Achieving the Unachievable

Achieving the Unachievable

By: Ann Drinkwater, PMP

Dramatically altering business processes and instilling organizational efficiency typically involves system automation. To succeed at system-related projects, it is important to join business and IT professionals early in the process. Business users typically think in terms of strategy, competitive positioning and how the project will impact their day-to-day operation, whereas IT implementers generally think in terms of analytical logic. Bridging the communication and cultural gaps between these groups can be a challenge, but very rewarding to the project and future joint endeavors.

In order to find inefficiencies in existing business processes and create new work strategies, the business community should first perform a comprehensive review of all activities within all related functions. This exercise will help to determine bottlenecks and potential areas for improvement, where elimination of non-value and redundant activities should be carefully considered. This due diligence, along with recommendations for improvement, must be performed before involving the IT group. Once the business user group has a strong understanding of what is needed to improve organizational operations, the case can be made to IT. There will be a much better chance for success if this upfront analysis and identification of needs is performed before involving the technical team. This doesn’t mean the business group should define the technical implementation, but they should definitely have clear business goals and rules that will drive the implementation. A well thought out business plan will also help raise implementer confidence in the solution they are being asked to build.

From the initial strategy discussion to the intricate details of what needs to occur, it is critical to keep the lines of communication open and continually remind ourselves of potential areas of misunderstanding and strain. An abrupt and demanding approach can create implementation barriers, preventing both sides from meeting their goals. With two differing groups working together, there will inevitably be some level of difficulty. Before you get to the point of no return and statements such as, “it’s impossible” or “it can’t be done,” you should carefully plan for and craft your approach to the conversation.

Stakeholder backgrounds and views must be considered in all communication. By invoking a joint problem solving approach, both groups are more inclined to openly “receive” the necessary information and support the project, moving forward together. Below are my suggestions for eliminating barriers.

1. Clear Problem Statement. Provide all involved sufficient background and detail. It is very difficult to correct early miscommunications and perceptions. First impressions count and once judgments are formed; it can be quite tough to reverse. Say the business group intends to revamp an existing system from the ground up, but what the IT group hears is the desire to add complex logic to an already complex, archaic system that's hanging on by a thread. In this situation, the business group may encounter steep opposition. To head this off, the business group should clearly present the reason(s) change is needed and leave the implementation aspect to the team responsible for the work. Reassurance should be given that implementation details will lie in the hands of the technical experts.
2. Acknowledging the Level of Effort. Create a supportive environment by listening to the concerns of the technical team. It is important to approach the technical team with an understanding approach of the complexity of their work, versus implying the level of effort is insignificant and easily accomplished. Focus should be on clarifying the needs of the project and working together to determine the best way to achieve those goals.
3. Allow IT to Present Impacts. While technical implementers usually have many projects waiting in the wings, it is important to involve them in decisions involving what gets implemented and of course how it gets implemented. This helps create buy-in, helps the team understand the importance and expected value of the project and also helps develop a relationship between groups. Allowing the group responsible for the work to present their initial reaction and findings to the business group is vital. If IT has reservations about code stability and how additional dependencies can falter an already weak structure, the business group needs to understand the risk. While the ‘how’ of implementation is in the hands of the technical staff, working together to determine possible solutions and workarounds is necessary and invaluable to the overall relationship.
4. Identify Available Resources. Barriers may also surface due to the complexity of the request and already stretched resource levels. Once the team fixates on these aspects, other, important project details may be not be heard. The technical team may view the project as just another daunting task. Working together to determine the necessary skills for the project and available resources will help settle any panic that may result from request overload.
5. Jointly Determine Timelines. The technical team may immediately compare the situation to previous, unrealistic schedule demands. Time boxed delivery dates not accounting for the level of work are not nourishing for the team or the project. Often times a middle ground can be reached and select portions of the project be delivered on a set date, versus the entire project. Determining how much time is involved for the work outlined is the first step. Next, both teams should meet to discuss delivery expectations, closely reviewing the time estimates on what can be achieved reasonably. Clearly setting the expectation of what you need and when it is needed is required in all project discussions.
6. Learn From the Past, but Move On. The technical team may not see past previous implementation plans and projects that went awry. While we obviously need to learn from our mistakes and previous project blunders, we should not immediately expect similar, undesirable outcomes for other projects. Showing the technical team you are working with them to ensure success and that you will provide them with the resources necessary to be successful creates healthy reflection and relationships.
   

Employing collaborative and effective communication, polishing your approach in working with others, and creating an environment of openness and healthy exchange will improve your working relationships. Below are three key focus areas:

1. Communication. I can’t underscore this one enough. Clear and effective communication is an absolute must to set the stage for what is needed, when it is needed, and by whom. Clear communication can go a long way in easing anxieties and setting expectations. Effective communication and involving the technical team and business community early on can help squelch inaccurate perceptions and expected demands. The sooner the technical team and business user group are included with the project, the sooner they will become part of the project. In my experience, it is helpful to have those that will be performing the work involved in very early, contractual commitment discussions involving milestones and other schedule parameters.
2. Empathize. Work together to holistically solve business issues, versus an isolated, one-on-one approach of “this is what I need from you.” Sensitivity to the work involved and other project commitments without offering too much of an opinion on how to proceed will improve the reception and tone for future interaction.
3. Create an Open Environment. Developing an open and supportive relationship goes hand in hand with reviewing things objectively. If the technical implementers know you are a reasonable and supportive person, they will be more inclined to voice their technical opinion in a healthy and proactive way, instead of taking the discussion to one of a defensive nature.

The project manager, business analyst, and business users must learn to communicate effectively with the technical team to overcome initial obstacles. It’s often hard to overcome the wall that someone erects when faced with a difficult or uncomfortable topic, so early identification and mitigation is key. Once you cross the “it’s impossible” threshold, both parties have usually become frustrated by the discussion and have often stopped listening to reason.

As businesses continue to look for ways to operate in the most efficient manner, there will be an increasing need for effective relationships between IT and business users. Basic communication skills and genuine interest in team members will be two areas that can make or break this union.

13 Rules for Surviving A Horror Movie Project

13 Rules for Surviving A Horror Movie Project

Horror movies follow unique and immutable laws of physics. There's never anything in the backseat unless you forget to check it. Brand new cars with the sticker still on the window will refuse to start when zombies attack. Even with a full gas tank and 35 mpg, you're going to end up with an empty tank on a deserted highway with no shelter but a creepy haunted old mansion. Sound like some of the projects you've worked? We thought so too. So with our favorite creepy holiday approaching, we decided it was time to publicize our favorite rules and tools for surviving a (project) horror movie. There are thirteen, naturally; read at your own risk!

The 13 Rules for Surviving Projects

- Never do anything on a dare
- Don't pickup hitchhikers
- Recombinant DNA is not a toy
- It's probably deserted for a reason
- Wear running shoes
- Check the ammo supply
- Turn on the lights
- It wasn't just the cat
- Look behind you
- Don't split up
- Don't be afraid to call in backup
- Coffee is for when the building's not on fire
- No, it's not dead yet

1. Never Do Anything on a Dare

Any idea that's followed by the words "that would be really cool" is a good candidate for a stop, look, and think approach. Sticking your hand into dank, musty markets or spending the night in an abandoned product line in order to impress the execs is only going to work if you don't lose something important (like reputation, capital, or critical project resources). This template walks you through the entire rationale, so you can assess new ideas in a consistent, repeatable fashion that allows you to compare their benefits against each other as well as against objective reality. (Hint: Talking dolls are pretty much always a bad idea.)

2. Don't Pick Up Hitchhikers

A little yes here, a little yes there, and before you know it you're careening down the road with a homicidal clown and a guy with bolts sticking out of his neck. You'll never get to that quaint little town festival in the middle of nowhere if you keep stopping to pick up strangers. This worksheet helps you keep the project goals in clear view, and makes it very obvious what is out-of-bounds. Having a common understanding of these boundaries, in a simple "is/is-not" form, reduces do-overs and makes it easier to sort out requests that make sense and those that should prompt you to hit the door locks and floor it.

3. Don't Fool Around with Recombinant DNA Technology Unless You Know What You're Doing

Before you decide to throw in a little frog DNA just to round out the edges, make sure you've really thought it through. This table format provides a concise way to document, analyze, and communicate the scope and feature alternatives for your project. Consider and capture the critical factors, and compare the impact of various combinations on cost, schedule, resources, risk, and potential staff loss to rampaging carnivorous reptiles.

4. It's Probably Deserted for a Reason

If the locals say it's haunted or cursed, listen to them. They've been around a lot longer than you have. They can probably tell you exactly what the problem is, or at least where, if only someone asked, and if only they weren't so busy fighting off all those ravenous change requests and shambling zombies. This paper by Cinda Voegtli outlines how to get everyone to put down the shotguns, step out of the bunkers, and develop a new plan of attack so you can get your product out the door.

5. If You Expect Zombies, Go With the Running Shoes

Those shambling zombies are a LOT faster than they look; high heels and oxfords aren't going to cut it. Neither will laying around and screaming about it, for that matter. You need to have a plan and an escape route, and you need to know when to use them both. This collection of tables and guidelines helps you develop a comprehensive risk plan covering both technical and non-technical areas, and analyze them against factors like potential impact, probability, and how hard it is to spot them on a dark night or in a thick fog. It covers risk ownership too, so you can ensure someone is actually watching for the zombies instead of waiting for them to sneak up on you.

6. Check for Bullets BEFORE You Need the Shotgun

Why does it always come as such a surprise when they pull the trigger and nothing happens? Did no one think to look for ammo when they grabbed the weapons out of that old shed behind the farmhouse? This template provides a simple table for documenting the equipment and tools that will be needed during a project, before the project. Your list should include the things you'll need (decoy hockey mask, working flashlights, chainsaw repellent), as well as vital information like need dates and owners (before the city-sponsored graveyard relocation, any character that has lines in the second half of the script) to ensure that equipment is available on schedule.

7. Turn On the Lights

Something's gone bump in the night, so you fumble around for a bit, see something scampering around out of the corner of your eye, and announce with a relieved sigh that "it was just the cat." Wouldn't it be a lot easier and less stressful if you flipped on the light switch? This template includes several different one-page document formats for getting a true picture of a project or portfolio at a glance, and a presentation format for talking to management-everything you need to make sure that no one (including you) is stumbling around in the dark.

8. P.S.: It Wasn't Just the Cat

That little scamper you saw out of the corner of your eye? It was actually the cat trying to get the heck away from the giant axe-wielding maniac wreaking havoc on the other side of the room. (This is why turning on the lights is so important.) Sure would be nice if you had a high-level view of everything that's going on right now. This easily scanned form was designed to keep executives-who never read more than a page no matter what's chasing them-up to date on project progress, by showcasing all the major project parameters: scope, goals, resources, expenses, and risks. A compact form like this is a great overview for project managers as well as execs; it doesn’t leave axe-wielding maniacs anywhere to hide.

9. Look Behind You

How much carnage would be averted if people would just look over their shoulder once in a while? Reviewing the lessons learned from previous projects gives you a front-row view of the bogeymen that stalked them. If you don't have these invaluable records from the previous team(s), consider calling the lessons learned meeting yourself. This sample agenda shows you how to capture a wealth of information in just a few hours, with time left over to brainstorm better approaches. Even if you're calling on memories from months ago, people have an amazing capacity to remember disastrous results and near misses, and will probably be able to tell you right where the bogeymen are hiding. Shouldn't you know too?

10. Don't Split Up

"Let's split up" is almost always a terrible idea. (But go with it if you're pretty sure the other guy is one of the pod people.) You don't want to be the guy standing around wondering where everyone went and why the fog suddenly got so thick. So if you're pulling in an outside team, make sure they're really on the team, with a clear understanding of your goals, objectives, and timelines. This paper draws on QRPD principles to provide real world examples and specific recommendations for keeping everyone from running off in different directions.

11. Just Call the Cops Already!

When the creepy villain is chasing people around in the fog, how come they never call for backup? Self-sufficiency is admirable, but certain situations call for an authority figure with a really big gun and access to SWAT gear. An escalation process can help your team deal with high-level issues like threats to staffing (stealth reassignments, mysterious portals in appliances), unmet group dependencies (recalcitrant science teams who would rather "study it" than work on the antidote), scope disagreements (like whether to quarantine the neighborhood or the entire town), and issues with functionality (has anyone made sure the brand-new getaway car still starts?). This guideline will help you establish an escalation process appropriate to your situation. Examples from several different project environments are included, so you can see how escalation plans work when different factors like company culture and project complexity come into play.

12. Making Coffee Will Not Stall the Monsters

You'd better believe that the bad guys aren't popping off for a quick cappuccino while they discuss how to get around the hastily-rigged trap you just installed on the back porch. You need a better plan, and fast. By all means continue with the coffee maker, as long as it hasn't spoken a dead language or sucked anyone into a vortex yet. But while it's brewing, you might want to try some of these brainstorming techniques for getting a group focused on finding and fixing the problem, once and for all. Pound for pound, problem solving beats hitting the panic button (or the double-non-fat-whipped-mocha-lattes).

13. No, It's Not Dead Yet

Everyone knows that monsters have more lives than cats from suspicious cemeteries. If you need to send your monster project to its just rewards, you don't want it to pop up again (and again and again) where you least expected it. This detailed guideline helps you plan a strategy for closing it down once and for all, without leaving a nasty mess behind in the process.

Unconventional Wisdom in a Downturn

Unconventional Wisdom in a Downturn

by Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton, Stewart D. Friedman, BV Krishnamurthy, Tamara J. Erickson, Jeffrey M. Stibel, and Peter Delgrosso

“What best practice challenges the conventional wisdom about what to do in a downturn?” We put that question to our team of management bloggers at harvardbusiness.org. Following is an edited selection of their provocative responses.

Protect Strategic Expenditures

by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton

Many executives react instinctively during economic slowdowns by cutting discretionary spending across the organization. But such an indiscriminate slash-and-burn response is a big mistake because it fails to distinguish between short-term operational and long-term strategic programs. Unless the downturn threatens a company’s existence, executives should focus on rooting out operational slack and inefficiency, not on modifying or sacrificing strategic initiatives, which build capabilities for long-term competitive advantage.

To help companies preserve and strengthen their strategic programs, we developed a new expenditure category, strategic expenditures (or StratEx), to supplement the traditional capital and operational expenditure categories. We have found that unless StratEx are segregated from the other categories and protected, managers will view them as discretionary. Faced with short-term economic hardship, managers often defer or transfer funds from their strategic initiatives to achieve near-term financial targets—a principal reason why most organizations have so much trouble sustaining their strategy execution processes.

Two companies we have worked with have effectively cordoned off StratEx. Nordea, a leading bank of northern Europe, created a separate process for planning and funding its strategic initiatives. After the annual meeting that updates the company’s strategy, strategy map, and balanced scorecard, the executive team identifies the strategic initiatives required to achieve the performance targets on its scorecard. It then assigns one of its members to sponsor each project and funds those initiatives under a separate budgetary authority. The initiatives’ sponsors follow up with monthly progress reports to executive committees.

Ricoh, a manufacturer of office automation equipment, creates a strategic investment fund for projects not included in its normal operational and capital budget. Working from the company’s three-year strategic plan, business and functional units prepare and submit detailed proposals for funding the initiatives identified in their own respective plans. A team comprising the CEO and members of the strategy and planning office analyzes each proposal in depth and allocates capital from the strategic investment fund to the projects they deem most important. The CEO and strategy and planning office meet quarterly to monitor the progress of the projects.

During a downturn, companies attempt to eliminate the slack and inefficiencies accumulated during the recent growth period. But their attempts to cut fat and waste often slice into newly growing muscle, bone, and tendon. Creating a StratEx funding category helps companies continue to build capabilities for the future while eliminating the excesses of the past.

Dial Down the Stress Level

by Stewart D. Friedman

The knee-jerk response in an economic downturn is to wring greater productivity out of your workforce by making employees work harder. But this can hurt more than help, by fueling resentment and burnout. A smarter approach: Be open with employees about the business problems you face, and invite them to be part of the solution while encouraging them to meet critical needs in other parts of their lives. Do this right and you’ll reduce stress, decrease wasted time, boost trust, build resilience, and improve productivity.

Contrast three approaches you might take as the manager of a solid performer when times are tough:

• “Hey, Sarah, we’re having a bad year, so if you want any kind of bonus at all, you’re going to have to suck it up and work harder than ever before. Sorry, I know it’s tough, but that’s just the reality.”

• “Hey, Sarah, I know that there’s a lot of pressure on you now, on all of us, really, and I want to make sure you’re getting it all done. Let me know how I can help.”

• “Hey, Sarah, I know that there’s a lot of pressure on you now, on all of us, really, and I want to make sure you’re taking care of all the things that are important to you—not only at work but in other areas of your life, too—so that you don’t burn out. What small changes could you try here that would make things easier, so you’d have more energy to focus on performing well for our business? We desperately need your best efforts!”

The first option helps Sarah face the harsh reality and ties economic incentives to her performance. But you’ve not dealt with whatever other stressors Sarah is facing or explored what’s really driving her. That means the burnout risk is high, and the energy she might bring from her most powerful sources of motivation remains unused. The second option shows your empathy and desire to be supportive, but it’s so passive and vague that she probably won’t even be convinced that you’re serious about providing real support—much less be inclined to change her actions.

The third option has the greatest chance of producing the results you want because, my research shows, the more attention you pay to employees’ lives beyond work, the more you’ll get out of them at work—especially during times of great stress. If you acknowledge the pressure Sarah is under and show that you think about her as a whole person, you will most likely be rewarded with loyalty and extraordinary effort.

Of course, although you are sending the message that you value her ideas and are willing to try them, you are not telling Sarah she can do whatever she wants. Her experiments should be made up of little changes, like shifting her schedule to avoid rush hour, which she might try for a month or so, and they must benefit your business as well as her life beyond work.

Smart experiments are designed to produce what I call four-way wins. They’re intended to benefit work, home, community, and self (mind, body, and spirit) all at once. (For details, see my book Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life.) When people undertake those experiments, they shift some of the attention they have disproportionately allotted to work and dedicate it to the other domains. The result is surprising: Satisfaction and performance in all domains, including work, goes up.

Use Downtime to Enhance Skills

by BV Krishnamurthy

In even the best of times, organizations often pay lip service to professional development. Excellent frontline workers might receive better titles or become project managers without actually having learned how to deliver a group’s work on time, assure quality, and stay within budget. Even experienced managers may be so preoccupied with quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily reports that they have no chance to learn something new—or to unlearn what’s become obsolete. A downturn presents the perfect downtime to enhance the skills your people really need to excel.

“Are you kidding?” you might ask. “When times are tough, professional development is a luxury.” Not so. Often that’s precisely when there is enough breathing room in the daily work flow to give your people the chance to better themselves. Employees at all levels can be sent for training to improve their team-building, collaboration, process ownership, and other skills—which pays off when economic normalcy returns.

For example, in response to the economic downturn of 2000–2002, Alliance Business Academy started conducting annual team-building exercises at a top Indian software company. Working with two of the company’s 200 teams a year, ABA focused the training on endeavors such as completing joint tasks, clarifying group values, and improving team processes. Since the program started, trained teams have been 50% more productive, on average, than untrained teams, according to aggregated measures of quality, time, and cost. This year, the company is putting five teams through the program. ABA has replicated the results at a major aerospace company and a large European engineering conglomerate.

Such professional development pays off most with employees whose team skills are poor but whose impressive individual performance precludes letting them go. A joint research project between ABA and two European business schools has borne that out. In a study of 36 companies in the manufacturing, financial services, and transport sectors in five countries, star performers with poor team skills became change agents within their firms after going through two cycles of team-building exercises lasting 10 days each. Teach solo high performers how to collaborate better, focus on the big picture, and consider the organizational implications of their work, and you’ll reap sizable rewards.

Of course, casting a downturn as an opportunity to fine-tune skills is not easy. Various stakeholders’ anxieties about the short term need to be assuaged and framed in a long-term context. That includes the people whose skills are being improved. They need to have a broad enough view of how their professional development fits into organizational goals to be sufficiently motivated to make the downtime investment pay off. And they must be confident that the organization’s culture will tolerate honest mistakes as they progress and grow.

Those caveats notwithstanding, actively seizing a downturn as an opportunity can reduce the pain of the current one and can soften the blow of the next. Those are luxuries you can’t afford not to indulge in.

“Give Me the Ball!” Is the Wrong Call

by Tamara J. Erickson

Almost all executives I know feel the weight of obligation deep in their bones. They feel a duty to the owners of the business and to customers, of course, but perhaps an even greater one to the employees and families who depend on the company for their livelihoods.

So it’s no surprise that, in troubled times, many leaders believe it’s their job not only to call the shots but also to personally execute the key plays. That’s the nature of leaders. Faced with a crisis, executives often shout, “Give me the ball!” Executive instinct drives greater control—they review costs, tighten approval criteria, redirect key decisions to higher levels, ensure everyone is as busy as possible, narrow the business scope, and so on. Small teams of executives attend secret retreats to review options even as meetings that would bring all the troops together are canceled. As a result, authority becomes centralized.

What leaders frequently forget in the heat of crisis is that the wisdom of crowds applies within their own companies. Instead of hogging the ball during a downturn, they ought to tap the ideas and the energy of the entire organization. When times are tough, leaders should:

Ask great questions. Challenge the organization to respond by setting intriguing and complex goals. Don’t narrow the focus of your questions to the mundane or overspecify how teams should approach challenges. Articulate a compelling mission that will get people to rally.

Build trust across the organization. Don’t cut out meetings, intensify internal competition, or reduce investments in learning. Increase your firm’s collaborative capacity by building relationships and encouraging the exchange of knowledge (see “Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams,” HBR November 2007).

Challenge the status quo. Ensure that your team is regularly exposed to diverse points of view and experiences. Don’t cut travel or fall back on tried-and-true players. Bring in new voices and new ideas—and take them seriously. Get outside your business sphere. Encourage brainstorming and scenario analysis. Don’t abandon training and experimentation. Invest in your people.

Jorma Ollila followed these principles during his tenure as CEO of Nokia. Consistent with the company’s deep traditions of teamwork and global collaboration, he encouraged newly hired leaders to travel to form personal relationships with the diverse array of individuals around the world who would affect their performance. And he never sacrificed his goal of achieving a wireless information society.

Leaders can strive toward ambitious goals during tough periods at their firms and still manage to share obligations broadly. Downturns are no time to tighten control. They’re opportunities to inspire your people to become more spontaneous and innovative. Pass the ball.

Discounts Can Be Dangerous

by Jeffrey M. Stibel and Peter Delgrosso

During tough economic times, companies often rush to reduce prices on their products and services. That seems like common sense: People can’t afford to spend as much, so charge less to keep them buying. But discounting has its perils.

To be sure, discounting is effective when done wisely and strategically. It can get consumers excited about a product, encourage them to buy more, and help your short-term bottom line. However, whether the purchase is a hot dog, a handbag, or a stay at a five-star hotel, customers want good value for their hard-earned money. The price of something is often an important determinant of its perceived value, as Dan Ariely points out in Predictably Irrational. Often, the more consumers pay, the more value they ascribe to a purchase. If you discount prices purely to boost sales, buyers may begin to question that value.

Consider Abercrombie & Fitch, which lowered prices by roughly 15% during the 2000–2002 downturn. When the dust cleared, the company realized that it had sacrificed much of its brand’s cachet and lost significant market share. A&F didn’t recover until 2004—and then only after returning to higher prices. In August 2008, having learned its lesson, the company announced that it was considering another price increase, despite a decline in second-quarter profits. The goal: to enhance what the CEO called the “iconic status” of the brand.

But discounting is so easy that some companies simply can’t resist. Starbucks, which posted its first-ever earnings loss in July, has begun to offer lower-priced options, such as a cup of coffee for $1, with free refills. This strategy may boost sales in the short term, but we suspect that, as with A&F, it will hurt the Starbucks brand in the long term.

Discounting is not always a bad idea, though—there are safe ways to lower prices. Earlier this year, Chrysler discounted something that does not affect its core brand: gasoline. It guaranteed to purchasers of new cars a price of no more than $2.99 per gallon of gas for three years. The idea was to subsidize the fuel that a new car uses, not the car itself. It’s similar to what GM did in 2001 by discounting its financing rather than its cars. Obviously, the auto industry has more problems than brand deterioration. Nonetheless, this is smart marketing during a downturn: It couples the appeal of a discount with an implicit message about the value of the core product.

So if you’re eyeing a simple, traditional discount strategy during the present slowdown, first consider the potential for damage to your brand and then evaluate the brand insurance that a more nuanced approach may offer. If you inadvertently shatter your brand’s mystique, reestablishing the value proposition to consumers may be tougher than you expect.

The Power of Negative Thinking – Project Management in Reverse

by Kimberly M. Wiefling, M.S.

Most of my work revolves around the power of creating breakthroughs through extreme optimism and hideously positive thinking for which "hyperbole" simply isn't a big enough word. I frequently rant and rave about the hazards of know-it-alls who poo-poo every idea and wield their negativity like a scythe, cutting down anything new or imaginative in its path. But the popularity of negative thinking is undeniable, and, like most veteran project leaders, I'm a pro at it. I was reminded of this when I recently received a note from a guy I used to work for at HP who, after reading my book, mused, "It seems a bit cynical. Is that intentional?" Jumpin' Jesus on a pogo stick! Yes, of course it's intentional! Any human being who's been a project manager for more than a couple of hours and hasn't become a tad cynical simply hasn't been paying attention.

Negativity for its own sake is an annoyance at best, and a soul-sucking experience similar to what I imagine a psychic vampire would produce. But in the right hands, it's a weapon of mass construction, freeing the mind of half-hidden dark thoughts, and an on-ramp to the superhighway of results in your project. Jump in, strap in, and hold on 'cause we're going to take the curves up on two wheels.

Negative Thinking is Easier, I'm Positive!

Perhaps due to some quirk of evolution and slight survival advantage (my apologies to the creationists out there), human beings seem to find it easier to think of things from a negative perspective. Don't believe anything I say, of course; check it out for yourself. Hustle an exhausted team working on a high-pressure project into a stuffy meeting room and ask them questions like:

· What's working well on this project?

· What could you do to work smarter, not harder?

· How could we speed up the schedule?

Most likely you will be met with open-mouthed stares as your team struggles with their disbelief that you are serious, at least initially. If you're lucky, someone will take pity on you and mumble that they really like getting free sodas again now that the drought that followed the economic downturn of the first couple of years of the 21st century is over. (Of course, that crash could be dwarfed by the next economic downturn, who knows . . . sorry if I seem negative.) But unless you have a group of people picked straight out of "Pleasantville," you're likely to go from silence to violence pretty darn quickly. Stand near the door and be prepared to make your getaway!

Doom and Gloom Approach

Now put the same group of harried team members into a room, tell them you expect them to respond with at least one thing that would get you all fired if word got out, and ask them questions like:

· What are the top three things preventing us from making changes that we KNOW will make us more effective on this project?

· How could we guarantee that our schedule slips by at least a factor of two by the end of the project?

· In general, what could we do to make this project much worse?

Now you are going to get some creative juices flowing! Be sure to cover the walls with flip charts because you're going to fill every one of them with ideas, comments, criticisms, and a few snide remarks. (And this is EXACTLY what you want if you want to improve your project's results. People are already thinking these thoughts, so you might as well get them out in the open.) Get people up at the flip charts scribbling furiously and egging each other on. Throw in a few playful doom and gloom comments of your own to get the ball rolling, and then encourage the negativity to soar to new heights, shouting out "Excellent! Awesome! More! What else! We are looking for the nuclear scenario, people!" from time to time if you can manage to be heard above the din. Give prizes for the most negative comments, like a year's subscription to "Skeptic's Weekly" or an "EASY" button reprogrammed to say, "That'll never work." Before you start, however, draw a line down the center of each flip chart and tell all of the peeps to post their comments only on the left side of the charts. The right side is for the next step in the exercise, which I recommend you keep secret until after you squeeze every bit of negativity out of their brains.

Reversals

Now you're ready for the next stage. In the world of innovation, the following technique is called "Reversals." It's a powerful approach to identifying and breaking free of unexamined assumptions and beliefs about reality and what's possible, and it's one of my favorite tools in what I call my "Impossibility Toolkit." Briefly, after listing ideas from a negative perspective on the left side of the flip chart, the reverse of each comment is posted on the right side. Naturally, you can group similar ideas together before doing the reversal to avoid duplication. After all, you're bound to have a few people independently come up with ideas like, "Add even more features to the product requirements even later in the project" and "Hold more time-wasting meetings like this one." (For those of you working virtually—and who isn't these days?—you can get a group brainstorm going on a shared spreadsheet laid out in a similar fashion either asynchronously or on a group brainstorm online.) You'll get good results if you follow these two rules: Keep it fun. Keep it real.

When you're done with the reversal you'll have something like this:

Master of Disaster Ideas	Reversals
Lots of email with dozens of CC'd people all responding endlessly back and forth on an urgent matter.	After 2 rounds of email ping pong pick up the phone, hold a quick teleconference, or call a meeting of the critical stakeholders to sort things out.
Avoid involving the customer and the end users in the development process.	Get feedback early and often from both the customer and the end user on early revs.
Keep piling more work onto already overloaded people and encourage them to multi-task excessively because everything is top priority.	Balance the workload across available resources, prioritizing ruthlessly so that people know what to work on next and can avoid the productivity losses of excessive multi-tasking.
Damage morale by getting people to help outsource their own jobs and then lay them off at the end of the project so you can do the work cheaper offshore.	Openly discuss the economic pressures facing the business and involve the team in developing ways to address the need to be profitable amidst increasingly global competition.
Allow scope creep and scope leap, but keep the same level of resources and schedule that were inadequate for the original scope.	Get the team huddled around the real business needs and business-driven requirements, like features and schedule. Once they understand the business and customer needs driving the tough constraints, enlist their support and reward their creativity in coming up with solutions that meet the business needs.

OK, you get the idea, right? This technique works in a wide range of situations, like when you need to figure out how to untangle some knotty technical conundrum or sort out some impending schedule train wreck. You can even use it to improve your personal life and your relationship with your family. One ProjectConnections staffer did this with her husband when house hunting. They made a list of every complaint they had about their apartment for the last 6 months. The reversal of that list—along with the things they did like—became their prioritized house "feature" list. When the dust settled, they basically had it all.

One aspect of this approach that I really love is that it taps the power of the group genius. I've been reading Wikinomics lately and, as a result, am even more convinced of the power of mass collaboration to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles. As Tapscott and Williams point out, effective collaboration requires a supportive framework. Just like the organizations applying these concepts to co-creation of encyclopedias (Wikipedia), video entertainment collections (YouTube), and collaborative innovation (InnoCentive), the freedom to create collaboratively thrives in a framework that provides support for the community. If we want to unleash the power of the group, we've got to create a safe environment that fosters individual contribution and collective creativity, and tools that enable these ideas to be shared freely, explored, examined, extended, expanded, and vetted. Collaboration grows out of the rich soil of such environments and wise project leaders don't leave this to chance.

How can we make sure that this idea dies on in your in-box? Do nothing! Or . . . in the spirit of Wikinomics and mass collaboration, how about taking action on one idea that you gleaned from this article and posting your experience and comments below? I look forward to hearing your thoughts. After all, none of us is as smart as all of us.

Collaboratively yours,

– Kimberly

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©2008 Kimberly M. Wiefling. All Rights Reserved.

Kimberly Wiefling is the founder of Wiefling Consulting, a scrappy enterprise enabling companies to tackle the impossible and get at LEAST partial credit! A business consultant and physicist by education, she spent 10 years at HP in technical leadership and project management roles, then 5 years in the wild and crazy world of Silicon Valley start-ups before leading a one to a glorious defeat during the dotcom bust of 2001. Vigorously scrappy, she reemerged, consulting on leadership and project management worldwide—from Armenia, to Tokyo, to the Silicon Valley. Kimberly is the executive editor of The Scrappy Guides® and a regular contributor to ProjectConnections. Her radio show, "The Scrappy Diaries," airs randomly here and there. Find out more about how to get a dose of Kimberly at www.wiefling.com.

Peter Drucker's Mantras for Success

Peter Drucker's mantras for success

Each time you read something Peter Drucker has said, there's the sensation that a flash bulb has gone off inside your head. This is because the Drucker-isms, as the legendary management gurus's mantras as known, are something you've always known; but rarely heard put so succinctly.

Born on November 19, 1909, Drucker was the giant who defined management and aided in the rise of the modern corporations. Over the last few decades, new gurus may have replaced Drucker, but his books and his management principles continue to be a steadfast bedrock of the corporate world.

Among the other hats he donned included that of a finance reporter in Germany early stages of his career. Drucker, who was born in Vienna, moved to England -- where he had studied -- to escape Hitler. He took up a job as a securities analyst for an insurance firm. Four years later, he moved to the United States, where he began his academic career.

Drucker, who has authored numerous books on the principles that should govern the corporate world, helped develop the US's first executive MBA programme at the Claremont Graduate University; the university's management school is known as the Peter F Drucker School of Management (it was named in his honour in 1987).

He died on November 11, 2005, disillusioned with the increasingly capitalistic trend being displayed by the business world. His principles, however, stand rock-steady and continue to inspire millions of employees, employers and entrepreneurs across the world. Read on for your dose of inspiration.

1. Efficiency is doing better what is already being done.

2. The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.

3. Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.

4. No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organised in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.

5. The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.

6. Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.

7. Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.

8. All one has to do is to learn to say 'no' if an activity contributes nothing.

9. What is the first duty -- and the continuing responsibility -- of the business manager? To strive for the best possible economic results from the resources currently employed or available.

10. People do not know that you cannot successfully innovate in an existing organisation unless you systematically abandon. As long as you eliminate, you'll eat again. But if you stop eliminating, you don't last long.

11. Leaders shouldn't attach moral significance to their ideas: Do that, and you can't compromise.

12. The only things that evolve by themselves in an organisation are disorder, friction, and malperformance.

13. One cannot buy, rent or hire more time. The supply of time is totally inelastic. No matter how high the demand, the supply will not go up. There is no price for it. Time is totally perishable and cannot be stored. Yesterday's time is gone forever, and will never come back. Time is always in short supply. There is no substitute for time. Everything requires time. All work takes place in, and uses up time. Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable and necessary resource.

14. The really important things are said over cocktails and are never done.

15. Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.

16. Concentration is the key to economic results. No other principles of effectiveness is violated as constantly today as the basic principle of concentration.

17. Long range planning does not deal with future decisions, but with the future of present decisions.

18. Leadership is not magnetic personality -- that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not 'making friends and influencing people' -- that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to high sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.

19. What gets measured, gets managed.

20. No decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone's work assignment and responsibility.

22. Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.

23. Meetings are a symptom of bad organisation. The fewer meetings the better.

24. The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.

25. Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got.

26. Objectives are not fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are means to mobilise the resources and energies of the business for the making of the future.

27. Any organisation develops people: It has no choice. It either helps them grow or stunts them.

28. Don't take on things you don't believe in and that you yourself are not good at. Learn to say no.

29. If you can't establish clear career priorities by yourself, use friends and business acquaintances as a sounding board. They will want to help. Ask them to help you determine your 'first things' and 'second things.' Or seek an outside coach or advisor to help you focus. Because if you don't know what your 'first things' are, you simply can't do them FIRST.

30. Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the ?naturals', the ones who somehow know how to teach.

31. Don't travel too much. Organise your travel. It is important that you see people and that you are seen by people maybe once or twice a year. Otherwise, don't travel. Make them come to see you.

32. The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say 'I'. And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say 'I'. They don't think 'I'. They think 'we'; they think 'team'. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but 'we' gets the credit... This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.

33. Too many leaders try to do a little bit of 25 things and get nothing done. They are very popular because they always say yes. But they get nothing done.

34. Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.

35. The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.

36. Again, let's start out discussing what not to do. Don't try to be somebody else. By now you have your style. This is how you get things done.

37. Leaders communicate in the sense that people around them know what they are trying to do. They are purpose driven -- yes, mission driven. They know how to establish a mission.

38. I tell all my clients that it is absolutely imperative that they spend a few weeks each year outside their own business and actively working in the marketplace, or in a university lab in the case of technical people. The best way is for the chief executive officer to take the place of a salesman twice a year for two weeks.

39. Few top executives can even imagine the hatred, contempt and fury that has been created -- not primarily among blue-collar workers who never had an exalted opinion of the 'bosses' -- but among their middle management and professional people.

40. When you are the chief executive, you're the prisoner of your organisation. The moment you're in the office, everybody comes to you and wants something, and it is useless to lock the door. They'll break in. So, you have to get outside the office. But still, that isn't travelling. That's being at home or having a secret office elsewhere. When you're alone, in your secret office, ask the question, 'What needs to be done?' Develop your priorities and don't have more than two. I don't know anybody who can do three things at the same time and do them well. Do one task at a time or two tasks at a time. That's it. OK, two works better for most. Most people need the change of pace. But, when you are finished with two jobs or reach the point where it's futile, make the list again. Don't go back to priority three. At that point, it's obsolete.

41. We suffer from over-choice: 67 varieties of toothpaste, 487 styles of shoes, 186 brands of cell phones with 137 telephone companies. We demand more variety than we could possibly need or want; and as a result, we get lost in options, opportunities, and choices. There are 87 varieties of lawyers, and 75 specialties inside medicine. The world of work can be a confusing landscape.

42. That people even in well paid jobs choose ever earlier retirement is a severe indictment of our organisations -- not just business, but government service, the universities. These people don't find their jobs interesting.

43. A critical question for leaders is: 'When do you stop pouring resources into things that have achieved their purpose?'

44. Morale in an organisation does not mean that 'people get along together'; the test is performance not conformance.

45. An employer has no business with a man's personality. Employment is a specific contract calling for a specific performance... Any attempt to go beyond that is usurpation. It is immoral as well as an illegal intrusion of privacy. It is abuse of power. An employee owes no 'loyalty,' he owes no 'love' and no 'attitudes' -- he owes performance and nothing else.

46. Ideas are somewhat like babies -- they are born small, immature, and shapeless. They are promise rather than fulfillment. In the innovative company, executives do not say, 'This is a damn-fool idea.' Instead they ask, 'What would be needed to make this embryonic, half-baked, foolish idea into something that makes sense, that is an opportunity for us?'

47. Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship... the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.

48. Once a year ask the boss, 'What do I or my people do that helps you to do your job?' and 'What do I or my people do that hampers you?'

49. Great leaders find out whether they picked the truly important things to do. I've seen a great many people who are exceedingly good at execution, but exceedingly poor at picking the important things. They are magnificent at getting the unimportant things done. They have an impressive record of achievement on trivial matters.

50. How does one display integrity? 'By asking, especially when taking on office: What is the foremost need of the institution?and therefore my first task and duty?'

51. Ask yourself: What major change in the economy, market or knowledge would enable our company to conduct business the way we really would like to do it, the way we would really obtain economic results?

52. Ask yourself: What would happen if this were not done at all?

53. So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.

54. The subordinate's job is not to reform or re-educate the boss, not to make him conform to what the business schools or the management book say bosses should be like. It is to enable a particular boss to perform as a unique individual.

55. Effective leaders check their performance. They write down, ?What do I hope to achieve if I take on this assignment?' They put away their goals for six months and then come back and check their performance against goals. This way, they find out what they do well and what they do poorly.

56. The individual is the central, rarest, most precious capital resource of our society.

57. The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.

58. The computer is a moron.

59. Successful leaders make sure that they succeed! They are not afraid of strength in others.

60. The CEO needs to ask of his associates, 'What are you focusing on?' Ask your associates, 'You put this on top of your priority list -- why?' The reason may be the right one, but it may also be that this associate of yours is a salesman who persuades you that his priorities are correct when they are not.

61. Free enterprise cannot be justified as being good for business. It can be justified only as being good for society.

62. Executives owe it to the organisation and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.

63. A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.

64. Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer.

65. Business, that's easily defined -- it's other people's money.

66. Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realised their expectations... They now need more and more expensive clerks even though they call them 'operators' or 'programmers.'

67. What's absolutely unforgivable is the financial benefit top management people get for laying off people. There is no excuse for it. No justification. This is morally and socially unforgivable, and we will pay a heavy price for it.

68. Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

69. A man should never be appointed into a managerial position if his vision focuses on people's weaknesses rather than on their strengths.

70. Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

71. Performing organisations enjoy what they're doing.