The Regenerate Web

I've learned a lot in the past four years of being an author.  One thing I learned about blogging is to "pay it forward" to other authors.  When I released GUST almost three years ago, I reviewed a book right before the release.  On the eve of SWAT's release, it's time to talk about a few other people's work and show some nods to other people who have seized the accomplishment through writing.

The first big nod goes to a guy I've met through Twitter and through mutual social media friends.  I hope someday to meet him in person, because he sounds exactly like the type of person I enjoy hanging around:  an adventurous, accomplished, principled leader whose goal is to pull others up.  His name is Tim Milburn out of Boise, Idaho and his work with Studentlinc is amazing.  He's written a great book called Core Leadership Training, and it's designed to help student leaders succeed in their roles.  Those of us who have been in offices and cubicles for years already know how hard leadership is.  Tim provides those who haven't even yet earned their stripes through the obstacle course of leadership through their roles in student organizations.  If you are a sponsor of a student group, be it a sports league, fraternity/sorority, student government, whatever... this is a must read... and Tim is somebody you need to get to know.

The second book nod I'm giving came about in the most unusual way.  I had just finished creating a blog post about my relationship with my daughter, when I received an email.  It seems these two guys, Sep Kamvar and Jonathan Harris, were creating a compilation of people's feelings.  They had harvested about every derivation of the verb "to feel" from the blogosphere and had amassed a HUGE compilation of people's feelings, aptly titled, We Feel Fine, An Almanac of Human Emotion.  This album of photos and snippets was constructed, designed, and executed so brilliantly, it should be on every desk and coffee table book in the nation (and I'm not just saying that because Lauren's baby picture is in there).

Those are just a couple of the things that have hit my radar screen in recent months which deserve some special highlighting of their own.  I wish all three amazing success with their book projects.

For me, tomorrow is coming... and I'm at peace...

"Why is Vision so important in the planning process?" I asked.

Brent was thinking, but the answer wasn't coming to him.

"How excited does your team get over the goals you set?" I continued.

"Well, it's work. How excited can you get about work?" Brent replied.

"Exactly. So, what's the one thing in your plan that your team can get excited about?"

Brent closed his eyes, then opened, nodding, "The vision."

"And that's why the vision is so important. It's the only part of your plan that creates energy, entices people, engages people. Goals are nice, but that's not where the electricity is."

It's coming... just a few more days and SWAT - Seize the Accomplishment moves into the category of reality.  I have a lot of people to thank for this journey (too many to list in a blog post, but they know who they are and most of their names are in the acknowledgments section of the book).  My biggest thank you, though, at this point goes to my publisher, Lexicon, and to the SWAT operators from the SERT (Suburban Emergency Reponse Team).

A lot of people from near and far have been asking how/where they can get a copy.  Here are the vendors who are carrying it:

Local Bookstores:

• Beaverdale Books (Alice and crew absolutely rock)
• The Bookstore (my first retailer; will always have a soft spot for them)
• Borders Books (Amy and her staff are great)
• ConnXions (new relationship)

Online Bookstores

• Amazon
• Project Management Bookstore (check these guys out - great service)

Everybody should be well stocked with copies of all three of my books.  I continue to look at expanding my reach in bookstores, and I prefer dealing with independent stores, so if any of you know of a "great little shop" who would be interested in carrying any or all of my books, let me know.  And if any of you want to start hounding the giant behemoth known as Barnes & Noble about carrying my books, I wouldn't argue (although they'd have to work hard to wow me as much as Borders and my independent partners have).

I've also expanded my Products page for additional information about SWAT.

So if you're ready to have your thought processes flashbanged by systems thinking, if you're ready to seize the accomplishment, then I'd say you're ready for a SWAT!

Chuck at U Make It Happen reminded me of the George Patten Quote

A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.

There are two critical understandings around this quote. A quote like this, and Eisenhower's, is often used and misused by both sides of any process argument. Some agilest are fond is using the notion that planning is not needed - which of course is nonsense.

A PLAN is a strategy for the successful completion of the project.

"I plan to attend our sons graduation from college in the spring." "I plan to take a motor home vacation with our adult children." These are strategies for fulfilling some capability.

Plans Describe Capabilities

Another Patton quote is

I need the capability to move a brigade of 3,000 to 5,000 troops 100 miles in ten hours.

Capabilities-based planning specifies the outcome but does not specify how to cause that outcome to appear. 

For Plans To Work They Need Schedules

With the specified outcome, there now needs to be a schedule to sequence the work needed to produce that outcome.

You both a Plan and a Schedule before the Probability of Success can be increased

Here's What a Plan Looks Like Notionally

• Define the needed level of maturity at this point in time - what do I need to know at the Preliminary Design Review?
• Define the Significant Accomplishments needed to reach the needed level of maturity at that time - what is the evidence I need to bring to the Preliminary Design Review to assure I understand the design to the units of measure of "preliminary?"
• Define the "exit criteria" for the work performed to produce the needed level of maturity at that time - there are the Accomplishment Criteria - when I perform one of the Work Packages, or complete an iteration, what are the units of measure of "done?"
• Sequence the Work Packages in the proper order to produce a Schedule with resources - for all the work I have identified to get to the planned level of maturity, what dependencies and in what order do I have to perform this work?

I was reading, Nervous about an interview? Try this! and thought, hmm, I’ve said something like that before, haven’t I?

I have, but in slides (for my Hiring for an Agile Team tutorial and workshop and in my other workshops) and in person, but not on this blog. So, let me say it here:

Good interviews are conversations. Period.

Good interviews do not surprise people. Good interviews build rapport with a candidate, learn about a candidate, preferably with behavior-description questions and auditions. Maybe with hypothetical questions. Maybe with a meta-question.

But good interviews should make a candidate (and an interviewer) think, not sweat.

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Miriam crept into the conference room so as not to disturb the rest of the meeting. Everyone was working hard on their business plan for 2010. "I'm having a bit of trouble," she said. "I know all the steps for the plan, but I am just stuck."

"What have you done so far?" I asked.

"Step one was the purpose. We know the focus for the project, what problems it is supposed to solve. Then, I created the vision. And that was easy. I think I got it all captured in a couple of sentences. It's the rest of the plan that I am having difficulty with."

"Interesting," I replied, "that you can capture the detail of your vision in two sentences."

"Well, you are right," Miriam confessed. "There isn't a lot of detail, but I thought it would be better if it was short."

"Miriam, here is the way the vision part of the plan works. The more detailed it is, the clearer the images are, the easier it is to write the rest of the plan. Instead of two sentences, write two pages. I want to know who your customers are and what services you provide. You probably have more than one customer segment, tell me how they are different and how your services to each are different? Tell me what position you hold in the marketplace, what your market share is? Who are your competitors? Tell me what your competitive advantage is, what are your core competencies? Who are your key personnel, how do you find them, how do you grow them? Tell me about your facilities, your plant? How do you control quality? How do you guarantee performance?"

Maybe it was a byproduct of too much togetherness over Christmas break.  Perhaps it was caused by a decade of being outnumbered by the fairer gender around home.  Could have been too much eggnog.  Who knows?

My younger daughter got a new Barbie dollhouse from Santa.  So of course, every Barbie had to come and inhabit this new abode.  It was like big plastic sorority (complete with all of the requisite drama whenever that many Barbies get together).  And - oh yeah - there was one Ken doll amid all of them.  All was well.  The girls were playing together.  They were having fun.  They were using their imaginations.  And then the fateful event occurred:  my older daughter asked my younger daughter for the Ken doll:  "Abby, would you please pass me the boy Barbie?"

I snapped.

"Excuse me?" I started.  "Did you just call him a 'boy Barbie'?  His... name... is... KEN!  Yes, he may be the ONLY boy in a sea of plastic estrogen... BUT HE HAS A NAME!!!  HE HAS AN IDENTITY!!  He is NOT a boy Barbie.  He has NOT been sucked into the vortex of pink."

I found three pairs of eyes staring at me in shock at my tirade.  I shrugged and went back to my little cubbie of testosterone, my small corner of maleness.

In a sea of consistency and sameness, we all have a little bit of Ken in us, don't we?  We all have a personal brand just waiting to get out, but everybody else wants us to wear their personal brand.  We want to convert our gray cubicles into a tropical rainforest.  We want to wear brightly colored polka-dots in a sea of navy blue pinstripes.  We long to be different, to be significant, to be noticed.  In short, we cringe at the thought of being called a "boy Barbie."

So what are YOU going to do in 2010 to brand yourself?  Or are you just another boy Barbie?

"We need to put a plan together," Karlyn declared. "Let's meet in the conference room and set some goals."

"Sounds great," I replied. "But what are you going to set the goals for? I need to know a few things before we get to setting goals."

"Like what?" she pushed back.

"Karlyn, do you remember that multi-track project last summer. You had five teams working on simultaneous tasks for two months. In the end, you were missing two major pieces, but you had used up all your budget. Two of the teams went off on a tangent and created stuff that turned out to be useless."

Karlyn went silent. "I was lucky I didn't get fired over that one," she finally admitted.

"What went wrong?" I asked.

"We never clearly understood the purpose of the project and spent a lot of time and money on things that didn't matter."

"And why didn't you understand the purpose of the project?" I pushed.

"I guess we were moving so fast that we didn't stop and ask. We knew it was a fast track project with tight deadlines, but we didn't go slow enough to make sure everything we did was necessary."

"And how do you know if something is necessary?"

"That's why we have to define the purpose for the project. Before we can set goals, we have to make sure we understand the purpose."

The past 2-3 years have been spent fretting.  People have been worried about their jobs, about their companies, about their stability.  Business owners have sweat bullets every night, wondering if tomorrow would be the day they had to shut the doors for good.  Many have continued to do business in good faith, even with the evil thumb of fate hanging immediately over them... waiting to squish them like an insignificant bug.

Other companies have managed to ride out the storm, but they've not played nicely in the corporate karma sandbox.  They've taken advantage of suppliers and contractors.  They've oppressed employees.  They've screwed over customers.  Here in Central Iowa, there are a couple of companies who have low-balled project management consulting rates to insulting levels.  Why?  Because they know supply outstrips demand.  There are companies who have all but expressed they don't care if they lose a customer... there will be another to take their place.

But...

Recovery is coming.  The economy is showing some signs of rebound.  While it may not happen tomorrow, companies are looking like they'll be hiring, doing more projects, and expanding their businesses... it's a cautious recovery, but it's a recovery all the same.  And what's going to happen when all of these "you done me wrong" vibes come to light?

Jeannine Aversa wrote a great piece today that job satisfaction is at an all-time low.  It's harboring ill-will, impacting teamwork, and undermining culture.  I've been fortunate to work for clients who have risen above the pettiness and have been great.  I have also had the luxury of recognizing the other end of the spectrum and be able to politely decline my services.  Some of my local colleagues have not been so fortunate.

Is your company ready to compete in a stronger workplace?  How do your employees really feel about you?  Are your suppliers and customers loyal to you through thick and thin?  If the responses to these questions are not all that positive, recession survival may be the least of your worries.  Your system's feedback loop is about to catch up with you during the recovery.

The NAVAIR Earned Value Management Tool Kit - available at the Defense Acquisition University web site. (When you reach this site, answer yes to the missing certificate)This site by the way has a wealth of resources for everything related to program management. If you're looking for something, start there.

Here's NAVAIR's restatement of the obvious.

NAVAIR EVM Guidance For Success And Failure Of Projects

Successful Projects

Failing Projects

?  Effective project planning

?  Inadequate project planning

?  Effective project cost estimating

?  Inadequate Effective project cost estimating

?  Effective project measurements

?  Inadequate Effective project measurements

?  Effective project milestone tracking

?  Inadequate Effective project milestone tracking

?  Effective project quality control

?  Inadequate Effective project quality control

?  Effective project change management

?  Ineffective project change management

?  Effective development processes

?  Ineffective development processes

?  Effective communications

?  Ineffective communications

?  Capable project managers

?  Inexperienced project managers

?  Capable technical personnel

?  Inexperienced technical personnel

?  Significant use of specialists

?  Generalists rather than specialists

?  Substantial volume of reusable material

?  Little or no reuse of technical material

Like all restatement of the obvious, many things are not so obvious.But notice the emphasis on Planning, Cost Estimating, Performance Measures, Quality, and Change Management. All activities that cause project churn. Even in the best of agile development, if the goal of the project keeps changing, and the agile team rapidly responds to these changes, money is being burned for work that may or may not be recoverable.

This is a fundamental "hidden cost" of poorly defined agile projects in the same way it is for poorly defined traditional projects.

If I create work product that is then tossed, it is a non-recoverable sunk cost

So ask these questions for your project, no matter the method used. And ask anyone who brings you a technology solution to your project - How does you new technology improve the probability of success?

If you notice in the NAVAIR table, people and processes dominate the conversation. Tools are a distant third.

Lots of response to this morning's blog post about My 2010 Business Plan, our current Subject Area at Working Leadership Online.

Sometimes as Managers, we talk out of both sides of our mouth. We understand the benefits of planning, but we also have a litany of excuses why we don't plan more often. Over the last 15 years, we have created a bullet-proof planning model that blows away the excuses. And if you are willing to do the work, we will share this model with you for FREE.

If you have a manager (or if that manager is YOU), that would benefit from using this process, follow this link to get a Free Trial to Working Leadership Online.

Your Free Trial membership is good through January 31, 2010. It includes full access to our online learning platform. In this Subject Area, you will:

• Understand why planning is important and where it can be useful.
• Understand what prevents us from planning more often.
• Understand a model of planning that helps us be more effective in planning.
• Create a 2010 Business Plan.

We are holding only a limited number of slots for this Free Trial. Looking forward to seeing you online.

I am putting the finishing touches on my next book, tentatively called Coaching Up and Down the Generations. One of the things I have always struggled with is what to call the person who is being coached. Each company I have worked with and for has had a different name. Sometimes these learners are called proteges or coachees and if we are talking about mentoring, then the person might be called a mentee.

These names all seem so patronizing to me and tend to reinforce that the coach and mentor is the one who "knows," like a mountain-top guru. And while there is a time for sharing sage advice, I would like the overall focus to be on the goals and interests of the person being coached. And we know that often the best coaching comes in the form of a question, not an answer.

For this book, I decided to call the person who is receiving coaching a performer. The person who seeks coaching has a goal and when he/she moves forward toward that goal, he/she performs. This makes sense to me and I like that it puts the focus where it belongs. And if I could rename the coach, I would call him/her a helper, because this reduces the guru aspect of coaching and reinforces the service oriented nature of good coaching.

What do you think? Have you heard of a name that is even better than "performer?" Do tell!