The Regenerate Web

I just returned from Tokyo, where I keynoted at JaSST, the Japan Symposium on Software Testing. 10 years ago, when they started the conference, maybe it was just about testing, but now it’s evolved to be about quality in the organization.

Some highlights from my trip:

• Everyone (and everything) I met appeared quite orderly. Everything had a place and everything was in its place. I saw this at the lost-luggage counter, in the hotel, and at the conference.
• I was pleasantly surprised that the subway ticket machines had an “English” button so I could buy my ticket and know what I was doing. The maps were in English as well as Japanese, so I could know in advance what my trip would be and which stop to get off at. I had a little trouble with which track, but that’s probably because I was jet-lagged.
• I was pleasantly surprised to see evidence that the simultaneous interpretation for my keynote worked fairly well. I could tell because people laughed when they were supposed to :-)
• For the tutorial, I did not allow enough time for the consecutive interpretation or for the questions about agile, so I needed another 20 minutes, which I did not have :-(
• I was a little concerned that when the panel prepared for the questions, I thought we might be boring. Nope, we were thought-provoking and funny.
• My Japanese hosts were amazingly solicitous and helpful for my entire experience: to/from the airport, to/from the conference, to/from sessions at the conference

I had a blast. I hope I have an opportunity to return to Japan. Now, all I have to do is get enough sleep so I’m awake during the day…

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"Things are managed; people are led" - Capt. Grace Hopper

Thanks to John Goodpasture for the reminder. I once had the privilege of "trying" to carry Captin Hopper's bag at the Orange County airport for an ACM meeting she was speaking at. She wouldn't let anyone "give her a hand."

I am a big fan of welcoming naysayers and devil's advocates into the conversation. I reminded myself of this last week and enjoyed the outcome, so I thought I would share the concept with you. Not only is inviting a challenge a great way to unearth diverse ideas, it helps enroll people into the process and improve their acceptance of my work. Naysayers make great evangelists!

• Create a rough draft of your proposal. Offer the rationale, describe the idea, and give as much context as possible.
• Select a small group of pre-early adopters. These should be people who you think can – and will – give you interesting feedback. Include people who are the most logical detractors.
• Create a list of questions you would like your pre-early adopters to answer. Include questions like, “what are all the reasons that you think this idea will not work?” and “what about this idea do you find least appealing?”
• Invite the pre-early adopters to review the plan and provide feedback. If possible, invite them to a 15-minute meeting where you hand out the rough plan and questions and ask for their feedback within XX days. If a meeting is not possible or practical, give each person a quick call asking them to participate and letting them know they will soon get and email with the plan and questions attached. Let your pre-early adopters know that you do not want them to sugar coat the feedback and that you believe that all feedback is a gift – even when it is tough to hear.
• Once you get the feedback, thank everyone sincerely and warmly, regardless of how critical they were of your ideas. Then use their feedback to improve your plan.

You will find that when you invite a challenge, you create many more fans than detractors. Even those who do not like the idea will become more accepting of the revised plan implementation. It’s magic! In addition, when we establish an environment where people feel comfortable sharing their concerns and ideas, we will be more likely to hear about and catch mistakes and head off problems as they emerge. You want to know what’s happening as soon as possible; otherwise your options for dealing with barriers will quickly diminish.

While responding to a post on Herding Cats, I came across a $75 Outlook based PM tool MissingLink Project Management

So minus the software interpreted process of Andrew's tool, what's the difference here? Outlook is ubiquitous, possibly on every desktop and cell phone in some form. It's highly configurable and like Andrew is fond of saying "as easy as email." It is email.

We get brilliant results from average people managing brilliant systems. Our competitors get average results from brilliant people working around broken systems

– Fujio Cho, Chairman Toyota Motors

People are needed. But the "system" is the critical success factor. Tools implement the "system," but tools must support the processes defined by the "system." If not the tools are worthless and the people cannot perform their job, so the whole thing falls apart.

Bret is a reader of Management Craft. He tried to leave a comment (on this post about the Aubrey Daniels slam on Dan Pink's book Drive) but was unable due to length (again!). I looked at my Typepad settings and could not find anything I could check or uncheck to change the allowable length of comments, sorry! I don't quite know why this is happening. Here is Bret's comments, my thoughts at the end:

===========================================================

Hi Lisa:

www.bretlsimmons.com 

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Thanks, Bret. I appreciate your comment and that you took extra energy to get it to me by email.

I like giving managers both the concepts and some specifics and here is why. I think it is helpful to facilitate a deeper understanding with examples and "what this might look like in practice." Take something seemingly simple like:

• Showing we care
• Removing obstacles
• Collaboration
• Partnership
• Catalytic coaching
• Clarifying expectations

I have worked with managers who thought they knew what these practices looked like and would have said they are using them. But when we talk about some specifics - what it looks like on a daily and weekly basis, what it looks like in action at a staff meeting, what it looks like in a morning huddle, etc... they find that they did not understand the practice and that they are not currently doing this much at all. The specifics are not the ONLY ways - they are examples of ways for doing _____.

Organizations spend a lot of time defining desired practices, expectations, core competencies, values, and such but not nearly enough time training managers on what this looks like at their level and what this looks like on an every day basis.

I recently designed a four-hour class, for example, that does only one thing - it takes two concepts (accountability and ownership) and progressively drills down on what they are, how they are different, and the daily and weekly actions supervisors do that affect both.

A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner - English Proverb

Experience comes from "doing." Doing in difficult situations, with difficult projects builds experience that can be applied to the next project which has difficult situations.

Dan Ward - a favorite Blogger and Author in Defense AT&L - has a nice little post about the principles of the US Navy Seals.

• Humans are more important than hardware
• Quality is better than quantity
• Special Operations Forces cannot be mass produced

Connection with Project Management and Project Controls

I'm home for awhile from a 9 week stint on a large US Army program, rebaselining the next increment of the contract.

• When we don't have the right people in the right roles all the technology - planning and cost tools - provide little value to our efforts. The Control Account Managers needed to be "really good" to get their Budget Change Requests in shape for baselining within the allocated time period. No tool is going to fix a poorly formed BCR and Work Package flow.
• Having all the numbers line up and the Work Package duration be "credible" in the right sequence to maintain the needed schedule margin and cost margin is a critical success factor. This margin is calculated using Monte Carlo simulation, per DID 81650.
• The core cadre of PP&C specialist is rare these days. The training, experience, and skills needed to pull the Performance Measurement Baseline together does not come from books. It comes for Training, Skills, and Experience. Hand On "doing" of the work of PP&C. Same for being a program manager. Being a Control Account Manager is not learned from a book either.

What this means is:

• Tools are 3rd place every time
• People and Process are synergistic. You have have good people and a poor process and be in the ditch. You can have a good process and poor people and be in the same ditch.
• Good people can over come poor process b y making up their own processes, but that process is not scalable.
• Good people and a good process can over come the lack of tools for awhile, but cannot be sustained.

We us a quote around tools and process.

Did it once, and I'll do it by hand. Do it 2 to 3 times and I'll write a VBA macro. Do it 50 times and I buy a "real" tool

In all case though it starts with competent, trained, skilled, experienced, and most of all motivated people.

All success flows from there.

A couple of days ago, I wrote a post called: http://www.managementcraft.com/2010/01/aubrey-daniels-versus-dan-pink-bam-management.html

Aubrey Daniels tried to leave a comment on that post, but the system did not let him because of its length. He emailed his comment to me and I said I would share it here.

See Aubrey Daniels' post about Dan Pink's book Drive here.

Find Dan Pink here.

See my original post here.

Now here is the comment from Aubrey Daniels. Thanks, Aubrey, for taking the time to share this!

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Lisa,

Thanks for the comments about my blog post about Pink. I would love to have a long discussion about this whole topic with you and Pink as well but lacking that I will make a few comments about your post.

The issue about intrinsic motivation is not its importance at work or in the rest of our lives, but how to create it.  How is it that people come to love their work?  Were they born loving a particular job?  Can you decrease intrinsic motivation?  Can you increase it?  If the answer is yes, then it follows that the environment is responsible.  Some environments increase intrinsic motivation and some decrease them.  The science of behavior analysis seeks to understand just how that happens. 

I have been working in the private sector for about 40 years and I can tell you that we have seen many examples where managers have "tapped into that inner fire" and turned a dreadful workplace into one where discretionary effort is the norm.

You say we need to "build our organizations around the idea of how can we work so that everyone can and will be driven to do their best work."  I certainly agree, hence my book, Bringing Out the Best in People.  You also say we should train managers differently.  I also agree but quite frankly I don't know how to do that without some pretty specific guidance, even to the point of using templates and routines.  When you have a manager who for decades has never told one employee that he liked, valued or appreciated her work, how do you get him to the point of showing "admiration, gratitude, and care.?"  It is not easy but we think it is worth the effort.

My bottom line is that everybody has opinions about motivation but until the subject is researched scientifically, we will never know which opinions are correct.  In the meantime, if we are wrong we can not only decrease intrinsic motivation but severely limit employee's ability to express themselves fully in all aspects of their lives.

In the last hundred years, behavior analysis, the science of behavior, has discovered a lot about why we behave as we do.  Unfortunately, most people (including Dan Pink) don't know it. Until they do we will continue to waste time, our most precious resource, being influenced by persuasive opinions even when they are "wrong headed."

Aubrey C. Daniels

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I believe in good, healthy, debate about things of importance like these, and I thank Aubrey Daniels for taking the time to share his thoughts on Management Craft. In his comment, he asked:

When you have a manager who for decades has never told one employee that he liked, valued or appreciated her work, how do you get him to the point of showing "admiration, gratitude, and care?"

This is a common problem, for sure. I would first ask, what is the root cause of the problem? On what basis is this manager deciding what to do, what to communicate, and how to manage? Often what I see is that the only training this manager has received has reinforced the wrong things (paternal practices, a focus on extrinsics, and that people are essentially machines - although it is usually phrased less directly) and that what needs to happen so that the manager can improve is a shift in his or her thinking about how to best manage people. Well intended structure with forms and check sheets will only reinforce the old and inadequate beliefs that underlie a detached management style.

Aubrey also asserts that he thinks we need to give managers pretty specific guidance. I wonder if he is suggesting that I think managers ought to be taught abstract and broad concepts and not trained on the specifics of what great management looks like. Actually, Aubrey, you and I agree that specifics are important. I think that the specifics we each recommend would be quite different, however (as related to motivation).

Also, I think that we know more about motivation - scientifically - than Daniels seems to believe.

What's your take? Read all the posts and information and weigh in. This is fun!

From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
I have been a department manager for four years and things are going well. I have created systems and have few problems with my staff. I also managed to establish good communication with outside groups that need our services.

All is well, my boss thinks I'm getting bored and now wants me to transfer to another office with more staff. The were problems with the previous manager. My specific instructions are to help them improve productivity and quality.

Here are my issues:
1. Most team members have worked in the company longer than me.
2. The company grapevine tells me they are difficult to manage, stubborn.
3. There is conflict among the team leaders, about priorities, methods, allocation of resources.

Before I assume my new position, I plan to talk to each and every one of them to get to know them personally. I will conduct an interview to understand the existing difficulties and how I can help. I hope that I can develop solutions to make them more productive and stop their fighting. To be honest, I don't have 100% confidence that I will be successful.

Response:
It's like getting married. You never know you if made the right decision for a soul-mate, until after the ceremony. And once you are in, you can't go back.

Tenure and age can create friction, sparks, smoke and small outbreaks of fire. Respect, authority and accountability will be the dynamics at risk. Yet, younger managers can be successful in a team with older, tenured workers. Here is your mantra.

Bring value to their decision making and problem solving.

If you are able to bring value to their decision making and problem solving, you will immediately earn their respect, establish your authority and gain the ability to hold them accountable. Easy to say, hard to do.

How do you bring value? You don't do it by telling people what to do. You bring value by asking questions. Your intuition tells you that is the first move, conduct interviews, gather data and do some analysis. It is your ONLY move. And when you come to your conclusions, delivering the news to the team about the "new" way, must also be done with questions. And if you are not getting the response you want, then you are asking the wrong questions.

You have your intuition. I have my intuition. My intuition tells me that your boss selected you for some very good reasons.

I always find a way to like where I am at, how about you? Great hotel chains like Marriott and Kimpton help a lot (as do iPods, Whole Foods, and a love of meeting friendly locals).

I have a TON of travel coming up and I thought I would take a few moments to share the cities I will be visiting. Here they are:

• Washington DC (several trips)
• Miami, FL
• Tupelo, MS
• Cleveland, OH
• Columbus, OH
• Chicago, IL (two trips)
• Seattle, WA
• Roanoke, VA (And points between Cincy and VA, I am driving my motorcycle)
• Tampa, FL
• Singapore

Included in that are a few conferences: ASTD ICE, SOBCON2010, VASHRM Regional, ASHHRA, and EWG. Also, I will be doing two two-day workshops for Agile Avant in Singapore.

In addition to traveling a lot, I am doing many presentations and classes. Here are some of the topics I will be presenting:

• The Agile Leader
• The Change Ready Organization
• High Impact Middle Management
• Talent Development: Power ties, iPhones, unconferences, virtualization and the coming together of decades of differences
• Hip and Sage: Leaving a Legacy
• How to Meet
• Accountability and Ownership

Do you work near any of these cities? Would you like me to come to your organization to speak or train while I am in town? Send me an email (the link to email me is up top and to the left) and let's get something going!

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled
- Richard P. Feynman

When we hear about the latest "gadget" or "process" that is replacing the current "gadget" or "process," in the project management world, let's stop and ask does this "next new thing" provide new or more informative answers to these questions:

1. Where Are We Going?
2. How Do We Get There?
3. Do We Have Enough Time, Resources, And Money To Get There?
4. What Impediments Will We Encounter Along The Way?
5. How Do We Know We Are Making Progress?

Great comments coming in, as we continue our discussion. This is from Jim D'Wolf.

"To further muddy the waters, I have found that people who study the numbers and people who manage the people will not always share a common language or common goals.Both perspectives are equally important in managing an operation, but getting them on the same page is a challenge. It helps to define effecient as the use of resources in being effective and to define effective as the degree to which you meet or exceed the customer's needs or requirements (George Eckes - Six Sigma)."

Jim's comment stirs the continuing debate over the difference between managerial practices and leadership practices. In some sense, it is very simple. People do NOT want to be managed. People want direction and strategy. People want to be led. By the same token, you cannot lead a process. A process has to be managed. Manage processes, lead people.

In the end, it takes both, managerial leadership practices to make this engine run.