Ken Blanchard is at it again. This time with Jesse Stoner. The two authored a book on the power of vision Full Steam Ahead!. I heard about it last week, got myself a copy, and poured through it last night. Like all Blanchard books this one takes place in a story. The authors show the significance of having a vision on one's life and those around. Throughout, they show how to generate and convey the vision in a way that enrolls others. This isn't just a book for people leading organizations; it is a book for each of us.

Well, my whining has worked. Two readers submitted proposals for Project e-Tips. I accepted both and they selected Purple Cow as their reward. Look for their e-Tips in the next two weeks. I still have 3 more copies of Seth Godin's Purple Cow and 5 full-year subscriptions to Business Book Summaries (a $99 value). Get me your proposal while you still have a choice!

Context provides teams with a sensibility for action. There's no better context on a project than what is of value to the customer. It is the project manager's role to bring the context to life. That happens in the everyday conversations of the team.

The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week

005: Speak about Customer Value with Your Team

Get clear about what is of value to your client in the work you are doing this week (and every week hereafter). Find some way to speak about this in your everyday-walking-around conversations. Customer value provides both the context for the work and the guidance when making choices. Don't let your team operate without it. Keys for Value-Focussed Action: Speak about value from the client's perspective. Examine everything you do with the question, How does this add value for the client? Find and eliminate the sources of waste. Make work ready. One of the principal sources of waste on projects is waiting for someone to complete their task so that you can begin. In the LPS™ we address this by "making work ready." Your attention to resolving constraints prior to the planned start of work will eliminate waste across your project. Excerpted from the coaching-by-email program First 30 Days on the Last Planner™ Last Planner is a trademark of The Center for Innovation in Project and Production Management

©2003 Hal Macomber | weblog.halmacomber.com | e-Tip Archive | PDF | Submit Tip

So, it looks like I'm in this e-Tip writing business alone. I do have five subscriptions and five books to give away if I publish your tip. Maybe I'll just use them as birthday and Christmas presents. Or, not.

Donna Fitzgerald writes a regular column for Builder.com, The Nimble Project Manager. She's been writing about Peter Senge's Fifth Discipline. She's still it at: Shared vision: A key to project success.

Donna explores two issues of vision in detail:

(F)irst is the explicit concept of shared vision that focuses on capturing, communicating, and reconciling our goals and our methods for achieving those goals. The second perspective is that all organizations have an implicitly shared vision, which manifests itself as what is most often referred to as the corporate culture. In addition, this implicit shared vision influences, at a significant level, how we manage our projects.

Donna takes the space necessary to share context and develop her ideas. Hang in there with her. It's worth it.

I found a short article today that supports the point I made in my Project e-Tip this week Keep the Project Mission Alive. John Brandt writing Brandt On Leadership — Managing For A Higher Purpose in Industry Week claims leaders are more successful when they manage according to purpose rather than time or tasks.

(M)ost of us manage ourselves not according to our talents and purpose, but according to time and tasks.

(L)eaders who imbue organizations with a mission beyond merely making money — something that can capture the imagination and hearts of customers, employees and partners alike — are consistently more profitable than those who don't.

Clarify the mission for everyone on your team. Do it today. And, do it again and again.

Some of you long-time readers know I am a Patrick Lencioni fan. Pat is the author of three best-selling books on leadership: Five Temptations of a CEO, Four Obsessions of Executives, and Five Dysfunctions of Teams. I've reviewed his leadership trilogy before (this posting might be temporarily unavailable). So why am I writing now? I got to meet Pat and his team while they were delivering a program for executive teams Conquering the Five Dysfunctions Workshop in the same hotel that hosted Coachville's Future of Coaching conference.

Pat is a cool guy. (Is it still cool to say, "cool"?) He invited me to slip in to watch him work. Later I introduced Pat to the folks leading Coachville. In one of Pat's most recent articles Conquering Team Dysfunction. Pat writes:

Successful teamwork is not about mastering subtle, sophisticated theories,
but rather about embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence. Ironically, teams succeed because they are exceedingly human. By acknowledging the imperfections of their humanity, members of functional teams can overcome the natural tendencies that
make teamwork so elusive and accomplish more than any mere group of individuals could ever imagine.

Do yourself a favor. Read the whole article Conquering Team Dysfunction and share it with your team.

In this Project e-Tip I am introducing actions the project manager/leader can take for organizing and keeping a project on track. Try it out. Try speaking about the project mission for six weeks. I'm not kidding! It takes that much repetition to convey the seriousness and to make it stick. Don't stop short.

The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week

004: Keep the Project Mission Alive

Projects tend to drift away from the original purpose. The principal truing mechanism is the project mission. Don't misunderstand. I'm not suggesting a long drawn-out process for creating and word-smithing a mission statement. No. I am saying the team needs a concrete way of speaking about what it is they are there to accomplish on behalf of the customer. State the mission in the customer's language…in a language that conveys the value the customer derives from using what it is you are providing. For example, if you are doing a project where your product is a software program for sales management, state the mission as (something like) "tools for increasing company sales." You can't over-communicate the project mission. State and re-state the mission at the opening and closing of each project meeting. Reconfirm the mission with the customer throughout the life of the project. Customers change their view of what they need AND you and your project team will see better ways of taking care of customer concerns. By keeping the mission in front of the customer and the team you will avoid project drift but not miss the opportunity of course correction.

©2003 Hal Macomber | weblog.halmacomber.com | e-Tip Archive | PDF | Submit Tip

Still waiting on readers for their e-Tips!

Bill Duncan, original author of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK®), wrote a concise article, METHODS AND MEANS: For Good Measure, in the May/June Projects@Work journal. Bill covers the bases providing both a context for measuring project success and guidelines for developing useful metrics that matter.

I suggest we step back from the usual success criteria of cost schedule, and customer satisfaction. While performance in these areas matter, they are the result of doing other things well. Try these:

• What is the point or mission of the whole project? We might describe it as design and build something, or we could describe the mission in terms of the overall value created for the customer. Why the latter? Because even project missions can be expected to change over the project life. The customer learns, the team learns, circumstances change, and life happens.
• What is the reliability of task completions? When team members' work completes as expected others' work is released as planned.
• How are we doing learning and adjusting to the ever-changing project circumstances? Are we innovating? Are people growing in their roles? Is the customer getting more value than expected?

Take another look at your project measures. Focus on the variables not just outcomes.

Projects are the setting for carrying out innovation. We don't lack for good ideas, not even great ideas. We lack for successful selection, development, and implementation of those ideas through the process of innovation. That all happens as projects.

Christine Canabou writing Fast Ideas for Slow Times in the May issue of Fast Company offers an assimilation of some very good thinking on innovation. Too bad she sells it short in her subtitle …three rules for conservative creativity. From where I sit the advice applies equally well to the general project setting:

1. Do more of what matters.
   …out innovate and outperform everyone else. Start with relationships.
        Jeffrey Pfeffer, Business 2.0
2. Test, screw-up, learn — only faster.
   leave the meeting with an embodiment of the idea.
        Tom Kelley, IDEO
3. Define innovation
   Use a systematic process for selecting ideas to proceed as innovations.
        Alistair Cook, Bain & Co.

The process of innovation only begins with the idea. It continues as a project through prototyping, development, delivery, etc. Throughout the project there is a continuing opportunity for (re)shaping the innovation through inviting all project team members to use their gifts.

Organize your projects, of whatever type, to exploit the otherwise latent talents available on your team. Invite team members to join you in playing the game You ain't seen nothin' yet!

Here's my third weekly Project e-Tip. I've decided to emphasize the fifth lean principle, pursue perfection, in my early e-tips. This one has the added benefit of producing a team dynamic of open communication. This is key to benefit from the varied perspectives and expertise of project participants.

The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week

003: Conduct Plus-Delta Reviews to Encourage Team Openness

Schedule sufficient time on your agenda both at the beginning for carrying forward learning and at the end of the meeting. Two to three minutes at the beginning and five to ten minutes at the end of the meeting is usually sufficient for groups of eight people. Adjust your scheduled time based on your experience and size of group. Inform participants at the beginning of each session that you will be asking them for their comments and assessments at the end of the meeting. Ask people to comment on what was performed 'nearly well' or 'approximately correct' as well as what produced high value. Ask people to keep their comments positive, …'unconditionally constructive'. Record comments in two columns: plus on the left, delta on the right. Limit the conversation on any comment to exploring what is being said rather than arguing the merits of what was said. At the beginning of each session refer back to the most recent Plus-Delta sheet of comments to give people guidance on participating in the current session. Always thank people for their comments, both at the time they make them and at the end of the session. Excerpted from the coaching-by-email program First 30 Days on the Last Planner System™

©2003 Hal Macomber | weblog.halmacomber.com | e-Tip Archive | PDF | Submit Tip

Note to readers: I've got five subscriptions to Business Book Summaries that I want to give away along with five copies of Purple Cow. Submit your tip.

I keep hearing people say, "We spend too much time in meetings." The complainers often have a good point. Project meetings are often poorly run and don't result in action. On the other hand, there are people who complain about all meetings. Jeffrey Pfeffer, co-author of The Knowing-Doing Gap writes Don't Believe the Hype About Strategy in the May issue of Business 2.0.

Pfeffer argues that we spend too much time talking about what we will do and not enough time (and intention) on doing it. While the article is about strategy, he could have been talking about project management.

Talking replaces action, planning replaces learning by doing.

For a company to stay ahead of its competition, it must do things that others cannot easily copy.

What is difficult to copy…is the way a company implements and executes proficiently. Anyone can talk about…delivering software that actually works. But few organizations can really make good on such promises.

Pfeffer finishes the article encouraging readers

(I)nstead of sitting in meetings and producing fancy PowerPoint demonstrations, develop your strategy by using your company's best thinking at the time, learning, refining, and trying again. Under almost all conditions, fast learners are going to outperform even the most brilliant planners.

Projects are always about "implementing and executing." Let's substitute some fast learning on our projects for some brilliant planning.

Low Intensity Project Management by Andrew Weiss, PhD, PMP, appearing April 30, in Gantthead.

The article is both seductive and frightening. Weiss states, …not all project management is highly structured and driven by formal tools. Towards the end of the article he characterizes low intensity projects:

LIPM is far more of an emergent activity than standard project management (in other words, project management in a given organization would arise more from situational variables than from adherence to standard practices). LIPM thus tends to be more experimental than prescriptive.

Are you beginning to see the seductiveness? (for me anyway)

It's all the stuff in between that's scary. Weiss offers one rationalization after another describing why some organizations or situations may not be ready for the formal approaches that they really need. (my paraphrase) He sees taking a LIPM approach as a way of introducing more formal approaches to organizations. An example:

Work breakdown structures. In the LIPM environment, one of the most challenging tasks is simply keeping track of what has and has not been done. Personnel are probably not used to regularly reporting on their progress or looking at their activities in a structured, hierarchical manner. However, once they are shown how to do so, the WBS becomes a powerful tool for project control.

See what I mean? In short, LIPM is a Trojan horse for introducing formalized methodology and all the trappings.

Still looking for just what's needed and no more? Consider designing a set of practices based on Fernando Flores description of projects. You're sure to do better than LIPM.

Here's a treat for the weekend. Seth Godin published his book Purple Cows yesterday. It's a book about setting yourself apart. Seth says "Be reamarkable!" To coincide with the publishing of the book he wrote an ebook of purple cow examples — remakable people and companies. You can get it here for free, or from Amazon for 10 bucks. You choose. You might be wondering why I can give it away for free? It was Seth's way of saying thank you for a nomination I made for the ebook. Although he didn't publish my nomination, he did send me the ebook and his encouragement for me to share it. Nice!

Get a dose of remakability — 99 Cows.

The Top Ten Reasons Projects Fail (Part 4) by Frank Winters, appearing on April 16th in Gantthead. This article is not about the 4th reason for failure. It's a continuation of a series. Winters has published five articles in the series. The series is good. This article is very good. In it Winters explores the role of leadership to project success.

When there is a leadership vacuum and negative inputs are coming from those who should be leaders, it's up to the PM to fill the vacuum and overcome the negativity. That's one reason the No. 1 cause of project failure–inadequately trained and/or inexperienced project managers–has everything to do with the project manager. The buck must stop someplace, and for projects that place is the PM's desk.

Get this, Winters is saying project leaders must be in on-going conversations of why the project matters:

The project manager's role includes an obligation to fully understand the goals and objectives and then do what it takes to lead the team in that direction. This almost always requires a constant stream of reminders of what the goals and objectives are. Very often, the stream goes up the chain as well as down. It's very easy for the team–including upper management–to forget why the project was commissioned in the first place. The project manager must not let this happen.

Winters offers five characteristics of project managers:

1. Understand, believe in and continuously communicate the project's purpose.
   It is the PM's job to keep the team and all stakeholders focused on and excited about the objectives.
2. Behave with a high degree of personal integrity.
   (Integrity) means maintaining a balance between what is good for the project and organization, and what's good for the team and the individual team member's personal goals.
3. Be a supportive, constructive source of strength.
   Effective leaders focus on the strengths of those they lead, not on weaknesses. Maximizing the value of the strengths of the team members will produce the most good.
4. Be honest and clear in all communication, particularly when making progress reports.
   Telling the truth is only half the battle. The project manager must also have a plan and must communicate what the plan is with the same degree of clarity and honesty.
5. Have a plan, know it well and be willing to change it when necessary.
   Of great importance is the PM's ability to know when change is needed, coupled with a willingness to make the changes.

And Winters' finish is great:

PMs who are not true leaders leave the success of their projects to others–and to chance.

It's the project leadership age.

I received a number of comments and emails in response to last week's Project e-Tip. One theme came through: Use measurements for the purpose of improvement. Of course, that's lean principle #5 pursue perfection. So, this week I'm offering one of the first steps in pursuing perfection on projects: collect useful data and find ways to make sense of it. For that I recommend combining a five why analysis with Pareto charting.

Here's my second Project e-Tip:

The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week

002: Collect and Post Pareto Data

Reliable task completion provides for reliable task releases. We use PPC (percent of plan complete) as the measure of reliability in the Last Planner System™. When a task doesn't complete as promised we call this a plan failure. Investigate the cause for each plan failure. Do this at your daily or weekly meetings in conversation with the performer or last planner. Don't be satisfied with the first stated cause. Get to the underlying issues by asking 'why' five times. Develop and use standard reason codes to categorize your data in a Pareto format. Remember this is about learning and improving not about assigning blame. Post the Pareto data alongside of the PPC chart in the location of your project team or last planner meetings. Update this chart as you are discussing your weekly work plans and daily or weekly performance. After a while patterns of plan failures emerge. When you see at least five instances of a reason for failure, then stop and perform problem-cause removal. Last Planner is a trademark of The Center for Innovation in Project and Production Management www.leanconstuction.org

©2003 Hal Macomber | weblog.halmacomber.com | e-Tip Archive | PDF | Submit Tip

Calling for Project e-Tips.
What's your proposal for a practice that supports delivering projects on a lean basis? If I publish your submission, then I will give you either a one-year subscription to Business Book Summaries or a copy of one of my favorite books (going on sale May 8, 2003). And yes, I get to decide whether or not I'll publish your proposal!

I do too much writing about uncertainty, lean practices and methods, and the linguistic action perspective and not enough writing about what we find is the most difficult aspect of lean. It is Womack's and Jones' fifth lean principle: pursuing perfection.

Invariably I visit companies who have adopted a lean approach to project delivery, but they haven't adopted any formal practices of continuous improvement. Seth Godin writes Slowly I Turned…Step by Step…Inch by Inch… about the difficulty as being endemic to American business and our culture in general:

We need to stop shopping for lightning bolts. The way out of our paralysis is simpler than that: It's about thinking small and thinking gradual.

We are programmed to look for the quick fix, the overnight diet, the winning strategy.

Womack and Jones will tell you while flow and pull are the distinguishing characteristics of the production activity, pursuing perfection is the general orientation that separates the Toyotas of the world from everyone else. Seth puts it this way:

If every element of an organization gets a little better every day, then that organization will become unstoppable. An organization that builds that kind of momentum will soon evolve into a market leader.

Jim Collins confirms that in his study reported in Good to Great. He says that breakthroughs come from consistently building up effort over long periods of time.

None of these authors are saying something new. Who knows, we might even find a Ben Franklin quote on the subject. What these authors fail to help with is how to create a habit of pursuing perfection. Seth tells us:

The truth is, gradual change is challenging and hard: challenging, because the people around you are demanding something great right now, and hard, because gradual requires the faith to know that your hard work is worth the investment.

So how can we pull this off?

The best advice I've read was from Dr. John Psarouthakis. Dr. John, as his employees called him, is a Greek immigrant who got an MIT education and later a PhD. After a successful career he went on to found a series of companies that became JP Enterprises. Those companies provide parts to the automotive industry. Dr. John wrote the book Better Makes Us Best. (It is now out of print, but can be found on Half.com and Amazon used books.) He describes an approach that I'll characterize as intense engagement. Dr. John encourages all staff to align their actions everyday with the mission of the company making it their personal goal to do better today than they did yesterday. He goes on to describe how management must shift their behavior and the formal systems to support the goal.

We can thank Seth Godin for being the most recent person to call attention to the pursuit of perfection as the source for long term competitiveness. Now, let's take that advice and build practices for continuous improvement in our project settings.