First, do no harm! Hire the right people.

The first thing HR or any hiring manager needs to do is hire the right people. Notice I di not say “good” people. I believe to the core of my soul there are very few bad people. Most people who are hired are “good” people. But why are so few “good” people the right hires.
What follows is my tried and true test questions of myself when hiring:

• Does the person fit with our company culture? I am not talking about any external cultural manifestations, I mean core beliefs and actions.
• Will they get along appropriately with others in the firm?
• Will they become bored, or worse, will their ambitions upset the harmony we have achieved. (I know many many firms thrive on dissonance, and I have worked and thrived in them, but MOST companies thrive in accord!
• Will they be satisfied with our company pay, promotion and transfer system?
• Will they criticize or bully others or push to hard for change?
• Will they need constant care (high maintenance) and praise feeding?
• Are they smarter than you, and if so, will they have the grace not to rub that in your face every minute of every day?

After you analyze the above, and you  might make a hire that doesn't exactly fit (be prepared to manage that problem if you judge the reward worth the headache.) then ask?
Do they have the skills, abilities and desires to do the job you ask them to do?
If they don’t, don’t make the hire.

Using "red herrings" as bait to catch what you want.

This appears to be a facetious post, but its not. It's nefarious.

Make a list of the proposed projects including the one you favor and the unacceptable one. When you have several options for projects to undertake in your workplace or even in the community. (I learned this trick while working in a City Engineer's office.)  Include at least one proposed project that is absolutely unacceptable to every possible stakeholder (including yourself).

• Put the pros and cons on the list.
• Include your "real" project as second ranked (or maybe 3rd if you have the skill to pull it off).
• Submit the list and sit back until the inevitable firestorm over the first project breaks.
• Ague for the first project until you assess that any further argument will make you look really, really stupid and then cave in arguing that the second (or third) project on the list should then be first..

Two things will have been accomplished.

• You will have vented the energy of those who oppose everything. My dad called those folks the "aginer's" ("I'm aginst it!", those who oppose anything new and have never supported anything)..
• You will have an opportunity to figure out who is for the other options (not yours) and have taken that time to formulate persuasive arguments for your “real” project.

When you drop the proposed project, you will have shown yourself as a very "willing to compromise" and wise individual.

The term of art for this is using a "red herring", a red herring is an idiom referring to a device which intends to divert the audience from the truth or an item of significance (Wikipedia)

A perfect example of this is going on right now between the White House and Fox News (?) Network. The White House accuses Fox of being the mouthpiece and research arm of the GOP. Fox News takes the bait, and spends a lot of time whining about how the White House and President Obama is getting all "Nixon like". The White House keeps throwing gas on the fire, and Fox keeps it up. Fox is so obsessed with this "non-issue" that they ignore real news and influence issues. We get public health care.

So two take a-ways from this posting.

• Learn how to spot a "red herring"
• Learn how to effectively use a "red herring" to get what you want or divert attention

Dr. Rogers Rule No. 1

Dr. Rogers Rules for Project Management Rule No. 1 If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.

This is a fundamental axiom of my professional life.

Every time I tried to manage something without a concrete measurement system in place, the project became a action of personal sacrifice and agony,and unnecessary personal hard work

A lifetime ago I was called on to manage the architectural and engineering design for a $100M plus high tech manufacturing facility . The first item on my agenda was to build some kind of budget estimate for the engineering. At the time I picked up the project, engineering was working on a reimbursed basis. The client was expecting the engineering and construction to be converted to a lump sum or a guaranteed maximum price. Getting a handle on $5 million of base priced engineering was essential for project success.

I approached the lead piping engineer, who was also the lead engineer for the entire project and asked if he had some measurements for project progress. His answer: we design until we get it right and don't worry about costs, and "by the way you can't measure engineering design output".

I rolled my eyes and moved on asking him what the output of engineering design was for a piping system. Right off the top of his head he said "these are the outputs I check to see if we are meeting the design schedule.:

1. Pipe system calculations.
2. Pipe system sketch (pre-cadd days)
3. Client check and approval
4. Draftsman completes formal drawing
5. Engineer markups drawing
6. Draftsman corrects drawing
7. Design specification draft
8. Design specification review and approval
9. Engineer approved drawings
10. Architectural coordination drawing check.
11. Construction plans ans specifications
12. A couple of meetings.

My response: looks like some measurable outputs, and oh by the way we can add engineer hour budgets to these items and have a cost/schedule plan. Pretty simple.

The engineer completes the system calculation and she earns 8 hours as per the budget for the work.

This particular design engineer became a believer in Rule No.1 over night with just a little coaching.
At another period of my career I had the opportunity to manage a group of artists doing a significant public exhibition project. There was a budget and a schedule.

Again the lead artist, we just work until we are done, run out of paint or run out of time and then you get what you get.

Solution: We measured paint consumption versus a linear map of the installation against the artist labor budget and came in ahead of schedule, under budget and what the artist thought was a superior product.

The fundamental take away for the project manager is:

You get to decide what to measure and how to measure it.

In a future post I will report on Earned Value Management, pros and cons and pitfalls, but that's all for this week.





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Coaching and teaching roles of a good Project Manager

This morning I am grading twenty midterm graduate student examinations.

One of the scenarios was " how you would go about staffing, organizing and controlling a project that is mostly labor related". Mostly the answers were as expected, derived from the readings and the students' own professional experiences. The work was solid, but not very inspiring, with a couple of exceptions. I am, by nature, self questioning. I didn't find fault with the students. I wondered if I had been pointing them in the right directions in my lectures.

Maybe I had better go back and check.

A long with Stephen Covey's traits of highly effective people I provide the following list for Great Project Managers

Seven Traits of Great Project Managers

Great Project Managers are:

Organized: keeping track of things in an orderly manner.

Not easily distracted: being able to stay focused on the task at hand during times of confused demands.

On time: not procrastinating, meeting deadlines and being where you are supposed to be when you are supposed to be.

Empathetic: being able reading other people's emotions without their having to tell you what they are feeling.

Results oriented: focusing on non-personal problem solving rather than blame casting and fixing people's personalities.

Highly internally motivated: not needing lots of outside "ataboys" to get the job done, being satisfied with a successful job without external praise.

Honest and ethical. How can people work on projects with you if they cannot trust your statements and your ethical behavior.

Well, there is another one that I left out.

Great Project Managers are good Coaches and Teachers.

In my work I seldom, if ever, get to pick my team. I am given what was a"available" or what I could hire. So I was often forced to train people or coach them to improve. I always was a teacher, mentor and coach so it was easy for me to move from industry to teaching.

I seldom was assigned superstar technicians,but I was often assigned superstar people, people. so I mark myself as truly lucky. Don't get me wrong, I got my share of lulus, including the pathological liars among others, but overall I worked with hundreds and hundreds of great people, and the loosers really stick out.

Back to coaching and teaching.

I am reading a book titled Giants Among Men by Jack Cavanauh. Its about the NY Giants of the 1950s and early 1960's. In the middle 1950's the Giants were coached by Jim Lee Howell and the assistant coaches were Tom Landry (defense) and Vince Lombardi (offense). Pretty good assistants would you think?

No two men could be more different in approaches than Landry and Lombardi, but they were good friends and colleagues. Both knew that teaching, preparation, and training were key to success on the football field. When game day came, neither man could do more than sit back and let his team do what they were prepared for. Landry never showed emotion and Lombardi showed too much. In fact one of his players opined that "on game day he (Lombardi) was pretty much useless." waving his arms and shouting. But the team was prepared, as were Landry's teams.

So, back to teaching and coaching as PM attributes. If you are given your project staff you can do it yourself or delegate. If you have no one with the needed skills to delegate to you need to teach the skill,or go outside the team (which i suggest is done occasionally, as most project skills are not that difficult. (except maybe writing computer code)

If you have the people with the skills for the project, then coaching makes all the difference.

Practicing and drilling skills, reminding folks about their important role in the team's success, checking off the needs and then providing feedback.

If we rely on our EQ we will know who and when to either pat on the back, or kick in the butt.

Next semester the list will change to add coaching and teaching.