Project Management and
Event Planning
Dr. Dena Maloney
Vice President, CCC and Economic Development
Mr. Peter Bellas
Dean, Economic Development

The Art of Managing Partners!
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How to establish communications with your partner so you are more consistently on the same page regarding the project
How to create a shared vision and common understanding of the project goals and outcomes
How to define tasks and ensure there is common understanding of what will occur, and when
How to document decisions so that you and your partner can review them on a regular basis
How to effectively manage conflicts or differences in viewpoints during the course of the project
How to use templates for project planning that can serve as communication tools as well

The art of flawless events, every time!
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How to establish a vision for your event and the outcomes you hope to achieve
How to determine who needs to be involved and to what extent
How to work your plan backward
How to determine what steps need to be taken, and in what order
How to determine if any steps can be done in parallel with others
How to determine the critical steps
How to evaluate the progress of the project
How to determine when corrective action needs to be taken
How to set up a method for timely updates to the project team and others
For recurring projects, how to establish procedures and a project log so you don’t need to start from scratch the next time

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Tell us what you want to achieve today
What types of projects do you typically work on with a partner?
Give us an example of a project and a partner you have worked with in the past.

Workshop Part 1

• Balanced decision making
• Balanced power
• Both parties have particular expertise
• Shared goals
• One partner has more authority
• Unbalanced power
• Expertise is not equally shared
• Goals may not be shared

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Knowing the nature of the partnership is important – partnerships must have a purpose
Avoid partnerships “in name only” where neither party has targeted expertise, capacity or a clear goal
You need to know if it is worth pursuing
You need to discern value from the relationship
There must be at least one partner who is the “driving partner” with a compelling reason for the partnership

Analyzing Your Partnerships
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Identify a current or recent partnership
What are the shared goals?
Identify the expertise and capacity you bring to the partnership
Identify the expertise and capacity your partner brings to the partnership
Is there balanced decision-making?

Criteria for Effective Partnerships
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What qualities make for an effective partnership?
How do you assess for these in the formative stages of a partnership?
Are there clues to how well a partnership will fare?
What can you do if you sense the partnership potential is not good?

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• Develop a mutual understanding of the problem to be solved, the capacity and limitation of each partner, and the internal processes which will influence each partner’s ability to execute the partnership
Make decisions and assign responsibilities/deadlines
Establish norms you will be using during the partnership - if you do this in the beginning, you will avoid problems down the road.

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Communicate to ensure that there are no hidden barriers to moving forward
Don’t assume that reporting information is “communicating”
Don’t assume that, since no objections have been raised, you have support for the project from your partner

Stakeholders
• Who is served or impacted by the project?
• Who has a stake in the project’s success?
• Who needs to know about the project?
• Whose support is critical to the project?
Resources
• Identify project costs
• Resources include facilities, funding, networks, relationships
• Talk to others about innovative ways to expand resources for your project
Risks
• Identify threats to project success
• Assess the likelihood of those threats
• Strategize how to minimize those conditions which jeopardize the project’s success

• The hidden message behind the words
• Much like a marriage – words may mean different things
• It’s a “Venus/Mars” dynamic

What They Say
I don’t understand what you are saying.
Let’s get more data.
I will get back to you.
Let me talk it over with my staff.
We don’t want to study this to death.
Why don’t you think it over and get back to me.
We need to talk to other folks about alternatives.
That’s not how we have approached this in the past.
What They Really Mean
I don’t like what you are proposing.
I don’t want to do what you are proposing.
I don’t want to do what you are proposing.
I don’t want to do what you are proposing.
Just do what I am proposing.
Just do what I am proposing.
I don’t like where we are heading with this.
I don’t like where we are heading with this

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Be direct and probe to identify the real issues.
If you are stuck, circle back reviewing your shared goals and how to best achieve them.
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Understand the partner may truly need to: check with others build internal support get buy off from the leadership at her organization gather more data to support his case.
Sometimes you can agree in concept but can’t agree on the next steps - the devil is in the details!

Commmunicating with Your Partner
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Think of a time when you were working with a partner but the communications were “off ”
What clues did you have that you might be dealing with partner “code-speak”?
How did you deal with the communication challenges with your partner?

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Touching base and sharing information?
Providing official updates?
Solving a problem?
Making a decision?
All of the above?

 What information will you need at the meeting?
 Who will create the agenda and document the results?
 How does your partner like to process information and make decisions:
 Data Driven – send it in advance
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Emotion Driven – paint a picture
Immediate reaction or mull it over?
 Have a standard method of documenting meeting results and use it consistently throughout the process – it makes for a smoother project!

Desired Outcome
When first solidifying the project or building the relationship
When there is a difficult topic to discuss
Strategy
Face to face meeting
When tone and/or body language is important
When message is urgent
Face to face meeting
Telephone or face to face
Telephone or email/text
When you need to document the message Email, memo or text
If you exchange more than 2 emails on a topic, pick up the phone!

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Compose your subject line carefully.
Compose carefully – most people won’t read beyond the first screen.
Place requests up front in the email message.
Give an overview and the number your points for easy reading.
Design your messages for “high skim value” by using headings, lists, and breaking your message into chunks.

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Make up for the lack of nonverbal cues by using words such as please and thank you.
Humanize your messages by using the receiver’s name in the first sentence of your email.
If you want your message to be the first one read in the morning, don’t send it at 6:30 the night before. Write it
– then launch it early the next morning.
Always include your contact information in your signature block.
Pause before you send.

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• Negotiating with your partner on the desired outcomes, shared and individual responsibilities, how often and in what ways you will be communicating, and how you will divide the benefits/rewards of the partnership is a key process in forming the partnership.
The difference between “hard” and “soft” negotiations.
The difference between “positional” and “principled” negotiations.

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Participants are adversaries
Goal is victory.
Demand concessions as a condition of the relationship
Distrust others search for the single answer: the one you will accept
Try to win a contest of wills
Apply pressure

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• Participants are friends.
Goal is agreement.
Make concessions to cultivate the relationship.
Be soft on the people and the problem.
Trust others.
Change your position easily.
Make offers.
Search for the single answer: the one they will accept.
Insist on agreement.
Try to avoid contest of will.
Yield to pressure.

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Positional focuses on starting point and concessions.
Principled focuses on mutual interests.
Dangers of “Positions”.
 Positions tied to ego.
 Negotiators locked into positions.
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Less attention devoted to meeting the underlying concerns.
Agreement requires concession.
Contest of will.
Anger/resentment may result.

Four key steps
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Separate the people from the problem.
Focus on interests, not positions.
Generate a variety of possibilities before deciding what to do.
Insist that the result be based on some objective standard.
From “Getting to Yes” 1981

 Negotiations are not always a formal process.
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Negotiations are not necessarily adversarial:
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Reaching agreement on roles/responsibilities.
Reaching agreement on timelines.
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Reaching agreement on outcomes/benefits to each partner.
Reaching agreement on cost/contributions of each partner.
Negotiations should often focus on long term relationships rather than immediate results.

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• Think about a time you had to negotiate with a partner
What was the nature of the negotiation?
Was it a “Hard” or “Soft” negotiation?
Were your negotiating on positions or principles?
What was the outcome?
What would you do differently if you could?

Workshop Part 2

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The team should create the event plan
Start with “the end in mind” – visualize successful event and work backward
Identify the major tasks that must occur and then fill in the steps under those tasks
Some tasks can be done in parallel and some tasks must be done sequentially
Determine the “critical path” to project completion

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Use meeting management tools to identify the major tasks to be completed (brainstorming, small group discussion)
Group and sequence tasks to be done
Identify project risks and associated strategies - build those into the plan
Set timelines and milestones – build in time for addressing risks
Assign tasks to team members and establish meeting dates
Leave with a project plan – send it out and update it regularly
Use the project plan to communicate with the team members

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A task that is a gateway to progress on all other tasks that follow
Sometimes the task appears unrelated to other steps along the way
Some tasks must be done sequentially while others can be done in parallel – a critical path analysis reveals the relationship among the tasks
A task may not appear to be a critical step in the project until it is too late!

Some tasks must be done sequentially:
Project
Launch
1 2 3 4 5

Some tasks can be done in parallel:
1 2 3 4
Project
Launch
1 2 3 4
5
5

Some tasks are “critical” to other tasks:
1 2 3
5
Project
Launch
4
1 2 3 5
6
6
Step 4 must be done in order to move forward with Step 5 and 6

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2.

Date: May 21, 2010 - 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Task
Select Date and Time
Identify and Form Committee
Identify Location
Determine Guest List
Contact PIO for Publicity
Flyer
Dissemination of Information to Schools
Send Out Invitations
Accept RSVP's
Responsible Party
Maloney/Falconer
Maloney
Committee
Committee
Date Needed
Complete
Complete
Comments/Instruction
Date selected based on visibility of Saturn and
Moon
Tom Falconer, Joe Gerda, Jamie Milteer, Jasmine
Foster
Complete Carl A. Rasmussen Amphitheater
Status
Complete
Complete
Complete
Complete
Community members, Advisory Board members,
COC faculty, staff, Grades 4-6 Sulphur Springs SD
Students, high school students Complete
Maloney
McElwain
Maloney
N/A
N/A
Complete
Ads in magazines, article in CC Magazine May issues,Radio spot, press release, flyers to Sulphur
Springs SD, set meeting with PIO Complete
Complete PIO to design/use last year's design Complete
N/A
N/A
N/A
Send flyer to advisory committee and schools, along with Advisory Committee. Email blast to the campuses Complete
No invitations will be sent for this event
No reservations required for this event
N/A
N/A

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Throughout the project, make risk analysis and strategy development a standing item on team meeting agendas
Maintain and update the project budget
Keep Fiscal Services staff informed on changes to the budget
Send out updates frequently to project stakeholders

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Hold regular team meetings – use technology to assist in communications
Establish a standard format for project updates within the team - use this to keep everyone informed on project progress
Ensure you are communicating effectively with team members and stakeholders
Maintain an issues log and use team meetings to solve problems

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Closing out an event
Celebrating with the team
What should go into a event de-briefing?
Identifying unfinished items and how they will be handled