Assumptions

Anyone ever get mad at you because they had an assumption that they didn't communicate with you?  This is a problem in personal life as well as professional.  Never goes over very well.  This is why the use of Log Frames in projects can be very useful.  What are the assumptions that get us from the project inputs to the outputs?  What are those things outside your control that could impact your delivery?  Also, when creating a project schedule in MS Project, add assumptions to the Notes section of a task.  Always be aware of what your assumptions may be.  The odd thing is that when we have assumptions about someone else, we think that they're obvious - 'hey, don't you think it's reasonable...', 'isn't it obvious that you should have...'.  Funny how that works...

Meetings: Protect Your Calendar

Your calendar should reflect what your working on and what your goals are.  Think of your calendar as a place where time is blocked out to do things.  Too often we think of our calendars as a place just for meetings.  Then what happens is someone sees a blank spot and schedules another meeting.  Before you know it, your day is mostly meetings.  Some people have this odd feeling of accomplishment when their days ARE filled with meetings, “look at me, I’m really busy.”   Busy isn’t what we should be striving for, we should be striving for effective.  If your day is filled with meetings, then you’re ineffective.  Period.  Yeah you might have a day filled with meetings once in a while.  That happens.  But every week?  That’s just plain ineffective.

If you follow David Allen’s, Getting Things Done approach to time management, you know you have a list of projects, which cascade into tasks.  Say you need to draft a copy of a document.  You should have that time blocked off on your calendar, especially those that have a specific due date coming up.  Anything you systematically need time for should be on your calendar, like doing email, doing your weekly review, etc.

Meetings: You Should Say No More Often

You get invited to a meeting – in fact you probably get asked to attend meetings many times a day. If you’re in a virtual environment where you get electronic requests to dial in, there’s usually a simple ‘Accept’, ‘Reject’, and ‘Tentative’ button to acknowledge the request. It’s so easy to hit that ‘Accept’ request button if it says you have time on your calendar. Guess what?

YOU CAN SAY NO!

In fact, you should probably say ‘no’! You should probably say no ½ the time! I’m serious! Just say no! Yeah you have to think about it: are you a key decision maker, who’s doing the ask, and do you have some key deliverable to present, but most of the time you should say no. Manager Tools business consultants, Mark Horstman and Mike Auzenne in their podcast, Calendar Control – Say No, advocate this very practice – say no. Bias towards no. Say no frequently.

Listen: you won’t be evaluated at the end of the year on how many meetings you went to or how ‘busy’ you were with meetings. You’ll be assessed on what you got done. Saying no frees up time to get work done.

DO: Open your calendar right now and decline a meeting – RIGHT NOW

DO: Say NO to a meeting today.

DO: Say no to a meeting everyday this week!

Meetings: Is Your Meeting Necessary?

Is there really a need to have a meeting? I mean, REALLY need one? Can the meeting objectives (if there are any) be accomplished through a memo, email, or a phone call to someone? When you schedule a meeting, it’s like you’re going to the organization and asking them to fund a project. Your asking people to set aside time and they only have so much to give. In the book Meeting Excellence, the first chapter is titled, “Is This Meeting Necessary?”. That IS the question! In Read Before Our Next Meeting, Pittampalli says that people can read, so send them a memo! People should do work BEFORE the meeting and make decisions AT the meeting.

Making a withdrawal from the ‘time bank’ of the company is a big deal. Have too many meetings and you might get someone laid off. 30minutes doesn’t seem like much. Multiply that times hundreds of employees who think the same and go ahead and schedule that meeting and that’s some serious time/money. Your bias should be to not have the meeting. In today’s meeting culture the bias is to have the meeting. And today’s meeting culture is killing us.

DO: Pick up the phone and call someone instead of having the meeting!

DO: Can you leverage some social media in the company to have the dialog, list a discussion forum, company twitter like tool?

Meetings: End on Time

Not that this has ever happened to you...

The meeting you’re attending over runs by 10-15 minutes, which impacts your next meeting, which means you miss stuff in the next meeting so you don’t get what’s going on so you re-ask about ground already covered, that impacts, so the meeting drags out longer than intended, which… and on it goes. Think dominos. One domino crashes into the effectiveness of the next.

It’s a respect thing. Over run a meeting and you’re impact other people and it’s not just me impacting you. It’s me impacting the 5 people in my meeting that impacts the five meetings their attending, which impacts the 25 people in all those meetings, etc.

Why do we over run meetings? TONS of reasons. Lots to talk about. Knotty problem. The guy that has an opinion on everything. Okay, so there’s more stuff to do – what else is new?? Manage it, don’t let it manage you.

Ending on time is about RESPECT.

Ending on time is about forcing DECISIONS.

You can always have another meeting or discuss via email those items you don’t get to.

Things you can do:

• Give a five minute warning before the end of the meeting, say, “Let’s do a time check, we have five minutes left. Let’s summarize the action items.”
• Give a 1 minute warning
• Have a parking lot for the stuff you can’t cover. More on the parking lot later.

Toxic People Curve

Here's a problem - when you're dealing with a toxic person, especially when managing a toxic person, there is the illusion that some coaching will change things and we can get on with life. Unless the toxic person is off the charts, most of these people have some very good skills that we'd kind of like to keep. So we'll send them to a conflict resolution class and move on. The problem is that these people may require way, way more energy that we think.

Seth Godin nails this: the gap between the toxic person and other people is huge, a vertical cliff. The angry person isn't just like you but angry, their in a class by themselves. See Seth's blog posting on this. We can't just send them to a class. If you have one who works for you, then giving them immediate feedback is important and be prepared for late stage coaching (i.e. get ready to fire them). If you work for one, realize that hope is not right around the corner. Start looking for another job.

Like Seth says, there are too many people who are way easier to work with. Go work with them.

Toxic Team Lead

There's nothing worse than a toxic boss, team lead, or project manager. Their presence on the team impacts home life, team productivity, people's health, etc. Here are some tips for dealing with one:

Tell you spouse: let your spouse know what's going on. The toxic lead is going to have an impact for a long time, so be prepared by starting at home.

Leave it at the office: this is super hard, but you need to protect your family. Don't sit and spin on the situation or a conversation. The temptation is to sit and replay situations and conversations - don't. If you need to write your thoughts down, great, but get it out of your head. Don't wake up with the situation in your head. What you go to bed with is what you'll wake up with. Focus on your wife, your faith - anything else, but not them. Make a pact with yourself - they will not hold you hostage.

Self assessment: there are times when we contribute to the toxic relationship to varying degrees. This can be due to communication style, confusion over roles, or maybe you're just not doing your job. It's time to be honest. Make sure you're not toxic and this lead is trying to protect themselves.

Get feedback: if you can get feedback from other stakeholders - find out if they think you're doing your job. Sometimes people have a skills center manager and may have an opportunity to get a quarterly or mid year assessment. This is a good way to gauge if you're contributing to the problem.

It's not you: you can walk away from a conversation (or battle) with your team lead and feel like crap, feel like you're a looser, have failed, and on it goes. You are a valuable contributor to your organization - you have skills and ability. You are important. Don't let them define who you are.

Don't gossip with co-workers: the temptation is to get your buddies together and say 'man, you should see what she did today...' - it'll feel good, but it's unprofessional.

Be clear about roles: part of the problem with a toxic lead is that they may think they can give you direction on things that their not responsible for. Matrix organizations can really add to the problem here. Be sure you know who is supposed to give you direction. Know who is in the food chain - you may have to go to the person who is giving you direction and their team lead and get their help in resolving the confusion.

Short answers: the more you give to a toxic lead, the worse things can get. Yes, no, and clarifying statements about tasks are best.

Prep, prep, prep: I had one toxic lead who loved to dig and pick. When I spent the time to get the work product in order, had it peer reviewed and had really thought through it, things went much better. You'd like to think you can work questions out or details with the team lead, but not when their toxic.

Communication style: remember that your lead may have a communication style that their not even aware of and may be the opposite of yours. Your lead may be very commanding and you may be very conversational. Learn to communicate in their style.

Your words: be polite and don't let anger in. You may be flustered in the conversation and afterwards wish you had said this or that. Don't dwell on it. There are usually (or always) better things to say, but there are no magic words that will shut the lead down or make them into a nice person. Ain't going to happen. Drive on.

The system is staked against you: Remember the conversations are going to be stacked against you. They have the role power and they probably got to their position because their a good talker. Unless you're really good at this kind of dueling, you'll probably walk away from the conversations thinking you lost and didn't say the right stuff. Be okay with that. Focus forward.

Stay focused on task: know what your tasks are, when their due, and what the closure criteria. If you can't get these, establish your own and work to that. If you have to establish your own, be aggressive. At the end of the day the only thing that will matter is: did you get your task done and did you do it well.

Your probably being setup: when they talk to you, they maybe taking notes on what you've been assigned and did you do it. They'll ask loaded questions - don't get sucked in. The temptation is to push back and do 'passive aggressive'. He or she is waiting for that and will nail you on it.

Take notes: if they tell you to do something, accuse you, etc. keep a log. You may be asked at some point to provide input - chances are if you're having problems, other people are having problems and HR may be a phone call away from getting involved.

Get help: is there someone who can counsel you through this and provide some air cover? Be careful not to gossip with them or dump on them. Their not there to carry your load, but they can help.

Lead emoting: you're team lead may emotionally dump (or vomit) on you. You'll probably come away from the conversation thinking, "what the heck did they want me to say?!?". These kind of conversations are very hard - they create a story where things are very bad, they can't do anything, and look at all the things you did wrong. Then they expect to have a dialog. Don't dialog. Say, "thanks for the feedback, let me think about what you've said." You may even ask if there's something specific they want you to do.

Exit strategy: Get your resume up to date: it may be time to move on. Sometimes these situations can be waited out - the lead is a climber and will be on to the next assignment, maybe the project has a deadline coming up and people will move on, etc. Be realistic and start the process for finding something else.

Don't play the game: you may try and get clever about word games and situations - don't. And don't be looking for vengeance. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay says the Lord"

Get exercise: I'm going to sound like your mother here, but get exercise to burn off the tension, and loosen up. Eat right (stay away from alcohol, sugar, etc), take extra multi-vitamins and get enough sleep. Your health will take a hit at this time, so take care of yourself. This is an emotional endurance race and endurance athletes know they need to take in extra nutrition or they'll bonk. You don't want to emotionally bonk.

These are hard times and you'll need a cool head. There are probably a lot of reasons someone in leadership is toxic, but it's probably because they have tied role power to who they are. That's a dangerous tie and a no win situation.

I once heard a biologist talk about the ebola virus - fearsome, terrible, deadly. The problem is that it kills the host that it needs and eventually dies out. There is not much ebola around because it kills the things it needs to efficiently and quickly. You may think your toxic lead is better at the game than you and you're probably right. Their destroying the organizations and teams they work with, and sadder still is that they may be destroying their families. Think of what their kids have to live with. Very sad. You're toxic lead will burn out and fail - no question.

You know what? Their ship will sink and they will be part of the dark legacy that every organization has. I mean really, who wants that?!? It may be a rough spot on your career path that causes you pain and even to uproot and move, but time will wash them away and there will be too many good people to work for and with in the future.

Hang in there, I know what you're going through - you'll make it

I want every email, every meeting

Let's say there's some miscommunication on your project - you thought she'd do it and she thought you'd do it. You have emails, she has notes to prove it. There's some urgency with this one because it'll impact schedule.

One reaction I see a lot is that the project lead or program manager now wants to be included on all meetings and emails. There are several problems with this:

This approach doesn't scale well on programs. A person can only process so much information and getting in the full stream of the project will just create more problems. For example, the lead will think they have to respond to more emails, or will have more information to not remember correctly.

If there's a break down in communication, the lead needs to look at the team and figure out who was responsible for the communication and work with that person to plug the hole.

Sometimes there are big battles or a lot of negative energy around the issue. Pick your battles - does this one really matter? Hey, stuff happens - see it as an opportunity to strengthen the team.

I want to be careful with this comment: if you find yourself in a tug of war over who said what and by-god-I-have-emails-to-prove-it, take a step back and assess yourself. Are you reacting because there's a serious project impact or because someone challenged your authority? Almost anything can be whipped up in to a project impact. Anyone's sense of power can also impact a project.

Blogging in the Enterprise

Blogging on projects can be a great way to let folks know status of key tasks. I've used blogs to report progress towards key milestones, results of testing, and completion of key work products. The great thing about blogs is that when reporting progress, folks don't need to figure out who to send emails to and those people who don't want to get notifications any more can opt out of the alerting. Also, blogs provide a chronological history of the project - useful when having independent reviews or audits (or cya). Good use of blogs will also cut down on the number of meetings you'll need.

Here are some recommendations:

* Setup a blog for each project, assuming a project is around 2 months or more.

* Each person on the project sets up an alert on the blog so they'll get a notification when something is posted.

* For each deliverable, peer review, or formal review, make it part of the closure criteria to post.

* Include instructions on when to blog in the projects collaboration playbook. If the blogging tool you use allows for tagging, give some basic guidelines

* Blog postings should be simple - not lots of elaboration. Use links to supporting documentation.

Stupid Requests

I got a stupid request today - someone wanted an architectural diagram so that they could figure out something concerning disaster recovery. For this person, it was kind of like saying, "I need to find a coffee shop in NY City, can you give me a detailed map of the water system, I mean, you need water for coffee right?" I said something witty and scornful and moved on.

Here's the problem with the word stupid, it's a loose-loose word. The person it's direct towards now feels pissed off, shamed, etc And I've just feed my big fat ego. It can get even worse - the person doing the asking may be stuck in the middle and now has to satisfy someone who doesn't know what their talking about with someone who's being to knuckle head. Both accomplish nothing.

But here's the crazy thing: these are great opportunities - their easy! All I have to do is send a diagram and tell them if they need help, let me know. That's it! Sure you and I can see the problem a mile off, but who cares? We've engaged in a dialog (good thing), offered to help (good thing), and they get something to start thinking about (good thing).

So, loose the attitude and use the opportunity to foster a dialog.

Project WBS: Product or Task?

With social networking solutions evolving rapidly, the reality is: you're going to be doing this again and again. You're not going to deploy one wiki/document management/discussion forum/... solution that will last for the next five years. So here's the project management challenge: estimating the next effort. To accurately estimate the next effort you're going to need to track actuals for your current effort, and to do that effectively, you'll need a good WBS structure. So do you use a task or product oriented WBS? Many WBS' I've seen are task oriented, where they are broken down by planning, analysis, design, development, and deployment. The problem with this approach is - it's not reusable. If I track how long it takes the team to do requirements analysis - so what? Requirements analysis for the deployment of an integrated suite of commercial (COTS) tools is way different than deploying a home made wiki tool. But, if we track how long it takes to do a wiki tool, whether it be home made, COTS, etc., then we have something we can reuse and compare. And that's why you should use a product oriented WBS, instead of a task oriented one. Large IT organizations can often have planning and estimating groups. I'm not sure why it is, but some of these groups can resist the use of product oriented WBS. This makes estimating almost impossible for later projects. Push for the use of the product oriented WBS, it'll make your life easier later when you have to redeploy part of your collaboration solution. And you will be doing this again!