By Andrea Ames | Fellow and Alyson Riley | Senior Member
In our roles as strategic information architects (IAs), we’ve both had some exceptional partnerships with project managers working on product content teams. We decided to explore the essence of those experiences to provide some insights and practical advice for IAs and project managers on a professional relationship that is seldom explored: that of the IA and the project manager.
We’re huge fans of Tom Rath’s book StrengthsFinder 2.0. We use this tool frequently to communicate with others about who we are, what we do, and what we don’t do; to understand the unique gifts of our colleagues; to maximize the capabilities of our teams; and to ensure that we stay focused on work that plays to our strengths. We’d like to use the StrengthsFinder framework here to discuss why effective partnerships between project managers and strategic IAs are so important to the success of teams and projects.
Let’s begin by taking a look at some very specific StrengthsFinder strengths. In addition to what you can find in StrengthsFinder resources in print and online, Rachel DuBois contributes an interesting classification scheme that will help in our analysis. DuBois groups the strengths into four categories: “strategic thinking, relationship building, influencing, and executing strengths, (although we prefer the term delivery to execution, sensitive as we are to implications). Here’s what we look like from a StrengthsFinder 2.0 + DuBois perspective (plus a quick-and-dirty description for each strength, for those of you who are new to this stuff):
- For both of us:
- Strategic thinking—Strategic: You “see patterns where others only see complexity.”
- Strategic thinking—Ideation: “You are fascinated by ideas … always looking for connections … [and] new perspective on familiar challenges.”
- Influencing—Activator: You believe that “Only action can make things happen.”
- For Alyson:
- Strategic thinking—Input: “The world is exciting precisely because of its infinite variety and complexity.”
- Influencing—Maximizer: “Excellence, not average, is your measure.”
- For Andrea:
- Strategic thinking—Futuristic: You “see in detail what the future might hold, and this detailed picture keeps pulling you forward, into tomorrow.”
- Influencing—Command: You “take charge … take a stance and ask [people] to move in a certain direction.”
As you can see, DuBois classifies most of our strengths as strategic-thinking strengths, although we each have strengths that she classifies as influencing strengths. Our top five strengths are very different from those you would typically see in those focused on execution (or delivery). For DuBois, execution-related strengths tend to include things like:
- Arranger: “You are a conductor … you enjoy managing all of the variables, aligning and realigning them until you are sure you have arranged them in the most productive configuration possible.”
- Consistency: “Balance is important to you.… people function best in an environment where the rules are clear and … where people know what is expected.”
- Deliberative: “You like to plan ahead so you can anticipate what might go wrong.”
- Responsibility: “When assigning new responsibilities, people look to you because they know it will get done.”
- Discipline: “Your world needs to be … ordered and planned. So you instinctively improve structure on your world.”
- Focus: Goals “serve as your compass, helping you determine priorities and make the necessary corrections to get back on course.”
Don’t those things all sound like the strengths of a great project manager? And does it come as any surprise that those are not our top strengths? And where are we going with all of this?
We know that not every strategic IA looks exactly like us from a StrengthsFinder perspective, but we’re guessing we have some things in common—namely, that we’re stronger in the vision stuff but weaker on the management stuff. One of the big ideas from StrengthsFinder 2.0—and the heart of our message in this column—is that “You cannot be anything you want to be—but you can be a lot more of who you already are” (page 9). We’ve been around long enough to realize that we’re happiest being who we are—and we’re not happy when we’re trying to be project managers. StrengthsFinder 2.0 is built on the idea that people are most happy and do their best work when they are doing things that align with their core strengths. Execution is not our core strength. On the contrary, we work best when we acknowledge that fact and shore up our weaknesses by pairing with people for whom execution is a core strength—the people who are happiest doing project management things and not doing the kind of stuff that we do.
Beautiful things happen when a strong, strategic IA pairs with a strong, execution-focused project manager. But don’t just take our word for it. We sat down with a handful of excellent IBM project managers—Colleen Enright, Katherine McMurtrey, and Tim Hogan—to talk about the good things that happen when we play to our strengths and shore up our weaknesses with strong IA and project management collaboration. Here’s what we discovered while reflecting together on successful IA-PM partnerships.
Project Managers Need IAs
Our colleagues in project management told us that IAs provide tremendous value to them and the projects they manage by ensuring that they and their teams stay focused on the highest value, highest priority areas of work. “As a project manager, you want to make sure that your team is working on the highest value content,” they told us. “Resources are limited and you can’t do everything.” Given this reality, the project managers observed that “the IA has knowledge about high value content” that the project manager can leverage in order to “move resources around and put the eggs in the right basket.” The project manager and the IA share the common goal of wanting “the best content possible for our users,” and the IA helps provide the big picture sense of strategic priorities. One project manager said, “Oftentimes, I’m so deep in the details—I’m looking at [our project management tools] and making sure that the team isn’t overburdened.… it’s difficult to pull out and look at things at a high level.” Others echoed this theme, noting that “I also don’t have the time—I know I should make the time, but I can’t invent time!—to see what other teams are doing. Am I consistent with everyone else?” IAs strengthen project managers by providing insight into strategic content best practices across teams and projects along with a higher-level view of client needs and the overall content architecture.
And this collaborative process can lighten the load. One project manager noted, “When you’re collaborating with someone who has a different perspective, it makes work more fun and interesting—we’re learning from each other all the time. We’re coming at the same problem with a different approach.” The rest of the group agreed: the “synergistic division of labor made us enjoy our jobs more.” In other words, “I hate [doing] this but I like [doing] that—and vice versa. What we like doing is in balance with our strengths and the likes or strengths of the other person.” (A little StrengthsFinder philosophy in action!)
IAs Need Project Managers
It should be no secret from our introduction that as strategic IAs we are highly dependent on an effective, symbiotic relationship with strong project managers. In our conversation, we defined strong project managers as those who excel at classic project management thinking and activities, but who do so strategically, thinking about work that matters relative to the end goal and ensuring that the right work gets the right focus. From an IA perspective, it’s extremely important that project managers “get it.” “They don’t have to do [information architecture],” said one of our interviewees, “but they have to understand it enough so that they can make decisions and prioritize things at a [more granular level of detail].” Effective project managers make good decisions about allocating and managing resources based on a strong understanding of strategy. They prioritize work based on a shared understanding of the big picture. This is crucial to IA success: a vision without an effective implementation plan is worthless (In true Activator style, Alyson has a sign hanging over her desk that says, “Ideas become real at the point of action.”)
Project managers support IAs (and their teams in general) by ensuring that strategy items make it into a plan and are assigned appropriate resources. We cannot overemphasize the importance of project management in managing “the plan”—their strong roots in the “here and now” and their savvy management of what it takes to achieve a vision are critical. Project managers also are critical in making sure that schedules allow enough time for IAs to bring the team into the conversation by planning and delivering education and evangelism prior to winning the team’s acceptance of the strategy (more on this topic in the next section).
IAs also need the support of project managers to ensure that the team that must implement the information architecture understands and buys into the strategic vision. “More than one person backing up the direction is helpful from a team management perspective,” our project managers told us. “It’s mutual reinforcement.” Often the PM goes beyond mutual reinforcement to actually helping the IA “sell” the vision more broadly to the team. For example, there are times when a strategic IA will propose a new vision that is very aggressive or involves something different from what has been done in the past. It is natural for some team members to think that it’s impossible to “get there from here,” to face such a proposition with concern or even fear. In those instances, a strong project manager will strengthen the IA’s vision by showing how it is indeed possible to get there from here. A good project manager who understands the vision can help calm fears and bring the discussion down to an implementation level that provides a degree of comfort to the team while addressing critical “doability” issues. This way the strategic IA can stay “in the clouds” and incite enthusiasm for a better vision for tomorrow, while the PM can be the balancing influence that ensures a strong implementation plan and instills comfort in (and thus buy-in from) the implementation team. The project managers we spoke with backed up this idea, citing instances such as “when you’re new to writing or new to a team, and you don’t trust the direction that someone is telling you to go—having both an IA and a [project manager] telling you that this is the direction, the right direction, and the reasons [behind it]” is highly effective. IAs and project managers can work together to tell the story behind the strategic vision; given their unique strengths, each will tell the story in a unique way, focusing on different aspects, and in so doing, win team support. The vision becomes a plan with the collaboration of the IA and project manager working together.
What IAs Should Know About Collaborating with Project Managers
When we asked our project managers about what IAs could do to better work with them, the response we got was both quick and loud. “The IA has to be able to sell it!” they said. In other words: “Give me the information I need, but do it with such confidence that I am convinced it’s the way to go. If I struggle with it, then I have a hard time convincing others that it’s the way to go. This is a skill set and an action. Be able to articulate a future vision well!” Others continued with this thread: “Show the passion and value—get others signed up and excited.” This means not “OK, now I have this plan and I need some resource to do it.” On the contrary, this means that the IA should envision their strategy work as “a collaborative process … team building and selling a vision.” Our project managers encouraged IAs to “treat people the right way” by bringing them along on the strategy journey, involving them in the data gathering, learning, synthesis, and ideation that is core to our work as IAs. The project managers asked for “true collaboration, not a handing-down-of-an-edict.” This means “building trust—building friendship—where learning can happen. Then you get more comfortable going into new places because you’re doing it with someone you trust.” One of the best ways that IAs can achieve this goal is to involve their project managers early on in the strategy and design process.
Take-Aways
For the project manager: We know you don’t like the strategy stuff (the project managers we talked to actually used the word “hate”)—but work with your IA to understand it. If your IA isn’t doing a good job selling the strategy, say so. Hold the IA accountable for an effective communication plan and for driving the vision and culture of the team. Sign up to support the IA by actively selling the vision.
For the IA: Avoid the temptation to throw your strategy over the wall and move on to the next project. Yes, you need to be focused on the future while your implementation team is focused on today’s delivery—but you need to bring the team along with you. Start to look at the hearts and minds of your team as a deliverable. Gauge your success by how well your team members can explain the strategy, how they fit into the big picture, and why their work is important. You know you’re doing a good job when your team members are passionate about the strategic value of their work and can articulate it in ways that resonate with those outside your team. Leverage your project manager in this process and encourage open, honest feedback about your work, communication, and leadership.
For all of us: The oracle at Delphi gave us some advice somewhere between the 6th and 4th centuries BC, and the ancient Greeks thought it was important enough to carve it into the stone of Apollo’s temple. “Know thyself”—once a wise and novel idea, and now a cliché. In his StrengthsFinder 2.0 book, Rath quotes Peter Drucker who said, “Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong.” Maybe we ought to revisit that ancient Greek cliché and find in it very freeing advice for those of us harried by the pace of the modern world. Figure out your strengths and focus your energies there. Be free to be who you are, and be confident and comfortable with who you’re not. Go be you and build partnerships with people who aren’t you. Value what you don’t have and be intentional about finding smart, fun people to help fill in your gaps. And consider taking the StrengthsFinder test—how often is the answer to one of life’s significant questions “go take an online quiz”?
References
DuBois, Rachel. Strengthsfinder’s 4 Categories of Strengths: A Creative Reworking. The Touchwood Project. www.touchwoodproject.com/strengthsfinder-4-categories/.
Rath, Tom, 2007. StrengthsFinder 2.0. Gallup.
