Building Leadership Skills: Developing and Leading Projects

1. Building Leadership Skills:Developing and Leading Projects Instructor: Pat Wagner pat@pattern.com An Infopeople Workshop December 2006

2. This Workshop Is Brought to You By the Infopeople Project Infopeople is a federally-funded grant project supported by the California State Library. It provides a wide variety of training to California libraries. Infopeople workshops are offered around the state and are open registration on a first-come, first-served basis. For a complete list of workshops, and for other information about the project, go to the Infopeople website at infopeople.org.

3. Introductions • Name • Library • Position • Your purpose in coming to this class on leadership and project management

4. Workshop Overview • Introduction to project leadership • The organization map • The project planning model • Benchmarks for success • Why projects fail

5. Leading Projects

6. Workshop Success • Evolve your skills • Apply the “reasonable” test • Use issues that are real for you today • Find a buddy at work

7. Questions for the Group • What constitutes a project? • What constitutes project success?

8. What is a Project? • Personal time management • Short term projects • Ongoing projects • Special projects

9. What is Project Success? • The better future • for the individual library user (relevance) • for the community or institution • for the library employee • for the profession

10. Project Benchmarks: • Achieve strategic goals • Everyone is treated well • Parameters are observed • time • resources • quality

11. Exercise #1 What Contributes to Project Leadership Success?

12. The Organizational Map • Three points of view: roles • Based on time and scope • Each role is equally important • We play all three roles

13. Organizational Roles • Task : React • immediate response • Management: Pause • coordinate, communicate • Leadership: Anticipate • risk, influence, and the future

14. Blind Spots • Task : Short time horizon • autonomy “bug”, project “creep” • Management: Bureaucratic freeze • micromanagement, project “choke” • Leadership: Lone eagle • loose cannon, elitism

15. Typical Tasks • Professional and technical • Reference, cataloging • Tech services, circulation • Library user interaction • Hands on, immediate

16. Typical Management • Earn trust and respect • Resource allocation • Coordination • Oversight and supervision • Bigger picture

17. Typical Leadership • Mission and vision • The compelling future • Two years out • Politics • Biggest picture

18. How Do You Spend Time? Using the letters “T”, “M” and “L”, please rate the items from the list you wrote earlier.

19. Question for the Group What distracts us from our leadership role when we are managing projects?

20. Question for the Group Why is the leadership role difficult?

21. Exercise #2 Leadership Approaches

22. What is Governance? • Who makes decisions? • What decisions does that person or group make? • How do they make decisions?

23. Project Governance • Seek input from everyone. • Document and communicate decisions. • Execute the plan. • Take responsibility and hold ourselves accountable. • Give and take feedback.

24. Exercise #3 How Well Does Your Library Support Good Project Governance?

25. Planning to Plan • What are the job descriptions? • What are the checkpoints? • How much time do we need? • How do we coordinate with others? • How do we manage conflicts?

26. Exercise #4 How Do We Plan for Project Success?

27. Benchmarks for Success • Descriptive Benchmarks • what we see, hear, do • Measurable Benchmarks • what we can count and measure • Strategic Benchmarks • how we impact goals, mission, vision

28. Descriptive Benchmarks • Sensory-specific detail • Physical evidence • What we can see • What we can hear • What we and others do

29. Measurable Benchmarks • Time: deadlines, length of time • Size: measure, change (big, small) • Location: specific place • Number: count, change (more, less)

30. Strategic Benchmarks • The hardest to achieve • Can take years to identify • Tied to the strategic plan • Significant change or impact • Bottom line: the library user

31. Exercise #5 How Do We Use Benchmarks to Create Criteria for Project Success?

32. The Project Triangle • Do you want it good? • Do you want it cheap? • Do you want it fast?

33. Question for the Group What are examples of things you prefer good, cheap, or fast?

34. Three Bottom Lines • Avoid one-bottom-line thinking • perfectionism • false economy • false productivity

35. Project Priorities • Everyone needs to know • Agreed-upon for every project • Priorities support consistent choices

36. Project Ratios • Everything can’t be a “10” • Shorthand for discussing ratios • Creates project expectations

37. Project Expectations • What are the goals, sorted by priority? • What are the parameters? • Quality, time, resources, legal • Civility: how we treat each other

38. Exercise #6 How Can We Use the Project Triangle to Communicate Expectations?

39. Exercise #7 What is Your Project Readiness Score?

40. Exercise #8 How Can You Prevent Project Failure?

41. Your First Step What will you do to apply leadership skills to your next project?

42. The Early Bird…