Suck it up and take the blame!

As a project manager, rarely does everything go your way. Mistakes by the team happen and they are often seen from outside by supervisors and clients.

When I was younger, and on the south side of wisdom, I would get upset when mistakes were made and things didn’t go my way. I rarely got angry with a person. At least I was that wise. However; I would show my displeasure with the outcome or the product. My team members learned to sense when things were not going well. They were certain that when things were not going well that the focus would be on fixing the problem not casting blame or doling out punishments or worse yet corporate purge.

When things went wrong, I would suck it up, take the blame, and move on. When I reported problems to clients, I always had recovery or mitigation plans ready. After awhile my clients and bosses rarely asked for the details of the plan, they knew that the fix was was already in the works. I found, that every time I took the blame, my stature in the eyes of my client and/or my boss went up. They knew I was a stand up guy, and wouldn't waste effort on things not related to the project moving forward.

Hey, I wasn’t averse to providing career guidance and or an opportunity for an individual to excel with our competitors, but I felt that retaining the new knowledge gained by the error often outweighed the cost of the error. One approach that served me well in “fixing” problem employees was to recognize that there were no “bad employees”, just mistakes in hiring, training, assignment or supervision, and those mistakes always led back to me.

Once I discovered that there were no “bad employees’, I learned to reassign work towards the individuals strength. They could regain team trust by performing at a high level in their skill mastery area. They would get back on the horse that threw them, so to speak. Sometimes, as an added benefit to me,  the individual would get angry and leave; saving me the public humiliation of firing someone who I had hired, trained, or assigned and who I had certainly supervised.

The take away:

• There are no “bad employees”, just hiring, training, assignment or supervision errors.
• Suck it and take the blame, it can raises your status in an organization.

PS. As I recounted in a previous blog. I once had the opportunity to take the blame for others, and was promoted on the spot to a direct report to the CEO of a company with 2000 employees. I was newly hired to fix a project (I spent a decade in project turnarounds). The guilty team members were all assembled, expecting a few executions. The CEO walked in and said “Who’s in charge of this mess/”. I said “I am but I have a plan to fix it.” He looked at me and said: “Good, then you have my support and please let me know directly what you need from the corporation to fix the problem.” and he left the room. It took about one minute for the team to recognize who was now in charge and that I had saved at least some of them from a trip to the pink slip office.

PPS. If your company has public executions of mistake makers. I suggest that they are not a “learning company” and you should seek a new employer.

The Project Management Circus Parade.

Information is key to orderly and enjoyable project management. Information is one of the necessary resources for efficient and effective project management.

Dr. Rogers' Rule 5: Project Communication is an active, two-way process, not a one-way street

Dr. Rogers' Rule 8: Have Fun!

Information coming down “Communication Street” often looks just like a circus parade. Lots of elephants, jugglers, and clowns obscuring the tractors, trailers, and cages overlaid with a cacophony of sounds and smells. Communication Street should be like a mythical wide boulevard with shading elms and sidewalk shops and cafes; a perfect Paris or New York thoroughfare. A two way street, broad enough to allow the parade of information to make a straight run from one end to the other even with the overload of busy cross traffic, parade watchers, souvenir hawkers, and pot holes, a typical project endures.

Like a major city artery “Communication Street” needs to provide for the boutiques, cafes and shops (your matrix providers of services) that line the sidewalks. Your allied team members need to pick up the information they need to stay in business without interfering with the project parade and without the parade overwhelming their main business enterprises.


“Communication Street” also needs to allow two way traffic during the parade. The entire project team needs to know what’s happening up and down the parade route so that they can react to the lions escape. The sidewalk cafes need to stay open during the parade to provide a place where one can rest a minute and pick up or drop off information.


Effective and efficient communication of information is essential to project success. Top project managers are like “Circus Ring Leaders”. They know how to lead the parade down Communication Street, ignoring the jugglers, clowns, and elephants while picking up and dropping off information at the cafes and making it all the way to the Circus Grounds.

Already behind as the new year starts? Crash the schedule!

As usual, the new year brings new expectations for productivity increases, quicker and smarter project delivery and as always some new twist coming out of no-where.

This posting will review the fundamentals of crashing a schedule. Whether you find yourself behind schedule with clients breathing down your neck, or you want to look for ways to move your project ahead of schedule, there are certain fundamentals to consider.

It has been my experience that even good project managers make mistakes because they fail to master the fundamentals. It is always a good idea to review fundamentals.

If you plan to shorten a schedule by crashing, take these basic steps.

1. Look at the critical path activities. (Assumes the good practice of creating a CPM schedule before starting a project.)
2. Review longish activities in the near future that have small associated costs and make a list of the targeted activities. (You might have to use Pareto analysis to fill the list, but that's a good thing).
3. From your list, pick the longest task with the smallest cost. (Low hanging fruit.)
4. Analyze what resources would need to be added or compressed to shorten the activity. Never overlook new technologies or new ways of doing the same thing. I once was able to crash a schedule simply by de-cluttering the workspace of tools. (The idea came from junior team members.)
5. Analyze any "added" cost of the added resources.
6. Simulate "what-if" to the critical path if you shorten the chosen activity. You might just create a new critical path that does not significantly shorten your schedule.
7. Analyze the cost benefit, or non-monetary cost benefit and make a decision, yes or no.
8. Repeat activities 3 to 7 until you have looked at a variety of options and new schedules.
9. Bring the team together to discuss the options and decide on a course of action. The team will probably have some good ideas and maybe see opportunities or pitfalls that you have overlooked.

When the decision, which activities to crash, has been made, ensure that it is communicated widely and that you have buy-in from anyone who can help or hurt actualization.

Pay promptly for the change.

Communicate success or failure. Failure should be rewarded at least by acknowledging the effort and diligence of the team.

Start looking for opportunities again.

Two steps away from the county line. Just trying to keep my customers satisfied.

Those are the words from Paul Simons song Keep the Customer Satisfied.

One of the most difficult challenges faced by senior project managers is scope control.

Whether it's an internal or an external one, clients always want the most they can get and team members are trained to try and satisfy the client.

It it's a major project you might have dozens of client interfaces with hundreds of staff and project team member all trying to make the "customer satisfied". The combination of trying to satisfy the customer and the customers desires for more, inevitably leads to scope creep. It's often little things that add up and become a big thing and when you move your focus for a second it's the little things that turn a big project south.

How do you as the person in charge control the inevitable? Well here is a short list.

Have a charter that clearly outlines the project mission and goals.

Have an agreed to list of priorities.

Make sure the clients know that there WILL BE trade-offs in time and scope if they ask for "extras". Keep the tradeoffs in front of the team and the client’s team. This may tend to retard client requests when they are confronted every time they ask for something, even if it is cost free.

Carefully define contract deliverables. If it’s not on the list ask for extra time to complete the work for extra coasts. If the client is confronted every time they ask for more with cost or schedule issues they will be reluctant to go up the food chain for permission.

Build a detailed WBS and if it’s not in the work plan it’s a change, ask for written notice whenever there is a change.

Make a critical path schedule for the project and review it with the team and the client. If a request from the client affects the critical path, ask for a time extension, or at least some consideration for the costs of "crashing the schedule".

Ensure that there is a system that requires decision makers to approve any client requested additional work. 

Team members who notify senior management before making client requested changes are REWARDED for helping control scope.

How do you reward team members for controlling scope?

Here are just a couple of suggestions; you need to look at your own operation to find better ones.

Ensure that change control is not confrontational. Pose it as focusing on effective and efficient work process for the team and client.

Add time to their task work. Don’t crowd them to finish and start other things, or overload them with new work. If you can, pay them extra for the extra work (overtime).

Publicly acknowledge scope control by publishing change lists to team members so they can see how others are controlling scope.

Each project and team is unique, make sure you tailor the scope control process to the needs of the client and the team.

The secret of invisibility! The "no one is thinking about you" phenomenon.

Today on my usual morning stroll (this time to the beach with the sun shining on the eve of Festivus) two things kept coming back to me.

Who among my supervisors are thinking about me at this minute and what would that have to do with my career(if I worried about it like I used to). The answer is no one is thinking about me or my job except me. So that means as long as nothing pops up about me, my job is secure.

I would bet a dollar to a doughnut that the same phenomenon affects most middle and upper level managers in most businesses and in the public sector. Out of sight is out of mind.

I gave some thought about who I would think about when I was running a significant profit center. I rarely thought about my employees. I most often thought (and worried) about what my boss was thinking about me or what I was doing. The truth is my boss was worrying only about what popped up on his desk that day and most of that was bad. If I could avoid being in the bad in-box I was invisible.

Invisibility in the work place is NOT a negative thing. Invisibility is a secret power thing (like superheroes have). You are invisible always and then when you can take credit for something good, you swivel the secret decoder ring and become visible. If you are only visible when good things happen and you are never in the bad in-box, your career would be assured.

I always made it a point to keep my mouth shut when I was screwing up and when things were going my way I would wear my silk CEO suit and an expensive tie so I would be noticed. I could never understand project managers who always wanted attention by causing problems.

I wanted project managers who were playing golf with their clients on Friday afternoon while their assistant managers gained valuable experience by being left unsupervised to manage for short periods. My best mangers knew the secret of invisibility and used it to their advantage. After a Friday afternoon of being invisible, they would show up Monday or Tuesday with some good news about their client relationship and future work, or enhanced revenue projections.

So try and learn the secret of invisibility, and remember your boss is not thinking or worrying about you. She is constantly trying to figure out what her boss is thinking regarding her, which is nothing. Your bosses boss is worried about their boss, on up the line. The CEO is worried about his/her spouse and their retirement portfolio not you.

So as tomorrow is Festuvus, you should be making your list of grievances and putting up the bare aluminum pole.

So my gift: Stop worryng about what others are thinking and try to learn the superhero secret of invisibility/visibility.

Conventional Wisdom and Reality on Stakeholder Buy-in.

From the beginning of the planning phases of a program, stakeholder buy-in is essential. Program success is unlikely unless the community is drawn in from the start. Once stakeholders are on board with a program’s ideas, they are likely to remain involved, supporting the program over its lifetime. 

From Innovation Network
 
The preceding quote is pretty much the conventional thought on stakeholder buy-in. But when is conventional thought, incorrect thought, or not applicable to the reality on the ground?
 
Maybe when the stakeholder's competing interests are irreconcilable and complete buy-in is not possible.  

• When does an executive decide that "enough is enough" and stakeholder interests are not reconcilable.
• What happens then?
• Who gets their feelings hurt?
• How do you repair damaged relationships?
• Who makes the decisions and how do you move forward to a successful project completion.

I don't have any answers (and maybe no one has), but I find myself asking these questions because I am in the middle of a project with just such a conundrum.

In this case the decision to move forward without full stakeholder consensus was made by the CEO due to budget and external force reasons. (We will be experiencing lots of that over the next few years).

The outcome is unclear at this stage, but I am sure, without any doubt, that the project will be a winner for the greater organization. However there are already hurt feelings and damaged relationships. I am NOT the project manager, just a consultant, but I am sure I will have to suffer also. The good thing is that I have a long successful track record with this organization and I also have a secure fall-back position.

What am I doing? Running for cover? maybe or maybe not?  At the second highest level I checked to see how I was fairing and I am fine. It appears the actions of others on the team caused the reaction. When I run into the CEO, I will figure out what to say on the fly. With others on the project, I will act pleasant and professionally and not worry about what they may say, think, or feel about me.

I am at an age when I know that I am doing my best (or worst) and do not care one whit about "career" issues. Hopefully, everyone gets to that place in their professional life eventually.

So what's the point of this posting:

• Conventional wisdom often fails on the ground.
• Occasionally all your good work goes down the drain.
• Don't worry too much if you are doing your level best
• Act professionally and never hold a grudge when things don't go your way.
• Don't worry about what is said about you, your boss's opinion is all that counts.
• Live in the future and don't over dwell on the past.

So the final take away, Projects can be successful for the organization, but not always for the team; and In the words of the Rolling Stones:

You can't always get what you want, And if you try sometime you find, You get what you need.

Time flys when you are having a good time.

I just checked in to make a new posting here and found that I have been a "bad boy".  I have been gone for a month. It seemed like just yesterday.

That makes it a good time to review Dr Rogers' Rule No 1 and No 2.

Rule No. 1 If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. No matter what the goal, even managing artists, you set the measurements, set a baseline, and then measure your progress and report against the baseline. If you aren't measuring success or failure then you are not practicing good project management. You might be doing something else but it isn't project management.

OOPS! I set the measurement as a weekly one page blog. I failed to manage the measurement stage. Remember you get to set the metrics. My meetrics were one one-page blog post  each week.

 Rule No. 2 Failure to plan is a plan for failure. If you start a project (or any endeavor) without at least rudimentary plans you will be defeated, unless you are incredibly lucky.

OOPS Again! I didn't have a good plan for actualization. I failed to set a time and place for blogging and I fell behind and failed. I also took on a significant remodelling project that is on track for completion by March, but it was a tough start up.

How am I going to correct these failures?

1. Post the metrics in my office where I can see them.
2. Set a specific time and place each week to go to my blogging place and make my postings.
3. Simplify my life by dropping some other task.

Simplicity in plans and updates and following your own rules will help you succeed,.

As a teacher I can get away with a failure now and then. My failures rarely have a significant effect on others than myself. My successes I hope have more of an impact. However if you are managing projects that effect the lives of others and involve large teams you cannot fail to plan or measure. Make it a daily part of your lives.

Mea culpa! I will get back on track.

However as it is the solstice season my next post will be on Rule 8 Have Fun!