Want to get promoted to a manager? Do you think you have what it takes to successfully deliver on a client project? The critical difference between an analyst and a successful project manager is the ability to think around the client requirements to get to the core of what the client needs. This often means being resourceful in thinking around the obstacles and presenting clients with solutions not problems. Making the transition between being an analyst and a skilled consultant in the way work is approached can lead to getting the promotion to manager.

Do You Simply Take Orders?

The manager tells you what to do; you follow the specifications as given. Many analysts follow this pattern and complete nothing more in a job than what the manager has assigned them to complete.

There is nothing wrong in following orders, but if you want to make the progression to manager more is needed than simply following orders. For example, a skilled consultant will think laterally about what the objective of his work is and consider additional routes to solve the problem. If he faces an obstacle in his work – before presenting this obstacle to his manager – he will consider through possible solutions to the problem and present these also to his manager. In other words to become a manager you have to start thinking like a manager.

In addition, successful project managers will be probing of their client’s requirements. Understanding that clients often don’t fully articulate their requirements a skilled consultants will know how to ask the right questions, interpret responses, expand client perspectives of problems, manage expectations, anticipate future needs, and stay in close contact with clients.

Question Your Assumptions

A pitfall for analysts is to make assumptions without questioning them. Every assumption should be checked. Skilled consultants are able to question both their own and their clients’ assumptions. In order to avoid false assumptions, skilled consultants ask the following questions:

• What are my assumptions about this project? My role in this project? About what is expected of me? About others’ perceptions of me?
• What might others be assuming about this project? Their roles? My understandings?

By considering assumptions, miscommunications and mistakes are often avoided. Consider creating an assumption-checking process on both your own part and your clients’. There are two steps:

1. Brainstorm factors pertinent to the project’s success. Keep this session to no more than 20 minutes.

2. Identify any assumptions you and your client are making about each item on the list. This way, you can identify any false assumptions – before work starts.

What Kinds of Questions Do Skilled Consultants Ask?

Skilled consultants know that clients are not always able to articulate their needs. Hence, there is often a question behind the question being posed in the scope of the work. The skilled consultant is able to uncover what the customer really wants through asking specific types of questions.

To help make the transition between analyst and skilled consultant, ask the questions that get at the core of what your client wants. These questions typically fall into five categories:

1. Probing Questions – these questions get to the heart of the problem or situation. Examples include, “Can you provide a specific example?” and “What steps have you taken to resolve the problem?” These questions should be open-ended to give the client a chance to elaborate.

2. Clarifying Questions – ask clarifying questions to ensure understanding of the problem or situation. Examples include “Do I understand you correctly to be saying…?” and “When you say ‘x,’ what do you mean?”

3. Process Questions – these questions ensure your client understands you. These questions include, “Do you have any questions about what we’ve been talking about?” and “Do you need some time to think these things over?”

4. Empathetic Questions - These demonstrate that you are on the same page as your client, and that you are listening, thus leading to a good relationship. Examples are “Does this situation frustrate you?” or “It appears that you’re feeling overwhelmed.”

5. Meta-Questions – These questions ask about the questioning process. They help your clients to remember pertinent information. Examples include, “What question do you think I should have asked?” or “If I were to start now, what will your staff wish we had discussed?”

During this conversation, listen nondefensively to the member and remain open to critical feedback concerning your management style. Next, discuss options for shifting additional authority over to the member, while minimizing unnecessary risks. Look for an option that will serve as a brief and timely mini-experiment for testing the individual’s ability to handle additional responsibility.

Fully empowered-workers with both the competence and the authority they need to achieve top performance. They are operating close to their maximum performance level and usually make the greatest contribution to your team. When working with such an individual, you should:
• Periodically meet to look for opportunities to broaden and extend her contribution to your team
• Make certain you’ve removed all empowerment roadblocks that could hamper her performance
• Consider work experiences that would enable him to serve as a successful role model for other members.

1) People think they are experts.

Many people tell me that they know how to hold a meeting. Actually, all they do is host a party. They invite guests, provide treats, and preside over a conversation. People talk. People eat. And nothing happens. Or, if they somehow manage to reach an agreement, no one implements it.

> What to do: Learn how to lead a real meeting. Schedule a workshop or buy a book. When results really matter, hire a facilitator. Recognize that there are modern tools that help people make methodical progress toward results. These tools are practical and easy to use. Of course, you have to know what they are in order to use them. Call me (714-528-1300) for details.

2) People think they are inspiring.

Many people believe that long-winded announcements impress others. Actually, it’s the opposite. A long lecture quickly becomes a boring (and sometimes offensive) harangue. Why? Most employees want an active role in contributing to the business, and thus listening to a speech feels like a waste of time.

> What to do: Design meetings that give the attendees opportunities to contribute. Plan questions that direct thinking toward the results that you want. Use activities that help people make decisions. Distribute announcements in letters, memos, or E-mails. Or, if you must use a meeting, keep announcements brief (less than a few minutes).

3) People think others agree with them.

Many people rely on nods, smiles, and eye contact to measure acceptance. Actually, most employees will do anything to appease a boss. And if the boss seems to be upset, the employees will become even more agreeable. Then, once the meeting ends, the employees will do one of three things: 1) forget the lecture, 2) ignore the message, or 3) sabotage the idea.

> What to do: Conduct meetings by a process that everyone considers to be fair. Use consensus to reach agreements and make decisions. People will accept decisions that they helped make.

4) People think others are clairvoyant.

Many people call meetings without an agenda expecting that everyone will arrive sharing their vision for what needs to be done. Actually, everyone brings their private hopes, fears, and vision to the meeting. Without a clear agenda, the result is something between chitchat and chaos, depending upon the complexity of the issue.

Note: A vague agenda, such as a list of topics, is almost as useless as no agenda.

> What to do: Write out your goal for the meeting. Then prepare an agenda that is so complete someone else could use it to run the meeting without you. Specify each step and provide a time budget. Send the agenda at least a day before the meeting so that the attendees can use it to prepare. Call key participants before the meeting to check if they have questions or want to talk about the agenda.

5) People think meetings are necessary.

Many people respond to every emergency, surprise, or twitch by calling a meeting. Actually, a meeting is a special (and expensive) process. It should be used only to obtain results that require the efforts of a group of people working as a team. A meeting is NOT a universal cure for everything. Meetings held for the wrong reasons, waste everyone’s time.

> What to do: Challenge every meeting for its ability to earn a profit for your business. That is, make sure the value of the results is greater than the cost of holding a meeting. If any other activity can accomplish the same result, use that other activity.
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• • The types of problems or roadblocks it is likely to encounter.
• • How these roadblocks or problems might affect the success of the project.
• • The types of actions that could be taken to prevent these problems from occurring or to get around them after they’ve occurred.
• • An agreement regarding when and how you will alert each other to changes that could affect progress on a project.

To overcome these roadblocks, consider these two steps. First, dramatically raise your expectations on a few key performance measures. Focus your efforts on the vital few performance areas most important to your teams survival.
Second, select performance goals that can be measured. The performance goals you select should include a definite time frame, focus on discrete performance areas, be quantifiable, and be worded in such a way as to be relatively free from ambiguity. If you aren’t sure whether your performance goals meet these criteria, ask your team and a trusted associate to help you troubleshoot them.

Strategies
The first strategy is to overcome inertia. An engineering friend once explained that 90% of a locomotive’s energy is expended during the first few minutes of start-up as it attempts to move the train from rest. Once the engine overcomes its massive inertia and the train is running at high speed, relatively small amounts of energy are needed to keep it in motion. In much the same way, the first job you must tackle will be to overcome your team’s initial inertia and get it started along the track. In this section we offer strategies for overcoming inertia by creating a sense of urgency, removing yourself as a buffer, conducting a performance analysis, and creating competitors.

The second strategy is to challenge the limits of your members. This strategy involves encouraging your members to raise their self ¬expectations, redefining performance, modelling limit-busting, cloning superstars, and using incremental successes and celebrations.

The last strategy is to get out of the way of team members. This involves removing any roadblocks that you may be unintentionally placing in their path. Managers get in the way whenever they hamstring a team’s authority and its control over its own work, send inconsistent messages about desired performance, or create conse¬quences that actually work against desired performance. As part of getting out of the way, you will discover how to strategically empower your staff, send clear messages about your performance expectations, and create consequences that support desired performance.

Situation 2. Responding to Criticism
1. Put the person and situation in perspective. When people are under stress it’s easy for them to blow out of proportion any critical feedback that’s presented. If you find yourself criticized, remind yourself that the criticism addresses only one aspect of your performance and that there are many other areas in which your performance excels. If someone directs a general criticism at you, help that person focus in on more specific feedback.

For example:
Other: You’ve really got to improve the way you are managing your relationships with your customers.
You: When you say “not managing relationships effectively,” what exactly do you mean? Do you feel I’m being rude to customers? Are we talking about my entire customer base?
Other: No, you seem to be well liked by your customers, and things appear to be okay with your established customers. However, a couple of times I’ve felt that you’ve made promises to entice new customers that I don’t feel you can possibly meet. For example, I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation with ABC Corporation the other day on the phone, and I noticed that…”

2. Remember that you are not the target. If someone makes personal comments about you or criticize you too strongly, keep in mind that stressed-out people tend to indiscriminately dump on the other people. Remind yourself, “I am not the target. I just happened to be in the way when this person decided to dump on me. It’s her problem, not mine.”

3. Turn criticisms into desired aims. Criticism often takes the form of telling people what we don’t want them to do. Unfortunately, in this sense it provides little informational value because it doesn’t spell out what desired behavior looks like. Whenever you receive negative feedback, ask the person to clarify her expectations of you. If needed, provide some suggestions.

For example:
Other: That budget forecast was really a surprise. When I took it into the director’s meeting I ended up with egg all over my face. The actuals were completely out of line with your original projections. I want to make certain this doesn’t happen again.
You: Well, as you know, given the number of project readjust¬ments we’ve been having, it’s almost impossible to provide an accurate, annual budget projection. Are you saying you expect me to increase the accuracy of our projections?
Other: I realize you can’t do that, but I would appreciate being forewarned the next time around so that I can give our director more advance warning of any increases prior to the annual budget review.
You: So you want me to generate a quarterly budget projection?
Other: It doesn’t even have to be that formal. Just pull your budget trend line out of your spreadsheet package and fax it to me for review with warning flags on those areas that are beginning to run over and a handwritten note as to why. Also, I’d really like to receive that on a monthly, not quarterly, basis.

The vice president of personnel was given a crown and
honored as Miss Pink Slip (she had to make some of the difficult termination arrangements and then was herself one of the first people terminated). In condition, office jokes about the situation were encouraged: “What are they going to do about it, fire us?” Pink achievement awards were given out to selected employees to affirm that, despite the downsizings, their per¬formance was appreciated.

The purpose of all of this tongue-in-cheek humor was to laugh in the face of adversity. As Bevan says, “We created an environment that said that humor was okay and that humor was what was going to get us through this thing.” Expand your team’s range of control. A significant amount of stress research shows that the more control people exert over difficult work situations, the more they are able to cope with those situations. In the work environment, you can help regulate stress by looking for ways to place control in the hands of your team.

Teach coping skills. Supply members with books and guides which provide suggestions and guidelines for self-managing stress. An additional approach might involve looking for low-cost stress management workshops that members can take after hours or on the weekends through local adult education programs, colleges or community health agencies. Periodically audit stress factors in your environment. Conduct an audit to identify factors that may be creating stress for your team. This doesn’t have to be a tedious or expensive process.

Step 8. Investigation. In some cases, the explanation cannot be filled in by the budget review meeting, because the person or depart¬ment preparing the review (usually accounting) does not know the answer. At that point, an investigation is in order. It might be possible to assign the problem to one department, or it might be necessary to ask each manager to look into individual budget assumptions to identify the components of the variance.
Investigation is troublesome on a companywide basis. No one will want to take responsibility for explaining the variance, or for looking into it. As an unfortunate consequence, the accounting department ends up with the lion’s share of budget-reporting duty. This means that, with or without your knowledge, your department could be criticized for a budgeting problem, even if you had nothing to do with developing that budget.

Step 9. Response. Once investigation is complete, some form of response is demanded. If an expense is running above a reasonable budget level, it should be brought under control. If the problem is strictly in one department, assignment of response is simple. How¬ever, it is more often a companywide problem and, again, no one will want to tackle the problem. So the accounting department again is given the responsibility and the power to respond and to solve. The power issue wouldn’t be a problem in itself, except for the fact that you should want to control and answer for your own budget.

Step 10. Review. Once a problem is discovered and the process of correction is entered into, the review process begins. This is a year-¬round, never-ending, ongoing effort, one that should be instituted as a daily priority and as part of your routine. The idea of monitoring the budget is too often delegated, or thought of as an unpleasant and inconvenient demand on our time. Think of the control and review process not as manipulation of rows and columns of numbers, but as real and tangible events and financial consequences-that you can and should control as part of your job.

There are a number of steps you can take to achieve the benefits intended from the budgeting process, and you will see tangible results at once:
• Respond to discovered variances. When you discover that an account in your department has a significant variance, take immediate action. Identify the cause of the problem and fix it. If the variance is significant in either direction, it deserves a careful look. And when you find the answer, your task has just begun. From there, you need to decide what actions are appropriate; then you need to follow through and take those actions.
• Build control ideas into assumptions. If you think of budget¬ing as a function outside what you actually do, then you have missed the point. In fact, budgeting should be (but rarely is) an ongoing exercise in control.Typically, the budget comes up only at the end of the month, when a variance report is prepared; or at the end of the fiscal year, when you’re reminded that, once again, it’s time to stay late and start filling out worksheets. But suppose you have a problem keeping expenses down, so you correct the problem. The budget assumption for that expense category might be the logical starting point for getting your accounts under control, assuming your control ideas work.
• Modify to correct, not to avoid problems. Unfortunately, budgeting priorities might prevent you from achieving this. How should you respond? Get in there and solve the problem. If the budget is reasonable but employees are spending more than they should, put a preapproval system in place. If the budget is simply wrong and the spending level is right, document that fact as part of your explanation. In either case, don’t let the problem go. And don’t complicate the real reasons for the problem by providing an accept¬able answer that doesn’t really say anything. That only prevents anyone from knowing what should be done.