Finding The Right Question

What is your moral compass for navigating corporate life?

Here’s a scenario:  your company is counting on you to profitably deliver an outcome for which your client has agreed to pay a great deal, and upon which your client’s business performance is heavily dependent.  If you perform well, you will be rewarded with a significant promotion.  Your team, and especially the key players who have been working overtime for the last 6 months, have advised that a 2-month delay in the schedule will be necessary.  This will delay the client’s business benefit and will negatively affect the profitability of the contract.

Whose interests are paramount?   To whom do you owe the greatest loyalty:  your client, your company, your people, or yourself?  How do you make that decision?

At any level of management, including the executive levels, and in almost any kind of business, we are tasked to do four things:

• Bring value to our clients or customers
• Bring value to our company
• Bring value to the people we lead and influence
• Bring value to ourselves and our career.

Indeed, what differentiates the role of a manager versus a director versus an entry-level executive versus a senior executive is defined by the scope of responsibilities in each of those four areas. 

And moral dilemmas are defined and created by the potential conflict between two or more of those areas.  In fact, the scenario described above has all four in play.  So what would you do?  More interestingly, how would you decide?

I don’t claim to have all the answers, or even to have always behaved over the course of my career to the highest moral standards.  Here is what I do believe. 

First, you must do your best to decide what is “truth” in any given circumstance.  In the above example, you would need to realistically assess the feasibility of adhering to the original schedule.  Can it be done at all by anyone?  Can it be done by this team?  What will be the human cost, if it is in fact feasible?  What will the business cost be to the client if there is a planned 2-month delay?  What will the business cost be to the client, the company, and the people if there is an unplanned 2-month delay?  I am reminded of a line from the recent movie, “Margin Call” when, as the investment company’s world begins to crumble, and the executive in charge of risk management is recalling a key decision of the previous year, she reflects, “It seemed like the only choice at the time.”  The truth, if it were to be analyzed dispassionately, invariably suggests multiple choices.  

Next, I believe our professional obligations generally should be prioritized in the order of client over company over people over oneself.  Why?  Clients come first because we, as individuals and as enterprises, cannot endure if we do otherwise.  The company comes second, because we have an employment contract to honor, based upon which we are being paid to help the company achieve its goals.  And our people come before us, because we cannot sustain a leadership role if people believe we will put our self interests before theirs.

And finally, no matter which area is given preference in any specific circumstance, it should never be at the total expense of any one of the parties.  Any such decision tends to suggest coercion or bullying, in my experience.  While a “win-win” solution may not be possible in every case, there is almost always a way forward that does not involve totally “throwing under the bus” any one area of interest.

One final point:  I do believe that client interests come first, but if one is confident they will be reasonably addressed, then one can go to the next perspective down the chain, and so forth.  Of course, thinking typically is not as sequential as that – it often is quite iterative.  But the notion of the hierarchy still seems to me like a good approach to navigating the waters. 

So the next time you feel at risk of getting lost in the murky morality of corporate life, I suggest you start with the truth, and then decide whose interests should come in what order, while finding some way to acknowledge all the perspectives.

It won’t make your days simpler, but it might make your nights a lot more restful.

What is the point of reporting project or programme status?

In many organizations, the more visible the status is to higher levels of the organization, the less meaning it has.

Wait...what?

So if an executive wants to know how a portfolio of projects is doing, and which projects might be about to experience challenges, she may be pursuing a lost cause?

Yes.  For two reasons. 

First, many project managers have learned that “yellow light” or “red light” status reports make their lives more difficult with unwanted and generally unhelpful attention.  “Green light” status reports, on the other hand, make it easier to focus on productive work, which may allow one to skate through the challenges and end up with a successful outcome.  Maybe.  Hopefully.

Second, as I have written elsewhere, what gets measured and reported on most status reports is rarely of any use in predicting and articulating the need for helpful and timely intervention.  In many organizations, even if their status reports were accurate, the “yellow light” - and especially the “red light” - reports would be describing train wrecks in progress.  Executive intervention would likely be too late to alter the course of history.

So what is an executive responsible for a portfolio to do?  And what is a project manager navigating a career to do?

The answer in both cases, I contend, is to be a leader of cultural change.  Leading downward, executives need to celebrate and reward those project managers who raise flags and ask for help in a timely fashion.  And leading upward, project managers need to report status on the most important, and leading, indicators of project health, along with their recommendations for corrective action by the appropriate executives.

Without such a culture that clearly values the discussion of timely corrective actions, status reports may be little more than a nuisance to project managers and an empty comfort to portfolio executives.

Not much point to that.

How do you manage a career if career planning doesn’t work?

“At no time in my career could I have predicted five years previously where I was going to be or what I was going to be doing.” 

That statement is true for me (across the span of a forty year career), and I believe it is true for most, if not all, professionals.

Terrific!  So career management is like betting at the roulette table? 

Fortunately, no.  It is true that specific steps and assignments cannot be accurately planned far in advance.  But there is a push-pull strategy that can be used to accelerate career advancement.  It involves the pull of a network of mentors/sponsors and the push of a personal desire to stretch into new competencies and expertise.

One model for this strategy has been articulated by Linda A. Hill, a Harvard Business School Professor who has done extensive research in this area.   (You can purchase this article for $6.95 from this site.)  She describes a repeating cycle in which a stretch opportunity is orchestrated through a personal network, resulting in new competencies and a more prominent reputation, leading to a more powerful network that helps provide the next stretch opportunity, and so on.

That would explain why accurately predicting the next five years is not possible.  But what makes it intentional and what makes it happen faster rather than slower?

I believe the answer lies in what we choose to do in growing our networks and in pushing ourselves to stretch.  Elsewhere I have written about one’s Personal Board of Directors.  This concept involves intentionally recruiting mentors/sponsors (the pull side of the strategy to find stretch opportunities) as well as trusted advisors and coaches (the push side of the strategy to help understand the necessary areas for growth and to embrace the challenge of stretching).

In the final analysis, you can’t plan a career far in advance. 

You can, however, put in place your own mechanisms to build competency and reputation.

Do that, and the rewarding career will follow.

It’s a sure bet.  

What do ambiguous threats and recovery windows have to do with courageous project management?

The Columbia space shuttle disaster of 2003 provided a particularly poignant example for some work done at the Harvard Business School by Amy C. Edmundson, Michael A. Roberto, and Richard M. J. Bohmer[1].  The loss of the ship and all crew members was found to be the result of a foam strike upon launch.  There had been a twenty-year history of such strikes, although this one appeared to be a particularly large piece that may have been capable of causing structural damage.  Asking the CIA to divert some spy satellites to take pictures of the exterior of the shuttle, and ultimately launching a rescue shuttle, would have been the only decisions that might have altered the course of this particular history.  No one seemed individually prepared to argue strongly for either action.  When the decision was made to wait until after re-entry to complete the examination, the fate of the crew was sealed.

What has this got to do with courageous project management?  The Harvard researchers described two phenomena in decision-making within organizations:  ambiguous threats – risks that may have an outcome that is completely unacceptable – and recovery windows – that period of time beyond which no recovery is possible, regardless of subsequent actions.

Does that sound familiar in the project management world?  Looking back on disasters we have been close to, wasn’t it obvious that success was unobtainable unless the poor estimate, inadequate team skills, lack of key sponsorship, or whatever other critical factor was in play had been addressed early and quickly?

I have written before on the topic of courage for project managers.  Let me explore one aspect of the dynamics at play – the apparent powerlessness that project managers face. 

Typically, executives are placing direct or indirect coercive pressure on project managers to “just do it”.  And yet, I believe that it is the project manager with a track record of successful delivery who holds the real power.  Imagine the response if any of us were to stand up and say, “I cannot be successful unless we take the following actions within this specific time frame.  If that can’t happen, you need to find a project manager who you believe can do it.  I am not that person.”  I believe that nine times out of ten, the executives will respond as we need them to, because they know in their fat little hearts that we are right.  In the case of the other one time, we don’t want to be anywhere near the pending disaster anyway.

Acting courageously is easier when you know you’re right and you know you have power.  As you think about your next project, evaluate the ambiguous threats, determine the recovery window for corrective actions, and know that you are the power player in altering the course of this project’s history.

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[1] “Facing ambiguous threats”  Roberto, Michael A; Bohmer, Richard M J; Edmundson, Amy C
Harvard Business Review November 2006 pp106,108-113

What are the most important things to measure, track, and manage in projects and programmes?

Interesting question, but it first requires some insight into what “important” is.

Let me suggest two dimensions of “important”:

1.    The degree of impact something has on our ability to deliver a great outcome, and

2.    Whether our assessment of that factor gives us a leading or a lagging indication of success.

Great.  We now can look at this topic through the lens of a classic two-by-two matrix, like this:

  

And we might conclude that the answer to our big question should lie in the upper right quadrant, and secondarily perhaps in the lower right quadrant.

Or are we spending most of our energy on measuring, tracking, and managing other things?  Well, let’s see…

Elsewhere I have written about seven key factors in project and programme success.  Briefly, they are:

• Stakeholders are committed
• Business benefits will be realized
• Work and schedule are predictable
• Scope is realistic and managed
• Team is high performing
• Technical risks are mitigated
• Delivery organization benefits will be realized.

In my view, and especially as our projects and programmes are played for higher and higher stakes, three of those factors are of supreme importance to success:

• Stakeholder commitment
• Business benefits
• High performing team.

Furthermore, of the seven factors, only two can truly be assessed in a leading indicator fashion:

• Stakeholder commitment, and
• Business benefits.

All others present lagging indications, to a greater or lesser degree.  That is, by the time enough time has elapsed to give a reliable read out, it can be difficult to “correctably” manage to a highly successful outcome.

So by this analysis, our two-by-two matrix looks like this:

        

Yet what do we measure, track, and manage mostly?  Things, I suggest, in the lower left quadrant, especially:

• Work & Schedule (although really only if we are doing some sort of Earned Value Analysis) and
• Delivery Organization Benefits (and only to the extent of understanding the financial costs of delivery versus the promise).

 

 

***   Wait…what???   ***

 

 

So we only measure two of the seven factors, and those two are not the most critical, and in any case, are lagging indicators?

Yikes!!!!

Now, a word about measurement, because I can hear you protesting that it’s awfully hard to quantify Stakeholder Commitment, for one example.

It is possible, and frequently beneficial, to measure without significant precision.  We do it all the time.

If you are driving in winter and are coming to a curve, you “measure” the road conditions to determine if the surface is ice-covered or bare.  You don’t need to know the specific coefficient of friction between your tires and the road surface to decide whether you need to slow down.  And yet the road condition is your leading indicator for successful navigation of the curve.

 

*   *   *   *   *

 

So back to our matrix, and our big question.

As a programme or project manager, where are you going to “up your game” in measuring, tracking, and managing for a successful outcome? 

What does that look like?

And who do you look like, as a leader, not just a manager?

 

Good questions….

Who’s on your personal Board of Directors?

It seems to me that the notion of governance can be applied to one’s personal and professional development.

Just as in other applications of a governance model, we can benefit from an oversight that is focused on our personal and professional direction and strategy.  This oversight is also concerned about our sustainability, and provides a mechanism for accountability of actions and outcomes.  And like good governance models, this oversight does not take responsibility for execution.  That is up to management - or in the case of our own development, we are the ones who are solely and personally responsible.

How then might you think about what kinds of “Directors” you would invite onto your personal “Board”?  Here are what I believe to be the three essential types of role:

·         The Mentor, who is a door-opener, who provides access to a network, and who is a role model we would like to emulate in some way

·         The Trusted Advisor, who is a counselor, who has wisdom and experience to impart, and who will tell us what we need to hear – even if it’s not what we want to hear; and finally

·         The Coach, and not the sports model of coach who calls the plays, but the therapist/listener/reflector model of coach, who lets us gain access to our inner wisdom, and helps us to manage our internal saboteur.

No one can play all three roles, although some can be both Mentor and Trusted Advisor, or Trusted Advisor and Coach.  I don’t believe a Mentor has enough detachment from his or her protege to be their Coach as well.  And of course, one’s personal “Board” can – and typically should – have more than one of each.

So who’s on your Board of Directors?  Who should be on your Board but hasn’t yet been recruited?

 Don’t you think the Enterprise of You deserves the best possible governance?

Why should you care about personal branding?

What is all the fuss about personal branding?  When I Googled “personal branding” I got 6,570,000 hits!  Is this simply the latest narcissistic fad?  Or something of relevance in our professional lives?  And should you even try to blend your work and your life in your personal brand?

The questions intrigued me, so I went looking for insights into how to express a personal brand.  This is the most useful description I found:

“To crystallize your personal brand, ask yourself what you want to be known for — what differentiates you from everyone else who might have a similar background or set of experiences? In other words, what skills, abilities, knowledge and attitudes do you have (or are developing) that will make people want to work with, follow or "friend" you — online or off? What value can you create for others as a friend, blogger, colleague, teammate, boss or subordinate? And what will make you satisfied and fulfilled that you are indeed making a contribution?”

And…

“Your brand can also aspire to describe who you are; what you stand for; what makes you unique, special, and different; and what your values are.”

I have been working recently with high-performing senior professionals who are striving to build a higher level of competence in leadership while struggling to find balance in their lives.  This challenge of reaching for personal growth while staying true to who you are has led me to embrace the process of developing a personal brand. 

And yes, the process of articulating a personal brand may be as valuable as actually having one. 

Want to see why?  Try completing the following three sentences (and I mean sentences, not paragraphs):

1. I am (or am becoming)…
2. I believe…
3. I will…

 I would be willing to bet you did not find this an easy exercise to complete satisfactorily.  I would be further willing to bet that when you did complete it, the process actually changed your thinking. 

And if you really want to stretch yourself and push your thinking, I suggest you share this work with a trusted advisor and ask them to challenge your statements in terms of a sound balance between growth and fulfillment. 

I think you will find that those are important goals for both a professional career and a personal life.

What is the difference between a project manager and a program leader?

That would beg the question of what the difference is between a project and a program (or programme, as many of my international colleagues would spell it). 

Programs, unlike projects, are, by intention, transformational.  As a consequence, here are some characteristics of programs that are different from projects:

• The stakeholder landscape includes Board level and cross-functional senior executives
• The nature of a program is often a “bet the company” strategic effort
• The specific work plan is not knowable at the beginning of the journey
• Expanding value delivered is more critical than controlling scope
• The performance of a team of hundreds (not dozens) needs inspirational (not controlling) styles of leadership
• The solutions that leverage such significant business value have many potential failure points
• The organizations responsible for delivery (internal IT, software vendors, consultancies) must also adopt a “bet the company” level of commitment.

(Some of you may have noticed that the previous seven bullet points seem curiously correlated to my view of the dimensions of project/program health.  No coincidence there.)

So how does that translate into the differences in our personal “game” as we move from project manager to program leader?  Here is my view of the critical areas that require a transformation in our own competencies:

• Executive level relationship management – we must become trusted advisors to a wide variety of senior stakeholders
• Leadership and personal power – we must achieve through influence and coaching, not through command and control
• Understanding and delivering business value – we must gain a deep understanding of the business problem, and ensure that all aspects of the program are driving to optimize business value
• Articulating a vision – it is our ability to inspire that will keep everyone moving toward the goal, in spite of fears, anxieties, and confusions that are inherent in programs
• Masterful negotiating skills – we must be able to craft a win-win situation among the many (and often competing) internal and external organizational objectives.

Sound a bit daunting?  Here is the good news:  I believe that effective program leaders are made, not born.  That is to say, one can learn and acquire proficiency in the competencies I have listed above. 

Mind you, these competencies do not come easily or quickly, but there are approaches that will accelerate these aspects of professional development for the program leaders of tomorrow.

The investment of time and money required seems appropriate if you’re going to “bet the company” on the competency of a program leader.

What does it mean to be “professional”?

Whether we are advising external clients or our own senior management, whether we are in the role of strategist, planner, marketer, seller, developer, implementer, or general manager, we are called upon to act and behave “professionally”.  So what does that mean, and more interestingly, how can we grow in this important aspect of our careers?

I think about professionalism in three fundamental dimensions:  presence, values, and intellect.  And I think it is entirely possible to grow in each of these aspects over the course of a career.

Presence is the most straightforward dimension and the easiest to master.  At the simplest level, this means not slurping our soup.  It means showing up on time and dressing appropriately.  It means treating everyone with courtesy and respect.  There is a form of professional behavior for virtual interaction as well, or what I have described elsewhere as one’s Virtual Intelligence Quotient (VQ).

Values represent a more nebulous dimension, because situations - and our behavioral response to them - are rarely categorized in purely black and white terms.  As professionals, though, we are called upon to behave truthfully and courageously.  We should be prepared say what people need to hear, not simply what they want to hear.  And we must do this constructively and tactfully, often in the face of subtle or not so subtle pressure to go along with the crowd and not make waves.  We are likely to face situations, over the course of our careers, when the only real choice we have is whether we make a career decision early, or whether we will be forced to make one later, but we will be making a career decision.  We can learn to recognize those situations and act early and professionally.

And finally, there is the dimension of intellect.  Sometimes this is referred to as thought leadership.  One organization I know is using the term “eminence”.  Both terms imply that we must do two things. 

The first is to have a point of view.  It is not enough to merely be smart.  You have to be smart about something, in a way that not many others around you are.  You must use your smarts to develop insight.

Second, it’s not enough to have insights if no one knows you have them.  “Thought leadership” implies that you are operating in some arena and in some fashion to have people perceive you as an intellectual leader.  “Eminence” implies that some audience has deemed you as being eminent in some field.  So we need to learn how to convince others we have something to offer intellectually. 

In fact, this is not so hard to do.  There is usually some local chapter of some related professional organization that would be willing to let us speak at their next meeting.  Or perhaps there is a professional publication for which we could write an article, or at least a letter to the editor.  Within our organizations, there is likely some form of a knowledge management function who would be delighted to receive a submission describing some best practice or sample product.  Some might even consider going the route of blogging!

Yes, but what if we do that, and someone finds a hole in our argument, or points out some aspect that we hadn’t fully considered?  That, in fact, is the real beauty of the dimension of intellect.  Every time we get a response like that to our point of view, we have an opportunity to build a better, more robust one, in a way that we couldn’t if we just sat by ourselves and contemplated our professional navel.

We used to say, in the consulting world, that we didn’t know anything of value that we didn’t learn from a client.

And so I come back to my contention that in each of these three dimensions of professionalism, we can aspire to achieve new levels of behavior and performance.

It just takes a bit of self-awareness and a willingness to work at it.

Why don’t good methods prevent project planning failures?

Is there now some scientific thinking to suggest method development is a fool’s errand? 

In his recent book, “Streetlights and Shadows;  Searching for the Keys To Adaptive Decision Making”, Gary Klein makes an interesting case.  He presents a number of arguments, with many disparate real world examples, to show that the more complex the situation, and the more extensively documented the procedure (such as most IT development and implementation methods!), the less likely a competent professional will use it, and the more likely that an inexperienced person will perform at a mediocre level at best.

Let’s run that by one more time.  If the target audience for an IT method is experienced project managers, they probably won’t use it…  And if the project manager is inexperienced and the project is a complex one, we are pretty sure that’s a recipe for disaster…

Hmmm…

Maybe we need to re-think this a bit.

Historically, project managers have railed at methodologists for not understanding the complexities of project life.  (There is an old joke that asks, “What’s the difference between a methodologist and a terrorist?  Answer:  “You can sometimes negotiate with a terrorist.”) 

So when the project manager asks the methodologist, “What’s the shortest time that this type of project can be done, with acceptable quality, under the following circumstances?”  The answer often sounds like, “I can’t tell you, but you better have these 1200 line items in your work breakdown structure.”

Why are we surprised, then, that good methods do not appear to prevent project planning failures?  Indeed, my experience suggests that most project managers rarely reference method materials, but they almost always reference work plans from trusted sources (and sometimes the only source they trust is themselves). 

And the corollary might be:  why are we surprised when “bad” methods (like the seductive siren song of Rapid Application Development or Agile Development) are adopted with almost religious fervor and mis-applied in complex and mission-critical situations?

So what’s the answer?  Well, if we can’t get methodologists to adequately address the real world of project management, why don’t we educate project managers to have a better understanding of methodology?

I am not arguing that project managers re-invent a method for every project (although many like to do that).  I am saying we might limit the prescription of methods to, say, 25 tasks (5 life cycle phases with 5 tasks each, perhaps) and then teach project managers to build plans that answer my two favorite questions:

          1.       How will we know when we are done? 

          2.       How will we know we have a good solution, not just any solution?

This, of course, will necessitate extra effort and intelligence at the planning stages of complex projects.

Oh, right, that could be a good thing…