Taking A Punch

I like to think that I’m a pretty tough guy.  I’ve walked on a big toe that had no middle joint in it for over a year before finally succumbing to the pain and seeing a surgeon to get it fixed.    I broke my wrist during a class to get my motorcycle license and finished out the class.  I’ve been hit on my bike by a truck, gotten up, went to the park and played football like I was planning to pre accident, albeit with only one working arm.  I once drilled a screw straight into that meaty area of the hand between the thumb and the first finger, got the screw out, wrapped the hand and kept on building the shelves my Dad and I were working on (that one left a really cool scar!).

I’m also at heart a pragmatist.  It drives my wife insane sometimes.  “What do you think”, she’ll ask me, and I’ll reply with several logical responses that are actually what I am thinking but don’t really relate to how I feel about something, which is what she’s really asking about. 

Life beats us up.  It’s a fact, and it is unavoidable.  Even the wealthiest, the best, the nobility, the sheltered, take their lumps like the rest of us from time to time.  I came to terms with this a long time ago and I have stopped trying to avoid getting hit.  What I’ve started to do is become smart about the hits that I take. 

Getting hit in the stomach sucks.  There’s the initial sharp pain, followed by a dull ache that takes a little while to dissipate.  Compare that if you will to getting slapped in the face.  You feel an acute pain that quickly goes away, and while your cheek might be red for a while, it leaves you soon enough.  Given the choice, I think that it is safe to say that most of us would choose a slap in the face over the punch to the gut any day. 

Think about the following scenario for a moment.  Given the choice between a single punch to the stomach or repeated slaps to the face, which would you choose?  Do you choose the isolated instance of pain, knowing that it will hurt for a while then go away, or do you choose the constant, nagging pain of the slaps that just keep on coming your way?

Given that choice, I will now always try to take the punch to the stomach.

Ok, great.  What the hell does that have to do with anything, you may be asking yourself right about now. 

I submit to you that during our lives every day we are taking repeated slaps to the face instead of a single punch to the stomach.  Whether it’s putting off doing the dishes for a few days, or paying our bills, or doing our laundry, or continuing to reboot a dying server instead of replacing it, or stalling on writing up that employee for a series of minor infractions or reacting to issues instead of proactively addressing them, we are unconsciously making the decision to accept repeated slaps in lieu of a punch to the stomach.  Instead of sucking it up and getting things done the right way, we accept Band-Aids, half assed approaches, and procrastination as suitable alternatives.  Why?  It’s easier, cheaper, and less confrontational, less work, indeed; less painful. Or so we think. 

The reality is that the pain in the long run becomes far more severe as well as more impactful to others around you- your family, your organization.  It becomes a chronic condition, and sadly until it flares up, we accept the pain as part of our life. 

The solution is a punch to a stomach.  Take the time to do things right the first time.  Fully consider our decisions and don’t weigh cost more heavily than other aspects when making choices.  If there is an opportunity to enhance our performance, responsiveness, efficiency, or have some dishes in the morning for our daily oatmeal, take it.  You know you’ll have to wash those bowls sooner or later, so why not do it now when you’re washing those plates? 

The results will be astonishing.  You will save time and money, you will become more efficient, and you will probably even rest easier at night knowing that you’ve made the best decision, not the easiest.

And in the end, all of that will make that dull ache in your solar plexus dissipate that much faster.  Trust me, you won’t miss that constant stinging in your cheeks at all.  

All I ever needed to know I learned from Craigslist

In the business world, you really can’t turn around without being faced with an article, conversation, or interview question about the importance of communication and how those of us in the workaday world just don’t do a very good job of it.   I’ve rarely met the happy soul that looked at me earnestly and told me how they were fully informed and felt that communication in whatever they were engaging in was sufficient; and usually when I  do meet them they are part of either HR or Marketing so it’s hard to tell if they’re being sincere or not.

I want more information and better communication.  You want more information and better communication.  So what’s the problem here?  Let’s take my chocolate and your peanut butter and you know, see what happens.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I've discovered that all I ever needed to know about what we’re doing wrong I learned from Craigslist. 

We don’t listen:

Buyer:  I’d like to buy your futon frame.

Me:  That’s great! My cell number is xxx-xxx-xxxx; send me a text and let me know when you would like to come and pick it up.  I’m available today after 4, or Saturday until noon or Sunday after 10.

Buyer (doesn’t text, just emails back):  We’ll come after one on Saturday.

Me (smacking my head inside, but trying to be patient):  Sorry, but I am not available after one on Saturday, I can meet before noon Saturday or after 10 on Sunday.

Buyer:  I can’t do before noon at all.  I’ll have to see if we can come early Sunday morning before church. 

I never heard from her again, and I’m kinda OK with that. 

We don’t always speak the same language (sometimes literally)*

Buyer:  Send address.

Me:  It sounds like you want to buy my tool chest.  That’s great!  My cell number is xxx-xxx-xxxx; send me a text and let me know when you would like to come and pick it up.  I’m available after 4:30 every day this week.

Buyer:  $30?

Me:  Yes.  Text me and let’s set something up.

Buyer:  I come?

Me (after looking at his email address and thinking about it for a few minutes): Prefiere espanol?

Buyer:  si por fabor

We go back and forth over a few additional emails and set a time for him to come by.  He never shows up and I never heard from him again.  I’m kinda not OK with that; Babelfish and I bent over backwards for the guy.

We go out of our way to sound legit, thus calling into question the legitimacy of what we’re trying to convey:

Buyer going by the moniker Doomsday Machine: Hi! Are these still available? I'm a Japanese-American and a part of a re-enactment group and would much rather use good re-pop over original for my getup just because I wouldn't want to scrape up the real deal in the dirt and trees and whatnot. Plus these are just in time, since we're coming up on some important dates in the WWII New Guinea campaign vs. the Japanese.

Please let me know, too, if it would be possible to have them sent to Cali. I can send money through walmart or moneygram, since those are literally cash in your hand on your end. Or however you want to do it. I'd even be willing to spring for the cost of having someone like the ups store box it for you so it would be less work for you.

I'm just guessing here, but he probably needs a little help to get the money out of a foreign bank.  If I pay the processing fees of $300 and ship the swords to him while we wait for the bank drafts to clear, he'll like totally give me a cut of it.  

And sometimes we really oughta try a little harder to you know act like we’re paying attention and kind of care:

Buyer:  (responding to an ad listing about 10 different PS3 games for $10.00 each with the just super moniker Im Awesom [sic]) do u have games ill buy them cash right now. please respond if you do.

Me:  The ad lists games for sale…

Buyer: Asking if u still had them. Some people leave the ad up after they sell all the games

Me: Ah.  Yes I still have them. My cell number is xxx-xxx-xxxx; send me a text and let me know when you would like to come and pick them up. 

He ended up coming out and buying the games.  I don’t recall just how “Awesom” he was in person.

We’re lazy:

Buyer, via text:  Let me know when I can come and get the item

Me:  What am I selling?

Buyer:  Sawhorse

Me: You know they come in pairs, right?  I’m just wondering why you called it an item

Buyer:  Oh, I’m buying a bunch of stuff right now and didn’t know which what you were selling until I checked after you asked.

It just got more flaky from there.  In the end I killed the deal.

We don’t change what we say or the way we say it despite some evidence that maybe we should:

Me:  My cell number is xxx-xxx-xxxx; send me a text and let me know when you would like to come and pick them/it up.

I think that I’ll post an ad in the General section next week and sell Communication 101.  An online only affair, you pass if you can send 5 consecutive emails that a) make sense b) have no misspellings c) aren’t written on a cell phone d) have no abbreviations that I have to look up on urbandictionary.com AND are devoid of emoticons. 

I bet I make some money and that it takes a while for my first graduate.  But that’ll be mostly my fault for not clearly communicating the course outline.

*Alternate title:  I say potato and you say papa

One Minute

This week I think we’ll start with a quick snippet of conversation between Terry and Jerry, two IT gurus, and I that occurred a couple of years ago.

“Jerry, the Exchange server was hung yesterday afternoon.  I had Terry hard boot it.”

“You should never do that!  You can have major data corruption or data loss by doing a hard boot!  Why didn’t you call me?  There’s a bunch of different things you guys should have done. But never ever hard boot an Exchange server.  Oh my God, I’ve gotta go make sure the LUNs are still attached, Terry, we better start pulling backups…”

…at this point Jerry goes off for about 10 minutes, looking more and more wild eyed as he describes the total anarchy that is imminent before I jump back in…

“Jerry.  The server was hung.  The.cursor.would.not.move.   Couldn’t kill any processes, couldn’t start or stop services, and couldn’t gently restart it. You didn’t even know that we had an issue until we told you today. What exactly did you want us to do?

“I would have had you hard boot it”.

There was a time when every person in my IT department had a sign in their cube.  Two words were on the sign:

One Minute

The idea is simple and true.  One Minute can save you an hour or even a day’s worth of work.  Take a moment to take a deep breath and think about what you are about to do and more importantly why you are about to do it.  Does it still make sense?  Then go ahead and hit Enter sir.  It doesn’t?  Then go back to the drawing board. 

An IT infrastructure team faces an inordinate amount of pressure to keep things running.  The smallest, most seemingly benign change can have a major impact if not properly prepared for.  When things go wrong, the entire organization is standing at your desk, wanting to know what happened, what you’re doing about it, and when will it be fixed?  There’s a strong sense of urgency to every action in this scenario.  Taking a moment is the last thing that most people want to do.

But that is when it is most important to take that minute.  Pressure can make us take short cuts, make decisions that upon reflection are ill advised, and cause us an inordinate amount of clean up. 

We’re a society that revels in instant gratification and quick fixes, but we all know that slow, steady weight loss is better than a cram diet, that a made to order burger is better than a mass produced patty that contains a percentage of wood fiber in it (although neither really helps with the aforementioned diet), a custom made suit is better than one off the rack from JC Penny. 

Where does this lack of patience come from?  We’re accustomed to having everything at our fingertips, the latest Enter-The –Not-Quite-Celebrity-That-Is-Currently-All-Over-The News’s-Name-Here rumor readily available along with our thoughts and those of 10,000 of our closest friends, that pair of shoes can be here tomorrow with free shipping from Amazon Prime, our car telling us where the closest mass produced hamburger patty is.  I get it, and I readily admit that when a family member recently told me how he orders his toilet paper and paper towels on Prime so that he doesn’t have to go to the store I was all over it.

So all I’m asking for is One Minute. 

I’m not in any way saying that taking a minute will solve all your problems; indeed, there will always be situations that are untenable.  But taking One Minute can lead you to go with Bad Option B instead of Bad Option A, resulting in clean up but far less clean up than Bad Option A would have caused.  Similarly, a little bit of internal validation never hurts, right?  Bad Option A is in fact the only option, so let’s go for it.

Faced with a non-responsive email server and hordes of angry villagers no doubt beginning to form a mob complete with pitchforks, Terry and I took One Minute and did the unthinkable.  Jerry was able to externally validate our decision with far more time than we had to work with.  In the end, we were very lucky.  No loss, no corruption, and Jerry eventually started breathing normally again.  But looking back on it, that minute that we took made us both feel comfortable with the choice that we made, no matter what the outcome might have been. 

Next time you’re faced with a decision, take One Minute.  You’ll be glad that you did.

Entering the Matrix

This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember, all I'm offering is the truth—nothing more.

As a Project Manager or a Project Resource, we all live in the Matrix.  How deep the rabbit hole goes depends on where you work, what your role is, what the project is, when it needs to get done, and innumerable other factors. 

For those keeping score at home, there are three different types of project environments as defined in the PMBOK:

Strong Matrix- the Project Manager is in charge of the resources assigned to the project, and the resources are typically dedicated to the project.  They say jump and you better believe those resources jump.  A strong matrix environment is usually indicated by a PM that dresses up Neo-style, frequent bouts of maniacal laughter and the sound of the Imperial Death March preceding their entrance into the conference room.  (Seriously, try the latter sometime, it’s a blast)

Balanced Matrix- the project management equivalent of the porridge that’s just right.  Here we have a normal looking Project Manager with normal human attributes and the beauty of having enough power to get things done along with someone to turn to if things go south on them. 

Weak Matrix- the Project Manager has no direct control over the resources assigned to the project, and the resources are typically given project tasks in addition to their “day jobs”.  If the Project Manager says jump and the resources don’t jump, its tattle tale time.  Signs of a weak matrix are a PM with sunken eyes, permanent 5 o’clock shadow, torn and wrinkled clothing, and the sound of 10 middle fingers popping up every time they leave the conference room followed by gentle sobbing trailing away down the hallway.

A Weak Matrix project can occur in any size organization, but the condition can be exacerbated by two specific conditions:

1.      The Project Manager is also not dedicated to the Project and indeed not even to Project Management itself.  These unfortunate souls are also known as Accidental Project Managers

2.      The organization is small and there is no formal change management process

I was recently approached for consultation by an end user, let’s call him Alex, whose organization is currently undergoing a significant change.  Briefly, his company is switching from one operational software to a new operational software.  There are approximately 10 people on staff.  After several days of running both systems in parallel, it had become evident to him that there were significant issues with the changeover and he was frustrated, angry, and quite concerned that his clients would be impacted by the change.

I started out by explaining to him that what his company was going through was in no way unique.  They were certainly not going to be the best at making this changeover, nor were they going to be the worst when the dust finally settled.  Change is difficult, and it is impactful.  It’s about managing the change to mitigate that impact.  Our conversation continued.

“You and I have been through this type of thing before, Alex”, I reminded him.  “Remember when we made that switch from one system to another ten years ago?  You were on the front line for that one, in a customer facing role.  That had to have been really difficult and you made it through”.

“But we knew that you were there to help us, Chris, and we had a lot of support from the organization.   When things got bad we at least knew that we had some support behind us and that it was organized,” he responded forcefully.

“Ah, but we were a dedicated team.  It was our only job to support you.  It sounds like right now your Project Manager is still working with customers too, isn’t he?  This isn’t his sole focus, right?’

“That’s true,” he replied thoughtfully, “I hadn’t thought of that.  He is trying to do everything he was doing before and now this as well.” 

Here I knew that Alex had gone from feeling like a victim to thinking about how he could begin to support his Accidental Project Manager.  This is a crucial point of the conversation, because Alex can significantly impact this project negatively if he doesn’t help in the “right way”.

I began to dispense my unsolicited advice.  “The best thing that you can do is document your issues, and make sure that you describe why they are issues and how big of an issue it is.  Give him a list.  If you tell him things as you pass him in the hallway, he will not remember what you told him.  Help him to make informed decisions by giving him the information that he needs in a way that he can digest on his own time.”

Alex was nodding throughout.  “What really bugs me is that this is impacting my customers. That’s the biggest deal for me.  I think that I will just figure out how to make things work for now so that I can continue to service my customers while we get this working right.  But the Project Manager doesn’t seem to want me to help them.  My customer was waiting for 15 minutes for someone to help him and when I stepped in to get him squared away, the PM grabbed me and asked me to give the staff that were supposed to help my customer some space.  I was just trying to help!”

“You are better off learning this new system the right way.  Workarounds today are just going to lead bad habits tomorrow”, I replied.  “That goes for everybody, not just you.  Remember, everyone else is learning this at the same time as you are.  And sometimes it’s better to just let folks figure things out without a bunch of other people standing over them.  Hopefully, your Project Manager is looking at the bigger picture, and you have to trust the decisions that he makes even if you don’t necessarily understand them at the time”.

“Here’s the other thing that you have to understand”, I continued.  “Your customers are going to be impacted.  You’re not going to avoid it, so don’t run away from it.  Again, the best thing that you can do is document your issues and assign a severity to each issue and to be an advocate or proponent for the change that is occurring.  That’s going to allow your Project Manager to focus on the things that are impacting his business and your customers.”

Alex was silent for a few minutes.  “You know”, he began, “I really resented the way that they were handling this at first.  I never really thought about how this was impacting them.  I’ll try to work with them to get this working the way that it needs to.”

Change is never easy.  Operating in a weak matrix can make change all the more difficult.  Being an Accidental Project Manager in this environment can be seemingly impossible.  All companies are concerned about the bottom line; they make purchases that they believe will have a positive ROI for them, and unfortunately when they look to see where they can make cuts to the implementation of their purchase, dedicated Project or Organizational Change Management is usually the first to go and an Accidental Project Manager is born. 

The thing that I simply cannot stress enough to folks like Alex and his Accidental PM, and really to anyone that is part of is project is the importance of structured communication.  Give your end users a mechanism to submit their issues and insist that they use it.  Don’t allow yourself to be subjected to drive bys!  Tell your team what is going on, and what the plan is.  Set up touch points throughout the project to ensure that you keep the avenues of communication open- proactive communication will reduce tension and better still keep the rumor mill to a mild roar.  

I’ll post a follow up to share how Alex’s story ends.  I’m confident though that he will be successful, as will his organization.  I’m glad in the end he took the red pill and we took the journey into his rabbit hole.  It wasn’t nearly as deep as he thought it was initially.

Seven Attributes of Successful Project Managers

For a long time I believed that project management was really about common sense.  More recently, I’ve felt that it was all about one’s gut- that inner instinct or spidey sense that helps to guide our actions.  I don’t think that either of those beliefs are erroneous; I’ve read the arguments that common sense is applicable to everything and that gut checks are really not better than a flip of a coin in making a decision, yet I still believe that a person that possesses those characteristics will tend to be more successful in project and really even in general management.  But I acknowledge that this is an overly simplistic view. 

Digging deeper, I believe that the following are qualities a person that desires to have success in project management should possess or develop.  I don’t think it is necessary for that person to have expert proficiency in each area; that simply isn’t feasible nor is it desired.  But when taking a moment for introspection, consider the following:

1.      Pragmatism

2.      Flexibility

3.      Challenge your resources

4.      Make your resources better

5.      Don’t be afraid to say “no”

6.      Always be a student of the game

7.      Understand your role in each project

Let’s dive a little deeper into each of these.

1.      Pragmatism.  A PM must assess a situation and take the most appropriate steps to resolve it, relying on experience, logic, and reason yet never emotion.  We must understand that no situation is ever exactly alike and that we must be cautious in applying prior solutions to new problems for the sake of ease.  I think that those that refer to common sense in terms of project management may be actually talking about pragmatism.

2.      Flexibility.  Project Management methodologies such as Waterfall and Agile are processes and guides that we can use to assist us in our duties.  They are NOT absolutes and truly it is myopic to subscribe to only one.  Be amenable to all methodologies, be it PMI, Scrum, Six Sigma, or Prince2.  Study them and gain a core understanding of them, and then use them as you would any other weapon in your arsenal. 

3.      Challenge your resources.  This is kind of Project Management 101, I know, but get some sort of validation of the estimates that you are provided.  Ask just a couple of more questions of your stakeholders to really flesh that requirement out before you start building.  Restate statements that are made to you to ensure that you understand what you are being told.  It will make everyone’s job easier in the long run.  Always know why something is being done and make sure that the doer knows why as well.

4.      Make your resources better.  This goes hand in hand with challenging your resources.  Give them opportunities to voice their opinions, take on new tasks, ask questions of you, and above all else let them know why they are doing what they are doing and how it relates to the overall goals of the project or the organization or both.  They will work harder for you, and you will see an increase in their performance.  Every now and again you’ll run across a guy that really just wants to stay heads down and do his job, nothing more, and that’s OK.  But I find that these types of resources are few and far between.  I can already hear those that say that there’s no time for this in a project.  My response is find the time, make the time, schedule the time.  Find a way to make it happen.  You’ll be glad that you did.

5.      Don’t be afraid to say, “No”.  Simple changes or adds can be the death of a project, it’s like a death from 10,000 cuts.  It’s not just the additional time and effort; I find that poor change management can have a devastating effect on the morale of your team.  Remember, you are their advocate and their shield.  If they start to see chinks in your armor, real or perceived, you will quickly lose their respect, and their level of effort will depreciate as well.  A strong, well-documented, and defined Change Management process is critical for any engagement regardless of size or complexity. 

6.      Always be a student of the game.  You hear that a lot about athletes, and I think it’s true in the professional arena as well.  Be observant of everyone on your project, your resources, stakeholders, and sponsors.  Learn everything you can from them.  Continue your education by learning all that you can.  And challenge yourself.  Don’t be an App Dev PM all your life, try an infrastructure project, a construction project, even a process deconstruction project.  Take what you have learned and apply it to your new challenges, and take what you learn from the experiences and similarly apply it going forward.  You’ll be a much more well-rounded PM if you stick your head up and get outside of your comfort zone every now and then (you’ll also make yourself that much more marketable).

7.      Understand your role in each project.  Despite what you may think, it isn’t the same each time.  What type of environment are you in- strong matrix, weak matrix?  What’s the experience level of your resources and is it in line with the complexity of the project?  Do you have self-starters or folks that won’t breathe without a written requirement that they do so?  What’s your sponsor and stakeholders like?  Micromanagers or I don’t care how you do it I just want the end result and I want it yesterday types?  A good understanding of these qualities will help shape your behavior on the project.  Project Management isn’t one size fits all. 

Defining success for a project is not as easy as it may seem and identifying a successful PM is equally challenging. I don’t believe that successful projects necessarily point to successful project management.  Indeed, I’ve seen more than one project succeed in spite of the project manager.  Conversely, I’ve seen very skilled and experienced PMs go down with a ship despite all of their efforts, tricks, and negotiation.  But the core processes of Project Management methodologies paired with experience and the attributes I’ve called out here can position a PM in the best possible spot to realize success in their individual projects as well as in their career.