The Regenerate Web

I had the pleasure and privilege of speaking at the Executive Women in Government conference yesterday. There were about eight speakers - all powerful and inspiring leaders - and their messages seem to come together in a wonderful call to action. The post I did on Relevancy, Vibrancy, and Legacy shared the main points of my contribution. Here are a few of the more memorable bits of wisdom from the other speakers:

• We live in a new era of complexity and we need to face what we have to do. Our movements must change, too (referring to previous movements that catalyzed change).
• The importance of doing what you love. That we can all engage in unlocking the mysteries of the universe (or our communities, families, organizations).
• "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." Eleanor Roosevelt
• We must all fight to reduce tunnel vision, fragmentation, and silo-ization in our organizations as this is what causes big problems and serious collapses.
• We need to consider the need to change the DNA of what we do on a daily basis.
• Veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas wowed me when she said she still stays up at night thinking about how to ask the questions that will "get them" to share what they don't want to. At over 90 years old, she is still more proactive than many of us!!
• Leaders need to reconnect people with their purpose.
• We need to learn how to package stories so that people can learn from them (communicate so that our message is received as intended).
• If we don't set the bar high, we won't go anywhere.
• The next generation is HERE and deserves our support, coaching, mentorship.
• If we provide people with different experiences, we can change their perspective.
• It is always easier to break something down than it is to build it up.

And overall, I was energize to hear about all the great thinking and passion going on in the federal government. Washington DC has several sides. Many people only know the side they see on CNN and other news channels - the politics, the divisiveness, the 1000 page bills weighed down with hundreds of unrelated pet projects and promises, the bickering and name calling. Underneath this loud layer of partisan elected officials is a large infrastructure of dedicated, smart, and hard working career public professionals who are passionate about making the U.S. a better country for everyone. They have to zig and zag with each administration and after major legislative changes - and most do it without losing their faith, hope, and drive. Partnering with them are thousands of non-profit organizations and consulting firms who know it is worth getting through the inevitable red-tape to work with the government on projects and initiatives that make a difference. This is the vibrant D.C. that I really enjoy working with and around.

 Dr. Mike Clayton asks an important question "What is your appetite for risk?" His approach is different than we find in our domain. The inverse question needs to be asked

What is your appetite for delay, cost overrun or possible project failure?

Asking and answering this question is a measure of the organization maturity in the realm of risk management. Our risk management guidance starts with the DoD Model. At first glaince this appears to be overkill. It is not. The principles of risk management are independent of a domain. That's why they're called principles.

The implementation of these principles can be adjusted for the domain but if you skip one or more of the principles, you creating risk again.

In a report sponsored by INCOSE Risk Management Working Group; Project Management Institute Risk Management Specific Interest Group; UK Association for Project Management Risk Specific Interest Group, there are four (4) maturity levels for Risk Management (from Risk Management Maturity Model, April, 2002)

• Level 1 - Ad Hoc - Worship the Hero
• Level 2 - Initial - Try it out an see what happens
• Level 3 - Repeatable - Plan the Work, Work the Plan
• Level 4 - Managed - Measure the Work, Work The Measures

There are many definitions of Risk Management, one comes from PMBOK which defines Project Risk Management as

“the systematic process of identifying, analyzing, and responding to project risk.”

Successful projects have dealt effectively with all types of risk , maximizing benefits while minimizing uncertainty. Which brings up another quote from the "Universal Risk Management Final Report,"

If you can't afford to mitigate the risk now, be absolutely sure you can afford to resolve the problem later when it happens.

Instead of answering Mike's question "What's your appetite for risk?" ask "what's your appetite for paying the price for not dealing with risk now?"

From a Dr. David Hilson newsletter titled "Universal Laws of Risk Management,"

• Risk is uncertain
• Risk Matters
• Managing Risk is a Process
• Risk is Managed by People

This concludes our conversation with Jaynie Smith, author of Creating Competitive Advantage.

Tom:
As we move from the recession to recovery, and as we attempt to acquire new customers, gain market share, where do customer and client disconnects occur?

Jaynie:
Again, our research shows that 90% of companies have no internal agreement on what matters to customers. We always ask our clients to guess which three attributes came in 1, 2 and 3 in their customer research. Not only don’t they guess it right, they have no agreement amongst themselves. So how can the market-place receive what it values when the internal team is riding off in 25 different directions. The answer is simple: It can’t. We must have internal agreement based on the voice of the customer to know where to concentrate operationally and in alignment with our sales and marketing messaging.

You can find Jaynie's book Creating Competitive Advantage at Amazon.com.

This continues my conversation with Jaynie Smith, author of Creating Competitive Advantage.

Tom:
Can you talk about the necessity of integrating marketing elements with operational reality to drive new ideas into existing and emerging customer segments?

Jaynie:
Our research shows that 95% of companies are not focused on the things that matter most to their customers and so their resource allocation is not aligned operationally with delivering what matters most to their customers.

A tour operator spent lots of time and money chasing industry awards only to learn that it matters last on a list of 20 attributes to their clients. But would-be travelers wanted solid knowledge delivered by their destination specialists. This company invested in everyone who sold a “continent” to make sure they had traveled to the countries sold and had extensive ongoing training relative to the vendors used. Cross training, then became the next operational investment. This company is booking at a better rate than nearly all of their competition even in a down turn.

The conversation continues the rest of this week. You can find Jaynie's book Creating Competitive Advantage at Amazon.com.

Next Monday, we kick off our next Subject Area in Working Leadership Online, Managing Time, Managing Yourself.. Based on David Allen's Getting Things Done, we will explore ten Time Management Disciplines. You select the one or two that work the best for you.

Working Leadership Online is growing. For our Friends and Family, we are holding fifty slots available for our Free Introductory Membership (and 22 are already filled). If you would like to secure one of these slots, just follow this link.

Working Leadership Online Free Trial

Here is what we know about our community.

1. Our participants have a day job, as a manager.
2. Our participants are really busy.
3. Our participants want to be more effective, now.

This is Real
Working Leadership Online is practical. There are no quizzes or tests. There is no make-work. This is not extra work. The Field Work is real.

At Your Pace
Participants login on their schedule.

Unforgettable
The problem with most training programs is they stop. After a few classes, it's over, good luck. Working Leadership Online goes year-round. It changes the way you think about your role as a manager.

How This Works
Your first Subject Area is on us. Then you decide. We are holding the next 50 slots. Word is already on the street, so we expect to close this offer in the next few days.

Here's Some Feedback

This program is anti-matter to today's barage of costly management solutions. The program covered a great deal of critical leadership material that managers can immediately benefit from. -Cathy Darby

Some people live online and I'm not one of them. I'd much rather be in a human presence. Having said that, after Tom's first response he won me over. His honesty and feedback is invaluable. -Jane Hein

There's a lot of valuable information in this course that isn't easily available elsewhere, and the coaching from Tom in addition to accountability for actually carrying out the assignments makes for a solid learning experience. Keep up the good work. The online format makes the course accessible, and makes it easy to put into practice directly in a work environment. -Erik LaBianca

www.workingleadership.com

Here is the schedule for the coming year.

2010 Subject Area Schedule (Total 15 Subject Areas in 2010)

• Jan 11 - Planning - Your 2010 Business Plan - COMPLETED
• Feb 1 - Goal Setting - The Essence of Time Span - COMPLETED
• Feb 22 - Decision Making - Time Span of Discretion - COMPLETED
• Mar 15 - Managing Time - Managing Yourself
• Apr 5 - Spring Break
• Apr 12 - Communication - Mineral Rights Conversation
• May 3 - Delegation - Leveraging Time Span Capability
• May 24 - Control Systems and Feedback Loops
• Jun 14 - Team Problem Solving - Time Span Inside a Team
• Jul 5 - Summer Break
• Jul 12 - Coaching - Bringing Value as a Manager
• Aug 2 - Coaching Underperformance - Time Span and the Employment Contract
• Aug 23 - Coaching High Performance - Time Span and Maximum Capability
• Sep 13 - Fall Break
• Sep 20 - Managerial Authorities - Time Span and Accountability
• Oct 11 - Managerial Authorities - Time Span and Hiring Talent
• Nov 1- Time Span and Effectiveness
• Nov 22 - Break (Thanksgiving USA)
• Nov 29 - Bringing Out the Best In People
• Dec 20-Jan 9, 2011 Winter Break

Reserve your spot today - Working Leadership Free Trial

This continues my conversation with Jaynie Smith, author of Creating Competitive Advantage.

Tom:
As companies expand their product and service offerings to fill holes in the market, created by retreating competitors, or even retreating suppliers, what should companies consider now to update their expanded strategies?

Jaynie:
A company should focus its resource allocation, future strategies and internal accountabilities on what the customer thinks is most important. A commercial real estate client of ours has 200 buildings in which they lease office space. Research showed tenants seeking office space overwhelmingly wanted “security” above all else. My real estate client was floored… This means, maybe they take a few bucks from, say landscaping, and add it to the security systems budget. Research often catches companies off-balance when their previously held belief is turned upside down. This real estate client was certain that the number one attribute valued by their clients was “location, location, location”….it was important, but not, first, second or third. It came in fourth. Times they are a-changing.

The conversation continues the rest of this week. You can find Jaynie's book Creating Competitive Advantage at Amazon.com.

Brad Egeland has a post about status reports. This is a topic near and dear to my heart, along with many others. Brad has a nice list of items that should be in a status report.

• Project title
• Project description
• Contact information for key project personnel
• Quick view high-level status on project, budget, and schedule
• Recent tasks completed
• Tasks in progress
• Upcoming tasks
• Status of all change requests
• Detailed budget status
• Issues status
• Risks status

Here's my experience in a variety of project domains, ranging from Enterprise IT, heavy construction, defense and space, industrial projects, and other domains.

Fundamental Reason for a Status Report

A status report should do just what it says - report the status of the project. So what are the primary elements of the project status?

• Are we on schedule?
• Are we on budget?
• Are the deliverables we said we would deliver compliant with their technical performance measures?
• Do we have all we need to stay on budget, on schedule, and meet the technical performance requirements?
• Do we know the risks and do we have a plan to mitigate or retire them?

This is the status of the project.

Here's the real problem with Status Reports

Status reports should report progress to plan. Tasks and the execution of tasks are not measures of progress. The production of deliverables are the measure of progress. So Brad's list of tasks in progress, upcoming tasks, and completed tasks are no measures of progress.

This is a common mistake of confusing effort with results. "We're completing all these tasks, so we must be making progress."

It's results that measure progress, not the effort.

So the status report must state in clear and concise terms, what results were accomplished during the period of measurement. But not just any results, but the Planned Results. So this means we must know what results were planned. This means we must have a Plan. A Plan that says what is "planned" to be accomplished.

Steve Berczuk has a lovely discussion of Manage Your Project Portfolio. You can see his review here.

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Geoff Crane of Paper Cut Project Monitoring described his TwitterView with Jhaymee Wilson. I had not heard of a "TwitterView" before this. It seems to be an interview over Twitter.

I've been interviewed twice this year (2010), once by PMI for an upcoming article and other time for a commercial Blog. Both times were around an hour on the phone and an editorial session after to do the "fact check" and final edits of the interviews.

What came to mind with Geoff's post is doing an interview with two tuna fish cans and a string.

We did this as kids. It's half duplex, low fidelity, highly distorted. Fun but not very effective.

Endless studies have shown that communication between people is largely through body language and expressions. Then comes tonality, and finally the words themselves.

Now I enjoy Geoff's Blog very much and the people he points us too as well.

But I still have not gotten my mind around the notion of Twitter as a communication channel for anything other than exchanging short - almost context free - messages. 

I live on IM with our field staff. It's a way to see who's in, a quick check up on something that can be resolved in a very few sentences - like ONE. For example - "who's using the WebEx account?" "Hey Matt, I'm headed to 59th facility, you gonna be there for lunch?" "Hannah, you coming to Breck this weekend with your roommates?" "Honey, stop by Safeway and get two bunches of green onions." Stuff like that.

Serious adult communication seems to require a wider channel.

Managing projects requires an even wider channel. In narrow channels we have, no hand waving, no doodling on the reports, no looking at multiple pieces of paper at the same time, no sensing of the facial expressions to see if we're actually exchanging information rather than just textual characters.

Someone please tell me what am I missing here, where the PM2.0 advocates claim this is the "next big thing," in the domain of Project Management?

I like to work with recruiters. I’ve used them in the past. I refer people to them. But I am missing something here.

I just got off the phone with a recruiter. He was using some kind of a phone, either VOIP or a cell phone, but it cut in and out. I had to spell someone’s name for him twice. He didn’t hear me. I finally stopped the call because I couldn’t stand it. Stupid recruiter trick #1: Use a phone that makes someone unable to actually converse with you.

The other trick happened last week. A recruiter emailed me, looking for an “agile developer.” He said “rate is based on velocity.” This is so wrong in so many dimensions, I thought I had misread the email. I asked him. Nope, that’s what he meant. His reply, “Our client is not basing the rate on experience, but on how well and efficient the candidate’s code is.  Velocity = Productivity. ” Stupid recruiter trick #2: not understanding agile and pushing the hiring manager to explain what the manager is really looking for.

OMG. I thought that with the depression/recession, stupid recruiters would be unable to keep their jobs. I guess not.

Recruiters and hiring managers: personal velocity is meaningless, especially on an agile team. The team works together to deliver features. If you persist in measuring people’s productivity, they will game the system by always estimating stories as slightly larger than they are, or breaking stories down into tasks and assigning very large numbers to those tasks.

I won’t be referring people to these guys. TSTL. (In fiction, that’s a character who is Too Stupid To Live.)

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This continues my conversation with Jaynie Smith, author of Creating Competitive Advantage.

Tom:
In an attempt to scratch out precious points in market share, which will multiply during the recovery, what changes should companies design into their marketing strategies?

Jaynie:
Companies should delete the “blah, blah, blah” cliched messages of yesterday and substitute with solid metrics that speak to reliable past performance. Unlike a mutual fund, past performance is the best indicator of whether or not you can deliver in the future. We need to build confidence and remove risk, more than ever, right now, in their buying decision.

So, we don’t say…”we will deliver in 24 hours”, that is a promise. No one believes promises anymore. But if you say, we have measured on time delivery for the last 3 years and are tracking at 98.2% , customers know you hold folks accountable for it, so you have more credibility.

The conversation continues the rest of this week. You can find Jaynie's book Creating Competitive Advantage at Amazon.com.

Nancy Sebring can have a free, signed copy of SWAT - Seize the Accomplishment if she wants it.

I think she could use it.

On Saturday, the Superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools was put on the defensive.  The district is forced to make some unpleasant budget cuts; however, a disproporationate number of jobs cut came from elementary music and fine arts.  (Didn't see a single athletic position take it in the jock strap, though.)

Sebring explained her position of the situation as follows (compliments of the Des Moines Register):

Superintendent Nancy Sebring expressed frustration with having to make the cuts. "Those courses are absolutely essential because they enhance learning," she said.

But, she added, the district also has a commitment to making sure students pass core subjects and meet federal requirements. This year, nine schools in the district were identified as persistently low-achieving schools.

Has Sebring perhaps overlooked the well known correlation that music and art CONTRIBUTE to higher scores at core subjects?  Simple cause and effect.

It amazes me when those in the position of decision-making power fail to see the obvious connections, the proven relationship between inputs and outputs, when they are right under their noses.  It happens in business all the time, so this one isn't surprising either.  Managers make short-sighted decisions because the almighty dollar says so.  There must be other creative solutions to allow their elementary students to continue in the arts and music so they WILL get higher scores in math, English, and science.

If you have 20 minutes, watch the following video.  You'll see what I mean.  If you have children in the Des Moines school district, perhaps you should attend tomorrow's school board meeting and let them know what you think.

(One note:  it is not wholly up to schools to educate children in the fine arts.  Those children whose parents are committed to the arts and/or can afford to supplement the school's shortfalls will do fine.  The others?  Hmmmm.)

And, Nancy, your book is waiting.

If you think we are at the bottom of this recession and can breathe a sigh of relief, think again. Year over year, we may see improvement in sales volume, but even as your revenue builds, there is still whiplash in this market. So, I spent some time with my friend Jaynie Smith, author of Creating Competitive Advantage.

Tom:
As we make this slow turn from recession to recovery, what are the biggest mistakes companies make attempting to re-engage their markets, the ones, by necessity, they have contracted away from?

Jaynie:
Most companies are delivering yesterday's value proposition, using old messages, and assuming their customers and prospects have the same buying criteria they did two, three and five years ago. Markets change and certainly with this recession, each company has redefined what it values in making purchasing decisions.

For example, we have seen, across the board, in the last year, market research showing that, despite the industry, many buyers want to know the vendor/supplier they choose has strong financial stability. Yet, few marketing and sales messages address this key attribute. We have seen prospects tell our clients, first and foremost, they want to receive easy-to-understand and accurate billing. Simple.

All this makes sense in view of the recession, yet few companies take the time to learn what their customers truly value in today’s world.

The conversation continues the rest of this week. You can find Jaynie's book Creating Competitive Advantage at Amazon.com.