Cultivator Profile: Building Collaborative Culture through Project Management
Meet Stefanie
Stefanie Hausner likes a challenge. Alongside her work as a Senior Designer on the Marketing Team at an investment management firm, Stefanie has made a habit of driving community-focused change; founding and leading the Women’s ERG to taking initiative across DE&I and culture change efforts within the organization. So, when the Chief Marketing Officer noticed that the department was consistently behind on delivering on projects, it wasn’t surprising that they tapped Stefanie for a fresh approach. While in the past, peer-to-peer efforts to create solutions did not achieve the hoped-for impact, Stefanie was tasked with creating new solutions to help her team deliver in a more timely way, but the biggest aha moments were unexpectedly around culture change and helped the entire department move forward together.
Photo by Junior Ferreira
The Idea
Stefanie designed and marketed a project management challenge to the Marketing Team that supported them in adopting and utilizing Lytho, their project management software, to communicate more effectively and complete more of their projects on time. Within Q2, Stefanie set a goal to track all projects and raise their on-time completion rate from less than 40% to 60% (a more than 50% increase from their starting baseline).
Enter the “2Q’22 Lytho Challenge,” a team-wide, focused challenge that was time-limited (for Q2), with clear, achievable goals. By setting ambitious but manageable goals and timelines, Stefanie wanted to create momentum and help the team build habits, while limiting overwhelm.
The Challenge
The Marketing department is made up of about six different sub-department groups, and the existing project management software had varying levels of adoption across those groups. Some teams and individuals used it often and well, while other groups weren’t clear on how they might use it or why.
The Outcome
Before this initiative, the Marketing department completed less than 40% of its projects on time. By the end of the quarter, that number had increased to 67%, a massive shift in just three months! What’s more, the challenge enabled the team to find the blockers that were frequently delaying project completion so they could create ongoing solutions and automation.
One unexpected impact happened when Stefanie reached out to a colleague who had been resistant to the change and they said that as a result of the challenge, “I really understand how what I do impacts my teammates.” But it wasn’t just the resistant folks who were impacted! Those who were already producing a lot on the team also felt a positive impact on their work. Many of their existing Lytho superusers were able to reduce project churn and move through blockers more smoothly as a result of this focused challenge. The 2Q’22 Lytho Challenge not only elevated those who were struggling but gave more opportunity to those who were already high performers.
Further, as a department, they were able to develop more agency in keeping each other accountable, and a similar vocabulary around project management and goal setting. And they’re just getting started! Stefanie hopes they will continue tracking things consistently and plans to leverage her team’s new habits and workflows to monitor where things are getting delayed as they move through project work on an ongoing basis. Overall, the project had a massive impact for one-quarter of change!
An often overlooked step in the Cultivator Journey is seeking to understand the problem or challenge you’re facing before you try to address it. Stefanie did just that by engaging in conversations with colleagues and running reports in the team’s Project Management software.
Stefanie was inspired by the change management possibilities of not just helping her larger team adopt and use existing project management software, but creating new ways of working together and growing as a community to be more impactful in their work.
What I love most about this story is how something that started as a Project Management project turned into a culture change initiative that improved not just outcomes, but the ways a large department worked together. In just three months they laid the foundation of a departmental identity that will continue to impact how they view their work.
What Worked?
What gets measured, gets managed: Prior to this challenge, the Marketing team knew it wasn’t staying on track with most projects, but it wasn’t until Stefanie did some digging that they were able to quantify this. Having a starting point allowed them to take action to improve those numbers and identify common blockers and challenges faced by the team.
Get leadership buy-in: Stefanie credits the support of team leaders in making this challenge a success. By communicating the importance of this initiative, they were able to start from a more solid place. “With any change you’re trying to foster, it’s really crucial to have (leadership) buy-in to foster adoption.” You can learn more about that here.
Be Transparent: Throughout the challenge, Stefanie sent her team weekly updates to show how they were progressing towards their goal. By keeping the team in the know, she helped everyone stay engaged and accountable to their teammates on a weekly basis.
Lead with Listening: Like any good Cultivator, Stefanie began by listening, taking the time to speak with her colleagues and find out what their pain points were, the reality of their work, and their existing processes. With this lens, she wasn't a person giving her team an additional project to work on, but a caring collaborator, helping each team solve the challenges that got in the way of their goals.
Stefanie’s Advice for Cultivators
Do the prep work you need to succeed on the backend: Stefanie met with her colleagues before the challenge began to get their feedback on potential challenges that may come up. Because of this, she tailored her training initiatives and rollouts to best support the goals she had set and ensure that her team had the tools they needed to succeed.
Leverage your skills: Stefanie’s background in graphic design and marketing helped her to approach this project in a unique way, creating a branded challenge, honing an elevator pitch, and ensuring that the initiative was a clear and recognizable entity for her colleagues. She says, “Good design is 99% invisible…there’s a lot of work that goes into making something feel effortless…and that’s what I wanted to deliver to my team.”
Point to your values: When trying to build adoption or find an executive sponsor, connect your change initiative to your company’s shared values to find common ground. Stefanie pointed to her company’s drive to deliver great service to their clients to help create support for this initiative, explaining how collaboration and better workflows would allow for more timely and efficient work outcomes for clients.
De-stigmatize falling behind: Sometimes things don’t go as planned…this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Stefanie hopes that experiments like this can allow individuals and teams to get curious about what happened and creative about solutions rather than assigning blame. We call this Celebrating a Pivot.
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