It wasn't a happy time for Johanna Rothman this week. She hurt herself in the kitchen making tea. She needed to visit the ER for 4 stitches on her head. She seems to be all right. Typical of Johanna, the injury produced a project lesson, Unanticipated Events Screw Up Schedules. Reading only the subject I thought of the local paper reporting Dog Bites Man. I almost skipped her posting. Glad I didn't.

Always knowing where you'll find response capacity is critical to being able to keep your project commitments.

In the winter in the Northeast we can anticipate snow, sleet, and ice. We don't know exactly when it will occur, but except for the most unusual winters, we know we will incur weather that leads to delays. While we don't put snow "on the schedule", we can add a contingency for snow somewhere "in the plan".

Then there are events like needing 4 stitches that we don't anticipate. In some settings these unanticipated events can have serious impacts on our schedules. When deadlines are important contingencies become critical, especially when those deadlines are tight. Always knowing where you'll find response capacity is critical to being able to keep your project commitments.

Thanks Johanna for reminding us. And do be careful making tea.

While Toyota is in 3rd place in the US behind Ford and GM, it ranks 2nd in sales worldwide and 1st when it comes to profitability and value of the company. It seems everyone is paying attention to Toyota and their lean ways. Toyota made the cover of the September issue of Baseline Magazine, What's Driving Toyota? Baseline is a Ziff Davis publication catering to IT professionals. (ZD also publishes PC Magazine and eWeek.) While there is a decidedly IT bent — read the Baseline executive summary¹ — author Mel Duvall shows himself to be quite the student of the Toyota Production System and The Toyota Way. You won't read a better 11-page description of what makes Toyota the world's best manufacturer.

While we can be fascinated with Toyota, we better get started on our own lean path.

One thing stood out for me. Toyota's go slow to go fast approach — nemawashi — is practiced throughout the enterprise. The author gives a number of project examples of how Toyota executives take the time up front to establish clear roles, objectives, communication channels, and experiments. This up front consensus-building time allows Toyota and their partners to accomplish big goals together. Try talking your clients and bosses into taking more time at the beginning of your project to clarify performer roles. Who wants to pay for that? Toyota does. And their returns are the evidence that the rest of us should take that time too.

While we can be fascinated with Toyota, we better get started on our own lean path. There's no better place to start than on projects. Each project offers the opportunity for experimentation. Set your goals with the project performers and constituents. Take the time to establish roles and communication channels. And keep your attention on what you are learning as your project unfolds. Then, share your learning broadly within your firm. Your future viability just might depend on it.

1. "Behind Toyota's power drive are sophisticated information systems supporting and enabling the business processes that help the car maker eliminate waste, limit inventory buildup and continually improve production." [ ⇑ back ]

Fortune Magazine has a special section on being effective in work. Anne Fisher (Ask Annie) writes the column. Back in March '06 Annie wrote Be Smarter at Work, Slack Off, a piece on the value of not being overburdened particularly when doing creative tasks. She wrote,

(I)t's really, really hard, if not impossible, for the human brain to come up with fresh new ideas when its owner is overworked, overtired, and stressed out. And in today's wonderful world of nonstop work, 40% of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep on weeknights.

"The physiological effects of tiredness are well-known. You can turn a smart person into an idiot just by overworking him," notes Peter Capelli, a professor of management at Wharton.

Capelli is not the only one offering that advice. 40 years earlier, one famed management theorist said something similar.

"All one can think and do in a short time is to think what one already knows and to do as one has always done."
Peter Drucker

Some companies know better. They create the situation that keeps their designers in a condition to do their best work.

"We want to take as much hurry and worry out of people's lives as we can, because a relaxed state of mind unleashes creativity," says Stacy Sullivan, (Google's) HR director. "And everybody's on flextime here, so we don't reward face time or working super-long hours. We just measure results."

Lean design — designing for high value without corresponding waste of negative iterations and difficulty in production — demands groups of people come together in ways that call on the diversity of experience, expertise, and judgement in collaborative ways. Even one person who is overburdened can keep the team from doing its best work. A little slacking off from each of the participants might make all the difference.

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Congratulations to the people at C.R. Meyer for a safety record that has 50% fewer incidents than others doing like work. That record along with their safety program has qualified them for OSHA's Voluntary Protection Program's (VPP) Star status. This program has previously not been available to general contractors. In 2004, OSHA created a challenge program to bring the construction community into the fold. Let's look for more announcements of people achieving Star status.

Wal-Mart gets a bad rep for a lot of their actions, particularly their influence on small businesses. Might that be changing? FCNow reports one company joining WalMart's CFL campaign.
How many companies does it take to change a light bulb? One. A few weeks back I wrote of Walmart's initiative to sell 100,000,000 compact fluorescent lightbulbs, Will Wal-Mart Change the World Selling CFLs? Let’s Wonder…. It's an ambitious goal even for a firm the size of WalMart. However, to the extent they attract other players, 100,000,000 bulbs just might be a low hurdle.

Kristina Runciman, president of Lifeforce Glass, got inspired:

I was so inspired by the article by Charles Fishman on CFLs that my company is now sending one compact fluorescent lightbulb with every order. We are counting on each customer to try their free CFL and then replace their incandescent bulbs in their homes and businesses.

Great projects are invitiations for participation.

As a wholesaler of giftware, Kristina doesn't have a direct opportunity to benefit from her actions. She won't be making big sales of CFLs. She "signed on" to the larger project of taking care of our environment while taking care of our pocketbooks. Funny thing, Wal-Mart is part of the process. Kristina buys the give-away CFLs at Sam's Club. I can't imagine this was part of the WalMart plan, but what a nice by-product.

I'm liking Wal-Mart's project more and more. Great projects are invitiations for participation. They attract people to join. I'm so curious about how the project is going. Last week I visited the local Wal-Mart to just take a look at the lightbulb section. As reported in the Fast Company article, CFLs are prominently displayed at eye-level along with shelf cards detailing the savings these bulbs generate. Kudos to Wal-Mart and to Kristina for joining in!

"Ford needs to remake itself once more, this time in the image of the company that copied Ford’s original system: Toyota."

James Womack is one of the key people¹ who introduced the world to the dominance of lean approaches over conventional business approaches. He continues to engage company leaders in discussions inviting and imploring them to adopt lean approaches to their business. One way he does that is with his regular emails to Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) members². In his latest email, The Lean Way Forward at Ford, Jim recounts Ford's historical contributions to lean and offers his opinion of how they came to their current fate. He finished that email this way:

"…my prescription for new Ford CEO Alan Mullaly is the same (as it was for former CEO Jac Nassar): Fundamentally rethink the supplier management system. Fundamentally rethink the product development system. And fundamentally rethink the production system from order to raw materials and from raw materials to delivery, with special attention to the information management system. (Much can still be learned from Ford’s Mazda subsidiary, which became an able pupil of Toyota after a crisis in 1973.) Above all, fundamentally rethink what mangers do and how they do it in order to regain the gemba consciousness that originally took Ford to world dominance. In brief, Ford needs to remake itself once more, this time in the image of the company that copied Ford’s original system: Toyota."

None of us have to repeat the fate of the once-mighty Ford. Not on the factory floor; not in product development; not for those of us who make our livings in project-based firms. Getting lean is no longer an option.

1. Norman Bodek, founder of Productivity Press, translated and published over 300 Japanese-language books including Taiichi Ohno's and Shigeo Shingo's. The other person is Jeffrey Liker, author of the easy-to-read book on lean The Toyota Way. [ ⇑ back ]
2. Visit http://www.lean.org to subscribe. Use "Member Sign-up" at the bottom right corner of the homepage to get a free subscription and gain immediate access to all the valuable content on the LEI web site about implementing lean. [ ⇑ back ]

In PMI's September 2006 PM Network CareerTrack section Karen Bannan has an article titled, In Theory: You can't always go by the book. (Sorry, it's not available online, even to PMIers.) Three things caught my attention. First, just a few weeks ago, Karen interviewed me for an up-coming article. Second, my friend Lauri Koskela was interviewed for this article. Third, the article was about the usefulness of theory in practice. I was somewhat surprised by what I read.

The article opened quoting Lauri Koskela, Ph.D., Univ. of Salford,

"Many of the methodologies taught in textbooks are idealizations. What project managers encounter in reality are plenty of stumbling blocks. This means that students or new project managers often find out that theories don't work for them in practice."

Karen goes on with quotes from Paul Hassels, CapGemini,

"It's always a balance between process and content. Getting too far carried away from either poses a risk."

After including a number of other quotes, Karen begins her close with a doosey from Gregory B. Beacher, Ph.D., Univ. of Maryland,

"Theory is not otherworldly. Theory is just distilled best practices."

To Beacher's credit, Karen finishes this way,

"Your practice will be much richer if you are informed by theory."

It looks to me that these people don't agree on the meaning of the word "theory". Some speak of it as "conjecture" while others indicate a scientific explanation that can be used for prediction. I prefer the last.

The books are relying on obsolete underlying theory.

Four years ago, Lauri Koskela and Greg Howell presented their research in a paper for PMI's bi-annual research conference. They titled their paper, The Underlying Theory of Project Management Is Obsolete. I was told the presentation of the paper generated quite a controversy. In my opinion, Lauri and Greg wrote a great paper. It pointed to flaws in our conjecture about how we succeed on projects. I blogged about the paper for 5 or 6 postings. You will find a collection of my commentary on the lens for Project Management Theory.

I have to agree with Karen's conclusion when it comes to project management theory, "…you can't always go by the book." The books, as Lauri and Greg put so well, are relying on obsolete underlying theory. It's not so much that putting theory into practice fails us, as it is we are relying on the wrong theories. Further, methodologies are no substitute for theory. Following them with an appreciation for theory, as Beacher says, will enrich our practice and lead to better results.

Thanks to Karen's article, I was prompted to create a new lens. You'll find all the project management lenses from a navigation button on the top of each page.