For PMs Who Might Someday Have to Deal with Human Beings
August 5th, 2003 by Hal
Just in from the 5th issue of Software Development Magazine's People & Projects Newsletter MANAGING YOUR OWN BLINDNESS — A Conversation with True North's David A. Schmaltz. I can't show you the newsletter. Nor can I refer you to an archive; they don't seem to have one. So I am doing something that I've never done before. I'm republishing their newsletter interview verbatim. It's not to be missed.
The newsletter interview is with the author of the book The Blind Men and the Elephant: Mastering Project Work by David Schmaltz.
[I haven't read the book. My comments refer to the SD newsletter interview, Amazon reviewers, and the publisher's website.]
Schmaltz orients the reader to a fundamental nature of being human — we are all blind. While one of us sees the elephant's trunk, another only sees its tail, while still others see or feel massive legs and a large underbelly. This could (predictably) lead to arguments among those present. While this looks like a problem for someone managing a project, it is really the opportunity afforded when we bring together a group of people. Maybe we can share what we are seeing and figure out that we are looking at something different from what our limited perspective allows us to see.
Schmaltz also claims projects are conversations. (Where have I heard that before?) He contrasts that with projects as carefully scripted plays, that projects unfold rather than are told.
I love this comment from Amazon reviewer Dan Starr from St. Charles, IL,
"The Blind Men and the Elephant" is not a replacement for a good textbook on organizing and managing the mechanics of a project; it's something far harder to find — an essential addition to the shelf of any project manager who might someday have to deal with human beings.
My book is on order. How about you? Order here.
MANAGING YOUR OWN BLINDNESS
A Conversation with True North's David A. Schmaltz
Published in SD People & Projects email newsletter, Aug. 5, 2003
In "The Blind Men and the Elephant" — an ancient Hindu fable popularized by the American poet John Godfrey Saxe — six blind men happen across an elephant one day and go about trying to describe it to one another. The first man, upon walking into the elephant's massive body, tells the others that the beast "is very like a wall." The second man, upon feeling the elephant's sharp tusk, concludes that the animal "is very like a spear." The third feels the elephant's long trunk and says it "is very like a snake." And so continues this line of reasoning until all six men are deep in argument over what an elephant really is, neither one willing to consider that what the others may have to say is just as true — but incomplete — as his own perspective.
It is exactly this sort of blindness that author and project management consultant David A. Schmaltz warns readers about in his most recent book, aptly titled The Blind Men and the Elephant. Rather than provide yet another lecture on the mundane but necessary aspects of Gantt charts and deadline scheduling, the book focuses on ways that members of project teams can learn to evaluate and overcome their own blindness. It's a lesson, he says, that could very well change the outcome of all your projects.
We caught up with Schmaltz recently to discuss this dynamic view on project building. Here's what he had to say:
SD: In your book, you note that the root cause of project failure is "incoherence" among team members. Does this simply mean that managers must find a way to get their teams to communicate better, or is there more involved in building a coherent team?
DAS: Creating coherence can't be the sole responsibility of any manager. One of the most popular ways to undermine the possibility for coherence — and project success — is for the team to expect the manager to somehow create it. As I say in the book, a manager might encourage coherence by embracing her own blindness and by appreciating everyone else's blindness too, but the manager has no special power or responsibility for creating it.
Coherence is a choice, and is well within the power and authority of every member of a project's community to create. It comes from making generous interpretations of others' curious testimony.
The alternative, as the Blind Men again illustrate, is a theological war, featuring endless arguments over what the elephant "really" is, when it really is an integration of all of the different perspectives.
SD: How does this perspective account for the times when people disagree with the project's goals, deadlines, or other attributes? Should they remain quiet in order to create coherence?
DAS: Disagreements can be resolved in a variety of ways. One of the best is to engage in a conversation where each of the participants expect to be changed by what they hear. This can provide a more robust resolution than any imposed order, but the willingness to be changed by what we hear can be difficult to acquire. Proving some framework for this to happen is one of the reasons I wrote The Blind Men. If we could understand how blind our
perspective is, we might be more able to be changed by what we hear.
SD: It seems that one of the biggest causes of incoherence among specialized project teams, such as in software development or engineering, occurs when employees feel that their managers do not understand the technical aspects of the project. How should managers deal with situations like these?
DAS: I think a better question might be, "How should an individual deal with situations like these?" You could as easily ascribe the cause of these rifts to the technical folks not understanding the managerial aspects of their project.
As the Blind Men demonstrate, you create rifts for yourself when you insist that others understand the elephant as you understand it. It's a feature of every technical project I've ever been associated with that the management understands the technology about as well as the technologists understand the management — but these normal differences in perspective need not cause rifts. When employees feel that their managers don�t understand the technical aspects of their project, the issue is probably more effectively resolved between the employee and their feelings, and any employee can take care of that for himself.
SD: Some people might see the "coherence" that you talk about as simply a nicer word for "conformity" or "attitude adjustment."
DAS: We seem in this culture to be suspicious of anything that might change simply because we shift our perspective. Such change is in fact the most simple and profound possible.
It�s important to note, though, that there�s a huge difference between choosing to adjust your perspective and having such adjustments imposed upon you.
SD: Is there any advice out there about project management that you disagree with?
DAS: Don't get me started. Project management is steeped in myth that influences more than just the project managers. We�re told, for instance, that project success can be measured as "on time, on budget and on spec," even though no novel effort has ever satisfied those expectations except by accident. We plan "contingencies" as if divergence from the plan should be the exception rather than the norm. We script our efforts when we could be engaging in meaningful conversation.
Project training too often focuses upon those elements that add little real value to the effort. Follow any masterful project manager around and you'll see that they do almost none of the "best practices" touted by the certifying agencies because that theory doesn't work very well in practice.
The most successful project managers focus upon creating the community that comes from embracing their own inevitable blindness, from helping people find their project within their project assignment and from making generous interpretations of other's curious perspectives. Blind men, all.
Further Reading:
The Blind Men and the Elephant: Mastering Project Work,
(Berrett-Koehler, 2003) by David A. Schmaltz
http://click.sd.email-publisher.com/maabjSGaaZCOwbdnxoRb/
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