Destructive Heroes and Brilliant Jerks

Great article in today's Times about someone we sometimes run into at work: 'Destructive Heroes'. These are the people who are effective at their jobs but abusive to their co-workers. Because of their effectiveness their obnoxious personalities are tolerated by the organization, to the detriment of their colleagues.

Scott McGohan, chief of McGohan Brabender, has dealt with a destructive hero — a persona that once described him. CreditMaddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Rather than just complaining about these people, the article discusses the negative effect these people have on their companies. In one case the company totaled up the hours spent cleaning up the messes created by this high-flier and found that the "Brilliant Jerk' (another name for this type) cost the company more than he made. And that didn't even count the cost to employee morale.

In his training seminars, Mr. Sullivan, president and managing partner at the Shamrock Group, a management consulting firm in Denver, could count on two things whenever he asked, “How many of you have had a destructive hero in your midst?” About half of those in attendance would raise a hand. And of those, “Almost 100 percent said the same thing: ‘We waited too long to deal with it, and it cost us a lot.’ ”

“Get rid of the brilliant jerk as fast as you can,” said Cliff Oxford, founder of the Oxford Center for Entrepreneurs in Atlanta, who has registered the URLwww.brilliantjerk.com and is writing a book to help companies deal with such employees (Mr. Oxford also wrote about the topic for The New York Times’s You’re the Boss blog.)

“Teaching over 100 courses,” Mr. Sullivan said, “I’ve never had one person tell me they converted a destructive hero.”

I have had my own experience with these people and they are not always men or in sales. In my current position, a highly intelligent QA Director who won't suffer fools has intimidated the entire staff until she doublechecks everything done and belittles every small mistake made. The end result is that projects drag twice as long as needed.

Dear PM Advisor. Sep 8, 2014

Dear PM Advisor,

In your Project Management experience, how do you manage the individual working styles? For example I worked in project where the development team is in the UK. The typical problem I faced was a team member who overwrites in my email and sends it back. I spend hours understanding what is his response to my email. 

Muddled in Mumbai

Dear Muddled,

Remember that 90% of Project Management is communiucation. Communication is difficult enough when we all speak the same language. Everyone has developed their own way of communicating and it rarely matches anyone elses. Witness almost every married couple for examples of how people who live together daily miscommunicate. 

It gets much harder on global projects where some use English as a second language. Here are some things I have done to help facilitate communication in these environments:

1. When English is a struggle, require a translator with the group who uses English as a second language during status meetings
2. Speak slowly and pause for translations during long speeches
3. Use as little jargon as possible unless it is well-known by all participants
4. Set up ground rules for e-mail communication, talking over each other, etc.

This last rule might help with your specific problem. What you are saying the team member does seems pretty reasonable to me not having seen the results. When I receive an e-mail with a lot of questions, I answer next to each question and write "Answers within your text for clarity' in the body of my response.

Perhaps your problem child doesn't format his answers obviously. I recommend using a different color, bold my responses and make sure there is a carriage return between each response. 

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com

Dear PM Advisor. Jun 30, 2014

Dear PM Advisor,

I’m documenting the introduction to our Project Profile for presentation to management. I’ve been advised not to use bullets for this document. Why not? I believe the white space makes it easier to read.

Format Queen in Morristown

Dear Format Queen,

Bullet statements are good for three purposes:

1.       Lists

2.       To present your resume in an easily readable format that highlights your experiences without causing anyone to push through paragraphs of words.

3.       To present your key points along with your wording as you present something.

A Project Profile, while it may be initially presented, ends up being a stand-alone document that anyone may pick up months or even years later to try and determine what this project is all about.

A stand-alone document cannot use bullets except for lists like deliverables, measures, etc. because bullets typically are not complete sentences and require more words to fully explain what you mean. Since you will not be there to add the needed words, you need to add them now, while you create the document.

Here is what I recommend you do to ensure you have a complete Project Profile:

1.       Write up the Profile with the aid of your team

2.       Print it out

3.       Hand a copy to each of your team members along with a pen

4.       Present your Profile to your team

5.       The team members will mark up your profile with the ad-lib comments you made during your presentation

6.       Type this new information into your edited Profile

7.       Repeat steps 2 – 6 until what you are presenting is exactly what is documented on the Profile

8.       At this point, your Profile is good enough to be that stand-alone document you want.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com

Dear PM Advisor. Jun 16, 2014

Dear PM Advisor,

We are documenting our assumptions as we plan but we’re concerned. A lot of the assumptions we are making won’t be proven true or false until we are halfway through the project. Management has challenged these and told us they won’t approve the project unless we have answers to all these questions.

What can we do?

Nervous in New York

Dear Nervous,

Project Planning is the process of predicting the future. But management typically wants our predictions to be 100% accurate while we are dealing mostly in hopes and dreams. We can never be 100% accurate in our predictions so we use past data to try and improve our predictions.

Along the way we need to make assumptions to continue planning. Since we don’t know which of two or more paths will prove to be correct, we assume the most likely path to be true, treat that as a fact and continue planning accordingly. This allows us to complete a project plan, along with all the assumptions that got us to that point.  It is extremely important that management buys off on all these assumptions when they approve the project plan. If they disagree with an assumption, they need to let us know. We’ll pick one of the other paths as true and adjust the plan accordingly.

Some of these assumptions will not be proven to be correct until the project is underway. That is a reality of life. Your management needs to accept this reality and move on. The only way you can determine the validity of this assumption is to proceed to the point where it will be proven. So they need to either allow you to proceed or, if they are too unsure about the project, they need to reject the project’s progress to the implementation phase.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com

Dear PM Advisor. Jun 2, 2014

Dear PM Advisor,

I wrote my Project Objective Statement to include the words: “Final product must cost < $2 per pound.” I was told by one of my team members that this was not the correct cost to put in the Objective. My response was that this was extremely important and should be reflected in the headlines of the project: The Objective Statement which appears on every project document.

Who is right?

Concerned in Connecticut

Dear Concerned,

From your question I imply that the ONLY cost you show in your Objective is this cost per pound of your final product. While that is indeed an important measure of the success of your project, management still needs to know how much your project will cost to complete in order to determine whether or not to do your project. If it costs $10 million to complete and brings in revenues of only $1 million a year, it doesn’t matter if you can make the product for $1 a pound, the project will never pay for itself.

You are correct that this important measure needs to be elevated to the Project Objective and appear in the ‘headlines’ of the project. It is OK to have two cost values in your Objective. So your Objective should read somewhere along these lines:

To develop the XYZ product, produce it reliably for < $2 per pound and market it by Dec 21, 2015 for a cost not to exceed $250,000.

Now you have the three elements of a good Project Objective: Cost, Schedule and Performance, along with the most important measure.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com

Americans should obey Russian rules while visiting.

The opening ceremonies in the Sochi Olympics held a few entertaining moments. The German team came attired in rainbow colored uniforms to protest the anti-gay rules imposed in Russia. And the Olympic rings failed to open completely, leaving the ring that is traditionally red unopened. Was this a failure of Red communism or the failure of pink to bloom in Russia.

All this hoopla about the no gay-propaganda during these olympics demonstrate a basic difference between Russian and American culture. Americans culturally are individualistic while Russians are collective. While both countries have minorities, Americans believe that anyone can become whatever they want so there is a feeeling that everyone should be given a fair shake. Members of minority groups can protest and be awarded equal rights in this country. From religious freedom to the civil rights movement to the current gay marriage question, the majority has yielded to the minority and granted equality.

Not so in Russia. There the culture is that the majority is paramount and that minorities can be quashed. Gay rights marches are met with protestors who feel free to disrupt the demonstrations with support from the police, government and church. Putin stands behind this policy that the majority shall not be bullied by the 'obnoxious minority.' That is the Russian way.

Is this right? Not from an American perspective. We all believe in equal rights for all. But we are not Russians. They look at our system and scoff that we should cave our feelings to the minorites that are 'destroying our culture.' It all depends on one's perspective.

It is not our place to criticize other people's cultures, just as we bristle when other people criticize ours.

But what happens when an international event like the Olympics takes place in a country where rules differ from those at the visiting country? I believe the host country should make concessions to the visiting countries' tastes such as providing food and lodgings acceptable to them but they shouldn't to change their way of life completely. Part of the allure of traveling is to experience different cultures.

While traveling I try not to be the ugly American. I take off my shoes in Japanese restaurants and businesses. I refrain from drinking alcohol in Muslim countries. I'm respectful in other religions' temples. I don't stick my thumb up when hitch-hiking in Italy.

The American athletes are guests in a country with certain rules. While they shouldn't actively discriminate against gays, I believe they should respect the rules in Russia and not actively propagandize for gay rights during the two weeks they are being hosted by a country with that rule.

It is fine to send Billy Jean King as a representative to Sochi, but if she starts raising banners and encouraging homosexual behavior, she is breaking the local laws and being that ugly American. Just behave. We don't allow Russians to drink in public when they come here, we should obey their laws while in their country.

Dear PM Advisor. Oct 15, 2013

Dear PM Advisor,

Last week 'Ignorant in California' asked what stakeholders were. I defined the term and how to identify them but didn't explain what to do about stakeholders. In this post I will go over the next step in dealing with stakeholders: Stakeholder Management. 

Once you have your list of stakeholders, you should get together with your team, BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, and fill out this grid:

Power Interest Grid:

You do this behind closed doors and hide the results from the stakeholders because you don't want the VP Human Resources to find out that you consider his power to be minimal. It's a simple job to fill it out. Write the stakeholders names on post-its and move it around the grid until your team agrees where they stand. Then manage them accordingly.

Nex tthing to do is come up with a communications matrix. Here's an example from my novel in progress. You list your stakeholders on one axis and your types of communications on the other axis. Then visit each of the stakeholders, explain your project, show the different forms of communications you will be putting out and ask them three questions:

1. Which of these communications do you want?
2. How often do you want them?
3. In what media would you like them? (Verbal, face-to-face, electronic, paper, etc.)

D = daily, I = as issued, Q= quarterly, W = weekly

You'll have to either color code or put a slash through each box to indicate the media or frequency of receiving communications.

Then do what you promised. 90% of a Prokject Manager's job is communication. Make sure you do this right.

Good luck,

Dear PM Advisor.

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com

Dear PM Advisor. July 29, 2013

Dear PM Advisor,

We have a priority list for all our projects. We have thirteen active projects, five in the scarcity zone and a bunch below the line, waiting for other projects to finish up. But now my project, number eight on the list, is missing a specific resource due to a maternity leave. Does this mean we have to move it down below number thirteen into the scarcity zone? 

Scared in Maryland

Dear Scared,

Don't confuse priority with lack of resources. Your project was ranked number eight in importance because that was what the result of this project was worth for the company. Losing resources doesn't lower this priority. 

But you still have a problem. You lost a resource and need to resolve this. I suggest you make an immediate appeal to your company's steering committee. Reinforce the importance of the project to your company. Show them the impact of the loss of this resource to your project's timeline. Ask that they provide a replacement resource immediately. This resource can be a new employee, a temporary employee for the duration of the maternity leave or a consultant. Outline the cost of this resource but be sure you indicate that this is not an additional cost since the company is not paying the lost resource during this time. Allow the steering committee to make the decision and adjust the project plan accordingly. 

If teh steering committee refuses to provide the resource, limp along the best you can but don't lower the project's priority. That is not your job.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to BFieggen@gmail.com

Delhi Metro is a project success

With all the corruption rampant in India, it is a refreshing surprise to see a huge proejct like the Delhi Metro come in on time and budget and actually make money. How is this possible? A great article in Australia's The Age looks into this to find that the project's success hinges on the personality, strength and confidence of the Project Manager, E Sreedharan.

Sreedharan agreed to take on the Delhi metro on one condition: no political interference. He hired a small, motivated staff, solely on merit, paid them well, and sent them overseas to study how the world's best metros worked. He insisted on developing expertise within the organisation, rather than relying on consultants.

Deadlines and budgets had to be realistic and achievable; but once set, they were not to be altered, save in compelling circumstances. Once a decision was made, it was final. If anything went wrong, there was no hunt for scapegoats, only for solutions. A colleague told Forbes magazine that in 30 years of working together, he never heard Sreedharan shout at anyone.

There was no mercy, however, if the issue was corruption, so rife in India. Anyone caught was out immediately. Sreedharan ignored the rule book on competitive tenders to award tenders to firms he trusted - but if they failed to deliver on time, quality and budget, they, too, were out. Politicians used to pulling strings to get jobs or contracts for their allies found their strings were cut.

Mr. Sreedharan was named India's man of the year for his efforts and the government won't let the 81 year-old man retire.

The inventor of the Internet and the computer mouse dies.

Douglas Engelbart, the computer visionary who changed the way we use computers died this week.

In a single epiphany in 1950, he envisioned the way computing should be done. At this time, huge computers were fed punch-cards by a single person trying to solve one problem at a time. According to this recent NY Times obituary, this is what Dr. Engelbart envisioned back then:

In his epiphany, he saw himself sitting in front of a large computer screen full of different symbols — an image most likely derived from his work on radar consoles while in the Navy after World War II. The screen, he thought, would serve as a display for a workstation that would organize all the information and communications for a given project.

Looks similar to what we do now doesn't it? (Al Gore was 2 years old at the time) But Dr. Engelbart didn't just leave it there. He went ahead and created the elements of this vision.

A decade later he established an experimental research group at Stanford Research Institute (later renamed SRI and then SRI International). The unit, the Augmentation Research Center, known as ARC, had the financial backing of the Air Force, NASA and the Advanced Research Projects Agency, an arm of the Defense Department.

The SRI is widely acknowledged as the founder of the Internet. 

In December 1968, he set the computing world on fire with a remarkable demonstration before more than a thousand of the world’s leading computer scientists at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, one of a series of national conferences in the computer field that had been held since the early 1950s. Dr. Engelbart was developing a raft of revolutionary interactive computer technologies and chose the conference as the proper moment to unveil them.

For the event, he sat on stage in front of a mouse, a keyboard and other controls and projected the computer display onto a 22-foot-high video screen behind him. In little more than an hour, he showed how a networked, interactive computing system would allow information to be shared rapidly among collaborating scientists. He demonstrated how a mouse, which he invented just four years earlier, could be used to control a computer. He demonstrated text editing, video conferencing, hypertext and windowing.

A prototype of the first computer mouse, which was invented in 1964 by Dr. Engelbart and constructed by two of his associates.

In contrast to the mainframes then in use, a computerized system Dr. Engelbart created, called the oNLine System, or NLS, allowed researchers to share information seamlessly and to create and retrieve documents in the form of a structured electronic library.

The conference attendees were awe-struck. In one presentation, Dr. Engelbart demonstrated the power and the potential of the computer in the information age. The technology would eventually be refined at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center and at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Apple and Microsoft would transform it for commercial use in the 1980s and change the course of modern life.

Years later, people in Silicon Valley still referred to the presentation as “the mother of all demos.” It took until the late 1980s for the mouse to become the standard way to control a desktop computer. 

Check out the presentation here. It's quite eye-opening to see history in the making.

New App provides Malibu beach access

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

For years the rich of Malibu have been illegally blocking beach access to the public by refusing to open up access ways and gating off those that exist. According to this recent article: There are 17 public access ways to the Malibu coastline. Under state law, there should be more than 100. 
Coming from a country (Australia) and a state (Oregon) where beach access is a public right and expectation I am shocked by this behavior. 

There has been a way to find the few gates that work by buying a 300 page guide for $25. Finally technology has come to the rescue. For $2, one can buy an app that shows all the secrets. This includes such gems as which garage doors and No Parking signs are fake. 

The home-owners protest that there are no facilities to service these 'interlopers' but I bet they fight the installation of bathrooms and garbage cans on 'their' beaches. I say we all get this app and raid their beaches and show them that according to California law, they must provide access. Who's with me? 

Sixty-third Excerpt from 'Twelve Towers'

          That night, Gwilym had an epiphany for his human resource problem. The next day, once the crew was working hard, he went back into the village and purchased some cheap, colored cloth and a pair of spring scissors.

          He set about cutting this cloth into many small squares, each about an inch square. Then he took some paper and lined it like they had yesterday with axes showing dates on the x axis and number of people on the y axis. Each week on the x-axis and each half person on the y axis was one inch long. He made one for each skill. Then he called Fred in.

          Gwilym explained his idea to Fred. “Each one of these colored squares indicates half a person of a particular skill working for a week.” He placed two on top of each other. “This represents a whole person working for a week. We place this on the chart and we can see what we need given the current schedule. Then, when we change the schedule, we move the pieces of cloth around to make sure we don’t overload our people.”

          Fred’s eyes grew wide as he understood, and the two men worked together, placing squares, adjusting the schedule, moving squares, sometimes cutting them further down to indicate a quarter person on even vertically to indicate someone working for a day or two rather than for a week. Within a few hours they were done. They had reached a point where the schedule could be met without stretching resources anywhere. There were a few occasions when they would have to bring on some extra laborers and other occasions when work off the critical path would have to sit until there was a lull in other activities. But their schedule was doable now and the men would have plenty of warning when they could take time off the project and work their fields.

          During dinner they stitched the cloth pieces to the paper. Then Fred redid the calendar and placed it on the wall where every member of the team could see it. As the crew left the job-site at the end of the day, Gwilym showed it to them. Each crew member followed their plan on the calendar and took note of the days they would be expected to leave the project.

          “How good are you at predicting de future, Gwilym?” asked Tollemache.

          “The schedule should be pretty accurate for the next few weeks. Then things will happen that will change the predictions but I will keep this calendar up-to-date. Keep checking back to see how things will change. If you have plans that cannot be changed due to your farm, it becomes my problem.”

          The men nodded and walked off home. “What do tha call this tool, Gwilym?”

“Resource planning. No. There will be other plans we need for resources like stone and wood. How about Human Resource Plan? Yes. I like that. Are you putting it in your book?”

          “Aye, Gwilym. The song was getting too hard to rhyme. Would you like to see it?”

Gwilym nodded and Fred showed him the book. He had a page in the front that titled all the tools and each page that followed described the tools in detail. So far, the title page had the following entries:

          Charter

          Stakeholder List

          Project Management Plan

          Requirements

          Scope

          Work Breakdown Structure

          Activities

          Activity Sequence

          Activity Resource

          Activity Duration

          Schedule

          Activity Costs

          Budget

          Human Resource Plan

          Gwilym smiled and shook his head. “Fourteen elements to planning a project! And I still think we’re missing some things. What else can you think of, Fred?”

          “It would be nice to plan th’bad things that seem to happen on every project, th’things that always seem to go wrong.”

          “I’m not sure if that’s possible, but it bears thinking about. What about the stakeholders? We identified them early and came up with a list of them. What are we going to do about them? How are we going to tell them about the project?”

          “I like these matrixes. Why don’t I create one for this, too.”

          Fred listed the stakeholders of this project on the x axis and the different communications on the y axis. Project plan, Calendar, Schedule, Budget. “What else, Gwilym?”

          “We should have regular meetings with the team to see how things are going. Call them Status Meetings. We should put out Progress Reports for people like Sir Kay to see. He’ll also want reporting on budget.”

	Sir Kay	King Arthur	Euros	Mostyn.	Nantlais	Merlin	Tollemache	Project Team	Quarry	Sawmill	Fred’s Project Notebook
Project Plan	I	I					I	I	I	I	W
Charter	I	I					I	I			W
Status Reports							W	W	W	W	W
Status Meeting Minutes							W	W	W	W	W
Budget	Q	Q	Q								Q
Calendar							D	D	W	W	M
Requirements	I	I		I	I	I	I	I	I	I	I
Progress Reports	Q						W	W			W
Issue/Problem Log	Q						W	W			W
Contracts	I		I				I		I	I	I

           

          Fred and Gwilym decided how often people would get information and placed notes at the intersection in the matrix. I for as issued, W for weekly, M for monthly, Q for Quarterly.

          Fred added the Communications Plan to his Project Management Plan book and Gwilym followed the plan for all their project information.