Good for the Goose!

All summer long we had dogs chase away the birds from the man-made pond around our office.  They jumped out of a truck and ran around the pond watching and chasing until the birds decided to fly away.  Most of the birds were Canada Geese I am told which are seen as a nuisance.  I can understand why as they are a large bird which produce a large amount of  fecal matter and can harm water quality and also apparently pose a threat to air-craft when they gather too close to airports. 

This week ducks and geese arrived fearlessly back at the pond in massive numbers with seemingly orchestrated patterns of arrivals, take-offs and fly-overs -- truly beautiful to watch as many of us did.  It's cold and wintery now and the border collies are off the payroll but if they were familiar with the Hitchcock movie 'The Birds" I think they would have called in sick this week anyway!   

Watching the hundreds of birds fly in and hanging around the pond made me think about the whole problem and how the efforts were not a very complete or root-problem solution.  In the summer, the dogs came and moved the problem to another location where there were no dogs at the moment - maybe to your pond?  So we only solved the problem from our perspective and really only moved it on down the line to someone else not addressing the root cause. 

We also don't have our deterrent (dogs) here all the time so the birds came back by the hundreds and for a week or more and made themselves very comfy in and around the pond.  I'm not suggesting that we should address the root issues with the bird problem or that it should be managed any differently going forward.   I think most projects have aspects like this that cannot be solved in the current effort and require work-arounds and temporary fixes to  meet the other project objectives like time, cost, scope.   So my question is  if we sufficiently consider which problems should be fixed at the root cause and which ones are ok to treat like the 'goose' problem.  My guess is that we treat too many problems like the 'goose' problem because it is seductively easy to do so - right up until you are tip-toeing through a fecal-matter landmine!


Here are some potential questions to ask yourself to help your decision:

• How much more effort is it to fix the whole problem permanently?
• How many other ponds are nearby?  - are we pushing this problem onto the next project(s)?
• Is there an potential business case/ROI on fixing the problem
• How much float/capacity does my project have to fix this and still meet the other project objectives.
• How would you have wanted the last PM to have handled this problem?

Do you have others???





Do Great Things! -- (with wings!)



Ed Sullivan, PMP

Perspective Muscles

I attended the PMO Symposium last week and had a great experience.  It was my first time at the symposium and I met a lot of people (some of whom commited to be followers of this blog!) and took back a lot of ideas for my organization and some opportunities for myself to work on.  As I reflect on the conference and the themes there are many directions that I could write about but I keep coming back to persepective. 

To be successful, a project manager (and just about everybody else too) needs to see the world in diffferent ways than their default ones to be successful.  They need to understand the context from the perspective of the client, the technologist, the builder, the team, the sponsor, management, finance .... etc.   They need to be able to adjust their communciation and message and style and methods to the different contexts that are created by people with different perspectives - and still be true to their message.  They also need to form a functioning team from a group of people that will certainly have different perspectives on many things.  The more rapidly they can understand these, the faster their team can move through the storming phase of team building.

My theory is that we can flex and grow our perspective muscles by using them more.  If you are inquisitive and acknowledge and celebrate some different perspectives on things in contexts where it is not critical to do so, can that make you better at doing it when it does matter?  I honestly don't know but I think it could.

So back to the conference and different perspectives....

• I heard about a PMO in an organization that has 27,000 project managers - wow that is different!
• I learned of different perspectives on politics and perceptions from people from South Africa and France(Vive la France!)  and other places around the globe and found some common ground
• I learned about different perspectives on prices and value (of beer and houses esp.) from around the world
• I sat next to a four year old who had never flown before and was very excited about it and climbed over me several times to see out my window! 
• I looked out the same window myself and saw tiny perfect rectangles and squares of farmland  - I bet the farmer does not see it that way.  (That's about the size, where you put your eyes....)
• I heard about PMOs that get by on shoe-string budgets or that don't have PMs or that are at the Enterprise level, or that don't manage resources or that participate in strategy and Portfolio Management  -- many different types of PMO perspectives and contexts.
• I attended sessions where attendees perceived great value and I saw none - and vice-versa

So, maybe you can try flexing that perspective muscle in the next few days/weeks and see what happens I will let you know if I have any great break-throughs and you do the same! 


Do Great Things!  - With your Perspective Muscle!


Ed Sullivan, PMP

A Project Manager is Fair

(Originally Published in PMI Madison/South Central WI Newsletter, Winter 2008)

I remember a night over 25 years ago now at a Boy Scout troop meeting. My friend Andy was on the short end of the stick again with the way a game was being played and he was fed up. He knew the only way to win this battle against the older and bigger boys, and specifically his brother, was to make it perfectly clear to everyone how un-Scout like they were being. He half-shouted That's not fair!!  To which his brother, who was very focused on winning, said so what?   I think Andy had run into this wall before so he quickly went to what had worked in the past. He leveraged the referential and mystical power of Lord Baden Powell  himself as he hurriedly quoted the Scout Law. Now fully shouting he declared A Scout is Fair !

As it turns out, this is not the case and Andy's battle was lost - at least for the moment. According to the Boy Scout Law, a scout is many inspiring things, but Fair was disappointingly for Andy, not one of them. For months after this incident however you could hear Andy and eventually everyone, recite the Law this way:

A scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent ... and FAIR!

Everyone agreed that a Scout should be Fair and that while it might be encompassed in some way in the other words of the Law, for our purposes we needed to spell it out. It often brought a smile, smirk, or giggle to our faces when we said this - it was funny and cute but most importantly this law was ours. Amazingly, the Scout Law has been around since 1910 without any change and yet we determined a need for a change - just for us, just for that moment of time. Making it our own gave us power and allowed us to correct a perceived oversight and we could again really believe in it. We, a bunch of kids really, changed the law, and were confident that our change fit with the original intent. We had no need to promote or sell anyone else on our version - it simply met our needs.

I think this story parallels a reality for Project Managers - that we will always need to adapt to our project environment. Considering that a project is a "unique endeavor" we should be expecting that what we've done before will not be what we need to do now. The Project manager and the team need to determine together the uniqueness of their environment and context of their project, people, skills, constraints, goals etc.... and make appropriate adjustments and adaptations to be as successful as possible.

We have so many tools and templates, methods and methodologies, processes and procedures, slogans and 'Laws' at our disposal but these are not what make our projects successful. They are familiar and make us comfortable but that comfort may come at the expense of a more important understanding. The understanding that this project right now has its own special needs and these comfortable 'helpers' may need to be customized even in some seemingly insignificant way to make it the project teams own. Ignoring these needs may have impacts ranging from unnecessary work to missing details, to a completely non-performing team. I'm not suggesting that there is no need for process and procedure and standards and best practices and tools, but rather that they are means to an end and hopefully not so in-flexible (or un-'Fair') that they can't make accommodations for the needs of the unique endeavor that you are embarking on.

P.S. --

Say what you will about the Boy Scouts - I know they've had their problems as many large organizations have, but relaying this story left me with renewed appreciation for the Scout Law. As I mentioned it's been unchanged for almost 100 years and the first item listed is "Trustworthy". We know that the most important items in a list or story come first - just check any newspaper headline to verify this! So Scouting chose Trustworthy as the first and most important thing for scouts to be.

It seems like there is a resurgence and re-discovery of the importance of trust lately. I've read about it over & over in books and articles on leadership, communications, emotional intelligence, project management as if it is something new. Gaining trust, building trust, maintaining trust, doing what you say you will do... all of these hot/buzz topics. If you search Amazon for 'Gaining Trust' you'll find over 2,800 books on the subject.

As I start to read books and articles on these topics, I get excited about what I might learn and how I might use it. I almost always do learn something from them because of new thoughts, examples, different wording and approaches, but I often experience a small sense of déjà vu as I read them. Now, I think I know why....



Do Great things!  (Fairly)



Ed Sullivan, PMP

We need a Plan!

I went on a one night cub scout family camping trip with our pack this Spring.  I pulled in late (family tradition) and began setting up our pop-up camper and was a little embarrassed to find we were the only ones pulling a camper this year.  Another leader looked at me shaking his head, and said: 

"Ed, …. a camper??? ...  Really???"

 I said:  "Yes, you know why?  ……………

 Because I don’t own an RV!"  (bah dump bump!)

That got some chuckles, and I had a few other thoughts too.  One was that this is a family campout, and my whole family is actually here – not too many others could say the same.  So if it meant pulling a pop-up for an overnight to have my entire family including a pre-teen in attendance, it was worth it.   My other thought was that it will be nice to be above ground and dry if we get the kind of rain that was threatening in the skies.  On some level though, he was right.  It is just not quite worth the effort of setting up a pop-up camper for a single night stay.  By the time you figure out where everything and everyone will go, it is time to start packing it up again. 

With my late arrival and my long list of setup tasks, surely our family would be last to be done and scrambling to help out with our Den’s dinner prep.   Setting up next to our pop-up was a father and son with a tent that the dad had not set up in a long time.    As our pop-up camper setup progressed the big blue tent next to us was still looking more like a pile of poles and a tarp than home for a night.  “What is the green marking for?” asked the son,  “Try putting this pole and that bendy one together” said the dad.   This camping trip is far from high-adventure so you have a lot of families that are not regular campers and they often bring a borrowed tent or a brand new one.  It’s family camping and struggling through unfamiliar territory like this is just part of the experience.  A cub scout leader came over to help out and now my camper was about half way set up.  A few minutes later another parent joined in and four people spent another 30 minutes before it was completely set up. 

It was about this time that I made a connection with project management.  As a profession we talk about planning incessantly.  It is foundational.  It is a major part of our PM value that we provide to a project as a PM.  Nothing that I can think of is more acutely evident of the value of a plan than trying to set up an unfamiliar tent without one.   I saw it that weekend, and I’ve lived it myself more than once!  Now, I’m betting good money that the manufacturer of this tent has marketing folks that will tell you and probably even show you on their website how it can be set up in under 5 minutes with two people  - probably with a hand tied behind their backs too.   Instead it took an hour with as many as 4 people helping - thats 10 minutes effort instead of roughly 150 minutes of effort.

The only difference between our cub scout campers and the manufacturer is that they have the plan and slightly practiced people to set up the tent.   The plan shows what is needed for parts and tools (resources), site preparation, what steps to take, what order they need to occur (precedence and dependencies), and what done looks like (clear goals and quality) (or a tent with vestibule!).  And usually this plan provides even more.  The directions (Plan)  will describe a variety of things to avoid (risks) (WARNING: KEEP ALL FLAME AND HEAT SOURCES AWAY FROM THIS TENT FABRIC), and even mitigation strategies (Call 1-800-TENTHELP for assistance or replacement parts). 

So if you are ever in a situation where the value of planning and creating a plan is being questioned, give me a call – I think I could get my hands on a big blue tent you can borrow and demonstrate.   (I know it does not get used much!)

Do great things!  (In tents) (Intense?)

Ed Sullivan, PMP

My Fave Five … On Leadership

I’m not in Charles’s Fave Five and that's ok .... he’s not in mine!

(Note: this article was originally published in PMI Madison/South Central WI Quarterly Newsletter Fall 2010 - since I currently have no followers I don't think this will matter to most! However, if you have already read it there, my apologies!)

My Fave Five … On Leadership

I had a discussion the other night at a ballpark about leadership and started to explain about some of what I’ve done and read and I was told I should write an article on the subject. I said that I would. Afterwards I wondered if I am really the right person to write anything on this topic and there is certainly a voice inside my head that whispers “…you’re not” but I also remembered one of the keys to leadership is DWYSYWD, so here goes nothing!

In my limited experience it has helped me the most to educate myself, try to apply newly learned concepts, evaluate how it went, then, – lather, rinse, repeat…

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not an expert on Leadership but I have done more of the self-education than some and I’ve tried to follow my patented “shampoo” method for a long time in my career. In that time I’ve read a somewhat embarrassing number of books on leadership. Some of them I’ve got in the rolodex some of them I finished just so I can say I finished the book and never have to pick them up again and then others were the real gems. – the ones I want on speed-dial and which continue to connect with me on an ongoing basis – my favorites (Faves) that I will narrow down to Five. And so with all due pomp and circumstance (i.e. –none) the following are my Fave Five books on Leadership. I hope you will share yours too and comment on mine, and challenge them – Just like with a certain cell phone carrier, I can always make changes to them!

1)    Leading with Soul – by Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal

A great way to start because it reads like a novel and has great lessons that really hit home for me the first time I read it. The significance here is that I’ve read it more than once and in fact three times. I can count on three fingers the number of books I’ve read twice and this is my only three-time-reader. You see I’m the worlds slowest reader so by the time I get half way through a book I’ve got several more that I want to read next so it has to be really really good for me to open one up again.

About the book – often written up as a “love it” or “hate it” in book reviews without a lot of middle ground. The trip-up for the negative reviews usually starts with the word ‘Soul’ in the title and the assumption that this book has a religious bent. Well it doesn’t, but it assumes the reader believes in human spirit and is essentially on a spiritual journey. The authors try to address this head-on in the Prelude but my guess is that non-believers – well, they don’t believe it.

I think if you just read it as an engaging story you will pick up as much or as little depth and value as you are ready for at the time. The authors make this clear too – that the depth of the book comes from the reader. They state that many readers have “found messages that go well beyond anything we can take credit for”.

2)    The Leadership Challenge – by James Kouzes and Barry Posner

I think of this as THE body of knowledge for Leadership. With over 1.5 million copies sold and now in its 4th edition and sporting well over 400 pages of education, citation, and inspiration this is a true treasure. It’s not a light book and it’s not an easy one for a variety of reasons – starting of course with page count! This book is just like its title suggests, intended to be a challenge. You can read it without taking up the challenge but the author’s goal is for you to be motivated to take it on, challenge yourself and grow from it in more than intellectual ways.

Biggest Nugget – The one extremely simple and very hard thing that I took away from this book that has been the most powerful lesson is that Credibility is the Foundation of Leadership and the way you establish credibility is “DWYSYWD – Do what you say you will do”. Very simple, very hard. I hope you take up this challenge.

Of note – I have arbitrarily limited my Faves to one book per author but I need to mention that these co-authors have written several other books on Leadership. The book Encouraging the Heart is an excellent book that expands on the challenge with more details and examples of ways for leaders to reward and recognize others to inspire extraordinary performance.

3)    Primal Leadership – Daniel Goleman

This book is all about leadership and the connection between emotional intelligence and being a good leader. It covers the four critical aspects of Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management and is pretty convincing that EI is a prerequisite to becoming an effective leader. The book has a lot of supporting data and is somewhat scientific and medical but you’ve been meaning to increase your vocabulary right? Another nice thing is that this book has great examples and stories that help demonstrate and validate the assertions he makes.

The big take away here is good news! You can improve your emotional intelligence and improve your leadership abilities!

4)    The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen R. Covey

What can I add here that has not already been said and said better about Steven R. Covey or this book? He is the proverbial ‘Godfather’ of the self-leadership genre and this is the foundational book that provides incredibly insightful and revealing ideas and examples to guide your growth and learning. In reviewing the book for this article I realize I need to put it back on my stack for another read as it has drawn me in again.

Since I can’t add much more praise here I will give you one quote from the first chapter where he describes the need for self reflection/development/growth/leadership in order to move forward – he calls this the ‘inside-out’ approach.

“The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.”

5)    Leadership is an Art– Max DePree

The book is a short read but a long think. This book is 148 pages of ideas, lore, musings and lists from a very experienced, successful and thoughtful businessman. The chapter headings of ‘roving leadership’ and ‘tribal storytelling’ as well as ‘pink ice in the urinal’ and ‘why should I weep’ give you an idea of how interesting, engaging and eclectic the stories, ideas and insights are in this book. You can skip the Foreward – it does not do the book justice and is not necessary for setting the stage. Max drives home the point that leadership comes out of our actions from our human state of imperfection and can’t be achieved by a prescriptive or wrote approach – it is an Art.

Overlooked?

Here are some more books that I’ve enjoyed that are directly or indirectly related to leadership and just did not make my top 5. Let me know what books you’d add to the Fave five, or the Overlooked list – or which ones you’d take off. Share your thoughts on the PMI-Madison Linked-in discussion page.

The Blind Men and the Elephant – David Schmaltz

On Becoming A Leader – Warren G. Bennis

Seeing David in the Stone – James Swartz and Joseph Swartz

Leading out Loud – Terry Pearce

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There – Marshall Goldsmith

The Speed of Trust – Stephen M.R. Covey

How Full is your Bucket? – Tom Rath & Donald O. Clifton


Do great things!


Ed Sullivan, PMP

The Pain Paradox for Project Management

The Pain Paradox was described by Rory Vaden to attendees of the PMI Leadership Institute Meeting in Washington DC this week.   The Pain Paradox is his catch phrase for a common (maybe epidemic) dilemma in our world today.  The dilemma is over our choices between near term work and discipline that help us achieve our long term goals vs. putting off the pain and payment for the nebulous future.  We know that we can’t take the last step of our journey first,  but our ‘get it now and pay later’ society helps us fool ourselves that we can.  Keep in mind here that we have to pay one way or another!

The most obvious pain paradox examples are in personal finances or health.   To achieve or improve in these areas we need to make the right decisions today and most days.   These are typically small incremental decisions which involve small amounts of work (pain) now and help us gradually reach our goals.  For our health however, we’ll put off regular exercise and go for the super triple bacon cheeseburger and double fries instead of the healthier options (yes there are healthier options!).   These decisions add up over time and we pay for them later with obesity, heart disease, diabetes and the list of related complications seems to grow every day.  The financial example is an equally simple trap that we can all fall into.   We go for the car or house that we honestly can’t afford and max out our credit.  Eventually we need to pay off the credit and face a huge wall of pain instead of the smaller incremental pain of disciplined saving and living within our means.

If the Pain Paradox is real, we must ask ourselves if we are falling for traps and avoiding the disciplined Project Management work  - and if there is a building wall of pain coming for us?  I think the obvious answer is that clearly some of us are. 

One way to check might be to ask yourself some questions about your project.  Here are some examples:

• Have you updated your risk list since the kick-off meeting?  How about in your last team meeting?  I’m sure they are not going to come back and bite you.   
• Have you shared with your sponsor the latest completion estimates or are you putting that conversation off for when it starts to improve?   
• Are you controlling the scope or is it creeping (galloping?). 
• What about metrics?  Are you measuring progress, tracking time, measuring quality? 
• Have you built strong relationships with your project team?  Did you say thank you to someone today?  Have you filled their ‘buckets’?    When you need your team to go above and beyond it is too late to start then, you’ve already hit the wall of pain.

The list of things you should be doing goes on and on for Project Managers so it may be hard to tell whether you are ‘right-sizing’ the PM work or if you are actually avoiding and putting off the pain.   I think if you ask yourself these types of questions and honestly answer them, you will already have a good idea.  It is still easy to fool ourselves here.  The last suggestion I have is to make sure you are not making creative excuses and justifications for your decisions.   Examples:

• The Methodology I’m using takes care of it….
• The Sponsor does not value that work – they won’t pay for it…
• This project is not very risky/strategic/complex/etc..
• Really the whole team is accountable for doing that…
• Our culture does not require it…
• We’re all professionals so I don’t need to …
• Add your own here…

As you consider these, I hope it becomes very clear whether you are being disciplined and doing the work every day or if you may have just ordered the Super triple bacon cheeseburger and fries!

Do great things! (with disciplined daily work:)

Ed Sullivan, PMP