Dealing with generational gap in a team as a project manager

Generation gap in a team can be viewed as God-sent or the source of a team’s curse. Last week I discussed about the common pitfalls that are abound to arise within a group especially if there is a wide generation gap between the members. I explored how ambition and experience can turn out to begative rather than a source of strength. Today I will focus from my experience, how these can be dealt with and what PMI knowledge should be appicable. Differences in any team are inevitable and are infact healthy. However, these can be detriemental if the differences threaten the unity of the team or poisons the working environment.

Open communication

A good project manager is able to spot these differences and stem a fallout long before they occur. The PM is able to guide the team so that they discover their differences and use these differences to build on to their relations, resulting in a constructive environment. A workplace that comprises of baby boomers(1946-1964), Generation Xers (1965-1976), Generation Yers(1977-1990) and Millenials (1991 – ), will require a project manager who promotes open communication between them, to bridge these gaps. It helps to build the strengths and skills of the team members at an individual levle but also improves cohesiveness. I have been in terms where each of these generational groups, think that the other generations are loosers or too loud or reserved. There has always been some nasty label attached to some team member who the others perceive to be difficult to work with. With open communication, such barriers can be easily overcome and the whole team can work progressively towards the strategic goals to be met by the project’s deliverables.

Mentorship

Project managers who aspire to have great team members should drive mentorship in their teams. And mentorship does not equate to parenting here. It simply means that the mentor, who is possibly older than the mentee(s), gets a privilege to share their experience whilst the mentee(s) get the privilege of quick learning. There is no one who is piggy-riding or bossing the other one around. The mentee should be encouraged to challenge status quo while the mentor should see an opportunity to learn new ways of doing things. It is here that outdated experience is dropped and new ones crafted.

Organization governance culture.

The project manager should always ensure that the organization’s governance culture is well known to the team. To resolve conflicts easily, the PM can resort to do this in privacy with each party or engage his superiors where there is need to do so. The team members should feel comfortable working in the team, knowing that they have a defined governance system to cater for their interests. In cases where the elderly employee has to report to the younger colleague, it is important to encourage the big icture thinking so that respect is maintained. Failure to do so, may lead to a team member feeling inadequate or unappreciated for their contributions.

Hurdles on the backdrop of Ethics and codes in the digital world

It has been quite the norm these days in the businees world, to want to stay ahead of the market population by digitizing services and products. For instance, most companies have launched apps to make it convenient for their customers to access their services. But what does this mean in the legal world? Who is responsible for ensuring that stakeholders are well-informed of the pending changes to be made long before they are implemented? What happens when digitization goes wrong? Who should be held accountable for misused data? It is not always a guarantee that digitization of services and products leads to success contrary to what is wildly believed by the leadership of most companies. Infact, it is reported that most digitization projects end up being discarded in their initial phases due to poor feasibility studies, change in market trends or moral and ethical issues. More often than anticipated, it leads to wasted time, resources and unmet expectations, unless the project was intended for research purposes.

This failure is not entirely to be blamed on the management of an organization but can sometimes be attributed to unobserved morals and poor ethical culture in a company or during the development and management cycle of the product. Market insecurity and failure to follow project management ethical guidelines are some of the reasons why businesses end up costing millions of dollars in lawsuits. It is quite normal that companies spend a fortune to implement a technology and learn how to use it, but later learn that it needs adjustments and even more supporting technology. The end users may not as well have been informed what the collected data is used for, which in some cases may be sold to third party companies without the clients’ consent. This causes mistrust in the public domain and the company looses integrity. This has been witnessed in many occassions, when opinion poll companies give misleading information to influence public opinion.

When there is no transparency and good communication between the team, then the project manager takes a fair share of the blame of their incapacity to instill confidence in the profession. The project management community advocates for responsibility, respect, fairness and honesty as the cores of the foundation. By willingly not informing the program and portfolio managers or the whole team of the actual hurdles that the project may face, then the ethics are compromised. This leads to products that are do not really meet the companys’ strategic goals and objectives and ends up being a costly affair, when later sued by customers or withdrawal of sponsorship.

A recent case study has been the sanction of facebook by US parliament after it was exposed that users’ data were compromised and shared with third party companies. Definitely, this could not have gone undetected for a company of Facebook statue unless there was compromise on the security and integrity of the users’ data. What followed was a massive panic in the market, which led to drop in their shares at NYSE. It led to legal suits which forced them to adjust the company’s approach to data collection, storage, management and usage. Such blunders may be fatal especially for startups which may not have the financial muscle to sustain legal battles and recover their reputation. It is therefore extremely important that PMs observe the code of ethics at any level of product development cycle as it not only safe guards the company but also help them have untainted reputation with a solid integrity.

Depending on the business industry, digitization should be viewed as a continous journey that does not end with project completion but rather follows the product cycle. To realize it’s value benefits, it should be understood to be a journey rather than an event. This can be realized if besides proper budgeting, there is ethical management of projects, programs and portfolios within an organization.