The Project Shrink

Of course, as a Shrink you get the hard questions. The ones that mainly take place inside the heads of Project Managers. This week I got a question from Dan:

"Dear Project Shrink: I have a used car, that keeps on breaking down. Every time I bring it to the repair shop to get it fixed, I have to pay a huge bill. Every time I think it is the last time, this will be the last mechanical problem that needs fixing. My projects feel the same. When do you know to surrender and give up?"

When you get the early signs of a doomed project, I think it is either time to really turn the course of the ship, or, if you don't succeed, to jump ship. For me personally those early signs have to do with the business intent. If there is no business case, if the business goals for the project are not clearly formulated or if they keep on changing every week, that is for me a huge sign of doom.

Time, money and scope may fluctuate, but only if there is a clear vision of business value. Decisions about changes in the iron triangle components can only be validated against business value. No clear value, no way to validate what done looks like. Doom! Doom I say. It is like your used car; no way to validate if the added cost is worth the investment.

Other signs of trouble can be found in the people surrounding the project. Stakeholders that are reluctant to commit. Oof. After a motivational speech of the sponsor where everyone is applauding the beloved leader, go to the water cooler and listen what people are saying ("That will never work!"). If you find your entire team making references to the pointy haired boss from Dilbert, you either talk to them to change their attitude, or you pack your bags.

Operating in a culture of blame, where more time is spent playing office politics than actually performing tasks, is also a beacon of doom. Open communication and honesty is a success for any projects, except when an honest statement is used to really shoot the messenger.

When do you surrender?

When you are up into your ears in signals of doom, and see no clues into addressing them properly.

I am very curious about your answers to this question?

If you have another question you would like to discuss, please send an email to: [email protected].

Did you just save the day? Did you just use your superpowers to singlehandedly turn that troubled project around? Can you do things much faster yourself than your team member?

Do you have a cape? Do you have a theme song for when you enter a building? Are you a genuine PM Hero?

Well, your days are over, as Lynda Bourne argued in her entertaining presentation "The Future Of The PM Hero" at the PMI EMEA Congress in Milan on Tuesday.

Somewhere during the 1990s a Project Manager became all of a sudden seen as CEO of his project. Not just executing a plan towards a sudden goal, but also having entrepreneurial spirit and being concerned with things much wider than your own organization; Captain of The Ship; Remover of Every Obstacle; The Great Visionary. And just coming out of the 80s, a good CEO, the person, was regarded to be a hero; an iconic figure that singlehandedly steers the company towards larger profits. Think Jack Welch.

And now, the PM should stop being a Hero. Yes, sometimes it is good that you are involved every decision made. And yes, sometimes you need to know everything. And yes, sometimes you need to speak to everyone. And yes, a true Hero does it all. Himself. Being iconic. Being stressed out.

This might have been useful than, but it is certainly not useful anymore. Now it is really more about leadership, about soft skills. And not in the sense of being the Iconic Charismatic Hero, but as in Level 5 Leadership. In the famous book "Good To Great" the author, Jim Collins, defines 5 levels of leadership. Level 3, the competent manager, is the level most Project Managers find themselves on. The Effective Leader, level 4, creates a compelling vision and ensures commitment to get there with ever increasing performance. The Level 5 Executive is the leader who "builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will."

So, yeah, Level 5. That's what we need. Humility + Will. Emphasis on your team
The Hero is out. Leadership + Business Focus are the future for the PM.

It sounds a little tree-huggerish, but they are sound concepts worth exploring. Google "Level 5 Leadership" and emerge yourself for a couple of hours.

A tip provided during the presentation, is the use of The Organizational Zoo to sharpen your soft skills. The zoo describes 25 personality types using animals as analogy. This is a fun and effective way to familiarize yourself with different personalities.     

John Kao, author of Innovation Nation and allround innovation guru, opened the PMI EMEA congress in Milan on Monday with an inspriring talk about innovation and what this can mean for Project Managers. After some introduction about how creativity is not the same as innovation, but just one of many essential components, he got me sitting right up my seat, taking notes.

Innovation from a management perspective is about mixing top-down approaches with bottom up. It's about ensuring value from a business perspective, but allowing creativity to emerge freely. It is not either or.

This is discussed frequently on my blog, with heated debates. I think the debates originate mostly from the perspective someone has of current PM practice.

Commonly used is the perspective of Taylorism. People in a factory. Management plans the process in detail and hands over instructions. Efficiency and maximum alignment are assured. This top-down in its purest form. During the keynote yesterday, this was picture also used shortly for illustration.

This is where most of the time the debate starts. "This is NOT what we are doing!" And they are right. We have strong leaders, we have highly social competent managers out in the field. Heck, we have an agile movement among the discipline.

So why still use this image of pure top-down?

First of all, for effect. If you have an hour to bring over a message, you have to make the message short and using strong opposites intensifies a message. Black-white, good-bad, right-wrong. I used this all time time. Yes reality has more shades of color, but reality doesn't fit in a blog post.

And secondly, it is an image still hold by many people outside the profession. Yes we have moved on, but does the rest of the world know?

A great session I attended later yesterday was by Peter Taylor, The Lazy Project Manager. In his humorous talk he made a case for Project Managers to get "out of our box". He said that we are unknown outside our profession. How do you explain to your kids what you do? "Uhm. I manage projects." His argument was that if we are unable to explain to the outside world what we do, how do we expect that everyone outside of our box is aware of what it is we do.

Going over my notes  I wondered how much of our own internal debates is about conflict of "the representation of you", as The Lazy PM called it.

So, we still have to mix top-down with bottom-up. But, we already know, and we already do. Right? And if we need (additional?) ideas on how to do this, we might have a look at "innovation". That is what I took away from the keynote.

Now we just have tell the world about it.

 

Creating an environment in which people find it fantastic to work in is the secret to almost any project success. Having a great cause to work on. Using cool technology. Having an office with actual real daylight instead of the bunker in the basement. And don't even get me started on the power of engagement and positive feedback. But sometimes the environment turns against us, and it gets harder and harder to stay the chipper, up-beat, always positive and genuine smiling Project Leader.

I recently got this question:

"How do you motivate a  project team during the crisis (no bonuses, reduced salary but a lot of work because of firing others)?"

How do you cheer the crew on when you just found out you're captain of The Titanic? It's ineffective if the captain is yelling "keep up the good work, men!" when he is getting too much Margarita's at the Acapulco Deck to forget his sorrows.

Start With Yourself

This is essential in motivating during a crisis. Your own attitude.  For motivation always start with yourself; to motivate others you have to be motivated yourself and should look for positives in all situations. As a role model, if you are energetic and inviting your team will have confidence in you and will follow.

This doesn't mean you should get into denial and put up a show for good appearances. This only makes things worse. It will backfire when the whole world thinks it's an economic disaster and you picture a sunny and bright situation. They won't think you are onto something. They will think you are getting delusional.

Be Creative

Address the situation as it is. And discuss with the team members their individual ambitions. Find elements that you have influence on and that inspire your team members.

Somewhere between the Millennium-bug and Euro-conversion projects, I worked with a small team creating interfaces between information systems. A lot of interfaces. Basically, the same work over and over again. It’s hard to stay motivated.

At this time XML was just discovered by tech marketers. So, there was this way cool new tech, that everyone was talking about, and there we were, building interface after interface with our old school stuff. What if we could use the new shiny stuff to build our programs? Functionality would be the same, costs identical, but the development team could learn and use new technology. They would be excited to be involved in something “state-of-the-art”.

Instant motivation.

This story is not telling you to keep on switching technology. This story is telling you to be creative within your own circle of influence. You will be amazed about what you can accomplish. For example by giving team members a role they desire, instead of what it says on their functional title.