Perspectives - Succeeding fiercely
Inaction on discrimination against women must not be tolerated, says Anita Phagura. Stop trying to fix women and instead change the status quo.
Anita Phagura is a coach who enables her project management clients to step up as diverse leaders.
If you’re a woman working in projects, then most likely you’ve faced prejudices, biases or discrimination related to your identity. In 2019, I surveyed 100 women in projects, who nearly all said that they had experienced this due to their gender, sexuality, age, race, disability or another aspect – or often a combination. They most often felt like they weren’t being heard or taken seriously and that they didn’t have fair access to opportunities.
We’ve also seen the outcomes of the pandemic response disproportionately adversely impact on women, especially disabled women, mothers, single mothers, pregnant women, young women, Black women, Asian women and women from minority ethnic backgrounds (see the Fawcett Society’s #MakeWomenVisible). While many companies have made pledges on gender and race inequalities, the inaction is no longer palatable for many. The issues are out in the open and many more people are not willing to continue to accept the status quo.
It is abundantly clear that there are systemic and cultural issues within our project environments that need to be addressed to allow women and those who feel ‘different’ or are under‑represented to flourish. This is an important issue, and the focus shouldn’t be on ‘fixing’ women or making misfits ‘fit’ – which, dangerously, is where the narrative can often fall.
However, we also can’t wait for that to happen to flourish and succeed within these spaces; knowing that our journey is harder means we can be more proactive in taking control of our career and recognising the skills beyond doing a good job.
The Fierce Project Management Model was developed in direct response to giving women in projects an alternative way of approaching their careers, against the backdrop of cultures that do not always work for us. Although it was developed with women in mind, actually it works for anyone who has felt different because of their identity and/or because of their leadership style.
The Fierce Project Management Model helps project leaders to create career success on their own terms, including supporting them to navigate external barriers, as well as overcome any self‑made obstacles (unsurprisingly, we internalise those external barriers). The Fierce Project Management Model is built on four cornerstone skills:
- Amplify your message: being heard demonstrates your expertise and your interests.
- Ally‑building: building your network of support and influence.
- Assertive and compassionate boundaries: establishing clear boundaries for wellbeing.
- Authentic leadership: leading in line with your values.
If you find yourself in an environment that is toxic, remember that you have choices, even if they aren’t immediately obvious. Often these cultures can invalidate our sense of self‑worth, contributing to mental health challenges, stress and burnout, and the rise of feeling like an ‘imposter’, which can then hold us back from fulfilling our potential even after we’ve left. Often the virtue of resilience is touted as the antidote, again putting the impetus of change on the women in the environment rather than on meaningful culture change.
While you are in these environments, it is even more important for your wellbeing to practise the cornerstones above – find your allies to support you (as well as to explore alternative opportunities), amplify your message with their support to be heard, assert your boundaries to protect your own energies and work/life balance, and continue to live and lead with your values.
We all have a role to play for culture change (but it doesn’t need to be solely our responsibility either) – we know it is most effective top‑down, when we have leadership who genuinely believe in and role model the change required. But it is also possible to create change bottom‑up through our own actions and role modelling of inclusive leadership.
For instance, if you witness behaviours that diminish someone, then do your best to stand with them and let them know they are not alone, as well as calling out the inappropriate behaviour. You can go further by challenging the systems and advocating for and creating change that removes barriers and obstacles that make some people’s journey harder than others.
The smart work revolution
The pandemic shows how fast the workplace can change, writes Jo Owen. Now we must determine other radical changes to accelerate
COVID‑19 has caused huge hardship, but it may be the best thing to have happened to leadership and management for 200 years. The pandemic revealed three pieces of good news about leadership and management. First, people and organisations can change faster than we ever thought possible. Second, managing smart and hybrid teams is far harder than managing a team in the office. And third, the end of command and control is, finally, coming closer
In the first 20 years of the century, we fooled ourselves into thinking we were changing faster than ever as a result of the digital revolution. Then the pandemic struck. Suddenly, the last 20 years looked like a walk in the park compared to the pace of change teams achieved as they switched to remote working overnight. In a crisis, we discovered just how fast we can move. Now the challenge for managers is to identify other assumptions that hold us back.
Managing smart and hybrid teams is far harder than managing a team in the office. It raises the bar for managers. You have to be far more purposeful and deliberate in all that you do. You have to communicate better, which often starts with listening better; you have to be clearer about setting goals and building buy‑in; you have to work out how to motivate your team even when you cannot see them. If you can manage a remote team, you can manage any team. Use this chance to build your skills and become an even better manager.
The end of command and control is getting nearer. The office is a mini‑paradise for control freak managers: they can see what everyone is doing, all the time. It is much harder to micromanage people you cannot see. On a remote team, you have to trust colleagues to do the right thing even when you cannot see them.
In the past, managers made things happen through people they controlled. Now you have to make things happen through people you do not control, or who do not want to be controlled. You have to make things happen through people in other departments and firms. And if you manage professionals, you manage people who do not want to be controlled: they probably think they can do it better than you can.
In the middle of the crisis, all the discussion is about how to make remote working work, how to redesign offices and how people will split their time between work and home. These are all important. But behind the noise of these debates, there is a deeper revolution stirring. Smart working forces all managers to raise their game. Those who rise to the challenge will succeed. This is your moment to shine.
Jo Owen’s new book, Smart Work: The Ultimate Handbook for Remote and Hybrid Teams, is published by Bloomsbury (£14.99)
How frames help us make better decisions
Kenneth Cukier explains why you need to embrace counterfactual thinking, cognitive foraging and diversity
Kenneth Cukier is a senior editor at The Economist. He is co‑author with Francis de Véricourt and Viktor Mayer‑Schönberger of Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil (WH Allen)
We make decisions every day, but we’re often told we’re not very good at it. Psychologists have documented countless ways that people fail to decide well, including confirmation bias, loss aversion and so on. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman warns of the wild variation in our decisions, or ‘noise’, that undermines our judgements. So troubling is this, that many people want to delegate decision‑making to algorithms and AI.
However, both AI proponents and behavioural economists are victims of their own narrow view of the situation. By focusing on flaws in the act of deciding, they lose sight of humans’ amazing cognitive abilities in how we size up the decisions in the first place. A special human ability takes place before the actual choice: our strengths of coming up with alternative options. Instead of focusing on where people get it wrong, we should celebrate, and improve, where we get it right.
Humans are framers: our minds work with mental models, or representations of reality, that we can manipulate. Framing is something we do all the time, though we’re rarely conscious of it. However, we can turn this basic feature of cognition into a powerful tool to elicit better options than the obvious, conventional ones. These mental models let us envision things for which only scarce data exist or that are simply impossible to observe. They help us fill in the blanks and extrapolate beyond the situation we are in. It empowers us to greatly improve our menu of options. Machines can’t do that.
Hence, the ability of people to create better outcomes for themselves is not focused where it should be. Instead of worrying about doing a better job at making the final decision, we need to improve how we broaden the range of options from which to choose. It is something we can practise and get better at. Framing is a cognitive muscle we all possess. If humanity is to tackle its toughest societal challenges, we need to frame issues well or reframe them all together, eliciting the best new choices, not just reducing the bias and noise around the narrow decisions before us.
So how can we tap the power of framing? Three strategies stand out: counterfactual thinking, cognitive foraging and embracing diversity. Counterfactual thinking is considering the world as it could be, not as it is. It’s asking ‘what if’ questions, not willy‑nilly but in a thoughtfully structured way. Mental models let us imagine alternatives in a way AI and algorithms cannot. We train our ability when we read novels, become absorbed in a movie and move through a video game. It is a cognitive superpower. Data is always retrospective; imagination is prospective. Counterfactual thinking is a precursor for action, a vital part of our preparation to make decisions.
Cognitive foraging is the act of deliberately and actively seeking out different sorts of information from far outside our normal fare, simply because knowing something about the topic is enriching. Doing this exposes us to a wide variety of frames and experiences that we might someday find useful when we want to adapt a frame to given circumstances or embrace a new frame. The benefits are not just for information breadth, but social variety too. Research shows that executives with ties from outside their normal circle enjoy more seniority, faster promotions, higher salaries, heftier raises and the like.
Embracing diversity is not about virtue signalling – it’s about hard‑nosed pragmatism. Groups and organisations that invite variation and difference into their activities perform better than those that don’t. It’s like a roulette wheel – you have a better chance to win by spreading your bets – or like capitalism, where the natural experiment of many ideas can find optimal solutions. Exploring numerous ideas for what may work is better than relying on just one or two strategies. It doesn’t happen by itself and it’s not easy: diversity causes friction. But it can be channelled in a healthy way.
There is an imperative to become better framers. The world suffers from a narrowing of ideas in the public sphere, while creative friction, pluralism and the freedom to frame are ebbing. This puts the onus on leaders to create an environment where people feel able to frame the world as their mind’s eye sees it. Good framing leads to more options, better decisions and winning outcomes. It is the way we innovate and addresses our most pressing challenges – if we are bold enough to take them on as framers.
Get recognised for making a real difference
Andrew Baldwin is head of public affairs at APM
The theme of this issue of Project is new ideas and concepts, which dovetails neatly with APM’s Think Differently – a week‑long event that brings fresh perspectives to topics like mental health and wellbeing, and how greater diversity can enrich and benefit project teams.
APM has always been a broad church, appealing to project professionals from different backgrounds, sectors and communities. Former chief executive Debbie Dore put inclusivity and opening up professional project management, including chartered, at the heart of her leadership message, and with the appointment of new chief executive Adam Boddison, our aim is to continue with that good work.
New chief executive
Adam arrives from the National Association for Special Educational Needs (Nasen), which supports and champions those with all manner of needs, including behavioural, emotional and social difficulties, speech, language and communication, hearing impairment, visual impairment, multi‑sensory impairment, physical disability and neurodiverse conditions. He is no stranger to finding the best in people.
There are parallels with my own background, too. I joined APM from the professional body for psychology, where there was a strong focus on neurodiversity in the workplace. Knowing and building on people’s differing needs is a vital component of any job, particularly that of a project professional.
Taking a different approach
A 2017 report by the British Psychological Society highlighted that although workers with ADHD may have difficulty with time management, they are also far more likely to excel in terms of creativity. Similarly, those with autism may perform less well with social interaction and communication, but will perform better at innovative thinking and detail observation.
In her recent blog, ‘Neurodiversity in project management’, Jenny McLaughlin shows just why these different approaches can be so valuable in projects. Jenny, a diversity lead at Heathrow, is helping to foster a culture of openness that recognises the “awesomeness of having a wide range of neurodiverse project managers” and the benefits of approaching projects through different lenses, such as challenging assumptions and avoiding groupthink.
This is just one example of where APM and its members can help to make a real difference and ultimately create the right environment for projects to succeed. When we get it right, we see remarkable results.
Everything has a PM angle
Our role is to champion the best that project management has to offer. I firmly believe that everything has a project management angle. APM’s brilliant communications team continue to highlight examples of the benefits of projects to the economy, the environment and society at large. It really is a part of everyone’s daily lives, I’m just not sure the public realise it yet.
That was a problem I faced at the chartered body for psychologists. Issues around leadership, workplace behaviours and reactions, the so‑called human factors, seeped into so many news stories. And they are so important in successful project delivery as well.
Similarly, having worked for the chartered body for health and safety professionals, I see parallels in peoples’ reactions to projects that went wrong. In health and safety, the public only seemed to notice our work if something went catastrophically wrong. And on projects, too, the risk is to dwell only on the negatives, so let’s champion those projects that go well and learn from those that don
I want to hear from members about the brilliant work you do and how we can raise awareness. Member‑informed policy is a central component of a healthy public affairs function and will help us focus in on the issues we need to address.
This is an exciting time. New ways of thinking are becoming mainstream and norms are being challenged. To quote Jenny McLaughlin, we should take this opportunity to embrace “the beauty of thinking differently and its gift to project management”.
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