Jerry Manas shares best practices in software and process adoption and change leadership, gaining buy-in from ideation to delivery. Based on a chapter in his book, The Resource Management and Capacity Planning Handbook.

1. Planning, Selling, Engaging
Gaining Buy-In from Ideation to Delivery
Jerry Manas, PMP

2. Why Are We Here?
Typical PMO Mission Statement:
“To promote best
practice standards and
methodologies and
foster effective project
management practices
to consistently deliver
projects that are on
time, on budget, and
within scope.”
“Our mission is to
continue to efficiently
facilitate diverse methods
of empowerment and
professionally
disseminate performance
based deliverables to
meet our customer’s
needs.”

3. “We need 100% compliance with the new
methodology/system we’re rolling out”

6. • Mandated values / policies / mission statements
do not drive behavior
• The more they’re created in a vacuum, the more
they will be ignored
Rule #1: Don’t Kid Yourself

7. How Do You Talk THEIR Language?

8. How do You Win them Over?

9. How Do You Become a Trusted Advisor?

12. Ask these questions:
 What are we trying to achieve?
 For whom?
 When?
 In what order?
 What’s the benefit?
 Why should anyone care?
These answers will help
form the communication plan.
Let’s Try This Again: Why Are We Here?

13. The Planning
Strategies for Success
Get your initiative off on the right foot
The Message
Getting the Point Across
…in a way that grabs their attention and interest
The People
Driving Engagement
Get/Keep People Involved
Remove Barriers that Cause Resistance
A Structured Approach

14. The Planning
STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS
Get your initiative off on the right foot
The Planning

15. The Planning
• Planning for Success
• Selling the Message
• Engaging the People
Getting Started on the Right Foot

16. The Planning
Focus on the Problem

17. The Planning
Typical Executive Expectation
“Maximize value from IT investment”
Are we working on the right projects?
Are we making the best use of our resources?
Are we investing wisely in our assets and services?
Are we targeting and tracking benefits?
Are we aware of the impact of project delays on business outcomes?
Are we enabling innovation?
Are we executing our plans quickly? What’s our project throughput?

18. The Planning
Get the Goals Right

19. The Planning
• One major goal or theme
at a time
• Select only a few metrics
and targets
• A singular call to action
Be Narrow Minded

20. The Planning
What is the Rallying Cry
…that defines the next three to six months of focus?

21. The Planning
Visibility
Governance
Planning
Resource Optimization
…a Roadmap is OK
Alignment

22. The Planning
Toyota’s “Genchi Genbutsu”
approach:
“Go and see for yourself.”
Be an Anthropologist

23. The Planning
Broaden your View

24. The Planning
“Look for the risks and drawbacks in
what people recommend -- even the
best medicine has side effects.”
“Avoid basing decisions on
untested but strongly held beliefs,
what you have done in the past, or
on uncritical ‘benchmarking’ of
what winners do.”
~ Jeff Pfeffer and Bob Sutton
Practice Evidence-based Management

25. The Planning
• Look for opportunities
• What do they want?
• What do they need?
• Can you create a better
way of doing something?
• Can you address a pain
point people don’t
know they have? “If I asked my customers what they wanted,
they would have said a faster horse.”
~Henry Ford
Explore the Possible
Be an Explorer

26. The Planning
Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for
something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.
- Etienne Wenger
Be a Community Builder

27. The Planning
• Anticipate resistance
• Develop strategies to address them
• Consider the impact and the influence
IMPACT
INFLUENCE
Make targeted
visits
Assess
concerns &
needs
Assess impact
General
communication
Scout the Landscape

28. “Electronic
communication will
never be a substitute for
the face of someone who
with their soul
encourages another
person to be brave and
true.” ~Charles Dickens

29. The Planning
Use a small set of priorities to unify
people towards a common cause and
guide their activities when tradeoff
decisions are needed.
The low-cost airline
1. Employee culture
2. Customer
3. Efficiency
1. Safety
2. Courtesy
3. Show
4. Efficiency
Provide a Compass

30. The Planning
Throw a Process Party

31. The Planning
• Provide global change drivers and themes
• Consider local/regional nuances
• Leverage domain experts
• Share good ideas across domains
“A rising tide raises all ships.”
Think Glocal

32. The Planning
Choose Your Leaders Wisely

33. The Planning
• Empathize
• Sell
• Delegate
• Influence
• Present
• Facilitate
• Negotiate
• Coach
• Solve problems
• Inspire
Good Leaders…

34. The Planning
• Visionaries and aficionados who will
make sure the job gets done right.
• Interested business members; Passionate
team members; etc.
• Don’t be afraid of heroes: Most major
accomplishments are driven by a single
catalyst or small groups.
Find Champions

35. The Planning
There is no “I” in
team, but there is in
“Win.”
 Michael Jordan
(to coach Phil Jackson)
Find Champions

36. The Planning
• Aim for quick wins to
build confidence
• Start with a small
group and limited
scope
Napoleon said he’d rather have part of a canal completed every year
than have to wait 10 years for a grand canal.
Take Baby Steps

37. The Planning
 The “why”
 The goal
 Singular focus
 Priorities
 Stakeholder needs
 The user experience (“close-up” view)
 Local and regional input
 Leaders and champions
The Planning: Recap
Success Strategies developed

38. The Message
Getting The Point Across
…in a way that grabs their attention
& interest
Success strategies developed
Communicate your message

39. “What we have here is a failure to
communicate.” ~Cool Hand Luke

40. The Planning
• Keep asking “why” until you get to
the root of the problem
• Once people understand the why,
they’ll more easily embrace the how
Articulate the Problem

41. The Planning
“The ability to
simplify means to
eliminate the
unnecessary so that
the necessary may
speak.”
~ Hans Hoffman
Simplify Your Message

42. The Message
• Focus on one key message with two or
three supporting points.
• “Saying many things usually
communicates nothing.”
-Harry Beckwith,
Selling the Invisible
Simplify Your Message

43. The Message
“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like
irrelevance even less.”
- General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army
Pose the Alternative

44. The Message
They CAN handle the truth!
Ref: A Few Good Men
Be Transparent

45. The Message
• Some changes bring organizational
efficiencies but not necessarily
individual efficiencies.
• Get resistance and concerns out in the
open; address them publicly.
• Superficial or deceptive messages
breed resistance.
Be Transparent

46. The Message
Ask Them to Help

47. The Message
If you want to build a ship, don't drum
up people together to collect wood and
don't assign them tasks and work, but
rather teach them to long for the endless
immensity of the sea.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Find a Way to Make them Care

48. The Message
Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Story
Make your Message Stick

49. The Message
Ref: Edward Tufte: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
The Challenger Disaster – Pre-launch Presentation
Make it Clear

50. The Message
Ref: Edward Tufte: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
A Better Way to Present (Edward Tufte)
Make it Clear

51. The Message
Good data presentation, per Tufte:
• Encourages comparative analysis
• Shows clear causality
• Explains with annotations
• Avoids unnecessary noise
• Avoids distortions
Make it Clear

52. The Message
Unexpected Messages Stand Out
Say Something Different

53. The Message
• Reinforce in
different ways
• Use different media
• Repeat, repeat,
repeat
Say it Often

54. The Message
Avoid abstract concepts and
focus on concrete examples.
Instead of this Say this
“That won’t work.” “How can we solve the issue?”
“They’re just being difficult.” “How can we best address
their concerns?”
Watch your language…here comes a MONKFISH.
Watch Your Language
Replace negative language with constructive language.

55. The Message
Culture Gap: IT & The Business
Watch Your Language

56. The Message
• Demystify IT – through one-on-ones, lunch and learns, and regular touch-base
meetings
• Speak in business language, not acronyms or system-talk
• Focus on benefits as opposed to solutions; make this clear in all goal statements
• Create a business relationship/analyst role, and have them sit in the business as
opposed to IT
• Pair project managers with a subject matter expert to bridge the communication
gaps
• Simplify processes (one CFO spoke of a complex registration process that was
reduced to a simple YouTube video)
Integrating IT and the Business: Advice from CFOs*
* Source: CFO/CIO Straight Talk summit at the Harvard Club, NYC, Nov 2009
Watch Your Language

57. The Message
• The “why”
• Simple, Concrete, & Different
• Transparent: Needs & Benefits
• A Call for Help
• Emotional stories
• Annotated charts that show causality
• Multi-media
The Message: Recap

58. Success strategies developed
Message communicated
Get/keep them involved
The People
Driving Engagement

59. The Message
“By involving people in
the standardization of
work, we can remove some
of the oppressiveness of it.
People are less likely to
balk at standards they
have devised.”
- Peter Scholtes
Don’t Dictate, Co-Create

60. The People
“Getting to the next level
of greatness depends
on the quality of the
culture, which depends
on the quality of
relationships, which
depends on the quality
of the conversations…
Everything
happens through
conversation!”
- Judith E. Glaser
Conversational
Intelligence™
Don’t Dictate, Co-Create

61. The People
Inform
Level I
Persuade
Level II
Co-Create
Level II
Transactional
Exchange Information
Positional
Exchange Power
Transformational
Exchange Energy
Confirm
what you know
Defend
what you believe
Explore
what you don’t know
Conversational Intelligence ™
Benchmark Communications, Inc./The Creating WE Institute© 2013. All Rights Reserved.

62. The People
So what do YOU
think we should
have for dinner?
Don’t Dictate, Co-Create

63. The People
T.R.U.S.T. Model
T Transparency
(Make threats transparent)
R Relationships
(Build mutual respect)
U Understanding
(Step into each other’s worlds)
S Shared Success
(Experiment and build trust)
T Truth-telling
(Speak candidly and co-create)
T
R
U
S T
EXPECTATION
GAPS
Benchmark Communications, Inc./The Creating WE Institute© 2013. All Rights Reserved.
Don’t Dictate, Co-Create

64. The People
Choose Your Battles
Standardize Selectively:
Don’t try to take on the world.

65. The People
• Those who set the norms are rarely senior leadership
• In The Big Picture, it was the senior students who brought
about the
desired culture change.
• Who sets the norm? Try to
solicit their help.
Influence the Influencers

66. The People
• More focused & accountable
than individuals or large
teams
• Ideal size: 5-9
• Even: allows
partnering
• Odd: eliminates ties
Aim for Small Teams

67. The People
Pull, Don’t Push: Lead by Example
“A piece of spaghetti
or a military unit can
only be led from the
front end.”
~ George S. Patton

68. The People
• Don’t wait for perfection
• Use the output ASAP: Total immersion
• Burn the ships
Just Do It!

69. The People
Institute Checklists
• Reduces approval steps
• Reinforces the basics
• Improves handoffs
• Fosters accountability

70. The People
The Power of Checklists
In just 18 months, a simple 5-step checklist at
Johns Hopkins saved 1,500 lives and nearly $200
million.

71. The People
WHO Pilot Program; 8 hospitals
› Major complications down 36%
› Deaths down 47%
› Infections down ~50%
› Patients returning to operating room down ~25%
The Power of Checklists

72. The People
Do Nothing Useless
• Excessive approvals
• Redundant processes
• Bad handoffs
• Rework due to bad input or
processes
• Wasteful forms
• Unused data
• Lengthy documents
• Useless meetings
There’s nothing people hate worse than wasting their time

73. The People
• Shape behavior, don’t grade it (beware of audits)
• “Nobody ever grew taller by being measured.”
~Professor Philip Grammage
• Some need more coaching than others
Be a Coach, Not an Umpire

74. The People
• Is middle management on board?
• Are they acting in line with your desired culture?
Watch for Jell-O

75. The People
Align People with Their Strengths
“Never try to
teach a pig to sing.
It wastes your
time and annoys
the pig.”
- Robert Heinlein

76. The People
• Retention of top employees is vital
• Offer incentives and recognition
• Do they like their direct supervisor?
Re-Recruit Good People
“An ‘ability to smell fear’ is a quality
I’ve never seen listed on a resume before.”

77. The People
• Identity instills pride
• Consider branding your initiative
• Make people feel “part of the club”
Brand It

78. The People
“A soldier will fight
long and hard
for a bit of
colored ribbon.”
~ Napoleon
Build a Wall
A wall of success or other public
forum to recognize successes

79. The People
• Discover what barriers prevent people from collaborating
effectively
› Inadequate tools, poor working space, policies that
disrupt progress, lack of training, culture gaps, etc.
• Remove said barriers!
Tear Down a Wall

80. The People
• Test the change on a small scale
• Don’t be the ship’s captain who’s veering off course but is expecting
the lighthouse to move.
“The Pessimist complains about
the wind.
The Optimist expects it to change.
The Leader adjusts the sails.”
~ John Maxwell
Don’t be Afraid to Change Course

81. The People
Get/Keep them Involved
• Collaborative standardization (Co-Creation)
• Influencers – one on one
• Small teams
• Middle Management
• Use the data!!!
• Process walk-through
• Checklists
• Branding
• Recognition
• Training, Support, & Tools
The People: Recap

82. 1. FOCUS: Focus on the problem and a few supporting goals
2. BABY STEPS: Avoid doing everything at once; aim for incremental steps.
3. CHAMPIONS: Pay attention to: Influencers, Domain Experts, & Core Team Leaders
4. SIMPLICITY: Keep messages simple, clear, and focused on the “Why”
5. WHO BENEFITS?: Ask for help and be transparent about who benefits
6. STICKY MESSAGES: Say something different and say it often
7. ENGAGEMENT: Co-Create; don’t dictate
8. THINK LEAN: Eliminate waste: Nobody likes wasting their time
9. DIVE IN!!!: Lead by example and just do it!
9 Key Takeaways

84. “The single biggest
problem in
communication is the
illusion that it has taken
place.”
~ George Bernard Shaw

85. For More Information
jmanas@jerrymanas.com
Twitter: @jerrymanas