old school way of thinking and approaching life that comes from being a “tween” during Reagenomics. I remember, with fondness btw,  first getting cable TV  and sitting on the floor up close to turn stations because the 33 channel plastic slide box was tethered to the TV by a 3 foot, brown plastic cord.  In college, I first saw the internet in action when a friend placed  his telephone onto a physical modem to “log-in” and register for a class. The rest of us stood in line.  I remember what it was in the human disposition that compensated for things later to be replaced by conveniences in personal computing.

On the other hand, greying temples aside, most people mistake me for being 10 years younger than I am. For whatever reason, my personal and professional lives have kept me in touch with what is going on at the edge – at least in terms of technology and the way it is affecting social dynamics. Beyond being a consumer, I have been an interactive production lead for over 10 years. My experience is from the data management to cross-platform front end-interactions and content.  I understand the power of full,  seamless connectivity – even though a part of me remembers a different way of being.

It is because of this perspective that I often provide professional value  by bridging the gap between the established way and the innovative way. The ability to see and appreciate both sides helps me create win-win scenarios that make sense to varying stakeholders who differ in, amongst other things, seniority, professional role and generational perspective.

The practical difference usually manifests in a decision to adopt a cloud based, SaaS application to replace client side installations of business application software.  This also means paying attention to which cloud solutions offer the best potential integration with other applications to promote ultimate connectedness.  It also shows up as analytical decisions of what success metrics can indicate positive ROI from social media campaigns, and how to define lifetime value for CRM marketing to a new breed of wired consumers. From the strategic to the tactical,  I constantly find myself in the middle of decision making processes that pit corporate momentum against the ever changing interactive landscape.   This is also the case with a number of known advertising agencies that started off in print and are now “doing digital.”

But don’t get me wrong, this is not a case of “out with the old, in with the new.”  As was true in any generation preceding ours, the younger must learn from the older. Wisdom of experience is not a quaint bygone of the pre-Ipad  era, and sometimes the best solutions, whether they use technology or not, are best assessed by people who know what it means to only know life under the cloud. All you need is someone who has been there and back.

“I hate process!”

Another challenge for any size production and development environment, especially in a matrix organization, is the question of commitment to meaningful process improvement and optimization. There is an added layer of obstacle if the organization is not large or mature enough to institutionalize operational mandates that are larger than the “thinking du jour” of the business owners, especially in creative shops where the major stakeholders tend to be generally adverse to overtly imposed processes.  Even processes rooted in best practices tend to run contrary to some peoples’ natural way of working and thinking about their work – therefore are known to publicly exclaim “I hate process!”

The obvious key here is transparent process. Making efficiency and quality process adjustments without certain team members even aware they were implemented. Subtle, nuanced – even elegant – refinements that meet the path of least resistance from project and functional colleagues. The problem is that  improvements are often needed to fix real production / development issues that are not so subtle, and real change needs to take place.

Cost saving tools like templates and forms are only as good as the process they come to support. They are not, and should not be, goals in themselves. Rather, they are the yield of issues identified and resolved.

Bottom line is that a PM as a change agent necesitates an organizational commitment to change. As goes the well known addage, the definition of insanity is doing things the same way and expecting different results.

“No TEAM in TEAM”

One of my most maddening PM realities out there is the common agency matrix situation where projects are run without clearly demarcated teams. It is not necesarily true at the larger agency level – although in digital I suspect its more than assumed, but the boutique to mid-size shops often have creative and technical resources acting as chef’s in a restaurant kitchen, filling orders on tickets without looking up to see which waiter and customer was doing the ordering. They and their work are managed solely by their departmental, functional manager and the PM, no matter how senior the title, is reduced to a de-facto project coordinator function.  The resultant reality is a project without a  team identity. IMHO, this is a huge detriment in running a project based production and development  operation.