The Project Shrink

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

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

Time flies. I mean really.

It's now February. And all the stuff you thought you postponed until later ("Ah well. Will do that in February.") is filling your daily todo list.

Knock knock. Who's There? This is February, stupid!

Fourteen years ago I stopped wearing a watch. One day I noticed that from the moment I got up to the moment I went to sleep, I was looking at my watch to see what the time was. And armed with that knowledge, I thought about how little time I had left before my next meeting. The watch stressed me out.

I threw the watch away. I felt much better. Being unaware of time helped.

The first day of a month is something mythical within organizations. Stuff is due. Stuff will start. Entire companies have reporting cycles that take the resemblance of a monthly birth. At the end of each month something has to be pushed out.

The organizational rhythm is directly linked to the calendar.

You're sitting in a bi-weekly meeting, thinking: "Really? Has it been two weeks already?"

Time flies especially when the rhythm takes over. Unconsciously.

If you get up the same time every day. Take the same train. Have every week on the same day the same meeting. Time will fly. Being unaware of time will make it go fast and unnoticed. We might not sense that things have changed. That, yes, everything appears the same, but some important things have changed. You only missed them.
 

As projects are about time and rhythms, it makes sense to me to be more conscious about our relationships with them. Conscious about entry and exit. Conscious about moving from one thing to another. Conscious about transitions.

I am trying to become more aware of the natural rhythms and transitions that occur in group life.

Havi Brooks has a nice exercise to enhance your awareness about markers in time. Providing them names. The idea is that you use moons (full moons or new moons) as markers of natural time. To become aware of our more natural rhythms instead of artificial time.

But, as hamsters in our treadmills running from one reporting period to another, we might start out with calendar months.

For me January consisted of Courtship and Embarking The Beagle.
February will be: Getting To Second Base and Changing Vessel.

Of course, to you this doesn't make any sense. It has no intention to make any. To me it does. And that is the whole point. I had to think about what I want the next month to be, or what I expect it to be, and make up a name for it.

The only thing left is to put a notice on your calendar at the end of the month to review what this month has given to you. Let's see if this helps.

Terrific. Another reporting cycle.

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

There was a loud, obnoxious man screaming at the gates of Shrinkonia. He demanded something. And now!

He stood there every day. Demanding. Yelling. Every day with a Wish dressed up as a Demand. Old Nox, short for "obnoxious" of course, was well known throughout the tiny mobile state of Shrinkonia. Nobody liked him. It was his town of voice. It was his attitude. But most of all, it was the fact the he appeared Every-Single-Day with something.

The louder Old Nox screamed, the higher the walls around Shrinkonia became. The more he demanded, the less the inhabitants did.

It was actually because of Old Nox that it was so hard to enter Shrinkonia. Not because people were scared. But just because Old Nox demanded something every single day.

Of course, this made Old Nox angry. The less his demands were met, the more demands he made. Ignoring the man, only made his voice louder. And this led to higher walls.

In the end, nobody in the entire empire knew what he actually was demanding. Nobody had bothered to listen to Old Nox. They were all to busy ignoring him, complaining about him and of course inventing immigration procedures to make it impossible for him to get through the gates.

There was the soft spoken woman that always smiled to the people of Shrinkonia.

She waved gently and offered them refreshments when they worked up a sweat in their cubicles. She made a nice casual chat once a week and was interested in what they were doing.

People were looking forward to seeing Dear Isl, as in Incredibly-Sweet-Lady, every week. She passed no judgements. She provided energy. And she could walk in and out Shrinkonia every time she wanted to.

Dear Isl was clearly the opposite of Old Nox.

Less noise from outside the walls made the walls lower and thinner. The appearance of stress from the outside, increased the walls around the empire.

It's a folk tale, so it's metaphorical, right?

Anyway.

One day, Dear Isl heard the Shrinkonians complaining, again, about Old Nox. And she said:

"You should take action, if it bothers you. If high walls don't help, why don't you silence him forever?"

Everybody liked Dear Isl, that's why they called her "dear" Isl, instead of just Isl. So, that seemed like a reasonable suggestion.

So they killed Old Nox.

His last words were: "But I just wanted to borrow some sugar."

At the reading of his will, it turned out that Old Nox didn't have any money left to buy even sugar for his coffee. All his money went to his ex-wife. All he had left was his house. His ex-wife had tried to get her evil hands on his house. But she hadn't succeed.

Until now.

Old Nox had forgotten to change his will. So Dear Isl, got his house.

There is a lesson somewhere about change procedures. And boundaries around projects.

Somewhere.
 

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

Life has very cool moments.

When you are presenting at a seminar you might wear a head set. You know, a microphone strapped to your head. And of course, at such moments, you feel like Britney. As in "Spears".  Wearing a headset entitles you to do a Britney. Finger in one ear, sing loud and out of key, having all the right moves. Sliiiiiiiiide to the left. Sliiiiiiide to the right.

If you don't feel like Britney, you're not allowed to wear the headset. If you don't feel like a princess, you can't have the pink tiara.

So. I am watching a presentation by some guy about some boring topic. He enters the stage and he's wearing a headset. I am waiting for the finger in his ear. Nope. Song? Nada. Slide? No way.

No Britney.

In my mind there is actually forming this sentence. Seriously. I hear myself saying to my other imaginary self…

"No Britney. What a loser."

Since last year I have a new inhabitant of my brain. Hogarth.

An 800-pound gorilla that I see sitting around offices. I have to thank Joel Bancrof-Conners for that.

"“Oh, right! Meet  Hogarth. He’s sitting down the table, wedged between the QA director and the product manager, quietly reading his newspaper and ignoring everyone else. It’s a bit of tight fit, but what do you expect from an 800 pound gorilla?”

Joel took a gorilla instead of the elephant that is normally used in the phrase “the elephant in the room”. It represents the topics every body knows are there, but aren't talked about.

"Hey, Hogarth. Wasn't expecting to see you here!"

Seriously. You'll start to see Hogarth drinking coffee. It's ridiculous.

Ever been to Abilene?

I see big signs with "Abilene 100 miles" on them.

Sometimes a member of a group ends up doing something that he doesn't want to be doing, but does it anyway to please the others in the group. When all members in a group do this, when all members do something that they think will please the others, but in reality nobody wants to, they are on the road to Abilene.

This is named after an anecdote management expert Jerry Harvey uses, to illustrate this phenomenon, which he called The Abilene Paradox. The story is about a family that ends up driving on a hot day to Abilene. Nobody wanted to go there. But they all thought they would do the others a favor.

Sometimes, seeing teams operate, my internal dialog goes …

"Yep. That truck is going to Abilene."

And don't get me started on Shrinkonia!

Unlike Abilene, you really want to go there.

I did even become Emperor of Shrinkonia.

I realized I needed a different language for writing about projects. I realized I needed embarrassing drawings to express my thoughts on projects. I know projects are about humans. But how can I talk about people stuff when the tools I have to communicate with are technocratic, cold and impersonal?

That's how my mind invented Shrinkonia.

I turned 40, started drawing and became emperor of my own imaginary state. Go figure.

Shrinkonia: a place where project teams find connection and flow, so they can create amazing things together. It’s located all over the world. And mobile. So it moves around. And people come and go. They move to Shrinkonia fluently and leave as they have done their thing. Also home of The Project Shrink. And MacGuyver. Although. They do not really live together.

Life truly has cool moments.
 

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