How to Argue -- Properly

     This very intense, very intelligent guy startled me by saying something I never had heard before.

     He interrupted a vigorous argument with me by saying. “You know, Jim, I see your point now. I agree with you. You’re right.”

     I was beyond surprised. Why did he do that?

     I’ve thought about that conversation often, and it has changed my basic thinking about why and how to disagree. I now see that the man understood argument in its finest sense, as an opportunity to jointly seek truth and value.

     At first look, this idea may seem ridiculous. But if you put aside conventional thinking, it changes the entire perspective.    

      Some people set out to win all their arguments. Some never win any. Many, perhaps most, rarely argue at all.

     Thoughtful people disagree with all of them. They know that all three types – those who dominate, those who lose the battles and those who avoid engagement entirely – are missing important opportunities. None of the three really know how to reap the benefits of constructive interaction amid differences. They misunderstand what argument can be and what it can do.

The Inquiring Project Manager

     One skill unerringly points to the competent manager: The question habit.

     Good managers ask a lot of questions. Besides the need to know what’s going on and why, they must be able to negotiate well – something that calls for a really well developed sense of questioning.

     Whenever I can, I squeeze a negotiating piece into management training, especially project management training. They’re negotiating all the time.

     Good negotiators do a lot of careful preparation, but they are fully aware that they can never know enough to completely understand the values – and therefore the motivations – of their counterpart(s) on the other side of the table.

     So their presentation of incentives in bargaining is preceded by, and continually enriched by, a search for additional information. The Holy Grail is finding the route to a mutually beneficial outcome.

     Real negotiators are never looking to beat anybody. They want happy campers all around when it’s over. They recognize that there will be a future.

Persuasion

     “Every person in this room is in sales,” he said.
     This charismatic guy stood in front, facing a dozen-plus of us middle managers in a smallish organization, a daily newspaper operation.
     He came and stood behind me. He put his hands on my shoulders.
     “Jim, here, shows a lot of promise for sales leadership. He should work at it.”
     What? I tell myself. Hey, man – I’m an editor. I don’t do sales. I do news.
     This sales leadership thing was an alien concept. To all of us.
     Still, the presenter kept at it for two or three 11-hour days. There was no noticeable effect on me – or the guys from production, accounting and other functions who weren’t out there selling ads, subscriptions or news dealerships.
     Not then.
   

Negotiating Oranges & Project Stakes

     Oranges used to be really big in the negotiation industry.
     One practice case opened with the story of a dozen oranges – unlike any others in the world – that possessed powerful medicinal properties.
     A group of scientists needed the oranges to save an entire village from certain death. A competing group had to have those oranges if it was to create a vaccine that would save future generations from great suffering. Both groups insisted they needed all the fruit.
     A simpler case involved a brother and sister disputing possession of a single orange. The essential nature of the situation was the same as that of the scientists. However, in the siblings’ case, the Dad stepped in to deal with the problem (not satisfactorily).
     I use a similar approach in negotiation training for project managers. No fruit, but I mix in a marriage, employment security, a failing project and the survival of an entire company. Positions that are apparently irreconcilable must be brought into agreement in a role-play exercise to which we commit about half an hour.

'Don't Argue with Me'

     “Don’t argue with me – I have debated before the American Bar Association.”
     That is one of the more efficient discussion killers I have collected in a lifelong study of human conversation. If the remark doesn’t instantly freeze the other party, it sets an agenda for a losing exchange. You are put down and set up in one neat pre-emptive strike.
     Are you going to now argue about whether you’re arguing, or debate debating with a master debater?
     You got into the conversation originally to explore differences and seek understanding. It hadn’t occurred to you that it was a competition. If that’s what it is going to be, you’ll need to reorder your entire frame of mind. Probably need to do some research, too.
     That is, of course, if you buy the choice you have been so smoothly locked into. If you don’t buy it, how would you rate your chances of resetting the basis for why we’re talking?  
     Perhaps the politic thing to do is just just acquiesce and withdraw.

How You Get What You Deserve

     The two of us were standing at the bar this one time during a rare event at which we worker bees could socialize with our superiors.

     “So,” my manager asked me, “where do you want to go in this business? What job would you like to have?”

     I, a beginner, had no idea. I gave some generic reply, because I had never thought of anything like that. Didn’t think about it after that exchange, either.

     Until two or three years later when that manager was promoted. I put in for the job, and as far as I knew I was the only person in the place who did.

     Then weeks passed, and I heard nothing.

     I had a pretty good relationship with another senior manager, and I thought he might be in on the decision. Eventually, I asked him what was going on, and got a painfully noncommittal response.

     After a long hiatus, they brought in someone from the outside to fill the position.

How to Argue

You never know whether your opinion is right until you get into an argument about it. And, if you don’t argue properly, you may never know.

People talk a lot of foolishness about arguing. Some say it’s a bad thing and should be avoided. They believe it accomplishes nothing except to hurt people, damage relationships and harden attitudes. Others say it’s a lost art because of “political correctness.” They are convinced that people tiptoe around each other, letting good ideas as well as error and misinformation slide by because they don’t want conflict.

So here’s a question for you: How much progress is possible without disagreement?

Competition is disagreement. Coke vs. Pepsi. The two flavors have competed for about a century, and their respective proponents have been known to disagree – sometimes vociferously – about their relative merits.

Never Overcompromise

          Treat compromise very carefully. It won’t take you anywhere worth going to.

          We’re hearing the word “compromise” everywhere. It has the glow of a Holy Grail: If only the parties had compromised in Washington, we wouldn't all have gone helplessly off the fiscal cliff (which actually turned out to be more a very costly and uncomfortable downslope).

Discount for the moment the reality that the fiscal cliff is an illusion, an inspired political confection that generates sufficient heat to fuel an urgent . . . ultimately meaningless . . . debate.  It does not connect to reality.

No question there’s a problem in Washington, but no matter what they do or don’t do about it, there will be no precipitous plunge into the national financial ruin implied by the concept. There will be plenty of time to avoid an actual crisis. And plenty of options. Plenty of incentives. For one thing, the increased taxes won't be due until April 1214. For another, the elections blew away some expectations.

This does NOT mean there aren’t important decisions to be made. There are, and they are difficult ones. Check with your local economist or other knowledgeable realist. Or a noninvolved politician.

Suffice it to say that the matter of the fiscal cliff is a fine example of the cloudiness that often obscures our route to common cause amid differing – conflicting – demands.  

Compromise won’t solve that situation. Nor is it of much use in our own daily and periodic situations. This is especially true because the word “compromise” as we hear it around us usually is inaccurate in describing whatever it is the speaker means.

We toss the word around in everyday discussion and express it in considering serious problems. We don’t want disagreement, we say – we want compromise.

We ought to stop using it that way, especially in important matters, personal and political. Compromise doesn't produce solutions. It is a way to ease a confrontation without solving the problem.

You don’t want a compromise. You want a solution. You don’t want to compromise, you want to collaborate. Or, if you don’t want to actually work together, you at least want to get somewhere.

Don’t compromise, then. Half a loaf doesn’t satisfy. You just got some of what you want or need, but the matter remains unresolved. There is more to be done. Progress is not yet possible.

“No compromise!”
That's worse. It means disastrous suicide when it declares rigid adherence to one's starting point, unyielding resistance to any negotiation with those of differing views. That's not what we want, and that is not what is being advocated here.

An uncompromising attitude arises from a narrow definition of one’s constituency as a warring faction whose position cannot sustain the slightest softening. It is blind to the inescapable reality that we’re all in this together. Sooner or later, my brother’s situation merges with mine.

If this strategy prevails, it doesn't mean victory. Even if you win a fight to the finish, it's not a victory with value. You have created a whole class of people who have ample motivation to withhold, subvert and lie in wait for openings to counterattack. Short-term triumph ensures longterm failure.

In fact, in negotiating differences, you should not start with a concrete end point at all. To be successful, you don’t set out to compromise, you set out to accomplish something that has worth. Compromise can't do that.

Compromise is too narrow. As a process, it starts with a belief that your goal is to achieve a specific, predetermined outcome. It’s a zero-sum game in which the other party is a competitor, sometimes an antagonist. The more you get, the less he/she gets. If you can’t get it all, you give up as little as you have to.

This assures a limited outcome, at best, and often results in a souring of relationships that is costly to everybody for a long time. It’s really dumb

The better word is “solution.” It requires an entirely different way of addressing situations. Its process is collaborative, open-ended and creative. It’s what the Harvard Negotiating Program calls “issues bargaining,” as contrasted with the “positional bargaining” of the compromise approach. 

What does everybody want? What does everybody need? 

You don’t define a specific result based on the known available resources. You commit to understanding and achieving what you really want and need. You don’t know exactly how to get there, and you don’t specify in advance what it looks like. You do your homework, but you leave the matter open.

Then you devote yourself to an honest, open and patient effort to gain a similar understanding of what it's all about for the other party or parties. Together with them, you seek out and use whatever is available to work toward a mutually useful result.        

This is respectful, creative collaboration. It takes work, it takes preparation, it takes communication skills of a high order. It takes professionalism. It takes time. Inevitably, it is  successful. 

It is not compromise. Never compromise. Instead, solve.

Magic Isn't. Politics Is.

     We all thought getting folks to do some challenging thing was  impossible, but someone pulled it off anyway. That wasn't magic. It wasn't just luck, either, although luck always is a component of success. It was politics.
     Politics, like project management, often is described as a variable blend of science and art. There's a reason for that common description, because the two professions are essentially identical.
     Politics, when it works, is the process of assembling and advancing reasons for disparate parties to act in each other's behalf to achieve an outcome that is valued by all. Usually, a person or a number of people explore and communicate interests among the various parties, searching for patches of common ground that encourage movement away from adverse positions.
     Opposing actors begin to see advantage in such movement, and they develop a willingness to sacrifice some less-desired benefits in the interest of gaining others of greater value. They re-examine convictions and suppositions in search of bargaining chips. As open discussion progresses, they improve their understanding of other positions, and see previously unnoticed value in offerings from different protagonists.
      There is nothing simple about such negotiations, particularly since all the parties typically have connections and obligations to other interests not at the table.
     Leading the effort takes sensitivity and tolerance, and an alert sense of real and potential motivations. It takes talent, skill and vision to negotiate the pitfalls, and to take advantage of the unobtrusive or unexpected opportunities that arise. You have to b both patient and intimately involved.
   
     All of that applies to the reality of projects, properly understood. You cannot simplify the management burden  to make it less daunting and more controllable. If you try to do that, you must then create some shrug-off to account for the resultant diminished results. You know. Projects never meet requirements, come in on budget, hit the schedule.
     It would be much like politicians blaming the opposition for intransigence when in truth they themselves failed to show leadership in convincing their constituents of hard truths and dealing honestly with their opponents.
     Project managers can't limit their work to operating the technology, reporting the processes and inventing the excuses. They must commit to hard outcomes and influence human behavior, often in circumstances of great difficulty and resistance.
     That's politics.
     The science of project management is visible on the surface, captured in the documentation and managed through organized, disciplined performance. It is PMI's 42 processes as outlined in the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge. It is an absolutely essential base for good project management -- and it can be manipulated as the refuge of mediocre managers. It is nowhere near all there is to this business, and it is an easy cop-out to pretend that it is.
     The art of politics, and of project management, is the nuanced work that goes on in convincing people -- including those who are powerful, convinced and antagonistic -- to see payoffs in doing what they originally may have had no intention of doing. It is the patient development of trust and candor through countless conversations and decisions, making collaboration possible. It combines empathy with decisiveness, example with engagement.
     It is your in-process assistance to people and guidance of ongoing events.
     This latter skill set is painfully learned and not always appreciated. It is at the core of quality project management. When you hate politics, you're thinking of the lazy, mean-spirited or dishonest corruption of a marvelous set of skills.
     When politics is done well, the results can seem magical. Close examination reveals that it's not magical at all -- just marvelous and admirable.

Project Politics: Good Thing. Bad Name.

          Politics has a bad name – so bad even politicians sneer at it. Pretty much every other day, some leader of a national party dismisses the opposing position in the healthcare debate as “politics.”  Bad stuff, he/she is saying. Dishonest and exploitive.

          It’s almost astounding to realize that politics once was considered a noble calling. Nowadays, the polls rate this – dare we call it a “profession?” – incredibly low in public esteem. Somewhere in that six-mile-deep Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean. Lower than whale droppings. It gets no respect. None.

          So you’re up against it when you remind everyone that politics is an essential function of civilization, to say nothing of democracy. It is equally at the core of project management. It is the art and science of accomplishing a mutually-valued outcome among disparate parties.

          The unsatisfactory alternatives are dictatorship, war or surrender to unsolved problems.

          Project managers actually have a much more favorable reputation than politicians – or should that be “a much-less-unfavorable” reputation? (Did you hear the one about the cannibals who lived happily within a large organization until they were exposed? One of them carelessly ate a janitor instead of the customary project manager. The janitor was missed instantly.)

          In fact, politics, like project management, can be practiced very well or very poorly. Or somewhere in the vast range of quality between the extremes.

          Similarly, the issues of either profession can be vitally important. Healthcare, so obscured by irrelevant and inane argument, really matters. People are dying because they can’t afford care, and people are going broke trying to pay for it. The country can’t continue to afford the way we’re going

This has been on the national agenda, in one form or another, since at least the days of President Theodore Roosevelt. We should all get our heads together and do something about it. You don’t have to take one position or another to think that would be an important thing to do.

It’s a project. A project within the humongous, revolutionary project that is the United States of America. And don’t believe there isn’t plenty of risk in them both, particularly the survival of the way of life we enjoy in this country.

At the end of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin referred to the newly-formed entity as “a republic, if you can keep it.” He was not at all alone among the founding members in understanding this thing needed careful tending. Thomas Jefferson famously said, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

It would have been too clumsy for Franklin to have said, “It’s a project, if you can manage it.” Or Jefferson to have warned, “Constant risk management is the price of democracy.”

The entire enterprise, at the time of that years-long “project charter” negotiation, was politics of the highest order. Washington despaired of getting the battling factions to agree on anything – but he kept it together through determination, persuasion and leadership. He was the ultimate political project manager, and without him the whole thing would have come apart.

In our infinitely smaller way, we project managers need a sufficiency of the same characteristics to do our job. It’s not all Gantt charts and work package specifications, however necessary they are.

You don’t have to call it politics if that offends you, but you’d better practice it that way if you’re going to hold your stakeholders together and navigate the political challenges of your projects.

Authority, Responsibility, Management

           “I can’t do anything about that agency,” the government official said. “I don’t have authority over it.”

          The statement reflects a primitive, fundamentally flawed management philosophy, for a number of reasons.

          For one thing, it implies that one-way exercise of power is the only way government can function.

          For another, it denies the speaker’s responsibility for outcomes he/she can’t control.

          You can find the same kind of thinking in nongovernmental organizations.

          In the real world, though, it is delusional for anyone in a position of authority to believe you make things happen as a continuing practice by ordering them done.

Organizations headed by such people tend to be circuses of hypocrisy and just-pretend. They become progressively less functional as they lose good people and gain a culture of fictional behaviors.

No one has all the answers, and smart leaders know how to spread authority around in the right places, and how to empower people to use it with pride to multiply quality results.

Conversely, people willing to be treated as lackeys pretend respect and compliance while they play hidden games that hollow out the operation.

You don’t dare question a dictatorial boss, but you don’t waste time and energy actually trying to carry out all of his/her stupid directives, either. Such bosses often see what they want to see, while they punish and humiliate those who don’t stay in line.

          Bad bosses have bad bosses. When a power-obsessed incompetent is allowed to continue in place, it’s because someone agrees with the behavior, isn’t paying attention or is practicing avoidance or denial. The boss’s boss isn’t doing the job.

          That is as true in the private sector as it is in public service. If you are elected or appointed to a position of power, it is because you are expected to get certain things done. That’s the responsibility part.

          If you take your responsibility seriously, you equip yourself with the skills and practices you need to get the desired results or as close to those results as possible. So you build relationships, and you learn and respond to the motivations of other people in the environment.

You respect and understand how others see their authority and responsibility. You work creatively and persistently in the realm of the possible. You negotiate, giving and taking in at atmosphere of mutual dependency and respect.

          That sounds a lot like project management. While “government as business” is in many ways a failed concept, there is significant value in seeing project management as politics.

          The typical functional manager in business, industry or the nonprofit world generally has more formal authority than the typical political leader – and far more than the typical project manager.

          What is common to all management roles, though, is the responsibility to achieve results through obtaining the constructive involvement and contributions of other people. What you can’t order into place, you must nurture into being.

          Power needs responsibility.

          Responsibility demands collaboration.

          Collaboration must be earned.

          Authority is dependent upon competence.

Derelict Projects

The mythology of the sea is ripe with mysterious and scary stuff. Why was the Mary Celeste discovered cruising along, relatively undamaged but totally without captain and crew? Is the Flying Dutchman really still fulfilling his vow to battle Antarctic gales in a ghost ship until doomsday?

The Mary Celeste case was examined by a court of inquiry at Gibraltar, but the provable facts were too skimpy to settle it, and the rich flow of supposition and speculation has kept the story rolling vigorously since the 1870s. No, there was not a half-eaten meal on the table, nor was there a cat asleep on a berth when the ship was boarded.

The Flying Dutchman tale is even more fun, since no one is quite sure what, if any, actual event in the 1600s seeded the endless versions of the cursed shipmaster’s challenge to God (or maybe the Devil) that condemned him to suffer the worst of every subsequent storm off the tip of Africa. To this day, or at least to the last reported sighting of the ghost ship in 1959.

For sure, there really were, and are, derelicts – abandoned ships and boats – in the modern world, plenty of them. Mysterious disappearances from vessels, too. In April 2007, a good-sized vessel was discovered off Australia with its engines running, an open laptop computer on board and – yes – food on the table. There was no sign of the three men who were supposed to be there.

For the big-tragedy-oriented, the Bermuda Triangle provides updated mythology that includes the unexplained vanishing of jet planes as well as ships. Scary.

There is a bottomless human appetite for mystery, and we have no problem finding it in the most unromantic places. Project Management, for instance.

Derelict projects loom in the workplace, drifting aimlessly, sometimes for years, their hopeless crew members staring out at the passing world from haunted eyes. Actual disappearance of projects occurs, too, but ghostly reappearances are thankfully rare.

The word “abandonment” shows up often in definitions of “derelict,” and there’s a lot of that in the world of projects.

The reasons generally are neither romantic nor mysterious.

The Project Manager's Art

How do you get people to do what you want them to do?

This eternal question of human relations has special resonance in the world of Project Management. Sometimes nobody wants to do what needs to be done -- perhaps even the Project Manager who is supposed to be its leader.

Considering the nature of Projects, this disability is understandable. But it's not acceptable. Dealing with it should be up front and on top of the Project Manager's priorities. It often isn't.

Consider the nature of Projects. They are temporary intrusions into the regular order of business. Sometimes they are massive. Always they require individuals to engage in unfamiliar tasks and/or to work with unfamiliar people. This uncomfortable new workload can be in addition to their accustomed activities, perhaps with no reduction in pre-existing expectations. You're supposed to kind of work this new thing in.

Surrounding it all is an aura of uncertainty, since Projects are -- by nature -- risky. No one, including the leadership, is quite sure how to handle this. That's why it's a project -- a complex, multidisciplinary effort to produce an innovation. The quality of the outcome is expected to be high. Oh, and you must use a minimum of resources, including funds and people, and meet a tough deadline.

There are many characterizations of what typically happens in such situations, some of them quite flip. Generally, the point being made is that there's no way this thing will get done anywhere near the deadline. Nor will it have a prayer of meeting budget. And quality? You're lucky if your result has 50 percent of the features or functions you set out to produce.

Well, what happens when things work, despite the odds? While successful Projects are in the minority, there are some. What makes the difference?

Project Management has been described as an art and a science. That's not just an airy remark. It is central to understanding how the Project Manager is to be effective.

All Productivity Is Personal

Effective Project Management can make perfect sense on paper. Logic, clarity and predictability are like that. Even risk can be identified and managed with reasonable certitude when you theoretically control the circumstances. Then you insert the human factor, and . . . .

Ah, the human factor. Sounds so manageable when you say it that way – sort of a verbal cardboard cutout with depersonalization of “human” and the emphasis on “factor.” As a matter of brutal fact, too many managers follow the Paul Simon dictum, “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

Truth is, people even at their best are the least predictable of the resources available to the manager. Someone who is a star performer today can be a flat tire in the operation tomorrow, depending upon utterly unpredictable personal, family, health, financial, mood influences.

When that happens, there can be radical effects on results. The resources of cost (salary), time (work schedule), materials, equipment, facilities and everything else remain completely unchanged. The bad effect occurs solely because the human being has performed differently. That catalytic resource – the person – gives dynamic meaning to all those other resources, and is the dominant determinant of the outcome.

As in everything else, what is true in ordinary organized human activity is more so in Project Management, because a Project is organized human activity in a pressure cooker. You don’t have the luxury of seemingly plentiful time. Your resources are sparingly, perhaps grudgingly, often inadequately doled out from stores originally anticipated elsewhere.

Most importantly, your people are loaned from permanent organizational functions whose managers are not above tugging them back to serve contrary priorities.

In short, management of this human being thing makes or breaks the Project Manager. And the most serious challenge in doing so is bounded by the end of his/her nose.

How to Rescue Yourself

Sergei is deep in it. Over deadline. Over budget. Overworked. This is a troubled project.

Sergei is the project manager. His project, implementing a new order entry system for a printing company, is not going well. He was asked to take over the project because it’s a key part of the company’s strategy, but had fallen seriously behind.

There was no time to lose, so Sergei hit the ground running. As far as he was concerned, the time for rational planning was long past.

The team includes members from sales, accounting, inventory management, IT and the general manager’s office, all of them overloaded with work. There are eight people, including Sergei, who is an assistant foreman in the warehouse.

You Don't Get What You Deserve . . .

You don't get what you deserve -- you get what you negotiate.

That's an axiom of professional negotiators, and it's true in spades for project managers. The art/science of project management is overstuffed with formulas for just about everything, but none of it works without the wise management of the relationships among the stakeholders.

Any relationship is a constant two-way stream of requests, promises and value exchanges, large and small. With projects, it is vital that, from the very beginning, all the stakeholders are clear on what this is all about, including what their contributions are to be.