Six Project Teams Wanted

Are you adventuresome? I'm looking for 6 project teams who want to join an experiment with me. Here's my plan: over the next five weeks I will be creating and testing a set of tools for encouraging the listening workplace in the project setting. This is part of a larger effort of mine to have project managers step up to the role of project leaders.

As you've probably read by now in 5R Protocol for a Listening Workplace I think that one of the reasons lean initiatives work in the production environment is they either begin or include the visual workplace (5S). The visual workplace does something essential for people working in the production environment. It creates a clearing for observing and maintaining value-based practices. That clearing is predominantly associated with materiel (equipment, tools, space, material, and labor). The world of projects is always about people and only sometimes about materiel. The principal actions of people on projects occur in language: requests, promises, assessments, assertions, and declarations. But those speech actions don't appear as clearly as does the physical elements of projects. If we are to conduct projects on a lean basis we need to produce a clearing for observing and maintaining conversations that are attending to the value promised on the project.

So here goes:

On Thursday I will offer six teams the opportunity to work with me on creating the listening workplace. To be one of those six teams I want to hear from the project manager of the team. Please email me to accept my invitation. Include:

• a brief description of your project,
• where you are in the project (just starting, about to finish, midway, etc.), and
• a colorful characterization of how you are doing as a team (firing on all cylinders, stuck in the mud, wiping the tears away, etc.).

I'll pick six teams to work with for the next month or so. I'll be reporting our learning in this weblog. The tools we develop together will be used in the upcoming program for project leaders. This is a great opportunity to contribute to the practice of lean project delivery while giving your team a boost along the way.

I want to remind you that this is an experiment. There is no listening workplace. There is only my strong suspicion that something I'm calling the listening workplace will create the circumstances for delivering projects on a lean basis. Don't even think about getting your team and project involved if you aren't up for the learning and surprises.

I'll provide more details during the week. In the meantime, I need to get ready for a trip tomorrow to New York. Seth Godin, author of Purple Cow, has invited me to attend his Purple Cow Workshop in his office. Maybe he thinks I'm purple…naw. I'll tell you what I learn.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2003 at 4:33 pm and is tagged: PM practice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. Convert this post to a PDF document.