Confirmation bias is a common tendency involving disregarding or discounting evidence that contradicts our beliefs or viewpoints. To avoid others imposing their biases on us, it's crucial to understand their beliefs and views:

• Do we have the same background, such as gender, race, education, or age? 
• Do we have prior errors known to others that they expect us to repeat the same mistakes? 
• Do we value the same beliefs as them as ideas, race, and political affiliation? 
• Do I agree with others? 
• ​Is the topic within comfortable zone of the audience? 

If the answer is no, we must proceed cautiously and ensure we set up the conversation creatively.

Wrike is a project management tool used in our PMO to drive process governance, display progress, manage the team's workload, and guide workflow operations. Let's discuss the best practices for using it.

Before creating the project, we need some preparation as follows: 
1. Create a project folder in Quip using the PMO template.
2. Create the project summary page by collecting the following information:

• Gather requirements from stakeholders. If the project is related to an initiative or product, translate the requirements to OKR and product features.
• Define the scope of the project.
• Define the success criteria.

3. Create the Project Onboarding document and review the project execution plan with the PMO leader.
4. Create the project plan in Wrike:

• Create a new workspace and a new project.
• Add the Work Breakdown Structure.
• Define Project Activities - What activities must be performed to create the project deliverables?
• Estimate the timelines or plan backward to deliver at a given timeline.
• Assign resources to the Project activities.
• Add Tasks: Per project standardization, placeholders should be created for all the significant tasks in the D2P process (refer to the D2P blueprint). Please don't add new tasks only for risks or special occasions because we use the task turndown rate to track project delivery progress.

5. Review your plan before publishing and consult significant changes with the PMO Leader for review.
6. If you plan to run the project in Agile (or using the Agile tool where the ticket system is well integrated) 

• Create a Sprint folder with Active, Completed, and Backlog folders.
• Split tasks into logical and doable Sprints.

7. Task Update:

• Before closing each task (marking it as completed), add the project details and attach the related documents.
• For meetings, refer to where the meeting minutes/recordings and presentation are.
• For document creation, add the links to the documents.
• For communication with decisions, record the email record.
• For dev issues, add radar tickets and necessary tech information.
• Follow up with all overdue tasks in your daily standup meeting, and clean up weekly to ensure there are no overdue tasks and everything runs smoothly within the week.
• Create a report listing overdue projects.
• If the task change impacts the project or sprint plan, seek feedback from the PMO Leader before closing tasks/sprints and, if needed, make changes to the subsequent Sprint and tasks to include the required changes. The goal should be to deliver success defined and agreed upon with the stakeholders.

8. Status Meeting:

• Avoid directly jumping into each task during the status meeting and requesting updates. Instead:
• Show the project plan first so the team knows where they are from the overall project plan perspective and emphasize the project objectives/goals.
• Review what has been done and what is coming soon (all tasks will be started and due next week).
• Keep annotating the task as you get updates to track the conversation.
• Update the task status as soon as the team gets started.
• Avoid changing due dates to shift the project schedule. Instead, add notes to the project to show the delay. If there is a date change, add notes to explain the reason for future reference.
• Copy the meeting minute email to the status meeting task before closing.

In summary, Wrike is a tool to keep project plans structured with easy updates. However, it lacks collaborative reporting and content sharing offered by document systems like Quip. Using it along with other tools is necessary. ​

Change managers will give people options to create a sense of control in decision-making. However, the choice should be limited to avoid decision fatigue which is "a psychological phenomenon showing the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making. " (Wikipedia). 
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The change management strategy needs to keep the option simple for easy pick, offer limited choices, such as two or no more than three options. In addition, we have to limit the decision-making requests in a short period because it can also cause decision fatigue. ​​Change management communication has to be comprehensive, empathetic, and authentic. 

• Comprehensive means sharing the discussion context with the audience and avoiding making assumptions. The change manager can ask a question like "What do you think about this change?" to get feedback from the audience. 
• Empathetic needs the communicator to talk in the audience's language and directly address the audience's needs like "How will it impact me? " or "How will it affect my team?" 
• Authentic demands transparency and openness when sharing ideas and opinions.

It is also crucial for change agents to come into a change management communication with a positive, focused, flexible, organized, and proactive attitude. No one like to make changes to them.Therefore, making the change with them, talking about "How can we change." instead of "How you can change."

Editor's Note: "The brutal fact is that about 70% of all change initiatives fail." (From Cracking the Code of Change by Nitin Nohria and Michael Beer, HBR 2000; "Most Change Initiatives Fail—But They Don't Have To," D. Leonard and C. Coltea, Gallup, 2013) The failure could be losing focus, the change happened incorrectly, or changes don't happen at all.

A project newsletter is an excellent opportunity to engage project stakeholders. Direct inbox access is precious, allowing us to gain attention, obtain support, and even call for action. 

An effective newsletter's content needs to be accurate and current. More importantly, the message demands relevance, engaging, and conciseness.

Relevant means there is a sound reason for your audience to read the content. With hundreds of emails in everyone's inboxes, the key is to show that the information is relevant and valuable to them. 

Engaging means driving actions. Think about what you want your audience to do after the read, and then make the call-outs loud and clear. 

Concise A crisp message always works better because brief, scannable content that is direct to the point shows your respect for others' time. Before sending it out, check the following details: 

• All the links are correct, especially email links.  
• The images are correctly loaded. 
• The newsletter can be read both in dark or light screen mode. ​

​All in all, use the newsletter to build a supportive community for successful project execution. ​