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Manage Risk Like a Formula One Driver
Categories:
Risk Management
Categories: Risk Management
I attended my first Grand Prix in 2000 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and quickly became a Formula One (F1) enthusiast. I have attended several Grand Prix races in Asia, North America and South America; visited iconic F1 destinations such as Autodromo Nazionale di Monza and the Ferrari factory in Italy; and even met a few World Drivers' Champions. Over the years, I have noticed that F1 and project management are very similar. Every race of the season is a milestone. Engineers, designers and mechanics work for the driver, who is always looking to minimize risk and maximize opportunities -- just like the project team and a project manager. Mr. Lauda, with 25 wins, one of the greatest F1 drivers, is well-known by racing fans for two things: his rivalry with James Hunt and his accident on 1 August 1976, during the German Grand Prix Nürburgring. During the 1970s, Nürburgring was the season's most dangerous circuit. It was known as "the Graveyard" and had claimed the lives of five drivers. In the 1976 race, the weather conditions were far from ideal. Mr. Lauda called a meeting with the rest of the drivers to vote to cancel the race. The drivers understood that the Nürburgring ring required perfect weather conditions to be even remotely acceptable in terms of risk. Due to Mr. Lauda's position in the F1 standings, canceling the race would've benefited him, but he was more concerned about the danger. The race went on despite the rain. During the race, Mr. Lauda's car went off the track and his fuel tank punctured, setting his car on fire. He was trapped for almost a minute in a searing inferno before other drivers could rescue him. Mr. Lauda suffered burns to his face and smoke inhalation. As with race car drivers, project managers face risk with different levels of severity. A project manager's risk tolerance level depends on different factors: organizational culture, national culture and experience. It's not only imperative that we provide early identification and assessment of risks -- the point is to know and stick to a risk threshold. We may face hardship for accepting the risk and not being successful, but we need to learn the lesson and move on. As Mr. Lauda said: "I accept every time I get in my car that there is a 20 percent chance I could die, and I can live with [that risk] -- but not 1 percent more." Another lesson in risk management from Mr. Lauda comes not long after his crash. Like a phoenix, 42 days after his near-fatal accident, he went back to the track and kept fighting Mr. Hunt for the championship. The Japan Grand Prix, the last race of the season, would crown the next World Drivers' Champion. Again, weather conditions were poor, delaying the race for several hours. While it was still raining, Mr. Lauda started the race but quit after a few laps. His team was surprised to see him coming back to the pit stop and asked him what was wrong with the car. Whie the car was in perfect condition, Mr. Lauda assessed the risk as too high. And when the team tried to present a technical justification for his quitting, Mr. Lauda told them to tell the truth: that he made the decision based on the weather. He had reached his risk threshold and decided to leave his championship hopes to other drivers -- including Mr. Hunt, who garnered enough points to beat Mr. Lauda and take the top prize. We project managers are paid to decide the future of projects, programs and portfolios. Sometimes, those decisions are difficult to accept -- by sponsors and stakeholders, not to mention ourselves -- but will provide long-term benefits to our organization. And canceling or postponing a project, program or portfolio will not prevent our professional career from progressing -- on the contrary, it can reinforce our knowledge and experience. After the Japan Grand Prix, Mr. Lauda continued his successful racing career and became champion in 1977 and 1984. I have my own experience of approaching risk management by determining the environment and sticking to thresholds. When working on a regional project in Central and South America in 2010, the project faced a geopolitical risk that slowed down progress. But in many countries in the region, 2010 was a presidential election year. This event usually contracted economic activities months before the election and sometimes even after. As elections impacted different countries at different levels, we had to define and implement contingency plans for some; for others, we accepted the risk, and yet for others, we didn't accepted the risk and suspended the project temporarily. How do you face risk? Are you a risk taker or a risk-averse project manager? And how do you define acceptable risk? |
World-Class Lessons from World Cup Coaches
Categories:
Leadership
Categories: Leadership
| Photo: AC Moraes People around the globe are tuning in to the FIFA World Cup. Even overloaded project managers will manage to find time to watch some of the global football championship coverage and root for their team. I can't help but find parallels between what happens on the pitch and some of the challenges we face as project managers. Both successful World Cup coaches and project managers spend a lot of time giving direction to a team to mitigate unexpected events. Here are four lessons to take away from these coaches that could help ensure your project produces winning results in the face of the unforeseen: 1. Set starters and specialists. World Cup coaches know what skills key team members must have to win games. They also have intimate knowledge of their players' skills, capacities, endurance and adaptability to changing conditions. That knowledge allows coaches to pick the players they want to start the game as well as those specialists to enter the field when the key players need support. Project managers should also know who the key team members are to have at the start of a project and the specialized resources -- such as subject matter experts on the business or work planners -- needed toward project completion to ensure success. 2. Be a coach, not a player. One of the more risky tendencies for a coach is to try to teach his own playing expertise to the team members. Yet the best World Cup coaches focus on making the team perform well as a whole, not on providing detailed instruction on ball technique. Specialized coaches (for physical training or goaltending, for example) and fellow team members should provide this detailed level of instruction, leaving the World Cup coach free to direct the overall flow of the game. Project managers can do the same by identifying and employing specialized resources that can assist team members with fundamentals, such as writing good requirements and creating work plans. This frees up the project manager to focus on solving risks and issues across the project. 3. Make sure everyone knows the plays. World Cup coaches go to great lengths to employ existing plays that are a good match for their players. In addition, they spend time creating new plays that can be used in unexpected conditions that can come up during a game. The World Cup coach spends a lot of preparation and practice time with the team making sure the plays are executed in a smooth and efficient manner. Project managers can do the same by identifying the right approaches -- that is, methods, processes and tools -- and spending time with the team to practice the execution of these approaches. 4. Provide feedback on results. At the end of every game, World Cup coaches spend time with the team as well as the media, sharing their thoughts on the outcome of the game. In addition, they will frequently share key decisions and outcomes that resulted in a win or loss for the team. World Cup coaches do this in a manner that reflects the overall effort of the team as opposed to the efforts of a few key players. Project managers should provide this type of feedback at regular intervals throughout the project, especially during project status meetings. Projects also have the equivalent of media attention in the form of sponsors, so project managers should openly provide the same type of feedback on a regular basis. What behaviors and practices have you seen that might help project managers create winning projects? |
Customer Service Lessons -- From a Hospital?
 Recently, my doctor advised me to go in for a minor surgery, so I had the opportunity to visit a clinical lab and stay at the hospital for three days -- an unlikely place to learn some customer service lessons. Before the surgery, I had to undergo blood tests. There was only one attendant at the blood collection center and a long queue. A woman at the back began complaining about the queue until a nurse came out, took that woman to a room and drew her blood sample. This upset others in line and led to more complaining. The manager came out from his office and asked people to calm down. But after time passed with the queue remaining as long and the manager offering another assurance, people became agitated again. This time, the manager told some people they were unnecessarily raising their voices while he was trying his best. This continued until another staff member (possibly late to his shift) came in. This experience made me think: Do mere assurances work all the time? Don't we need to apologize for unfair treatment and take action to correct the wrongdoing? Perhaps our egos do not allow us to do all this. So what does it take to control our ego? After finally getting my test, I scheduled the surgery. The hospital suggested I come in beforehand to complete the formalities of cost estimation and approval from my insurance (a procedure in India for cashless treatment at a hospital). When I arrived at the hospital's insurance counter, the attendant in charge took me to a room, asked me to fill out a form and told me that a few people are involved in the process, so it might take up to two hours. I filled out the form in a couple of minutes and waited for 30 minutes for a doctor to appear. He asked me a couple of questions, filled out the remaining form and gave it to the attendant. She asked me to wait for another half hour while she conducted some office formalities. Half an hour passed and I became restless. I approached the woman, and she promptly explained, "I said it would take around two hours. Hold on for some more time." After half an hour, she appeared, took my signature on a form and asked me to leave. My experience at the insurance desk taught me a simple lesson. If I don't set expectations (as the attendant did), a customer is free to expect anything based on his or her own experience. For better customer service and satisfaction, it is important to set expectations at the beginning and then exceed those expectations. In my next post, I'll discuss the lessons I learned from my hospital stay, and how those could be applied to project management. What customer service lessons have you learned when you least expected it, and how have you applied them in your projects? |
3 Tips for Remote Control
Categories:
Teams
Categories: Teams
| A relatively new challenge for many project managers is managing remote project teams. As our capacity to work remotely has increased thanks to greater connectivity and skilled employees who aren't restricted by geography, a new challenge has opened up: How do we effectively manage our remote project teams? Here are three ways that I've found success working with mine: 1. Manage based on outputs. Focus on results -- place an emphasis on what must be delivered, not what activities are taking place. If you find yourself doing the latter, begin the shift simply: The next time someone asks what you need him or her to work on, offer an assignment that is based on a deliverable and that is time-sensitive. That's because activities are not the best metric for measuring team members' participation. Plus, if you are measuring for an end goal, you can often find better and more creative solutions to problems because everyone's on the same page in regard to the goal you are pursuing. 2. Set a clear communication plan. When dealing with a remote project team, it's important to set a clear communication plan -- and to stick to it. If not, the void in communications will be filled by baseless speculation and observations that won't be helpful to your team's success. You can begin to set a clear plan by telling team members exactly when you are going to begin communicating with each member and working with your team to make sure the methods you choose are best for communicating with them. Conversely, you should also work together to create a plan that lays out the most effective ways to reach and communicate with you. Doing so ensures open lines of communication and a proper expectation of what positive, productive communications look like despite the distance. 3. Establish a chain of command. When managing from afar, it's tough for project managers to let go of the desire to manage and control every aspect of the project. But you need to accept that this is nearly impossible, because you're likely to have team members in various countries and time zones. You aren't going to be able to effectively manage every aspect of your projects, so setting a chain of command is vital to project success. This chain of command can be in the form of a work flowchart, for example. The important thing is to have a plan that allows the project to continue to move forward, even if you are half a world away. If you've never managed a remote team, becoming comfortable with it takes time and testing. But if you start with these three tips, you will find it much easier to take on some of the other challenging aspects of managing remote teams, such as cultural sensitivity, team building, and disconnecting so that you can refresh yourself mentally and physically. What are your basic tips for managing remote teams? |
Great Time Management Is in the Details
Categories:
Project Planning
Categories: Project Planning
| Bringing together all the aspects of a project -- including stakeholders, team members, software tools and project requirements -- is just the beginning. Once we gather all the pieces of the project, we cannot sit back and relax. Properly controlling a project hinges on using time management skills to see it through to the end. And those skills consist of these three types of actions: Reactive. There will always be an aspect of the project that needs to be tended to: risks and issues that may need near turnaround resolutions or disparate interests of team members and stakeholders that need addressing. But it's how we've set the stage for our project that will help us steer the project to the finish line, so allot some time to plan for issues to come up. Always be aware of how your surroundings and other resources may affect your project and how they can be of value at another point. For example, when your project is heading into a critical situation and you have no resources that can help, have a contact at the ready who may be able to get an immediate resolution. Co-active. This element entails taking collective action toward correcting an off-schedule project. While we set out to have a process for every action, somewhere along the line, the schedule starts slipping or team members aren't reporting bottlenecks or bad news in a timely fashion. In these instances, reset the tone of your project control. My technique is to keep the scope constantly visible, usually by making sure the agenda has it displayed. However, I didn't do this on a project years ago. The developers were making ongoing enhancements to the software, ones that would be very useful at a future point. Yet they were very off-scope. The co-active measure was to pull back on the enhancements and redefine the scope to get it to what the sponsor originally requested. I did so by meeting with the sponsor and development team manager and reviewing requirements from the standpoint of:
Proactive. But what if a project has components that are not fully defined yet? This is a situation in which we're not reacting to the existing project or controlling project issues, but instead considering the future: possible risks, another project's potential impact or information a stakeholder may want. Here I would recommend actively anticipating what may be helpful that has not yet been discussed. And this consideration can be addressed perhaps as an earned value chart, a report outlining project enhancements for future work or something as simple as organizing a meeting with sponsors to ensure there are no new impacts on the rise. Are there any aspects to managing your time in a project that you see as helping to bring the project to a smooth close? |