A Punch in the Nose & Other Good Communication

Talking about “communication” is not good communication. What is good communication? A punch in the nose, that’s what. A punch in the nose is good communication.

If you are repulsed by such a concept, then that also is good communication. Repulsion is an unambiguous response. I made my point.

Let’s do a little defining here. Defining is good communication. It is, in fact, at the heart of good communication, along with a few other practices we are about to explore.

Communication is defined as establishing some kind of understanding, and good communication is defined as establishing mutual understanding with the greatest possible clarity in the shortest possible time. Can’t beat a punch in the nose for that. It establishes clear proof of bad intent in seconds.

If you accept the definition, you cannot quarrel with the example. If, on the other hand, you live by a broader and more decorated concept of good communication, you’ll object.

And that’s the first half of the major problem in most relationships, most organizations and most projects. We start from different assumptions about what is being said, demonstrated or otherwise indicated.

Our individually distinct upbringings, educations, experiences and attitudes inevitably give us varied understandings about even the most common words, phrases and other communication tools.

That’s the innocent half of the problem.

The other half, the working half, is the one that directly causes widespread grief in our relationships. It is the sad fact that we don’t clear up these different understandings before we start acting on the decisions we make based on them.

We rarely bother to find out what someone else really means. We think we already know. Well, we don’t know.

Why should we know what the other person means? We don’t know what WE OURSELVES mean. We just assume we’re right about whatever it is, and fault other parties for believing and acting differently.

This general misapprehension often turns into mistrust. In more active cases, it culminates in a punch in the nose, that climactic and crystal-clear act of communication. Generally, it hardens and deepens the misunderstandings that led to it in the first place.

While miscommunication is everywhere and its causes and nature are complicated, its cure is not all that frequent. But it's relatively attainable.

Busting the Ghost in Our Days

Too busy.
Too much to do.
Too little time.
Workload overload.
“Hey, how ya doin’?”
“Busy . . . You?”
“Yeah, busy. Too busy.”

What’s this “busy” that everybody is? Is it work, real work? Is it important work? Worthwhile work? Is it the right work?

Ask yourself what was the most important thing you accomplished last month. Or last week. Or yesterday. What made it the most important?

Equally serious questions: What was the second-most-important thing you did yesterday? How long did it take? And the third? How long did it take, and why did it take that long?

In fact, what exactly did you do all day? And what about the stuff you didn’t do, maybe didn’t get to, that you had planned to work on?

Who has time to think about all that, much less figure out answers? Anyway, we may have no idea where to start.

And therein lies the problem: We don’t have time to manage our time.

Well, why is that?

As with any chicken-egg situation, this one just plain discourages examination. It frustrates decision.

That doesn’t mean we just become unaware of the issue. It hangs around. It is a ghostly presence in our days – this feeling of dissatisfaction with our own behavior because we can’t seem to get ourselves to accomplish what we want.

We all know we’re supposed to be doing something about it, but we don’t. Why?

Two main reasons:

First, we don’t really know how, even if we think we do.

Second, we don’t really want to do it, even if we think we do.

So that’s where you start: Finding motivation and getting practical.

A Case of Implementation

An exercise in introducing
Project Management into an organization

YOU
You are Phil Campbell. You were hired three months ago into a newly-created position, Project Manager, by this industrial materials supply company. You’ve worked for several other organizations over your 10 years of employment, and this is the job you consider your first real career-builder.
You’ve held various jobs in recent years as a lead worker and supervisor in retailing and construction. You originally got interested in Project Management because of a presentation at your Young Leaders Society meeting. Since then, you’ve taken a couple of Project Management courses and have become a regular attendee at programs of the Project Management Institute chapter.

The HIRE
You weren’t really in the job market, but they announced at a PMI meeting that Accurate Materials Company was looking to hire a project manager, and it sounded interesting.
Until then, you hadn’t really thought of yourself as a project manager, but the information you’ve been learning at PMI has made it clear to you that project management is what you’ve been doing for years. It hasn’t been all that high-level and sophisticated, but you’ve found that adapting project management practices on the job really does make things work better.
You also hadn’t realized how interested you had become in project management. When you heard about this opening, you were quite intrigued by the idea of actually going into a job with the title and status of “Project Manager.” It crystallized in your mind as something much more meaningful than just another job.
So you sent in your resume – and got the call. The interview was unlike any you’d had before. It became apparent that Dan and Simon, the two executives who met with you, did not know a lot about project management. They liked what they heard, though. They exchanged glances and nodded in satisfaction several times as they listened to your comments and answers.
Accurate Materials had some ideas about expanding its lines of business into product innovation and development, rather than remaining a distributor of basic goods from bulk suppliers and original equipment manufacturers.
Dan and Simon knew some of the specifics about what they wanted to develop, but acknowledged that they had no idea how to organize and execute innovative processes. They had heard enough about project management to identify it as the way to do the organizing and executing.
They were impressed with how well you fit their job description. The offer, with a nice bump from your previous salary, came quite soon.
It's been an interesting 90 days. (Click to read more.)

Up & Down the Pyramid

You haven’t had your coffee yet today, and you just spilled a full cup in your lap. How do you feel?

Or something important has just gone all to hell on the job, and it’s your fault. How do you feel about that? Say it wasn’t your fault, but you’re being blamed anyway. How’s your mood now?

Now, look the other way. You stubbornly stuck to your guns in a long, difficult effort. Everyone else said it would never work. In the end, you pulled it off – and now they all think you’re awesome. If you don’t feel on top of the world, there’s something wrong with you.

Either way, bummer or winner, we’re supposed to suppress our emotions: Never let them see you sweat . . . and it’s very bad form to celebrate yourself.

There are two important things, one good and one bad, going on in such situations.

One is how we build and improve our image and our relationships. Our behavior is one of our most important tools in successful workplace collaboration. No question that dignified response to all kinds of situations is important in earning respect.

The other vital element is what goes on inside our heads. We err seriously when we too rigorously enforce this restraint within the privacy of our own internal “conversations.”

Don’t kid yourself – the stream of self-talk is constant and powerful. It’s voluminous, estimated to flow in our minds at four times the speed of a typical conversation. Most of us don’t do it aloud – at least most of the time – but it is real and extremely important in determining our behavior.

When that self-talk includes too many admonitions to ourselves to bottle up our reactions, it is a mistake.

In short, we’re plenty emotional, but we don’t like to admit it. We don’t even acknowledge it, and that damages our ability to manage.

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid has been a cliché for decades, but don’t forget that clichés thrive for a reason: They provide instantly-understood definition and meaning. Maslow deserves better, and taking a serious look at the idea in our daily performance can be pretty instructive.

Project management, especially: Risk, uncertainty, complexity, dependency. That’s the environment for the project manager, and it’s guaranteed to keep the emotions at a boil.

Picture the project manager, eternally sliding or slipping down the pyramid. Maybe lurching or pitching down, depending upon how abrupt and impactful the event is.

Trudging or scrambling up the pyramid.

Maslow has a lot to say to you, project manager.

Fear, Avoidance & the Nonsecret of Success

          Most project managers work hard. Some of the best of us work too hard – especially considering the disappointment that all too frequently dogs our results.

          Give yourself a little private test, whether you carry the title “Project Manager,” or do projects without the portfolio, or just too often have to do stuff without enough time, information, competent personnel, etc.

Actually, we’re ALL project managers. Everybody is, at least part of the time.

This test requires that you do a quick – honest – review of your emotional state at work over the last few weeks. Zero in on the moments when the situation was not going particularly well. There may have been moments when you felt stress, panic, anger, frustration and/or the blues.

What was causing those reactions? Identify the moment, the feeling and the circumstances. This may not be easy, if poor performance and negative emotion have become so common in your life that they are virtually the standard state.

If necessary, just pick any old project or situation.

         What exactly was going on? Were results coming in as expected/predicted/promised? Were people doing what they were supposed to do, what they had promised they would do? Was stuff showing up on schedule? Were problems being addressed, meaningfully, in time to do so properly?
         How about ongoing support and response on the part of management?  

         If everything was going swimmingly, congratulations. If that was not the case, how did you feel about it?

         Stress, panic, anger, frustration, depression? OK, maybe just a modest level of pressure, fright and the general sense of just never getting things done? Do you feel this way often? Have you become resigned to poor performance? Have you, perhaps, even come to believe that that’s the way it is, and always will be?

Well, that’s not the way it should be. If that has become your way of life, you’re not in a good place. You don’t “fail” this test, but it does tell you something about your potential for effective management of projects.

The worst state is that of the project manager who accepts the false reality that their projects will never really work well, that organizations and individuals, however highly placed, simply cannot or will not consistently come through.

When that happens, the only sensible personal strategy is survival – keeping a watchful eye out for threats, staying away from hotspots, going with the flow – and managing to mediocrity. Not a noble occupation.

The solution is not particularly simple, nor is it easy. But it works.

Why & How to Go against Nature

When you really think about it, project management doesn’t make sense.

It attempts to introduce a strange mix of discomfort and disorder into a system whose purpose is to pursue adherence to repetitive predictability.

Start with the nature and make-up of organizations. You gather people and resources together to pursue an outcome – say, profit, or public notice or a worthy cause – that requires the focused dedication of this effort, talent and wealth. You devise and implement processes, and constantly tune them, to make your valued outcome happen.

If the processes you invent/import are to get you where you want to go, they must be good processes. Effective processes that do not waste resources and human input, that make good use of your investments. If the processes don’t work, the organization does not reach its goal. The resources and the human effort turn out to have been wasted.

As the leader of such an enterprise, your obligation is to assemble the kind of people who will respect the process, learn and improve the process, stick with the process to make it ever more effective. They become increasingly invested in the established process.

 

A process is a set of sequentially dependent steps that, properly carried out, lead efficiently to a predetermined outcome. The more trustworthy the steps are, and the more rigidly they are followed, the less variance there is in the process and the more assured is the desired outcome.

The people drawn to and chosen for this kind of work collaborate well in an orderly environment. They constitute the much-maligned “bureaucracy,” which is as necessary to civilization as roadways and waterworks. Good bureaucracy makes communal survival possible, and is generally taken for granted. Bad bureaucracy, usually a minority, gets all the mentions because of its encrusted maladjustments.

In sum, the smooth functioning of an organization requires that there be a minimum of disruption, while the very purpose of project management is to take away resources and familiar routines from the organization to do or install something that’s never been there before.

So, when we mount a project, no matter how valuable we expect the payoff to be, we’re going against the nature of the sponsoring organization. Should we take carefully planned special measures if we want this alien thing to make it? Well, yeah.

Do we? Well, most often, no.

Reality Fiction

There are six of them sitting in a conference room, tasked with preparing for a project. This thing is going to be complicated. And important parts of it are unfamiliar to them. They are meeting for the first time, and they’ve never worked together before.

Theoretically, they will collaborate to organize and execute this difficult innovation. They will recruit additional team members, arrange resource investments, guide the work process and resolve problems as they arise. They will take responsibility for their own parts, while supporting each other as necessary.

Unfortunately, it often doesn’t work quite that way. Many people in such situations would consider such a theoretical construction to be a fiction. They face an entirely different reality.

Five of the project planners in the example count themselves lucky. The sixth has been designated as project manager. This provides something of an escape hatch for the others. They had plenty to do before the dreaded tap on the shoulder that put them in this room. Now begins the delicate ritual that will determine for each of them what this new assignment will do to an already impossible workload – if indeed it has an effect at all.

You know, maybe it will die off, yet another victim of benign neglect.

The project manager is the only person out there in the open, clearly tagged with responsibility for making it work. In many organizations much of the time, this is a pretty difficult spot to be in, because history indicates there will be a lot of work, a lot of hours and a lot of frustration.

Objective studies show a high rate of shortfall or failure in projects of all kinds. There are reasons for that. Some are organizational, some are personal and all frequently are deeply ingrained in the culture.

One contradiction at the root of the problem originates with the fiction, subscribed to by some senior managers, that plans would work if only those charged with managing a plan would stick with it. The contradiction is completed at the working level by the counter recognition that fiction is not reality, however sincerely it is believed.

Sometimes all involved know that this “planning” business is a charade in which the impossible is demanded, with the expectation that anything less won’t motivate anyone. The effect is, of course, the opposite.

If job security dictates that the project manager pretend the plan will actually work, so be it. March dutifully along for a while, maybe, but sooner rather than later you’ll have to do whatever it takes to salvage something from the doomed initiative.

Or maybe not. If a shortfall isn’t acceptable, or if even a poor substitute can’t be wrung out of the effort, it might just be declared dead, or allowed to quietly wither away.

And life goes on. One more proof that planning simply doesn’t work.

Well, this “reality” is the real fiction. Overcoming it can be done, often is done, but it’s not easy.