My name is Avil Beckford. And I started The One Problem podcast. We know there are tons of problems in the world, but we're tackling them one problem at a time. Most of the people who come on this podcast, I have some prior relationship with them. For my very special guest today, I interviewed her father-in-law for a project for the United Church of Canada. Then I interviewed him for a project that I was working on. He recommended I should talk to his daughter-in-law, Kes Morton. Now, Kes Morton is the CEO of Pisces Research Project Management, Inc. Over to you, Kes.
Kes Morton
Thanks, Avil. The problem I'd like to talk about today is collaboration. It's hard, it can frustrate, but we absolutely need it, and here's why. So, with collaboration, there are some really obvious success stories to collaboration. The shared load piece many people know about. Many hands make light work. It's less risky because it's a shared load. But then there's also better resources like equipment or talent, especially in today's economy, knowledge, funding. But there are some less obvious ones that I'd love to hit on as well here.
So, another couple of great reasons to collaborate. Diversity is really well known to increase ideation. And so if you have a broader team, you're going to have more diversity. Collaboration actually consistently results in higher impact work. If you care about your work, it's good to collaborate. And collaborating with stakeholders from the ideation phase can really build in your early adopters, making it far more likely that your product, idea, or policy will actually happen. A big thing that's important to me because I work a lot and I love my work, is that it's more fun to collaborate. And apart from being more fun, people who are having fun at work are actually more productive and do better work.
Now, I will say this all starts from the understanding that you actually believe in your work. If you're just phoning it in, then collaboration is not for you. So, in terms of how to collaborate, it's something that we've definitely thought a lot about at Pisces. And we've identified four key pieces which will go into a little detail on each. So one is a shared vision, the second is empathy, the third is communication. And the fourth is planning for change.
Kes Morton
So if we're talking about a shared vision, you really want to think about your project's purpose. And don't forget the silent goals. Or what I like to call the secret heart wish. So this is what we write, which is the project's purpose. But then there's actually why we're actually here today. And if you can get to that, then there's a lot of likelihood that your project will be more successful.
Kes Morton, How to Collaborate
Talk about a high level schedule and budget within your shared vision. Your success criteria, which looks different from different perspectives. And that kind of comes back to that secret heart wish. What is it you want out of this project?
If you can get that out in the open from the get go, it is so much easier. And then also you want to make sure you talk about assumptions and constraints. What will not work for you? If traveling to Europe every second week to meet face-to-face with your stakeholders will not work for you, get that out in the open first and figure out a way around it. And then also thinking about who your stakeholders are.
I'm going to make a shout out here to suggest that you assign a project manager to curate this vision. It's ideal to have a neutral party. They're beholden to the project. Not to either partner. But to the success of the project. And the second piece that we think about is empathy. A lot of times, you think that empathy is something you either have or don't have. But you can study it, you can learn it.
The important part about empathy with projects is thinking about knowing yourself. Because you can't have empathy if you don't understand where you're coming from. So what is it you want out of this?
Kes Morton
Why are you collaborating? What do you want to spend your time doing? What's fun for you? Spend some time thinking about what's fun for you. What are your strengths, what are your weaknesses? Spend some time thinking about that regarding your partner. If you can, if you have a trusting enough relationship, have that conversation with your partner. But don't go in cold. Do your homework on it. It's kind of rude to walk into a meeting. It's the same as walking into a job interview if you have read nothing about the company's experience. Do your homework on your partner.
Know what's important to them, read their strategic plan. Make sure that you are coming into that understanding where they're coming from, so you can build that empathy in your project. The third piece is communication. So defining early on who you're going to communicate with. How? Is it email, is it face-to-face, is it webinars?
How often do some people want to hear from you, like every two days? And some people like, please tell me once a month or if there's a problem. And what language are you going to use?
Have you read or watched?
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Kes Morton
I strongly recommend when your project manager comes in, document how you're planning to communicate, so there's no miscommunication about how you're going to communicate. And then finally planning for change. Projects change. So for example, right now we're seeing a lot of talent movement in the economy. Many people are switching jobs, making changes, which is affecting a lot of projects.
So now what? Who decides and how? It's a really important thing to get out early in your collaboration. Who can initiate that change? So if I lose a key personnel on my project, do I just get to hire someone new and introduce you to them? But maybe your relationship with those key personnel who can authorize the change. And how tolerant are we of change?
We don't want to go back and forth on which type of pen we're going to use for the project. If it's a 5% change to the budget, we probably want to think about it. We should probably have a conversation with our partners about that. But figuring that out early in the project about how to make those decisions is really valuable.
Kes Morton
So my last shout out is, of course, as a project manager, I think that project managers do a great job of this. It's important to get a neutral party on this project. It can be internal or external to curate your vision, to manage the change and facilitate the communication. Consider a kickoff meeting and make sure that you write all of this stuff down, because it really leads to a much better relationship if you've written it down to start. And back to you.
Avil Beckford
Thank you so much, Kes. This is an interesting way of looking at collaboration. And I like the four items that you talked about: shared vision, empathy, communication, and planning for change. Thank you so much.
Kes Morton
Thank you.
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