​Here's our model of ©Talent GPS.  Depending on your perspective (employee, employer), you may start at different places in this process.   Each of the blue events (rounded rectangles) are described below in more detail.  Engagement is part of every single part of the process.  Notice the dotted arrows for Stay which are there for individuals to figure out how far they want to climb up the career ladder and when they want to stay put or retire.    ​Being a process, not an event, there is no end.  The wheels just keep on spinning.  Promote is simply a variation of Hire, requiring many of the same (and often ignored) events including onboarding and career mapping. As you'll read later, Gap Reports inform the Career Plan which can mature into a Personal Leadership Plan. The big question - who is in charge of this process?  In the next section, you'll learn about the importance of ownership.   

Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of people engaging in what I call "ain’t it awful" conversations. Believe me, I understand that with things going on like the terror attacks around the world, the controversial Presidential campaigns in the United States, and even the weather, it is easy to slip into a negative mindset. But hand-wringing and downbeat discussions aren’t going to change anything. In fact, it can make things worse by taking all your thoughts into a downward spiral. Now is the time for positive thinking. I always loved working with Norman Vincent Peale because he used to say "Positive thinkers get positive results." That is such a powerful message, and we need to keep it in mind to be able to rise above the negative and focus on the positive. We are free to choose our thoughts—and thoughts guide our behavior. It is essential to keep uplifting messages in our head so that we are able to think more clearly, make better decisions, and approach life with a better attitude. I don’t want to minimize the difficulties we all face in life such as illnesses, money problems, stress at work, and a hundred other things that can drag you down. But I know that a peaceful mind will give you more energy—and that will help you get through tough times.  My wife, Margie, uses a gratitude exercise to help her focus on the positive. Each evening she writes down the top three positive things that happened in her day. Sometimes it is as simple as getting a much-needed rainstorm in our time of drought, or reconnecting with an old friend. The point is that she ends her day with positive thoughts and a peaceful mind. Try it for yourself. I encourage you to think about it from two perspectives—your personal life and your work environment. I think you’ll be surprised how this simple shift in thinking will change your outlook on life for the better.

If the PS and PM are aligned, the project will go very well.  To sustain these connections requires some very specific discussions.  Having the guts to ask these questions requires trust and authenticity.  It also requires an agreement on the basic philosophy of the project.  Here are the philosophies (put these on a poster and hang everywhere) that drive project collaboration and success:Focus on the End Result / PurposeManage don’t control; collaborate don’t tellMinimize tools and chartsIt won’t go the way you’ve planned.  There will be surprises.Here are some additional tips and tricks that awesome companies use to drive project success:Use visual techniques to ensure understandingIf there’s a problem with a person, go talk to that person. Don’t send emails to everyone hoping it lands on them.Drive others' responsibility (I’ll take that) and clarify accountability (you own this now)Invite the PS do the status meeting / read-outs at least once a monthCreate alumni groups to support better project management that works better for your organization at your company.Do quick surveys when a project ends and capture lesson learned.Build a Project Advisory Panel with key stakeholders to continue to improve the throughput of projects and impact on the business. Create a Project Management Office (PMO) that connects organizational projects together that depend on each other and reduces redundant project work (does not audit!).Create Coaching Triads for PMs to improve leading projects

As you cultivate the PS / PM relationship, here is a great tool you can use to jump-start collaboration with each other and key stakeholders: Step 1: Go to a brewpub (or a coffee shop depending on your culture) Step 2: Draw this table and give everyone a copy Step 3: Break into two teams of people and ask them to take 15 minutes to make up a story about the following: You’ve gone into work and the project is halfway finished. Tell the story of what could be happening on the project using the bullets in the box below and based on the descriptors of either Quadrant 1 or 4 (one team will brainstorm and answer the questions for either Q1 or Q4.  Here’s an example of part of what the story for Q4 might be:If you are describing Q4, you might guess that people are not showing up for meetings or hitting their due dates.The budget and timeline are running low due to rework. Leadership is not involved and people are not talking to each other. The PM feels oppressed and the PS feels that the PM is the problem.Descriptors:​​​  After the teams share their stories, reassign the teams to the other two quadrants and do the same exercise.  Step 4: After sharing these stories, ask each team to split in two, and assign one team to each quadrant. This time, ask them to describe what events would have to take place for the project about to start to end up the quadrant they have been assigned. Share that list.Step 5: Create bylaws based on what you’ve learned together for the project about to start. Discuss how to avoid the bad events and decisions and leverage the good. Using this quick process ( done in less than three hours with strong facilitation), you can start every project well, leveraging an intentional and clear collaboration between the roles of Project Sponsor and Project Manager. Using the RMA process for project management, including a Project Charter, simple Project Schedule / Status Report /Dashboard and tons of communication, you may just be the first person in your company to actually finish a project well.Russell Martin & Associates has recently released a Project Management Program which allows you to customize the help you need with your project. You design the program (together with an RMA expert) that makes the most sense to your organization choosing from our popular online / live learning experiences, coaching, mentoring, Charter and Plan review, role defining, project read-outs, tools, and templates.  If your'e interested in working together to create a customized program for your team or organization, let us know and someone will connect with you shortly. 

"Success is not forever and failure isn’t fatal" is one of my favorite quotes from my friend Don Shula, former head coach of the Miami Dolphins football team and my coauthor on the book Everyone’s a Coach. This philosophy drove a great deal of Coach Shula’s behavior during his long career as the winningest head coach in NFL history. Don had a twenty-four-hour rule. He allowed himself, his coaches, and his players a maximum of twenty-four hours after a game to wallow in that game’s outcome—to fully experience either the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. But once the twenty-four-hour deadline passed, they had to put it all behind them and focus their energies on preparing for the next game. A colleague recently shared with me how she used this technique at work to turn a big mistake into a learning moment. One of our sales teams used an Excel spreadsheet saved on a shared drive to track revenue and bookings. The database provided an easy method to run reports by type of product sold, sales by person, and other key categories. Everyone on the team was able to access the document easily any time they needed information—that is, until the day one team member accidentally deleted the entire file! When the employee shared this news with her boss, she thought she might actually be fired. The manager had a better idea. She calmed the employee down by asking her to start brainstorming how they might recreate the data. Together they came up with a few options: ask the IT department if the file had been backed up so they could just request a copy; check to see if anyone had copied the file onto their desktop, or recreate the file from scratch. This activity helped the employee start thinking in a positive manner instead of beating herself up. The manager did one more thing: she gave the employee permission to go ahead and lament her mistake as much as she wanted to—but only for twenty-four hours. After the required time, they would meet again to discuss next steps and to talk about what they both had learned. What a difference a day makes. At first, the manager and employee were discouraged to find out the IT department didn’t have a backup—but then they discovered the manager had saved a copy of the file to her desktop a week earlier. So the employee needed only to update a week’s worth of data and the database was back in business. Of course, the employee learned to be extremely careful when closing a shared file. But the biggest learnings proved to be the foundation for an ongoing trusted working relationship: The employee learned: she could be honest with her manager; her manager trusted her to solve problems; she and her manager worked well as a team; and twenty-four hours is plenty of time to feel bad about a mistake. The manager learned: the importance of keeping her cool in the face of disaster; and how to empower her employee to turn a problem into a victory. As a result, their respect for each other grew and they went on for years, sharing successes and treating every challenge as a learning moment. Give the twenty-four-hour rule a try. Celebrate successes but don’t get a big head—and don’t get too down on yourself when you don’t succeed. Keep things in perspective and remember: success is not forever and failure isn’t fatal.

"When you’re looking at ‘converting’ classroom training to an online format, try to actually get to the classroom event. Get clear on what really goes on there, as opposed to what you might hear in a meeting or via document review. Talk to the trainers or facilitators who run classroom events, and ask them about any tricks or special adaptations they might employ. Then work on ways to bring the richness—and maybe even fun—to the worker’s online experience."Though I rarely do traditional classroom work now, I’m still around it all the time, as it’s what my co-workers do all day, every day. Our halls are full of people here to attend classes. I hear them before sessions and during breaks, talking to one another or on phones calling home or back to the office. Often they are enjoying the class they’re in. And often they complain that the sessions are good, but not quite realistic, or not always relevant to their needs. In the classroom, a good trainer can adjust on the fly, a luxury not available to the eLearning designer. This month's column explores some common issues and ideas for overcoming them.What's Happening in the Classroom? When we're in the classroom this is how we work on customer service skills for van drivers.  Can you guess why? What happens in the classroom is sometimes worth knowing. Compared to other service providers, a van driver’s situation is unique in a few ways:The driver always has his or her back to the customerThe driver makes eye contact through quick glances in a mirrorIf there’s a problem, the driver has to get the van off the road, to a safe spot, and notify a dispatcher about the issueWant more? You can access the full article at: Nuts and Bolts: What's the Reality? Also see 2011's  Think "Transform", Not Transfer to Online

​When you are a PM, you are always looking for ways to make things more efficient. You look around for risks and problems, mitigating them as quickly and cheaply as possible. You listen very carefully to your stakeholders for not only what they say, but what they don’t say. In a sense, you are gazing back over the pieces of the project puzzle and trying to figure out how to get the puzzle done. You are always looking back at what has happened on the project.When you are a PS, you are always looking for new strategies to drive business success.  What are other people, other companies, and your competitors doing? You like new ideas and strategies. You listen very carefully to other leaders, and you race against each other to the next best idea. New ideas create a competitive advantage.  It’s not your job or charter to figure out all the details- someone else will do that. You are always looking forward at what could be.It’s hard to collaborate if you are on two different playing fields. The PM focuses primarily on what is, looking back at things that have already happened on a project. The PS focuses primarily on what could be looking forward at things that haven’t even been thought of yet. The worlds they peer into are opposite. In a meeting, the PS may dread the endless micro-details of problems that the PM shares while the PM can’t figure out the details of what the PS really wants other than a vague, beautiful future. The relationship can break  because of these biases. Conflict is not a given, though. Because their views are opposite, the PS and PM also have the opportunity to leverage each other’s’ views and fill each others blind spots.  Together, in collaboration, they can make a whole brain, perfect for project success.   

To get this ‘whole brain’ for project success requires intentionally clarifying the two opposite roles.  Let’s clarify:To show competence, the PM must help the PS answer these questions accurately with a shared, consistent message:How often do the PS and PM meet?How often does the PS meet directly with executive stakeholders?When will the project be completed and transitioned to operations? What will we have as a business when the project is completed that we don’t have now?  What will be the ROI (Return on Investment)?What percentage of hours of the whole project are being used to manage the project? (strong projects are 10 - 25%)Are all key stakeholders actively involved in the project?The PS must also ask the PM these questions, as his or her leader:Where is your Project Charter?What are the prioritization of the constraints of the project (Time, Budget, Scope / Quality)? Where are we on this project right now (percentage done - time, budget, scope/quality as appropriate to the specific project)?What do you need that I can get you?  What keeps you up at night?How can I help you improve stakeholder collaboration together and with us?

Whoever we are, we are still an immature organization. In 2015, RMA researched and built five job benchmarks from the Training Magazine Top 125companies. We were able to benchmark five roles. What we also discovered is that these roles are defined very differently in each company. The Hoffman and Thurber e-book found the roles are also combined into one job:Most L&D departments have fewer than 10 team members and only 13% had more than 50 people in their department. On average, L&D professionals are responsible for 4 tasks and 3 different roles.  Most of these jugglers are responsible for an audience of greater than 1000 learners each year.   To legitimize and honor the sacred work that we in L&D do (growing people to grow performance), we must do the following:  Get to the table and influence higher in the company.  Learn and align to the organizations' strategy, priorities and gaps and present a proposal to intervene to a C Level Executive.  Sell High, Sell Often, Sell Alignment. Yes, you must sell.  Refuse to deliver L&D solutions without metrics and sponsorship. Just say No. Then say, ... and this is how I can help.Look at each performance gap as a system. Make sure you are intervening in the entire scope of the program. Fixing one side of the organization without the other will always cause side effects that aren't good. What boundaries are required to meet the performance goal? Don't start until all stakeholders have agreed to the metrics and how / when they will be measured. Don't be biased to one delivery medium of L&D. Do not let technology limit learning. Let the opportunity drive the implementation of the solution. Everything is 'blended' now.   Learn to be strategic not reactive. Step up when you see a chance to grow performance. Be a squeaky wheel. Find a better place to work if you can't do it where you are. Leverage the 'Engagement' mantra. Sell your services by authentically explaining that engagement comes from context (why?) and valued contribution. Employees want to contribute and grow with appropriate opportunities clearly laid out. Creating a learning intervention is a project; it begins and ends. Driving performance is a process- it never ends. Clearly explain this to your sponsors. The difference matters and they must support the entire life cycle. Other people can teach. You don't have to go to the School of Education. Leverage SMEs and help them learn to teach others. Broaden your reach. Each learner is unique and deserves respect. Learning for them is different than learning for someone else. Build a broad spectrum of learning options and let the learner choose. The bigger the learning buffet, the better. Performance is the Holy Grail. Talk about it. Demand it. Measure it. Just to be explicit - attendance (aka butts in seats) is not a performance metric. Teach Less, Learn More. It's not about you, it's about the learner's performance. Get out of their way and encourage self-discovery.  Another way to learn what this white paper has to say is to attend a free webinar on June 9 at 1 PM ET for a 30 minute overview with Jennifer and Brad. Register here.

In previous newsletters, I have shared with you the overwhelmingly consistent research (Gallup, Standish Group and more) that tells us that the #1 factor driving project success is a supportive, present Project Sponsor (PS). Ironically, most of the Project Managers (PM) in our workshops do not have this kind of relationship with their sponsor, and many don’t even know who their sponsor is. As my coach Mike Donahue says, the conversation is the relationship.  If you as PM are not having real, authentic and shared conversations with your PS regularly, the project will struggle. And quite possibly fail.  The truth is that most sponsors don’t know how to be a sponsor.  The PM doesn’t know how to be a sponsor either; they have plenty to do with their own responsibilities. In truth, some PMs don’t know how to do their role, either, and not having a sponsor just adds to the confusion. This drives frustration, guilt, avoidance, lack of conversation and poor decision making. The PS is supposed to play the strategic role, keeping the project connected to the business problem the project deliverables are designed to solve.  Lacking strategy since the PS is not being strategic, PMs run in circles screaming and shouting, delivering what they can and not what they should.  In this LearningFlash, as we celebrate Independence Day, I’m challenging you to be here now and lead on your projects. Lead your project teams, lead your stakeholders, lead you Project Sponsor and lead the way.  This month, you’ll read:Two Different Playing FieldsIt’s Not Leading if No One is Led: The PS and PM Roles1 + 1 = DONE: Collaborative PM/PS Strategies Kick Off: Scenarios to PonderRMA Contest: Last Months $100 winner and this month’s challenge