It’s no wonder that my bookmark for this website is filed under “Inspiring”: it truly is filled with “riveting talks by remarkable people”.

If you don’t know TED (and even if you do), here are my three personal favourites. Having watched each of these dozens of times, I can promise you: boredom is not an option.

Pranav mistry and the thrilling potential of Sixth Sense

Even if you are not a geek, you will love everything about this TED talk. The SixthSense technology, which is all about uniting the digital world with the real world, is mind-blowingly cool. How about taking a picture with your hands, then sending it by email from the nearest wall? Or turning a piece of paper into a laptop, like that scene on the train in the Caprica pilot? Or pinching a graph on a piece of paper to copy it to your computer? Pranav does all of these things and more in this talk. Which probably explains why it remains one of the most viewed TED videos of all time.

Clay Shirky: How Social media can make history

This talk dates from before the events in Egypt and the Middle East, which makes it all the more visionary. If you are still one of those people who thinks Facebook is for 14-year-olds and Twitter is just a fad, think again.

After listening to this talk, I read Clay Shirky’s excellent book “Here Comes Everybody” during my vacation last year and proved to myself that, yes, I can finish a business book…when it’s this good.

Hans Rosling: Asia’s rise, how and when.

You will never look at a graph the same way after seeing what Hans Rosling does with numbers and statistics. Thanks to some clever animation and his play-by-play narration, he makes numbers sing. (I really need to get my hands on the software that he uses, it’s remarkable.) And not only will you be enchanted by his dry Swedish humour, you will actually learn something about world economics.

Caution: Inspiration ahead. Unless you’re trying to stay up late, I don’t recommend watching a TED video after 9pm: any one of their videos has the firepower of about 20 espresso. I also don’t recommend checking out their very well designed home page when you’re in the middle of doing something else.

This blog post got delayed so many times because I did just that.

No related posts.

Don't be a Herb Tarlek.

This month, it will have been three years that I have been on LinkedIn, three years since I got over my irrational fear of posting my professional profile online, public, for anyone to see (gasp! the horror!), three years since I made the transition from “social media is for 14 year olds” to social media junkie.

Since social media years are like dog years, my three social media years actually translate to about 25 years of real experience on LinkedIn, which I figure makes me an expert. (Why not? Everyone else is.)

So as a self-proclaimed expert, here’s my Top Ten list of heinous LinkedIn crimes that you should avoid. Why are these actions crimes? Because they violate the main purpose of LinkedIn: to build a community of connections.

And because I said so. (I’m an expert, remember?)

1. Have an objective. As project managers, we should all understand the purpose of defining an objective. That’s what a project charter is for, right? In the same manner, take some time to define your objective and answer this simple question: “Why am I on LinkedIn?” Maybe you’d like to sell more widgets to more customers. Maybe you are looking to make a change in your career path. Maybe you are looking to add talent to your organization. Or some other reason. Or all of the above. Each of these objectives will have a different impact on how you manage your LinkedIn presence and your community of connections. Answer this question, and the rest is easy.
2. Use the IRL (In Real Life) test. Next to having an objective, this is the second most important rule to apply to any social media presence, including LinkedIn, and it has become my Golden Rule of Social Media. If you wouldn’t do it In Real Life, don’t do it online. An offshoot of this sacred rule is “If you can’t be positive, don’t say anything”.
3. Don’t be a connection whore. Early in my LinkedIn experience I noticed people posting on project management forums “please connect with me, I don’t use ‘I don’t know’”. Frankly, this type of behaviour shocked me. Look, if “winning” on LinkedIn was related to having the most connections, do you really think you can compete with Barack Obama or Guy Kawasaki? Personally, I liken this to the IRL behaviour of handing out your business card willy-nilly to every person you meet, Herb Tarlek-style, plaid blazer and all.  Although having connections is important, if not essential, to leveraging the power of LinkedIn, it’s the quality of those connections that will help you build your community of connections.
4. If you are a connection whore, be up front about it. Having said this, however, there are people who believe that having 10,000+ connections means you’re more fully leveraging the power of LinkedIn. These people, fortunately, identify themselves as LinkedIn Open Networkers (LIONs) and will display…wait for it… a lion logo on their profile. Remember what I said about having an objective? If your objective is to cast as large and as wide a net as possible, then this strategy is worth exploring. Ironically enough, even though LinkedIn frowns on LIONs, there is nonetheless a clear etiquette to follow, one of which is to be upfront about your LION status by displaying the logo on your profile. And to NOT act like a spammy robot (coming up next).
5. Stop acting like a robot. The thing that annoys me the most on LinkedIn is the spammy robotic form message to invite someone to connect, whether it’s “Since you are a person I trust, I wanted to invite you to join my network on LinkedIn” or my personal favourite: “I’d like to add you to my professional network”. Really? Really? This is your community, people! Remember what I said about the IRL test? Would you walk around at a party and robotically repeat the same phrase over and over to introduce yourself? Of course you wouldn’t! There is no excuse for not taking 10.5 seconds to write a personal invitation. Anything like “It was great talking to you last night at the wine and cheese” or “Of course you used to play football in university. That explains…everything” or even “I enjoy our conversations, let’s continue online.” In the words of an executive friend of mine: “If you can’t be bothered sending me a personal invitation, I can’t be bothered answering you.” Really, people, there is no excuse for this. None whatsoever. If the LIONs aren’t doing this, why the heck are you? You cannot build a community of connections if you are a robot.
6. Don’t be shy (and do some math). My earlier comments about connection whores aside, there’s no denying that in order to take full advantage of your LinkedIn presence, you need to have connections. It makes no sense to build a profile, and then stop at 6 connections, unless it’s only been a week since you joined. Consider this simple equation: if you have 100 connections, and each of those people have 100 connections, that’s 10,000 people in your first two levels and 1 million if you include the third level. If you have only 6 connections…well…you do the math. Not so impressive, is it?
7. Craft your headline. The default headline in LinkedIn is the job title of your current or last position, which you can, and should change. (Click on Edit Profile.) Remember your objective? Your headline should reflect your objective and should not be generic. “Expert in Turbo Encabulators” says way more than “Mechanical Engineer” and just might lead you down some interesting pathways the next time someone googles “Turbo Encabulators” and your name comes up first on the list.
8. Go back, go waaaay back. You’ll get more mileage out of LinkedIn if you post all of your employment information, not just your current position. And don’t leave out any volunteer work! The best way to add diversity to your community of connections is to include people you have met throughout your career, including post-secondary studies. Personally, I chose not to go as far back as high school, although if you went to as unique and interesting a high school as Dryden High School, then by all means, go for it.
9. Are you on the FBI’s Most Wanted? Why would you create a profile on LinkedIn and keep it private? How does this make sense? If you are in hiding from the law or engaging in illicit activities you shouldn’t be on LinkedIn. The rest of you: go public! It is, after all, a social media site and the whole point is to find others. And, of course, to be found. And it’s pretty hard to be found if your profile is not public. (Click on Settings.) Furthermore, you should change the default URL to something with your entire name in it. It’s your name, and your brand: wear it with pride. Need more convincing? Read this. (I recommend the whole article but you can also just skip ahead to number 3.)
10. Keep it short and sweet. And avoid the business-speak. Your summary should be just that: a summary. It’s the two-minute elevator speech that you would give to a potential customer or employer summing up who you are and what you bring to the table. And for heaven’s sake: speak English (or French). Stay away from that awful MBA-speak: avoid these boilerplate phrases and these six words that suck. (Guilty as charged: I am still serving my time for this horrible crime.)

Need more crimes? Here’s a whole lot more, some of which I already mentioned above. All worth reading and pondering.

Build it when you don’t need it. The biggest crime is waiting until you need a community to build it. The day you get that $50 million contract for which you need to hire 450 people or the day you get laid off is a little late to join LinkedIn (just ask an employee from HP). Remember: the whole point of LinkedIn is to build your own community of connections. And the best time to build your community is when you don’t need it.

That way, it’ll be there the day you do.

No related posts.

You’re welcome to let them change yours.

The 22 minute meeting. If the chatter on the internet is any indication, we are all obsessed with the inefficiency of meetings in the workplace. With good reason. Because most meetings suck so badly, it’s painful. This amusing video is only 5 minutes long and, after listening to it several times last year, I actually considered replacing that poster in our washrooms on “How to Wash Your Hands” with Nicole’s handy-dandy poster. In fact, I just might still do that.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As for the “changing your life” part, I was so intrigued by the challenge of giving a 5-minute presentation that I promised myself that I would try it. Which I did, earlier this year.

The Impossible Hamster. After watching this short video, I lost 3 hours surfing the nef website, which lead to more thinking that the 2008 / 2009 financial crisis is a sign that maybe our system is seriously flawed.

I’m still thinking.

Click here to view the embedded video.

At the very least, take a lesson from this video on the power of a simple story or metaphor to communicate your ideas. It sure beats a bunch of bullets on a Powerpoint slide, don’t you think?

RSA Animate: Crises of Capitalism. I picked up an RSA Animate video from my Facebook NewsFeed and I enjoyed the experience so much that it has quickly become my favourite YouTube channel. Again, take a lesson from watching any of these videos to notice the power of pictures and key words to communicate an idea or message, no matter how complicated.

Scrolling through the videos in the series, I tripped over this one by David Harvey. After I picked up the bits of my exploded head from off the dining room floor, I have since discovered his website, his free video podcasts in iTunes U, and a book coming out on the Kindle this summer.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And yes, that’s Marxism he’s talking about on his website.

Did you just squirm? So did I, self-styled fan of neoliberalism, when I typed it. Challenging your paradigms hurts, doesn’t it?

Caution, shifting paradigms ahead. As for all those silly CIOs and CEOs that ban YouTube from the workplace, you can use this blog post as proof that there’s some pretty useful stuff on that there internet thingy. It’s more than just about the top song playing in Italy this summer.

Happy watching and try not to get hurt from those shifting paradigms!

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1. Mr CEO, I am an adult, may I pretty please go on YouTube and Facebook now?

It’s hard work. Mainly because people really love their paradigms. Here are some of the business process paradigms that I have come up against:

I, of course, have no paradigms. None whatsoever. Because I am perfectly open-minded and never resist change.

Except when it comes to turkey.

Welcome to my paradigm. During our planning meeting for our Christmas 2010 Turkey dinner, my Dear Husband (DH) brought up some process improvement ideas. During our post-mortem of last year’s dinner (what? you don’t do a post-mortem on all of your projects?), we noticed that we were still spending too much time in the kitchen in that crazy period when the turkey comes out of the oven and it is time to get everything on the table. In an effort to improve on this madness, DH suggested that we do as much cooking as possible either the day before or even the morning of the dinner: the gravy, the cranberry sauce, the tourtière and even the mashed potatoes. Our resulting schedule was a complete re-engineering of the Christmas turkey dinner and I was onboard for every single change that he suggested and even came up with some myself. Because, as I mentioned, I am completely open-minded to change.

But towards the end of our planning session, DH made one more suggestion. He kept it to the end for a very good reason. Because he knows me.

“We could also make the turkey one day ahead.”

Say…what?

“I was talking to this woman at work, she loves cooking just like you do, and she makes the turkey in advance, then cuts it up, puts it in a shallow roasting pan, pours homemade chicken stock over it, covers it with aluminum foil, pokes some holes in it, then just heats it up in the oven. This way when the guests arrive, they smell the turkey but you get none of the hassle of carving it to serve it…”

I looked at him, absolutely horrified. Cut up the turkey? When you take it out of the oven, it’s in pieces? Chicken broth?

It has taken me this long just to be able to write about such a travesty.

Welcome to my turkey paradigm.

Shifting paradigms and other MBA crimes. Before we get into my turkey paradigm, or any of the paradigms that I encounter in my business life, we need a common understanding of what exactly is a paradigm. In simple terms, a paradigm is a thought pattern or a framework of ideas, a set of rules if you will, that is accepted to be true. The term was originally coined to describe a set of practices that define a scientific discipline at any particular period of time, but it has now suffered such abuse at the hands of MBA-wielding professionals that it has almost lost its meaning. (Ooops.) But for the sake of this discussion, let’s consider it as “the box”, as in, when you think “outside of the box”, you move outside of your paradigm or what you accept to be true. Because we haven’t killed that analogy enough either.

These days, paradigms are shifting all around us. (Double oops.) Here are examples of paradigms that I see everywhere, as well as the challenges to those paradigms which will cause them to shift. (See? I can’t stop.) I plan to write a blog post on each one of these subjects…eventually.

It’s my paradigm and I’ll cry if I want to. So as you can see from the above table, I am not afraid to challenge any paradigms. This is because I am a very open-minded person who embraces change.

Except when those ideas are totally ridiculous and silly. Like cooking a turkey one day before, cutting it up, putting it in a shallow roast pan, and pouring chicken broth all over it.

Because everyone knows that there is only one way to prepare a Christmas or Thanksgiving turkey: you brine it the day before, you stuff it, you roast it in the oven until it reaches an internal temperature of 160 degrees F, you take it out of the oven, you put it on the table so your guests can “ooh” and “aah” how perfect it looks, then you carve it and serve it.

Which brings me back to my Turkey Paradigm.

We all resist change. Every single one of us clings to set of ideas and principles that we just can’t let go.

Even me.

I’ve always done it this way but for a good reason. According to John Fisher’s transition’s curve, which describes the process for personal transition, I ran off the curve at Disillusionment in my Turkey Paradigm when I decided that “this wasn’t for me” after surfing the web for about 15 minutes and (thankfully) finding nothing about advance cooking and cutting up of turkey. According to Kotter’s 8-step model for organizational change, I certainly saw no urgency in trading off the beauty of presenting a roast turkey against the questionable convenience of this cook-cut-reheat approach. And, sure, when it comes to roast turkey, I’ve “always done it this way”, but I have a much better reason than, say, the reason for the “0″ on this form.

Not the greatest picture but I was a little busy

Never say never. Our re-engineered Christmas Turkey Dinner 2010 was a huge success. We were able to enjoy time with our guests and still pull off a full-course turkey dinner, complete with homemade tourtière, made-from-scratch Christmas Log cake and cookies, cranberry sauce, gravy, mashed potatoes and green vegetables.

As for that turkey?

It tasted as delicious as it looked when it came out of the oven in its glorious roasted splendour.

Whole. In one piece.

Will I ever cut up a turkey to save time and hassle?

Never.

But then, I also said I’d never read books on an ebook reader, didn’t I?

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1. Turkey Dinner for 18 and PMBOK OR What Happens When Project Managers Cook

Lindsay's shadow

I knew I had seen that face somewhere. It was driving me nuts.

Thanks to the bounties of the Internet, in the form of IMDB web site, it took me all of 30 seconds to place her: Alison Pill. I had seen her most recently in the second season of the magnificent In Treatment as well as the glorious TV mini-series adaptation of the best-selling novel The Pillars of the Earth.

And my jaw dropped.

Alison’s come a long way from playing Lindsay’s sidekick.

Hanging out with Ian and Gabriel. If you haven’t watched In Treatment, it is very much an actor’s series. There are no car chase scenes, no special effects, no doctors running around yelling “stat”, no computer special effects. There is only a therapist, played by Gabriel Byrne, and a patient, in a room, locked in verbal combat. Sounds boring? It is anything but. The show is carried “the old fashioned way”: story, dialogue and…well…acting. Every day of the week the therapist sees a new patient, with Friday being reserved for the therapist’s own therapy. The likes of Blair Underwood, Dianne Wiest and John Mahoney (yeah, Frasier’s dad) have all played roles in this series. And wouldn’t you know it, so does our Alison Pill, all grown up and showing her acting chops as she plays a young woman who deals with her cancer diagnosis in her therapy sessions.

She is nothing short of wonderful.

Alison also caught my eye in “The Pillars of the Earth”, with her portrayal of the beautiful Maud, the dead king’s daughter, whose contest with her uncle Stephen for England’s throne serves as backdrop for the mini-series. Her performance shows that she belongs in the company of such great thespians as the magnificent Ian McShane and the-best-Mr.-Darcy-ever Matthew Macfadyen, who star in the mini-series.

The rise… Alison’s career trajectory is in stark contrast to Lindsay’s since they worked together in 2004. Fresh from her role as Anna in “Freaky Friday”, a film which grossed $160 million and 88% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Lindsay did “Confessions” with our Alison. In the same year, she also starred in “Mean Girls”, released the album “Speak”, which peaked at number 4 on the Billboard 200 and, at 17, become the youngest-ever host of the 2004 MTV Music awards. This girl’s star was clearly on the rise.¹

…and fall. Sadly however, in 2005, things started to go downhill: her second album didn’t do so well, there were problems on the set of “Herbie Fully Loaded” and her parents separated. But it was in 2006-07 that the unraveling started, and just didn’t stop. Peppered in between a couple of movies that did “okay” were three stints in rehab, two DUI arrests, a felony charge of cocaine possession, 84 minutes in jail, and a three-year probation sentence. In 2010, after some TV appearances and attempts to break into the fashion industry, a failed DUI progress appearance in violation of her probation earned her a 90-day jail sentence (of which she served 14) and more rehab, followed by another failed drug test which garnered her more jail time and still more rehab. Sadly, it’s not finished: earlier this year, a charge of felony grand theft for a stolen necklace has been added to her résumé, for which she will stand trial later this month.^{2, 3, 4}

Having seen “Freaky Friday” about 200,000 times (it is my oldest daughter’s favourite movie), I never cease to be saddened to see someone who showed such great potential so early in life fall so spectacularly low.

Look what patience, practice and focus did

Patience will get you a chance to hang out with Gabriel and Ian. The reason Alison’s story resonates so much with me is that it’s sometimes easy for us to envy the Lindsay Lohans: those people whose star rises early and high, who seem destined for greatness, while we “plain Janes” stay in their shadow, watching from afar. You know the “Lindsay Lohan” types in our world: the 39-year-old President who is younger than your youngest brother, your ex-classmate who is CEO of a Fortune 500 company, your friend who gets promoted to VP Operations; all this while you’re just proud to have finished that “small” $1M project on-time, on-budget and with a happy customer. If you are feeling that way, take a page from Alison’s book, as I have. She went from playing Lindsay’s sidekick to honing her acting skills alongside the likes of Gabriel Byrnes and Ian McShane. How much do you think she learned from just being in the same room as such greatness, while Lindsay partied and went to jail?

The lesson here is simple: be patient while you stand in the shadows of others. Rather than playing the celebrity, practice your craft, hone your skills and get better at whatever it is that you do. Attend seminars, read books and blogs, learn something new, meet new and interesting people, get out of your comfort zone. Focus on what you need to get better.

Patience, practice and focus. These are the ingredients that you need to work your way up to the Fifth, not celebrity. Self-actualization is not about others knowing you: it’s about knowing yourself. Ironically enough, as you focus on your own potential, you might just find yourself in the same room as a Gabriel or an Ian…and who knows where that might possibly lead?

Who knows where will you end up? I have no doubt that Alison Pill is going places. Where she will end up, I have no idea. But there is one place I am absolutely certain she won’t end up.

Jail.

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1. Maslow’s Musical Moment: What Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” teaches us about potential
2. Maslow’s Pyramid: the Video Game of Life

Yeah, I know. Blasphemy!

Bob and me. In order to illustrate my point, I’d like to tell a story of conversation that I had with “Bob”. In a past life, I once worked in a company populated entirely with people who shared the opposite opinion: the project manager must be technical. When I joined this company, I made it clear to them that I was not in this camp. They claimed that this was good, they wanted “real” project managers. (I was to learn later that “talking” and “doing” were two rather different things. But that’s another story for another day.)

One day Bob, a designer on my project team, came to see me. Here’s the conversation we had…well…more or less.

Bob: I need your approval on a design decision regarding the Retro-Encabulator.

Me: (oh-oh) Say, what?

Bob: In order to reduce side-fumbling, I was thinking of fitting six hydrocoptic marzul vanes to the lunar wain shaft. But I am wondering if I should instead replace the lunar wain shaft entirely with a fault-tolerant optomodal cavity, which creates the population inversion condition at the outset.

Me (trying not to let my eyes glaze over): Why on earth are you asking me?

Bob: Because you’re the Project Manager.

Me (staring at Bob): Okay then. How long have you been designing?

Bob (proudly): Twenty-six years.

Me: Ah. Longer than I’ve been working.

Bob: I guess so. (The answer is yes. He’s far too polite to say so.)

Me: So I’m guessing you know something about lunar wain shafts, right?

Bob (proudly): Well, yes.

Me: Here’s the thing. I’m a Project Manager. I care about these things: your work package has to meet this budget (I pull it out) for your hours AND for the material cost. And you have to meet this date (I pull out our master schedule). But, you can’t cheat. In other words, if you cut corners, and Production can’t make your design work, and I have a bunch of non-conformances on my desk, that doesn’t work. You can be sure I’ll be back to see you. And I won’t be happy. AND, when we ship it to site, it has to work. So, you have to meet budget, and schedule and quality. Without increasing risk.

Bob: (Doesn’t even pause.) In that case, I’m going with a fault-tolerant optomodal cavity.

Me: Difference in purchase price between the lunar wain shaft and the optomodal cavity options? (Relieved I got the words right.)

Bob: No real difference. The optomodal solution will cost about another 10% more the lunar wain shaft solution, but it is still within my budget. (Shows me the quotes from the suppliers. I am impressed because he actually brought the quotes with him into my cubicle. I love it when that happens.)

Me: Schedule?

Bob: The optomodal cavity takes an extra week but it still works in the schedule. Here’s the lead time that the supplier has quoted. (We check the Master Schedule together and, yes, it works.)

Me: Quality? Risk?

Bob: The optomodal cavity is a superior design. It is smaller, more compact, and the higher S-value means that, not only is side-fumbling eliminated but so is sinusoidal depleneration.

Me: (Frankly, he had me at “superior design”.) Well then, optomodal it is.

Bob: Okay, then. Thanks for your help.

Me: I didn’t do anything. You did. Remember: no non-conformances. We pass acceptance testing on the first try, right?

Bob (bristling just a little): Tsk. Of course.

And we did.

About the Retro-Encabulator…? For those of you not familiar with Retro-Encabulators, you can watch this instructional video:

And, yes, I am totally pulling your leg. (Engineers are such geeks, even in our sense of humour.)

The same conversation over and over again. My conversation with “Bob” did happen, but the technology we discussed was the decision to use linear versus roller bearings in a mechanical design. But really, it doesn’t matter what technology we were discussing because I keep having the same conversation over and over again. It might be about configuring a DCS, making a tunable laser from a fiber Bragg grating, programming a simulator, testing an electro-optic module, using linear or roller bearings or the merits of Sharepoint as a Project Management Information System. By substituting a bogus technology based on an geeky engineering spoof when spinning my tale of “Bob”, I was hoping to make this point: substitute whatever technical jargon you’d like, real or imaginary, and the conversation will always be the same. As Project Managers, we focus on schedule, cost, budget, risk, quality, customer, scope. Or anything else in those nine knowledge areas of those 42 processes that compose the Initiating, Planning, Executing, Controlling and Closing processes of Project Management.

In other words: the work of the Project Manager is technology independent.

Back to you, Bob. My colleague Bob had a reputation of being “difficult”. Oddly enough, when I announced my resignation from this company, Bob came to see me. “I’m disappointed you’re leaving. I liked working with you.” I have to admit, I was a bit taken aback.

Could it be I was the first person that actually let a designer like Bob design, because I was too busy managing the project?

Blasphemy? I think not.

And don’t even get me started on the Turbo Encabulator…

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1. If Kent Nagano doesn’t play violin, then why should a Project Manager be technical?

A symphony orchestra conductor? A project manager? Both?

In order to learn what exactly the conductor does, I decided to ask someone who knows. My 14-year old daughter plays violin in her school’s orchestra, under the careful guidance of Mr. T. (And, no, that’s not his real name.) Here’s what she explained to me:

• The conductor controls the pace of the music (tempo): fast, slow and in between.
• If you lose your place in the piece, you look up at the conductor, who will help you find your place again.
• Mr. T plays the cello. But he doesn’t teach the cello, or any other instrument. Each instrument has a dedicated teacher who teaches the students their particular instrument. In the case of my daughter, she has a violin teacher. As she explains to me: “Mr. T doesn’t play the violin very well at all. I mean, he can show me some basic things but, if I really want to get better, I listen to my violin teacher.”
• Sometimes, during music practice, Mr. T needs to leave the room. “We try to play the piece without him. But, it’s all wrong. Everyone comes in out of order. We need Mr. T.”

The conductor is a Project Manager alias. In case those points didn’t hit you over the head with the essence of project management, let me sum it up for you.

• Tempo: the Project Manager is responsible for ensuring that all the work starts and ends at the right time. You have to program before you can test, and you need stuff delivered and put together into which you load the program. Before you weld, you assemble, and you paint only at the very end, when you are sure that assembly is complete. And you can’t start testing until everything is pretty much done. Sound like the “planning” process to you?
• Find your place: We all know that stuff happens: the moment after we have printed out the project schedule, it is already out of date. Customers change their mind, critical team members resign, and suppliers can’t deliver on the date that they told you. As things come up during the course of project execution that threaten the plan, the Project Manager rearranges things so that all team members can still find their place.
• Subject Matter Experts: Those teachers that specialize in their various instruments are called “Subject Matter Experts (SME)”. Every good Project Manager surrounds herself with SMEs, but knows that, like Mr. T, you don’t need to be one in order for your project to be successful.
• Leave the room: I have seen what happens on even “small” projects that don’t have a Project Manager assigned to them: chaos. A simple series of events quickly spirals out of control because there is no one overseeing the entire project. Do you want beautiful music? You need a conductor. Do you want your stuff to finish on time, on quality and on budget? Then you need a Project Manager.

And yet we just don’t get it. If you want to have some fun, either in a forum or in real life, ask the question: “Does the project manager need to be technical?” I did just that at a PMI Round Table last year…and ducked. So many Project Managers with technical baggage cling to the belief that because they can challenge their team with “smart technical questions”, they are doing their job. However, smart technical questions are not what make projects successful, it’s all of those “other” things, those 42 processes that comprise initiating, planning, executing, controlling and closing.

The conductor doesn’t play an instrument, but knows what beautiful music sounds like. As Musical Director of the MSO, Kent Nagano clearly understands what it takes to make beautiful music. In the same manner, as a Project Manager, I know enough to have a conversation with a SME, to understand what slipping schedule looks like, to recognize scope creeping out of control. I do this without programming, drawing, designing, testing, painting or welding. And yet, I continue to see job descriptions like this one. Does this sound like a Project Manager to you? Or someone “playing the violin”?

Does this sound like a conductor? Or a violinist?

I don’t play the violin, I conduct. I am very clear on what I do for a living. I make beautiful music without playing an instrument. The projects under my watch consistently finish on time, on budget and with satisfied customers. I haven’t “been technical” for many years now. I am hardly special: the same is true for anyone who practices the art of Project Management.

When my husband and I were watching the MSO in concert, we would have found it most preposterous to see Kent Nagano suddenly pick up a violin and start playing it. And yet, so many organizations, even other Project Managers, continue to expect the Project Manager to “be technical”: to program, to configure, to write bills of material, to check drawings for technical accuracy, to be experts in SQL.

But really, when you think about it, this really doesn’t make much sense, does it?

About as much as sense as Kent Nagano playing the violin.

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It started when I turned 16 years old, and the government of Ontario decided I was old enough to drive. It continued when I turned 18, and the government of Canada decided I was old enough to vote. One year later, I was deemed old enough to order alcohol in a bar. (Yes, it’s ironic, but that’s Ontario for you.)

Eventually, I bought a car (the bank decided I was adult enough to pay back the loan), a house (ditto for the mortgage), and another (ditto for the bigger mortgage). I got a credit card, then a couple more. I got married, had two children. Together with my husband, we’ve raised these children into teenagers, which is a superhuman adult feat in and of itself.

I pay my taxes, my mortgage and my credit cards. I put savings aside for my retirement. These are things that adults do. I know this because my teenage children do none of these things.

I am a professional who takes her career seriously. When I was pregnant with my first child, I went back to school part-time in the evening to get my MBA. When my second child was born, I took time off from my job, at my expense, to finish that degree for once and for all. Years later, I studied weekends and evenings to get my PMP certification.

And last year, I started this blog. It’s my blog: I bought the domain name, I pay the host fees and I squirrel time away to write it in it. About, what else? Project management.

On my 45-minute drive into work, I listen to podcasts about business, marketing, project management, technology, social media and other head-exploding subjects.

In other words, not only am I declared an adult by various governments and financial institutions, I act like an adult. I act like a responsible professional and citizen. And, you know what? I am hardly special. Most of us are adults, doing adult things.

So please explain this to me: why is it that as soon as we walk through the doors of our employers, we are treated like children?

According to this survey of 1400 CIOs, 54% of companies do not allow employees to visit social networking sites for any reason while at work. It’s done under the guise of promoting productivity: “Using social networking sites may divert employees’ attention away from more pressing priorities, so it’s understandable that some companies limit access,” said Dave Willmer, executive director of Robert Half Technology.

What utter and complete poppycock.

It is in reality all about control. And lack of trust. It reflects the Theory X management style which presumes that the employee is lazy and does not want to work, cannot be trusted, is a potential thief, a child, someone who needs to be controlled, supervised, who doesn’t know any better than the wise and oh-so-benevolent management overseeing them.

How insulting.

As always, Scott Adams puts it so much more eloquently, doesn’t he?

Blocking social media sites is equivalent to the company us telling us “Sorry, dumbass employee, you are too stupid to understand how to control your time. So we’ll do it for you.”

At this point, I’m tempted to write about how social media is revolutionary (it is), about how it’s good for organizations to learn and understand social media to grow their business (it is), about how social media actually increases productivity (it does). But I will write that blog post another day.

Because that is not the point. The point is that I do not need a company, a CIO or a CEO to decide how I spend my time at work. I am capable of doing that all by myself. Why?

Because I am an adult.

Lessons from a 14-year-old. I don’t block sites on our home network. Because I refuse to treat my children…well…like children. I figure the best “family filter” is me and my husband, peering over my daughters’ shoulders saying “Whatcha doin’? Whatcha looking at? Who’re you chatting with?” And they answer if they don’t want Administrator (that would be me) blocking their access. (Yes, I do know how to do that. I simply choose not to.)

So, one day, I asked my 14 year-old about her Facebook use and getting homework done. Here’s what she explained to me:

“Facebook is great. I love it for staying connected to my friends. But if it’s on, I get distracted and I don’t get any work done. So, when I have homework to do, I turn Facebook off. And when I’m done, I reward myself by going on Facebook and chatting with my friends.”

So, let me get this straight: she manages her computer time, keeping an eye on her personal productivity. And, when she has work to do, she shuts it off. All by herself.

Gasp! Is this possible? You mean she didn’t need a CEO or a CIO or her Mommy blocking sites on her computer so that she gets her work done?

Wow. Do you think that maybe I, an adult, and a professional to boot, could possibly acquire that skill? Just like my 14-year-old?

Apparently not, according to 54% of those 1400 CEOs and CIOs.

Do knowledge workers only work between 8am and 5pm? Here’s the thing: knowledge workers are not factory workers. We don’t punch timecards. We are not always “on” just between office hours. And we’re not always “off” outside of the office.

Just as I sometimes wake up in the morning thinking about that project problem that’s bothering me, or I stumble on a solution to a business problem while doing tomatoes, or I am struck by leadership inspiration while watching Friday Night Lights, sometimes, sometimes, when I’m sitting in my cubicle, I need a break from work.

Like on those really bad days when I’ve spent the morning in a conference call getting beaten up (metaphorically of course) by an irate customer, when I’ve had to explain to stakeholders why that “itsy-bitsy” change they asked for actually adds six months to the schedule, when my lead engineer resigns and her only replacement already resigned one month ago, when our supplier is late on delivering a critical part for the third time in a row, when that expensive widget with an 18-week-lead-time fell off the truck just as they unloaded it…

…on those days, it’s nice to take a three-minute break and watch a YouTube video of three 14-year-old Italian boys singing a one-hundred-year-old Neapolitan song that used to make my homesick immigrant Italian parents cry.

It uplifts my day, makes everything just a little bit brighter, and sort of makes me believe that maybe tomorrow might be a better day.

And what in the hell is wrong with that?

You’re an adult. You decide.

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“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.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

You will.

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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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.)
4. 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

5. 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?

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