Learning Solutions for Increased Project Performance

Welcome to Our January Issue

In this month’s issue, we’ll be focusing on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution. Negotiating and resolving conflict come into play throughout a project’s lifecycle, as project managers negotiate with vendors, collaborate with stakeholders, or resolve conflicts among team members. The ability to influence, bargain, and work out problems is of vital importance to a project manager, enabling them to smooth the way to cohesive and productive partnerships between all the parties working on the project.

Included in this issue:

• The Positive Aspects of Conflict
• Project Management Q&A
• Getting Ready to Negotiate
• Resource: Negotiation Strategy Worksheet
• Take the SIMPLE Approach to Problems
• What Not to Do When Receiving Bad News
• Reading Room: Negotiation and Conflict Resolution
• Better Negotiating Through Listening
• Checklist for a Successful Project Negotiation

Next Month’s Topic: Project Leadership

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pmPractitioner is published as a service to the project management community. Each issue provides practical project management solutions and tips adapted from a variety of business publications and resources.

The Positive Aspects of Conflict

Conflict most often occurs as a situation in which two or more parties believe that what each wants is incompatible with what the other wants. They may feel that negotiation is useless and that only negative feelings can result. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Through conflict, we can learn about ourselves, the project and what we lack in perspective. In a healthy project environment, creativity and positive risk taking can grow out of conflict, if it is managed effectively.

If we begin to think of conflict as a means to improve project relations and open up to new ideas, the positive aspects are many:

Positive Conflict Calls Attention to Existing Problems
It opens up issues of importance and, when approached correctly, can be a way of defusing or circumventing larger or more serious problems.

Positive Conflict Increases Energy
People become more attentive in a conflict situation. It can increase an individual’s involvement when an issue is of personal importance.

Positive Conflict Stimulates Interest
When there is a general feeling of wanting to resolve an issue, people will be more open to communication and make an extra effort to find new and creative ways to resolve the conflict agreeably.

Positive Conflict Builds Cohesiveness
Through successful conclusion of a conflict, a greater feeling of identity can grow within the project team. Pent-up emotions, stress and anxiety are released and motivation is increased.

Positive Conflict Helps Individual Growth
Self-confidence, increased creativity and the ability to apply learning to future situations are all positive by-products of successful conflict resolution.

Adapted from Creating Unity Through Conflict, Action for Results, Inc., 2005

Project Management Q&A

Test your project management knowledge with these questions or use them as an exercise to help prepare for your PMP certification exam.

1. Which of the following is the best example of the types of activities undertaken as part of the Monitor & Control Project Work process?

2. A form of planning where the work to be accomplished in the near term is planned in detail, and where future work is planned at a higher level of the WBS, is known as: 

Answers appear at the end of the newsletter.

Getting Ready to Negotiate

When facing a negotiation, it can be helpful to prepare for it by creating a structured analytical framework. The following method is recommended for complex or high-impact negotiations. Allow plenty of time for this process. As you go through the analysis steps, be sure you thoroughly understand your own strengths and weaknesses at each stage.

Step 1: Define the issues and goals. Analyze the conflict situation from your own point of view. Which issues are major ones for you and which are minor?

Step 2: Assemble the issues, and define the agenda. List all issues in the order of their importance.

Step 3: Analyze the other party. Researching the other side is vital to planning a good strategy.

Step 4: Define the underlying interests. To define the interests and needs that underlie the issues you specified, remember the following “why” questions: Why do you want this item or goal? Why is it important to you?

Step 5: Consult with others. Unless this is a simple negotiation, other people will probably be involved. For example, if you are negotiating for a project team member’s time, their functional manager will likely need to be consulted.

Step 6: Set goals for the process and outcome. Be sure you have a clear picture of your preferred schedule, site (location), time frame, who will be involved and what will happen if negotiations fail.

Step 7: Identify your own limits. It is very important to know these. They will arise from having a clear picture of your goals and their priorities, your bargaining range points, and your alternatives.

Step 8: Develop supporting arguments. Once you know your goals and preferences, think about how best to provide supporting arguments for those goals. You will have accumulated many of these during your research.

Adapted from Mastering Business Negotiation, Roy J. Lewicki and Alexander Hiam, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006

Resource: Negotiation Strategy Worksheet

A successful negotiation not only means getting what you want and need as a project manager, team member or stakeholder, it also means coming to an agreement that works for the other party as well. Before embarking on a negotiation session, use this worksheet to help you formulate what you must gain from the process, what you can live without, and what’s important to the other party.

Negotiation Worksheet

From Action for Results, Inc.

Take the SIMPLE Approach to Problems

Most traditional problem solving methods in the project environment focus on cause and effect. Instead of spending endless time searching for the cause of problems, wouldn’t it be refreshing to have a method that provides us with a fast-track route leading directly to a solution? One that focuses on solutions, not problems?

Try the SIMPLE approach developed by Paul Jackson and Mark McKergow. In essence, their method helps you to:

• Find what works, then do more of it.
• Stop doing what’s not working, then do something different.

The next time your project is faced with a problem solving challenge, let the SIMPLE approach guide your resolution strategy:

• Solutions not problems. Avoid problem talk.  Encourage solution talk.
• In between the action is the interaction. Look at what’s happening in between the people involved, not with the people themselves.  Many times, your solutions lie here.
• Make use of what’s there. Many times, your solution is directly in front of you. You just don’t see it. How about researching historical records and/or lessons learned?
• Possibilities: past, present and future. Avoid focusing on failures of the past and uncertainties of the future. Instead, create a vision of how things can be different (better) and work towards realizing that vision.
• Language, simply said. To help ensure effective communication, encourage all parties to use simpler, more precise language and words.  Avoid impressive sounding nonsense. Big words and complicated terms impede progress.
• Every case is different. View each problem as a fresh, new challenge. Find the solution that fits the particular problem you are looking to avoid or solve.

Adapted from The Solutions Focus, Paul Jackson and Mark McKergow, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2007

What Not to Do When Receiving Bad News

Projects by nature are unpredictable and have risks associated with them. Whether you’re a sponsor, senior executive or project manager, your job is to help people feel comfortable about escalating issues and getting decisions in a timely fashion so that the best outcomes can be achieved.

Here’s what not to do when you receive unwanted news:

• Don’t let your emotions control you. Respond, don’t react.
• Listen actively – seek to understand.
• Don’t make an example of the person who delivers it or who made the mistake.
• Don’t hold a grudge: Making a mistake does not equal being a mistake.
• Don’t just tell people what not to do. Tell them what they’re supposed to do and why.
• Don’t forget to acknowledge when they are right and you have made the wrong assumptions.
• Be open to exploring options and ways to minimize impact on project outcomes.
• Take ownership for engaging in cross-functional problem resolution (not just looking after your own function or unit).

Adapted from Sponsoring Project Results, Action for Results, Inc., 2007

Reading Room: Negotiation and Conflict Resolution

Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People, G. Richard Shell, Penguin, 2006

Coward’s Guide to Conflict: Empowering Solutions for Those Who Would Rather Run Than Fight, Tim Ursiny, Sourcebooks, Inc., 2003

Crucial Confrontations: Tools for talking about broken promises, violated expectations, and bad behavior, Kerry Patterson, McGraw-Hill, 2004

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, William L. Ury, Roger Fisher and Bruce Patton, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992

Harvard Business Essentials Guide to Negotiation, Harvard Business School Press, 2003

How To Reduce Workplace Conflict And Stress: How Leaders And Their Employees Can Protect Their Sanity And Productivity From Tension And Turf Wars, Anna Maravelas, Career Press, 2005

Better Negotiating Through Listening

It can be easy in the midst of negotiating to become so concentrated on our own goals that we do not listen as carefully as we should to the other party. However, the biggest source of mistakes in negotiations is failing to listen.

When you do not listen carefully, you are likely to:

• Misinterpret what the other side said.
• Be unable to confirm or verify what was said.
• Misunderstand the other side’s question.
• Make improper assumptions.
• Be unable to respond appropriately.
• Select the wrong strategies or tactics to advance the negotiation.

When you listen actively, you are thinking, analyzing and considering the other’s comments or questions. You are focused, energized and attuned to the spoken nuances that may reveal attitudes or shed light on the other person’s needs and concerns, creating a better chance for a win-win resolution.

Adapted from Negotiating for Business Results, Judith E. Fisher, McGraw Hill, 1993

Checklist for a Successful Project Agreement

When you are involved with negotiations within your organization, remember that you and your colleagues are on the same side. Just because there is internal competition between functions for resources, you should not lose focus of the fact that you are all there to define how to make the best choices for the business as a whole.

Ask yourself these questions to determine if you have completed a successful negotiation:

• Will the outcome satisfy mutual interests?
• Have the specific details been defined, documented and agreed upon?
• Does the agreement address the needs of all parties?
• Have you considered how the relationship will work (how you will work together)?
• Are there specific deliverables with deadlines and have they been defined with sufficient detail (quantities, quality criteria, delivery dates, payment schedules, etc.)?
• Have expectations by all involved been made explicit?
• Are the benefits to all parties clear and measurable?
• Does this agreement affect any other work/deliverables or agreements already in place for the project or other internal projects?
• Is it clear who will have the final authority based on implications from any changes in scope, schedule or budget?
 
• Have the necessary approvals been obtained?
• How will you know that the agreement is working?

Adapted from Project Management Foundation Series: Stakeholder Management, Action for Results, Inc., 2009

Answers to January Project Management Q&A

1. (a) is correct.

During Monitor & Control, the ‘assess whether corrective or preventive actions are required’ activity is part of the ‘control’ aspect of Monitor & Control the project work.

Answer (d) is incorrect.  The word ‘monitored’ is placed in this answer as a distracter.  Sequencing of work activities (monitored or not) takes place during the Sequence Activities process.

[Monitoring & Controlling] PMBOK® Guide 4th Edition, P. 89

2. (c) is correct.

Rolling wave planning is a form of progressive elaboration. Answer (A) may seem correct as planning is iterative, but there is no such term in PMBOK® Guide.

[Planning] PMBOK Guide 4th Edition, p. 135