Are You a Seeker or a Dwarf?

This is a copy of the blog post I did for the Silicon Valley "Art of Project Management" Blog.

When Project Managers and others work on projects, they often consider themselves enlightened seekers.  People seeking new and better ways to do things.  They are often frustrated by those not eagerly embracing the changes.  Let's call them dwarfs; people who are not on a journey, but who have the knowledge and almost magical power to make a project succeed or fail.  Dwarfs are often more critical to the success of the project than the seeker or anyone else might expect.  I contend that to succeed, you have to be both.  Sometimes you need seekers and sometimes you need dwarfs.

Now, this is not the terminology of PMI or Lean or Agile or PRINCE2.  It is older wisdom, articulated by the first Project Management advisors, the Brothers Grimm in 1819.  In The Water of Life, they articulated how to achieve project success under the most trying of circumstances.  

A Brief Retelling of The Water of Life

The king (CEO) was troubled.  A great malaise gripped the land and infected him.  New directions and ideas were needed, but who could help?  He called his three princes (favorite PMs) together to look for solutions.  The kingdom's future depended upon the success of the undertaking.  The company needed The Water of Life to survive.

The first prince stepped forward with a plan that could be implemented quickly.  It would be costly, but he was bringing in the best and brightest to assist on the new strategy.  He had detailed project schedules, maps to success and visionary PowerPoints.  The king was hesitant, but blessed the undertaking and sent him forth.

The prince and his beautifully dressed and highly compensated, expert consultants set out, executing his plan "Seeking The Water of Life".  As they set off, they came upon a dwarf who asked what the commotion was all about?  The prince responded that they were on a mission to save the land, to seek the Water of Life.  You are either with us or against us.  The dwarf mumbled something about daily requirements, but the seekers were so enthralled with visions of The Water of Life, that they couldn't waste their time.  There were no tasks for taking on the dwarf's daily dawdle.  So they hurried off, seeking The Water of Life.

The dwarf, frustrated at their not understanding the importance of his daily dawdle watched them ride into blind canyon.  This canyon had enticing valleys, but while the valleys looked promising and the road out of the canyon closed in behind them.  Trapped, with the canyon walls closing in around them, the seekers couldn't even get cell phone reception, as the mountains blocked the signals and they were never heard from again.

The second son had used the time while his older brother was away to plot his own path to the kingship and had put together his plan for saving the kingdom.  This he presented to the king.  The prince's arguments were good and he promised to be agile and communicate constantly to the king.  

He was given a smaller budget and tighter deadlines as he set off to seek The Water of Life.  Due to his constant communications with his customer's, who were paying for his endeavor, he barely noticed the dwarf as he rushed past.  The dwarf called out, but watched him continuously communicate himself into the quicksand.  Hopelessly trapped and sinking, the prince yelled frantically at the dwarf, but the dwarf, turning back to his daily dawdle, chuckled as the high and mighty sunk beneath him.

The third son, who hadn't prepared plans because he was busy with the details of running the kingdom, came forward and said he would seek The Water of Life.  The king was skeptical.  There was no vision. There were no schedules.  There was no map to the water.  The son resonded that no one knew where The Water of Life was, so how could they map a path there?  

The third son set out and when he came upon the dwarf, the dwarf asked where he was going.  The son said he was seeking The Water of Life and would welcome any help the dwarf could give.  The dwarf, touched that someone recognized and took the time to listen to him, replied that he knew where the water of life flowed.  The prince asked if he could help him get there?  Yes, responded the dwarf.  The journey is long, but as you have taken the time to ask and listen to me, I will help you get the Water of Life.  And with the dwarf's help, the son set out on a different path.  One no one else would have taken, seeking the water of life.

I urge you to read the der Brüder Grimm for the details of how the journey turned out.   There are riches, beautiful princesses and all the rewards a seeker could hope for.  But before you go, please think about when you are a seeker and when you are a dwarf?

Questions a Change Agent Ought to Ask

Susan Cramm of Harvard presents interesting questions from the new HBR article "How Project Leaders Can Overcome the Crisis of Silence."  We are all familar with the type of statistics persented, that 70% of IT-enabled business initiatives fail or fall short of expectations.  The authors try to get project leaders to engage in five conversations to gain greater insight into whether a project is going in the wrong direction:

1. How often do you plan projects around how you would like the business to operate rather than the way it really operates?  How often are estimates and deadlines set using the PDOOMA methodology (PDOOMA - Pulled Directly Out Of My Ass)
   
2. How often is the Project Sponsor drafted, un willing or uninterested?  I've written on this before "Project Manager: Right Person, Wrong Title" and unless the Project Sponsor is fully committed and powerful enough, there is no amount of project leadership, management or funds to make a project succeed.
   
3. Are we faithful the the approval process?  How often do we follow a process when it's beneficial only to leave it when it's more expedient to cut corners?
   
4. Are we honestly assessing our progress and risks?  How often do we put in work arounds, short cuts or make desperate efforts to complete a deadline knowing things have been left out?  How do we communicate the issue after it has happened?
   
5. Are team members pulling their weight?  What can we do about it if someone isn't?
   

These are all discussions the project leadership should have.  Not only to gain insight into them, but also to find effective ways leaders can confess if the pressures of deadlines have forced them to take short cuts they would rather not have taken.

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.

Does Technology Create Transparency or Mirages?

Many companies implement huge IT packages to get better visibility into what's happening and to (presumably) get more control, but this begs the question, does technology give you better transparency? Theoretically, it should and even could. Practically, technology may create mirages more effectively than a desert.

Why Does Technology Create Mirages?
Transparency comes from corporate strategies that value transparency. Technology effectively supports that approach if it exists or it obfuscates if one is not careful. If the departments and groups implementing the technology want people to know what they are doing, then you'll get a lot of transparency. If the departments and groups do not think it is in their best interest to have people know what they are doing, technology will not help; in fact, it will probably show you a corporate mirage. [Editor: Sort of like I help you look intelligent.]

Just like in the picture above, the peaceful and attractive house with bushes around it reflected in the lake is a mirage, sophisticated managers can manipulate technology to show whatever it most benefits them to present. Technology is not a magical elixir.

How can Technology Provide Transparency and Control?
If there is:

• Clear thinking about the business objectives
• Products and services that customers value
• Business models that support the required infrastructure to deliver those products and services and create reasonable profit margins
• Appropriate incentives to motivate employees to deliver those products and services

If those things exist, there will be transparency and control will not be a problem. Technology enhances the processes and systems a business uses to do its work. So, will adding technology enhance your transparency or create corporate mirages?

Photo Credit: mbz

Do You Align People or Let Them Align?

People are inherently self organizing. Who did you make friends with when you were a kid on the block? When you went to school, there were many kids in school, but there were a couple who became your friends. Why?

Are you organizing your teams so the become more efficient and effective, like the swimmer on the US relay team? Or are you hampering the very creativity needed for great advancement? Not sure? Think about how insurance or stock exchanges came about.

Why is it Called a Stock Exchange?
In 1680 Jonathan Mills opened a coffee house on Exchange Alley in London. It started attracting like-minded individual who would buy and sell stocks and commodities. By 1698, John Castaing had started posting prices. Taking the street name, Exchanges were born.

A Second Example, Lloyd's
Likewise, around 1688 Edward Lloyd opened his coffeehouse, Lloyd's. It attracted merchants and ship owners. By 1692 it moved to Lombard St and was later incorporated as a society, and insurance was born.

Why Organize the Self Organizing?
If kids can organize a football game all on their own, why inflict organization? Because organized teams beat sandlot teams. Companies are organized to clarify roles and responsibilities. Accounting and Finance are different from sales. Likewise project teams are organized to ensure the right people are in the right roles with the right responsibilities. [Editor: Can't my responsibility be to roll you under?]

In your company and projects', are you organizing to amplify peoples' abilities so the team succeeds and wins the gold?

Why Change is so Difficult

Peter Vajda has an excellent post on Why People Resist Change. While I have a lot of respect for Peter, I think his argument misses some important facts. Namely the fact that people resist change because they can't see how it benefits them. In fact, often times the changes will hurt them. In those situations, no amount of involving them in the decision making process is going to persuade them to execute the decision.

Very briefly, Peter's thesis is that people resist change because they are not involved in the decision to change. While his arguments are compelling, they don't address the core reason why people resist change.

Why People Resist Change
When someone is trying to change a structure or process, by definition there is a structure and process which already exists. It's a good bet that someone put it in place because it benefits them, intentionally or accidental. In either case, they are probably the key power brokers necessary to make the new processes work. The new processes are often more efficient because they get rid of the loopholes that the power brokers currently exploit.

Everyone will often agree that the new structures and processes benefit the company as a whole. However, it's a good bet that they will not benefit the people who are benefiting today. And its a better bet, that even if those people agree in principle, when it comes to executing them, they will resist. They may resist passively or subversively, but they will resist. And it's good bet that they'll be smart enough to do it quietly.

Think of it this way. If your mother suggested changing from eating spinach to eating cake, it's quite likely that you'd implement that change easily. However, if she suggested changing your desert from cake to spinach, no matter how much healthier the diet would be, you're likely to resist. Do you really think being involved in the decision making process would change your outlook?

Why is Value so Difficult to Measure in Project Management?

People struggle quantifying the value of project management. Partly because people value the outcome not the process. When you go to a restaurant for dinner, you care about the dinner not the process by which it was made. Part of it is also the new projects are difficult. Making dinner is a known, repeated process. Implementing a large new application in your company hasn't been done before. That makes it difficult.

Change is difficult and no matter what anyone says about their experience, they've never made changes in your company before. I believe the measure of this difficulty was described a long time ago:

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more doubtful in its success, more dangerous in its execution, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new. Their support is lukewarm partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the existing laws on their side, and partly because men are generally incredulous, never really trusting new things unless they have tested them by experience.” - Machiavelli

Its easy to forget that people have struggled making changes for a very long time. New technologies don't change that. Machiavelli wrote this in about 1515. Maybe things haven't really changed all that much in the last 500 or so years.