Mothers Make Natural Project Managers: Part 1

I’m a momma’s boy. I call my Mom every week just to hear her voice, get her views on important decisions, and ask her for $20 for gas. We don’t talk long. We have mutual hang-up pact after five minutes. Click we’re done. Those five minutes are important to me.

My Dad was the undisputed head of the household, but Mom quietly ran the whole show behind the scenes. She taught me to tie my shoes, balance a checkbook, play baseball, fold shirts. Who forced me to sit at the table every night and do my homework? Mom. Who once pinned all six of my brothers, sister and me at one time in a wrestling death match? Mom.

Leader’s don’t complain
Mom has all the answers to the thorny problems in life. For example, I once called her for advice on raising my daughter. In truth, I wasn’t looking for advice. I just wanted to complain about how hard it is to raise a kid nowadays. She quickly set me straight, “Tell it to someone who doesn’t know better. Do you really think that you and your brothers were angels? Your Dad used to say that raising you kids was ‘like raising a litter of six Dobermans … all rabid.’”

Why do we feel that complaining somehow makes a situation feel better? It feels like everybody is walking around with the “need to vent.” Take your situation at this moment, for example. Right now, you’ve got pressure from the job and from the home front. Something is causing you pain or anxiety. You complain about that issue to anyone who will listen. We’re all behaving like nobody’s seen the troubles we’ve seen.

Call my Mom and she’ll set you straight. The conversation will likely end with “Stop complaining and do something about it” or “toughen up you big baby.” She’s earned the right to dispense this tough love counsel because I never heard her say that her problems were unique. I never heard her grumble about how hard it was to raise six rowdy kids. When I was expelled from High School, she responded: “You’re going to work with your dad [a mechanic] on boat engines in the Florida heat from 7:00 am to 9:00 pm while you enjoy your time off school.” Dad got free labor. I learned the value of staying in school.

Leaders don’t complain. They just roll with the punches.

Now a Word From Our Sponsor

TO: Team Members

FROM: Sponsor

You have been selected to participate on the new [project name] team led by John. The team will meet once per week. The activities performed by this team will include:

• Defining the project requirements for each decision gate.
• Committing a closed plan to deliver project scope on [x date].
• Sponsoring change requests to modify product plans based on significant changes to the committed baseline.
• Communicating project status for your deliverables with the project manager to confirm that we have alignment of the piece parts.
• Highlighting project risks in a timely fashion.

You have been selected to participate on this team because you have the knowledge and experience to make important contributions to this initiative. If for any reason you feel that you will not be a productive representative on this team, just let Eddie know.

Regards,
Cornelius Vanderbilt

__________________________________________

Here are the important elements of this letter:

1. Communicates meeting frequency
2. Defines activities
3. Sets expectations
4. Establishes referential authority


Moments after this letter was sent, it became readily apparent that some members of the team never agreed to support your project. How often do you hear, “I don’t have the time for this, go away?” Yes, this letter will trigger an avalanche of resistance from employees who never signed up for the assignment. That’s the beauty of using this letter, since it flushes out resistance early in the process so that you can deal with it.

If a team member’s workload is constrained, then become an advocate for that team member and ask his/her manager to reprioritize that person’s work. Functional managers and sponsors who tell the employee to “just do it” are your worst enemy. You should never be the source of a major work/life balance issue in your team and you shouldn’t have to beg and cajole resources to help. Use your sponsor to help resolve these resource issues.

"Shutup!" is bad word in our house

I fell in a rabbit hole during a meeting this week ... someone started to "data gather" and before we knew it our time was up before we could cover the full agenda. How I wanted to stand up with arms outstretched and yell, "Shutup!" several times during the call, but it was a telecon so the dramatic acting would have been lost on the audience. Besides, my Mom would have probably heard me and driven 8 hours straight up from Florida just to slap me on top of the head.

Nonetheless, the word "Shutup" was flashing like a neon sign in my mind even if I lacked the gumption to yell it. Does the fact that I'm thinking the bad word matter? The answer is 'Yes' because thoughts lead to action; it's the thought that moves us precipitiously close the bad manners cliff. So what can I do to control my thoughts? Hmmm ...

John's Self Indulgent Rules for Meeting Behaviors

If I could rewrite the rules for meeting behavior, here's what my list would look like:

1. Please help me control my bad thoughts - keep the meeting focused and on track.
2. Join the meeting on time so that we don't have to retrace our steps to bring you up-to-speed.
3. Schedule side meetings with core team members to properly vet complex topics.
   
4. Schedule the side meetings yourself (I'm not your admin assistant).
   
5. Better yet, don't schedule a side meeting. Pick up a phone or walk on over to the person and talk.
6. Talk into the wee hours of the night. Explore the subject for as long as you like with every interested person, but do it outside of my meeting.
   
7. Come to my meeting with a crisp summary or proposal of the topic at hand.

As I review this list, it sure does feel a bit harsh. Shame on me.

Climb Aboard the Canonball Express

Welcome. Climb Aboard

Beginning with this blog entry, I'm going to take you on a real live project journey from the boarding station to final destination. For the purpose of this blog and to protect the innocent, let's call this project Cannonball.

Who knows how this journey will end? Will the team get along? Will stakeholders help or hinder progress? Will this project make money for the company? I'll just report the facts as I see them and together you and I can share lessons learned along the way. If you are looking out our project window and you see a potential obstacle ahead, I expect you to warn me.

Project Summary

• Cross Brand Solution that integrates software, hardware and services
  
• Final decision arbitar: Don't know yet. With three brands involved, every decision could be a dog fight
• Scope:
• Perform integration tests and performance validation
  
• Create auotmation scripts to install and configure the solution
• Time: target launch in November
• Team:
• Geographically dispersed virtual team
• Morale: Very high. I hear a brass band playing on the kick-off station platform and free donuts are luring unsuspecting team members on to the project train.
  

Challenges:

• Securing hardware for test. It aint cheap.
• Cross function coordination. Can't we just get along?
• Fulfillment process may require invention.
• Pricing process may require invention.
  
• A strong date constraint: launch a pilot in just a few month.
  

Take your seat and enjoy the ride.

Tip to start meetings on time

Meetings in my company chronically start ten minutes late. Why? Because nobody ever says, “Please make an effort to be here on time.” Instead, people say “it’s Okay” or shrug it off until tardiness becomes an institutionalized behavior. What is going wrong here? Why doesn’t a published list of guidelines stop the bad behaviors? The answer is that guidelines are worthless unless someone enforces them. Lists don’t stop bad behaviors. Leaders do.

In practice, people look to the project manager to be the gatekeeper or meeting cop. Most people don’t feel comfortable counseling other human beings about bad behaviors. It's not a skill taught in business school. As the PM, if you tolerate bad behaviors, you will lose the respect of your team. So tell your team that you are going to make a serious effort to start your meetings on time and finish 5 mins early (as a courtesy to give them time to stretch before their next meeting).

Here's a practical tip to get your start your recurring team meeting on time:

1. Create an instant message Group with everyone who participates in your recurring meeting
2. Send an announcement to everyone in the group to remind them, "Our meeting will begin promptly in 5 mins."

Note: Instant message tools (AIM, Sametime, Messenger) will differ in how they broadcast a single chat message to multiple recipients. Refer to the user guide for instructions.

Don't teach your wife project management

My wife Christine asked me for status on checking the car tires for proper air pressure.
"It's a recurring task ... it needs to be done every month."
"You know you consume more gas when the pressure is low."
"Can I count on you to do it without follow up from this point forward?"

My responses:
"Mark it zero percent complete."
"What's the dollar impact?"
"No you can't. Welcome to my world."

The Presentation Salt Mine

I entered the deep, dark presentation salt mine this week to produce a slide deck that presents options to deal with a thorny issue. Several of the options were ... well ... silly. For example, an executive asked us to double the headcount to cut the schedule in half. I can't recall the last time somebody asked me to do that. Most managers now recognize that people are not interchangeable parts, that there is a learning curve to bringing new people on board, and there is communication overhead to leading a larger crew. In short, there no straight line math between resources and schedule.

In any case, we exercised every option to demonstrate our ability to do completed staff work. The slide deck was then reviewed by multiple layers of management in a beautifully choreographed dance of meetings, edits, and updates. One executive with a touch of formatting flair even added a cool blue arrow pointing from one place to another! The finished product was truly elegant. In the reflection on my computer screen, I could see my mouth was slightly ajar as I gasped in awe at the creation.

Slide Junkies

Although the presentation salt mine did produce a stunning work of art, I'm mindful that Lotus Notes will automatically throw it in the trash (delete it) in another three months. I was left to wonder if all the work to produce the deck was worth the cost? Would it have been possible to discuss this topic with no slides? I know that I'd feel a little exposed without my PowerPoint Protection (PPP) force field, but the truth is ... there was nothing on the slides that couldn't be discussed interactively with an archaic process known in the 20th century as face-to-face communication. And here's where I experienced a revelation: when you give a presentation using PowerPoint, people are looking at the slides ... not at you. Maybe we use slides unconsciously to deflect attention?

Let's Just Talk

I challenge progressive managers to accept and encourage fireside chats where you discuss a topic with very little slideware. That cultural change could have any impact on IBM's bottom line. I recognize that executives are busy people and we shouldn't waste their time with ill conceived proposals. So all parties must be prepared. Likewise, they shouldn't waste our time by jamming us into a presentation salt mine for countless hours. After all, there is an opportunity cost to producing slides since the people creating them aren't doing value add work.