Given that I’m in the midst of a major career transition, I’ve been reflecting back on the highs and lows of my years as an IT professional. It’s been a rewarding exercise, and I’d like to share some of it with you here in the next couple of posts. And what better way to start than with one of the worst days of my life.

The Blowup

In my first job out of college, I was a computer programmer on a large government project. After about a year or so on the job, a senior team member (let’s call her Terry) was promoted to manager. With that promotion, our relationship changed from senior-junior colleagues to superior-subordinate. What I didn’t realize was that she brought into her new role some initial impressions and expectations of me as a professional.

After one particularly bad month, she called me into her office, and started unloading. I can’t remember the exact words, but they went something like this…

Jesse, you really messed up that last software module. Because you weren’t able to figure out the solution, your team lead had to come in and finish it for you. Consider the impact of that, Jesse. Because he spent so many hours helping you, his own assignment was late also. Remember the last time this happened?

…um, no I don’t. When?

It was the file manager. Remember how much trouble you had with that? Don’t you realize there is a pattern going on here, Jesse? Now, I’m left wondering if I can give you anything substantive to work on, or if we’ll just end up having to send someone else bail you out of the next problem. In fact Jesse, I simply can’t believe you spent so long on the module without getting anywhere. I think you knew your team lead would be there to bail you out and so you didn’t try as hard as you could have.

…are you saying I messed up on purpose?

That’s what it looks like. I don’t know what to do with you, Jesse. But whatever your issue is, you need to fix it, FAST!

Step 1: Get expectations out in the open.

Yeah, it was that bad. But when I look back, the root cause of her blowup was simple human disappointment and frustration. From her perspective, I was the key issue. But the real problem was that I had no idea.. She was viewing my previous difficulties as a liability, and had put me on a secret probation. Instead, the two of us should have known way ahead of time what was expected of me.

• For managers, you need to be 100% positive your team members know what you expect of them. When you move into a new leadership position, you should have both private and group discussions about what people understand their roles to be, what the team expects of you, and what you expect of them. Obviously, Terry didn’t do that, so I was left to continue my current work style, setting me up to fail.
• For team members, just because you’re not a manager, that does not mean you’re not off the hook. Expectations are a two way street. Namely, if Terry didn’t initiate the expectations chat, then I should have. I learned this from the One Minute Manager books by Ken Blanchard. If you as a team member don’t know where you stand with your boss, supervisor, or manager, then it’s up to you to fix that problem. Ask for a meeting with your boss to ask “how can I best help the team? What skills do you want me to focus on?” If your boss doesn’t give you the for that conversation, then at least send her an email spelling out your own understanding of where things are (heck, email is formal written documentation, so if anything you’ve generated some positive input for your next performance appraisal).

Step 2: Vent first, then confront

Because of Terry’s delivery I couldn’t hear her message. Instead, I internalized it by posting this little self-pity manifesto on my cubicle wall:

• For managers, no matter how frustrated you are, don’t confront your team members in the head of the moment. Let’s say you are boiling with frustration over a team member, someone who gets you so enraged that you know you can’t control yourself right now. If that’s the case, then right now is not the best time to confront him. Instead, go to a peer or to your own manager, ask for permission to vent, and then vent. If there isn’t anyone good to vent to, then go vent in the bathroom mirror. But whatever you do, don’t go to your people, with full engines revving and unload on them. 
• For team members, this is NOT how you deal with an unreasonable boss. First, it tells her that yelling at me is okay. Second, I allowed the intensity of the message to drown out the critical feedback that could have made me better. Looking back across the years, I really wish I had done some venting myself. If I had confided in a co-worker to get some additional perspective, I could have gotten past the episode. But I didn’t do that. Instead, I let the emotions get the better of me, and I held a grudge. In fact, some 8 years later a very similar situation came up, and I did confront my manager about a tirade. This time, because I took the risk of first venting, then confronting we were able to get underneath some stuff, and build a much better working relationship.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that”

At this moment, Terry was taking a risk. She’s in a rational state now and wants to follow up after the poor confrontation. And my epic response was

“Don’t worry about it. It’s an inside joke.”

Yes, I know. That was really wimpy. After my response, she smiled and left, and that was the end the conversation, and our working relationship. I soon started looking for a new job and turned in my notice a few weeks later.

• For managers, even if you or your manager exert the emotional discipline not to blow up, even if you take the risk of a rational confrontation, there is still the need for ongoing follow up. Terry did just that, but gave up when I made it hard for her. As a manager, you can’t take no for an answer. Yes, I wish I had responded better, but I also wish she said: “Well Jesse, regardless, I’d like to have coffee with you this afternoon to work through our last conversation. Meet me at Starbucks at 3pm”. This is what is expected of leaders; this is why you are chosen for the role of a manager. Because Terry didn’t go that extra mile, she lost me the opportunity to steer me into a productive team contributor.
• For team members, if your manager follows up with a peace offering, then it’s your obligation to accept it. Furthermore, if she never does follow up after yelling at you, then you need to initiate that. I held onto the grudge, and I lost the chance to grow through the experience.

So, when it comes to managers losing their cool. It’s a two-way street. Prevent it with open expectations. Control it by venting first. Resolve it with intentional and determined follow up.

QUESTION: Have you experienced similar conflicts? What worked or didn’t work for you?

A couple weeks ago, the PMI Washington DC hosted a webinar by Agile practitioner Joe Luttrell. The talk was call “Project Management: The Ultimate Calling?”, and it blew me away. You can download the slides, but they don’t convey the full essence of his story.

What’s Happened Before
Take a look at these facts:

Granted, I took some liberty by adding in the the observations about the Agile PM movement, but the overlap is uncanny. CPM, the PMI, the PMBOK, even the Agile movement were motivated by a shakeup in the business economy, or to cut to the chase:

When the market suffered recession, the market reacted with a further maturing of project management.

What’s Next
Joe also offered an analysis of what the next innovation in project management might be, by taking a look at digital technology. While most futurists declare us to have entered into the Knowledge Age or the Information Age, Joe noticed emerging technologies are mostly centered around communication. The Cell phone, CD/DVD, PDA, internet, PDA phone, Wireless, intranets, and social media are all communication media. Granted, communication is how knowledge and information is created. But look closer, and you’ll see these technologies are also progressively more collaborative. It’s more than an information age we’ve stumbled into; it’s a “Collaboration Age”.

This collaboration dynamic is a having a game-changing dynamic on management. Work used to be done under a centralized control structure. From customer support call centers to outsourcing vendors to teleworking professionals, work is increasingly decentralized. As it becomes more distributed, collaboration becomes the power play that differentiates one team over another. In yesterday’s world, the one with the most control over resources was the winner. In today’s world, the one with the most distributed and collaborative power structure is the winner. Nobody is making serious money on social media, but everyone is raving about it…because we know that collaboration is the new killer app. Well isn’t that what project managers do? We corral a variety of players from all departments toward a common goal.

What Now?
Joe concluded by giving us 3 concrete techniques we can employ to become those collaborative project managers:

1. Progressive Collaboration – Working together is a fluid endeavor. You learn each other’s habits, styles, interests, and preferences. And as soon as you get to know one another, someone new has entered the project. You can’t figure this collaboration thing all at once. You have to adapt to people along the way, and you have to persist through the annoying personalities and awkward moments
2. Conflict Confrontation – Joe reminded us that there are 3 ways to resolve conflict: Compromise (lose-lose), Smoothing (avoidance), or Confrontation. I struggle with this. I am a people-pleaser by nature. Even though I know putting an awkward issue on the table is the most effective thing to do, I get anxious about it. I get it, but that doesn’t make it easy.
3. Decisive Facilitation – As you can imagine, “collaboration” does NOT mean sitting in a meeting for hours on end, listening to everyone ramble, and beloabor the points over and over. Instead, be an intentional leader of any meeting. Know what decisions need to be made, so that you can drive discussion towards that goal.

If you can’t tell, I’m inspired. We are about to ride a the wave of a collaboration revolution. Our teams are relying on us to be the leaders that guide them along that wave. If you commit to developing these three skills, then you be a project manager that helps to change the world.

We’ve all suffered it.

Jane in the product design department is upset she didn’t get a budget increase, and Steve the Director of sales is upset she was promoted to VP sooner than he was, even though he had more tenure. Meanwhile, Todd the company’s chief counsel is so focused on limiting liability that Michelle the VP of Marketing feels stiffled in what she can do with a promotional campaign.

Whether you call it “silos” or “parochial thinking”, office politics affect just about everyone. It’s that organizational tunnel vision that slowly seeps into our work. Mission statements, corporate values, or the latest process improvement effort all fail to motivate workers toward a common vision. It seems no matter what leaders do, people still fall into old patterns. Enter Patrick Lencioni.

I’ve been wanting to read his books for a long time, so a couple weeks ago I picked up his book that attacks this topic head-on. Silos, Politics and Turf Wars describes the problem and solution in the format of a “fable”, a fictional narrative that gets the point home without the embarrassment of naming anybody in real life. The solution, as it turns out, is the age old proverb: “Never waste a crisis”. Lencioni observes that organizations and teams really come together in the face of a collective emergency. In the ER, a hospital’s organizational departments come together to save a gunshot victim. In a failing company, teams pull together to stave off bankruptcy. In a startup, the energy of a grand idea inspires people to a goal larger than their own turf. Over the course of a very quick read, Lencioni formulates an approach for tapping into the substance of a crisis, without have to suffer through the pain of a crisis:

What is your organization’s or project’s top priority right now? This is your “Rallying Cry”, the single most important goal for your team over the next 2-6 months. It needs to be succinct and simple. An example from the book would be “Complete the merger and launch the new company”. While this may be a compelling motivator, it’s a little vague. What exactly needs to happen to accomplish this goal? That’s the next question.

What component goals are need to accomplish the Rallying Cry? These are your “Defining Objectives”. What would it look like if this Rallying Cry were fully achieved? What are the components of this primary objective. Decomposing our example above, we might want to “Clarify the product offering”, “Simplify the org chart”, and “Establish the new brand”. These smaller, more tangible goals help to put real meaning into the Rallying Cry.

What regular ongoing responsibilities must be met, just to survive? These are the tasks that *have* to be done, regardless of what the highest priority is. No matter the rallying cry, a project has to deliver and an organization has to generate revenue. A key to combatting turf wars is to acknowledge that a given office is still important, even if it’s not the most important thing right now.

It turns out this model is so effective, he wrote another book that he uses it to provide clarity for the average frantic family life (The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family).

There you have it. A simple 3-question approach to adding context and clarity to the chaos of your own organization. I’m wondering what yours would look like. How would you use this approach to describe your organization’s key needs right now, and describe it in such a way to motivate your team?

I was mulling over how our project team might get better at doing Agile / Scrum, and stumbled over two proverbs that capture the substance of our efforts:

“Perfect is the enemy of good” – Voltaire

and

“Good is the enemy of Great” – Jim Collins

When contemplating the truth embedded in these statements, I wondered if they could be mashed up to yield a new cliche’ of my own:

“Good is a Necessary Evil” – me

Let’s unpack this a little more, using a few more colloquialisms along the way…

• Good is a Necessary Evil - Too often, we get so hung up on the way things *should* be, we refuse to accept any things else. Methodology snobs and process wonks declare that if you don’t do it (CMMI, Scrum, PMBOK, or Six Sigma) all at once, you can never be sure you’ll do any of it. Certainly, there are points to be made in favor of all-at-once process improvements: it creates the right kind of mess (aka “creative destruction“) and it forces commitment up front. However, the other maxim of crawl, walk, run reminds us that you can only be successful one step at a time. Don’t bite off more than you can chew, or you’ll never generate the confidence you need to push forward.
• Good is a Necessary Evil – Although the trip of a thousand miles starts with the first step, the danger of starting small is staying there. A little bit of success can dull our desire to get better, faster, cheaper as an organization. We as a team have to express, and re-express our commitment to continuous process improvement. The “evil” associated with being good, is that insidious notion that we’re good enough to rest. Surround yourself with a group of individuals that are ruthlessly devoted to getting better one step at a time, and you’ll be more likely to resist the temptation to do so.

Those are my meandering thoughts for the week. Now, I have to go back and count how many oft-repeated truisms and buzz-phrases I just mashed together…