How Do You Define and Align Expectations at Different Levels in an Organization?

If you're a brick layer, it's very easy to determine who the best brick layer is. Count the bricks. Some smart, clever brick layer may come up with a more effective way to lay bricks.  That’s wonderful and they may become a lead brick layer and be deemed a "leader". 

If we want to improve things, we might decide that it's a good idea to have someone coach a team of brick layers. We might say that a coach should work with 11 brick layers to find ways to make them all more effective. Determining the most effective coach is pretty easy. Count the total number of bricks laid by each team. You'll find that some coaches are more effective than others. 

Experience and brick laying skills are probably important to the coach.  If the coach has previously worked as a brick layer, it's reasonable to assume they'll be more empathetic and effective. Good coaches will also have different ways of organizing their teams, different methods of laying bricks, different attitudes towards laying bricks, etc. Clever coaches will use different techniques to maximize their teams.  If you’re laying bricks in the mountains you might want different types of people than if you’re laying bricks in a dessert.  Still, it’s pretty easy to measure a coach’s effectiveness. 

Now, let's say that we want to create a larger organization. We might have a division. A division consists to 10 teams of brick layers. In order to resolve disputes and make things more organized, we might say that we have a division head. This is necessary because everyone is trying to improve so there are competitions between our brick laying teams. [Editor: teams from the Big-10 seem particularly skilled at laying bricks…]

Now, the skills necessary to be an effective division head are not necessarily the same skills necessary to be a good brick layer or even a good coach. Also, complicating the issue, how do you measure who is an effective division head? Looking at the total number of brick laid might be effective, but they are pretty far removed from the brick laying process and the things they handle on a day-to-day basis are probably not similar to the brick layers or the coaches. 

If we elevate this one more level and create a league, the problem becomes even more obvious. The league is composed of 10 divisions. Some of these divisions are in the mountains, others are in the dessert and others have to deal with great lakes and snow storms. The types of bricks that each division can get are different just as laying bricks at 2,000 feet above sea level presents different challenges from laying bricks in the dessert, which is completely different from laying bricks in the middle of a Wisconsin winter. 

How do we determine if our league commissioner is effective? A brick layer or a coach may have innovative ideas and it's easy to asses their effectiveness. But determining the effectiveness of a division or league commissioner is more problematic. 

How would you approach this?

Is it the Environment or the Actions which Make You Successful?

If you want something to be successful, do you create the environment or pull the trigger? If you are going to have a successful project, the correct environment needs to be created. Pulling the trigger is nice and that is what people will notice, but success depends upon preparation. That preparation is rarely noticed. The most aggressive actions in the wrong environment end up looking silly.

Think about it this way, do forest fires occur when someone carelessly throws away a match? Well maybe. If you throw away a lit match in a green forest with rain falling all around you, it's very unlikely a forest fire will result. If it is in the middle of a heat wave with the grass burnt brown and hot Santa Ana winds blowing at night, a roaring forest fire may result. What is critical is the environmental conditions in which the match was thrown.

It's the old line about the straw that broke the camels back. Straw is essentially weightless, but under the right conditions, it can wreck havoc. Maybe those conditions are an overloaded camel or some other environmental situation.

If you want tremendous results, look at the environment, the necessary preparation to succeed within that environment, get the preparations underway and then at the right time, pull the trigger.

Have You Prepared Yourself for the Opportunity to be Lucky?

Someone once said that luck is the intersection between preparation and opportunity. If you prepare yourself and hit on the right opportunity, you have made yourself lucky. Congratulations, you are participating in a good life. You should be happy and your friends should be happy for you.

If you want to create something, doesn't it take more than luck? You need an idea for what you want to create. You need a plan and to know what the plan will require and whether it's feasible.

If you have a feasible plan, you need to find the missing pieces. When you find the people with the correct preparation to complete your plan; you need to articulate it in such a way that, it is in their best interest to make your plan succeed. They need to see your plan as their opportunity to make themselves lucky.

If the plan requires capital or assistance to be successful, then everyone needs to see how it benefits them to have your plan succeed. They all need to provide input to fill in the missing pieces so the plan has the best chance of success.

Finally, you must have enough time. It takes time to come up with an idea, make it feasible, find the right participants, get meaningful assistance, refine the plan and then execute it successfully. All of these things are important, but they all start with you. Have you prepared yourself for the opportunity to be lucky?

Photo Credit: Eric Lafforgue

What Makes a Project Succeed? The Project or the Management?

What is it that makes a project succeed? Is it the methodologies, the risk analysis, the reporting, the communications ability and talents of the managers or is it the project? This question came up as a result of a discussion about a story that Richard Feynman told, explaining what he called Cargo Cult Science. The story goes as follows:

In the South Seas, there is a cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas - he's the controller - and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.

How many project are really important or are there times we're waiting for planes to land?

Photo Credit: escapista

What does the take over of Fannie and Freddy Mac mean?

Sometimes its worth looking at what's happening in the larger world and think about what it means for you. With the US Government announcing the nationalization of Phoney and Fraudie, [Editor: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, thank you] think about what this means to you in your working life.

Through most of US capitalistic history, housing prices were about 3 to 4 times after tax income. This is not exactly true, but if you think about how much one can afford to pay on loans, it's reasonable.

If you consider that the average household income in the US is around $44K, the median is about $43K, to make the math easy, lets go with a pretax income of $45K. assume that around 33% will be paid in taxes, so the take home income will be $30K, or an after income of $2,500 per month.

The average home price in 2004 was about $264K, the median household price was about $221K. To make the math easy, let's go with a house price of $250K. On a 30 year, 6% interest loan, the monthly payment would be about $1,500. That means the average household is paying about 60% of their after tax income in house payments. Not sustainable.

For comparison purposes, if we look at the average house price in 1989, it was $120K, the average household income was $30K, so the median, after tax take home pay was $1,675. With an average monthly payment of $720, after taxes, homeowners paid 43% of their income for their house. Still high, but there have been a lot of assumptions made, so it's probably closer to 35%, but it's really only for comparison purposes.

As a point of reference in 2004, average rent price was about $650 per month, or about 26% of monthly, after tax income.

Now, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that someone makes the reasonable assumption that they don't want to pay more than 1/3 of their after tax income to own a home. That means that someone earning $45K doesn't want to pay more than $825 per month. On our same 30 year, 6% interest loan, that means the average home price would be about $138K.

Compare this amount to the average home price in 2004 of $264K, and you've got to think house prices can drop drop another 50%. In places like California, it could be even worse, considering the median income is $54K and the median home price is $514K.

If housing prices drop that much, how much will other assets fall? What will this mean for you?

Data information:

Home prices 1989:
http://www.census.gov/const/uspriceann.pdf

Real median income 2004: http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/005647.html

Real median income 1989:
http://www.demographia.com/db-stateinc2000.htm

Rental price information:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/H150-03.pdf

Average home sales price in 2004:
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/consumerawareness/a/avghomeprice04.htm

Average and median prices of homes between 1963 and 2007:
http://www.census.gov/const/uspriceann.pdf

Top 10 Posts

In the interests of shameless self promotion, here are the top ten posts as decided by the highest number of pageviews.

1. Project Management Excuse List Part II
2. Project Communications and the Terror of the Troubled Project
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4. How Do You Engage People?
5. Do Surpluses of Information Lead to Deficits of Attention?
6. Aligning People or Letting Them Align
7. Does PMI (Project Management Institute) find Value in Project Management?
8. Tips for Project Management Success
9. Does Technology Create Transparency or Mirages?
10. Should You Manage People or the Environment?
    

Are You a Tribal Leader?

How does a manager get their power? Maybe it's organizational, maybe it's access to information, but if you're on a project team to initiate something in a company, it comes from the people on your team. Do you understand the stages and dynamics of the team interactions?

Dave Logan has a great book out discussing different team stages and their dynamics. I consider Dave a friend with great insights. [Editor: Yea and you've also deluded yourself into thinking Natalie Portman would be your friend.]

Working with BNET, Dave's released a video describing these stages.

Briefly, the Five Stages are:
1. Life sucks.
2. My life sucks. [Editor: Working with you, that's me!]
3. I'm great.
4. We're great.
5. Life's great.

Check out the video and buy the book. You and your teams will be more successful.