It's been a few weeks since I published a Project e-Tip. I've got lots to offer! I've been working with teams who are just beginning to go on the Last Planner System™. While a few are struggling, others are making great progress. This week's tip just might be the key to making everyday improvement.

The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week

028: Measure Planning Reliability

Anyone know who first said, "What gets measured gets done?" I found a reference to a 1986 Tom Peters' article What Gets Measured Gets Done. Let's just start this Project e-Tip by saying if you aren't measuring, then you can't know if you are improving. We've come to learn that on projects reliability of planning is more important than productivity of work groups. But are you measuring reliability? No! Start now. Measuring reliability is a simple process. Start by meeting with your team on an everyday basis for just a few minutes. I recommend doing this at the end of the day. Schedule the meeting for 5 minutes. During this meeting you have one question. "Did you finish what you promised to finish today?" The only allowed answers are "Yes" or "No". Record the answers on a graph. The graph doesn't need to be fancy. Flip chart paper will do. Add to the graph each day. Record the result for your team as a percent. 5 tasks finished out of 7 promised to finish is 71%. Plot that on a graph. No credit for progress or for performing work that was not promised. The point of this exercise is to improve planning reliability. Check back next week for uncovering the reasons for unreliability. The Project Leaders' Studio™

©2004 Hal Macomber | weblog.halmacomber.com | e-Tip Archive | PDF | Submit Tip

How about a few tips from the peanut gallery! There's a free prize if I publish your tip.

Are you a project manager? or project leader? or both? I don't mean to play word games. I usually hear the senior person on a project refer to him or herself as PM. Barbara Fitzgerald commented on the ZweigWhite posting, "(Calling a project manager 'PM') is what allows others in the organization to turn the Project Manager into a blank projection screen." Harsh? Maybe, but project managers as Rodney Dangerfield says, "…just don't get no respect." Our conversation this week with Rob Galford suggests why that is the case.

Rob is the co-author with Anne Seibold Drapeau of the book The Trusted Leader. [book summary by QuickMBA] This past Thursday I interviewed Rob on the Project Leaders' Studio™ monthly call with project authors. Rob and Anne wrote the book in the context of the leaders of companies. After meeting Rob and reading and re-reading his book I saw opportunities for people leading temporary organizations…projects. Rob and Anne have done a good job presenting models for assessing and developing your trustworthiness and for building trust in your project organization.

I've been writing about trust, trusting, trust-worthiness, and restoring trust for quite some time. This interview with Rob is just another stop along the way. Back in October '03 I introduced The Trust Test along with Rob's and Anne's equation for assessing trust. In December '03 I wrote about Rob's and Anne's model for Building Personal Trust. In my posting Story-Telling Reforms the Project I claimed we produce alignment among the team as a basis for trusting each others' intentions. In November '03 I showed my exasperation in my comments on Michael Sheering's Trust Is Crucial in Project Coordination. Finally, any long-standing reader knows of my fondness of Fernando Flores' perspective on trust. As Patrick Lencioni points out in the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, trust is the foundational competence for team performance.

So what did I learn in the conversation with Rob? I'd read the book (three times) and listened to him speak once. Still, the conversation reminded me of one of Fernando Flores' key points on trust. If you want to increase trust you must talk about trust. Rob Galford is talking about trust…and then he went one step further. Rob and Anne took a subject that appears just beyond our grasp and gave us a handle for taking action. The simplicity of the equation for personal trust reveals the insight of the writers.

If you haven't taken the trust test, then do it today. And then go sign-up for Rob's and Anne's monthly newsletter Topics of Trust and Leadership. You won't be disappointed. And for a little more fun read a quick summary of the enemies of trust and this enemies of trust excerpt.

Catch a preview of our conversation with Rob Galford by reading the weLEAD interview. You'll read about Rob's and Anne's backgrounds and what they call the enemies of trust. We hope you can join us for our telecall on Thursday June 24 at 1:00 - 2:15 PM Eastern. If you haven't signed up, do so now by visiting Project Authors' Series. We'll listen for you…

We're having the last of our telecalls with project authors this Thursday, June 24, 2004, from 1:00 - 2:15 PM Eastern. If you've missed the prior telecalls then get over to Conversations with Project Authors to sign-up. We're tackling the topic of being a trusted leader. We will be having a conversation with authors Rob Galford and Anne Drapeau Seibold.

The authors have done a great job in The Trusted Leader of presenting the challenges and avenues for developing oneself as a trusted leader. I won't say more here. Get over to their website The Trusted Leader. While you're there look at Trust Topics and take the Trust Test.

Again, if you have signed up for the series get over to Conversations with Project Authors to do so now! Now that you've done all that, leave your questions for the authors as a comment at the end of this posting. We'll do our best to get your questions answered.

Have you ever read Contractor Mag.com? It's the news magazine for the Mechanical Contracting (plumbing and HVAC) industry. H. Kent Craig writes a regular column titled Craig on Project Management. In today's column Craig's article is titled, The New Project Management Paradigm. Here's how it opens:

"HOLD ON TO YOUR hats for the big winds of change headed our way sometime in the next couple decades in the way jobs are run and buildings built. The traditional sequence of "design-build-validate" project management, which has been the mainstay — if not the only way — jobs have been built for the past 100 years, has now become a suicidal strategy."

Among other things, Craig argues that buildings cost too much. That alone may bring about a change in project management. Read the article for the rest of the argument.

Mark Zweig, guru to the AE industry, noticed there just aren't enough good project managers. Writing in his Zweig Letter Mark offered four reasons and three recommendations. I urge you to take his views seriously even if you don't agree. Mark has a knack of getting to the heart of a subject. And he does so with few words. Mark graciously allowed me to republish his essay. Following Mark's writing is my commentary.

Editorial: Not enough good project managers?

This article first appeared in The Zweig Letter (ISSN 1068-1310) Issue # 566.
Originally published 06/14/04

Instead of lamenting the lack of good PMs, leaders should focus on why that's the case.

My theory is that no firm is completely happy with how it handles project management. There are always problems. And one of the common complaints heard is, "We don't have enough good project managers."

While I will accept that as fact — i.e., A/E/P and environmental firms DON'T have enough good project managers — it may be helpful to explore the question of WHY that's the case. Here are my thoughts:

Project manager is a very difficult job.
There's no doubt about it — being a PM is a tough role. As a PM, you may get responsibility for completing a job you didn't start. A lot of bad decisions could have been made that you will have to live with. The fee allocated to do the work may be too low. The client could be impossible to please, yet your job is to please them. You could be stuck with a team of low performers and not have the authority to get rid of them. The job you are assigned to manage may be one of 10 jobs that you are responsible for managing. Your computer system may not support moving the work around the firm to get it completed by those best qualified to do it. There just isn't enough time, money, or manpower to do the job properly. The fact is, project manager is probably the most difficult job in the firm to do well for any number of reasons.

Project manager is a thankless job — at least internally.
Not only is being a PM a tough job, but you get very little appreciation from your firm for doing it. If the budgets are routinely exceeded, deliverables late, or quality lacking for any number of reasons, it's no wonder PMs are not universally lauded in our firms. The fact that many, if not all, of these things were not/are not under the control of the PM is not usually brought up when top management is griping about it, or when other employees who aren't project managers are looking for someone to blame about their lack of a bonus. The good news for PMs is that they can at least get some positive feedback from the client. As the lead person handling the project from the A/E/P or environmental firm, they are also in the best position to see the firm's successes from the client's point of view. That's tremendously gratifying.

Project managers have to be tethered to the office.
While most everyone these days in any position of responsibility in a design or consulting firm has to accept more intrusion of work time into personal time (especially if we let personal time intrude on work time occasionally!), project managers probably face more of this than anyone else.

Clients expect an immediate response to every question. Team members need to be informed of changes in direction immediately. Contractors with questions in the field need an immediate response. The need for rapid-fire response requires that the cell phone be turned on and the BlackBerry be constantly checked. And this level of connectedness can create stress in your personal life.

The higher education system doesn't turn out project managers.
What the system does tend to turn out are experts (if you can call anyone with a technical degree an "expert"). What I mean by "expert," is someone with specific technical knowledge in a particular engineering/design/scientific discipline.

NO amount of technical knowledge, however, is a replacement for being able to communicate, being able to work well with others, or being able to solve complex problems.

These are the skills that are essential to being a good project manager, and they really are not emphasized in the typical engineering, architecture, or science education. The reasons for that are many? employers want people with certain training, accreditation boards drive higher-ed institution curriculums in certain directions, and academics often lack real-world work experience.

If we want to solve the problem of not enough good project managers in our firms, we are going to have to do some things differently. That includes making the job as easy as we can for our PMs by giving them some permanently assigned staff resources, fixing accounting policies that don't reinforce resource sharing, and building intelligent wide area networks.

We need to thank our effective PMs for the amazing job they do, and we need to get those who don't do so well into roles that they can be successful filling. We need to make sure we don't have overly restrictive policies on work hours or absences during the day if we expect on-call response from the PMs 24/7.

And we need to make sure we can tell people what the PM role is and provide some good guidance to those who want to succeed as project managers? not allowing them to go on with a dysfunctional idea that it is less important than the technical stuff they do. All of these things will help!? M.Z. (mzweig@zweigwhite.com)

The above was Mark's views. Now my commentary. Please join in with your own in a comment at the end of this posting.

• Project manager is a very difficult job.
  Mark offers a litany of usual circumstances that make the role difficult. I'll add three more:
  1. The firm lacks standard practices for organizing teams and delivering projects relying instead on the idiosyncrasies of project managers.
  2. There are no practices for learning from one project to the next.
  3. Team members are isolated from one another performing one task after the other on one project to the next.

  The job is difficult enough. And then we add to it!

• Project manager is a thankless job — at least internally.
  Appreciation and acknowledgement are easy to do. But the project manager too often only hears the griping…from the team, from the customer, from the management, and to top it off from his or her family for doing all of what is necessary to get the job done while missing or being late for one precious family event after another.
• Project managers have to be tethered to the office.
  The always-on always-available project manager is the current standard. This undoubtedly has a toll on the individual. And the uncertainty and ever-changing situation of AE projects demands nothing less.
• The higher education system doesn't turn out project managers.
  This is the big issue. Architects, engineers, and planners are not being prepared for the role they play as project managers. Worse, the preparation available is having little to no effect on project performance. As Mark says technical expertise is no replacement for communication skills, relating to others, and solving complex problems. And so often projects require all three at once in the form of collaboration.

Mark offers three recommendations for managers of AE firms. Building on those I will

• Make the project manager job easier. Adjust policies and systems to suit their tasks and challenges.
  Ask the projects managers what dissatisfies them. Then address each one.
• Thank project managers for the amazing job they do.
  Take care of your project managers. Stay close to them. Not to keep track of their actions, but to see they are getting what they need. And that includes telling them how well they are doing and how much you appreciate them. The Gallup organization claims that people only consistently perform at high levels when they are appreciated at least once every 7 days.
• Provide guidance on the role of project manager.
  Make it a point to understand the day-to-day nature of the role. There is nothing more important than communication. See that project managers have exceptional communication skills. See that company practices support everyday good communications.

The project manager role doesn't have to be difficult, thankless, or restraining. Projects are the exciting work of organizations. Make the time to support your project managers.

There's another Safety Thursday initiative. It's run by Landstar. Safety Thursday Calls: dial 877-717-5921 at noon Eastern on the third Thursday of each month for a discussion of safety. I've yet to participate. Client meetings have kept me away.

How about a few readers joining this month and then leaving comments on this weblog. The next meeting is June 17th. No need to make a reservation. Mark your calendar and call in.

I'm reluctantpleased to write about Business 2.0 articles since the publishers decided to restrict access to open the website. But Jeffrey Pfeffer is always a good read. He doesn't disappoint in his June '04 article How to Turn On the Charm.

Show a little courtesy; it pays off!

Paying attention to other people, in addition to being the best way to learn from them, happens to be one of the most powerful means of influencing them. And influencing others is what leadership is about — getting other people to get things done.

Courtesy pays off! People stand ready to serve you when you show respect and serve them. Didn't we learn this in kindergarten? Probably not! My current beef is with Blackberry-toting email-obsessive executives who constantly multi-task conversations and replying to whatever shows up on their screen.

Show a little courtesy. Give those around you your full attention. There's no telling what you will learn if you put your attention on listenting.

Silence is the principal source of dysfunction in organizations.

Clarke Ching sent along the latest VitalSmarts whitepaper Silence Kills, by Joseph Grenny. The paper is one in a series on Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Patterson, et al. I've authored a paper with Greg Howell on wastes in organizations and on projects. There certainly is no greater waste than death. Greg and I argue that the two sources of great waste are not speaking and not listening. While you'll have to wait for publication of our paper on August 3rd, don't wait reading Grenny's take on silence.

Silence is the principal source of dysfunction in organizations. Using examples of deaths in hospitals, the downfall of companies, and the gross tragedy of the Columbia shuttle, Grenny describes how a habit of silence during crucial conversations kills.

Choose speaking rather than silence to keep people alive.

Everyday on jobsites people avoid speaking about hazards, the recklessness of others' actions, and the inattention to the sanctity of life. The consequence of that silence is 1,300 injuries and 3 deaths each day. I've been quick to place responsibility for that silence at the feet of management. Grenny reports on a study of hand-washing in hospitals. The single greatest factor in having medical staff wash their hands at the appropriate frequency is the hand-washing example set by the senior staff. It is not training, nor is it the availability of sinks. What safety example do you set when you walk a site, in your conversations with workers, and in the actions you take? If we can generalize from hospital hand-washing, then your conversations and actions have more significance to the safety on the jobsite than the safety program.

Having said that, silence is a choice. What is the threshold at which we refuse to remain silent. Is it self interest? Must your life be threatened before you cross that threshold? Or, can you choose to speak at the first recognition that we are not doing all we can to care for the sanctity of all life? Can you do that? Sure you can. And I can. And everyone on our jobsites can.

We lack neither the know-how, nor the capability — speaking — for avoiding the needless deaths of construction workers. Perhaps, it is only a lack of love that is preventing those deaths. Love is the one resource with an endless supply. Giving love creates more love. Show your love to keep everyone safe. Choose speaking rather than silence.

Tom Peters has joined the Blogging Revolution. Bookmark this site. Really. Yes, Tom Peters can be cranky. Yes, he can be iconoclastic. But Tom Peters is not to be ignored. If you are running projects, leading people, or managing a business, then you MUST read Tom Peters.

Last week I attended Coachville's Third Annual Conference. I so love hanging out with coaches. The perspective, compassion, and curiosity of coaches inspires. The theme for the conference is the business of coaching. Does it surprise you that we spoke repeatedly of love?

One of the highlights was the keynote address by Tim Sanders, Love Cat. This guy is one amazing person. Tim is the author of the best-selling book on business Love is the Killer App. That's right, it's a book on business…the philosophy behind Southwest Airlines, SAS, and Yahoo! Here are my notes. Enjoy.

The only purpose to lead or coach is to change the world. It's a hero's journey. Every good leader and coach is a life-long learner.

Get the right paradigm…abundance. Faith drives it. Choose to be a good human being. Scarcity comes from reality minus perspective. It works in the short term. Fear predominates. Abundance is synchronized with the information world. Abundance is the driver of increasing returns.

Take the right prescription.

• Aggregate and share knowledge.
  Be a student. Inspire people to be students again. Read. People don't read because people aren't held accountable to read. Give a book not a box of chocolates. "Leaders are readers."
• Network.
  Your network is your network. Develop it. It is the greatest asset to share. Take serious delight by putting two people who wouldn't have come together without expecting anything in return. "Invest in others' success."
• Have compassion.
  "In a dog-eat-dog world it's better to be a (love) cat." Achievement breeds the situation for loving again. Appreciate and acknowledge others. Listen generously.

Tim has a simple and powerful message that applies to the project world. Successful project managers are leaders and coaches. Choose the paradigm of abundance and the love cat prescription.

This posting was inspired by Peter Drucker's Manager's Journal article in the June 1, 2004 Wall Street Journal titled The Rules of Executive Class. The article was adapted from his article "What Makes an Effective Executive" appearing in the June issue of the Harvard Business Review. Mr. Drucker argues that effective executives don't need to be charismatic out-going leaders. Who am I to argue with Peter Drucker? So I won't. I'll use his eight prescribed practices to develop a list for those people who are in the role of project executive.

What is a project executive? I first heard the term only 5 years ago. While I haven't done any research on it my anecdotal experience suggests that more and more people are finding themselves in that role. Some companies are using the title to give status or to recognize the competence and increased responsibilities of a project manager. It falls in the line of assistant PM, project manager, Sr. PM, and project executive. The term even has its own abbreviation: PX. I propose we use the role to describe responsibilities for client relationship, growth or development of project managers, selection of project team members, and overall functioning of project teams. Mr. Drucker says effective executives all follow the same eight practices. The italicized statement at the beginning of each list item is by Peter Drucker. The text that follows is mine. Consider it one run-on Project e-Tip!

• Ask "What needs to be done?" Project executives are not the doers on any project. Still, project team members can get in a rut of doing what they have been doing. Or worse, doing what the plan says to do. Every day is a new day. Project team members learn, innovate, and face the unexpected. The PX can bring a perspective that shifts the drift of the project.
• Ask "What is right for the (project)?" Projects are single-purpose networks of commitment undertaken by temporary social systems. It is easy to imagine constituencies pursuing what is right only for them without regard to what is right for the project as a whole. As temporary organizations it might be hard to uncover the differences in the aims of the constituencies. Use your role as PX to bring the intentions of the many into alignment with the aims of the project.
• Develop (project) plans. This is where the PX can shine. Mr. Drucker describes action plans as "statements of intention that need to be revised" as people have success or failure with the plan. The same is true for project plans. Project teams need help adjusting and revising project plans as they learn and innovate.
• Take responsibility for decisions. Selecting people for projects is one of the more important roles of the PX. It is neither art nor science. It's more like a crap-shoot. While we might try to follow a rule of assigning roles based on strengths, talents, and interests, we can make mistakes in our assessments. Own up quickly to your project organization decisions. Temporary organizations can't tolerate the inaction when it comes to team members that are not performing as needed.
• Take responsibility for communicating. One common sense view of communication is as information needs. Projects have different communication needs. The need is for the everyday functioning of the commitment-making and keeping practices of the team. The strength of the project team is developed in the network of commitment on the project. See to it that people have the habit of making and securing reliable promises.
• Focus on opportunities, not problems. Project teams are notorious for spending the bulk of their time dealing with what didn't go right yesterday. That focus on problem-solving gets in the way of pursuing the opportunities that just might allow the team to avoid problems. Let's not be naive to think the team can do this all by themselves. Make it a point to start your interactions with project team members with a conversation about the opportunities they see, then help the team pursue those opportunities.
• Make (project) meetings productive. Meetings are meetings are meetings. Right? Wrong! Design meetings for well-targeted purposes. Separate the meeting to review and adjust the project plan from the meeting to negotiate the work plan for the coming week. Have a stand-up five to ten minute meeting every day conducted by the PM or superintendent to hear reports of what was accomplished as promised and what is needed to fulfill the open promises. Bring an interest in learning to all of the meetings, but take time out on a regular basis for special sessions to explore how learnings can be exploited during the balance of the project.
• Think and say "We." The PX role is there to take care of the needs of the project team and the customer. Always put those needs and interests before your own interests.

Mr. Drucker offered a bonus practice he suggests executives take as a rule. Listen first; speak last. Ditto. Thank you Mr. Drucker!

The book The Third Opinion came highly recommended by someone who I've learned to think with for his third opinion. Previously, I used the term thinking partner. I frequently call on others for help in sorting out and exploring a range of perspectives on an issue and for speculating. I've haphazardly developed a loose network of thinking partners. The possibility of being more purposeful about that drew me to the book. Unfortunately, I was disappointed.

The idea is more powerful than the author's development of it. Dr. Saj-nicole A. Joni subtitled the book "How Successful Leaders Use Outside Insight to Create Superior Results." That did come through for me. She tells one mini case after another to illuminate elements of her various models of networked leadership. The author does a good job of developing those models in a step-by-step way. However, I was left thinking "Is that all there is?"

The author claims throughout the book that her own claims and insights are based on years of research. Unfortunately, she doesn't reveal what that research is, how it was conducted, or how she validated her conclusions.

What is the project leader or project executive to do with this? I'll tie The Third Opinion to a book that is having a big impact on many aspects of business and life, Tim Sanders' Love Is the Killer App. Tim claims that business works on three principles:

1. Develop expertise that you freely share with others. This is the opportunity for you to be the second or third opinion for others.
2. Develop your network. Make it a big network. One that you call on and are ready to be called. Be a connector for people in your network.
3. Bring compassion to your relationships. Another way of saying that is to be generous with your interpretations of others' intentions and actions.

The connection between the two books is obvious. By developing a network of support at the edge of our relationships we make ourselves and the network stronger. We can get more done. We can take on bigger challenges. We become more powerful along the way.

Tim Sanders is a key note speaker this week at the Coachville Annual Conference. I'll be attending, presenting, and blogging from the conference. Drop by at CoachBlog™.