The Project Shrink

If we are really serious about the importance of the environment we work in and the stories we tell, we should have a Set Designer and a Storyteller on our projects.

Yes, I am totally serious.

So is Daphne Depassé, an Amsterdam based solution designer. As I live 20km from Amsterdam, you could say we are neighbors. And that makes me a happy neighbor.

She developed an entire method, Plan B, for running projects.

A method called “Plan B”!

“What’s the plan?”

“B.”

It’s awesome.

Like. The need for a Set Designer. And a Storyteller.

I want to be both. And a Project Shrink.

Or. The importance of the look and feel of the environment we work in.

Yes.

Shrink: How does the look and feel of an office effect a team?

Daphne: “Whatever you do, it always takes place at a physical location. And this location affects our moods and thoughts. Everything – from the view, to the colors, the height of a ceiling, the temperature and furniture – influences how we think and feel, and how we work together.
Many offices and workplaces, however, can be more depressing than stimulating. I think everybody knows places with bad coffee, uncomfortable chairs, places without fresh air or daylight – places where you just want to leave – as quickly as possible.

As our working environment has such a big impact, it only makes sense to pay attention to it.”

Shrink: How does this works on a project?

Daphne: “During a project, there are always different activities going on. In the beginning for example, you just want to get a relaxed, cosy, warm and ‘safe’ environment to get to know each other a little bit better and to share some thoughts in an informal way – building trust. For these kinds of activities an office can be devastating. In that case; a café or a park can be far more effective.

So, it depends on the activities and needs of the moment in the process.

When you want to be creative, search for an environment that is inspiring and stimulate all the senses. When you have to think clearly and make some difficult decisions together, a clean, fresh and kind of boring location could be working (the office could be the perfect place :) ).”

Shrink: In your method, Plan B, you have defined the role of “The Set Designer”. What does a person with this role do?

Daphne: “The Set Designer takes care of an optimal setting -in the broadest sense. It’s about taking care of an appropriate, enhancing location to support the activities needed. But it’s more than that. It’s also about monitoring the right positive vibe, and the right amount of fun and humour for example.

This is just one of the six roles of Plan B.

Two other roles are “The Master of Value”: monitors the direction, the common goal and ensures the correct focus of attention and value that the team wants to create.

And there is “The Storyteller”, who ensures that ideas and proposals are made explicit and translated into clear, simple and clear (visual) messages.”

Shrink: This is a rather unique approach. How do people respond to the roles?

Daphne: “Initially people are a little confused, but never in a negative way. I use these roles as a deck of cards with all the roles represented. And people like gadgets! Within teams the members can determine which role they are going to take. And they can switch roles if they want. This makes it kind of fun. It’s feels like playing.

When people practice the roles for a while, they will see the real benefits. When a person assumes a role, he makes sure that the corresponding aspects are “safe guarded”. The role of The Storyteller emphasizes common understanding, verifying the message, making the results clear and convince people of the need.”

A book about Plan B is currently in the making.

For more information about Plan B visit her website. Or contact her directly.

I didn’t recognize Hannibal at first. Although the dinosaur suit and the cigar should have triggered some alarm bells. I was going to hire the A-Team.

Some things needed to be taken care off. Some would say “projects”. But the A-Team isn’t going to show up for “projects”, so I said I had a Big Adventure for them.

Hannibal said they only worked with the best people. And they always needed a helicopter, cars, welding equipment and machine guns that never shoot anyone. They could handle every situation. As long as they could weld old cars into tanks and fly away in the helicopter.

“The A-Team is adaptable.”, Hannibal told me, “You just need the best people. And make sure you have set up the environment in such a way we can do our best work.”

His first estimate for the fee was a couple of million dollars. Having no funds or authority what so ever I asked him what I could get for hundred bucks.

He suggested I talked to MacGyver.

MacGyver just has his Swiss army knife. His solutions are not sophisticated as those of the A-Team. But they seem to work. And he is cheap.

MacGyver entered the building with a big sign that said “Welcome To Shrinkonia. Population: 1″.

Mac explained: “Shrinkonia is my kingdom. I have full authority over it. It is so small that this sign hardly fits in it. I am the only inhabitant at this moment. But the cool thing is that every one who sees the sign, my Swiss army knife and thinks “wow. cool!” will join in. Shrinkonia is a very dynamic state. In size.”

I looked puzzled. “Why would you want to do that?”, I asked.

“Well,” Mac paused, “in that way I get people into my team that actually want to work with me. It is a way to attract people with the “best fit”. For free. Heck, I could charge them money for just being near my Swiss army knife.”

“But what if people are just assigned to your squad?” You see, Mac The Swiss Army Knife wasn’t going to dazzle me with just his cool talk.

“Ah!” the 80s TV hero yelled, “That’s the neat thing about Shrinkonia. You can change the culture just as much as you want. If Moleskine notebooks is your thing, you can introduce the use of these way too expensive Italian design notebooks. You can ask the team members what they like about the host organization and copy those elements.”

How did he knew my love for Moleskine notebooks? I wanted in! I wanted to be a Shrinkonian! Being a Project Shrink I MUST be a Shrinkonian!

“I want in!!!!” I screamed from the top of my lungs.

“You see how this works? I just added one element and you are already drooling to get in. It’s the David Copperfield solution to problems: if you cannot move the mountain, just change the angle of the camera.”

“Wow.”

“I can get you David Copperfield for $10.” Mac offered.

Bas de Baar is a Dutch writer who draws. Documenting a world in transition. He loves to make inspirational cartoons, travel guides and other story-telling structures for the collaborators of our brave new world. 

I bought a book because someone told me it’s the big thing among Agile Trainers. Not that I am an “Agile Trainer” or want to be one. I love the way they setup their training sessions. With games, fun, movement and stuff. They’re a lively bunch, them Agile Trainers.

So I bought “Training From the Back of the Room!” by Sharon Bowman (affiliate link) and lost myself in the content.

I had to buy the kindle version. Even though I read it on an iPad. Somehow the Apple iBook store isn’t really catching up here in The Netherlands. Or I can’t figure out how the bloody thing works.

So. The coolness, freshness, state-of-the-art-y-ness and usefulness of using a modern training set up. I think the Agile training crowd got that covered. And sure enough, the Bowman book can be a bible for that tribe.

Being a party of one – the community of project shrinks is not that large – I was thinking about flags for a project shrink. A flag for me represents a visible element of a culture that identifies that culture and the people part of the culture. And “playful, interactive and effective workshops” should definitely be a Shrink flag.

I decided it is one.

I copied it from The Agile Trainers and ran with it.

The cool thing with parties of one is you can shape it in “the group” you want to identify yourself with. You can provide it with all the neat flags you want.

A project shrink is mobile, global, nomadic and loves to travel.

Poof.

Just added a laptop and passport to the bag of flags. The Moleskin notebook was already in it.

Yes. I can do that. I just did.

“Identity is funny.” Havi Brooks reminded me: “The mind-boggling collection of internal rules about who gets to self-define as what. And why you don’t get to be a whatever-it-is. The way we silently agree to be put into one box or another.”

But luckily, she adds, “Identity is also fluid. … When we get to recognize the internal rules for what they are, we get to start deprogramming and destuckifying. … It’s messing around with choosing communities, changing metaphors, and rethinking how you approach the culture of your you-ness.”

I don’t want to get all Eckhart Tolle (affiliate link) on you. But. You don’t have to stick to your history to choose your group associations. You may. You don’t have to. Yeah, sure, The Others might look at your history and keep pointing to flags they find. Good for them.

Identity is like socks.

You can change them any time. You can go stripy. You can go plain blue. You can choose from your drawer, the socks you wear over and over and over and over again, or you can buy a new pair. Or make a pair yourself if they don’t exist yet.

I keep obsessing about socks.

And flags.

And identity.

I am mostly explaining this all to myself. Keep reminding me how thing are connected and influence what we do.

Your mindset determines how you think about the world and determines your behavior. Identity is how you perceive yourself in relationship to The Others. And the rest of the world. Identity is a mindset.

You can choose your own flags. Great.

But mostly you will copy flags from others. You need to know that certain flags exists in the first place.

I wouldn’t have found the cool training concepts if I hadn’t experienced them from The Agile Trainers. Perhaps I would have. But I needed the exposure to the concepts before I could copy them.

If you want to get people to associate with an organizational culture, you have to expose it to them in the first place.

If you are trying to reveal a culture, you should focus on making people aware of the visible traits of their current culture. The habits, the rituals, the in-groups and out-groups, the language.

This is the power behind creating a Travel Guide for your organization. You get people to focus on visible traits, rituals and habits, folklore. When they start to form a temporary tribe they are exposed to the collection of flags, or the sock drawer if you want, they can use to pick the ones they want.

When a Project Shrink combines his flags of “cool training”, mobile, global, nomadic and “loves to travel”, he’ll end up with exercises like “The Travel Guide“.

And he might stop wearing socks. It’s summer anyway.

Capish?

Oh. Wow. Metaphors are becoming serious business. I read in The Atlantic an article called “Why Are Spy Researchers Building a ‘Metaphor Program’?”

“Every speaker in every language in the world uses them effortlessly, and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity wants know how what we say reflects our worldviews. They call it The Metaphor Program, and it is a unique effort within the government to probe how a people’s language reveals their mindset.”

So. Metaphors reveal our mindset. Wow.

You already knew that of course. Metaphors are a central theme on The Project Shrink.

People can talk about projects as if they are conducting a war. They are using words like “marching orders” and “the troops”. If a Project Manager has a mindset like this, war as a metaphor, his mind is thinking in friends and foes, allies and enemies. You are either with him or against him. This view of the world will make it very difficult to collaborate with this person if you disagree.

In management circles a famous metaphor is that of a machine when looking at an organization (thanks Taylor!). Every employee is looked at as one of the many gears or bolt in the machinery. Talking about pure efficiency this is a powerful metaphor. However, within this mindset, it can also mean neglecting the individual character of every employee.

In The Atlantic article, an example is quoted from The Metaphor Program’s manager, Heather McCallum-Bayliss:

“Metaphors shape how people think about complex topics and can influence beliefs. A study presented participants with a report on crime in a city; they were asked how crime should be addressed in the city. The report contained statistics, including crime and murder rates, as well as one of two metaphors, CRIME AS A WILD BEAST or CRIME AS A VIRUS. The participants were influenced by the embedded metaphor… if people were given the crime-as-a-virus framing, they were more likely to suggest social reform and less likely to suggest more law enforcement or harsher punishments for criminals.”

So. Metaphors also effect reality.

If the model is powerful enough and wide spread among more people, the model will even become a reality.

This reminds me of an article I read 7 years ago. If models can have such an impact on the performance of reality, you almost have to be aware of the images that people try to fill in your head. Sumantra Ghosal writes in “Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices”:

“In courses on corporate governance grounded in agency theory … we have taught our students that managers cannot be trusted to do their jobs -which, of course, is to maximize shareholder value- and that to overcome “agency problems,” managers’ interests and incentives must be aligned with those of the shareholders by, for example, making stock options a significant part of their pay… Why then do we feel surprised by the fact that executives in Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco and scores of other companies granted themselves excessive stock options…?”

So. Metaphors have a large impact on how we think and what we do.

So. Switch metaphors and we change how we think and what we do.

This is the whole concept behind Temporary Tribes. It’s an adventure travel metaphor for groups pursuing the fulfillment of a certain outcome. For crews conducting interventions in host organizations.

Sometimes we need that.

For problem solving. To avoid people answering in ways they assume is expected, you can use a metaphor for your endeavor and frame all activities in an entirely different setting. One where there are no rules about how people ought to behave.

To create a more attractive association, to be less intimidating. If the association you have with “Project Management” is putting you off, you might be missing out on something beneficial to your business or work.

Some people would love to think about what their tent looks like.

But changing mindsets is hard.

Especially when you are saying you are going to change it.

Say to someone: “I am going to change your mindset!” and he’ll yell: “NO YOU’RE NOT!”

It’s the same as organizations changing culture by saying their are changing the culture.

“You join a new organization and you are required to sing the corporate hymn at the start of every meeting.

Or.

Someone next to you is humming a catchy tune. Cheesy. Or stupid. But catchy. He is humming this in the background once in a while.

First way is “creating” a culture. Waaaaaaaah. Yuk. Argh.

Second way is “revealing” a culture.”

If you are trying to reveal a culture, you should focus on making people aware of the visible traits of their current culture. The habits, the rituals, the in-groups and out-groups, the language.

Uhm. Yes. The metaphors used.

At least, that’s what I think.

Bas de Baar is a writer who draws. Documenting a world in transition. He loves to make visual maps and travel guides for the collaborators of our brave new world.