Holy Things-I-Didn't-Know, Batman!

Good old Aunt Harriet.

You Batman fans remember her from the 1960's television show. That lovely, doting busy-body really had no clue that her nephew and his playmate were superheroes, right under her own nose. Her blue blood personification made us smile. After all, many of us had an Aunt Harriet (albeit one who wasn't filthy rich).

But do you REALLY know Aunt Harriet? More appropriately, do you know the actress who played her, Madge Blake? Ms. Blake passed away soon after the series wrapped up, but it was her life BEFORE acting that astounded and surprised me. Every once in a while, I will go on a Wikipedia rabbit hunt, whenever curiosity gets the better of me. Batman reruns were such an integral part of my childhood that I decided to do a little research on a show based primarily on two superheroes, a butler, a clueless police force, and four recurring villains (with a new villain thrown in from time to time to keep it interesting).

What I discovered about Aunt Harriet was Madge Blake didn't take up acting until the age of 50 (so there's still hope for my career change in a couple of years). Prior to that, she and her husband were integral workers on the Manhattan Project, helping in the construction of the atomic bomb detonator and testing critical equipment. Both received citations from the US government.

BAM!  POW!  BIF!  ZONK!

I was bowled over like the Joker in the last five minutes of an episode.

You work with a lot of people day in and day out. Certainly you've come to your own conclusions about their "story" (or for most of us egocentric primates, their role in YOUR story). But here's my question for you: Have YOU taken the TIME to really LEARN about those PEOPLE in your life's STORY? Are you fascinated by them or bored with them? Do you feel you know everything you need to know, or are you still curious?

If you've lost that curious edge, it may be time to open up the relationship, check behind the bookcase, and yell, "To the Bat Cave!"

Fifty Shades of GRRR

Let's be clear: I've never read the book, Fifty Shades of Grey. I don't plan on seeing the movie by the same name. But the title does make excellent pun-fodder for me to post a list (in no particular order) of some of my top project management pet peeves:

1. Indecisive decision-makers
2. Passive-aggressive business analysts
3. Developers who don’t follow requirements and specifications
4. Project stakeholders who throw people under the bus
5. The buses that keep hitting project stakeholders, thus requiring risks be written if this event happens.
6. Status reports that read like stereo instructions
7. Methodologies (outside of common sense and experience)
8. Methodologists who act like Cubicle Pharisees
9. People who drive slow in the passing lane (I’m sure there’s a project tie-in somewhere)
10. Quality assurance analysts who refuse to log defects
11. “Well, it’s technically done…”
12. Micromanaging executives
13. People who accuse without adequate fact-checking
14. “Oh, I’m sorry, did I leave you off that distribution list on that message affecting your project?”
15. Blatant incompetence
16. Posers who are more interested in climbing than doing
17. No clear scope statement… and no desire to research it either
18. No compelling rationale for the project
19. Passionless projects
20. Forgetting a stakeholder
21. Making assumptions with no valid basis
22. Not documenting the assumptions made
23. Those who wish to make estimating an exact science
24. Executives who hold teams exactly to their estimates
25. No time to plan properly
26. Not providing the correct resources to develop the plan
27. Not providing the correct resources to execute the plan
28. Turning a lessons learned session into a witch hunt
29. Inability to prioritize (especially where the triple constraint is involved)
30. Holding a meeting only because it’s Tuesday at 9:00 AM
31. Scheduling a meeting for Friday at 4:00 PM
32. Leaders who can’t facilitate a meeting
33. Blatant, unchecked dysfunctionality
34. People who talk too much in meetings
35. Forgetting to say “thank you”
36. Lacking a sense of humor
37. Fill-in-the-blank templates… where half the blanks are required but irrelevant
38. Executive temper tantrums
39. The genetic cross of the Peter Principle and Weebles: they’ve hit their point of incompetence but keep bouncing back
40. “Not my job”
41. “We can’t do that”
42. “We’ve always done it that way”
43. Those who equate project management with filling in blanks on a project plan
44. Those who don’t consider project initiation and planning to be “real work”
45. “That person” in meetings
46. Conference callers who don’t know the difference between “on hold” and “mute”
47. Those who have more stupid answers than intelligent questions
48. Overabundance of ego
49. Dog haters… I don’t mind if you love cats, but if you hate dogs, take your Gantt chart and move along
50. Those who don’t understand project management skills are universal; you can put a seasoned project manager into any well-adjusted team in any industry/environment/organization and they will thrive

What forms of torture would you add to the list?

Nationwide is on your (Blind) side

Wow. Just wow.

Sitting there. Watching the Super Bowl. Loathing the Seahawks. Bemoaning the already mediocre set of commericals. And then the Nationwide commercial came on.

 

Now I'm not going to go down the road of how much of a downer it was. I'm not going to dog-pile on Nationwide for their insensitivity. They claim their goal was to start a dialogue about safety in the home. Very noble. Very necessary. As a parent, I've spent the last 15 years being neurotic about my children.

Two words: audience and setting

Whenever we try to communicate ANYTHING - from commercials on the Super Bowl to telling our kids to take out the trash, from a sales pitch to win a multi-million dollar account to an uncomfortable meeting with your project sponsor when things aren't going so well - one should always consider, beside the content of the message itself, the audience and the setting.

With the audience, to whom are you speaking? (Yeah, duh, but stick with me here.) Is it one person or many? What do they care about? What are their hot buttons? Why should they listen to you? Why are they in YOUR audience? Why should they listen to YOU? What's your past relationship with them? How much credibility do you have?

With the setting, you're looking at the broader context of the message delivery. Are people in the right mindset to hear what you have to say? Are they stressed about other things? Are you using the right channel? The right words? The right tone?

Nationwide failed on both of these tests. When watching the Super Bowl, we expect to see commercials about the misuse of Doritos, about puppies and horses making us want to buy beer (okay, I still struggle with that connection), and about what happens when a Viagra drops into the gas tank of a Fiat (my personal favorite of the evening). We want to laugh, to be amused, to be entertained, and (maybe) to be informed about the actual product.

I can't say whether heads will roll at Nationwide, but the decision-makers need to do a better job of explaining how they dropped the ball on both audience AND setting. They certainly seemed to be blind to both.