Success Keys: Compelling Vision

This is the first of the keys to having successful projects--you must have a compelling vision. That is, the project must be one that will produce an outcome that people find exciting, challenging, and worthwhile. Clearly, whether people find a project exciting will depend on their own internal motivation, so a project manager needs to understand team members in order to select those who will be excited to be part of the team effort. As I have told my seminar participants, there are people who love climbing cliffs. I am not one of them, as I have vertigo. So I would not be excited about a project to scale Mount Everest or even one of the cliffs in my Asheville area, and there are many of them.

But the last project I managed was to develop a state-of-the-art communications receiver which would be used on large ocean-going ships, such as oil tankers. I loved that job. So did members of my team. There were several challenges that made the job fun for engineers. We had to

1. Be able to manufacture the radio for 30 percent less that the model we were replacing.
2. Have it tune in 10 Hertz increments instead of the 100 Hertz increments that the old model tuned in.
3. Improve other performance characteristics, such as selectivity, sensitivity, and so on.
4. And we were trying to out-class our competitors!

Other Examples
If you think about other projects that must have had compelling visions, many come to mind. One that I have always pondered is the building of pyramids in ancient Egypt. Contrary to popular belief, these were built mostly by ordinary Egyptians, not slaves. We know this because they lived in little villages near the pyramids that they were building and left records of their work.

Another example is the space program. In the early days, the challenge was to put a man on the moon and get him back safely by the end of a decade. Part of the challenge was also to beat the Soviets, who scared us when they launched Sputnik.

Finally, a current one is the challenge facing Alan Mulally, now that he is CEO at Ford. The crisis facing the auto industry is huge, and in a recent Fortune Magazine article, Alan presented his vision for what he wants to achieve with the company.

Two Kinds of Visions
There are actually two kinds of vision that are important for project managers. One is a vision for the outcome of the project--that is, what the project is going to deliver. The second vision is about how people will work together. This vision is equally important, because you do not get high performance from a team just because they are working on something they find exciting. If working conditions are bad, it will eventually kill their passion for the job. If there is a lot of interpersonal conflict, bad relationships with supervisors or clients, and bad treatment by managers, they will eventually give up.

Mulally's entire Working Together principles have to do with how people were to interact on the 777 program, and eventually in the entire organization once he became president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. These included such principles as everyone is included, whining is okay occasionally, and the data sets us free. At the height of the 777 program, there were about 2200 engineers at Boeing working on the job and over 97,000 people scattered around the world. Did all of them catch the vision? Probably not. But if the core team did, that helped to at least spread it to some degree.

Benjamin Zander
If you want to see a compelling presentation on the power of passion, watch the presentation by Ben Zander at the TED conference: http://tinyurl.com/n2huwa. At the end of his talk, Zander says he gauges how much passion people are feeling by whether their eyes are shining. And he goes on to say, if they are not shining, we should ask this question: "What am I doing or being that keeps my followers from having shining eyes?" It's a question we should ask constantly, and we should be surrounded by team members whose eyes are shining.

Warm regards,
Jim Lewis

(c) 2009 by James P. Lewis, PhD

The Passionate Project Manager

My colleague, Doug DeCarlo, and I were having a conversation yesterday about self-mastery and project management. Doug is the author of xTreme Project Management (Jossey-Bass), and we have had many hours of discussion about these topics. In this conversation, we were talking about training people to be project managers, and lamenting the poor transfer of learning to the job that we have witnessed in our combined 45+ years of teaching. We know that very few people actually apply what we teach back at work, and we also know there are many reasons for this: lack of support by the individual's boss, resistance to project planning by members of the project team, and simple inertia--it's easier to continue doing what you've always done than to try something new.

However, in this discussion, Doug said, "I'll bet that 80 percent of the people who attend our training programs don't really feel passionate about being project managers. They are there because it's a chance to make more money, or the boss sent them, or whatever. But they aren't passionate about managing."

I had never really thought about it that way. I do agree with Doug. As Bob Wysocki and I wrote in World Class Project Manager, many of us are accidental project managers. We didn't choose the job. We were in the wrong/right place at the wrong/right time (depending on how you look at it), and became project managers. But do we LOVE what we do? Many do not.

In thinking about this, I realized that when I have gone to training programs that I have chosen for myself, you can bet that I internalized what was taught. A good example is when I became certified to use the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI(R)), which measures a person's preference for thinking in four different modes. I was fully engaged. I was energized. I absorbed everything the instructor said, as best I could. And I immediately applied what I learned.

The same was true in the year that it took for me to become a certified Integral Coach (R). This program consisted of four sessions of four-days duration--one each quarter, held in San Francisco. They ran from 8:30 AM until around 7 PM on Thursday-Sunday. They were intense. Even lunch was a working lunch. And in the evening we had homework. Hard work, to be sure. But did I love it? Absolutely! It was a wonderful experience.

Now I would like to challenge you with this question: Why are you a project manager? Is it because you really, really, really want to do the job, or is it because it was the next rung on the corporate ladder, leading to higher pay?

I can tell you that when I was an engineer, designing radio equipment, I loved my work. I lived and breathed it. I was at work early and stayed late, most of the time huddled over a workbench constructing and testing my designs. But then they made me a project manager, and I could no longer spend full time on the bench. It was the beginning of the end of my passion.

I am being totally candid when I tell you that I absolutely love teaching people how to be project managers, but I also do not like being a project manager. My two passions are creativity and helping others grow and develop. I am at home in the classroom. I would teach if I weren't getting paid (if I didn't need the income). And my personal view is that life is too short to spend doing something that you aren't passionate about.

If by this blog I talk you out of being a project manager--and you choose to be a potter or artist or entrepreneur--then I believe I have done you a great service (and you can feel free to send me a check--or just a simple "thank you" for that service). Seriously. Do what you love, and the money will follow. Do what you do JUST for money, and your life will be forever impoverished.

Cheers,
Jim Lewis
(c) 2009 by James P. Lewis

Managing Stressful Situations

In my last post, I discussed the negative effects of stress. Ultimately, stress takes its toll on your mind, body, and relationships. You owe it to yourself to deal positively with stressful situations.
I made a lot of mistakes in my career as a project manager. I suppose that's one reason I'm qualified to give advice to others. One of those mistakes was to commit to project targets that I didn't believe could be met. The net result was that I created problems for myself and my organization.

I finally learned my lesson. My last project was to develop a communications receiver for a shipboard application. My team and I spent some time estimating what we thought it would cost and how long it would take to develop the product, given the resources we were being given. When I presented our estimates to the vice president of engineering, he was in shock. "If it's going to cost that much to develop it," he said, "I'll have to get out of this business, because I won't be able to achieve the return on investment (ROI) that the company requires." He insisted that I should be able to develop the product for less than my estimate.

I showed him how we had arrived at the figures. I was able to defend them with sound arguments, but he still insisted that I had to do the job for less. Finally I said to him, "If you are convinced that the job can be done for less, you'll have to find another project manager. I won't commit to a lower number."

When I said that, he said, "Okay, if you're convinced of your numbers, I'll have to get the company to let me go for a lower ROI." He was able to do that, and we developed the product, coming in fairly close to my estimates.

Several years later, the company got out of that market. They could not achieve the kind of ROI figures that they needed to be profitable.

I know that some people think it's brassy to take the position that I took, but I see it as my duty, not as being hard to deal with. It is my JOB to provide senior managers with the best numbers I can so that they can make good business decisions.

Back to Stress
Okay, so what about stress? Well, you can imagine how stressful this situation was for all of us. Even though the vice president seemed to accept my estimate, he really didn't internalize it. So throughout the project, he put huge pressure on us to get the job done faster and cheaper.
So what do you do about such no-win situations? Well, you always have four choices in a bad situation. They are:

1. Change the situation.
2. Change how you feel about it.
3. Leave
4. Status quo.

By all means the first choice is the best one--if you can make it happen. However, in this situation, there was nothing I could do to change the vice president's attitude and behavior. I tried, but was unsuccessful.

The second choice is to not let the situation bother you. If you can really do that, it is an acceptable response, but you must really not let it bother you, rather than simply denying your feelings.
The third response is one that a lot of us are unwilling to take. It turns out that there is always a threshold of stress below which you will stay in a bad situation. You have to go over that threshold before you will actually leave the situation--whether it be a bad job, bad relationship, or bad neighborhood. Perhaps the fear of the unknown is greater than the pain of the known situation.
Finally, the fourth response is what I call the status quo choice. This means that you stay in the bad situation for an extended time without being able to change how you feel about it or change the situation itself. This choice will eventually take its toll on you, as I have already said. Again, you owe it yourself not to do this for very long. In my case, I stayed long enough to get my Master's degree in psychology, then went into business for myself and evenutally finished my doctorate. But what kept me going was knowing that I had an exit strategy.

Warm regards until next time.
Jim
(c) 2009 by James P. Lewis

The Kiss of Death

Michael Gerber, in his book, The E-Myth, points out that many businesses have problems because managers work in the business rather than on the business. That is, they become so involved in doing all the work required to run the business day-to-day that they never do anything to develop or grow the business. As an example of this, consultants know that you must set aside at least one day a week to actively seek new clients (called selling!). The selling activity is working on the business, while the consulting work they do is working in the business.

Many years ago I had a friend who decided to become a consultant, and he got a job with a large company and left his regular employment. One day I asked him what he was doing to obtain his next client, and he said, "I want to devote full-time to servicing this one." Three months later, the consulting work was completed for his single client, and he began scurrying around trying to acquire new clients. After several months of this, in which he had nibbles but no "bites," he had to get another regular job and abandon his consulting dream.

The kiss of death for project managers is to be what is euphimistically called a working project manager. That means, of course, that the person responsible for the project is required to do some of the same work as members of the project team. The net result is that the PM spends most of her time doing work (which always has a higher priority than managing) and managing the project suffers. The double bind she finds herself in is that when her boss does her performance appraisal, she will be told, "Well, Andrea, you did your work well this past year, but you really need to improve on how you manage your projects."

I have seen this happen many times. Project management should be considered a full-time job. You may be able to manage several smaller projects or one large one, but having to do any of the work nearly always results in the "doing" versus "managing" trap.

Speaking of many projects, the second kiss of death is trying to manage way too many projects. I am told by participants in my seminars that they are managing as many as 20 projects. With all due respect, I say they are not managing 20 projects. They may have 20 on a list, and they may switch between them periodically, but nobody can manage that many at one time.

At best, most people find 3-6 smaller projects to be about the limit. If you think about this on a regular workday basis, even that would mean you could devote somewhere between one and 3 hours a day to each project, which I believe is minimal time to allocate to managing. If you're spending less time than that, the projects that you are supposed to be managing are essentially just drifting.

I know what some of you are thinking: Jim just doesn't understand my situation. I can't do anything about it. Well, I do understand. You always have choices. If you accept these situations, then you accept the consequences. How are you living your life? How much stress, frustration, and anxiety do you feel every day? What is this doing to your health? I can tell you that long-term stress will take its toll on you. If you don't believe me, read Bruce Lipton's book, The Biology of Belief. You owe it to yourself to take control of your life and get out of such stressful situations.

In my next blog, I'll discuss how you should approach this.

Meanwhile, be well.

Jim Lewis
(c) 2009 by James P. Lewis

Real Project Management

I want to begin this blog by talking about some practical issues in project management--at least as I see them. I have been managing projects since my early days as an electrical engineer, involved in designing communications equipment (around 1966). For the first 12 years or so, I practiced seat-of-the-pants project management, because it was all I knew how to do. After all, engineering schools teach technology, not management. And all of the other engineers I worked with practiced the same kind of project management, so I didn't know anything else.

Then I attended a seminar taught by Jim Bradford, who had been a project manager at NASA, managing a segment of the space program that had an annual budget of some 400 million dollars. It was my first exposure to a structured approach. Jim taught us how to create a work breakdown structure, then sequence the work to make a critical path network, and how to measure progress using earned value analysis. It was wonderful! I finally had a way of managing the project I was leading, which was to develop a shipboard communications receiver, and I returned to work and planned forward from where we were.

This was in the days B. P. C. (before personal computers), an era that anyone under 50 may have difficulty even imagining, so we had to use a mainframe scheduling program that required cardpunch and was a timeshare system. You fed your cards to the system, then waited several hours for the results, only to find that you had made a typo on one of the cards, which required a lot of time to find, and the whole thing was very frustrating. Nevertheless, we were trying to manage in a structured way.

The thing is, those tools for managing projects (work breakdown structures, schedules, etc.) did not make me a project manager. They are like a hand-held calculator--it won't make a CPA of anyone. I love what someone once said, "Give us powerful tools, and they only allow us to document our failures with great precision."

Yet many senior managers believe that if they have given you a copy of some scheduling software, then you are an instant project manager--all you need do is "add water and stir." And with all due respects to the Project Management Institute, the Project Management Body of Knowledge(R) does not really define project managment either (my membership number in PMI(R) is in the 7000s, and they are now up to 300,000 members, so I assure you I am a fan of the institute).
Project management is a performing art, and like any art, it is nearly impossible to define. You have tools and techniques. You have currently accepted practices. And they define the profession.
There was a time when a doctor would bleed a patient or use leeches to effect a cure. That was accepted medical practice at the time. Any doctor doing the same today would be guilty of mal-practice, and would lose his or her license.

The bottom line is that project management is about getting people to commit to and participate in all of the activities that must be performed to meet project objectives, to deliver a result that meets the needs of the ultimate client or customer. I have trademarked the term Projects are People(R) to emphasize this. In its essence, project managment is not a technical job at all, but a people job. So those individuals who do not like dealing with people generally struggle as project managers.

The most fascinating thing about project management is that it is the only approach ever devised for managing work, and so we now have traditional and agile methods, and these can be applied to almost any kind of project imagineable. In subsequent blogs, I'll discuss these and draw on the expertise of some of my colleagues to offer you some ideas about how to succeed in this challenging profession. For now, hang in there!