The Holy Trinity Of Project Management

Originally Published in Iowabiz.com in April 2008

If you have ever been in a New Orleans kitchen, then you know that many a good Cajun dish starts with the "holy trinity":  celery, onions, and peppers.  Saute them until they are just right, and they become the cornerstone of many excellent meals. 

But you need all three to achieve just the right flavor balance.

As I learned from one of my early mentors, project management starts with its own "holy trinity":  Communication, visibility, and accountability.  All three of these together serve as the starter recipe for any successful project.

Communication is key.  As any certified project manager will tell you, a good PM will spend upwards of 90% of his or her time communicating with the team, the stakeholders, the users, and the executives.  As Emily Foshee notes,

A good project management system will provide a valuable mechanism to streamline communications with your customers and between your employees. It will help your employees complete each project phase on time and on budget, which will increase customer confidence and ultimately increase your company’s revenues.

Visibility is a forgotten element of project success.  If your project isn't hitting the right radar screens, then there will be nobody there to protect it when it hits road blocks.  Having (and using) a project dashboard report to demonstrate what projects are being tracked means that the focus will be on the right projects.  Chris Spagnuolo's dilemma on Agile/Scrum projects drives home the importance of visibility:

...Because the metrics are based on actuals being provided in near-real time by project team members, executives and customers can "peek" into the project at any given moment and know exactly what the situation is.  They don't need to wait for the weekly or monthly status reports.

Accountability is becoming a rare commodity in the workplace today.  It seems there are more and more excuses, acting in inverse proportion to results.  Creating a culture of holding people accountable for results (both in a positive and negative sense) is critical to getting things done.  As Bob Mitera comments:

As a former business owner and project manager...what if I was tired when I was supposed to be approving your pay check? Yeah...I thought so. Get to work.  If (your people) are accountable to themselves or their family...they will take action with or without you. Don't mistake passion for a job as loyalty.

Again, just as a Cajun cook needs all three elements of the holy trinity to make a successful meal, the project manager needs to channel all three elements of this holy trinity to make a successful project.  Missing any one of the three leads to something less flavorful.

Carpe Factum!

Make That High Priority... And Pronto!

When my students do their final presentations, I'm always introduced to some funny and fascinating YouTube videos I would have never found on my own.  This one came from a group doing a presentation on how miscommunication leads to office politics situations.

We could probably solve the "high priority" email crisis by doing a "reply all" to the sender with this video attached.  They might get the point.  After all, if a flood of high priority emails is annoying, imagine how much more annoying this video would seem to them?  (And, as a fun irony, send it out as low priority.)

When should an email be marked high priority?  Here are my criteria:

1. Is the sender's career, life, or livelihood in mortal danger?  If you can answer yes to any of those three, you MIGHT have a case.  For example, if the company will go bankrupt if the message isn't sent, I can see a high priority marking.
2. Do you need to CC a "cast of thousands"?  I've found very few broadcast messages that are truly high priority.  Other channels might be more appropriate.
3. Is the email requesting a specific action to be taken?  If it is only informational, can the priority truly be that high?
4. Is the message extremely time sensitive?  In this case, wouldn't a phone call work better?  You can still send the email, but does it need to be marked as high priority if it's just a back-up plan?

What are your criteria for marking emails as high priority?  How do you handle those who abuse this email function?

The Brand of Carpe Factum

I'm very fortunate to know, not one, but three amazing brand consultants all living right here in Des Moines.  I've talked about Mike Wagner and Drew McLellan plenty of times, and have shared how much they have done for me and my career.  Last week, I had the opportunity to have lunch with Mark True of REL.  Little did I know that the lunch was going to begin with a pop quiz.

"Tim," he began.  "I thought I knew what you did with this project management stuff.  But you focus on accomplishment and a whole lot of other issues.  What is your brand story?  How do you tie all these things together?"

It's pretty simple.  Carpe Factum is about accomplishment - always has been, always will be.  But there are three elements of focus here:

• Systems Thinking - How do you design your accomplishments?
• Project Management - How do you achieve your accomplishments?
• Office Politics - How do you remove obstacles blocking your accomplishments?

All three are interdependent.  All three are interrelated.  All three help you seize the accomplishment.  I think Mark gave me an 'A' on the pop quiz because my answer seemed to appease him (and when it comes to branding, he's not an easy man to appease; he asks really tough questions and expects good answers).

What about you?  Do you know how all of your products and services tie together to support your brand story?  How would you do with Mark's pop quiz?

A Life. A Legacy. A Loss.

I was very saddened to find out that Jim Goodman passed away today.  He was competing in the Hy-Vee Triathlon here in Des Moines, and suffered a heart attack.

A lot of people will read the statistics about Jim.  He was 46.  He had a wife and three daughters, all of whom he spoke very highly and with great love and affection.  He was a man of faith, a man of integrity, and a man of character.  I wonder how many will find out about the real Jim.

Jim was an entrepreneur.  He would exhaust me by listing off all of his business ventures, but with each word, his irrepressible grin grew larger and the twinkle in his eye grew brighter.  Creation was Jim's adrenaline.  I doubt he ever met a business venture he didn't like.  He ran the CEO Center in the East Village, a sort of incubator to help small creativity-oriented businesses grow and thrive.  "It's like an artist colony for business people," was Jim's description.  I knew some of his tenants.  And Jim made it happen.  That was just one of his ventures.

Jim was a community pillar.  He knew everybody in city and state government, and partisanship really had little meaning in Jim's mind.  He favored whatever made the most sense.  And he was too smart to run for an elected seat himself.  He knew he could have the most impact by partnering with government to make change happen.

Jim was a helper.  Very much a behind-the-scenes helper.  He was instrumental in getting my last book into the right hands.  And he wanted no credit for it.  I found this shying away from publicity and credit ironic for a guy with a marketing mindset, but then again, you had to know Jim Goodman.  When he interviewed me on his radio show last spring following the release of my book, Jim was so calm and calming.  I, on the other hand, was debating whether I'd pass out or throw up.  I was so nervous, I accidentally said I had three daughters instead of two (try explaining that to the Mrs.).  When a few of us started a creativity networking group three years ago, Jim provided us with a place to meet, to talk, to laugh, and to share.

Now he's gone.  And there's a big hole.  In his family.  Among his friends.  Throughout his community and state.  In my heart.  I've only known Jim for a few years, but he made an indelible mark.  As I've mentioned a few times, I've been teaching a leadership class at Drake (where Jim was also a fellow instructor).  My students have been attempting to grasp what "changing the world" looks like and how it's applied in a day-to-day life of action, how passsion meets purpose to drive results.  Sure, my students listened to me ramble for hours.  They read some great books on the topic.  But if they really wanted to see it done, and done magnificently well, they should learn how Jim did it.  He changed the world.  And he'll be missed.

My condolences and prayers to his wife, children, family, friends, and colleagues.  Jim Goodman was special guy.  I have a feeling that heaven is shining a little brighter tonight.  Jim's earned his reward.

Monsters Are Such Interesting People

So, why are monsters interesting?  Why do we seem to view the workplace monsters with fascination rather than disgust?  Why do we continue to tolerate - and in some cases, celebrate - our monsters (bullies and jerks) with such reckless abandon?

My thoughts:

1. Workplace monsters fascinate us because they're able to get away with it.  They buck social norms and make off like bandits.  And they're seemingly never scolded for their bad behaviors.
2. Workplace monsters are interesting because they carry a stronger brand.  If strong brands are either really loved (by upper management) or really hated (be peers and subordinates), then monsters fit the bill.
3. Workplace monsters get our attention because - as Sun Tzu advised - we should "keep our friends close; our enemies, closer."  Whether it's to avoid them or just keep tabs on them, we know that it's wise to keep monsters on the radar screen.

And, as Bugs observed, monsters really are "such interesting people."  Who are your monsters, and why do they interest you?

Spring Cleaning Your Project Archives

Originally Published In IowaBiz.com in April 2008

The requirements and specifications drafted for your project solution.

The minutes from all of those project meetings.

The status reports, drafted weekly.

The change requests, approved or denied.

The project plan.

The business case... or project charter... or statement of work... whatever you use to define the project up front.

What happens to all of these things when you are done with your project?  Well, there are a couple of different approaches. 

Ending a project is like spring cleaning.  Things either get thrown away, go in the garage sale pile, or go into seasonal storage (to be brought out later when needed).  Unfortunately, many project managers treat all of the project documentation like one of the first two categories (dispose or never access again) instead of the third.

Saving your project files in an easily accessible location allows reuse for other project managers to learn from you and your project - the good and the bad.  It also diminishes rework on future projects.  ("Remember that great test plan that Fred wrote last year?  Yeah, use that as a template.")  You no longer have to reinvent the wheel.

So don't toss that documentation into the spring cleaning bin too quickly.  It may be useful after all.  Just find a way to store it effectively so others can access it.

Carpe Factum!

Sandbagging Your Efforts

Last week, I needed to drop off a manuscript and some pictures with my publisher in Des Moines' East Village.  Just one little problem:  the building was two blocks from the Des Moines River, which happened to be at capacity and about to spill over its banks.  I went to the front door of the building... sandbagged shut.  I went to the side door.  Same story.  Finally, at the back door, I found an entrance that - while sandbagged - was passable.

I've been thinking a lot about systems the past year.  Our organizations are systems.  Our office politics situations are systems.  Our lives are systems.  Our projects are systems.  Our relationships are systems.  Just about everything we do can be broken down into identifiable inputs, transformations, outputs, and feedback loops.  So, if everything is a system, what are we doing to protect our systems from unwanted inputs?  And in the process, are we preventing desirable inputs from entering?

The Floods of 2008 have prompted my systems thinking even more.  When you look at the levees that have broken and the lives that have been devastated, you have to wonder how much was preventable.  But then again, it's a "500-year flood" (which in Iowa terms means we'll have another one around 2023).  Here's the paradox.  Is it worth it to prevent what happened?  In our efforts to prevent another flood like this, are we going to spend too much money and create other unforeseeable problems.  (Granted, that's an easy question for me to ask given that my basement never even took on a drop of water.)

OK, let's bring it back to our organizations.  One employee does something management doesn't like.  So management creates a new policy.  Everybody else who needs to be productive and get work done finds a way around the policy so they can continue to be productive and get work done.  So management creates another policy.  And employees create more work-arounds.  Vicious circle... right?  I just wonder how much our 4-inch binders containing company policies are like river levees.  Do they eventually break because what's naturally supposed to happen is going to happen anyway?  After all, employees bent on breaking the rules are going to break the rules.

Just some ponderings on a night thinking outweighs sleeping.

The Philosophy of Play-Doh and Sock-Rat-Tease

A while back, my whole family found itself at home for the day.  Instead of wondering what to do, where to go, what to see, whom to invite, we decided to stay home for the afternoon and make sock puppets.  And we had a blast doing it.  It was fun just to share some creative time with the kids.  I made a sock rat puppet and chased the kids around with it, making us all giggle hysterically.  Now that summer is here, we've had them playing with Play-Doh as well as other creative endeavors, like reading and drawing and playing outdoors.

Today is Fathers' Day, and one of the best gifts my dad left me was encouragement to use my imagination.  It's also the gift I want to leave with my children.  The next video game will be obsolete in months.  TV (even educational TV) is pretty much all reruns.  Dads, our kids really just want TIME with us.  They want to watch us having fun WITH them.  Many of the other fathers I know are great at the day-to-day hands on stuff, and their relationship with their children shows it.

To all the other dads out there, have a great day.  As a friend of mine once said, a one-night stand can make any guy a father; it's the relationship that makes him a daddy.  Enjoy your kids, and let them enjoy you.

Wordless Wednesday: Floods of 2008

Save Your Own Rain Forest

A recent end-of-year second-grade field trip to the Des Moines Botanical Center yielded some interesting facts about rain forests I'd never thought about before.  (By the way, taking time to engage the volunteers at places like this can be very educational, as they are a vastly untapped wealth of knowledge.)

Each rain forest has four major layers:

• Emergent layer - a few trees exceeding 125 feet (40 meters) in height serve as an overstory home to some winged creatures and a few monkeys.  Must be able to withstand heat and wind
• Canopy layer - continuous foliage of trees in the in 90-125 feet (30-40 meter) range serve as home to as much as 50 percent of the species that can be found on earth (plants and animals)
• Understory - all life between the canopy and the forest floor receiving only about 5% of sunlight but serving as home to many more types of animals
• Forest floor - receiving only 2% of sunlight, this area serves as a sort of compost heap to feed the rest of the rain forest.

What amazed me is the amount of interdependency among the layers and among the different species within each layer.  There's so much diversity that no one species can dominate the others; in fact, they depend on each other for survival.

What about your organization?  Are you valuing those in other departments?  Are you recognizing how your outputs provide their inputs (and vice versa)?  Are your executives forming a symbiotic relationship with front-line staff?  Are support functions like IT really helping the organization or are they trying to take it over?  We give a lot of lip service to "adding value" but do we spend much time really defining what adding value looks like as the life blood of those who use our organizational outputs?

Ask yourself this:

1. Who are YOUR customers?  What do they NEED from you to survive?  How can you provide it better?
2. Who are YOUR suppliers (internal and external)?  What do you NEED from them?  Have you communicated this to them and helped them be successful?
3. What relationships with other "species" and "layers" haven't you identified yet?  Who is paying attention to your processes and your outputs?

By all means, let's save the rain forests in our own companies as well... before they become an endangered species.

Putting Yourself Out There

I know a lot of ostriches.  It seems there are just too many people who go out of their way to avoid office politics at any cost because they don't want to get hurt.  Getting hurt is universally bad, so anything that could cause hurt can't be good.  Therefore, they want to avoid office politics.

This month, I'm volunteering some of my time for the local police departments as a role player for their RAID (Rapid And Immediate Deployment) training.  The police are practicing how they would handle an "active shooter" situation, and I get to play the "bad guy."  We're all using "simunition" (simulated ammunition) weapons, which is a cross between bullets and paintball.  Yes, I get to shoot at cops and it's legal.

Last night was my first session with this type of police training.  I've been receiving lessons in shooting and gun safety from one of the officers (believe it or not, as research for my next book), but it didn't prepare me for this experience.  I ended up with many more marks on me than I'm sure I inflicted on them (and I have the welts and bruises to prove it today).

But why would I do a thing like that?  Some kind of testosterone-laden perversely-masochistic fun?  (OK, well, sort of.)  But as I told one of the commanders, if I'm able to help an officer achieve a straighter shot or clearer thinking if the real event occurs, then putting myself out there to be bruised up a little bit for a few evenings is a worthwhile investment to me as a citizen.

Too often, we are so afraid of "being injured in the line of duty" as a cubicle dweller that we don't see the value that healthy conflict (or sometimes even unhealthy conflict) can bring to the organization to help it grow.  Avoiding office politics at any cost doesn't help to propel the team forward; it generally just suppresses the inevitable explosion.

How can you change your mindset and your actions to help yourself and your team get more comfortable with conflict?  Are you willing to take a couple of shots in order to make everyone stronger?  How can you move from "ostrich" to "bear" in your office politics situations?

Are You Botox-ing Your Organization

The other morning, I paused to really look at myself in the mirror.  And there they were... crows' feet, laugh lines, frown lines... WRINKLES.  And you know what?  I just chuckled and went on with my day.  I figure I've earned every single line on my face (and with two daughters who haven't yet hit teenage years, there are many more to come).

There have been many interesting stories about celebrity plastic surgeries in the news.  Personally, I think people like Dolly Parton, Joan Rivers, Joan Van Ark, and Kenny Rogers all look like Jack Nicholson's Joker character from the original Batman movie.  In contrast, two of the most stunning actresses I admire are Susan Sarandon and Diane Keaton.  They have aged so gracefully and beautifully, and they embrace their age (inside and out), which in turn makes them all the more attactive.

What about your organization?  Are you allowing your processes, your tools, and your thinking to mature as your business environment changes and evolves?  Or is your culture suppressing the maturation process by clinging to outdated modes of operation that worked at one time but no longer seem to fit?  There are a couple of organizations in town where I refuse to consult because their culture is so rooted in the past... they're effectively slathering mental botox on their employees and process to prevent new ideas from flourishing.  They have this "not invented here" mentality which prevents the normal lines and wrinkles of wisdom from appearing.

And these organizations don't have the patience to let true change take hold and move forward.  Their quest for results short-changes the natural processes that must occur.  David Anderson of Modus Cooperandi wrote a post talking about how they help their clients with strategic and tactical transitions:

Lasting change takes time. To do it properly can take 9 months to several years. It requires a serious commitment to achieving high maturity - quantitative management, predictability and continuous improvement - from the senior leadership.

What about your company?  Are new ideas embraced?  Are people allowed to earn battle scars?  Are the lines of wisdom shown off or are they artifically covered up to save somebody's ego?

The Best Time of My Life

"Tim, there's a growth.  It looks like it might be a tumor, but I'd like to do a biopsy."

Those words started me down a path that I wasn't expecting at the tender age of 24.  A few weeks later, a tennis-ball size tumor was removed from my neck, where it had been growing on my thyroid gland, which was also removed.  This would be followed by three radioactive iodine treatments (each requiring 48 hours in isolation), another surgery, six weeks of radiation, months of regulating medications, and two trips to Mayo Clinic (since the doctors here had "never seen anything like that before").  But before all of these follow-up treatments were to occur, something else monumental was about to happen.

"I'm sorry, but the surgery revealed malignant cancer on the pancreas.  We can try to treat it with radiation and chemo, but the prognosis does not look good."

This time, the diagnosis was on my dad, less than four months following my own surgery.  In addition to some of my own cancer treatments, the next seven months were spent watching the man I looked up to battle and eventually succumb to cancer of a different and more deadly variety.  He passed away the following May, two days after my graduation from Drake (looking back, the last months of my MBA program were a bit of a blur).  But my dad was able to see me in my cap and gown, which was what I think he was holding on for.

You're probably re-reading the title and wondering if I made a mistake.  Not really.  In a few short months, I learned more about life and living than I could from any book, class, or lecture.  I was provided with the unique opportunity to be both a cancer patient AND a family supporter of a cancer patient.  Two different perspectives would create a wider breadth of understanding in a very young and tender mind.  While it was truly the most physically and emotionally draining period in my life, I look back at that time with extreme gratitude for the lessons I learned:

1. Life is a gift.  No matter how badly or wonderfully it may be going, breathing is not an entitlement.  Passion and love and fun are what shows our Maker that we're enjoying the gift.
2. Coming through trials is intended to prepare one for greater accomplishments than they could have imagined beforehand, in case you ever wonder what event solidified my "Carpe Factum" mindset.
3. A sense of humor is the best defense available.  During one of the few times that my dad was doing better than I was and was visiting me in the hospital, I joked with him, "Dad, we need to stop this kind of father-son bonding.  I think it's bugging Mom."  He just grinned.  He's the one who taught me to laugh at everything.
4. My parents were/are the wisest, strongest, and most gracious humans on the planet.  Adversity simply strengthened the character that was already there.  I still look at my mom in awe for what she went through during those months (although I don't tell her that as much as I should).
5. We may not own the catalyst, but we always own the response.  And that response defines and shapes us in unexpected ways.
6. Empathy is critical for others who are going through rough periods in their life.  The journey may be hard, but it never has to be lonely.
7. My body and my health are my responsibility.  My current family doctor does not understand that and still thinks he has all the answers.  He may have 15 years of medical practice behind him, but I have 41 years of being Tim behind me.  That's why he's about to be replaced.
8. A legacy is written on a life, not a monument.  Changing even one other person's life for the better has a ripple effect that will be felt through eternity.

I'm sure that there are times my students, friends, colleagues, clients, and family wonder why I do or say or think something.  The answer is simple:  It's because - during a very dark period in my own personal history - I had the best time of my life.

Ob(li)vious

And we wonder why we have employee policy binders that are four inches thick.

Could it be that we're just communicating way too much that really doesn't need to be said?

What is your organization communicating (expressly or implicitly) that is creating eye-rolling among the ranks?

Thanks to one of my students for sharing this picture with me... great thought to start out the work week.