The Project Shrink

In 1949 thirteen firefighters died at the Helena National Forest, Montana. A forrest fire got completely out of hand, and surprised the team that was dropped by parachute to control the fire. The Mann Gulch fire is an incident described in detail in Norman Maclean's book "Young Men and Fire".

I became fascinated of this sad story by the article "The Collapse Of Sensemaking" by Karl Weick. In this article the author uses the case of the Mann Gulch Disaster to analyze what went wrong in this professional team under stress conditions.

This group of firefighters didn't know each other very well. A couple of team members had worked together before, but for the largest part this was a new group. Trust wasn't established yet, people didn't know how other members thought and how resourceful they were.  

But in professional teams trust isn't necessarily needed to operate.

The profession itself provides a role system that guides the individuals in what they should do and what they can expect from the others. In software projects we can have the project leader, technical team lead, tester and business analyst. This is one particular form of our role system. In hospitals there are strict role systems when operating on patients.

Firefighting in the 1940s also had a role system. A leader at the front of the crew who constructed the orders, a second in command at the end of the line who repeated the orders and made sure they were understood. And the firefighters in the middle, that followed and repeated the orders given by the leader.

What happened in this particular case is that the crew got separated from their formal leader, and the spaces between the remaining crew members became so wide they couldn't pass the orders around any more. The person replacing the formal leader wasn't skilled in strategy, so his orders weren't any good. And even if they were any good, no one behind him could hear his orders.

The role structure was simple.

A leader passing orders around, and a person at the end of the line making sure the orders were heard and understood. Remove the leader and disable the ability to pass the orders around, and the role structure broke down.

In "The Collapse of Sensemaking" Weick writes:  "If a role system collapses amongst people for whom trust, honesty and self-respect are underdeveloped, then they are on their own."

Trust holds teams together. We know that. But, trust also needs time to develop. We know that also.

In the meantime we are left with our role system. The formal structure that our profession and our companies provide to us. But this will only provide support when it is functioning properly.

Weick again: "The recipe for disorganization in Mann Gulch is not all that rare in everyday life. The recipe reads. Thrust people into unfamiliar roles, leave some key roles unfilled, make the task more ambiguous, discredit the role system, and make all these changes in a context in which small events can combine into something monstrous."

Before we get to know each other, before trust can be established, the role system is all we have.

Is it?
 

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.

I learned Project Management from Mr. Miyagi from the movie The Karate Kid. Actually, my  Miyagi was French, knew nothing about karate and everything about wine. But they both talked in weird English sentences. Myagi had "Wax on. Wax off." My mentors favorite being: "Gantt says."

I think he really talked to his Gantt charts.

There is something creepy comforting in blaming Microsoft Project for all your project problems. It's not your fault that people are over allocated just to make the deadline. It's not your fault that the resources are not available. It's not your fault that the deadline is months later than expected.

"This are just the facts. 'Cause Gantt says so. Now that we have established that, we can easily look at the problem."

In some disturbing way this talking to the Gantt chart as a third person can help separate you from your project and planning problems. You are not your plan. And that's correct. Because Herr Gantt is your plan.

So. One of my early lessons in Project Management was the use of externalization. “This process of externalization allows people to consider their relationships with problems, thus the narrative motto: “The person is not the problem, the problem is the problem.” as used in Narrative Therapy.

And then they wonder why I became a Project Shrink.

Working physically with something that represents your problem area helps you to explore your relationship with the problem.  Planning Poker for example lets participants interact with stories and estimations. Quite literally. Moving around cards. Kanban boards with post-it notes have the same function.

The concept also applies to culture.

Remember The Travel Guide To [your organization]? In this exercise you are asked questions about your organization that explore your relationship with its culture. You talk about habits, rituals and anecdotes. The interaction with with these cultural elements help you shape a new narrative.

By creating something, in this case a Travel Guide and drawing maps, you externalize your relationship with the organizational culture. This allows you to explore the connection from a small distance, taking a step back from the sensitive topic.

The trick of treating Herr Gantt as a third person, is just that, a trick. A powerful one. Just be aware that The Others might be a little annoyed when you just keep referring to calendars and sock puppets as your new imaginary friends that tell you how to run the project.

"When are you ready?"
"Well. Gantt says next year."
"Who?"
"The chart I have imaginary conversations with. You'll like him."

Not sure if that is a good career move.

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.

I had 30.000 subscribers to my blog and deleted them all.

This was not an accident. I didn't loose my mind. Well. Perhaps. But not that I was aware off. But then, can you be aware of loosing your own mind?

Anyway. I wanted to see what would happen.

When I wanted to see how video changes your conversations, I started a video podcast. When I spoke at some conferences, I was able to experience the impact of online reputations on realtime expectations.

So.

I think your topics, your language and your visuals have an enormous impact on group culture. Online and offline. But I can't experience that if I have a large audience that started reading me when I wrote posts with headlines like "25 Sure Fire Ways To …"

Make no mistake. I loved every single one of those 30.000 subscribers of my newsletter. And many joined again after I thanked them for their loyal readership, and closed the list.

From a blog popularity standpoint this is a disaster. A big NONO. There is no way back. It took me 4 years to build the list of subscribers. After I pressed "delete" that was all gone.

And that was exactly the point.

I know I would fall into some old blogging habits if I tried to please a large diverse audience. I needed to remove the path back into my old "comfort zone". I needed to cut some link with the past, to be able to really push things way beyond my current limits.

A year ago, in November 2010, I started writing in a more authentic voice. Here at Gantthead. Well. "Authentic" is a Big Word. But at least I really, really try to make an effort to not be "an expert" or something. "Experts" ruin everything. And the first thing they ruin is fun. And we can't have that. That they ruin it I mean.

In March of this year I put my first doodles online. Drawings that have the quality of a three year old. Drawings that help me to organize complex stuff. It is funny how adding human like shapes to a diagram about people, makes it actually more human. I always wondered why organizational diagrams have no human-like shapes in it. And then people wonder why organizations can become impersonal.

The blog is doing fine. Thank you very much.

I actually got an entire new type of audience. Not better. Not worse. Just different. One that fits the language and doodles. One that fits the culture.

So.

For me this had a big lesson in it. A  group culture is not something you just dip your toe in and get out when things get difficult. It's not just some suit you try on for a couple of minutes before putting on something more comfortable.

It is something else.

"He who cannot howl will not find his pack." - Charles Simic

 

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.

I let you in on a little secret: when I talk about storytelling in projects, I get a little help from movies. The Matrix, Star Wars, The Big Lebowski, Juno. What they have in common is that they all follow a universal structure called "The Hero's Journey". Or "monomyth".

Professor Joseph Campbell analyzed hundreds of stories, old and new, and described in his book "The Man With A Thousand Faces" the universal structure they all had in common.

The Hero's Journey.

In it's short form it's about an ordinary person faced with a challenge. He has to go into an unknown territory to retrieve something. During this journey he has to face certain tasks and enemies. He will meet people that will help him, show him the ways of this unknown place. (image: Wikipedia)

What makes this narrative structure so interesting is not that many movies are based upon it. It's more the reason why so many stories are following this flow. There is a certain appeal to it, we all recognize parts of how we experience our own life story.

One essential part of the monomyth is the transformation the hero is going through. It is not just a story about traveling through unknown territory. It's also about a personal change. Letting go of old patterns and having to face a crisis, before being transformed. There are two journeys: the journey to get something, and the personal journey of change.

This movie trailer describes the appeal of The Hero's Journey perfectly. This trailer is from a documentary about Joseph Campbell. My friend Steve pointed me to this video. Steve and I are working on something awesome around storytelling in projects.

Finding Joe - Trailer V.7 from pat solomon on Vimeo.

Campbell describes 12 stages that make up The Hero's Journey. You can read more about them here.

I hope you see know why I talk about projects as traveling through unknown territory. I hope you see the relation with the two project storylines: the organizational and personal journeys.

This is why I wrote about the crisis every project has in the middle. It's the Abyss in a Hero's Journey.

The entire idea of using "adventure travel" as a metaphor for projects is about a transformative journey into foreign land. Using tents. Maps. And stuff.

 

Webinar About Storytelling In Projects

I recently gave an introduction to storytelling in projecs. Below is a recording of that webinar. It doesn't include The Hero's Journey though.

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.

Your project is part of a larger context. Longer journeys. Larger stories. And these stories shape your project more than you know. It’s like Star Wars. You can watch just episode IV. And enjoy it. But it starts really making sense when you watch the entire series.

Your project is an episode in two stories.

The Story Of You. The individuals that are involved in the project. An individual has an ambition and a reputation. And he has a role in your Big Adventure. When the project has finished, you have changed. You gained skills, knowledge, reputation, a new party hat.

The other narrative is The Story Of The Organization. An organization has a history and finds itself facing a challenge all of a sudden. An opportunity to take or a threat to conquer. It is the host of the project. And when the project is done, things have changed.

For those that are input-output oriented: a project is a transition. You have a before and after. An IST and SOLL. Traditionally we focus on the organizational level. And that's cool. It's important to talk with your team about this organizational journey.

By exploring the relationship of the project and this journey, you and your team create awareness around why you are doing things. Awareness beyond the normal “build this” specification. A sense of why you are doing what you are doing. This will help the team to make decisions that fulfill the organizations desires and be more in tune with its context.

Important stuff.

But we can forget the personal narrative which is also a transformational story. A before and after. Viewing what you do today in the context of a larger path will help you explore your relationship with the current project. Why do you do what you do? Why do you want to do things in the first place? The Story Of You also addresses the relationships with your team members. They know a little more about your background. They see how you add to the diversity of the group. And it makes us all look more human.

Also very important stuff.

This is my solution for having a holistic view on your project, the organization and the team members.

The image at the start of this post hangs on my wall.

It helps me to get the important things around projects into perspective.

It goes from PAST to FUTURE on the organizational and individual level. The project is a transitional journey. The project is a container within the larger context. The project is on a road towards "done".

You also have Landmarks  that answers the question "how do we know how far we are", Stakeholders, Decisions (Signpost maps) and Uncertainty (Hurricane maps).

It helps me personally a lot. I hope it provides some inspiration to you too.

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.