Thinking Faster

Book Review: Making Things Happen

I've had a chance to do something few people ever do - read a book I really enjoyed about what must appear to be a very dull subject.  Well, if you are familiar with Scott Berkun and his writing, you'll know why.  Scott's latest is really an update to an existing book - The Art of Project Management.  The new book Making Things Happen looks at all the facets of project management and provides a number of insights, case studies and exercises to help anyone - the novice, the experienced project manager or people in between - plan, run and complete a complex project.

What Scott brings to bear, and what makes the book approachable for anyone, is a writing style and communication capability that demystifies the aspects of project management.  His book is broken into three sections:

1. Plans
2. Skills
3. Management

In each of these sections he looks at a wide array of topics to help you improve your project management abilities.  As I noted earlier, what differentiates this book from a PMI text is that it is actually readable and can be comprehended.  Rather than drill down into the 12 levels of change or eight letter acronyms, Scott lays out the skills necessary to succeed and places them in a chronological order, so that you can stay one step ahead of the project team if you need to.

Quibbles?  I have a few.  Most have to do with the fact that the book, while it portends to be about managing any project, really strikes me as a book about managing software projects.  Perhaps that's because that's my background, or I simply recognize a lot of the issues.  Perhaps it's also because most of his examples come from his days at Microsoft.  I think there's not enough focus on budgeting and the costs of managing a project and the inevitable tradeoffs (you can have feature X if we slip the budget or add more costs). Finally, I'd like to see more focus on getting in front of the ultimate customer and understanding their wants and needs, since too often requirements and specifications are built from the whole cloth rather than good customer insight.

Beyond these small issues there lies a book that is very accessible and readable.  Anyone could pick up this book and understand the issues and challenges of planning and managing a complex project, and would learn something in the process.  I was initially prepared to simply scan the book, but I found myself reading it carefully.  It held my interest, which I have to admit is not easy to do.  I'd recommend you read this book even if you aren't interested in project management, if for nothing else to see how to communicate relatively complex issues in a way that many people will find approachable.

Model Behavior

Everyone wants to know how to "change" their corporate culture to achieve the goals they want.  In some cases this means more risk taking.  In other cases it means more productivity.  In any case, corporate change happens in two ways:  external forces and internal behaviors.

An external force is usually not a good thing.  It means that something or someone has created a dramatic change that forces the organization to sit up and take notice.  This action could be a merger or acquisition, a significant shift in the competitive landscape or some other seismic change.  In these instances, the individuals within an organization are shocked out of their regular cultural attitudes and routines and often have a new culture or methodology imposed on them.

Behavior modelling is probably the most effective way to impact a culture from within.  While this sounds almost Freudian, the approach is very simple.  As Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world.  In other words, model the behaviors that you wish to see others display.  As an example:

In any firm, meeting attendance and timeliness are a cultural phenomenon, usually set by the management team.  If the most senior executive who attends a meeting is habitually late, then the team receives a signal that the executive does not value the meeting or timeliness.  This behavior is then copied throughout the rest of the organization.  If, however, the executive is prompt and expects prompt attendance, then the rest of the organization will model that behavior.  The same goes for using a PDA or Blackberry in a meeting.  If one person, no matter how senior or self-important, is allowed to regularly "check out" of a meeting to interact with their BlackBerry, then the precedent is set for everyone to copy.  Now, these examples have to do with modeling behavior around meetings, but ultimately the culture is defined by expectations and the behavior we as leaders exhibit in our daily work.

If you want to change your culture, change your behaviors and model the behavior that you want to achieve.

Identifying what's important

Doing some debriefing on a recent project, we were a little disappointed to discover that our carefully planned communication campaign that ran in conjunction with the project did not seem to create as much awareness and enthusiasm as we had thought it would.  Drilling deeper, we discovered that our plans had been relatively solid, but we had not anticipated the amount of inbound communication that an average person receives in this organization.  Our messages were lost in a constant stream of newsletters, emails, announcements and other messaging the company and its lines of business produce.

Frankly, in many businesses the problem of communication is bifurcated.  In some organizations there is simply not enough communication, so people are unaware of corporate strategies and their roles within the corporate structure.  In other firms, such as the one I'm referring to, there is an overabundance of communication, and once everything is important, then nothing is important.  What we discovered is that people simply did not have the ability to filter out what was important in their messaging and inboxes, so anything that was not sent from a person they knew and trusted (even within the organization) was simply discarded.  In this organization, it is not unusual to receive 20-30 emails a day with updates on product announcements, new ventures, strategic initiatives and so forth.  This firm, and others like it, have lost the meaning of communication and are now "spraying and praying", hoping that the right people will receive the message, be able to identify its importance to them, and then act on the message.

There's a fine balance somewhere in the middle - understanding who needs a specific message, what they need to understand about that message, the channels that should be used to deliver that message and in what terms the message should be delivered.  In firms where little information is shared, people make assumptions based on what they know or the rumors that float around, then act in what they think is their best interest.  In firms where too much information (really - data) is pressed upon individuals, then the best interest of the receiver is to screen out anything that does not appear to be immediately important and relevant.  Which means, in our case, that messages from the COO about a very strategic project impacting a large percentage of the population WERE NEVER READ.  Why?  Too much communication and not enough relevancy of the communications lead the receivers to simply screen it all out.

It's time for a rethinking of corporate internal communications.  In some firms, we've reached a point where there is simply too much of a good thing.  Every project, campaign and program should be forced through a vetting process to determine how critical the messaging is, what the appropriate audience is, how frequently they need to receive the message and what the appropriate channels are for the messaging.  Right now the answers appear to be:  Exceptionally critical, everyone, all the time, in every channel.  If that's the case, why do we need communication staff?

Book Review: Groundswell

It seems only natural to blog about a book like Groundswell, a book recently published by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff from Forrester Research.  After all, the book is about the growing importance of social networking applications - blogs being a big part of that phenomenon.

Li and Bernoff define the Groundswell as a spontaneous movement of people using online tools to connect, take charge of their own experience and get what they need - from each other instead of from companies.  The book looks at the nascent and growing power of informal communication networks using social networking tools - blogs especially, but also social networks and virtual worlds, wikis, online forums, ratings and reviews, tagging and rss feeds.  If you've been online lately, you've used one or more of these tools and techniques.  What Li and Bernoff are interested in is how these tools and techniques create a completely new dialog between:

• A company and its customers
• The employees within a company
• Customer to customer beyond the scope or control of a company
• Individuals with shared interests

All of this done on the fly, with little centralized control.

The book breaks out into a number of sections.  Early in the book, the authors review why the groundswell is taking off and how to participate, and they identify the "tools" - blogs, wikis and so on - that drive the groundswell.  Then they introduce the Social Technographic profile, which is meant to provide profiling on how a segment of the population is participating in the groundswell using these tools.  Once this platform is built, the authors then look at how to:

• Listen to the groundswell - gain insights from what is written
• Talk to the groundswell - using blogs and communities
• Energize the groundswell - charging up your best online customers
• Embracing the groundswell - including customers as collaborators

Finally, the book looks at a couple of examples of firms that have plunged in head first to gain advantage interacting with these tools and working closely with customers and prospects through the groundswell.

What I like about this book

What's great about this book is that if you and your team know very little about the emerging set of online networking, collaboration and communication tools, the book provides an excellent primer early on, describing what each tool is, how it is used and its benefits.  The book is full of excellent examples of firms that have used these tools to advance the interaction between themselves and their customers and prospects. 

What I'm skeptical about

The book seems to approach everything from a perspective of "What can the groundswell do for my company?"  As a blogger, I tend to think that the "groundswell" - if that's what we are to be called now - expects honest communication and open dialog.  The Groundswell to me seems to be more about Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park in London, where anyone with an opinion can bring a soapbox and say what they want to say.  If your message is interesting or vital, you'll draw a crowd and grow a network.  Many people writing and listening in the "groundswell" are quick to distinguish between "honest" opinion and perspective and "marketing" or PR.  I think Groundswell doesn't spend enough time making distinctions between these points.  A poorly managed online presence will be quickly sniffed out - especially one where a firm intends to "use" the groundswell for a marketing advantage.  It's important to "give" to the groundswell as much as you plan to "get" from it.

This book accurately portrays what any group - a commercial entity, a non-profit, even a government agency - could do leveraging the groundswell.  The tools are the easy part - what's hard is opening up to the dialog.  Can your organization bear the criticism and questions about its products and services, as well as bask in the positive glow of good feedback? 

I was a little disappointed in the wrap up.  The authors demonstrate throughout the book deep knowledge of the current state of the groundswell.  But as industry analysts and forecasters of future trends, they spend disappointingly little time on the future of the groundswell.  Given that almost all of these tools (blogs, wikis, tagging, RSS Feeds) are disaggregated services offered by very small companies or as open source or freeware, what is going to happen?  Will we see a consolidation of these tools into some sort of "ERP" for the groundswell?  Will I need to turn to del.ici.ous for tagging and Blogger for Blogging and PBWiki for my Wiki, or will these combine?  What are larger firms to do that may have concerns about disaggregated, third party solutions run by very small firms that may not be able to demonstrate longevity or the ability to manage critical, sensitive communication links to customers?  Given that the two authors make their living as industry analysts, I would have expected a much more detailed look at potential future scenarios.

Conclusion

This book is great if you are just starting out as a "newby" trying to understand how to join the online conversation.  Whether you want to tag and aggregate or find interesting feeds or information, or want to actively contribute through ratings, feedback or by blogging, or create an entirely new social network, this book has great advice for you. 

Choosing Civility

Every once in a while an idea comes along that is so simple, but so profound, that you have to stop and consider it.  Last week in our local paper a book was profiled that is exactly that - simple, yet profound.

The book is Choosing Civility:  The twenty-five rules of Considerate Conduct.  You can find it on Amazon here if you are interested.  What's interesting to me about this is that is has all of the features and characteristics of books like "Everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten" and others of that ilk.

The book is basically a compendium of sayings that are meant to help each of us live in a way that treats others as we'd want to be treated.  The author's goal was to help people to be "kind human beings".  A lot of the sayings in the book will seem obvious and repetitious on first reflection.  To wit:

• Pay attention
• Acknowledge others
• Think the best
• Listen
• Be inclusive
• Speak kindly
• Don't speak ill
• Accept and give praise

And so forth.  Really, everything you should have learned in Sunday School or Kindergarten or some other place.   However, work, job pressure, life's demands and a host of other challenges often drive out these motivations and they are replaced with ones that are often "me-centric".  For example, when I am in a hurry, I always wonder why all these crazy drivers won't just get out of my way.  I guess when I'm not in a hurry, there's another driver thinking the same thing about me.

The author's point is not that we don't know these things, but that we don't PRACTICE these things.  His goal, I think, is to bring all of us back to the basics.  If each of us took a little more time practicing these concepts - no matter how obvious, no matter how small - then perhaps we can all function a little more effectively in life.

Many of us constantly seek the Grand Unifying Theory - the one philosophy or concept that brings it all together and provides the final insight.  Perhaps it's really just a handful of simple rules that will make us all more productive, effective, civil and happy.

Truth over harmony

Working with a partner firm not too long ago, I heard that one of their base beliefs was to value "truth over harmony".  I wrote that down at the time and decided to write about it, since I thought it was probably one of the most productive concepts I've heard in quite a while.

Truth over harmony posits that too often we interact in ways that shade the truth, or simply avoid the truth to maintain some semblance of working harmony in an organization or team.  Often, the naked truth about the quality of a person's work, or their commitment, or their ideas, can be hard to deliver.  So, instead of telling the straightforward truth, we skirt the issue, avoid the decision and continue on.  I've worked in larger corporations where individuals were actively disengaged from the actual decisions and workflow, since no one had the guts to tell them that they were being cut out of the process due to poor work habits or low quality output.  Rather than tell a person that they needed to improve their capabilities and offer coaching or training, or suggest a new position or career, these individuals were sent to a small backwater and given special assignments that kept them out of the way.

Valuing harmony over truth means that eventually we have two work streams - the one that's defined on paper and the one that actually occurs in practice.  We find ways to work around individuals since we are concerned that their input won't be valuable, they'll take too long to accomplish a task or their feelings will be hurt if we reject their ideas.  What happens next is an informal process is developed and more and more work is heaped on the people who are willing to take on the work or are judged to be able to create "results".

Clearly, dealing with the truth - telling people why their work isn't up to snuff and helping them improve, or working through a long-simmering dispute rather than diverting around it - takes time.  But as these workarounds and dodges become ingrained, entirely new work environments are created - which actually cut out a significant portion of the workforce.  So a small number of people is performing virtually no value added work, while the rest of the organization finds ways to tip toe around these folks.

Telling the truth can be hard, and perhaps we all need a bit thicker skin and to learn how to break bad news to people who may need to hear it.  Unlike Lake Woebegone, we can't all be above average.  We all have our weaknesses and blindspots that can be improved, but too often we are unaware of the impact these are having since no one will tell us.  Another analogy that rings true here is the removal of a band-aid.  You can pull it off fast with a lot of short, sharp pain, or remove it slowly with less pain.  Or I guess in some cases you can simply ignore it and hope it will go away, which is the prevailing management style in some organizations - ignore the low performers and instead of training them or coaching them, hope they'll go away.

Does your workplace make you stupid?

I was wandering around in a client's office recently and was simply overwhelmed by the number of people who were "hot desking" on one floor.  That is, most of these people have no permanent home in the office, they simply come in and pick up any materials and go to the first open desk.  Many actually work from home and come in for meetings or other events.  They all had access to a PC, a computer monitor and about three feet of desk space, but the partitions were only about 3 feet high and there were people on the left and the right within three or four feet.  Conversations on the phone had to be taken in other areas since the people were so close together.

I recognize that flexible design and smart allocation of floor space is all the rage.  Permanent offices gave way to cubicles, which are now giving way to working from home or hot desking.  However, these trends don't portend well for knowledge workers.  I think in many cases these office situations create difficulties in working together and in coherent organized thought.

Right now I am writing this is a hotel room and can clearly hear the conversation in the next room.  It is hard to keep a clear train of thought even though the voices are muffled.  In many offices, including my own, people who work in cubicles wear headphones to listen to music or simply block out the surrounding noise.  There are two issues with this - cubicles and hot desks were supposed to make the "free flow" of information and communication easier.  Since so much of our work is caught up in communication, many of us have to actively  block out all the conversation around us.  And, as we block it out, we become less aware to what's going on.  Additionally, if you want to have a private conversation, you almost have to go outside or in the hallway to speak to someone without everyone else overhearing your call, so this just distracts individuals from work.

We often ask people for their best thoughts and best thinking, yet we place them in work situations - cubes, hot desks and conference rooms - that are not meant to promote good thinking.  Cubes and hot desks were developed more for space planning and flexibility, not for quiet contemplation or thinking.  Conference rooms, however, probably belong in one of Dante's levels of hell.  Who can get anything done in most conference rooms?  Too often they are too small, too poorly lit and nothing seems to work in any of the conference rooms I've been in.  Going into some conference rooms is almost like entering a jail cell.

Next, consider the decoration and personalization of the office space.  In one client's space I was in recently, the client noted that individuals had two choices about their cubes - whether or not to have a specific shelf or a coat hook.  Everything else was defined in advance.  Everything was dull gray, every cube like every other cube.  A vista of sameness distinguished only by random shelves or coat hooks.  The wall are beige or grey, with drop ceiling tiles.  Little natural light.  Must  escape  dullness ....

As managers we ask people to commit a significant portion of their time and their thinking to the benefit of our firms, yet we stick them in work situations and environments that are more attuned to prison cells that creative workspaces that inspire new thinking.  I saw a great ad by HSBC that asks - if we all think alike, how will anything ever change?  I guess the concept in workspace planning is - if we all work in exactly the same dull workspace, we won't risk creativity or new ideas.

Would it hurt to give people who need to think and create the ability to design their workspace?  How about a little color on the walls?  Or a quiet place to ponder and generate ideas that isn't like solitary confinement?  Instead of overcoming our work environments, they should be places that draw us in and stimulate our thinking. 

Asking for help, even when you don't really need it

Over my worklife, I find that increasingly I am willing to ask for help on thinking through a difficult problem or dividing up a task.  When I first entered the work world, I thought I had to "prove" myself by doing everything by myself, so I rarely asked for help.  I would never ask for help if I thought I knew how to attack the problem or knew the result just required some hard work.

What I've learned is that few people are able to sustain this working alone concept.  Asking for help and incorporating what other can do for you will make you more productive, but will also open up perspectives and points of view that you might not have possessed previously.  Asking for help also creates an obligation for you to return the favor or at least be available to help others.  This creates a sense of shared work and shared effort, and builds a stronger team.  When individuals don't seek each other's advice, team building and collaboration are much harder to achieve.  While it may seem like a weakness to ask for help, there are at least three good reasons to do so:

1. When you really don't know the answer and need help
2. When you think you know the answer and want to confirm
3. When you know the answer, but want to include others in the work or in the decision

It was the last reason that I struggled with the most early in my career.  I often thought I knew the answer and would press ahead, and sometimes people who felt they could have influenced the action were left out, or people who thought the decision reflected on their work or responsibilities were not happy.

What I try to counsel people who work for me to do is to involve people in a decision or discussion even if they think they know the answer.  By asking for help, you may alleviate "ownership" issues down the road and demonstrate that you believe another person's insights are valuable. 

Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength.

Preparing for Success

As a consultant I am frequently asked to help someone become more productive or more innovative.  What's odd about many of these conversations is that while people recognize the need to change or become better at a specific process or task, they rarely want to engage in any preparation.  It's as if you can simply show up and transform or convert individuals, teams or processes without any advance effort.

A case in point:  recently we were asked to help facilitate a brainstorm with a client who was trying to create ideas for new products.  The team decided that an outside facilitator would be helpful and contacted us.  I was happy to describe our approach and methodology, which calls for a significant amount of planning and pre-work.

The gentleman I was speaking with quickly corrected me - they didn't see any value in the prep work, and no one would do the work anyway.  Would we come in and conduct the session without any advance planning, preparation or prework?  I quickly answered "no" and we agreed to end the conversation there.  Think about the likely outcomes when you fail to prepare for an event, a meeting or a change in the way you do business:

- People don't understand the tasks assigned to them
- They don't appreciate the importance of the meeting or event
- They don't arrive with the same perspectives
- They don't understand all of the research or work that has been done before
- They don't understand the expected outcomes
- There's not a clear framing of what they are supposed to do

This is why so many meetings are considered failures, and why so many "big" corporate events are seen as failures as well.  Too many people want to rush right through the planning and preparation to get to the activity, since all that planning and prep is seen as overhead or as not adding any value.  However, when you have all the people in place and no one has a clear understanding of what is supposed to happen, and you send half the meeting time trying to get everyone to the point where they would have been if the prep had been done effectively, is that effective?

In doing some quick research, university professors expect to spend 2 hours outside of class for every one hour in class for a standard course of study, and as much as 4 hours outside of class for every hour in class for unique programs.  This is just one example of the effort involved to prepare and deliver a valuable meeting experience.  Would you argue that professors should just "wing it" and come to the meeting with no prep?  Note that this does not even count on the fact that the attendees (in this case students) should prepare for the class at all.  Of course they should.

For some reason many of us are wired to expect to commit to and pay for the conduct of an event, a program or a task, but we are genetically unwilling and unable to pay for the preparation time that will make the event a success, even in light of information that describes how important good preparation is for success for most of these events and activities.  The Ready, Fire, Aim mentality must be a dominant gene.

More Power to the workers

I was introduced to some research that was published through the Society for Human Resource management that should provide perhaps some good news for those of us who are actively working and wish our contributions were recognized and rewarded in a manner commiserate with what we believe they are worth.  The new research points out five reasons for concern about the amount of talent available to fill the positions that will be created in the next five to ten years.

There are five reasons for concern about the number of people who can fill the growing number of high tech, high knowledge jobs.  They are:

1. In most developed countries, the birth rate has screeched to a halt.  In many places in Europe, the birth rate is below replacement level.  In the US the birthrate is just above replacement level.  Add to that the boomers are retiring and the generations after them aren't as big, so there aren't as many people entering the workforce.
2. The workforce is getting older.  See above, but there are fewer young people entering the workforce and many older workers staying in the workforce.  Now, you can teach an "old dog" new tricks, but many older workers aren't as comfortable or as familiar with new technology and new methods of work.
3. Mismatch of skills.  According to the research, less than 30% of 21 year olds will obtain a college degree, when the minimum expectation for many jobs is college degree.  We'll have to import smart labor in the US or double up responsibilities on those with the necessary level of education.  Additionally, where do these other folks work, if most jobs will require a college degree?
4. Diversity in the workforce.  Not too long ago, the workforce was predominantly white and male.  Today, the workforce is highly distributed across age lines, racial lines and the sexes.  The management issues and challenges have probably grown dramatically as the diversity of the workforce has changed.  Additionally, different generations bring different attitudes about work and their contribution.  The boomers were comfortable with letting their work define them, while the general consensus is that Gen X and Gen Y are more interested in obtaining a work-life balance.
5. Less desire for responsibility.  It seems there is an increasing desire among many people to balance their work and their life, and who don't feel the need for increasing responsibility or stress.  Who manages the workers if no one wants to be a manager or executive?  Or is it possible they simply don't need management?

If all these trends are accurate, those of us in the knowledge worker industry can expect our salaries to rise if we are willing to continue working, since the pool of applications is growing smaller and less interested.  However, we'll probably need to continue to import smart, acclimated individuals from other countries to fill the difference between the number of jobs we have that require degrees and the number of people who actually have a degree.  If you think there is an immigration crisis now, wait until businesses are lobbying to bring in thousands of engineers, scientists, software developers and so forth, while lobbying to block immigration for low wage or manual laborers.  I know - it's already happening.

These trends could call into question how we organize to work, and our expectations.  It may be that a flatter, more self-organized team structure is required, where more emphasis is placed on outcomes and less on structure.  We'll also have to become more flexible about working with third parties or members of the supply chain, since a lot of Gen X and Gen Y want to create their own firms, rather than join the corporate rat race.

We shouldn't be surprised.  The corporate model that we have in place now has only really existed broadly for about 120 years.  As incomes and education levels have changed, and scarcity has given way to broad availability of goods and services in most developed countries, the compact between employer and employee may need to change, which will affect how we organize and operate.

Make us more Innovative

Allow me a brief post to note that my new book Make us more Innovative, has just been published.  While the topic of innovation is usually a focus on my other blog, I did want to note (brag) about the release of the book.  If you are interested in innovation, I hope you'll give it a look.

Also, we've launched a website for the book that provides an overview and more detail. 

Workplace Frustrations

In the Tuesday edition of USA Today there was a small "snapshot" that presented the results of a survey to 1200 workers asking them about their top workplace frustrations.  The top five:

1. Poor communication by senior management - 17%
2. Office Politics - 16%
3. Lack of teamwork - 15%
4. The use of politically correct language - 9%
5. Nosy co-workers - 6%

I was interested in the first three especially.

Many people feel like they have little stake in the place they work, because they don't understand the goals and strategies of the business, and when they do seek out this information they get the run around.  I don't know if most management teams are intentionally indirect about how their strategies and goals, but it's getting a bit embarrassing in some of the consulting work I do to try to map what teams are asked to do back to corporate goals and strategies.  Quite often, people claim ignorance or don't want to acknowledge a corporate strategy.  True, many senior managers are very vague in their communications.  Perhaps they don't want to be held accountable, or they've fallen in love with buzzwords.  Or perhaps they just don't have a strategy, and are uncertain about how the business is run.

The next two - politics and lack of teamwork - overlap.  Where office politics exist there is almost always a lack of teamwork, since someone has decided to get ahead by limiting cooperation or information sharing.  In fact, I think these are really the same issue.  There's only one reason that teams or individuals within a company should fail to work together effectively, and that's when there are incentives to encourage them to do otherwise.  If a business is established to make the best use of its resources, and then builds walls and political machinations that make it less efficient, those failures have to be obvious to the people in control.  So office politics and a lack of teamwork are not just accepted but often implicitly condoned by a management team that can't create clear incentives to work together and seems more intent on creating competitive teams that excel by eliminating team work.

These frustrations point to the fact that many managers simply don't know how to lead and manage people, and are afraid of providing specific, direct goals that are measurable and holding people accountable to those goals.  Rather, they create very indirect and unspecific goals, don't communicate them well and tolerate office politics and silos, then wonder why everyone is frustrated and work is never done as it should be.

Accountable for production not attendance

Craig Klein, the driving force behind Sales Nexus, wrote a comment about working virtually that I felt ought to be explored.  You can see the original comment and read my post Virtually There by clicking this link.

What Craig said was that we should hold virtual worker accountable for their production, not their attendance.  And so I thought, if we can hold virtual workers to that standard, why can't we hold most other white collar workers to the same standard.  Clearly, some individuals are locked down to work in specific timeframes (bank tellers, cashiers, health care workers) but many people don't have "office hours" and don't interact with customers on a daily basis.  So, now that the engine of productivity isn't a factory line, a machine or a business process, but is driven by ingenuity and good thinking, why do we still maintain the 8 to 5 fiction?

In the not so distant days of time clocks, most people worked in shifts, adding value to products that were built using expensive capital equipment.  That equipment was expensive and had to be kept occupied to recoup an investment, so in many cases firms worked two or three shifts.  The significant expense was in capital, and scheduling labor was important.  Now, most of your company's assets walk out the door every day in the heads of your employees.  Most of them are not tied to a business process or an expensive piece of machinery.  WHEN they work and WHERE they work is less important than the RESULTS of what they do.  In fact, most firms today spend very little time on telling people HOW to do their work, since creativity, innovation and a more open expansive culture has diminished the ability of the management team to dictate process and tasks.

With all that said, however, we've still got to feed the bulldog, so work must be accomplished on a regular basis with high quality, on time and on budget.  Our metrics and measurements must shift to examine the quality of the work and its timeliness and value, rather than examine how often or when a person shows up for work or the number of hours they work in any specific day.  What this also means is that managers are now responsible for dictating the expected quantity AND quality of the work, and being very specific about when that work product is due.  For individuals who have proven that they can self-manage, the office and the "cube" may become a distant memory.  For those individuals who cannot effectively manage themselves, their time and their work, the 8 to 5 workshift will remain a constant.

Continuous Reinvention

First, let it be said that I am a fan of continuous improvement.  In any organization, the goal of getting better and better at what you do is important.  Eliminating variations and errors, reducing work or tasks that have little or no value is exceptionally important.  However, what I want to understand is whether or not most firms have the ability to constantly reinvent themselves as well.

If you think hard about the logical conclusion of a complete focus on continuous improvement, you'll end up with the fact that every firm in an industry is racing to eliminate waste and cost from products and processes.  However, only one firm is going to be the excellence leader, and everyone else is playing catch up at best, and is falling farther and farther behind at worst.  Need an example?  Think about the real "low cost" big box stores.  Wal-Mart has destroyed most of its competition by a single minded focus on lowest cost.  Kmart and others are completely irrelevant as competitors.  Only the Dollar Store chains, which serve a specific niche, remain as competitors in that space.  However, Wal-Mart has jettisoned everything else. Remember how they used to talk about all of their products that were Made in America?  Gone.  All other strategies have fallen by the wayside to the god of low cost in this case.

Well, if continuous improvement is a good thing but not likely to be differentiable, where should you focus your creative energy?  I think firms should have a team that's responsible for continuous reinvention.  Rather than asking "what can we do better" we need a team asking "what should we be doing?"  Given how quickly tastes change and technology changes, we ought to be constantly re-evaluating our business and strategy.  Yet too frequently we lock into one long term strategy as if the world and our competitors and clients won't ever change.  Rather than have change forced upon you when you least expect it, why not constantly ask the question - what should we be doing differently?

Knowing what to do

As a bit of self-congratulations, this is my 400th post.  I've been blogging now for about two and a half years, and I've found it to be a great way to meet people, explore ideas and think about the way things work.

Which is what led me to the subject du jour - whether it's more important to know what to do, and not understand the "why", or if it's more important to understand the "why" without process clarity.  I'm going to stipulate that I think it's more important to know the "what" in very transactional processes and events, and to know the "why" otherwise.

If you know "what" to do, then there's a sense that a process or rationale has been developed.  Understanding what to do is helpful when your firm desires quick, repetitive work with little variation.  This assumes that risks are low and that what's ultimately necessary is throughput.  In fact, the more you know "what" to do in many cases, the assumption is the less you need to know the "why".  Think about it - most purely transactional workers rarely understand the strategic impact or importance of what they do.  They aren't expected to know that, and I suspect that their management teams aren't overly interested in letting them know. 

On the other hand, if the processes aren't well defined, or the work is dangerous or risky, then knowing "why" you are doing a specific task is more important.  Understanding the ultimate goal when you are called on to do something that is poorly defined is probably the more important information you can have, since you'll be inventing the process as you go, and it's up to you to figure out what the best approach or method will be.

Clearly, the optimal situation is one where each individual knows what to do and why they are doing it.  Yet in most firms where I've worked or consulted, the "what" is often uncertain and the "why" is often virtually unknown or unknowable.  This is a significant breakdown in management.  In any situation a management team should be able to provide either a clear "what" or a clear "why" to the people that work for them.  If a management team can't provide that, what value do they add?

While it's an imperfect metaphor, people need to know the "what" for transactional work and the "why" for tasks and actions that aren't well defined or require the worker to determine the appropriate approach.  The best of all worlds is when they know both.

Virtually There

I've been working lately with a few Fortune 500 firms that have a highly distributed workforce.  I guess in most cases that's not surprising, but what is interesting is the extent to which people in these firms are working virtually.  In many cases, individuals don't have an office and work primarily from home, or their "home" office is 50 or 100 miles away and they visit that location infrequently if at all.

This makes for some interesting visits.  I have occasionally been in the position of knowing more about an office building - where the restrooms are, where the coffee machine is - than the full time employees who are rarely, if ever, in the building.  But even more interesting is what is happening to how people work when they become virtual.

Working virtually is a blessing and a curse, it seems to me.  There are all the same pressures of the standard 8 to 5 job included in working virtually.  The same amount of work to get done, the same number of meetings, the same distractions.  However, as people work in a more distributed fashion, it becomes an expectation that you are available at almost anytime.  For instance, I'll participate in a call in a few days with a person in the UK and a person on the west coast.  The individual on the west coast will be dialing in at 5:30 am his time, and never gave that consequence a second thought. 

Working virtually also means working with technology - from teleconferencing and Skype to shared workspaces and video conferencing.  All of these technologies provide the means to bring people together, but they also require each of us to take on more support tasks.  There's no one here in my office who is responsible for Skype support, for example.  Additionally, we have at least as much overhead and planning for virtual meetings, if not more so, since it's inevitable that someone shows up late to a virtual meeting and someone must track them down.

This increased emphasis on virtual work means that line between work and "regular life" is not blurred, it's obliterated.  I can now participate in any discussion, meeting or email exchange from any location at any time, thanks to portable handheld BlackBerrys and teleconferencing.  What this means is that more and more people will be called on to participate in work related events in hours or locations that would have been unacceptable a few years ago, and we can expect to see some time shifting - virtual workers doing other things during the day since their time is expected in what were the "off hours".

There's also a question of etiquette in this brave new world.  What is the reasonable expectation for a virtual worker?  When is it appropriate to say "no" to an activity or task?  When is there too much of an expectation for you to support new technologies that enable your virtual work?

I was speaking with a friend in a large multinational who has individuals that report to him in six different countries.  He has never met, face to face, two of those individuals.  Perhaps I am old fashioned, but I cannot imagine managing someone I haven't met.  Or perhaps this is the wave of the future, and all our interaction with our colleagues will be virtual.  God help us if that's the case.

Failure to Launch

There's probably nothing more depressing than being confronted with the fact that your new product or service is going to fail.  If you've put a lot of effort, time and sweat into a new product, you have an emotional and psychological attachment to its success.  That makes it all the more bewildering when the reasons behind the failure are directly caused by a failure to plan and manage a project.

A client I worked with recently complained that his project did not receive the results he expected.  Toward the end of the project it became evident that a lot of issues had not been considered or adequately addressed.  Many threads were left hanging, as if other people were going to step in at just the right time to take on training his customers or developing a support mechanism for a new solution.  What's surprising and somewhat frustrating is that these issues were raised earlier in the project, but there was never enough time to plan, to consider what other capabilities and needs surrounded the development of the project.  What my client lost sight of was the fact that in almost every case, the product or service that you build is just a small part of the total solution that a customer expects. 

Given the complexities that we live with and the expectations we have of our products and services, it is not enough to simply create a great new product.  Along with that product, you need to create what Geoffrey Moore calls the "whole product" - that is, the manuals, support, training, registration, help and surrounding infrastructure that can make or break a product or service.  The old thinking is that people don't want drills, they want holes.  The new thinking is that people want to understand how to drill the hole effectively, and want someone to call in case they need help with their hole.

Understanding this from the start of any project is important.  Too often we cleave off all the "extraneous" stuff in a project plan that does not have to do directly and immediately with the product we're building.  It's easy to push off the documents, help guides, training, support, channel development and a host of other activities to place all emphasis on the product.  But, at the end of the day, without all of that other stuff that seemed so much less important, a product has little chance for success.

Think about it - two seemingly similar products hit the market, at roughly the same time and same cost.  One has information about how to use it most effectively, powerful user guides, websites full of information, support lines, documentation and trained partners.  The other is just a product - a fine, high quality product, but missing all of that "unnecessary" stuff.  Which one do you want to buy?

Too many products and services fail not because there's no need, but because the project planners and managers either fail to account for these critical elements or strip them out of the plan.  Any project manager worth his salt should be asking the question - Who uses this?  What information do they need?  How do we train and support them?  Simply building a great, high quality product is not enough.

In any business, the training budgets are one of the first things to get cut.  In any project, customer training, documentation and support are the first things to go.  As a project manager, do you have the backbone to demand that these critical elements are in the plan?  Do you have the ability to convince others that they should stay in the plan when things get tight?

The Tipping Point debate

Malcolm Gladwell has probably occupied the pedestal long enough.  In a new article in Fast Company, a researcher from Yahoo questions the concepts behind the Tipping Point - especially the concept that there are a small number of influencers who create or drive new trends.  Researcher Duncan Watts suggests that what drives trends is less about who is driving the trend, and more about how susceptible people are to the trend.

In the article the author seeks balance and contacts Gladwell for a response.  In typical Gladwellian fashion, Gladwell neither accepts nor rejects Watt's theory.  Well, which is it?  Are trends driven by a very small cadre of people who advocate new ideas and communicate them broadly throughout their network?  Or can anyone create a trend as long as people are ready and susceptible?

It would seem that there are several other rationales for why an idea, a trend or a fad gets spread and how quickly it is adopted or rejected.  For instance, how easily accessible is the trend?  Hush Puppies are available in many shoe stores, so they are ubiquitous in that sense.  Another factor is the cost of acquisition and trial.  Hush Puppies don't cost all that much, and we all need shoes.  I think another factor is the "fun" factor - is the new idea really different and does it make your day more interesting or more "fun"?  I don't know if Hush Puppies did that.  Finally, it would seem that how communicable the trend or idea is would have an impact as well.

It would also seem that these theories should be easy to test.  If Influencers do drive most of the adoption of a new trend or idea, let's run an experiment where they advocate a really crazy or hideous idea - for example, pink angora sweaters with lime green trim.  If theses Influencers drive others to purchase these sweaters, then we can assume the Influencer model is correct.  I tend to have my doubts however. 

Gladwell's book is interesting and a great read, but on further consideration it should have been clear all along that a number of factors play into whether or not an idea or trend takes off.  We as managers or marketers like the idea of influencing a few people who then communicate and influence a much broader swath of people, and to an extent that concept is still true, but there are a number of other attributes that come into play that we need to take into consideration when marketing a product or service.

Getting past the niceties

So I was sitting in a meeting today with a couple of guys from a firm that may become a business partner and we were discussing how we could bring them up to speed on our approach and methodologies, what was in the relationship for them and so forth.  Then we hit the part of the conversation that everyone feels like having but often seems just like lip service.  Someone said, "We want you to win and us to win.  It should be a win-win."  Yeah, no kidding.

This is then followed by a rather long back and forth about how important it is for both sides to get something out of the agreement and that it should be commensurate with effort, knowledge and experience.  Both should put in equal contributions and both should take out equal benefits.  While I know this is the case, I often feel like 1) this is self-evident and is the basis for the discussion and 2) this never happens in practice.

Most firms or people agree to some commitment with another person or firm based on some mutually agreeable criteria.    If person X gives company Y his best efforts 40 hours per week, company Y agrees to pay him or her Z dollars.  If two firms agree to work together, they have certain criteria and conditions about how they will work.  This is what keeps the lawyers busy - writing the agreements and adjudicating them later in court.   If there aren't mutually reinforcing reasons to work together, then the partnership won't happen unless one of the firms is forced to work with the other.  Yet we feel the need, through politeness and camaraderie to explain to each other how important it is to be fair to each other.

Yet in practice most relationships are never 50:50 all the time.  Generally speaking, most partnerships are about one firm or individual leveraging the skills or channels of another partner.  In any specific situation, that means that one of the partners has more control over the situation and more experience.  The best that can be hoped for is that the pendulum swings and the weaker partner in the first situation has capabilities or channels that can be leveraged to the other partner's benefit.  Rather than talk about "win/win" situations, we need to instead define what a "win" is for each partner and make sure both partners can get to the level they can declare the relationship valuable for them. 

Perhaps I am impatient and too anxious to get to the nitty-gritty in this case, but I expect a partner to do what's right for himself or his firm first, and to do what is best for my firm based on the agreements we have in place.  I don't believe many partners will put my best outcomes in advance of their firm's goals and outcomes unless they are heavily compensated to do so, which then puts them in a terrible bind.  I'd like to think that most people are interested, rational actors who understand the need for me to accomplish certain outcomes in our relationship and that they need to accomplish their own outcomes as well.  Sometimes those outcomes are mutually reinforcing, sometimes not.

I'd prefer to say to a prospective partner - these are the things we can do and how we can best partner with you.  These features and capabilities are important to me, and here's where we think we differentiate and how we make our revenue.  Now, can we together create an offering or solution that helps me achieve those things, adds even greater value to a customer, and helps you achieve something that's important to you?  Too often when we use the niceties and "win/win" language we never get to what's important in each person's or partner's business model to understand how they make money, how they differentiate, and what they consider their strengths and weaknesses.

Management Throttle

I've been thinking recently about the power of positive and negative thinking, and how it relates to a management team.  One of the things that's become very clear for me in my last few months of consulting is how important a very positive outlook is within the management team for the health and growth of a company.

Basically, a management team serves to provide leadership and direction to the people within a company.  If the management team takes on a positive outlook, leading others to greater growth, exciting opportunities and new adventures, the team will adopt that philosophy and work hard to achieve it.  This is NOT to say that being overly optimistic will create a firm that will follow you through fire, but the power of positive thinking by the management team is catching.

So too, however, is the reverse.  Management teams that are constantly questioning, constantly afraid of change and of new risks or new opportunities create a ceiling for the growth of the company, and impact the thinking and risk taking of the organization.  Without realizing it, a management team that is too conservative or too cynical or too pessimistic breeds and reinforces that thinking within its organization, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So, your attitudes when managing can be a throttle - in both the positive and negative definitions of the word.  Positive attitudes, reinforcing hard work and rewarding the right failures will obtain more buy-in and will help your company step on the gas - or open up the throttle.  Negative reinforcement, fear of risk or pessimism in your management team will filter down and create fear, uncertainty and doubt.  This creates the alternative definition of throttle - meaning to choke off the windpipe.

Your attitudes and outlook matters as an executive or leader of a team.  In most cases, the team adopts and adapts to the outlook and perspective of the leader.  What is your leadership style and perspective?  Are you helping people "step on the gas" or is your management style choking off initiative?