The Real Reason Twitter is Business Critical

Dilbert answered the question of why Twitter is mission critical.

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.

Bird in the Bush

Warren Buffett used an investing analogy many years ago in one of his Shareholder Letter's that is relevant to people making business decisions.  Aesop's question of whether a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.  Or if this is too theoritical for you, ask if a brunett in a convertible is worth five names in a phonebook. [Editor: How would you know?]

To answer Aesop's question, one has to decide how much more valuable the birds in the bush are relative to the one in your hand?  How difficult will the be to get them out?  Are there other benefits to gaining the bush?  How long will it take to get those benefits?

How often do business question come back to this?  If I invest in this project, will it improve my business?  How will I know?  How will the people working on the team know?

If you can articulate those answers with everyone on your team, aren't you much closer to aligning your team towards achieving those goals?

With all the tools available to us, how often are these basic questions ever asked or answered?

Now, where is that phonebook? 

Photo Credit: Olive Eyel

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

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.

Aligning People or Letting them Align Part IV

Bill Miller and I have been talking about whether it is better to align people or let them align. You can read the other three parts here, here and here. Its been a great discussion, to make it clearer, I'd like to reframe my response. I always hate it when girlfriends do this to me, so I'm apologizing up front. [Editor: No need to apologize, I've been suggesting girls do that to you for years and it's benefited me tremendously.]

A little background on business
To get some insight to this, let's think about why businesses were really founded. The modern corporation came into being in Britain in the early seventeenth century, when some very intelligent and presumably humble nobleman noticed that there’s no correlation between intelligence and wealth. In fact, there may even be an inverse correlation, but I’ll resist the urge to rant about Paris Hilton and spare you my other Hilton-esque urges. [Editor: Please do.]

What these noblemen realized was that if they gave up a portion of their capital and entrusted it to an organized group of intelligent, motivated and hungry workers selected from the masses, they could make themselves much wealthier. A side benefit to this was the incredible improvement in the standard of living for those working for them. This is the genesis of the modern corporation.

Why is this important? What these noblemen and now women realized was that they had to set up the appropriate structures so the intelligent, motivated and hungry workers had proper direction and incentives to make the business successful and them wealthier.

Project Structures
Should teams self-organize? Absolutely. As a project goes along, the team needs the freedom to realign itself to meet the demands of the project. What an effective manager does is define the structures within which to project will operate to deliver what the business needs. If the project team has the correct direction and incentives, they will align themselves and the project has a better chance of success.

Does this make sense?

Photo Credit: Eric Lafforgue

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

How to Engage People

Dennis D. McDonald in his always educational blog, got me thinking again today. He is absolutely right when he says that blogs would greatly improve communications between distributed teams. The real difficulty is getting people to participate.

The Problem
It is fairly well understood that in most social type application, from youTube to blogs, that 2 to 3% of the people contribute 90% of the material. The question is, how do you get the other 97% to engage? [Editor: 97% of them are intelligent enough not to engage with you. I'm so jealous of them...]

The Solution
You have to offer a way to get feedback in a simple way that requires little effort and recognizes their input. That is why we give people the ability to answer questions (multiple choice, percentage, yes/no) and rank people based on the accuracy of their answers.

As a manager, you don't know what they answered, but you do know that Dennis is more involved and knowledgeable than Andy. [Editor: That's not saying much. The slowest third grader is more knowledgeable than you.]

If you make things entertaining and engaging, people will participate. If you set up a little competition that rewards their engagement, they will engage more.

If you want to know more, email me: ameyer@go2incent.com

Response to "Freedom is Overrated"

Professor Andrew McAfee has an interesting blog entry Freedom is Overrated in his Harvard Business School blog. In it, he discusses Facebook and Twitter and asks about their uses as business tools. In response to his question, I made several comments from my personal experience . I have found that social networks are used on the fringes of business, not in core businesses. I'll offer an example of the first, reasons for the second and insight into what I think will happen with them.

Use in the Fringes of Business
Please note that my saying "Fringes" is not pejorative, but rather it refers to the outer edges of the network, which is where the really interesting things happen.

One of the great things about FB (Facebook) is that it allows people to create verifiable and yet pseudonymous users. Furthermore, it allows you to create private groups, where only people who are known and invited can participate. Might there not be groups who want to securely blog and discuss events who would find FB useful?

Core Businesses Concerned about Social Tools
Many executives and managers in core businesses are rightfully concerned about the time wasting that accompanies FB and other social tools. There is also a security threat, which is very real. Additionally, there is the bigger issue, that there isn't a clearly defined business problem that social tools solve. Finally, there is the hurdle that many in IT view social networks, SaaS, etc as a threat. This is a valid concern, which, coupled with other issues, will probably keep social tools out of core business applications.

There are business leaders struggling to get blogging and other social/collaborative tools used in corporations. Their struggles are interesting to consider and offer interesting insights that the creators of social tools are not paying as much attention to as they should.

What I Believe will Happen
I do believe these tools will be used, but not in their social sense. They will be used as compliments to other processes (project management, corporate communications etc.) in modified forms. There are people whom I greatly admire who are trying to do this. They are the pioneers developing new, more efficient methods of solving business problems. I look forward to hearing about their successes and insights.