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Author: George Pitagorsky

George Pitagorsky, integrates core disciplines and applies people centric systems and process thinking to achieve sustainable optimal performance. He is a coach, teacher and consultant. George authored The Zen Approach to Project Management, Managing Conflict and Managing Expectations and IIL’s PM Fundamentals™. He taught meditation at NY Insight Meditation Center for twenty-plus years and created the Conscious Living/Conscious Working and Wisdom in Relationships courses. Until recently, he worked as a CIO at the NYC Department of Education.

Beginners Mind: Back to PM Basics

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles. 6 Comments on Beginners Mind: Back to PM Basics

pitagorski Feb25

Project management fads and fashions like entrepreneurial PM, Agile PM, earned value, and critical chain PM, come and go. Often they get folded into the overall knowledge base as skillful techniques. What they all have in common is the ability to wake us up a bit, focus our attention on our process and get us out of a rut.

People tend to get into a pattern of thinking and behavior, sticking with it even when it no longer works. We seek stability and certainty. We find it hard to break old habits and to break new ground. We tend to spend 100% of our time and energy on performing and not enough on the evaluation and refinement of our process. When we apply beginner’s mind, we are likely to come to performance with a fresh view, unencumbered by habits and preconceived ideas that are not relevant to the situation at hand.

When we recognize our unproductive tendencies and make a commitment to optimal performance, we choose to first become aware of our habits and blind spots, then to assess whether they need to be broken and then to doing something about it. We commit to being present and mindful and to creatively adapt to the needs of the moment. We commit to the courage to own up to our short comings and to do something about them.

In project management we need to go continuously back to basic principles and apply them, using appropriate tools and techniques, in a way that suits the need of the current situation.

What are the principles? I boil them down to:

  • Prepare – make sure your process is effective and that it suits your environment and project needs. Refine it over time based on past experience and best practice expertise.
  • Set Objectives – Know what you want to accomplish and why you want to accomplish it
  • Plan – Decide how you will go about accomplishing and managing the project, given the expected resources, environment, objectives, risks and uncertainties.
    • Set rational expectations and manage them throughout the project
  • Execute – Do the work
    • Adjust performance to meet the needs of the current situation,
  • Control – Observe the way the work is being done, deliverables are being delivered, schedule and budget constraints are being met, relationships are healthy and happy, etc.
    • Continuously refine the plan so that it increasingly reflects how the project will turn out
  • Close – end the project and release the product, review your performance and learn from it

This maps to Initiating, Planning, Executing, Controlling and Closing processes in the PMI model. Take note of the fact that while the process seems linear, it is not. It is an iterative refinement process in which planning, executing and controlling overlap and influence one another. Even aspects of closing occur while the project is being executed – why wait until it is all over to learn from experience and adjust the process.

These principles and the process they represent tell us what to do, but not how to do it. While the principles have stayed pretty much the same for many years, even they should be questioned. Don’t do anything by rote or because you have always done if that way. Question everything and adapt your process to the situation at hand.

The how to’s are many. For example you can control a project with earned value management using a sophisticated PM toolset or by a combination of scope, schedule and budget monitoring using Excel. The problem arises when you get to a point at which you completely identify the principles with the techniques. You use a technique habitually without thinking about alternatives. As soon as that happens, performance is likely to suffer.

The way to avoid this is to continuously manage your process.

Your process has multiple levels. On the surface is the day to day performance with its use of tools and techniques, at the next level is the management of that work, on a level underlying both of these is the interpersonal process of our relationships and our communication, and underpinning them all is the intrapersonal process, the way our mind works.

First, focus on the intrapersonal level, on yourself and your ability to mindfully perform your work, undistracted. At this level you train yourself to become responsive as opposed to reactive; to be accepting of your coworkers, managers, clients and other stakeholders, even when they behave irrationally. You give up the expectation that everything should be simple and divided into neat black and white compartments, and instead open to uncertainty, conflicting objectives, paradox and continuous change. You cultivate the courage to do what needs to be done to satisfy your needs and the needs of your organization or project.

This sets the stage for you to perform at the communication and relationship level, the most critical aspect of the entire process. It is here that we collaborate, manage expectations, issues and conflicts, make decisions, assess and improve performance. Without communication and healthy relationships performing and managing become dysfunctional and sub optimal.

Imagine an environment in which there is little or no formal process for managing requirements, project schedules are dictated from above, with little regard for the actual capacity of performers to hit their mandated targets and where products are released for sale or use before they are ready, just to meet an arbitrary deadline.

Sounds awful doesn’t it? Almost unbelievable that such an environment could exist in this day and age. But if it did, then the ability to apply your intrapersonal and interpersonal skills, would be the way to handle the situation. Even if your environment wasn’t quite that bad, you might find opportunities to improve your process applying these same skills.

You would be mindful of your position in the organization, the need to find a champion to drive interest and commitment to continue improvement. You would address issues with the right people in a way that made it clear that you were not blaming and complaining but we’re collaboratively seeking improvement. You would patiently do what you can to optimize the process within your scope of control, accepting the things outside of that scope that you cannot change. At some point you might recognize that working in a dysfunctional environment that is not changing is not for you, here is where the courage to make a radical change comes into play.

Note that we haven’t addressed the performance and management levels. These require far more time and space. They require courses or, at least, a series of articles. With attention to the intrapersonal and interpersonal process levels, there is a solid foundation for optimal performance at the other process levels.

In summary, make sure that you and those around you

  • Are aware of the basic principles of project management in a practical way, focusing on how the principles eliminate problems and promote success.
  • Understand your process and its complexity so you can all focus on the foundation skills at the intrapersonal and interpersonal levels
  • Commit to continuous improvement, not just paying lip service to it but actually spending the time and effort to hold performance reviews and translating findings into changes to the way the work is performed and managed.

For yourself, cultivate mindfulness, concentration and open minded thinking to set the foundation for optimal performance.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

Right Effort: Balancing Effort, Energy and Relaxation

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Right Effort: Balancing Effort, Energy and Relaxation

Who doesn’t want to perform optimally?

Performance is action to accomplish a project, task or function. It may relate to painting, dance, software development, accounting, cooking, or living effectively in a relationship. High functioning people want to optimize their performance to make sure they sustainably meet ever-changing success criteria, like satisfying customers, staying on budget, etc., while adjusting for current conditions and balancing thoroughness and efficiency so as to not overtax the resources at hand.

Performance management gurus agree that the right balance between effort and relaxation is required to optimize performance. Over exertion leads to burnout while under exertion leads nowhere. A Buddhist parable speaks of the need for the player of a stringed instrument to think of his effort in the same way he tunes his instrument so the strings are neither too tight nor too loose. Too tight, the string breaks. Too loose, the sound is muddled. With the right level of tension, there is music.

The building Blocks of Optimal Performance

The building blocks of optimal performance are confidence, effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. These are relevant in each performance realm, for example in the arts, crafts, business, personal or spiritual realms. In each realm, specific knowledge and skills are needed, but the effective application of these rests on the five building blocks.

Confidence in one’s approach, technique, knowledge and in the ability to achieve one’s goal, fuels effort. Effort enables mindfulness, concentration and action. Mindfulness makes it possible to objectively observe and assess current circumstances and to concentrate. Concentration enhances the ability to act. These lead to wisdom, evidenced by the ability to apply skills and knowledge to meet the needs of each situation most effectively. Wisdom increases confidence.

Effort and Energy

In projects, effort is the amount of labor applied to a task. If a task requires three people working two hours per day for ten days the effort required for that task is 60 person hours. Effort, in a more general sense, is the use of energy to do something. It is exertion. In physics, effort is force applied against inertia. It is the force required by a machine to accomplish work.

Effort requires energy. Energy is the capacity to do work. Effort is the application of energy. Informally, energy means that hard to define force or quaity that characterizes a person, group or place. For example, you can say that “new members easily picked up on the team’s positive energy, it fueled their performance.” or “that guys negative energy drained everyone he came in contact with.” This energy modifies the raw energy and makes it more or less likely to be transformed into useful effort.

Making the right effort to accomplish what you want to accomplish is a challenge. It is a complex blending of the effective use of energy with a worthy direction or goal.

When we apply this to project work, we decide what we want to accomplish and identify the people with the right knowledge, skills and motivation to get the job done. This is the raw energy. That energy is enhanced by establishing a supportive environment – positive energy created by effective communication, team building, collaboration, effective leadership, and candid, appreciative feedback. The energy is directed into useful effort by identifying and scheduling the tasks required to accomplish objectives. Scheduling is done with recognition that the pace of the work must be set to create the right balance of effort and energy.

Over exertion

With respect to the effective use of energy, one extreme is to go all out, never stop, grit your teeth and go at it until you are done or until you are exhausted. When you are exhausted you fall down and rest until you have enough energy to go at it again and then you work, work, work. In this extreme, if the work takes mental effort, there is a sense of brain fatigue, a tightness in the head and around the eyes. Like your head is in a vice. If the work is more physical, then the muscles are straining and you are pushing with the last drop of your strength.

There is a place for this kind of physical effort, but it can only be sustained for short time, and it can be physically and mentally harmful. As for the mental effort, it seems that the more you push and strain your brain the less you accomplish. A relaxed mind is a productive mind. A relaxed and well tuned body is a body that can operate at peak levels. Up tight is not right.

Over exertion can be caused by fear of failure or retribution, a misplaced sense of urgency or a lack of understanding of the consequences of excessive effort.

Note that there is a significant difference between peak effort and excessive effort. Circumstances often make it necessary to work intensely at peak performance levels. Excessive effort is overdoing it at the expense of your ability to sustain effective effort.

In projects, scheduling that overloads resources and requires them to work excessive overtime under pressure to perform the impossible is counter productive. It saps physical and mental energy which in turn leads to suboptimal performance and loss of the most valuable resources.

Under Exertion

The other extreme is to take it too easy. There is no push; not enough energy. The attitude might be “Maybe the job gets done, maybe not.” The person working at this extreme may lack motivation. Sure there is no strain but there is also no gain. Project schedules may be made with too much “fat”.

Insufficient effort may be the result of chronically having too much to do, having unclear or unstated objectives, working with an approach that doesn’t work, never seeing any fruits from the effort, a poor work ethic or a lack of energy. A low energy environment in which there is little or no accountability influences people to slack off and under perform. Goals that are not aligned with personal values sap energy and lead to insufficient effort. Expectations, in the form of overly expansive schedules and quality criteria, may be set low, creating a situation in which performers are not motivated to work hard and smart.

The Right Balance

Interestingly, under exertion and over exertion have similar effects. They both sap energy and create an environment that perpetuates suboptimal performance. High performers are as likely to leave low energy environments as they are to leave environments that thrive on chronic over exertion.

The right balance of effort, rest and relaxation is dynamic. A continuous monitoring of the needs of the situation and the capacity of the resources enables adjustments to maximize energy and sustain effective effort.

Rest and relaxation must be valued as much as effort in order to motivate people to take the breaks they need to recover from periods of exertion and to absorb the lessons learned. Rest is the absence of effort. Relaxation is the absence of unnecessary tension. Optimal performers are relaxed when they are at rest and when they are at work. To rest while the mind is churning away about how quickly one needs to get back to work is not particularly restful. To perform while uptight about the fear of failure or about the things you do not like about your co-workers is counterproductive. To perform happily, mindfully focused and with only the level of tension required to get the job done leads to optimal performance.

To strike the right balance try the following:

  • Before you begin an effort, make sure you and everyone involved know what you are going to do, why you are going to do it and how you will proceed.
  • Make sure that your goal is realistic so that it can be accomplished under the conditions at hand.
  • Make sure that the goal is aligned with your values.
  • Set things up so that you can see signs of accomplishment.
  • Step back from time to time and see how far you have come, what you have accomplished and what you have left to do.
  • Fine-tune your approach by reflecting on it and seeing how you can improve things going forward.
  • Create a comfortable work environment.
  • Relax both while working and when you are not at it.
  • Have fun. Remember it is all an interesting game.
  • Give it your full attention and effort to enjoy the heartfelt pleasure that comes from being one pointed and in the flow of work or play; not wasting energy.
  • Let the effort be its own reward.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

Why Do Things the Hard Way

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on Why Do Things the Hard Way

Why do things the hard way? The hard way takes more time, requires more effort, is usually frustrating, is more prone to error and generally doesn’t work as well. The hard way is more likely to involve rework and unnecessary conflict.

Does anyone of sound mind consciously decide to do things the hard way? It usually happens because they didn’t plan effectively or they followed an approach without assessing its quality. Often doing things the hard way over and over again happens because no one takes the time to learn from experience or question the status quo. Sometimes, however, people take a harder way because it minimizes risk, making it the easy way under some circumstances. Sometimes the hard way is chosen for the challenge or as an experiment to see if it is better than some other way.

Effective Planning

Effective planning means taking the time and effort to identify the optimal approach for doing what you want to do, laying out the tasks, roles and responsibilities and figuring out the time it will take and how much it will cost. It includes assessing and managing risk and establishing procedures. Planning, appropriately scaled, applies not only to big projects but to just about anything you want to do, from the simplest tasks to the largest programs. Identifying the optimal approach, the best way, implies looking at alternatives. Effective planning makes sure you don’t do things the hard way.

The key principle is to think about what you want to do and how best to do it. Often, it seems that “just doing it” is the easy way. And, for the moment that may very well be so. All the thinking, communicating, and the time and effort needed to explore different approaches, lay out the steps, identify dependencies and all the rest are bypassed. So why not just do the work and get it done? The answer is that “just doing” the work may lead to doing things the hard way and not only once but perpetually. The question to ask is “what is the cost and risk of not consciously deciding on the best way to proceed before proceeding?”

Working with Best Practices and SOPs

Doing tasks for the first time is a challenge. Planning in this case includes taking the time to find a best practice or standard operating procedure (SOP). These are left by others who have performed similar work previously. It is like reading the instructions for putting a new gadget together before diving in to doing it. If you read the instructions you might avoid frustrating rework or realize that a prescribed sequence of steps makes the job easier or maybe that a part or tool you will need is missing.

If there is no SOP or set of instructions, then you are on your own to find a best way to proceed. The first time you perform the task you might be doing it the hard way. Without a baseline for comparison you really can’t tell. You can still plan, laying out different scenarios, modeling the work to see how it might turn out under diffent conditions.

Afterwards, you can reflect on how it went and identify specific places where you think you could have done it better. Write it all down and leave a record for the next person to use. The next person could very well be you coming back to the task after enough time to have forgotten how you did it the first time. By reflecting on and communicating about your experience, you make it possible for the next person to do the task to take the easy way.

But of course, SOPs and best practices are not always perfect or even very good at all. Sometimes you do things the hard way because you follow SOPs or apply so-called best practices. There is a need to use your discretion, if the situation allows for that. When you come to a step that looks as if following the SOP is not going to be productive, don’t do it. Let your intuition, informed by your experience and intelligence be your guide and go off the beaten path, experimenting with alternatives. Ideally, after you are finished, you will leave comments on the SOP to make life easier for those who follow.

If the situation dos not allow for deviation from SOPs, then sometimes the best you can do is to critique the SOP after the fact and do what you can to have it changed.

Working With Complex Plans

When working with complex projects there maybe a methodology and/or project plan templates. There may also be plans and archives of past projects that are similar to yours. These can minimize the time and effort required for planning. However, as with SOPs and best practices, the old way may not be the best way.

The more complex a project is the more likely it is that there are unique aspects that require skillfully charting a new course through changing conditions, individual differences in stakeholder personalities, experience and skill levels.

Creativity, risk assessment and remediation, and the mindful use of past experience taken together are likely result in finding the best way forward.

The Best Way Is Not Always the Easiest Way

You might ask if the best way is always the easiest way.

The answer is not so simple. It depends on how you define best, hard and easy. Here I define the best way as the the way that leads to the desired result with the least amount of time, cost and effort, and with reasonable risk. It is the right way, where right means optimal for the current situation. The easy way is the way that minimizes effort, stress and frustration. The hard way, as stated earlier, is the way that takes more time, requires more effort, is usually frustrating to yourself and others, is more prone to error and generally doesn’t work as well. The hard way is more likely to involve rework and unnecessary conflict.

The Risk Factor

The risk factor is significant. Doing things in what seems to be the easiest way may open you up to risks that could be avoided or minimized by adding some extra work. For example, the easy way may be easy 70% of the time but 30% of the time it turns out to be either a hard way or the wrong way. Sometimes what seems to be the easiest way runs the risk of hitting a roadblock like not complying with some regulation or policy, getting caught and having to take the time and effort to satisfy the administrators who caught you. The easy way turns out to be the hard way. The hard way, (following the defined process) turns out to be the easiest way.

Sometimes taking the easy way turns out to be deadly, as it was in the many instances of people ignoring potentially dangerous circumstances, like ignoring warnings about the ‘O’ Ring that brought down the space shuttle Challenger.

Some might argue that it is easier to measure once and then cut. Best practices say measure multiple times before cutting. Paradoxically, It is harder initially, but overall it is the easy way.

The Goal

Doing things the best way is the goal. The best way may seem to be more difficult than its alternatives, but it is worth the extra time, cost and effort. It minimizes rework and risk and is an optimal fit for the situation at hand. So don’t take the easy way out, and, at the same time don’t do it the hard way, if you can help it. Plan, judiciously follow best practices and SOPs, and consider risk to find the best way to proceed. Monitor progress and be ready to change course as needed.

Reflect on what you have done and learn from experience, passing the learning on to others.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

Everyone Needs Project Managers and Business Analysts

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles. 6 Comments on Everyone Needs Project Managers and Business Analysts

Everyone needs someone who is good at analyzing requirements, communicating with stakeholders and who is good at managing projects.

This article is for Project Managers (PMs) and Business Analysts (BAs) to reflect on the importance of their roles and on the foundation skills that span from relationship skills to analytical skills. It is important to step back and look in on ourselves every so often so we don’t forget how important we are and the skill sets we need to succeed.

PMs and BAs are related. They may be professionals in their disciplines or they may be part time, incidental PMs or BAs. They share a tendency toward left brain (analytical and linear) thinking. Their roles overlap. The work they do is often unappreciated because it is future focused, gets in the way of operations, costs a lot, holds people accountable, and causes change.

But where would our organizations be without these roles being competently played?

Why Project Management

Without project management, there is a strong likelihood that things will most likely stay the same or get worse. Things will change, of course, since everything does. But, they might change too slowly or in the wrong direction, or chaotically, at great cost.

Why would things most likely stay the same? It is because projects are the means for consciously implementing orderly change. Why might things get worse? Because, without orderly change, systems tend to degrade over time.

Without someone with the time and skills to describe what needs to be done, how much it will cost, how it will be done at what risk, etc. to executives (sponsors, funders and approvers), peers and subordinates (the ones who will make it happen and/or live with the outcome), either projects never get off the ground or they flounder. The worse case is where projects plow ahead and waste tons of money and frustrate everyone.

Project managers coordinate, control and communicate. They make sure stakeholder expectations are rational and that they are met.

Why Business Analysis

Without someone with the skills of a business analyst, the time to exercise them and access to stakeholders, it is likely that systems and procedures will be undefined, and not subject to regular review and improvement efforts. It is also likely that projects will stretch on because requirements have not been fully and accurately defined.

What are the skills of a business analyst?

  1. The ability to use a variety of tools and methods to describe organizations, their processes, and their products and organizational change requirements, in layers of detail and from different perspectives;
  2. The ability to facilitate communication among the stakeholders;
  3. The ability to create useful documents;
  4. An understanding of the organization, people and technology;
  5. The ability to assess how technology may be used and the interface between humans and machines;
  6. The ability to translate and facilitate communication between technologists and not so technology savvy stakeholders.

How Do the Roles Get Played?

How do we manage to get these two essential roles played, particularly in budget constrained and staff constrained organizations?

In rich organizations and those that truly value the need for PM and BA roles, the roles are often played by professionals, particularly when it comes to large projects. But even in those organizations it is likely that professional PMs and BAs are scarce resources and become a constraint on project start up and performance.

Leverage

To address the need for more PM and BA resources than you may have, you can leverage professional BA and PM experts by having them play a consultative training/coaching role and by establishing guidelines, checklists and templates.

Guidelines, checklists and templates address the concrete, left brain aspects of the PM and BA roles. They lay out the specific content, steps and documents that must be created and maintained. They also are a means for promoting best practices that are often not known by incidental PMs or BAs. For example there is need to address risk in a project and to identify assumptions. This is (or should be) basic knowledge to the professional. Having a checklist or template that explicitly calls for risk analysis and management, makes it clear that these aspects of the project must be addressed.

In addition to risk guidelines, guidelines, templates and checklists should cover meeting agendas and minutes, project charters, cost/benefits analysis, requirements documents, use case descriptions, project plan models, status reports, test plans, document management, and others.

The more the process is defined and documented, the easier it is for people who do not perform it regularly. Of course, no amount of documentation and training will be enough. Experience is necessary. Incidental PMs and BAs need support and an understanding that both BA and PM are complex processes that must be adapted to the needs of each situation. You cannot just follow a script.

Professional Support

Professionals should be there to support incidental practitioners in their use of project management and business analysis tools. Professionals should understand that the use of tools must be scaled to the competency levels of those using them and to the complexity of the project at hand. For example there is no need to use a project management tool with earned value analysis when doing a small and simple project for which an Excel spreadsheet will do. Similarly, for a small and relatively simple project, formal data modeling may not be necessary.

Choosing the Right People – Behavioral and Analytical Skills

PMs and BAs must effectively blend analysptical and behaviors skills.

Behavioral skills are key when negotiating schedules and estimates, coordinating with vendors, functional managers and other stakeholders, and eliciting requirements, leading requirements and design workshops and creating presentations and documents to communicate business cases and requirements.

When choosing the people who will play these mission critical roles, recognize that behavioral or soft skills are more complex and difficult to master than the concrete skills that can easily be learned using courses, guidelines, checklists and templates.

The behavioral skills revolve around communication, facilitation and collaboration. Adaptability and sensitivity to the needs of others are traits that support these skills. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a measure of the degree to which an individual is aware enough of his/her emotional responses and the responses of others to avoid reactive behavior and work effectively with others. High EI is an important attribute for PMs and BAs.

At the same time, the ability to apply analysis is critical. The BA must be able to see the environment as a system and depict that system in layers of detail, from multiple perspectives. The PM must be able to decompose a complex project into discrete phases, activities, and tasks in a hierarchical work breakdown structure. Doing these decomposition and visualization tasks require the ability to step back and analyze

Individuals with the ability to facilitate communication, relate to others with sensitivity, and the ability to analyze, take multiple views, communicate complex concepts in text and graphics, and use the tools of the trade are somewhat rare. A small team will do, as long as everyone understands their role and how to work synergistically. Create a balance among left brain oriented and right brain oriented team members, exploit the strengths of each to accomplish the PM and BA roles.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

Say What You Think to Promote Project Success

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles. 7 Comments on Say What You Think to Promote Project Success

Not speaking up about controversial issues can cause project failure.

It takes courage to speak up in the face of a perceived flaw or error. This is particularly true when the idea being critiqued has been put forward by someone in a hierarchy above you. First, you might be wrong. Then again you might be right and subject to firing or other penalties. Courage is not enough, though. Timing and diplomacy are also required. It is all about saying the right things at the right time to the right people in the right way.

The Trip to Abilene

The Trip to Abilene is a story by Jerry B. Harvey about how four intelligent and well meaning people took an unpleasant trip to somewhere that none of them wanted to go. The Abilene paradox is a phenomena that takes its name from this anecdote.

The Abilene paradox is the cause of many a misstep by organizations. People do not speak their mind when what is in their mind is opposed to the perceived general opinion of the people around them. Note that the Abilene paradox is different from group think. With group think, people are convinced that the group’s idea is sound. In the paradox, people are consciously aware that they oppose the idea and are acting contrary to their own thoughts and insights.

People don’t speak up because they may think that what they have to say is unimportant, possibly stupid, and/or bound to upset someone. They may fear retribution and censure. Sometimes this fear is quite rational. There are many examples of whistle blowers being persecuted. Many examples of the negative effects of arguing against the favored idea, design, plan, etc. Further, it takes effort to come to the table with a compelling argument. Harvey, quoted Herbert porter a Nixon campaign aid as saying that he “was not one to stand up in a meeting and say that this should be stopped”, a decision he then attributed to “the fear of the group pressure that would ensue, of not being a team player.” Porter was referring to the Watergate scandal.

Few will risk saying that the emperor is not wearing any clothes. Hans Christian Anderson’s tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes is another way of bringing out the difficulty of saying what you think. In this story, a vain emperor is tricked into believing that he was getting a suit of clothes that could only be seen by the most intelligent people. No one but a child had the courage to appear unintelligent and tell the Emperor that he wasn’t wearing any clothes. The emperor himself was too vain to admit that even he couldn’t see the new suit.

Whatever the reason, not speaking up is a problem.

Example

For example, in one project to implement cultural and technological change in a large organization, the project sponsor had in mind aggressive objectives coupled with an aggressive time line and a limited budget. When he stated his desires to his direct reports some of them thought the objectives were great while others hated them. No one argued. Some thought “nothing I could say is going to change the situation so why bother.” Others thought “the change is going to fail, all I have to do is wait.” Still others thought “I don’t want to be seen as a naysayer.”

With tacit consensus on the idea, the next step was to define the approach. How would the project achieve the change within the time frame and budget? Here experts were called in to design and estimate the various parts of the project. Some came back to their managers with the bad news that it was impossible to hit their targets and therefor the overall target could not be met. Whether Driven by the desire to meet the target date or the fear to tell the sponsor that the target date was not viable, the middle managers pushed their experts to make it work.

It is easy to make a complex project work on paper. The realm of planning is conceptual. A complex environment is simulated and, for the most part, over simplified. Planners and estimators can adjust the plan to fit any target date and budget. This may be done intentionally to sell some services or meet an imposed demand from above. Alternatively, It may happen inadvertently because the planners are too optimistic and they don’t adequately manage risk.

Based on an overly aggressive, unrealistic plan the project was approved and kicked off. Expectations were set in the minds of the sponsors and other stakeholders. Off the organization went on a trip to Abilene.
Once the work started and people began to interact, the real world of complexity, ambiguity, resistance and poor communication came into view. To compound the problem, status and progress reports were influenced by fear and the Abilene paradox continued to manifest itself in the area of project reporting and control.

Open Discussion At the Right Time

If one of the many people who knew that there were good reasons to not go on the trip had spoken up and put forward his/her reasoning the others may have listened, thought about the ideas, had a discussion about differences of opinion, risks, rewards, etc. and then made up their minds. The outcome can be far better when there is open discussion.

Doing this at the right time in the life of a project is important. Open discussion requires that people speak their mind in a constructive attempt to reach mutual understanding and agreement. When initiating, and planning a project it is best practice to establish a formal process to cut through the causes of people holding back. Open discussion generally means not only being open to conflicting ideas but to actually promoting conflicts by requiring that alternative ideas are raised even when it seems as if everyone is behind the idea that is on the table. Risk assessment is an example of how a team can create the space and give people permission to “be negative”. It motivates people to bring up issues that in the absence of the risk assessment context would make them seem like they not are being team players. By making risk assessment part of planning as well as part of any major decision there is a greater likelihood that open discussion will take place at the right time.

Sometimes we find that people speak out after what they have to say can no longer be acted upon. Instead of arguing about the details of requirements when the product is delivered, discuss or even argue about them when the requirements are being defined. A statement like “I could have told you so” is a sign of dysfunction. If you think something is wrong, say so.

Diplomacy

Diplomacy is artfully dealing with people with sensitivity while being effective. It is knowing the right way to say the right thing in a situation. Diplomacy is necessary as a balance for the assertiveness that is required to be candid. It can be taken too far and then be used as a way to avoid saying anything that might be disturbing to anyone. But in the right measure it is an important skill. It enables a person to say something that is controversial in a way that is least likely to arouse hostility while promoting healthy conflict.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that unless people say what they think at the right time and in the right way about key issues, projects and processes in general are more likely to fail. Commit to being candid and to taking the risk to say something you think will make you unpopular. If you can, make it as easy as possible for others to say what they think.

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