How to Save Your Organization

It’s the unlovely little secret of most organizations. It’s the universal challenge facing those responsible for the work of others. It’s the sand in the gears of group productivity.

What is it? Delegating, that’s what. Poor or nonexistent delegating.

Delegating is the reason we have managers. The managers’ job is to clarify and specify what is to be done, then subdivide the workload and assign suitable portions of it to the various people who are under the managers’ direction. Sometimes it works. When it does, it produces results whose quantity and quality rise well above the possible accumulation of individual outcomes from the same workforce.

When delegating doesn’t work, which is often, it is because the managers haven’t successfully set the goals, identified the work and transferred the responsibility. Alternatively, it doesn’t work because the delegatees haven’t done their part. They haven’t gotten it done correctly, or on time. And sometimes it doesn’t get done because it never really was assigned at all.

The Modern Project Manager

     The PMBOK Guide describes 42 processes necessary to manage a project, and organizes them into five process groups and nine knowledge areas.

     It takes nothing away from the Project Management Institute formulation to state the basic truth that not a single process, not a shred of knowledge is worth anything without one factor that is the ultimate essential. The “sine qua non – without which nothing.”

     Commitment.

     I rewind and rerun in my imagination the project meetings of my life, especially the famous opening act: the initial organizational session.

     I see once more the veiled eyes, the crossed arms, the sagging body language, the disguised yawns and smirks. Hear the doubts and obstacles and competing priorities. Workloads. I feel the palpable rejection and get that old familiar lost, gone feeling, sliding down that slippery slope once again. All alone.

     Then I fast forward to today’s older-wiser mental video of the project manager behavior that reflects a deep understanding of why those long-ago days were the way they were, and a complete grasp of what it is that was missing then.

     Commitment.

     Not only does this modern project manager understand the situation and grasp its implications, he/she also knows what to do about it. This project manager will not become immersed in planning details that result in nothing. Or get entangled in excuses, squabbles and slippages. This project manager will pay attention to business, and will do so in an order of priorities that recognizes the sine qua non of commitment.

     The project manager constructively engages the very deep-down human infrastructure that guarantees successful project performance and full satisfaction of the project intent. This project manager has, in fact, done what needs to be done about it before this first project meeting, and will now proceed to do it again.

Winning without Power

The Emperor Nero ordered his Roman subjects to worship his horse as a god, basically as an idle demonstration of his power. He did it because he could, and there was no way to stop him. You could wind up dead if you didn’t comply.

That is authority without responsibility.

The modern project manager, on the other hand, often is the one who must meet quality standards within cost and time limits set by someone else – and do it through the work of people he/she doesn’t control. Amid plentiful risk and multiple complexities.

That is responsibility without authority.

The project manager swings in the breeze between those two poles. He/she is at the mercy of people who own all the marbles and can yank them back at any time. Simultaneously that project manager must somehow get tough stuff done predictably and consistently by “team members” who have no obligation to comply while they have lots of other things to do.

Too many project managers respond to this by working like dogs, scrambling in pursuit of busy people and filling in the gaps through their own efforts.

In the world of management, among the worst things you can do is to substitute personal labor for management direction. When you, the manager, pick up your shovel and go to the mine, you often are the best digger down there. While you’re demonstrating that, the actual designated diggers are leaning on their tools to watch admiringly, if they’re not off on some other dig.

As this sort of thing is going on, management is not happening. When you, the leader, become overbusy, a lot of really important stuff goes by the boards. Leadership very significantly depends upon observation and analysis, paying attention, understanding. It demands persuasion, the ability to convince people to do what they otherwise wouldn’t do.

You can’t determine what’s happening or convince anybody if you don’t have time to conduct adequate observation and effective communication. You anticipate/solve problems and build productive mutual relationships through attention to events and people, watching and listening, responding to variances, needs and ideas, showing people they can look to you for solutions, assistance, ideas and inspiration.

A workload overload robs the project manager of the time and mental/emotional balance required to do that sort of thing. And, truth be told, many project managers secretly long to have these folks get out the way so they can have at the work themselves.

In sum, the project situation is set up to leave the project manager all alone out there with the responsibility, facing at best a major set of challenges. At worst, the view is a solid wall of people’s backs. What to do?

Don't Just Do It! Do It Right

Just do it!

What a great slogan! It clears away a lot of the fuzz and distraction. Just do it. Act. Get things done. Results. We love it. The phrase emits a shiny, glowing simplicity that feels really good.

It would be great if only it worked. It doesn’t. For the athletes (and wannabes) the Nike slogan is aimed at, there is an implication of a simple need to unleash intense action based on high-level preparation. As a slogan, it may even have value for the couch potato who needs a boot into motion, any motion.

For general purposes of life for the rest of us, the “just do it” concept is dangerous nonsense. Think about it in the context of managing projects. Reasonable expectations about human behavior say “no way just do it.” You can’t lead project teams that way.

“Just do it!” says “impulse.” Don’t take time to think it over – your determination might drain away. Jump before you think about it too much.

What do you think it does to the team you’re trying to lead if people never know when you’re going to lurch into unexpected, unexplained action in response to some unpredictable impulse? That’s not leadership; it’s solo hyperactivity.

This is not to dismiss the project manager’s need for motivation. Leaders are by no means exempt from the fundamental and very human reality that we need a recharge on occasion. In fact, a project manager’s emotional battery must have extra capacity. It has to supply the energy for the leader’s own demanding role as well as frequent jump-starts for numerous dependent stakeholders. If the project manager is not driving forward with vigor and confidence, everyone else loses headway. The drag increases exponentially and can become irreversible very quickly.

So the project manager must have and display fire and determination, as well as focus and mental engagement. The project manager’s behavior must reassure and inspire others. He/she must be tuned to the needs and momentum of all those others who operate at lesser speeds on lower levels.

That central role demands steady direction and guidance. Impulse is out. But the need for self-motivation is not. And, in fact, for the project manager the need is greater – often much greater – than that of other project stakeholders.

But we’re not superhuman. Just do it! won’t do, so we must look elsewhere for self-motivation.

They're Not Listening to You

The project manager has been at this a long time, and he’s been frustrated for much of that time.

“I get to the end of my rope about once a week,” he said, “I go in there and tell my manager how screwed up things are and what needs to be done to make it all work. And you know what happens? Absolutely nothing!”

Meanwhile, at the other end of this relationship, things are fine. It all depends upon your perspective.

“Joe is a really good project manager,” his manager tells me. “But he’s kind of a worrier. He comes in here every once in a while with a list of problems. I let him unload for a while – then he goes back and finds ways to get the job done.”

So one sees a system that doesn’t work, while the other sees a cyclical ritual that is just a factor in a passable way of life.

This kind of relationship is not sustainable. When there are systemic problems, continued indifference at the management level results in progressive unhappiness at the working leadership level. It wears people down. If there is not a sudden explosion at some point, there is an erosion of productivity and/or eventual burnout.

The syndrome has countless scenarios in the workplace. It is pervasive. You wonder if any organization actually has clear understandings between the people who do the job and the people who manage the process and own the resources.

This is, of course, the famous “communication problem.” It comes up in conversation and complaint really, really often. There is reason for the impression that not only is it everywhere most of the time, but there’s really nothing to be done about it.

Well, the main reason nothing gets done is that no one does anything. We don't resolve basic communication disconnects because the real issue gets too little thought on all sides. More specific to project management: They’re not listening to you because you’re not talking to them. You’re talking to yourself. They just happen to be on the scene, providing an occasion but not a partner for the verbalization.

If something effective is ever to be done about this failing, let’s start with the project manager.

Leadership: Do You Want to Work That Hard?

We talk of leadership in glowing scenes of roaring crowds. Huge ones. Rippling banners and uplifting trumpets. Adulation. No rejection. No resistance. No nasty sniping.

That’s why we see so little of it.

If you’re actually going to do leadership, be ready. Leadership, real leadership, is mostly grubby, grinding, endlessly demanding of time, patience and effort. Then, in the midst of long stretches of unnoticed, unrewarded labor, unexpectedly there arises the moment at which great success is achieved . . . or great disgrace is earned.

Basically, your extraordinary personal investment is taken for granted.

You can’t be sufficiently disciplined, adequately tolerant, to invest all that time in supporting, guiding, educating, persuading . . . it takes to build a strong constituency of appreciative followers. You can’t – at the same time -- be sufficiently gifted and smart enough, properly alert and sensitive enough, politically attuned at the necessary level, to know when your moment has come.

Unless you’re a leader.

If you love authority, you’re out. They'll hate you. If you enjoy the limelight, you’re a performer, a lightweight. They may love to watch you, but they won’t follow you. If you declare yourself a leader, you’re a joke. It’s not up to you. If you expect appreciation, you’re really missing the point. When and if appreciation comes you didn’t anticipate it, because it never was part of your motivation.

You lead because you outwork expectations, beginning in the most mundane ways. Wherever your project, your organization, your people are, that’s where you are. You attend an awful lot of meetings. You tell people, early on and all along, what they need to know. You have, and you demonstrate, respect. You ask real questions, and you really listen when people talk. You reward significant input, and you ignore distraction and misdirection.

Man, does all this take time. Most of that time is low-octane investment of your presence and attention. It is draining. You don’t need to have all the answers, but you need to be a steadying, reinforcing backbone of the process. Alert, believing and always on message.

You need to do your homework, answer the questions and dissolve the objections. You must offer ideas and solutions – while empowering people to think and act in ways that get them to consciously engage their own initiative.

Oh, and this job requires what Peter Drucker called “the ‘C’ word – courage.” No really meaningful decision, he said, is easy. When it truly matters, there is going to be pain and a price is to be paid, no matter which way you go. People are going to be hurt. They're going to be angry. At you.

Probably no one will blame you if you dodge the firestorm.

But, if you do, they will never ever think of you as a leader.

OK, so you buy all that, and you’re ready to be a leader. How do you do it?

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.