Drunken PM

Tim Ferriss, author of the 4-Hour Work Week, 4 Hour Body, and 4-Hour Chef recently launched a new show, The Tim Ferriss Experiment, on Upwave.  (You can also find it on iTunes.) In each episode, Ferriss will take on the task of learning a new skill and getting good enough at it in five days to prove his abilities in some type of high-profile demonstration. The show follows some of same basic principles also covered in JoshKaufman’s The First 20 Hours.

Basically, the idea is that by following a specific process, you can take anything you want to learn and in a short amount of time, develop a “good enough” level of skill/knowledge to get by.

It’s a interesting premise. As I read Kaufman’s book, I found the idea inspiring. He takes a number of things he wants to learn about – like yoga, playing the game Go!, playing the ukulele, and by dividing up the work of learning in a specific way, he gets good enough to feel like he can check the item off his list of things he wants to do.

In Kaufman’s chapter on learning the ukulele and how part of what makes it work is that you have to set some pretty high stakes for yourself. In his case, performing at a speaking event.

Segway to The Tim Ferriss Experiment…

Tim Ferriss is an amazing human example of transparency and being open to the possibility of failure. I love the fact that he’s hacking his own life in public and that this is how he makes his living. I also think the idea of outsourcing the stuff you don’t like doing is great, in theory… but whose going to change the cat litter? (An argument for another post…)

In the initial episode of The Tim Ferriss Experiment, Tim decides he wants to learn drums. The program has a very Myth Busters/How It’s Made vibe. Ferriss has 5 days to learn to play drums well enough to play “Hot Blooded” on stage with Foreigner in L.A. He’s got a few people helping him out, including the rhythmic god, Stewart Copeland, drummer for the Police. Ferriss also has a drumming teacher from The School of Rock in LA help him out. This is the part where the show reeled me in like a starving fish. The line at the bottom of the screen about drumming together being like paired programming. I’m not really convinced it is 100% accurate, but it was a cool geek tidbit. (And with any luck, the masses will very soon begin misusing “pairing” with the same degree of ninja like expertise they employ in misusing the word “agile”.)

In another segment of the show, Ferriss talks about how he always tries to find things to do that are scary for him because it is a way of inoculating himself against the fear of failure.  This is also quite brilliant.

But then the scary part...

Ferriss has a massive world-wide audience. People who read his books look to these

books for advice on how to improve the way they approach their work in order to make their lives better.  In his 80/20 approach, Ferriss is going to be learning to do new things in each episode. He’ll get “good enough” at 20% of something to deliver 80% of the value.  This is more, or less the same approach Josh Kaufmann promotes. And I think, if you are applying it to a hobby, that is great. But, my deep, dark, wake me shaking in the middle of the night fear, is that people are going to see Ferriss applying this to pretty high profile gigs (like being a professional drummer), and a new trend will emerge. We will suddenly have an ocean of professionals whose goal is to just learn 20% of a skill so they can get by stumbling through 80% of a task or job ... 

and I may have to work with people who think that is ok. 

And that makes me wanna get my Gran Torino on...

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My favorite presentation at DigitalPM2013 was given by Sam Barnes. After years working as a PM in Digital, Sam turned to the DARK SIDE… he became a client. Suddenly, he was taking bids from all the companies he was used to competing against. Given his years of experience leading projects from the agency side of the table, he walked into it thinking it would be a bit of a cake walk. What he found was maybe not so much with the cake … or the walk.

In this podcast interview Sam and I talk about his experience being on the client side, his presentation at DigitalPM 2013, the challenges for those working in the Digital PM space who have to be able to work in both waterfall, and Agile, but find that neither really fits as well as one would hope and the upcoming DigitalPM UK conference.

If you’d like to learn more about Sam:

He’s got him some blog 
He’s on the twitter 
And his very excellent presentation from Digital PM 2013 is here

Click here to listen to the podcast

At DigitalPM 2013 I had the chance to meet Dan Brown, who is a founder and principal at Eight Shapes, a Washington D.C. based user experience consulting firm. Dan is also the author of Communicating Design and Designing Together and at the conference he facilitated a session using a game called Surviving Design Projects that he developed to help improve communication with design on projects where there is conflict.

In the interview we discuss Dan’s perspective on the value Design brings to the team and how we can improve our interaction with them. Dan also shares his thoughts on the challenges facing the role of project management in the digital space.

One of my lightbulb moments during this conversation was that in many ways, it seems as though the design side of the house and the agile software side of the house are headed down the street in the same direction, but on opposite sides of the street. It raises the question of when/how there will be a convergence in how the two sides approach their work.

If you’d like to learn more about Dan, here are some links that will help:
Eight Shapes
Twitter
Amazon

If you have ever attended a professional conference, one of the most common things you hear goes something like this:

"Oh, I don’t actually get much out of the sessions. I really just attend to network. The most important part of these things is what happens in the hallways in between sessions."

In fact, this sentiment was one of the main things that led Harrison Owen to start Open Space  as a more (less) formal way of holding a conference.

One reason professionals often attend conferences is for self-validation. Being surrounded for a few days by peers who share the same knowledge base you do and attending sessions that confirm that you all do in fact know the things you need to know can be very reassuring.

If you reach the stage where that becomes boring, you, like many will bail on the sessions and spend time in the hallway chatting with your colleagues. This is the portion most people say they find most valuable. It is a great way to extend your network, check in with others on your ideas and ensure that your face and name are a recognized entity in your professional community.

The question is, is this really the best that professional conferences have to offer?

This fall I attended two events that changed the way I look at conferences. The first was DPM 2013, which I’ve already written about here. It exposed me to a segment of professionals in the PM field who are working towards what may become a new way of approaching work. It includes aspects of agile and traditional pm, but is really neither of those things.

This November, I had the good fortune to be able to present at Øredev 2013 and this is the event that has had the most significant impact on how I view conferences now. This was my 3rd time attending Øredev. It is always enriching and challenging, but this time, I found myself very reluctant to miss any of the session. Each talk I attended introduced me to a new batch of ideas, concepts and ways of working that were unfamiliar to me. Each speaker I watched present, challenged some assumptions or practices I hadn’t previously thought to question. As someone who was firmly in the “It all happens in the hallways” camp, this was a new experience for me. I was more concerned about missing something my brain needed than I was about hanging out in the halls networking. Any decent conference will offer an attendee a chance to learn something, but what makes Øredev stand out is that it requires something more than information consumption.

The best way to sum it up may be by paraphrasing a conversation I had with another attendee at Øredev following the "Tekhnasthai" keynote given by Anna Beatrice Scott. He said:

"As I was watching her and listening to her, I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated and angry. Then I realized that what was making me frustrated and angry was not her, or her message, it was that she was was challenging my beliefs about work and how to approach it."

IMHO, this is the type of bar against which conferences planners should be measuring themselves if their events are going to retain value going forward. And as attendees, we should use the same bar. Going to conferences where we can have our assumptions validated or where we can be passively fed is not enough. In order to grow the profession and grow in our practice of it, we should always be seeking out events that will push and challenge us and leaning into the scary bits.

One of the people I had pleasure of meeting at DPM 2013 was Carson Pierce. Carson is the Director of Project Management at Yellow Pencil, an end-to-end service provider for web development based in Edmonton and Vancouver. He’s also one of the folks helping the DPM community take root and grow.

Carson and I discussed DPM2013, the challenges facing the digital PM community with respect to the Agile vs. traditional question, and the group he has formed of folks in this space who are actively trying to find the collaborate on finding the optimal way to solve the unique each of them faces.

You can find the interview here.

You can follow Carson on Twitter here.

You can find Brett Harned on Twitter here.