Don’t blame the hammer for the hole in the wall. Whenever my husband sees me walking around with a hammer in the house, he becomes nervous. And with good reason.
“What are you doing? Hanging a picture? I can do that. Let me do that. I said, let me do that…Step away from the hammer!”
Let’s just say that I can do some serious damage to a wall with a hammer. Now, do I blame the hammer? Hell, no. I blame the klutz holding the hammer.
Which brings me to my point: do you blame the tool or the person using the tool? You’ll find much chatter on the internet these days about PowerPoint presentations: PowerPoint has been declared a crime, bullets that can kill. But is PowerPoint criminal, or are our presentations?
Just as I don’t blame the hammer for the hole I made in the wall, I don’t blame PowerPoint for the scores of really bad presentations that I have had to sit through. PowerPoint is not a crime. Our use of it is. Profoundly, utterly and totally criminal. As Scott Berkun notes while defending PowerPoint: “you can do stupid things with any tool.” And I have seen many stupid things done with PowerPoint.
Back in time when only words mattered. Let’s step back in history, to a time before PowerPoint. When you wanted to start a revolution, did you use slides? No, you used words. And those words were fired by passion.
When I first saw a clip from Martin Luther King’s famous speech at the Washington Monument in 1963, I was in fourth year university, taking a break from studying. Along with one of my housemates, I listened to the famous “Let freedom ring” clip, which happened to be on TV.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.
When it was over, all I remember was dead silence. (I had something caught in my eyes.) Then my housemate said, in what is probably one of the greatest understatements of all time: “Wow. He was a really good speaker.”
Yuh think?
Thanks to the bounties of the internet, I now have the entire speech as a favourite on my YouTube account. I have listened to it, in its entirety, about 45,000 times. (I am exaggerating only a little.) And I never ever get tired of it. Because there are lessons in this speech even for project managers whose messages are so much less profound than trying to lead a civil rights movement.
Don’t believe me? Here’s what we all can learn from Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech (transcript here.)
The words are the pictures. The first thing you’ll notice about Martin Luther King’s speech is the power of words, which is the only tool he has to convey a message. Remember, this was 1963, when television was in its infancy: no internet, no Twitter, no blogs, no digital photos. Specifically, he uses metaphors and analogies to paint a series of pictures. His most powerful metaphor, which he introduces at about 3:19, is the cashing of a check, a check of civil rights to be cashed at the bank of the American justice system. He builds up his metaphor, like a story, until the first climax at 4:28: “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked insufficient funds”. The crowd roars. (Funny thing, I always get something stuck in my eyes at this part.) He finishes off his metaphor at 4:57 when he proclaims that “we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.” More roaring at 5:05. Understandably so. He uses this simple metaphor to convey his message, his mission. And everyone gets it. These words are powerful in their simplicity.
Check out the other pictures he paints which his words: “the winds of police brutality”, “sweltering with the heat of injustice”, “drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred”, “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream”. These are words at their most potent. No slides, no photos, no transition effects, no animation. Just words. Beautiful, simple, powerful words.
Repetition. Dr. King keeps repeating certain phrases over and over, like the chorus in a song or a poem. (His entire speech is poetry, in my opinion.) He answers the hypothetical question “When will you be satisfied” (9:15) with a series of sentences, each beginning with “We can never be satisfied”. Like a song with a chorus we all know, he repeats “We can never be satisfied”, pauses, then finishes his sentence with an image or an injustice (the changes he seeks), then pauses, at which point the crowd roars. He repeats the entire cycle again for a total of five times. It never gets boring. Never.
Of course he uses the same technique again at the end of his speech, the famous part, the part that I watched as a young student so many years ago.
He first introduces the phrase “I have a dream” at 12:20. And just keeps repeating it, over and over. Again, he introduces the phrase, then his vision, phrase, vision, phrase, vision, for a total of eight times.
Then he ends the speech with the famous “Let freedom ring”. Same pattern: he introduces the phrase at 15:24. And then repeats it over and over: “Let freedom ring from”, followed by a place in the United States, over and over again. Ten times. Does it get old? Never. It gets me. Every. Single. Time. Maybe on the 45,001 view, I will not have something stuck in my eyes when he gets to the “Free at last” part. Maybe. But I doubt it.
Passion. Of course the last ingredient for any great speech is to believe in your message. With your body, heart and soul. If you watched the entire video (it is only 20 minutes long), you will notice that Dr. King starts out slowly. At about midpoint, (the “I have a dream” series), his voice picks up (especially when he talks about his four children). Then he gets caught up in his message and, at about 17:00, you can see him raise his arms and almost lift himself off of the podium, as if to fly. His body language conveys his passion to the point that the crowd cheers along with him. Like a conductor in a symphony orchestra, he sweeps the audience up into his passion. It works, on me anyway, every time. As for my eyes: well they seem to always have something stuck in them at this part too…must be something in the air…
Channeling your inner Martin Luther King. Before you tell me you are not leading a civil rights movement so this couldn’t possibly apply to you, let me tell you about the time I saw an ordinary person channeling her inner Martin Luther King. She was talking about…building performing teams. Mundane? Not to her.
However, before I got to listen to Ms. Passion, I had to sit through an introduction by her colleague Mr. Boring, who had set out (I’m convinced of this) to break every single tip on how to give a good presentation. He fussed about the animation (I didn’t care), read boring bullets (I didn’t care), put way too much information on his slides, like the number of employees (again, I didn’t care).
Thankfully, after he finished torturing us, he then gave the floor to Ms. Passion. And she did two very interesting things.
First, she bubbled over with enthusiasm, telling us that this was a subject “that I feel very passionate about”. You just can’t fake that kind of passion. (Not even Sally could.)
Then, she stepped away from the PowerPoint, moved over to a flip chart, and wrote down a simple equation. She was using words to tell a story. She knew her audience was full of geeky engineers and we love equations. Smart girl.
The rest of Ms. Passion’s presentation reminded me why I get up at 5:30 am to attend breakfast events like this. That is until she had to give the floor back to Mr. Boring, who killed all the momentum that she had built up, by going back to his tables, bullets, and slides.
Stop choking your inner Martin Luther King with slides. Sure, it’s one thing to give a killer speech at an event, but what does this have to do with work, with project management?
Duh. Everything.
Here are two more examples where I got to see leaders, executives, channel their inner Martin Luther King, at work. The fact that I never forgot these presentations is testament to how successful they were.
The first one was a President of our business area (pretty high up in the nosebleed section) who came to our lowly division to explain why we were embarking on a particular path of change. Do I remember his PowerPoint slides? Nope. What I do remember is this guy standing up in front of us and saying: “I believe, with all of my heart, that this is the right thing for us to be doing. If I didn’t believe, why would I travel to every division in the world to explain it to you myself?”
Whoa.
The second one was a Vice-President, years later, who came to our division to explain some change that we needed to do. (There’s a pattern here, isn’t there?) Sure, he had slides. Nope, don’t remember the slides. What I do remember: he almost jumped in the air (like Martin Luther King does at 17:00) and told us “I believe we need to do this. If we don’t, our business won’t survive.”
I have kept these examples in mind every time I try to communicate a message, whether it’s to a customer, my project team or project stakeholders. We all have a message. We all have an inner Martin Luther King. We just need to stop choking him with slides. And animation effects.
Forget PowerPoint, remember Words, Repetition, Passion. So, for your next presentation, spend less time (like, none) on the animation effects and more time on channeling your inner Martin Luther King. Use words as pictures, keep repeating your message, and be passionate.
Sure, you can have a few PowerPoint slides. Just remember that, like those executives whose passion I remember, it’s not the words on the slides that will move your audience.
Pyramids are everywhere. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about hierarchy these days. And I’ve noticed something rather interesting: humanity has an obsession with pyramids.
Pyramids: built for Kings of the (sand) castle
I’m not talking just about Egypt, but why not start there? The pyramids in Egypt were built for a sole purpose: to serve as a tomb for their Pharaohs. These pyramids are a frivolous thing: huge imposing structures that did not serve the community or provide any value to the public. Their only purpose was to state: “I am king, I am better and bigger than you.” It’s much like that game we used to play as kids in the winter when we’d climb up on top of huge snow banks and chant: “I am the king of the castle, and you’re the dirty rascal.”
In other words, the pyramids stand as symbolic proof of our tenacious relationship with hierarchy.
It wasn’t always like this. About 100,000 years ago, humans were organized in decentralized hunter-gatherer bands. This changed in about 10,000 B.C. when people first started cultivating the rich agricultural land of the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East. As agriculture spread and population densities increased, hierarchical forms of organization started to become more prevalent. These early farmers eventually found themselves organized into kingdoms, empires and fiefdoms which were ruled by kings, emperors and chiefs. Ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, the Macedonian Empire (ruled by Alexander the Great), the Han Empire in China: the list goes on and on. Humanity had turned to hierarchy as a way to provide structure to governments and societies.
If you had a choice, why would you? Why would hunter-gatherers and early farmers, who were essentially free men and women, trade in their freedom in exchange for rule by Emperors and Kings, who would command such useless frivolities as the pyramids? The answer, according to one reference, is that the empires, or larger groups, were better at two things: making lots of stuff (like food) and fighting.
The power of bigness. As we have seen with the appearance of managerial hierarchy, bigger things offer economies of scale and specialization of labour. By organizing themselves in a hierarchy, the members of the community were able to make more things for more people more efficiently. But that specialization came at a price: someone had to organize who made “what” and “when”. That someone ended up being a chief or a king, who, of course, in return for this effort, kept some, if not most, of the stuff for himself.
As for the fighting: quite simply, once again, there is strength in numbers. The more people you have, the more likely you are to defeat your opponent. And when you did, you got to keep their stuff. Including picking up a few slaves from the defeated society. So, naturally, you’d go out and get even more of someone else’s stuff. And you’d get it by fighting, and winning, wars.
But these two factors don’t quite answer the question: why would a free and autonomous farmer allow himself to be ruled by a king?
Five good reasons. In my opinion, our farmer ancestors traded in their freedom and autonomy to be ruled by a King for five reasons: they had no voice, they had no choice, they didn’t know better, they didn’t know that they didn’t know, and they couldn’t find out what what they didn’t know. And, yes, this is strictly my interpretation based on my reflections and readings of the history of hierarchy. Here’s a bit more detail:
No democracy. In a democracy, people vote for their leaders. Why would they vote for some idiot pharaoh who wastes the country’s resources on building a really big tomb? The answer: they wouldn’t. An essential ingredient to keeping these ancient hierarchies or kingdoms working is the lack of democracy. The best way to keep democracy away? A really big army. With lots and lots of weapons.
No human rights. In order for a political hierarchy to be sustainable, you must adhere to the belief that you have no choice, that some lives are worth more than others: the King is God, you are an idiot peasant whose life is worth nothing. That’s just the way it is. The moment that humanity started questioning this, kingdoms started to fall. The French Revolution is just one example.
No education. If you don’t know better, how can you have the tools to question your Chief, your King, your self-proclaimed leader? As education levels rise, the stupidity of building a pyramid for a dead king becomes more and more evident: you ask questions. Something like I did in Grade Eight.
No information. If you don’t know what’s going on around you, you can’t ask questions or challenge your leadership. Information and education do go hand in hand: you might be well educated but if you don’t know that the village next to you is being slaughtered by your King because they asked too many questions, then you can’t begin the process of wondering: “WTF?” and organizing a rebellion. Information really is power: education simply gives you the tools to wield that power.
No communication. When my husband and I were watching The Tudors, we would make the same joke over and over again. (We do that.) Every time King Henry VIII received a letter, delivered to him by a messenger who had travelled weeks by horse and ship, we’d say: “Oh look, he’s getting another email.” (Yeah, we’re sooo funny.) Clearly, when you have little or no communication methods, you have practically no access to information. It takes far too long to make a decision, and it’s very expensive. So it’s actually more efficient to leave the decision-making to one person, or group of people, who have access to information through communication. I love this table (scroll down to see it) as it actually spells out the dramatic reduction in communication costs and time from the telegraph to email.
So there we have it: the five factors that you need to make any form of hierarchy sustainable, whether that hierarchy be social, political or management. Hierarchy sticks if you have no voice, no choice, if you don’t know better, you don’t know that you don’t know and you can’t find out what you don’t know.
Same story, repeat. When we look at the rise of the large corporation which characterized the Second Industrial Revolution, it makes even more sense that we turned to management hierarchy to solve the problem of managing bigness, doesn’t it? We were just applying a model with which we were very familiar and comfortable. So it was only natural that in the late 1800s, we would turn to hierarchy to manage these large now unwieldy corporations.
Fast forward to 2010. Let’s take a look at any modern day nation and society. Just to stay on familiar territory, I’ll stick with Canada and the US. But, really, this analysis applies to many nations in our modern world.
Democracy. Yes, Canada is a democracy (even if our Prime Minister thinks he can prorogue Parliament when he feels like it.) And even if the American system of electing presidents mystifies any Canadian, it, too, is most definitely a democracy. If we don’t like our Prime Minister or the Americans their President, we can vote him out of office next term. It’s that simple. And clearly not an option for any of the Empires I listed above.
Human Rights. Slavery is illegal, as is discrimination by race, colour, religion, sex or sexual orientation. And while I am not naive that, globally, we still have much work to do, I’ll go out on a limb and say that we have all made much progress since Ancient Rome. All citizens are considered equal, regardless of birth, colour, religion, race, sexual orientation and so on. You are not king of the castle, and I am not a dirty rascal.
Education. My Italian parents, raised in post-WWII Italy, barely finished primary school. Their four children? University degrees, every single one of them. Access to education is not restricted to the rich, or the upper class. And when it comes to first year physics in engineering, we are all equal…likely to fail that is. (Physics is a bitch.)
Information. I read somewhere that we have more access to information in a week than our grandparents had in a lifetime. (Nope, I can’t find a link but intuitively doesn’t that make sense?) You’ve heard of a tiny thing called the Internet perhaps? If you’re still not convinced, take a peek at my blog reader. There is no way I can read all of that stuff…and still sleep.
A modern day pyramid
Communication. This is the key that unlocks revolutions, just as the telegraph unlocked the Second Industrial Revolution. Personal computers, smart phones, word processors, email, Twitter, blogs, Facebook, collaborative software: all of this means that we can talk to anyone anytime anywhere. We don’t need a chief or a king to do that for us anymore. The power of many-to-many conversations, the hyperlink, should be more than sufficient to kill hierarchy. (I said “should”.)
Stuck in the past. And what about the corporation? Here we are in 2010, and most companies still have these pyramids floating around. By all logical and rational reason, we should no longer be structured like this, a 160-year-old business model, designed to solve problems that are long gone.
And yet, we still are. We’re stuck in the past. The far past.
And I can’t for the life of me fathom why. Can you?
As the winter TV season comes to an end, I find myself saying goodbye to some long-running TV series. Without a question, my favourite was Lost, which, in my humble opinion was the greatest series ever to air on network television. But then, I am one of those strange people that enjoys a TV show that makes my head hurt. In a good way.
And so, as I ready myself to delete the epic Lost Series Finale from my PVR, I think it’s only right to reflect on what we can learn about project management from Lost.
Before you think that this is some sort of frivolous goodbye post, or an excuse to talk about Lost on a project management blog (ahem!), be forewarned: each of these lessons actually ties in to deeper reflections about some of my favourite subjects in project management and business. And one final warning: if you still haven’t watched the finale, be aware that there are spoilers in this post.
1. Leadership does not follow the lines of an org chart. I once said this to a boss of mine. And I remain mystified to this day as to why I never did get promoted. (Umm, not really.) But did you notice how there was not one single org chart on the island in Lost? Don’t kid yourself: corporate life is actually not that different. How many of us really follow the leaders that the Power Point lines tell us to follow? Exactly. Instead we follow those natural leaders that spring up from the many corners of our teams and organizations. In the Lost universe we watched Jack, who led by science; Locke, who led by faith; and Ben, who led by lies and manipulation: each of these leaders was able to perform in certain situations and not necessarily in others. And then there was the unexpected leadership of Sawyer, the bad-boy loner who, in the absence of Jack and Locke, surprised us all with his leadership during Season 5 in the Dharma Initiative. And finally, we witnessed the blossoming of Hurley as a leader when he accepted the title of Protector at the Series’ end. Each leader offered something different to his followers, something that was needed at the time. (Yes, in biz speak, we like to call that “situational leadership”.) What they didn’t offer was an org chart. Remember: hierarchy really is irrelevant. And, yes that is even more true in our business lives.
An unexpected leader. Without his shirt on.
2. Projects need an end, and so do great television series. A project is, by definition, a unique endeavor, with a defined start and a defined end. The defined end is what makes a project…well…a project. There is no doubt in my mind that when the Lost producers announced, near the end of season Season 3 (in May 2007), that they would end the series in Season 6, the quality of the show increased a notch, maybe even several notches. This is actually quite rare in television: most series keep going and going like the Energizer Bunny until they run out of ratings and steam and then die a slow and painful death when no one is watching anymore. How delightful then, that by announcing its scheduled end in advance, the Lost creative team had to work to a schedule and a goal, thereby having no choice but to stay on focus and close their various story lines. In other words, by turning Lost into a project, they made it better. Huh.
3. It’s a mystery why I can’t get colour-coding on my project issues. No matter how much dark chocolate I use as bribes, I can’t seem to get my project teams to upload their documents to our collaborative software “team room” without nagging them 45,000 times. So when I first saw the Lostpedia site, I nearly fainted. And these people are doing it for free. Because they want to. Because they want to share a passion with the world. I mean, they even colour code and cross-reference the Lost mysteries for heaven’s sake! I would love to have something similar for my project issues but, man, I am dreaming in technicolour. (Bad pun intended.) What remains a mystery to me, (somebody please stop me) but I plan to explore on this blog, is why knowledge management and information sharing is so difficult in project environments. We have the technology: where is the behaviour? Why do we want to share our knowledge of the Lost mysteries (in colour) but not of which project issues we’ve closed and how? I remain…mystified. (Okay. I’ll stop now.)
4. Believe in duct tape. One of my favourite lines in the Series finale was uttered by Miles. In his usual deadpan manner, came these words of wisdom: “I don’t believe in a lot of things, but I do believe in duct tape”, which he uttered as he was wrapping duct tape around a leaky hydraulic line on the plane so that it could take off. For 20+ years, I have searched for the nirvana of project management: the magical software that will integrate project scheduling with timesheets and business systems and give me all of my project status updates at the push of a button. It just doesn’t exist. A colleague with much more experience than I have told me this: “a little Excel is all you need to fix any business system.” Excel. It’s the project manager’s duct tape. Don’t believe in the do-it-all project management information system. Believe in duct tape, believe in Excel.
5. The art of the status report. Another of my favourite lines in the Series finale was an exchange between Ben and Frank, as Frank was frantically readying a very battered plane for takeoff:
Ben (in the walkie-talkie): How’s it going over there with your timetable?
Frank (in the walkie-talkie): Don’t bother me.
Ben (turning to the group): Sounds like they’re making progress.
I think that Ben has the status report down to a fine art, don’t you? I just wish I could answer like Frank sometimes. Sigh.
And so I bid adieu to my all-time favourite network television show. Goodbye hatch. Goodbye mysterious numbers. Goodbye donkey wheel. Goodbye Sawyer without his shirt on. Goodbye Jin without his shirt on. Goodbye “brother” and “dude”. Goodbye Claire’s crazy hair. Goodbye flashes backwards, forwards and sideways. Goodbye Man In Black whose name we never learned.
And, most importantly, thank you, Lost, for teaching me not to multitask while watching TV, because I might miss stuff like Walt’s picture on the side of a milk carton. Which I did. Because I was.
We’re in full hockey fever here in Montreal. If you have no idea what hockey is, or who the Montreal Canadiens are, you can read this post by substituting your favourite professional sport and team. It’ll still work.
The Canadiens are currently facing the Philadelphia Flyers in the Eastern Conference Finals, on their way to the Stanley Cup. Considering that the Canadiens finished the regular season at second-last place in their division, barely qualifying for a playoff spot, the fact that they got this far is nothing short of…well…miraculous. And deserving of reflection on what it takes to win in whatever “game” you choose to play.
[Edited: Tonight the Canadiens were eliminated by the Flyers. It was a great run. These lessons still apply. Thanks for a great playoff season. À la prochaine!]
1. You can only fire the coach so many times. Then you fire the team. I remember almost to the day when Michel Therrien was fired from his position of head coach for the Montreal Canadiens, mainly because I was…er…in “career transition” on almost the same day. I still remember the advice I received at the time: “When a team starts losing, you don’t fire the team, you fire the coach”. In other words: when projects first start to fail, the first victim is the project manager. But that will only get you so far. I also remember this comment from one of my managers, later on in my career: “When you get to PM#3 (on the same project), that’s when you know that it’s probably not the Project Manager!” Maybe it’s the product, the company, or a really bad contract. Or all of the above. As for the Canadiens, wouldn’t you know it, after firing their coaches two more times after Michel Therrien, they finally figured out that, yes, maybe it was time to fire the team. They did that last year. And here we are in the Eastern Conference Finals. Huh.
2. Le septième joueur: support your team. The city of Montreal is in full Canadiens’ fever. There are flags on all the cars, everyone is wearing their Canadiens’ sweaters (even in this near-summer weather) and there is Canadiens’ paraphernalia everywhere, most of it in my house. My 13-year old daughter goes to hockey game parties at her friend’s house wearing her Canadiens’ sweater. “Le septième joueur” (the seventh player as there are only six players on the ice in a game of hockey) is in homage to the fans whose loud support, some say, has helped to inspire the Canadiens to their victories. Project teams also need to be supported: by management and other stakeholders who can help remove obstacles to success. When is the last time that a Vice-President-King or Manager-King stopped into a Project Manager’s cubicle and asked: “What can I do for you today?” This only happened to me once in my entire career, which is kind of sad when you think about it.
3. Go find your Halaks. Work your team’s potential. Did we know who the heck Joroslav Halak was two years ago? And now can you walk two steps in Montreal without seeing something with his name on it? At 271st in the overall draft pick into the NHL, Halak himself didn’t think his dream of playing goaltender in the NHL would become a reality. After playing his first NHL game in February 2007, he was sent to the minors for most of the 2007-2008 season. He came back to the NHL in April 2008 but really came into his own this year when he helped the Canadiens defeat the defending Stanley Cup champions, the Pittsburgh Penguins. All this to say that you never know where your Halaks are in your project teams. Go find them. Nurture them. Right now, they might look like 271st draft picks. But, if you give them what they need, before you know it, they’re taking you to the Stanley Cup Finals.
4. Every project has risk. All risk needs to be managed. Last Thursday night, my husband and I went out for a romantic dinner, which apparently included a big screen TV so we could watch the game at the same time. (It’s okay: only in Montreal can one watch hockey while eating an excellent risotto, sipping a fine red wine and finishing it off with the best tiramisu ever. We take our food as seriously as our hockey.) After watching the Canadiens finally get one over the Flyers 5-1, we came out of the restaurant to find downtown Crescent Street blocked off to traffic, police everywhere and a helicopter, a HELICOPTER for heaven’s sake, hovering over the downtown core. Why all the surveillance? Well, when the Canadiens started winning hockey games this playoff season, things got a little…hairy…downtown, resulting in some broken windows and other unfortunate signs of bad behaviour. I could just imagine the phone calls on Thursday night when it was 4-0: “Okay, they’re winning, call the calvary, MOBILIZE!” Now that’s risk management. The Ville de Montréal (I’m guessing) had a plan, and worked it. I couldn’t help but be impressed.
5. Celebrate your victories. This is the most important rule of any work in teams, and the one we neglect most often. Celebrate your victories often and well. A lunch to celebrate a completed milestone, a hand-written “thank you” card, have an executive come by and visit, homemade banana bread (but only if it’s really good), a banner saying “we did it”, a paid day off, an email congratulating the team: whatever the gesture, big or small, take the time to celebrate your victories. Take a lesson from the fans of the Canadiens: on Thursday night, when my husband and I walked north on Crescent Street and along de Maisonneuve, the cars were not honking because they were stuck in traffic (they were), they were honking because the Habs won 5-1 and the fans were running along the cars shouting “Go Habs Go” waving their flags and their noisemakers and you just couldn’t help but throw in a “WHOO HOO” in there because we most certainly were not going to let the Flyers off that easy.
Lovely, useless antiques or decaying, rotten crap. Our house, dating back to the 1920s, is rather old, for a Canadian house. (If you are European, you are laughing and saying: “Oh, that new?” Please, bear with me.)
We have some lovely plaster molding on the walls in our living and dining rooms. We paid a lot of money to restore that molding to its original condition: it looks exactly like it must have when this house was first built. It is the first thing that many first-time visitors notice: its quaint architectural detail recalls an earlier style that, quite frankly, you just don’t find in modern houses anymore. It is a lovely antique. Utterly, completely useless, but breathtakingly lovely. As I sit here writing, I look up at it, sigh contentedly, and keep writing. Other than the fact that it makes my husband and I happy, it serves no other purpose.
Making pasta is easy in our modern kitchen. Is anything easy in the managerial hierarchy?
The second thing that many visitors notice is our thoroughly modern kitchen. Like the molding, we spent a lot of money renovating that kitchen. Unlike our molding, however, we did it because we had to. It was falling apart, decaying, decrepit. One of the first bad surprises we had was the floor: when we walked across it, it felt like it was swinging in free space. For good reason: the support beam had completely rotted through and was no longer touching the basement floor. Not only did we fix this, but we eventually completely gutted that kitchen: stripped it bare to the exterior brick wall, even ripped out the floor (you could see clear to the basement) and started over. Our kitchen stands as a testament for modern times: equipped with every modern convenience, it’s the heart of our family and entertaining lives.
Some things need a good gutting. It never ceases to amaze me how practically all organizations today resemble our old kitchen: decaying, decrepit, dangerous and desperately in need of gutting. Of course I am speaking of that most ancient relic, more than 160 years old: the managerial hierarchy. When you think that my kitchen was “only” 40 years old and yet managed to be completely useless, what does this say about the managerial hierarchy? Exactly.
Before you correct me and start speaking to me of decentralization, participative management, empowerment, flat organizations, project-based organizations, matrix organizations, please understand this: if you are reporting to some sort of manager who is not an owner, (if you use the word “report to”) you are in some product of the managerial hierarchy. They are all one and the same: antique relics that, like my old kitchen, need to be completed gutted. Thrown out. Discarded.
The managerial hierarchy is beyond broken. It’s rotten to the core.
Once Upon Time in Capitalism. The managerial hierarchy wasn’t always broken. In fact, once upon a time, it was a bright, shiny object. Like Twitter or Facebook. Which explains why it is so prevalent in twentieth-century capitalism. To understand this startling fact, we need to go back near the beginning of the Second Industrial Revolution, which is said to have started somewhere in the 1840s.
Prior to that time, capitalism existed in the form of owner capitalism: owners managed, and managers owned.
This marvel of technology helped to bring in the Second Industrial Revolution
And then a perfect storm of events happened, in transportation, communication and technology. This perfect storm is responsible for the birth of the managerial hierarchy, and looked like this:
Technology: Electricity replaced steam and water power, thus allowing factories to be designed according to the logic of the production processes rather than proximity to a power source. This resulted in a dramatic decrease in capital required for factories as well as in production costs.
Technology: Substitution of steel for cast iron and advances in metallurgy resulted in the ability to manufacture interchangeable parts, which opened the door to mass production.
Transportation: A railroad system, supported by steamships, was in place by this time. (It had just finished by the 1840s.) What used to take weeks and weeks to ship only took days.
Communication: With the invention of the telegraph system, you could send and receive messages over a space of minutes and hours instead of months and days.
These four factors, coming together in precisely the same time period, starting in the 1840s, meant that you could get incredible cost reductions with increases in volume. The advances in technology made mass production feasible, but you still needed a lot of capital to build the factories. To offset this capital investment, significant cost savings were needed, which could only be achieved by volume production: economies of scale. You couldn’t achieve those economies of scale, though, without the communication and transportation networks that kept the constant flow of goods moving: raw materials into the factory and finished goods leaving.
Put simply: making more of the same thing cost so very much less as long as you kept making them, and you made lots and lots of them. And you didn’t stop.
A Six-Sigma Black Belt’s Wet Dream. Just how much less did things costs to make? Take a look at these numbers. Have we ever been able to make these kind of savings since the 1880s? (That question is purely rhetorical.)
Standard Oil Trust’s cost of kerosene dropped from 1.5 cents / gallon in 1882 to 0.45 in 1885
Andrew Carnegie reduced the cost of steel rails from $100 / ton in the early 1870s to $12 by the 1890s.
Henry Ford reduced labour time in putting together the Model T chassis from 12 hours and 28 minutes to one hour and 33 minutes.
Do the math:that’s reduction in costs by as much as 90%!
Rolling on down the river. The perfect storm of technology, communication and transportation boiled down to this: making lots of the same thing cost less, as long as you kept the flow moving. That river of raw materials flowing in, and finished goods coming out could not stop. The only way to achieve this was through the attention of a dedicated management team who constantly watched over every step of the process. It was just too complicated for just one or two owners to keep an operation producing these volumes running.
And so, the managerial hierarchy was born.
In other words, companies were now run by a dedicated team of salaried managers, with little or no equity ownership, whose sole purpose in life was to keep this river flowing: raw materials in, finished goods out.
Really, there was no other way to manage this complexity…back in the 1840s, that is.
Capitalism’s Golden Period. The Second Industrial Revolution, which spawned the period from 1840 to 1914, saw the birth of companies like Campbell Soup, Heinz, Carnation, Nestlé, Cadbury, Lever, Procter & Gamble, Colgate, Bayer, BASF, Ford. Sound familiar? They should, as many of these companies are still around today. It is no coincidence that they all came to be born in the same Golden Period of the Second Industrial Revolution.
Fast Forward to 2010. Times have changed a little since 1840s, haven’t they? It’s now 2010. Let’s take a peek at just some of the changes that have occurred since the onset of Second Industrial Revolution.
Volume production. Lean manufacturing, lean methods, Atoms are the new bits, the Dell business model. We have now rejected making lots and lots of the same thing. The business model to follow is make a batch size of one, and it’s exactly what the customer ordered. We make it when the customer ordered it. What’s a factory?
Communication. Gee, just a few minor changes have happened since the telegraph. Fax. Personal computers. The internet. Email. Text. Facebook. Twitter. Blogs. Social media. Collaborative software. Video calls. Computer chat. Telephone. Cell phones. Smart Phones. We can talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere. Instantaneously. We now talk about delays in seconds when we talk communication. We can work anywhere, anytime. What’s an office?
The next Revolution? Where? Where? I am a Project Manager who has always worked in an engineering environment. I have always worked on projects: unique endeavors whose volume size is…well…one. I have never worked directly in a factory. Ever. In other words, in my 20+ years of experience, I have never encountered the perfect storm conditions of the 1840s. My responsibilities have never involved making lots of the same thing or with keeping the flow of goods moving.
So, please answer me this: why have I always found myself in a management hierarchy? Why has everyone else around me? Why have you?
The answer is…I shouldn’t. No one in 2010 should. Even factory workers no longer should. So much has changed since the Second Industrial Revolution that the managerial hierarchy is not only useless, it is keeping most companies from realizing their full potential.
It has morphed into a soul-sucking, innovation-killing monster whose only purpose is to feed itself.
I keep waiting for the next Revolution, which supposedly is happening right now, has been happening for the last twenty years, and yet, nothing changes. We still use the words “report to”, “boss”, “hierarchy”, “organization” and “reorganization”. Do we not already have the perfect storm that is needed to make that next Revolution happen, the one where hierarchy goes away?
When do we finally get rid of decaying, useless, dangerous crap that no longer serves its purpose? That is actually dangerous? When do we finally rip organizations down to the studs and floor boards and start over?
I’m still waiting.
I’m also just getting started. I hope you’ll check back, and see where I’m headed.
I got asked this question the other day. Given that it was another project manager asking me, I decided to have some fun with the answer.
As the contents of my daughters' closets prove, there are many kinds of Converse shoes. There is however, only one kind of project manager.
Laughing, I answered: “There’s more than one kind?”
He caught my meaning immediately, and had the grace to be a little embarrassed. “You’re right. I mean, in what industrial sector do you usually work?”
And I let the conversation go into a direction of comparing past experience and industrial sectors. But, this question, and the fact that it gets asked, still bothers me. Truth be told, it drives me up the wall.
I happen to think that there is only one kind of project manager.
This kind of project manager does not sit down and do the deliverables herself: she doesn’t program, do drawings in CAD, weld, or build. This kind of project manager manages her team, stakeholders and customer while still keeping an iron grip on the project scope. This kind of project manager meets budget, schedule and quality requirements. This kind of project manager initiates, plans, monitors and controls, executes, and closes.
This kind of project manager manages priorities, handles carrots and sticks, and builds teams. This kind of project manager sells, solves and negotiates.
You can find this kind of project manager in all sorts of industries: IT, construction, automation, video game, health sciences. You might also find this kind of project manager using an alias: video director, music producer, symphony orchestra conductor.
But no matter the industrial sector or the actual title, no matter the tools and skill sets being used, it’s all for one purpose: the relentless pursuit of “done”.
So the next time someone asks me what kind of project manager I am, I will be ready with an answer.
I am the kind of project manager that gets things done.
When you think about it, there really is no other kind.
It should be outlawed. Several years ago, a friend of mine, enamoured with her new Blackberry, marveled at how she could check her email anywhere, even while barbecuing chicken. Her husband, however, was considerably less impressed. When he went to check on the chicken that he had left in her charge while he was taking care of other things for the meal, can you guess what he found? Yep, that chicken was black, burnt to a crisp. To this day, he refers to this cooking disaster as “Email Chicken”.
I stopped laughing at this story the day I discovered that Google Reader Oatmeal tastes really gross. I love to read the blogs in my Google Reader in the morning, while my oatmeal cooks. (I make the slow-cooking kind, the best there is.) I pride myself on being a half-decent cook (handmade pasta, succulent filet mignon and glorious turkey), but that day, I burnt oatmeal. What sort of loser burns oatmeal? A multitasking one.
So here it is: I now declare multitasking to be a crime.
No emails were written while barbecuing this chicken on a beer can. The succulent result spoke for itself.
Like my email crimes, I am a reformed multitasker. I used to multitask all of the time. I cannot tell you what happened in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s because, while I watched it, I was making a necklace. I used to process my email while talking on the phone, whether at home (talking with my Mom or sister) or with a customer. I shudder when I think of it now, but I actually had one customer repeat what he had just said, very irritatingly I might add, which I missed because I was multitasking. Not only was that embarrassing, it was eye-opening.
There are no multitaskers, just people who think they can multitask. According to this cognitive scientist, there are there are three types of “multitaskers”:
Desperate to stay competitive: “This is the way it is, suck it up”
Impulsive: unaware, for example checking email and text messages while doing something else, including having a conversation.
Proud: believe they are superiour human beings because they multitask, and will seek out opportunities to continue. “I’m a multitasker.” (Yeah, sure you are.)
If you judge me as an inferiour human being because I have dared to proclaim myself a monotasker, you would not be alone. Take a peek at the comments on this blog post that dares to question multitasking. Geez, you’d think they were being told there is no Santa Claus. The category 3 people rise up in arms (“I can do it, why can’t you”) while the category 1 people will ask “What choice do we have? That’s just the way it is.” The category 2 people are too busy checking that new email that came in and missed the entire conversation…
Flip the switch. There is considerable science to prove that multitasking is a myth. In one test performed at the University of Michigan, MRI scans were taken of a test subject while performing relatively simple tasks: red digits required identification accordingly to its numerical order while green ones required selection according to font size. The MRI scans measured the brain’s activity and found that the brain actually paused before switching from one task to another, ie from red tasks to green ones. There was no “multitasking”, only fast switching. When we claim we are multitasking, we actually shifting our focus from one task to another with astonishing speed. Other studies have found that the mind actually slows down when it switches from one task to another.
Think you’re Good? Think Again.This study is even more interesting. Comparing multitaskers to monotaskers, the monos scored higher on every test than the multis. “The shocking discovery of this research is that [high multitaskers] are lousy at everything that’s necessary for multitasking.” Did you get that? You only think you’re good at multitasking but really, you’re not. At all.
Faulty Wiring? The science behind the mythology of multitasking is simple: our human brains are simply not wired for it. Our brain’s executive system, located in the frontal lobe behind our eyes, is responsible for “directing traffic”: taking in the information that we receive and directing it for processing to other parts of the brain as appropriate. The executive system is also responsible for removing distractions, in other words, helping us to focus. Theories are that this is a throwback to our hunting days: the ability to focus allowed us to win the “eat or be eaten” evolutionary battle. All this to say that our brains are wired to perform one task at a time, and to switch rapidly from one task to another. Our brains simply cannot handle doing more than one thing at the same time. Period.
Our brains also delude us into thinking that multitasking is productive, much the same way that my brain deludes me into thinking that all that TV I watch is good for me. Wonderful thing, that human brain.
Test Yourself. Ever since I read that first article debunking the mythology behind multitasking, I’ve been doing these simple tests. Try them and be honest about your performance:
Drive and listen to a podcast at the same time. Tell the truth, when that car cut you off, you stopped listening to the podcast, didn’t you? You actually had to rewind it, right? (Or does being cut off only happen in Montreal?)
Talk on the phone with a close friend and process your email at the same time. Call the friend back and ask “How attentive was I? Did you sense that I was engaged in the conversation?” You might be surprised at the answer.
Watch TV and do anything at the same time. I used to do all of my multitasking while watching TV. Until I found I had to keep rewinding because I missed something important, which meant taking twice as long to watch the program. I now choose to watch less TV, but at full attention. It’s amazing how much more I understand of what is going on. Oh, by the way, even during the peak of my multitasking days, I never multitasked while watching Lost. Never. For obvious reasons.
Mono Doesn’t Mean One. For some reason, people equate monotasking with having only one item on your TBD list. Of course not! All monotasking means is that when you choose to tackle one task, you focus only on that one task. Don’t forget that there is also “parallel tasking”: while one task is sleeping (doesn’t need your attention), you can shift your full attention to another task, preferably in the same category or physically nearby so that you can still monitor the first task. A cooking example would be: while waiting for the water to boil, you’re slicing the garlic and onions. But not, absolutely not, checking your Google Reader or your email. I believe I was clear on that…
There is Life Without Multitasking. If I have convinced you to change your criminal ways, try these handy tips for being more productive without multitasking, adapted from this article.
In a Minute (No, Not Really). Improve your ability to accurately estimate the time to complete tasks. On a daily basis, write down all the tasks you have to accomplish and estimate the time needed. Then truthfully time yourself. In addition, note how many items you actually cross off your list. You will be able to find the percentage that you routinely underestimate as well as what you can realistically achieve in one day and can adjust your work schedule accordingly. You’ll be surprised at how long things really take and how few tasks get completed. But, once you focus, you’ll find that you are crossing items off with more regularity.
Unclutter your brain. A cluttered brain makes it much more difficult to be creative and productive. David Allen calls the state of an uncluttered brain “mind like water”: in this state you can quickly process new information, assess new risks, and take action. In order to unclutter your brain, use external memory as much as possible: anything from a pad of paper to a task list in Outlook.
These things belong together. Rather than checking email multiple times per day, set times for reading and responding. Put other similar tasks together, like paying bills or reviewing the financials on your projects, to increase efficiency. Project managers spend a lot of time following up delegated tasks: group your follow-up tasks together and walk around to get an update from each person on your list (MBWA).
Interruption Management, not Time Management. In order to keep your focus on your task, control interruptions and noise, including shutting off email, Twitter and IM and letting your phone go to voicemail.
We All Have A Little ADD. Yes, focus on one task at a time can get boring, even for an introvert like me. To get around this, take a break every once in a while (for example a 5 minute break every 30 minutes.) During this break, do whatever you want: read your email, blog posts in your Reader, checking your newsfeed in Facebook and Twitter, make a quick phone call, listen to music, or get up and talk to someone. Just be sure that you time this break. When you come back to your task, you’ll be refreshed, ready to focus again. For example, while writing this blog post, I stopped, read and commented on a blog post, then came back to writing.
Note to Self: Start Here. I sometimes need to step away from a task before I finish it. Looking at a document with fresh eyes the next day allows me to see things differently. Before stepping away, I leave a note in my TBD list, (“Left to do: add photo, add links, polish draft”) so that I know where I can pick it up again next time.
Monotask Without Shame. And so, dear readers, I give you permission, backed by scientific data, to go forth and monotask without shame. Before you know it, multitasking will be out of style, and we’ll be saying stuff like: “Multitasking? Pffft, that is soooo 2009.”
As I mention in my first post, for some reason, many people seem to have this misconception that project management is this complicated, dorky discipline where we issue piles of excel spreadsheets, network diagrams and Gantt charts. Now where did a silly idea like that come from? (Yes, my tongue was firmly in my cheek when I typed that last sentence.)
One of my promises to you was that I planned to prove that Project Management is both fun and cool. And you can actually use sound Project Management principles to do useful things like…cook a turkey dinner for 18 people in your home. And not end up in a psychiatric ward.
This crappy out-of-focus picture is the only proof I have that I actually pulled this feat off.
And where does one find these sound Project Management principles? Why, in the Project Management Body of Knowledge, fondly known as PMBOK, the standard for the Project Management profession. Sound surprised? Don’t be. There are some pretty darn useful notions in that PMBOK.
It’s not a License to Kill with Paperwork. For some reason, PMBOK has this really bad reputation: people look at it and think that it’s a license to produce piles and piles of paper and procedures. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, right there in 1.1, PMBOK clearly states that you would never apply all of the standard to all projects uniformly: it’s up to the project team to decide which parts of the standard apply to each project. So, if you choose only to apply, say 3 processes, then that’s what you do. As for producing those piles and piles of documents? For my small project “Turkey Dinner for 18”, not every process output is necessarily documented: many are verbal. Still many others are skipped. Again, this is normal. You can hardly expect a global standard that would apply to a $5 billion construction project to be applied in the same manner as a $20K feasibility study…or Turkey Dinner for 18.
The Answer to the Ultimate Question is 42…but not always. PMBOK does a really cool thing: it defines project management as 42 processes, proving that maybe it is the answer to the ultimate question. These 42 processes are grouped in five process groups: Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing. But, does every project need every single one of those 42 processes? Of course not. Because that would be silly. It would be like…using every spice in your spice drawer for every recipe. I should know: I own every herb and spice known to man, including about 10 different kinds of sea salt.
As you can see in the detailed Table of Processes for “Turkey Dinner for 18″, I only used about 24 processes, and of those, only 12 are documented. That documentation? Fits on three pages of my Cooking Journal.
Do you think this cannot possibly apply to real life? As Cornelius Fichtner notes at the end of this PM Podcast: “Project management with lots of documents is not project managment.”
Amen to that.
See? Five process items on two pages. How hard was that?
The secret’s in the…Journal. In my many readings as a passionate foodie, I recently came across an article advising that, in order to truly master stress-free Christmas turkey dinners, one should keep a Cooking Journal, including a schedule for your meal, which can be used year after year. Duh! I have kept a Cooking Journal for more than six years and am now filling my second notebook. Before my Journal, I used to scrawl roast times for turkey and roast beef in the margin of my convection oven manual: these notes quickly became illegible and therefore useless to reuse. Besides the schedule, my Journal has evolved to capture all sorts of information for my cooking projects: the menu, oven cooking times for all major cuts of meat, lessons learned, guests entertained, wine served with the meal, and interesting anecdotes. Thanks to these notes, I can now predict with a great amount of accuracy the time it takes to cook any cut of meat.
In other words, this Journal is my Project Management Information System (PMIS).
As you can see from the example for this particular meal, Turkey Dinner for 18, the Cooking Journal entry contains the Project Charter / Scope Statement, Stakeholder Register, the WBS, detailed Schedule, and Lessons Learned. And all that on three pages.
Yes, this is what what happens when Project Managers cook.
Show me the money…? You might notice in my Table that I deliberately left out all processes that dealt with budget and cost, for the simple reason that for entertaining, I spend no time at all making a cost budget and controlling against it. It’s pointless. We have an annual budget for groceries (which includes wine) and, year after year, it is always pretty much the same. Once my husband and I make a decision as to the type of meal that we will prepare for our guests, then the rest of the meal’s cost is frankly irrelevant. What is interesting is that the triple constraints of time-cost-performance really come into play when cooking: an expensive cut of meat like prime rib requires almost no preparation time and is virtually risk-free (as long as you have a meat thermometer). However, a beef stew requires much more preparation time and labour and considerable longer stewing time even though the ingredients are dirt cheap.
But remember, my skipping the cost processes is appropriate for Turkey Dinner for 18. Not at all appropriate for the project “Build a New Airport”. Not at all.
Plans? Plans? You will also note in the Table that I did leave in all of the processes involving the preparation of plans, but these steps are all verbal. I most certainly do not write out a PM Plan for my project Turkey Dinner of 18! But we certainly engage in the process: my husband and I sit around the kitchen island and plan for hours: we debate options, make decisions, then put them into action by either updating a grocery or task list or by an entry in the Cooking Journal. This is entirely appropriate for Turkey Dinner for 18, mainly because the project team and number of stakeholders is very small. But if you are doing “verbal” plans for the project called “Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics” or “Tallest Skyscraper in the World”, I fear for you. Truly, I do.
There’s no “I” in Team, is there? One plan worth noting is the HR Plan, which looks something like this (DH = Dear Husband, D1 = oldest daughter, D2 = younger daughter):
Project Manager, Master Chef, Master Food Shopper, Goddess of all, Last Word and Veto Power on Everything: Me.
Sommelier, DJ, Sous-chef who gets fired and re-hired at least three times in the evening much to his sisters’ delight: DH
Seating plan, Makes the pretty menus and decorations for the table, Folds the napkins so that they look like tuxedo shirts: D2.
As for D1? She opens the bags of chips when the guests arrive. And that’s about it.
It begins only with my approval (according to me). Since every project needs one before it can start, it’s worth mentioning the Project Charter. Quite simply, it’s the document that formally authorizes a project. For this project, it goes something like this:
DH: “Elisabeth, my sister from France will be in Montreal over the Christmas holidays. Let’s have the whole family over for a turkey dinner. That would be about…(counts)…18 people. We’ll have them over on December 31 since your family will be here from December 27 to December 30.”
Were I to promptly file for divorce, the project would be considered…well…dead. But, as I always enjoy a challenge, especially a culinary one, I answered something like: “Hmmm. Okay. Sounds like fun. Let’s do it.”
And so, a project is born. No, it’s not written down but that sentence is essentially the Project Charter. Its approval, though verbal, was obtained from the only person that matters: me. (Evidently, DH doesn’t read my blog.)
There's a homemade table in here somewhere, as well as the "stakeholder management strategy" ie the name tags.
Never Ever Never…And I mean that. The WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) the subdivision of project deliverables and project work into smaller, more manageable components. You will notice that I have skipped a lot of processes for my project Turkey Diner for 18. That’s okay. Here’s a word of advice based on my 20 years of experience. NEVER EVER under any circumstances NEVER EVER skip this step. NEVER. Or you will be very very sorry. I mean that. If you do one step, do this. Always. Always. Always. Got that?
The optional part to the WBS is the granularity, that is, just how detailed a WBS you feel is required for your project. The part about skipping it? Not optional. I believe I was clear on that…
Here’s the detailed WBS for a Turkey dinner. Yes, for this dinner, DH did have to manufacture a table extension. Did I not already mention the extensive planning?
No, I didn’t invite the cops, did you? Stakeholders are all those people who are affected by the project. In this case, they are all 18 of the dinner guests, which includes me, DH, D1 and D2. Neighbours are not affected in this case since we were indoors. When we had our house-warming party way back in 1991 which was held in the backyard with about 50 guests, I invited the neighbours (2 houses down, both sides). I figured with all of the noise we would be making, they’d feel too guilty to call the cops if they were guests. That, dear readers, is stakeholder management.
Those fun family “discussions”. For this project of Turkey dinner for 18, the stakeholder management strategy was basically the seating plan around the dinner table, which was carefully devised so that those family members who tend to…er…loudly disagree with each other do not sit next to each other. My youngest daughter (D2) is always in charge of the seating plan, and has this down to a very fine art.
Risky Business. For Turkey Dinner for 18, it turned out that the risk processes were key to our success. We had done many turkey dinners before this point, but only for 14 at the most. The higher number of guests (18) posed a greater risk in that it required a bigger turkey, or two smaller ones. In addition, we were having the party on December 31, which was late for the Christmas turkey season and therefore increased the procurement risk. To complicate matters even further, we were also hosting my family from December 27 to 30, with another turkey dinner in there, so our only fridge would be full to capacity. Similar to the other planning processes, we spent hours and hours of discussing options, something like this. With all the turkey I was cooking, let’s just say that this was the year I became in expert in what to do with turkey leftovers.
The Second Very Best Part or What overcooked green beans? My favourite part is when the entire meal is on the table and we finally sit down to eat (I don’t get up any more after that) and I get to hear the “oohs” and “aahs” from the family. My second favourite part is the Closing process. The next morning, I update the Cooking Journal with actual data and include our lessons learned: what worked, what didn’t, and how hard it is to find Diamond Crystal kosher salt in Montreal at Christmas (which explains the three boxes in my pantry.) I also recalibrate the turkey cooking time (mins/lb) and check it against my years’ worth of data. In Project Management terms, this is documentation of Lessons Learned, and I often refer to the lessons captured in my Journal when planning future meals. And yes, if I document Lessons Learned on a small project like Turkey Dinner for 18, don’t you think you should be doing it for all of your projects? That was a rhetorical question, by the way.
What really matters. As we reminisce about the meal and the evening, it never ceases to amaze me how, despite the many things that went wrong (the mushy perogies, the slightly overcooked green beans, how quickly that second turkey cooked compared to the first), the family did not notice or care, had a wonderful time, and thinks I am God’s gift to cooking. (I am not but please don’t tell them that.) The next day we get about 20 emails with pictures profusely thanking us for the wonderful dinner, the perfect evening and for the fact that my husband married me.
And that last part, dear readers, is what Project Management is really all about.
I’d like to tell you two stories. Both of them are true.
As a Project Manager, I have come across many broken things in organizations. Regardless of your profession, I challenge you to look for the broken things in these two stories.
The first story involves a woman who lived in country where the people did not have enough bread to eat. This woman, however, did not have this problem. She had plenty of food, wine, and even…cake, (brioche, actually). When this woman heard of the plight of her people, she supposedly said “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” or “Let them eat cake”. Considering that brioche is a luxury bread made with eggs and butter, it reflected the woman’s arrogant obliviousness to the nature of famine.
Sometimes cake is a symbol. Sometimes it's just pretty and yummy.
We all think we know who this woman is: Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, wife of Louis XVI. In fact, it was Queen Marie-Thérèse, the wife of King Louis XIV, who uttered these infamous words.
Regardless of which Queen of France said these words, we all know how this story ends, and thus recognize the power and symbolism of this quote. Both the Queen of France, Mary Antoinette, and her husband, King Louis XVI were beheaded during the French Revolution, an epic transformation process resulting in centuries-old ideas about hierarchy and monarchy being replaced by new and “radical” notions of citizenship, rights, and democracy. It happened pretty quickly actually: three years to destroy notions held fast for centuries. The quote “Let them eat cake” thus eventually came to symbolize the selfishness of the French monarchy…well, any monarchy for that matter. For while France chose a rather bloody path towards democracy, every modern nation eventually chose democracy over monarchy. “Let them eat cake”: indeed, the people replied, we shall, thanks very much.
My second story involves a company trying to make its 2009 “numbers”. “Numbers” are revenue, profit and cash flow actuals against targets that companies post at the end of each quarter, presumably, in order to make shareholders happy. (“Presumably” because the reality has very little, if anything, to do with shareholders.) Knowing that they would have difficulty making its “numbers”, the management at this company “asked” their employees to reduce their work week from five days to four. Naturally, their pay was also reduced accordingly. There was no such sacrifice on the part of management.
A VP from this company traveled to a far away office in a far away city to thank his employees for their noble sacrifice. That evening, given that the VP was on an expense account, he went out to dinner in a very expensive restaurant, even though the far away city was (and is) world-renowned for the quality of their cuisine at all budgets. The VP invited a select few managers to dine with him and they all ordered foie gras: an expensive delicacy in an expensive restaurant for a select few. I wonder if the VP said something like: “We’ve had a tough year. Let us eat foie gras.”
Naturally, this company made their 2009 “numbers”. Naturally, because the company made its “numbers”, the VP and his management team received their bonuses. Naturally, they accomplished this on the backs of their employees, who were rewarded with…reduced pay.
The parallels between the two stories, I hope, are obvious. Both involve monarchs who are oblivious to the plight of their people: the Queen who can eat brioche when her peasants are starving and the VP-King who can still eat foie gras in an obscenely expensive restaurant even after he has cut the salary of his employees. Both involve people whose rights and needs are subjugated to those of “the hierarchy”: the peasants starve while the Queen eats brioche, the employees get less pay while the VP-King eats foie gras. Both involve a select few who “have” while the majority “have not”.
However, the similarities between our two stories end here. The first story ends with the peasants who say “enough is enough”. Paradigms shift: and monarchy gives way to democracy.
The second story…has yet to play out.
Don’t you think it’s about time that it finally did?
If there was a prison for e-mail crimes, I’d be serving 25-to-Life, with no chance of parole.
Having since been rehabilitated, I can now look back at my wanton life of email crime with a critical, if not somewhat embarrassed, eye. In order to keep you on the path of email righteousness, here’s some advice on how to avoid the most blatant of email crimes. It was easy to compile this list: I simply looked back at all the stupid emails I have written over the course of my career and have advised you to do…the exact opposite.
And to all of those who suffered as a result of my life of crime: I am truly sorry. Really, I am.
See this? It's a cool invention. Sometimes more efficient than e-mail
Never ever under any circumstances EVER write an e-mail when you’re angry. Go for a walk, for a run, for lunch, talk with a trusted friend, shopping, to a park, to the lake, around the parking lot, to an empty conference room…do anything except write that email. Don’t do it. Calm down and think. Trust me, things always look better in the morning. Except if you send that email.
Click Save, not Send. If you ignore tip #1 and you must write as part of your personal therapy, then don’t send it. A VP friend of mine gave me this useful advice, helpfully pointing out to me that the “save” icon is right next to the “send” icon in Outlook. “See? It’s a clue!”, she said. How about that? Just make sure you leave the “send” field empty so you don’t send it by accident because that would be so very very sad.
Just the facts ma’am. When you do finally calm down enough to send an email, stick to the facts. Writing things like “John is an idiot and should be fired immediately” is an opinion. Opinions don’t belong in business emails, only facts do. Instead, you could write: “John is late delivering his drawings, and this is the second time that this has occurred for this project alone. Since these drawings affect our next billing milestone, the project will be unable to meet its cash objectives for this quarter. An action plan is urgently required to address this situation.” See? No opinion, just cold, hard facts. Here’s some advice that’s particularly true for Project Managers: pick the facts that management cares about, like cash. (Cash is always good.) Other facts Project Managers should consider: schedule, cost, cash, cash, cash, revenue, cash, quality and customer satisfaction, all of which affects cash and revenue. Oh, and did I mention cash? Stick to these facts and you’ll get everyone’s attention.
Keep it short. If it’s longer than 3 lines, then it shouldn’t be an e-mail. You either need to split it into more than one e-mail, pick up the phone or call a meeting. I once had a boss, bless his heart, who replied to one of my long and preachy e-mails (see #7) with the following comment: “Your e-mails are boring and I don’t read them past the third line.” I took it in stride. After that, we played a game: every email I sent him, I’d end it with the number of words in brackets. He’d reply with his number of words. His number was always lower than mine (sometimes only 2!) Mind you, he got to reply with words like: “Approved (1)”, “Not Approved (2)”, which was easy for him. And this was long before Twitter was invented! (Twitter? That’s coming in another blog post.)
Get out of your cubicle. I once sent five or six e-mails to my cubicle neighbour. In a row. On the same morning. And no, I wasn’t mad at her or anything, I was just being a typical introvert. I stopped when she said to me, through the cubicle wall: “Good morning, Elisabeth. How are you today? Do you have time to talk about some of these things with me today?” Geez, talk about embarrassing.
Reach out and touch someone. When email first came out (yes, I’m that old), I thought it was amazing. You can send correspondence to someone without printing it out on paper and faxing it! Or without mailing it! Marvelous! But, until you’ve exchanged emails back and forth with your lead engineer regarding the fact that the model keeps crashing and you now have to tell the customer we’re delayed another month, you will not appreciate how ineffective email really is for conversations. The answer: it’s not. Pick up the phone, and talk in real time. I’ve been able to resolve seemingly complicated issues with one phone call, at a net cost of 5 minutes, after wasting hours going back and forth exchanging convoluted emails. Alexander Graham Bell was onto something, don’t you think? If you need to reacquaint yourself with his marvelous invention, take a peek at the handy picture, with directions, that I’ve posted for you.
You can’t solve world hunger. You have an opinion and need to share it? Your opinion can save the world? You want to teach, train, pontificate, hop on a soap box, tell everyone what’s wrong with the world and fix it? That’s great, except: none of this stuff belongs in an email in a business environment! Unless you’re specifically asked by someone very high up in your company. (This never happens, by the way. But if it does, there’s a protocol on speaking out which I’ll handle in a separate blog post.) If you’re burning with opinions, by all means, express yourself: start a blog, make a YouTube video, create a lens on Squidoo, give a speech to your professional association, be a guest speaker at a local college or university. There are literally hundreds of ways that you can share information and opinions, without violating your professional ethics or your employer’s code of conduct. Many of them are free, easy and, trust me, so very good for your mental health. Why do you think I finally started this blog? I’m not kidding when I tell you that it’s cheaper than therapy!
So, that’s it. Stick to these seven tips and you will stay on the path of email righteousness. But if you stray, and end up in email prison, come by and say hi. I could always use the company…it gets lonely in solitary confinement, you know?
August 8th, 2010
