Ward Wired

As project managers we want our team members to have a commitment to deadlines, be optimistic about their work, stay focused on the goal, have a competitive mindset, stick to the budget, and please clients and management don’t we? And yet, these 6 behaviors, which most of us would readily agree are important, can precede a scandal, cause morale problems, and sink projects.

In an interesting blog post David Gelber, author of The 3 Power Values provides some pertinent examples of disastrous business results from being obsessive about these behaviors. They intrigued me so I decided to write about them in a project management context. See what you think.

Commitment  to deadlines—While this is at the core of successful project management, when the schedule becomes sacrosanct and we do everything in our power to meet it, we create more problems than their worth. A colleague of mine once called this phenomenon SOT, or “you know what the S means” On Time. The State of Maine was under a court order to launch a system to pay for the medical care of indigent residents. They were hopelessly late and launched without proper testing. The result? The system rejected more than a quarter of a million claims and the State’s CIO found another job running the local YMCA.

Excessive Optimism—Optimism can be a powerful influencer on projects. But when team members see things that are problematic but won’t report them for fear of being rebuked or ostracized, or worse, being accused of being negative, everyone pays a heavy toll. If everyone walks around with a happy face because they don’t want to tell you what’s wrong, you’ve got big problems. How do you know if your team members are being honest with you? NASA’s Challenger disaster was the direct result of members not speaking up with negative information.

Having a competitive mindset— We want our team members to be totally dedicated and committed to our projects because we want to deliver and be seen as successful project managers.  But when project managers raid other projects for members, or team members constantly try to outdo one another for your attention, the company, and the project will suffer.  A back-biting, “I got mine Jack” environment, where individuals see themselves in a zero-sum game and will do anything to “win” creates a toxic work environment. Just look at Wal-Mart’s problems with alleged bribes to Mexican officials so they could open stores faster than the competition. They’ll pay dearly in the court of public opinion if found guilty.

Staying focused on the goal— The end-game is important but too much focus can radically alter our good intentions. A friend of mine is working on a project where she is required to produce one deliverable a day. She said she would get that deliverable out no matter what because her job is riding on it. Do you think she’s going to provide the same level of quality she did to these deliverables before management issued the “edict.” Be careful what you ask for. You may get something completely different!

Sticking to a budget— Weird and unfortunate things happen when financial performance becomes an overriding objective. Take Boston’s “Big Dig,” a massive construction project that suffered stupendous cost overruns (460% over budget). Although I don’t think anyone knows for sure, we have to wonder if the rush to finish the work in one of the tunnels caused a 12 ton concrete slab to collapse on a female commuter. In my personal experience, rushing to finish a job is the leading cause of quality issues, regardless of what type of work you’re doing.

Wanting to please management—If we’re honest with ourselves, we like the idea of those around us working hard to earn our respect and a “pat on the back.” But we need to be careful not to create a culture in which those who please us the most get ahead. When team members try to please us they will produce estimates and agree to schedules that are unrealistic and cannot be met simply because they fear your rejection. I worked with one guy who consistently failed to deliver because he always said “yes” to any request. In fact, the very thing he feared the most, being criticized and demoted because he was afraid to say no,  actually  happened because he said yes and didn’t deliver.

I wrote this short article for the online project management newsletter Projects@Work. After all, if we can’t get the requirements right, we’re doomed from the start. Thought you’d find it of interest. If you’re already a member of Projects@Work just sign in; if not, you’ll be asked to join (it’s free). Just an fyi.

Your next project manager?

Are you a bully? Do you bully your teammates, vendors and weaker stakeholders? Most bullies don’t even know that they are one. Do you?

Well, to find out, see if the 13 statements below describe you. Be honest. No scoring is necessary. By the way, the assessment is excerpted from “The Hidden Cost of Executive Bullying” by Susan Annunzio, CEO of the Center for High Performance.

1. #1 You tend to label people who disagree with you as “naysayers,” “risk averse,” “incompetent” etc.
   #2 You are taken by surprise when things go wrong.
   #3 No one ever finds fault with your point of view.
   #4 You deliver results but people don’t enjoy working for you.
   #5 Your direct reports (project team members) rarely tell you bad news.
   #6 There is little disagreement or debate within your project team.
   #7 When your team does debate an issue, there are clear “winners” and “losers.”
   #8 You always believe you are the “smartest guy in the room.”
   #9 You believe you are better at almost everything than anyone else on your team.
   #10 You fall in love with an idea, position or deal.
   #11 You blame others when things go wrong.
   #12 You rarely admit mistakes or apologize.
   #13 You are an expert at “gotcha”-catching others in an error.

By the way, I recall on a trip to Australia that my colleague there said that “bullying” is actually against the law which I found very interesting. In fact, The Australian magazine The Age reported a while ago that Sally Berkeley, formerly a senior executive at Pacific Brands, filed a $9 million law suit alleging she was bullied by her superior. Not only is this type of behavior completely counterproductive, in Australia it comes with a heavy financial toll as well.

The "Unsinkable" Titanic

The Titanic sank 100 years ago on April 15, 2012. And yet, given the press, it seems like it sunk yesterday. For many years, speakers at project management gatherings have used this most unfortunate disaster to highlight lessons learned we could apply to our projects; and, a vast majority of these lessons had to do with risk management, and rightfully so.

That said, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve grown a bit weary reading these project lessons learned from this event; that is, until my boss, John Elsey, ESI’s president, sent me a link to a white paper on the subject authored by the head of R&D for the Forum Corporation, a sales and leadership training and consulting company. (Full disclosure: Forum is a wholly owned subsidiary of Informa PLC, ESI’s parent company; and, Forum’s head reports to John).

In her highly readable and engaging paper, Leadership Failures Sink Unsinkable Ship, Jocelyn R. Davis, weaves the harrowing tale of that fateful night with the three “leadership traps” that often “sink” a company in times of crisis: namely, lack of clarity, unity and agility. She provides powerful examples of how the Titanic’s leadership, and in particular its Captain, missed all three that night, resulting in the deaths of 2,223 people (only 706 survived).

Ticker tape parade in Lower Manhattan

But the one fact that I had never read about, and the one I believe was at the root of the fatal shipwreck which Ms Davis brings forward was the finding that Captain Smith wanted to reach New York in record time. Why? It’s anyone’s guess. He might have pictured himself atop a float being carried down the “Canyon of Heroes,” Lower Broadway in New York City, in a ticker-tape parade. Or maybe, he had a huge bonus riding on beating the published schedule. Whatever the reason, he ordered his men to fire up two more boilers to increase the Titanic’s speed but did not put more resources looking out for icebergs along the way. In other words, he assumed an enormous amount of risk to meet his objective, but had no mitigation plan in place to deal with it.

If you’re going to go faster through dangerous waters, wouldn’t it have made a lot more sense to have more of your staff looking out for icebergs? Sadly, he did not do so.

Sound familiar? The “boss” wants the project done “faster” but will not authorize the needed extra resources to make it happen. The boss reverts to the “just do it” platitudes and cliches that so many leaders succumb to hoping these alone will motivate the staff. Sure, we all need a surge capacity every now and then, but “smart” leaders know if they want to shrink time, there’s a cost of doing so. Too bad the poor passengers of the Titanic had to pay it.

By the way, if you would like to see a restrospective on the ship watch this short You Tube video. That said, I just can’t seem to get that Celine Dion song out of my head.

Alan Mulally, CEO, Ford Motor Company

Don’t recognize the name Alan Mulally? Well, he’s the former CEO of The Boeing Company who was hired by William Clay Ford, great grandson of Henry Ford, in 2008 to turn around the Ford Motor Company. And, turn it around he did.

By the end of 2011 Ford turned a net profit of $20 billion on sales of $128 billion. It distributed profit-sharing payments of about $6,200 to each of 41,600 employees. And, on Friday, March 30, 2012, Ford’s stock price hit $12.48, up from $1.01 the day Mulally took over (a 1,136% increase..I know your personal investments didn’t hit that mark).

As you can imagine, Mulally did a lot of things to make this outstanding performance happen, and of course, he didn’t do it alone. But underlying all the initiatives was one really big one: changing Ford’s backbiting culture, a culture manifested by “theatrical” meetings and back-door deals, to one where transparency, forthrightness, and honesty were encouraged if not demanded.  And, it all began with the way meetings were conducted.

How did he do it? First, he eliminated all corporate-level meetings and introduced two new ones in their place: a mandatory weekly business plan review and a “special attention” review meeting. The former brought together the senior team who reported its progress on specific goals, and the latter was held when executives addressed issues that required a deep dive to figure out what was going wrong.

Ford used to mean Fix Or Repair Daily: not any more

But not everyone thought this was such a good idea. For example, Mark Fields, head of Ford’s Americas business really wanted to know if Mr. Mulally really wanted business plan meetings to be forums where problems as well as progress were discussed. If that were the case, the meeting would run counter to Ford’s culture in which those meetings were really “political theater,” according to Bryce Hoffman author of American Icon, Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company, a compelling book about the turnaround. Seems like the real decisions in the company were made off-line because executives just couldn’t stomach describing the truth in a PowerPoint presentation. But Mr. Mulally pressed on.

Mr. Hoffman writes about one meeting where, taking Mr. Mulally at his word, Mr. Fields reported a delay in a product launch because a test driver noticed a grinding noise in the car’s suspension. Others around the table thought Mulally would go into a rant and publicly upbraid and humiliate Mr. Fields; instead, he started clapping, praising Mr. Fields’ willingness to report the delay. Two weeks after that, other execs came to the meeting reporting problems that they were having as well. This was a huge turnaround in Ford’s culture, and it worked because of Mr. Mulally’s behavior.

What about you? First, do you hold too many project meetings? Are they the right kind? Are your folks afraid of telling the truth? Do they sit there silent and then approach you afterwards with their real feelings? Don’t tolerate that sort of behavior. Make sure that if they have something to say, they say it at the meeting otherwise they need to abide by the old saying heard in most wedding services that goes like this: “If anyone objects to this marriage, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.”

I don’t know about you, but when I hear the person officiating the marriage say this, I sometimes wonder if the bride or groom will speak up.

Nonlinear dynamics is a concept that comes to us from the world of complexity theory. Let me give you three examples. The first is a comedic view based on an advertisement for DIRECTV, a satellite television service. Take 30 seconds to watch it and see if you don’t find it rather humorous.

The second is an example of how nonlinear dynamics manifests itself in society.

Recognize this man?

Tunisian Street Vendor Mohamed Bouazizi

He is Mohamed Bouazizi, the poor Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire to protest his deplorable living conditions and abusive treatment by the local police. He subsequently died of his wounds which set off a storm of protest and revolt that has resulted in collapse of the governments of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, is causing serious societal problems in Bahrain, and widespread unrest, death and destruction in Syria.

The third example comes from the business world. According to the authors of Surfing the Edge of Chaos, FedEx managers determined that their pilots were spending too much unproductive time deadheading from one city to the next and that they were not flying enough in any given month as a result. In other words, FedEx was paying a lot of money to fly their pilots around when the pilots should have been making the company money by flying packages around. So, they made a “tweak” to the scheduling algorithm to increase pilot productivity.

Switch used to fire up the new scheduling system!

When they “flipped the switch” on the system, it spit out schedules so rediculous it had pilots flying pan-Pacific flights followed immediately by pan-Atlantic flights with little time in between to recover. Their schedules were so chock-a-block with flights they didn’t know if they were “on foot or on horseback” as my Great Aunt Olive Reilly was so fond of saying. Long story short, the pilots walked off the job, demanded more pay, fewer flying hours than they had before and a number of other concessions, all of  which they received.

Edward Lorenz gave us a name for nonlinear dynamics that you may recognize: he called it the “butterfly effect.” Actually, it came from a paper he wrote in 1972 entitled Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” In other words, can a small perturbation in one part of the system have such a ripple effect throughout that system to ultimately cause a massive impact down the line? In each of the above examples, it did.

What about your project? What small perturbation in your labor supply, stakeholder expectations, work space, working conditions, or supply chain, can have massive consequences for the cost, schedule, or quality of your project? Only a good job at risk management can have you constantly asking these questions and keeping an eye out for nonlineaer dynamics. They’re out there, just waiting to get you!

PMO "Dead on Arrival" after only 4.1 years

In ESI’s soon to be released Global State of the PMO for 2012 survey (our second annual one), we asked those surveyed if they had worked in or with a PMO in their organization that had been terminated. If they answered yes, we then went on to ask two more questions:  1.) How long was the PMO in operation before it got the ax? and 2.) What was the primary reason for disbanding it?

We received some very interesting replies as you might imagine.

First, the average age of the PMO when it was terminated was 4.1 years with the “range” of answers spanning 4 months to 20 years. Yes, after 20 years one of the respondents stated their PMO came to an end. The answers though clustered somewhere in the 2-5 year time frame which appears to be consistent with other research on the topic.

Let me ask you this….How old is your PMO? Has it exceeded its normal life expectancy, at least given ESI’s survey results? Based on its current performance, how long does it have left?

Next, we had the respondents write in their comments telling us why they thought their PMO was disbanded. Here are the top five reasons.

1. Company reorganization. Many respondents commented that the reorganization was focused on decentralizing core business functions. In the case of project management, the decentralization resulted in project managers being placed in the business units rather than under the control of the PMO. As such, no PMO was required.

2. Cost concerns. The PMO was perceived as overhead and in seeking to reduce costs, which many organizations are doing in these tough times, the PMO was viewed as a cost that the organization did not want to bear.

3. Lack of executive support. Two areas were mentioned here. First, many people commented that the PMO “lost” the support of the executive responsible for it. Second, the executive responsible for the PMO left and was replaced by an executive who didn’t believe in PMOs.

4. PMO doing redundant work. If an organization is seeking to cut costs, one of the easiest ways to do so is to identify components performing the same, or virtually the same function. In certain organizations represented in the survey, when management looked around it noticed that the business units were doing the same work as the PMO.

5. The PMO was ineffective. Rather self-explanatory, but given that many PMOs concentrate more on whether project managers are using a methodology than if the PMO is instrumental in moving the business forward, it is not surprising that certain business heads will come reach a conclusion that such an organization is not needed.

As you read these reasons, it is obvious that many of them are related. For example, a PMO can lose executive support because its work is not deemed as effective. That will also lead to a business head questioning its expense and reach a conclusion that it can be shut down with no real impact on the business.

What's more important to your execs? Making money or using a PM methodology?

If you are a PMO Head, or work in a PMO, and if you want to have a longer life expectancy than the average, you’d better sit down with your key stakeholders and figure out what’s really important to them and start delivering big time. You may not have that much time left!

As project and program managers we hear a lot of talk about the value of networking. It can help us in many ways, especially if we have some tough problems to solve on our current project. But in a new study three professors (more here) demonstrate that you’re better off reconnecting with folks you haven’t heard from in a while over people who you’re working with or have an active relationship presently. Why is that?

Well, Daniel Levin, Jorge Walter, and J. Murnighan, say it’s because dormant ties are great sources of unexpectedly novel insights. Even though you may have lost touch with certain folks, they have been accumulating experience and insight that can be a fresh source of ideas for what you may be grappling with. They also assert that reconnecting requires a minimal time investment. “Reconnection” conversations tend to be shorter and get to the point a lot faster. And “these relationships demand only minimal maintenance for the same reason they required no maintenance at all during dormancy.”

Additionally, when people reconnect, they have strong feelings of trust and a shared perspective, both of which are sorely needed if one is to listen carefully, and follow, advice given by another person. Their research shows that these feelings of trust don’t fade with time. Interesting.

When asked to rate and compare the value of the advice received from dormant versus current contacts, executives in a study reported that dormant ties not only delivered more, they delivered a lot more advice; and the advice they offered was twice as “novel” as they received from their current ties.

If you’re cautious about picking up the phone, or sending an erstwhile colleague an email to ask for advice these professors say “Don’t be shy, dust off your Rolodex and get on the phone, Facebook or LinkedIn.” They say the odds are good that you will be the recipient of “efficient access to novel knowledge from a trusted source.”

My view is simple, if you still own, and use, a Rolodex, there’s a good chance you have a lot of “old” connections to make. Hmm, I wonder who I can call?

Time to upgrade!

Some can't stop talking; others can't start!

You have project meetings to discuss matters of importance. But if you have project team members who clam up, get tongue tied, or simply can’t speak for whatever reason, you’ve got to figure out a way to reach them to hear their thoughts and obtain the information you need to make project decisions.

In an interesting study conducted by Virginia Tech’s Carilion Research Institute, scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study how the brain processes information about social status in a small group and how people’s perception of their status affects their cognitive performance.

To make a long story short, they wired up a bunch of people, men and women alike, divided them into groups of five, gave them a standardized intelligence test followed by a 92-question test on spatial problems, and analyzed the results. And, the results are very interesting.

Why do people clam up? It all has to do with your amygdala, the part of the brain that registers fear and processes emotion.  The bottom line is some people in group settings just freak out and stay that way through the entire meeting; others calm down and then start solving small problems quickly within the group. The researchers calculated that 11 of the 14 “low performers” in a particular sample were women, yet they answered more questions correctly than men. Why?

The root cause of the problem

Dr. Read Montague, leader of the study, and director of the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory and the Computational Psychiatry Unit at the Institute, and a professor of neuro-science at University College London, says that women are more attentive to what others may be feeling or thinking; in other words, they’re more sensitive. One example is Dr. Alissa Fox, a dermatologist. She says in meetings with other docs she’s fine, but at the neighborhood barbecue she simply shuts down. She says if people don’t respond initially to her comments she figures “no hears me or no one agrees with me. And then I clam up.”

Oftentimes people who don’t speak up in meetings are introverts, folks who prefer to collect their thoughts before speaking as compared to their opposites extroverts, who tend to “think out loud.” Think of a meeting in which half the participants are systems programmers and the other half are sales professionals…who do you think will do most of the talking!

So, if you’re one of these people who struggle here are some tips according to Elizabeth Bernstein (see video here) who investigated this phenomenon for The Wall Street Journal: 

• Team up with a “talker” They’ll drag you into the conversation and you’ll feel more comfortable with them getting things going.
• Talk to the person running the meeting beforehand letting them know the points you would like to make so they call on you; that’s easier than trying to “get a word in edgewise” in many meetings.
• Take a break. If you’re anxious get up and go get a drink of water (or maybe something stronger…). Mentally hit Ctl-Alt-Delete on your brain and restart it.
• Realize that others around the table feel exactly the same way. You’re not the only one who’s struggling. As the scientists at Virginia Tech discovered, the ones who clam up are usually the smartest so if nothing else you can take comfort in the fact you’re just brighter than everyone else around the conference table.

The greatest introvert of his day!

But if you still struggle, remember these insightful words of Abe Lincoln, one of the greatest Presidents of the U.S. and perhaps one of the greatest leaders who ever lived- “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

If you’re the project manager running a critical meeting, understanding this dynamic can be very helpful. You need everyone’s input. People aren’t responding because they don’t want to; it’s becuase fear gets the best of them. Understand that people are a jumble of emotions; we’re the most complex things on earth and some of us just have a hard time in a group setting.

I had a boss once who questioned why I wasn’t participating in a particular and important meeting. He immediately though I was disinterested or maybe worse, apathetic, as regards the meeting topic, one in which I was very involved as a manager.  My sense was that as an extrovert he thought everyone should be just like him and provide their thoughts freely, early and often. Little did he know, until I told him, that that type of forum was the worst possible for me to express my ideas, and that I’m much better in much smaller groups, preferably dealing with people either individually or in very small groups.

I think he understood, but I think his expectation, and a fair one at that is, when you reach a certain level in an organization, or you’re a member of a project team trying to solve tough problems, you’ve got to work hard to overcome whatever feelings are inhibiting you from expressing your thoughts. Everyone deserves to be heard because everyone has important ideas to express. We’re all left a little poorer when one of us around the table just can’t quite speak up.