Transcript Advanced Project Management

Project Management
and
Event Planning
Dr. Dena Maloney
Vice President, CCC and Economic Development
Mr. Peter Bellas
Dean, Economic Development
Project Management
The Art of Managing Partners!
 How to establish communications with your partner so you are
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more consistently on the same page regarding the project
How to create a shared vision and common understanding of the
project goals and outcomes
How to define tasks and ensure there is common understanding of
what will occur, and when
How to document decisions so that you and your partner can
review them on a regular basis
How to effectively manage conflicts or differences in viewpoints
during the course of the project
How to use templates for project planning that can serve as
communication tools as well
Event Management
The art of flawless events, every time!
 How to establish a vision for your event and the outcomes you hope to achieve
 How to determine who needs to be involved and to what extent
 How to work your plan backward
 How to determine what steps need to be taken, and in what order
 How to determine if any steps can be done in parallel with others
 How to determine the critical steps
 How to evaluate the progress of the project
 How to determine when corrective action needs to be taken
 How to set up a method for timely updates to the project team and others
 For recurring projects, how to establish procedures and a project log so you
don’t need to start from scratch the next time
What Are YOUR Objectives?
 Tell us what you want to achieve today
 What types of projects do you typically work on with a
partner?
 Give us an example of a project and a partner you have
worked with in the past.
Partnership Management
Workshop Part 1
Types of Partnerships
Equal
Partnership
Consulting
Partnership
• Balanced decision making
• Balanced power
• Both parties have particular
expertise
• Shared goals
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One partner has more authority
Unbalanced power
Expertise is not equally shared
Goals may not be shared
So What?
 Knowing the nature of the partnership is important –
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partnerships must have a purpose
Avoid partnerships “in name only” where neither party has
targeted expertise, capacity or a clear goal
You need to know if it is worth pursuing
You need to discern value from the relationship
There must be at least one partner who is the “driving
partner” with a compelling reason for the partnership
Exercise #1
Analyzing Your Partnerships
 Identify a current or recent partnership
 What are the shared goals?
 Identify the expertise and capacity you bring to the
partnership
 Identify the expertise and capacity your partner brings to the
partnership
 Is there balanced decision-making?
Exercise #2
Criteria for Effective Partnerships
 What qualities make for an effective partnership?
 How do you assess for these in the formative stages of a
partnership?
 Are there clues to how well a partnership will fare?
 What can you do if you sense the partnership potential is not
good?
Moving From Concept
to Partnership– COMMUNICATE!
Develop a mutual understanding of the problem to be
solved, the capacity and limitation of each partner, and
the internal processes which will influence each
partner’s ability to execute the partnership
• Make decisions and assign responsibilities/deadlines
• Establish norms you will be using during the
partnership - if you do this in the beginning, you will
avoid problems down the road.
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Communications
• Communicate to ensure that there are no
hidden barriers to moving forward
• Don’t assume that reporting information
is “communicating”
• Don’t assume that, since no objections
have been raised, you have support for the
project from your partner
Topics for Initial Discussion
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Stakeholders •
Resources
Risks
Who is served or impacted by the project?
Who has a stake in the project’s success?
Who needs to know about the project?
Whose support is critical to the project?
• Identify project costs
• Resources include facilities, funding, networks, relationships
• Talk to others about innovative ways to expand resources for your project
• Identify threats to project success
• Assess the likelihood of those threats
• Strategize how to minimize those conditions which jeopardize the
project’s success
Understanding your Partner
The Challenge of
“Partner Code-Speak”
Partner “Code Speak”
•The hidden message behind the words
•Much like a marriage – words may mean different
things
•It’s a “Venus/Mars” dynamic
Partner “Code- Speak”
What They Say
What They Really Mean
I don’t understand what you are saying.
I don’t like what you are proposing.
Let’s get more data.
I don’t want to do what you are proposing.
I will get back to you.
I don’t want to do what you are proposing.
Let me talk it over with my staff.
I don’t want to do what you are proposing.
We don’t want to study this to death.
Just do what I am proposing.
Why don’t you think it over and get back
to me.
Just do what I am proposing.
We need to talk to other folks about
alternatives.
I don’t like where we are heading with this.
That’s not how we have approached this in
the past.
I don’t like where we are heading with this
How to Deal with Partner “Code
Speak”
• Be direct and probe to identify the real issues.
• If you are stuck, circle back reviewing your shared
goals and how to best achieve them.
• Understand the partner may truly need to:
 check with others
 build internal support
 get buy off from the leadership at her organization
 gather more data to support his case.
• Sometimes you can agree in concept but can’t agree on
the next steps - the devil is in the details!
Exercise #3
Commmunicating with Your Partner
 Think of a time when you were working with a partner but
the communications were “off ”
 What clues did you have that you might be dealing with
partner “code-speak”?
 How did you deal with the communication challenges with
your partner?
Meeting with Your Partner –
Planning for Success
What do you want to get out
of the meeting?
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Touching base and sharing information?
Providing official updates?
Solving a problem?
Making a decision?
All of the above?
Meeting Strategies
 What information will you need at the meeting?
 Who will create the agenda and document the results?
 How does your partner like to process information and
make decisions:
 Data Driven – send it in advance
 Emotion Driven – paint a picture
 Immediate reaction or mull it over?
 Have a standard method of documenting meeting results
and use it consistently throughout the process – it makes
for a smoother project!
Strategies for Communications
Desired Outcome
Strategy
When first solidifying the project or building Face to face meeting
the relationship
When there is a difficult topic to discuss
Face to face meeting
When tone and/or body language is
important
Telephone or face to face
When message is urgent
Telephone or email/text
When you need to document the message
Email, memo or text
If you exchange more than 2 emails on a topic, pick up the phone!
Email Strategies
• Compose your subject line carefully.
• Compose carefully – most people won’t read beyond the
first screen.
• Place requests up front in the email message.
• Give an overview and the number your points for easy
reading.
• Design your messages for “high skim value” by using
headings, lists, and breaking your message into chunks.
Email Strategies (continued)
• Make up for the lack of nonverbal cues by using words
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such as please and thank you.
Humanize your messages by using the receiver’s name
in the first sentence of your email.
If you want your message to be the first one read in the
morning, don’t send it at 6:30 the night before. Write it
– then launch it early the next morning.
Always include your contact information in your
signature block.
Pause before you send.
Negotiating with your Partner
• Negotiating with your partner on the desired outcomes,
shared and individual responsibilities, how often and in
what ways you will be communicating, and how you
will divide the benefits/rewards of the partnership is a
key process in forming the partnership.
• The difference between “hard” and “soft” negotiations.
• The difference between “positional” and “principled”
negotiations.
Hard Negotiations
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Participants are adversaries
Goal is victory.
Demand concessions as a condition of the
relationship
Distrust others search for the single answer:
the one you will accept
Try to win a contest of wills
Apply pressure
Soft Negotiations
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Participants are friends.
Goal is agreement.
Make concessions to cultivate the relationship.
Be soft on the people and the problem.
Trust others.
Change your position easily.
Make offers.
Search for the single answer: the one they will accept.
Insist on agreement.
Try to avoid contest of will.
Yield to pressure.
Negotiating on
Positions versus Principles
 Positional focuses on starting point and concessions.
 Principled focuses on mutual interests.
 Dangers of “Positions”.
 Positions tied to ego.
 Negotiators locked into positions.
 Less attention devoted to meeting the underlying concerns.
 Agreement requires concession.
 Contest of will.
 Anger/resentment may result.
Principled Negotiations
Four key steps
 Separate the people from the problem.
 Focus on interests, not positions.
 Generate a variety of possibilities before deciding what to do.
 Insist that the result be based on some objective standard.
From “Getting toYes” 1981
A Final Word about Negotiations
 Negotiations are not always a formal process.
 Negotiations are not necessarily adversarial:
 Reaching agreement on roles/responsibilities.
 Reaching agreement on timelines.
 Reaching agreement on outcomes/benefits to each partner.
 Reaching agreement on cost/contributions of each partner.
 Negotiations should often focus on long term relationships
rather than immediate results.
Exercise #4
Your Experience with Negotiations
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Think about a time you had to negotiate with a
partner
What was the nature of the negotiation?
Was it a “Hard” or “Soft” negotiation?
Were your negotiating on positions or principles?
What was the outcome?
What would you do differently if you could?
Event Management
Workshop Part 2
Developing the Event Plan
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The team should create the event plan
Start with “the end in mind” – visualize
successful event and work backward
Identify the major tasks that must occur and
then fill in the steps under those tasks
Some tasks can be done in parallel and some
tasks must be done sequentially
Determine the “critical path” to project
completion
Developing the Event Plan
• Use meeting management tools to identify the major tasks to
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be completed (brainstorming, small group discussion)
Group and sequence tasks to be done
Identify project risks and associated strategies - build those
into the plan
Set timelines and milestones – build in time for addressing
risks
Assign tasks to team members and establish meeting dates
Leave with a project plan – send it out and update it regularly
Use the project plan to communicate with the team members
“Critical Path” Analysis
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A task that is a gateway to progress on all other tasks
that follow
Sometimes the task appears unrelated to other steps
along the way
Some tasks must be done sequentially while others can
be done in parallel – a critical path analysis reveals the
relationship among the tasks
A task may not appear to be a critical step in the
project until it is too late!
“Critical Path” to Project
Completion
Some tasks must be done sequentially:
Project
Launch
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3
4
5
“Critical Path” to Project
Completion
Some tasks can be done in parallel:
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3
4
5
Project
Launch
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4
5
“Critical Path” to Project Completion
Some tasks are “critical” to other tasks:
1
2
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3
Project
Launch
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4
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6
Step 4 must be done in order to move forward with Step 5 and 6
Critical Path Analysis
1. How can you and your team
identify the critical path in your
project?
2. Is there more than one “critical
path” in the project?
Example of Star Party Work Plan
Date: May 21, 2010 - 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Task
Select Date and Time
Identify and Form Committee
Identify Location
Responsible Party
Maloney/Falconer
Maloney
Committee
Date Needed
Date selected based on visibility of Saturn and
Moon
Complete
Tom Falconer, Joe Gerda, Jamie Milteer, Jasmine
Foster
Complete
Complete
Carl A. Rasmussen Amphitheater
Complete
Complete
Community members, Advisory Board members,
COC faculty, staff, Grades 4-6 Sulphur Springs SD
Students, high school students
Complete
Complete
Ads in magazines, article in CC Magazine May
issues,Radio spot, press release, flyers to Sulphur
Springs SD, set meeting with PIO
Complete
Complete
PIO to design/use last year's design
Complete
N/A
Send flyer to advisory committee and schools,
along with Advisory Committee. Email blast to the
campuses
Complete
N/A
No invitations will be sent for this event
N/A
N/A
No reservations required for this event
N/A
Maloney
Contact PIO for Publicity
Flyer
McElwain
Maloney
Dissemination of Information to Schools
Send Out Invitations
Accept RSVP's
N/A
N/A
Status
Complete
Committee
Determine Guest List
Comments/Instruction
Complete
Risk Analysis and
Budget Control
Throughout the project, make risk analysis and
strategy development a standing item on team
meeting agendas
• Maintain and update the project budget
• Keep Fiscal Services staff informed on changes to
the budget
• Send out updates frequently to project stakeholders
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Communication is Key
• Hold regular team meetings – use technology to assist in
communications
• Establish a standard format for project updates within the
team - use this to keep everyone informed on project
progress
• Ensure you are communicating effectively with team
members and stakeholders
• Maintain an issues log and use team meetings to solve
problems
After the Event – What Happens
Next?
Closing out an event
• Celebrating with the team
• What should go into a event de-briefing?
• Identifying unfinished items and how they will be
handled
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