Learning Leader

The most important thing you must work on

I'm indebted to the writings of Michael Gerber ('The E-Myth Manager' and other associated titles) for explaining the common error that many of us who lead growing businesses can fall into: we get seduced into working mostly in the business rather than working on it. I find that this time of year is particularly good to stand back and reflect more broadly on how it ought to develop.

However, I find even this perpsective is becoming a little limited for me. For example, time and again, I hear experienced venture capitalists remark that the pitch is often not the thing that swings it for them in deciding to invest in this company or that; they find that they do not so much invest in a business plan or a business model as in the leaders themselves. They invest in the people; people who strike them as so remarkable and invigorating that they will back them with their own money, all in order to become part of their story.

So I find myself standing back from working in the business, even from working on the business, and working on me. This becomes a different take on the tradition of New Year's resolutions. The question I ask myself is, 'How can I develop in 2012 in four areas of my life?'

1. Physical.
   For me, this primarily affects matters of diet and exercise. How can I so eat and exercise that the energy I bring to leading my company goes up? I've come to value regular exercise in my struggle to gain energy. Often I will get ideas - such as the one for this post, for example - during or at the end of a workout; presumably because there is more oxygen coursing through my brain. So it becomes stupid for me not to exercise.
2. Mental.
   How am I stretching myself with my own reading and study? Major influences in my life are the other blogs to which I subscribe, the books I read (more history, agile management, and human psychology these days), and the Scripture my vicar occasionally asks me to preach on. Keeping a regular journal and writing this blog also help me keep sharp.
3. Emotional.
   As someone with a tendency to the melancholic, I find I must work consciously on this one. One of my favourite quotes from C.S. Lewis is, 'Joy is the serious business of heaven.' I aim to be more thankful, to smile rather more, to sing more, to play more. I find being around my grandchildren helps enormously.
4. Spiritual.
   As a Christian I practice the traditional disciplines, but privately as directed by my Rabbi (see Matthew 6:1) so I'm cautious about going into more detail here. I find these habits have helped keep me grounded as a businessman as to what 'success' really means, and they bring me back regularly to focus on what really matters.

Of course, all these areas affect each other, so I must attend to them all.

If you, dear reader, think I have missed anything, I'd value hearing from you.

As we all enter 2012, may I wish you and your loved ones well, a year in which we all grow. Remember the most important thing any of us can work on is ourselves.

What's your frame? #PMOT

When you look at this picture, what do you see?

Some see one thing, others another. If you've seen this picture before you will probably have had it 'explained' so that you can shift between seeing one image and another. [Some people see a young woman looking away; others see an old hag looking down. Look at the almost-horizontal line at the bottom: it's the collar-band of the young woman and the mouth of the hag. Got it?... OK]

Gestalt psychology demonstrates with images such as this that the human brain makes sense of reality more by interpreting whole patterns than individual elements. This has a consequence: we tend to focus on certain matters in the foreground of our consciousness whilst filtering out a lot of other detail, detail that doesn't fit the structure, putting it into the background. In this way, we are told, we all approach reality with our own frames of reference.

Our own research tends to confirm, for example, that not all project managers have the same frame of reference. Some see data, see evidence, see indicators that others simply do not see.

But this is not merely a matter or personality or taste. Our frames of reference matter. It seems that some of us have been ignorant of some quite important data.The data our brains choose to make sense of seems matter to our performance. We began to see a clear frame of reference for the few high performing project managers that is different from the rest.

And that data is largely in the area of people and relationships, of stakeholders and communication. For all too many project managers, people, relationships and conversation are all just a distraction; such things just slow them down. And yet the evidence is there: higher performers have a relational bias: a bias to making time for people and relationships.

So when you look at your project work priorities today, what do you see?

Project communications: the route to high performance

The British Computer Society has a project management specialist group (PROMS-G). In the next few weeks they are holding a Spring School, every Tuesday evening from 1st March in London on the theme of 'Communication in Project Management'. The School have very kindly invited me to open it with a presentation on 'Project communications: the route to high performance'.

Come if you can. It would be great to meet you. Details here.

Learning in the Cloud

Last week I was leading our Change Management Practitioner course (which I love to do). We had a great group of people and I made a little experiment: I created for the delegates a shared notebook on Evernote, one of the free storage systems. Delegates were able to set up a free account, if they didn't already have one, and access notes that I posted there during the week.

Evernote's mission is to store the world's memory, and I must say it does a pretty good job.

Delegates were invited by me before the course to access the free notebook (pictured). As we went through the week, I captured photos from the course of flipcharts, table and floor layouts, and added notes on relevant resources, including an updated Change Management further reading list.

It was easy to set up and operate. Now we are considering creating streams for our graduates by topic on our Facebook page.

I suppose this is what people mean in part by 'Learning 2.0': use Web 2.0 technologies, cloud services like Evernote, to gather and share learning materials.

Right now, I'm enthusiastic, but I'm not sure we've yet landed on the best tool and process. I'd be interested in any views or advice on this, particular from people in management training.

The Strategic Moment

One of my favourite passages in Lord of the Rings is towards the beginning of the second book in the trilogy: The Two Towers. Aragorn, as leader of the Fellowship, is now seeing the mission fall apart before his eyes. He is having a bad day. Boromir is slain, valiantly but vainly protecting the hobbits Merry and Pippin, who are now captured by the marauding band of Orcs.

It gets worse. He discovers that Frodo, the Ring-Bearer, is also missing, along with Sam and one of the boats.

What should he do? They have just spent a precious half hour giving Boromir a river burial, as befits this great warrior of Gondor, and time is ticking away. It is urgent! Should he, Gimli and Legolas pursue Frodo and Sam to protect the Ring-Bearer (the ‘Main Thing’ of the mission, perhaps?) or seek to rescue Merry and Pippin from the Orcs?

What he does next is an object lesson to leaders in what I would call the Strategic Moment. To be sure, the situation requires urgent action, but it must be strategic action. If Aragorn makes the wrong call then the consequences could be dire.

‘Let me think!’ said Aragorn. ‘And now may I make a right choice, and change the evil fate of this unhappy day!’ He stood silent for a moment. ‘I will follow the Orcs … My heart speaks clearly at last: [emphasis mine] the fate of the Bearer is in my hands no longer. The Company has played its part…’

For me this illustrates a number of qualities of a good leader in a crisis:

1. He pauses. Despite the pressing urgency of the moment, the good leader actually does something counter-intuitive: he slows down. The cavalry may almost upon the archers but they hold it for the right moment. What is crucial is that the aim is sure.
   
   
2. He faces reality. This is not the time for indulging in denial or retreating into self-pity. Aragorn doesn’t bleat, “This isn’t happening!” (that all-too popular idiom these days) or start to take out his frustration on those comrades who happened to be around.
   No, he calmly faces the situation as it really presents itself. As Max de Pree once said, “A leader defines reality.”
   This not the time for grieving or, worse still, to indulge in the blame-game. As William Durant, founder of General Motors, once said, “Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it.”
   
   
3. He gives the situation his total attention. A strategic moment is a mission-critical moment. In pausing, this is not the time for being distracted. Mental focus is one of the key disciplines of a good leader.
   
   
4. He searches his head and his heart. As Spencer Johnson has written elsewhere, we make better decisions when our head and our heart agree. We make better decisions that are congruent with our value systems and passion as well as making rational, logical sense.
   
   
5. He releases himself from what he cannot do, and focuses on what he can. Strategic decisions are as much about saying ‘No’ to options as saying ‘Yes’ to others. Leaders are always alert to the waxing and waning of what Stephen Covey calls their ‘Circle of Influence’. At times we can influence and control more than at other times; that’s just accepting reality.
   A real source of unhelpful stress is to get frustrated and angry. We tell ourselves that we don’t have as much executive latitude today as yesterday that some on our project aren’t as cooperative or as available today as yesterday, that key stakeholders don’t seem to be as responsive to us as they have been in the past, and it’s not fair! We can’t afford the luxury of a “pity-party” now. We need to assess with the situation as it really is now.
   
   
6. He is prepared to redefine the Mission. The ‘Main Thing’ was to escort the Ring-Bearer to Mordor, but Aragorn reflects deeply enough to make even this mission statement negotiable. He identifies the real ‘critical success factor’ of his mission – to protect as many of his party as he can. What is not negotiable is his value of protecting those whom he can protect. Reflection helps him distinguish values and practice.
   In project terms, this is called ‘reviewing the business case’. In truth, the great project leader will never lose connection with the fundamental ‘why’ of the project. We need to stay connected with the business case, to refine it, re-state it and re-communicate it continually to our team. Out of this we can give authentic direction.
   
   
7. He takes positive action. Follow through a decision with an immediate step towards it. As a leader you need to model the response for your team. This is not the time for ‘paralysis by analysis’. Unless we identify and act upon a positive practical response to the Strategic moment, then no matter if we have done all the above, we have failed. Consider the question, ‘What practical steps can I, as leader, take now, to model and reinforce this new strategic direction?’

I am always fascinated how leaders respond in the crucible of a crisis. These are not just Strategic Moments for the mission, but also defining moments in the character development of the leader, herself.

It seems to me that the first Strategic Moment in a project for the typical leader comes almost immediately. A client requirement is given her which is a dangerous cocktail of ambiguity and prescriptiveness. She probably hasn’t been included in the ‘pre-sales’ feasibility discussions, and this half-baked solution is almost dumped on her as a fait accomplis. What does she do when the Account Manager is demanding an immediate start: ‘Just do it!’ It takes guts, not methodology, to press the pause button in these situations.

However, if she does it enough and make the right call enough times, each time it gets easier. And she grows as a leader.

Peter Jackson’s excellent movie of Tolkein’s Fellowship of the Ring finishes just before this incident in the book. The second movie in the series – The Two Towers- skips this fascinating moment: Jackson has Aragorn hurling himself into pursuit almost immediately. The movie looks at the story, no doubt, through a postmodern lens, a view that can only appreciate the chaotic, the fast-paced and more obviously magical. But here in the book is, I believe, a classic literary portrayal of timeless leadership wisdom.

So next time you have a crisis, and everyone is clamouring for an urgent remedy, press the pause button ... 

…. and have the courage to wait ...

… until your heart speaks clearly.

[First published in Project Manager Today, 2002.]

Cuts in charitable funding are what I'm talking about

In my last post I spoke about stress and simplistic responses to the call to make public sector budget cuts. Well we are seeing a lamentable expression of that now.This morning the BBC had feature illustrating this:

Charities have warned cuts in local authority funding in England may threaten services they provide.

via www.bbc.co.uk

The case of Croydon Accessible Transport, a charity quoted in the item, despite mobilising a large a critical volunteer workforce, has had its local government funding withdrawn. Quoting the BBC article:

Martin Brookes, of think tank New Philanthropy Capital, said voluntary groups would need to prove their worth.

"There are some charities that are simply not doing good enough work or they can't prove how good their work is - they're more vulnerable than others," he said.

"The vital thing for charities to do is to invest in demonstrating their impact, proving that they deliver vital, valuable services and that they should be exempt from cuts."

This is exactly the point I would make. In these austere times, the Business Case now becomes crucial, even in the charity sector. The trick is producing measurable contributions that keep in step with public agency strategic objectives. Make clear how your charity helps my council meet its service levels needs to be clear and the case powerfully made.  

Then the discussion could become, "If you withdraw my funding, this will be the social impact of it, and the additional demands on your service delivery."

Let's have some joined-up thinking here, rather than panic measures.

Inside the Minds of Star Project Managers

I'm presenting the current state of our research at the Oxford Branch of APM tonight at 6:30. Here's a copy of my presentation:

As you will see the presentation above does not fit this blog's page layout, so instead, click here: Mental Crib Sheet of Project & Programme Managers on Prezi

Good Change: Relentless or Rhythmical?

As a continue to read (and value) John Kotter's latest book, A Sense of Urgency, there is a growing dis-ease that I must set out here. As I noted in an earlier post, Kotter makes a distinction between a true sense of urgency with a false sense of urgency and with complacency. But he goes on to describe this desired state a permanent dynamic:

    'It is often believed that people cannot maintain a high sense of urgency over a prolonged period of time, without burnout. Yet with all the alertness, initiative and speed, true urgency doesn't produce dangerous levels of stress, at lest partially because it motivates people to relentlessly look for ways to rid themselves of chores that add little value to their organizations but clog their calendars and slow down needed action. People who are determined to move and win, now, simply do not waste time or add stress by engaging in irrelevant or business-as-usual activities.' (p.9)'

Professor Kotter, you anticipate my objection. It reminds me of another quote, this time from Tom Watson, Founder of IBM:

    "IBM is what it is today for three special reasons.  The first reason is that, at the very beginning, I had a very clear picture of what the company would like when it was finally done. You might say that I had a model in my mind of what it would look like when the dream - my vision  - was in place. 

    “The second reason was that once I had that picture, I then asked myself how a company that looked like that would have to act. I then created a picture of how IBM would act when it was finally done. The third reason that IBM has been so successful was that once I had a picture in place of how IBM would look when the dream was in place, and how such a company would have to act, I then realised that unless we began to act that way from the very beginning, we would never get there. In other words, I realised that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one.  From the very outset, IBM was fashioned after the template of my vision. And each and every day, we attempted to model the company after that template.  At the end of each day, we asked ourselves how well we did, discovered the disparity between where we were and where we had committed ourselves to be,  and at the start of the following day, we set out to make up the difference. Every day at IBM was a day devoted to business development, not doing business.  We didn't do business at IBM, we built one." 

But I am still sceptical about living this level of urgency as a business lifestyle. Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz in The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal , and Dr Jack Groppel in The Corporate Athlete: How to Achieve Maximal Performance in Business and Life , have brought research on improving athletic performance to the business arena. All human systems operate on a stress and recovery cycle. What Loehr, Groppel, et al.
 have shown is that by introducing proper, regular disciplines ('rituals') that slightly stress more but allow a rhythm of recovery, individual performance can improve in measurable terms by as much as 20%.

Now, if this is true for individuals, could this also hold true for teams and organisations? I think there may be some carry-through into project or organisational performance. Indeed, I have come across organisations where there have been deliberate practices of planning shorter, high-stress project life cycle bursts, but then following that with a step-down into useful, but restorative recovery patterns of work.

As a Christian I draw on the Jewish tradition of Shabbat ('Sabbath') as one of my spiritual disciplines (rituals), and I can testify to the restorative nature of this practice. Among other things, it breaks the 'Tyranny of the Urgent', as Charles Hummel called it, and helps me to get my head above the weeds and remember what is truly important. It's more than a mere cliche to say that life is a marathon and not a sprint.

So, yes, working on truly urgent/important work as a tempo is energising, but I suspect it is even more productive when it is not chronic, but mixed with cycles of recovery.

Reverse Culture Shock

Returning from Venezuela this week to the UK after spending the previous three weeks over Christmas and New Year almost without any exposure to the UK news media, I've had a strange sort of reverse culture shock: on returning I feel almost assaulted by its negativity.  

I know we are in recession and I know the war in Gaza is frightful, but we are called to obsess about the awful and what further awful things might happen. Having come back to this diet, I am seeing the irony, and the self-fulfilling nature of the negative. Pundits say things like, "People falling ill through flu may be not yet technically be an epidemic, but can we cope?!" And after an upbeat interview with the credible and competent Sir Stuart Rose, "Marks and Spencer may be warm and breathing ... but only just!" P-L-E-A-S-E. This is now verging on the ridiculous.

In pearcemayfield, I lead a great team and I'm acutely aware how bad trading conditions may become, but confidence in ourselves, our clients and our suppliers counts for a great deal. Yet I find it is the journalistic industry itself has spouted such negative propaganda in their voracious search for copy that this in itself breeds fear and undermines confidence - "Oh dear, there is now no confidence in business!", they will no doubt respond.

My friend and sometime co-presenter, Helen Whitten, of positveworks has written an interesting and useful piece on her blog.

I think I might watch the news less from now on and treat the little that I do read and hear with almost as much humorous skepticism as I do with TV advertising. And I think I'll do that positively!

Communications

Reflective Project Management

Whilst at the BPUG Members' Conference last week in Crewe I saw even more vividly the connection between the work we are doing on the Crib Sheet research and this whole idea of better projects being ones that demonstrate a regular cycle of reflection on experience and learning. One of the emerging principles in the work to refresh the PRINCE2 project management method is 'Learn from Experience'. This is more than just logging or reporting on lessons, but demonstrating an adaptation to these lessons during the life of the project, where possible. This would be evidenced by conscious adaptation in the light of that learning.

Of course, this has implications for the organisations within which projects happen. Most projects assemble temporary teams. Once the project ends, the team breaks up - and usually so does the opportunity to exploit the collective learning which that team has gained.

It is one thing to understand knowledge management; it is quite another to mobile that knowledge for future benefit.

Enter P3O (R). One of the three main functional strands of this kind of office is as a 'Centre of Excellence'. Knowledge mobilisation is very much central to this. I see members of a good P3O being rather like worker bees, cross-pollinating valuable learnings from one project to another.

But at the individual level, at the level of the professional project manager, our research shows that those regarded as higher performers seems to have greater emotional intelligence, in particular a self awareness, a concern over learning and adaptation of their own working patterns.

Now there's a lesson for us all.