Posts filed under 'Management'
An unexpected impact of the crisis in project management (no, they are not lazy)
As the new terminal in Barcelona’s airport nears its completion and the trials are increasingly successful, we are increasingly dwelling into the depths of this recession / depression. No manager can have the luxury of forgetting the external environment, as it always impact us somehow, somewhere.
Sometimes project managers tend to think that they are insulated from the rest of the world. They have their budget, their plan, their milestones. Of course there’s a great deal of interaction with the customer and the stakeholders, but sensing the environment isn’t usually deemed necessary.
They are wrong.
I’m not talking here of budget cuts, or milestones changing. That could happen anywhere, anytime. I’m here referring back to an old post: Soft and hard human resource management (utilitarian instrumentalism versus developmental humanism) and the concept of the psychological contract.
There are many definitions of the psychological contract. For our purposes, let’s say that the psychological contract is the assumed relationship between employer and employee that includes a lot more than what’s included in the papers: what you’ll do for me, what you expect from me, including the promises I might have made, the way you expect to be treated, and the expectations you have for the future. Those small things you’ve talked with your boss about and the trust you have in him that they’ll be taken care of. If your boss lied to you, for instance, your psychological contract would be shattered, and your attitude with your job would dramatically change… for worse.
So, what’s in it for construction workers here? They are usually contracted through companies that have a working relationship with the companies that have been awarded the construction contract. There may be two, three, even four layers of agreements between them and the project. They may even work for several contracts, always ready to switch between one form of contract or another, everything transparent and irrelevant to the direction of the project, apparently.
But, what used to be the reality for them, that they went from one thing to another always having things to do and always earning money in one form or another, no longer holds true. Their expectations have dropped and, for many, next destination is unemployment. They won’t get bulky severance pays as many other layoffs. They will be simply be no longer required and no longer invited to participate in the next move. They will be have unemployment compensations, of course, but I bet they will be lower, for many reasons, than those of other kinds of workers.
So it’s no wonder they psychological contract has been shattered as well, as they expected to be able to keep living as they had been living. Not anymore.
And when is that going to happen?
The scary thing is that this is going to happen whenever they finish their job.
So, where is the motivation to finish as soon as possible? Do you think their intentions are aligned with the timeframe of the project’s direction? Obviously they are not. If they are not paid lump sums but depending on the days spent working, which is the usual contract as the lump sums are in higher layers, they will take as much time as they can. And with that they will also shatter part of the psychological contract.
I have been observing this effect. And this feeling is dangerously infectious as workers from one contract see workers from others procrastinating as much as they can. Moreover, this has no easy solution, as the usual ways of control are not responding effectively as they were never designed to overcome this threat or to better manage people, but to apportion and divide the value of the contract between several companies.
Sometimes, when we are thinking of leading our team to peak performance, we are forgetting to look around and realise how things are changing. We can name them however we want, but we can’t forget that, layers below, there is not a collection of resources: they are people.
Add comment 9 April, 2009
Moving from the tyranny of success to the crisis-stifled innovation
Yes, your company used to work so well. You were succeeding. And since you were succeeding and you were the incumbent, you needn’t innovate. Well, of course, you were better than that and you decided to innovate anyway, letting go some leash and opening some space for incremental innovation, probably parting from your customers and clustered companies suggestions, and put up some resources to think of new ways of doing the same things, or even new things. You were great.
So, let’s agree that your successful company innovated in any case, at least namely. But you were in a disadvantage with respect to new smaller entrants, that did not have a strong corporate culture to protect, and some rules to adhere to. Yes, you did have those, as that was the culture that helped you to be successful in the first place, and the first thing you’d need to do, if you were not successful, in your turnaround strategy, would be to build a new, aligned and strong culture anyway.
True divergence, the one that was contrary to everything you held dear, had to be repressed. That success was the tyrant that stifled innovation, till now.
The tyrant has died with the crisis. Now you’re no longer that successful, but prone to crisis-fighting and worried about keeping your ground. Who thinks of innovation now? Surely you know about the importance of innovation, as the innovators now, the ones that rethink the business and learn the ropes of the new rules, will be the winners of tomorrow, but, what about those innovators that bend the norms, destroy capabilities in order to build new ones, ride through the waves of creative destruction inside your company. Couldn’t they wait and not to bother too much until a better time comes? Aren’t they annoying?
Yes, they are the traitors that are breaking the ranks precisely when you needed everyone unconditionally by your side, to put up the fire.
Innovation is stifled again… different reasoning… business as usual.
Add comment 24 March, 2009
Listening (a reflection induced by a beacon)
Yesterday I took a few hours away off the hectic drumming of the new terminal to concentrate on a new project that I am leading: a new control system for the runways and taxiways lighting system for Barcelona’s airport, that happens to have the biggest beacon lighting system in Spain, bigger than Madrid’s.
This project has a very important difference to many other things I’m doing. It’s not focused on the big opening day but the completion date is one year later, in 2010. That means we can focus on understanding the problem, building a team, applying a methodology, generating buy-in with the final customer, expliciting the acquired knowledge and incorporating the best practices into the organisation.
We are also going to standardise the application. Coming from a bespoke application, it won’t be easy but my intention is to be able to build an standard that the organisation will be able to use in its 40-something airports. Closed applications are a thing of the past, we all know it but, instead of paying lip-service to it, this time we’re going to do it.
But, what was important is the personal reflection that arose after our working session. Just forgetting fire fighting for a while and listening to somebody that knew a great deal about the system and discussing various proposals of what we could be doing for our initial project viability analysis.
It felt so good. Listening, learning. I’ve been getting these kind of sensations thanks to my Henley MBA, but it was great to have the same sensation coming from an engineer’s discourse. Focusing in the input instead of the output as I’ve grown accustomed to be lately.
We all need to be able to take long perspectives into a project. Be able to plan, and consider alternatives. To flex our creative muscles and deploy our energies into constructing something new, more effective, something built constructively not on the unstable foundations of pressure.
We all need to sit back an listen, as humble as the boy (or girl) we all still carry inside, and learn something from people that know more than us. Be able to capture that elusive gist that will enrich each and everyone of us. Coming humble from humus, or ground in Latin, and humilis from lowly, every manager needs to be humilis habitu humilis et actu, that means humble in dressing (or garments) and in its way of behaving to be able to trascend the manager-administrator role into leading the project’s team to success.
1 comment 12 March, 2009
Never say no to upper management (reality will do it for you anyway)
In many organisations, bad news just go one way, and that’s out the door. Managers try to keep their superiors happy, and you bet they do, just talking more about the good things than the bad things. Who can blame them for that?
Well, you should. As I like to say, reality is stubborn. As stubborn as reality can be, and that’s a lot. When you try to make your boss happy, you are making a good deed… unless there are deadlines.
How can huge companies make huge mistakes when everyone knew they were not ready? Well, the leaders didn’t. Upper management really thought they were in a sweetened version of reality. And then an airport fails to work as it should, or a supposedly great product is a flop, or a huge investment in satellites is simply converted into flying junk. Whatever.
This bears an important relationship to what John Kay, a brilliant British economist, labels as the architecture of an organisation. If we see the information as the blood that flows inside the organisation’s veins, a good architecture will ensure that it reaches wherever it needs to reach: the right information to the right people that can make the best use for it.
That won’t happen in sclerotic organisations where there is lack of clear purpose, weak leadership. stakeholder conflicts, where failure is severely punished and where hierarchy is very important. Managers won’t have holistic perspectives at all, but tunnel vision instead. They will make erratic and irrational decisions guided by personal interests, maybe defending their clans and silos. Problems will tend to be assigned to someone else, or simply dissoluted around.
And bad news won’t go upwards. Only downwards. Think of “Why should I bother telling them while it’s not my responsibility to tell? Someone will realise” or maybe “If I put the spotlight in this problem, it will be my problem. Mind into my business.”.
If you add a pinch of “That’s the way we do things around here”, the recipe is made for cooking the ultimate failure. With its executives doped with tons of saccharine, the organisation will start behaving recklessly. And down below cooperation will give way to antagonism, combined effort to abrasion and erosion. Through the confrontation, we will be collectively driving looking through the rear view mirror… or even, while figthing crises one after the other, looking at nowhere at all… it’s only a matter of time…
3 comments 10 February, 2009
Blogging from the Opera (blogging with Figaro)
Less than two weeks into an important milestone for the airport’s operational readiness and less than three weeks from my marketing and business environment exam, I find myself blogging from el Liceu, Barcelona’s opera house. Amidst this quagmire that my daily job has been turning into, I still could scape to enjoy Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. It really sounds strange in English instead of Italian’s: Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata.
Yes, the second name for the opera is “the day of madness”. That’s how I live my days at work now. Trying to cope with unmatching requirements, trying to sync reality with political requirements. But, as I like to say, reality is too stubborn for that. And we always end up crashing with a concrete wall which we could have avoided. But that’s second nature to us, humans. Why is it that reality ends up resembling just another opera buffa?
Yet here I am. Everyone needs a place to hide. And that’s mine today. I even could open my computer in the bar in the basement, use my HSDPA connection and write this lines while sipping a coffee. Watch the old ladies ingest huge quantities of sugar and chocolate in different shapes and colours. Isn’t life nice after all?
The thing is that when I began the MBA I promised to reflect. And these latter days have been so amazing. So many different things happening from a global perspective, at work and even a personal perspective. And I don’t want to feel that the many things that flow around me just do that: flow. I need to capture some of them. I need to retain, absorb, think, grow.
They say that experience is everything, that you actually learn by doing. And that is a blatant lie. Well, you learn, true, but only in a mechanical way. As Figaro doesn’t actually learn about Almaviva until he actually sees him fishing in his waters, or Almaviva doesn’t learn about behaving until his infidelity is publicly exposed. The aristocracy depicted, ridiculised here didn’t learn on time to change. Until it was too late. Pierre Beaumarchais saw his play censored in France, only to be played in 1778, with the French Revolution almost at the doors…
You learn when you think about what you live. When you think of improving what you’ve already learnt to do mechanically. When you make it grow inside of you. When you go one step further to accepting what is already established, what is already known. When you apply something more than common sense. When you’re not scared of rethinking something that is already working (apparently).
When I give project management classes, I always stress how important is the “post-mortem” analysis at the end of the project to clarify not only what we have done well but also what we could have done better and what we have learnt from the experience. Now I feel that the end is too far, too late. It must be done now and again, in a continuous process of taking a step back, getting perspective, digesting, and then going in again with regained strengths that will not hold us back from stepping out of the comfort zone. Every manager should take some time to learn now and then.
And now, let’s enjoy this opera 
Add comment 18 November, 2008
Back from India (and from a cultural impact)
I’ve just arrived from Delhi. In fact it has been 24 hours but, in the meantime, my mind kept wandering inbetween all kinds of different landscapes, smells and tastes until it settled back again. So many different faces, so many different paces: our hectic effort of preparing a presentation on the club lounge of a five-star hotel, the five-year-old child making his frenzied small monkey shout and dance to attract our attention and a few coins, the slow-moving cow trying to take a nap in the middle of the street and the agitated drivers trying to pass as close as possible. Definitely distances are measured differently in this huge place.
The billion cattle estimated to be alive today are more less one sixth of the estimated human population on Earth. The lucky ones live here, where they are revered and spoiled, where they can live tranquil and blissful lives, where they can thrive and be loved. It’s a wonder that there is no cow immigration process to this beautifully colored lands. If the other cows knew!
Humanity. This word takes new meaning here. So many people. We Europeans have tended to grow aseptic, almost inhumans. We hide within huge buildings of concrete, glass and steel, like the new terminal I’ve nurtured along with my peers, and we become insignificant below our not-so-functional monuments. We want them to serve as a rule to measure our cities and civilisation, instead of ourselves, our little selves.
In India you see so many people, so many happy -and not so happy- faces. The wonder is that it’s not easy to infer which faces will be happy and which won’t. Usually you won’t see that in the colours -or cost- of the robes. Humans… sometimes so happy owning nothing but conceiving nice thoughts… you never know.
This column, blog, page -whatever this is- wouldn’t be complete without the management reflection. And today it comes from Professor Geert Hofstede, of Maastricht University: “Culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergy. Cultural differences are a nuisance at best and often a disaster.”
Are they? I’m personally a cock-eyed optimist and I tend to see the positive side to it. If we kept narrow mindedly to our own culture and background, the learning process would surely be impaired. Nonetheless cultural divergences must be managed.
As a reference, it is very interesting to examine Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, built from a handful of parameters:
- Power distance or the degree of acceptance of the less favoured members of one society of the inequalities they are subjected to.
- Individualism versus collectivism, or the degree to which the members of a society are integrated into groups.
- Masculinity versus femininity, or the degree of distribution of roles between genders.
- Uncertainty avoidance or degree of tolerance to uncertainty or ambiguity.
- Long-term orientation versus short-termism.
As an example, the former dimensions applied to the Indian, Spanish and British cultural dimensions, according to the available data by Hofstede. Of course generalisations are unfair, and the Spanish profile was never actually completed, but the exercise is still interesting.
4 comments 22 July, 2008
From Madrid to Barcelona’s olympic port (and a captain)
Some weeks are so hectic that you simply don’t have time to write. And if you do, it’s not because you’ve had the chance to sit back and reflect about something, but because you have some free time in-between things to be done. That’s the case for today: a few free minutes.
The day began in Madrid, in the Indian embassy, queuing for such a simple and stupid thing as a visa. It’s incredible how certain processes are still done as the last century, or even the previous one. The fact is that if you want to travel to India from Barcelona, first you must go to Madrid to get your visa. The alternative is waiting around three or four weeks to have it.
And if you went there without a warning, you’d be astonished to know that they only issue a limited number of visas, clearly outnumbered by the people that need them. So the queue starts around two hours before they open. By the time they unlock the doors, there’s enough people waiting to fill the entire waiting room. If you arrive at ten, just forget the visa. Come back tomorrow (in Spanish “vuelva usted mañana” although the Indians speak more English than Spanish). And that’s the only way for the 46 million inhabitants of Spain to visit the 1,100-million-people country.
Well. I finally made it. I was sixth on the line. Then, to the airport to take a plane back to Barcelona. And from the airport to one of Barcelona’s marinas: the Olympic port, built for Barcelona’s Olympics 15 years ago.
From air planes to boats: time to sail. That’s why I am here for. I am to renew my sailing licenses and, following legal requirements, I need several navigation hours with a captain instructor. A good way to ensure that people actually know about boats before granting them the right to sail them. That’s what I am here for.
Time for the final comment. Where is management in all this? Well. Ask it to Captain Marcos Rivera. In a ship, there’s only one captain. Such affirmation is something that we tend to forget. Authority is not a very popular value these days. It is still necessary nonetheless. Someone has to decide. There must be someone in charge, asessing the risks, analysing and drawing conclusions, and then, finally, deciding.
That doesn’t mean that he (or she) is the only one to think. That would be a great loss of value, rationality, thinking capacity, a loss of options. Empowerment is still essential (and compatible), as it is dissent. But there’s a limit to it. And when the captain decides, the others must follow.
Have you ever felt that, in a project or a workgroup, the problem was that the decisions were not actually being made? Or being enforced? Have you ever felt that authority was missing? That indecision and ambiguity was undermining the whole execution? That’s when a good methodology for making decisions is needed.
There’s a time when every task becomes critical: just give it enough wandering time and you’ll see. IT comes a time when further procrastination is no longer possible. That’s when a chieftain is needed.
1 comment 9 July, 2008
Mirror, mirror… (Project shadow management)
The average project manager is affected by all sorts of diseases. One of the worst, that could be labelled as project manager’s myopia, in line with other sectoral diseases like manager’s myopia (that is related to perfectly managing something that should not be done at all) or marketeers’ myopia (when we further seek perfection to our product, to an extent that our customers do not demand neither understand or value).
Project manager’s myopia is something similar to paranoia, albeit in a much lesser way. There are some symptoms to be aware of:
- Reality denial, we still are working as if things were like they used to be,
- Reality avoidance, skipping focus on the symptoms of change,
- Deflection, blaming change on others or seeking scapegoats that temporally justify mismatches,
- Projection, attributing one’s feelings to other people, we have this disconnection because of someone else,
- Splitting and radicalism, there are final groupings into good and bad things, good and bad people, good and bad customers… greys tend to converge into black and white only
- Somatisation, in late stages people can even become ill to avoid facing reality
Ok, those are extremes, but what is it that usually happens?
Sometimes we simply focus so much on a project’s completion and success that we tend to forget that projects are not isolated realities but that they are inserted into organisations. With time our big project is able to evolve and change. This is something that we can naturally accept and live with. In fact we need a big dose of flexibility when driving our project through execution, when risks are being faced and decisions being made.
But the project is not the only thing that is about to change through its lifetime. The organisational reality in which it must fit is going to change also. A change that can even be induced or catalysed by means of the project that we are taking care of.
And what do we do in the face of change? First we still keep the serious intention of managing the match, usually following a stakeholder model like this one:
This stakeholder matrix represents the main groups of stakeholders, or people that have a say, that we have to manage. They are divided in four groups related to the power and influence they have and their importance (or stake):
| Stakeholder Management |
Low Importance | High Importance |
| High Influence | Keep Satisfied | Manage Closely |
| Low Influence | Monitor (minimal effort) | Keep Informed |
Those are reasonable and wise words but, in the end, when the project has overcome the frustration and hysteria phases, we are so focused on the final deliveries that we tend to forget about stakeholders at all. And then the mismatch occurs and blows up on our faces. That’s when the aforementioned symptoms start to occur.
There’s another model that I especially like. Made by Holland and Skarke, projects the need for change with an additional dimension: time.
The model is taken from an article focused on IT and organisational alignment, but it’s also applicable in many other contexts. It says clearly that we must be manage two projects at the same time:
- Getting the system ready for the users, our main goal or the project that we are struggling to manage to completion
- Getting the users ready for the system, the often overlooked part.
Getting the users ready for the system will entail much more than the simple stakeholder engagement described with the classical approach. In information systems will be related to the user acceptance processes that we know should be analysed and managed, but in many other contexts, user acceptance must not be taken for granted. The users must be ready for the new infrastructure, and that means that they must not only know about it, but about the benefits it entails for their work processes, the alignment with their own personal and organisational objectives and the motivation to learn to use, and effectively use them.
Only this way we will be able to quickly climb the productivity drop in the adaptation curve, and only this way we will be able to adapt the deliverables to what the organisation expect: actively managing both ends of the final acceptance bargain.
Add comment 30 June, 2008
Kobayashi Maru (a no-win situation)
Star Trek is not the encyclopedia of life. Even though it contains so many interesting ideas about leadership and management, with different styles depending on the series, that is worth knowing about.
One of the scenarios that is a reference in the Star Trek world is the Kobayashi Maru scenario, which is a “lose-lose” or “no-win” scenario. Regardless of what you do, you’re doomed. We can see this kind of scenarios in everyday life: from organisations that have a couple of conflicting objectives to pursue at all costs, pyrrhic victories or military victories that are so costly to win that are not worth-it (ring a bell?), or the kinked curve of demand for oligopolies, that can only begin competing between itselves bearing huge losses. Even the Spanish Inquisition’s confessions were like that: torture until pleaded guilty and then executed: every move made it worse.
The original Kobayashi Maru scenario was a test for Star Trek commanders. In the simulator they received a distress call: a ship had been stranded on the other side of the border. They were subsequently faced with the decision of whether or not entering into enemy zone, underpowered, to try to rescue the crew of the Kobayashi Maru.
There was no escape, the only option was not to try the rescue.
One briskly student devised a solution: cheating. Cadet Kirk did in his third attempt. Strangely enough, tweaking the simulator was considered original thinking. Probably that was only because it had not been attempted before. In time Cadet Kirk became the infamous Captain Kirk.
Sometimes, regardless of what you do, defeat is unavoidable.
Yes, I’m exagerating a little, but this has been a hell of a Kobashi Maru week. And to you all there that have Kobayashi Maru weeks once in a while, there’s still a message of hope. The Kobayashi Maru scenario had a meaning and purpose.
Because it wasn’t an intelligence or ability test. It was a character test. How do we face odds and specifically unsurmuntable odds? After all managing death is a way to learn to manage life.
Paraphrasing another Star Trek classic, Mr. Spock, “fear is the mind killer”. Sometimes the worst might simply happen, and what’s important then is how to handle the situation, how to keep your own control and integrity under adverse or inauspicious circumstances.
Making the most out of it. That’s how you learn to be better, and how to bounce back and subdue the next possibly conquerable odd. Don’t let circumstances drag you down, because you need to keep fit for the next, possibly unforseeable, challenge. And it may well be one you can cope with.
5 comments 20 June, 2008
Under-promise and overachieve (the expectations model)
One of the things that happen to often in program management is that contractors, specifically their project managers, want to be too nice. Yes, of course they must be nice, but not that nice.
I’m not talking of nice presents or sumptuous dinners. I’m talking of making too much promises. Well, it’s understandable when you don’t have the contract but, once you have it, it’s a most annoying practice.
Reality is stubborn, bull-headed, disobedient, especially to the wishes of a project manager. It’s not her but her team who is really doing the hard work and, as they try to please her, they will tell her whatever she wants to hear… until the milestones get closer and the completion gets -or should get- nearer.
Then, nervousness gives way to hysteria and the hidden truth arises and comes out of the closet. The project is not going well. Guess what? Now hard decisions must be made, there’s almost no time and they (we) all go crazy.
Follow my advice: it’s all about managing expectations correctly. Too eager to please, sometimes we are too optimistic and make our projections forgetting risk management, inefficiencies, overheads, limited budgets, mistakes or that people are simply people.
If you are realistic in your predictions, and still take out a small bite allowing for some slack, you’ll be able to actually achieve what you have promised. Even, on the eyes of your benevolent customer, the under-promise might become an overachievement. You won’t lose your face but keep your credibility and increase your perceived efficiency.
Even in the worst case, it’s better to know the truth. Maybe the customer decides not to go ahead with the contract, but that will be better for you because there is no glory in projects that are doomed beforehand. Or maybe you and your customer can discover a better way of doing things, put some safeguards in place or simply make some drastic measures that might increase the probability of success. In any case, honesty is always a good advice.
I’ve tried to describe all this in the following expectations model:
It’s all about aligning expectations and results. The credibility zone is along that line but also tending to the overachievement. In short, people might expect you to do things better as they thought you would, but they won’t forgive if you do worse.
When you go down the credibility zone, there’s only danger: dissatisfied customers are your worst enemy: they may spread the word of a poor job.
Still there’s another danger zone in the upper left hand: giving too high achievements when you’ve managed poor expectations. In this case the problem is the bottom-line: probably you’ve spent more resources than were necessary and your customer would have been satisfied with less. It seems to me you should make a better use of your resources, or handle a few of them back to your organisation: after all they have a cost, although you might not perceive it. But with less capital employed, the profitability grows higher.
Remember: don’t be the one to put the rope around your own neck but do your best to keep it healthy instead. You might have much more leverage than the one you think you have.
2 comments 13 June, 2008
