The Hard-Nosed Project Manager

Growing leaders

This past Friday evening I had the pleasure of attending a briefing on the future state of the Artillery given by the RCAA (Royal Canadian Artillery Association) and hosted by my unit.  I’ve been out for more than 20 years but “Once a Gunner, always a Gunner”, so I do attend these as much as I can.  As a bonus we get to trade “war” stories with the other old crusties…

Among many subjects discussed was the state of leadership in the various units of the Royal Canadian Artillery.  I’m happy to say that my old unit is still at the top of the list due to its strength in identifying, training, and mentoring new leaders.  This yields a few observations:

• Organizations that believe in leadership regularly discuss the state of leadership in their organization.
• Leaders do not pop out of the womb fully formed, they are grown.
• Leadership begets leadership.  Those I trained years ago have trained others who trained others, who trained others.  You get the pattern...

A few months ago I ran as series on leadership that discussed how to identify and pick future leaders.  Let’s assume some candidates have been identified, now comes the time to get them to grow into the job and to strengthen the qualities that got them the job in the first place. 

Here are a few tips that served me well in the past:

• Mentor the new leader.  In the army you don’t have a choice as you’re graded on how you bring up the new wave.  In the “real” life those you mentor will fill your shoes allowing you to move to something new.
• Mistakes are part of learning.  Mistakes indicate the need for more training while repeated mistakes may indicate that the new leader was promoted too early.
• Offer advice even when it has not been requested.  Do this softly as the new leader may not have realised yet that he doesn’t know everything.  Hell, do you?
• Help the new leader identify his strengths and weaknesses.  Sometimes this will be a hard pill to swallow but it needs to be done.  As we well know 90% of drivers think that they are above average.
• Help the new leader “read” people, their strengths, weaknesses, and motivations.  That’ll help him get the best out of everyone to the benefit of the whole team or organization.  That’ll start him on the path to mentoring others.

I read somewhere that only 10% or so of all leaders in civilian companies have been groomed for their position.  I guess it says a lot and explains a lot.  If the organization you’re in does not believe in training leaders then I guess you’ll have to do it on your own.  You don’t know but maybe 20 odd years from now you’ll meet someone from way back whose professional life you’ve influenced for the better.  I’d call that a great reward.

What do you think?  As always comments are welcome.

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Laser beam

I love making weird, some say intractable, analogies.  Let me throw one out; maybe it’ll resonate with you.  I don’t know, I may just be the next Yogi Berra…

Having your team members multitask is like trying to cut steel with a light bulb; you end up wasting a lot of energy with little result.

Do you see where I’m going with this?  Do you give up? 

The point I am trying to make is that multitasking wastes energy by scattering it; with 1000W of lighting you generate a lot of heat and some light, with a 1000W laser you cut through steel.  The difference?  Focus.  The same applies to teams and their members; we scatter the energy of teams in a number of ways:

• Not properly closing projects, leaving phantom tasks that need to be taken care of, which creates distractions and frustration.
• Assigning the same person, at a reduced utilization percentage, to a number of projects. This forces the person to switch and regain focus over and over again.
• Holding meetings with unclear agendas or that involve too many people.

I contend that if project were to follow Balanced Score Card (BSC) principles, greater focus would be achieved, team members would enjoy a greater sense of accomplishment, and energy (and $$$) would not be wasted.  When I first made mention of Balanced Score Cards, Glen Alleman contributed this document; you might want to steal a copy!

What do you think?  As always comments are welcome.

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Run your own O Group

O Group?  What kind of jargon is that?  Well; it is a military term that stands for Order Group.  What does this have to do with project management?

The purpose of the O Group is efficient information dissemination.  For example, in the Canadian military, an Artillery Battery Commander (BC) convenes an O Group before every battery move.  The O Group is attended by most of the battery’s officers and top Non Commissioned Officers (NCOs).  It is a stand up meeting with a clear, never changing agenda. 

The O Group is delivered in 3-5 minutes; the BC goes through the list of topics, the second in command or BK repeats the information, everyone is asked if there are any questions, questions if any are answered.  The O Group is then closed and everyone resumes their activities.  O Group participants disseminate the information to their own teams.  It is very typical for officers and NCOs to verify that everyone got the information by quizzing people at random.

An O Group discussed the following (non exhaustive and in no particular order):

• When is the battery moving; the start time

• When is the battery expected to be ready to fire; the end time, a milestone

• The tactical situation; basically a list of tasks, dependencies, and resources (stakeholders) for those tasks

• The strategic situation; how is this activity linked to a set of larger goals, along the lines of a Balanced Score Card (BSC).

My suggestion is for you to prepare your own O Group type of communication template and use it on a daily basis to deliver information to your project teams.  Remember; we are talking a 3-5 minute long stand up meeting with a defined, never changing agenda.

What do you think?  As always questions and comments are welcome.

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Do we need accurate estimates?

You bet your life you do and you should involve as many people as possible developing one.  If you do get that accurate estimate you will enjoy, in no particular order, the following benefits:

• Focus on the deliverables; hopefully you started with a WBS. Are the task in the estimate directly related to the deliverables or are we gold plating?

• Buy-in from your team members and management. It is not YOUR estimate anymore, it is EVERYONE’s estimate.

• You can run a Monte Carlo simulation to figure out the realistic end date instead of the optimistic one. It is pretty amazing how both values may differ.

• You’ll have identified the training and staffing needs you’ll have if this project becomes part of your portfolio.

• A strong basis for contractual negotiations. Now your sales force knows how much you think this will cost and why.

• If the client says you are too high by X your sales people can ask what can be dropped from scope.

• If your company wants the project to satisfy both its Balanced Score Card financial and customer objectives we now know how many hours we may agree to give away to gain a new client or keep an old one. Remember; do not drop the rate, give hours away instead.

• Faster response time when revising your estimate following scope changes. You already have figures out where you can cut. If the client doesn’t volunteer potential areas of scope reduction you probably have identified them already.

• You’ll have a good starting point for the next time a similar project crops up.

Of course you’ll only know how accurate you were after you get the project and you deliver on it…

What do you think?  As always questions and comments are welcome.

Connect with me on LinkedIn.  I am a LinkeIn Open Networker (LION); you can use “Friend” to add me to your network, please mention the blog in your request.

The PM and the BSC

I thought I’d start this one with a little TLA (Three Letter Acronym) salad.  Beware; TLA salad is highly addictive…

I recently finished reading “The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action” by Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton.  This book presents the BSC (Balanced ScoreCard) approach to enterprise strategic performance management.  The book puts in perspective the relationship between the financial, customer, internal processes, and innovation and learning dimensions of an enterprise.

My main takeaway was that the BSC is an amazing tool for enterprise, and by association, project leadership.  For PMs lucky enough to work in an enterprise that uses a BSC approach (I’m not one of them), the clarity of purpose creates fantastic leverage in leading projects to completion.

• You can either link your project to the goals of the enterprise as documented in the BSC or classify it as a “target of opportunity” that was undertaken purely by chance. Push comes to shove; target of opportunity will lose support to the benefit of projects that support enterprise goals.
• The BSC approach will either steer the enterprise towards projects it can accomplish given the human resources it has, seek to retrain human resources to achieve the goals, or acquire new resources that enable the goals. This is a powerful driver for continuous learning both enterprise funded and employee self directed.
• The BSC approach will steer the enterprise towards processes that decrease production costs while preserving or improving quality. Fix the process, not the people.
• The BSC approach and the metrics it implies will eventually eliminate projects undertaken for clients that do not contribute to the bottom line.

What do you think?  As always questions and comments are welcome.

Connect with me on LinkedIn.  I am a LinkeIn Open Networker (LION); you can use “Friend” to add me to your network, please mention the blog in your request.