The Regenerate Web

The term "thought leadership" is a hot buzz word to describe what we used to call scholars, gurus, and experts. It's not exactly the same thing as these other terms, but along the same lines, and it seems to be the term of choice because I see it popping up all over the place.

A though leader is someone who continues to work hard to stay current and knowledgeable in a field and adds to the collective knowledge of that field.

Often, thought leaders (those we recognize or those who proclaim themselves though leaders) tend to be outside the organization. Most consultants, for example, want to be regarded as thought leaders. I did a presentation yesterday for ASTD and they introduced me as a thought leader in management and leadership.

But look at my definition above again. Wouldn't we want our managers and leaders to also be thought leaders? I do! Great managers and leaders stay current and they add to our understanding of what it takes to catalyze greatness in others and produce extraordinary results.

Great managers read, explore, discuss, experiment, and innovate. They are active participants in the craft of management and they help future professionals.

I like it when people refer to me as a thought leader, because I work hard to stay on the edge of my field. I hope, however, that this is nothing special and unique, that all managers and leaders endeavor to be thought leaders, too.

Consider Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos and author of Delivering Happiness. He is a thought leader in organizational culture. As a leader, he has added to our collective understanding of how to build cultures that engage and excite employees.

Sure, Tony wrote a book, too, and I know many of you could fill a great book. I talk to brilliant professionals every day - people who are actively engaged and innovating quietly within their organizations.

Are you a thought leader? I encourage all managers and leaders to consider this a goal (not so you can write a book, so you can do your best work) and I encourage training departments to consider how they can develop the discipline of thought leadership inside their organizations.

And if this is something you are or endeavor to be, how are you staying on the edge? More than anything, thought leadership is a deliberate and active practice. It involves taking time to reflect on how you manage and how employees and peers respond. To be a thought leader, we need to ensure our daily to-do lists don't take up 125% of our time, because how can we improve what we do when we can't improve what we do?

From time to time I feel like I am falling behind in this regard. As a consultant, having client projects is great and a big part of my business goals. But just like you, I can take on too much "doing" and fail to stop and think, network, discuss, and learn. My blog posting goes down and I struggle to hop off the hamster wheel. And the wheel is not a bad wheel, by the way, we all choose our jobs for a reason. We like the doing, the work, and may feel more productive when we are doing a lot. And yet, we can't grow our craft and our capabilities when we are doing so fast and furiously.

We can and should also learn and grow while we are doing, but this type of progress should not be our only kind. A great conference, training session, networking group, book, collection of blogs, or other growth experience can be very powerful catalysts. I really enjoy my podcast conversations, because I get to talk to great thinkers and this recharges my mind.

Make sure your good DOING does not completely take over your work. Your work and potential thought leadership will suffer. And this, eventually, will reduce your results and your competitiveness in your field.

As we head into August, Management Craft's 6th Anniversary by the way, put something on your schedule for the month that has the potential to electrify your mind and push you to your edge.

“Yes, but shouldn’t these people be reporting to me?” asked Ted.

“That depends. Functionally, their roles produce results you are interested in, but are you prepared to be their Manager?” I replied.

“I think so. I think they can report to me. I think I can hold them accountable for producing those results. I think I can check up on them to make sure they are working,” Ted proposed.

“That’s only the surface part of being a Manager.” I stopped to draw a picture. “Here you are, and these people, you believe, should report to you. But are you prepared to be their Manager?

“Your most important role, in the Manager relationship with your team, is for you to bring value to their problem solving and decision making.” Ted stared at the simple picture of circles and lines. “Are you bringing value by telling them that their reports are due on Friday and then reminding them Monday morning that their reports are late?”

Ted was still staring, but putting the pieces together. “Well, no, not when you put it that way.”

“Then, how, as their Manager, do you bring that value? And are you committed to bring that value? Are you willing to commit the time to bring that value?

“The answers to these questions will determine whether you should be the manager of this team.”

There are unlimited opinions floating around about the role of management. Many come from voices that would have management be removed from the process - the extreme agile point of view.

For those looking to understand how management has and is evolving in the "post industrial" age, here's a nice article A NEW ROLE FOR MANAGEMENT IN TODAY’S POST-INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION

The Ivey Business Journal is free Business Journal from the Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario.

- Bilal M. Ayyub, Peter G. Prassinos, and John Etherton

PMI has moved to Virtual Communities, away for the standalone organizations of the past. What ever their reasoning, it doesn't matter. I voted against the VC move for College of Performance Management, but we went there anyway.

Now that VC's are starting, I', signing up for their Blogs.

This process is of course broken and lame. No Goggle Reader link, when you navigate to the RSS feed page, and copy the URL to Google Reader it can't find a "read" feed, but provides a "watch" process. This is new for Google Reader and applicable to those sites that are clueless about RSS and Blog Feeds.

Experience with the VC To date - not impressed.

I hear this story again and again. A hiring manager can’t find the right candidate.

Why? You would think it would be easier to find great candidates, because so many people are out of work or are looking for better jobs. But that’s exactly why it’s so hard for hiring managers to find people–there are too many great candidates out there. That leads to looking for perfection. But eventually, if you decide you really need to fill a job, you decide it’s time to use a recruiter.

And, for many people that means HR is firmly in the middle. HR decides which recruiters you can and cannot use. HR does all the negotiation with the recruiter. HR provides the recruiter a job description. HR does a first pass reviewing resumes, looking for buzzwords or keywords. HR does the initial phone screen (and I’m not talking about the dirt-bag phone screen). HR sets up the interview. HR decides when to have a followup meeting to discuss the interview, and HR extends the offer.

But that’s not the best way to use a recruiter. Hiring managers need to work with the recruiters. I suggest HR has a real role: in selecting and negotiating with recruiters, in helping the hiring manager and the interviewing team make good decisions about how to hire and who to hire. If your HR person is an internal recruiter who knows your group and how they work, maybe that person can help. But too often, the HR person is not an internal recruiter, but an HR generalist. And, HR generalists have no business being in the middle of the recruiting and interviewing work.

For those of you in HR, I suspect this feels like a slap in the face. But here’s the reason I feel so strongly about this: as an HR generalist, you have too much to do to do a great job at recruiting. You not only recruit, you do the health care negotiation with vendors. You make sure the corporate policies keep the organization away from lawyer’s offices, and especially out of court. You make training decisions. You may even conduct interview training or management training. You certainly conduct new hire training.

If you wanted to be a full-time contract recruiter, you would be. Being a full-time contract recruiter means you network with candidates, that you build relationships around the local area, and maybe around the world. If you are in HR in an organization, it’s a formidable task to develop all those relationships and still do your HR job. I don’t see how you do it. (It’s just barely possible if you are an internal recruiter and you never touch the rest of the HR jobs.)

A contract recruiter needs to build a trusting relationship with a hiring manager. Every time a hiring manager rejects a candidate (even just reviewing resumes), the hiring manager needs to explain why to the recruiter. The whys are myriad: You explain how the job works, the corporate culture, what you are looking for, all the quirks of how things work for this position. The more the recruiter learns, the better the recruiter can source the candidates for this job.

When you allow HR to be in the middle, HR takes control of the transaction. That means delays. It certainly means someone else is playing telephone with your job description and analysis. Is that what you want?

Yes, it’s more work for the hiring manager, as you learn about recruiters and how they can help you. And, over time, you work with those recruiters and you build that relationship. It’s to the hiring manager’s benefit to build those relationships and make it work.

If you have internal recruiters, take the time to get to know them, and have them get to know you. Explain your group’s culture. Review resumes with them. But if you don’t have an internal recruiter, don’t let HR get in the middle of the sourcing process.

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“What do you mean, bring value?” Joan asked. “Sounds easy to say, but I don’t know what you mean. How does a manager bring value to the problem solving and decision making of the team?”

“So, you and I are sitting here talking,” I nodded. “And in our conversation, am I telling you, directing you on how to be a manager?”

“Well, no,” she replied.

“And would you say that our conversations are valuable, valuable to you, in your role, as a manager?”

Joan followed the nod. “Yes,” she said slowly.

“I am not telling you what to do, yet, I am bringing value to the conversation?” I could see Joan making a leap in her mind to follow. “How am I doing that? If I am not telling you what to do, what kinds of sentences am I using?”

The music clicked. “Questions,” she responded. “You are not telling me what to do. You are asking questions. And your questions are bringing value to the decisions I have to make and the problems I have to solve.”

After reading this Deron Snyder article about making snap racial judgments, I was reminded of my own mis-perception on a recent business trip.  As my group pulled up to the hotel, we noticed a large African-American man and a very attractive Caucasian woman conversing at the back of the taxi.  He was somewhat unkempt, and definitely dressed very casually.  She looked like she had just stepped out of a salon, wearing a short, casual dress which complemented her figure.  They appeared to be having a conversation about the future pick-up from the hotel for the trip back to the airport a few days in the future as he pulled suitcases out of the trunk.  What happened next is what floored all of us:  he took his suitcases into the hotel to check in, and she jumped in the driver's seat of the cab and took off.  Everyone in my party completely misread the roles, whether by race, gender, or appearance (or all three), we automatically assumed he was the taxi driver and she was the customer.

If you've ever read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (truly, one of my favorite books), you learn how your mind really works.  It's an amazing computer, allowing us to generate snap decisions, often with great accuracy.  Gladwell even covers the race/perception issue with alarming clarity.  However, when you look at situations outlined in the article or even your own personal judgments as a systems thinking problem, it really brings things into clearer focus.

Whenever we look at ANY situation, what we see are not the only inputs reaching our brains.  We are also seeing our own past experiences, our judgments, our values, our prejudices, our paradigms.  Tom Vilsack saw what Fox News wanted him (and everyone else) to see.  Based on that information, and his own set of perceptual filters available to him at the time, he reacted... incorrectly.

Next time you go people watching, try something:  suspend judgment.  Just try to see what is actually there.  It's not as easy as it sounds.  You're challenging your mental system by suppressing inputs which the brain naturally wants to process.  Now... the next time you have to make a decision at your job, try the same thing.  What are the facts, and what are the filters? 

I will be offering a 60 minute webinar for the ASTD Benchmarking Forum this Wednesday, July 28th at noon EDT. They have some slots left and you can attend by clicking and registering here. Here is the title and description of the session from their web page:

Catalyzing Coaching Up and Down the Generations

 
Coaching is a great learning tool. Often however, we see coaching as something that the "sage" imparts to  "newbies." With four generations in the workplace and work practices and preferences changing faster than a hummingbird on espresso, we need to foster a coaching environment where people give and receive coaching up, down, and sideways in the organization. During this interactive webinar, Lisa Haneberg will offer several strategies and practices learning professionals can use to catalyze multi-directional coaching in their organizations.

The primary target audience for this webinar is training, HR, and OD pros, but even managers and leaders who coach a lot will benefit. I hope you can join in!

I had the pleasure of speaking at the Fort Worth Texas PMI Chapter meeting and two sessions of the PMI Symposium this June.

Here's the material

Fort Worth Chapter Meeting

Symposium: Immutable Principles of Project Management

Symposium: Establishing the Performance Measurement Baseline

I learned this week that I made the Top Women in Business Blogging list. They tell me my readers nominated me. Dear readers, thank you!
Online MBA Rankings

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Ben Snyder has several posts on PM Hut about the demise of the "Iron Triangle" in PMBOK® Version. For some reason PMI decided to remove this concept, just when those of us in the defense and space business are starting to use the phrase "Ponzi Scheme."

Just as a reminder, the three invariant variables in any project are, Cost, Schedule, and Technical Performance. Technical Performance includes the quality measures from the previous version of PMBOK®. Technical Performance Measures describe the behavior of the product or service in units meaningful to the buyer.

The relationship between these three variables is coupled, in likely non-linear ways, but they are coupled and this coupling is inseparable. There have been those that suggest this coupling can be broken. It can't.

Just so we don't forget - since PMI removed the reminder - making trades between Cost, Schedule, and Technical Performance and NOT expecting unfavorable impacts is a Ponzi Scheme. Treat anyone suggesting those trades can be made with no impact in the same way you'd treat Charles. Run Away.

There are no points for predicting rain, only building lifeboats

-Warren Buffet’s Noah Principle 

When we hear about the "principles" of project management, good principles for sure, we need to ask the next question how can we cause actionable outcomes

I’ve been working with Rebecca Wirfs-Brock on an agile architecture workshop. I’m working with Rebecca because she has such a depth of experience in architecture, as well as design. She’s working with me because of my project and program management experience. We’re pretty psyched.

We’re working through the issues of large programs and architecture, and, of course, we have encountered the develop by component vs. develop by feature debate. I’m closer to the develop by feature side of the house than Rebecca. She’s a little closer to the develop by component side. We’re not too far apart–we’re not polar–we’re not precisely at the same place. And, we may never be at the same place, because our experiences are different. We each have good reasons.

You get tremendous benefits when you develop by component: high cohesion in the component and low coupling between components. Don’t underestimate the value of these. If you don’t pay attention to cohesion and coupling, eventually you can’t develop anything.

When you develop by feature, you get features. It’s hard to underestimate the value of working product.

But especially in a large system effort, with multiple teams, how do you do this right? Of course, it depends. You might have a combination of teams, in my preference after you have a little experience with some features. Maybe you develop some prototypes. Maybe you do something else.

We’re developing a simulation for the workshop. If you have encountered this problem in your system, please post a comment and let me know if you would like a simulation to explore this. (I am not under the impression this means you would commit to our workshop!) If you’d like to send me private email, that’s great too. We’re trying to develop a simulation that will mimic what happens at work.

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When someone tells me they have a schedule, they have a budget, they've got a set of requirements. One starting response is:

Are these schedules, budgets, and requirements credible?

What are the units of measure of credible? How would we recognize credible if it walked in the door?

Let's Look At The Attributes of a Credible Schedule

The National Defense Industry Association (NDIA) has quarterly meetings of the Industrial Committee for Program Management (ICPM). These meetings are a gathering of the industry and government program management community.

During the February 2010 meetings there was a presentation of the Program Planning and Scheduling Subcommittee (PPSS) Initiative, by Ms Lil Vayhinger and Ms Rebecca Davies. One slide in a presentation listed essential elements of the "generally accepted" scheduling principles. These are:

A valid schedule provides reasonable and credible information based on realistic logic, durations, and dates. This information is:

• Complete: The schedule captures the entire discrete, authorized project effort from start through completion.

• Traceable: The schedule logic is horizontally and vertically integrated with cross-references to key documents & tools. 

• Transparent: The schedule provides visibility to assure it is complete, traceable, has documented assumptions, and provides full disclosure of program status and forecast. 

• Statused: The schedule has accurate progress through the status date. 

• Predictive: The schedule provides meaningful critical paths and accurate forecasts for remaining work through program completion.

An effective schedule is useful, helps align time-phased resources, and is built and maintained using a controlled process. This  information is:

• Usable: The schedule is an indispensable tool for timely and effective management decisions and  actions. 

• Resourced: The schedule aligns with actual and projected resource availability.

• Controlled: The schedule is built, baselined, and maintained using a stable, repeatable, & documented process. 

These attributes are the basis of a credible schedule and the costs associated with the work delivered by the work elements of the schedule. They are independent of the domain or context of the project. They are independent of the size of the project or program. They are the basis of a "credible" schedule and therefore a "credible" project.

If you have a project that does not have these attributes, you're likely in trouble and you may not know it.