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Friday, May 11, 2018
Radio Show - May 11, 2018 - Why Project Management Has to Change - Colin Ellis
The Two Wolves....
I get several questions around the logo for my company. There are two main stories. One is personal, the other stems from an old story that is dear to my heart. First the story:
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, 'My son, the battle is between two 'wolves' inside us all.
One is Evil.
It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, ego and superiority.
The other is Good.
It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, truth, benevolence, empathy, generosity, compassion and faith.
The grandson thought about this for a minute and then asked his grandfather:
'Which wolf wins?'
The old Cherokee simply replied, 'The one you feed.'
I love that story. It reminds me to focus on the positive and reward the good work done. The second reason for my logo is a personal shout out of pride to my family. I am Irish and Italian. I lean more to my Italian side. The wolf in my logo is modeled after La Lupa, the mythical she wolf that nursed Romulus and Remus back to health. In many of the pictures of her, you will see the twins. In the logo, we removed the twins and put R2 underneath it to signify my children. Ramsey and Remo. Finally, the wolf has green eyes to signify my wife. So I am the wolf protecting my children and my wife is looking after us. That is the story!
No Day But Today,
Rick
Thursday, May 10, 2018
Culture vs. Vision
In the project management world, we can see the clash between culture and vision vividly. Sponsors, companies, or clients will state what they want (vision), and then rarely change what they do (culture). The culture continuously will outpace the vision.
I had a chance to spend some time with Seth Godin recently. He says, "You can't change a culture if you don't follow the vision." He shares a story about an organization talk about wanting to have a culture of inclusiveness. Their number one sales person was known for behaving poorly. Several complaints were brought against him. The company never took true action against the sales person. The real reason is that he was their top producer. Therefore, the actions outweigh the words. The culture of the company trumped the vision.
I see this quite a bit in project management. We are often hired because companies want to understand portfolio management and to be able to make better project decisions. They think that software will solve culture issues. While software is a great enabler, it will not solve organizational or cultural issues. I recently heard an organization was reaching out who is an existing user of a PPM system. They were wanting to use resource requisitions. When I inquired as to why, the answer is because they were not getting the engagement from the resource managers and they wanted to have a better tracking mechanism to prove it. They even removed many of the rights from the resource managers because they were not utilizing the system properly. The subsequent result is to add a process that requires more clicks and more tracking from the people who do use the system to prove what they already know. Why not address the actual issue?
One of the biggest cultural issues that we run into frequently when it comes to portfolio management is the resource manager. Organizations ask to know the utilization of their staff and want the data to make better project selection decisions. The logical source of the data is the person who is paid to supervise the staff or the resource manager. The organization will then say, "we don't want to ask them to do it," or, "they will throw a fit because they are already to busy." Stating that we do not have time to do resource management is the same is saying that we are too fat to diet! It is simply not true. It pushes many people outside of their comfort zone to have to hold people accountable. That is a key difference between leaders and managers. Many managers that I know want the title and the money, just not the accountability. The crazy thing is that from company to company, what is expected is based on what the culture allows.
It is great to have a vision, the culture is what will win the day.
No Day But Today,
Rick
Thursday, May 3, 2018
Believe in people.....
The greatest asset any organization has is it's people. Without fantastic employees, no company can survive. This is always intriguing to me when organizations make decisions thinking that there is a "silver bullet" that can solve organizational or leadership issues. One of the most popular shifts right now is Agile. When I first heard of Agile, I was skeptical. I thought it would go by the wayside like ISO or Six Sigma. When it started to gain steam, I devoted my full resources to understanding it. Especially as I saw some of my favorite clients become derailed during the implementation of Agile. Just like any methodology, software, or project, you have to trust your people. The magic formula in business is people, then process, then technology.
Agile is fantastic as a methodology. However, it is the people that can deliver results. It actually requires more trust in teams and people than some of the other methodologies on the market. So if an executive is having organizational issues, why do they think adopting a new methodology will solve it? A successful Agile transformation requires a strong foundation of leadership and the ability to trust the team to make decisions. I am seeing so many Agile transformations in progress right now that baffle me. I was just talking with my good friend John Stenbeck as we were taping the next episode of the Web series AgilityCast about this. In many of the Agile transformations, it is being suggested to take the entire organization through a transformation instead of incremental gain. Alf Abuhajleh said it best that people are implementing Agile in a Waterfall way! John suggests an incremental implementation of transformation so that experimentation and results can be understood and tweaked while expansion of what works can be rolled out to the rest of the organization. I concur.
What I have noticed in the most successful Agile implementations is the secure leadership and the profound trust that they instill in the structure and teams. Agile is actually more disciplined than many of the methodologies if implemented properly. If an executive already does not trust the team or staff, then Agile will not be the fix. It will only create more confusion and miscommunications. So many organizations are diving in to the Agile world thinking that it will just make everything faster. It can, but with the right trust and leadership.
No Day But Today,
Rick
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