… from the “anecdotes for project managers” series …
This time, the story comes from ShadowCulture’s BugBash. It’s so nicely written that it can well stay there.
Enjoy!
Category Archives: Leadership
Topics around leadership: How to shape teams where the whole is more than the sum of the parts.
Motivation 2.0: Daniel Pink on the surprising science of motivation
The other day, a friend of mine recommended another TED-Video to me: “Daniel Pink on the surprising science of motivation” (~18 Minutes). I think everybody who’s into management and/or leadership should have seen it.
It’s clearly worth watching, because Daniel is a truly gifted speaker. Still, for the hurried reader, here are the core points as I picked them up. The main theme is
There’s a gap between what science knows and what business does.
What he’s referring to is the “candle problem“: A cognitive performance test dating back to 1945. This test and a range of other examples Daniel quotes clearly shows that “sticks and carrots” (aka incentive plans etc.) actually reduce performance in cognitive tasks.
Incentives do work for mechanical tasks (which were predominant through much of the 20th century). They do not work for cognitive tasks, which dominate the 21st century. That’s the gap Daniel is talking about, and I’d like to add that this especially applies to the business of software
While science knows for more than 60 years that a bonus plan, say, for managers, reduces effectiveness, businesses reach out to higher and higher incentives in the areas where they are known to work least. One could say: They don’t know better. How else to motivate people?
And Daniel has an answer to that question: Purpose, Autonomy and Mastery.
In the video, he goes on to explain purpose – the topic in its entirety is covered in Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Since then, I keep asking myself: Do you create a sense of purpose in the people you are working with?
Everybody, Somebody, Nobody. Anybody?
I think everybody knows the following story. Still, it has turned out both fun and useful for me. Regularly. 🙂
This is a story about four people: Everybody,
Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was this
important job to be done and everybody was asked
to do it. Everybody was sure that somebody would
do it. Anybody could have done it, but nobody did
it. Somebody got angry about that because it was
everybody’s job. Everybody thought that anybody
could do it, but nobody realized that everybody
wouldn’t do it. It ended up that everybody blamed
somebody when actually nobody asked anybody.
Image: Flickr / нσвσ
Image and Reality
It is interesting to note that the literature on management, spends little to no attention on the accuracy of the measurement, while the literature on leadership barely mentions such KPIs at all. When discussing topics that are easy to measure, like manufacturing, taking the accuracy of KPI measurements for granted may make sense – however, the business of software is so far largely resisting meaningful, repeatable measurement. KPIs are so important because, often, KPIs are tied to people’s bonuses, which immediately invites, encourages … tuning of KPI actuals.
Continue reading Image and Reality
Anecdotes for Project Managers: Cargo Cult
Another anecdote that is really working miracles is Richard Feynman’s story about Cargo Cult. I have to admit that I’m telling my own version. I’ve researched it on my own and massaged it a little bit to focus on the point I’m trying to make.
The situation where this anecdote works best is at milestone meetings, at larger companies: large companies have processes, even for project management. Project management processes typically focus on special milestones with special deliverables and a range of bored senior managers who have to take the decision.
The other day, I started one such meeting by telling the following story:
Continue reading Anecdotes for Project Managers: Cargo Cult
HDWKTWD – a User Story for Tasks
Have you ever experienced that a task has been agreed, and half-way through somebody comes back beaming with the statement “it’s done!”?
Every once in a while, this happens, and it happens more often in distributed teams than in localized ones. The point is: there was no real agreement about when the task is done. I’ve started a new experiment in my teams, I’m starting to add to every task a little “HDWKTWD” section.
What’s “HDWKTWD”? – It’s short for “How Do We Know That We’re Done”. A good task assignment already does that implicitly (compare “discuss the schedule for XYZ” to “agree on a schedule and inform everybody in an email.”), but sometimes it helps to be even more explicit 🙂
User stories deal with the user observable behavior of a system. Who says that this characterization of user stories should apply purely to programming? The trick is: If I’d make a movie – would an outsider be able to judge whether the goal has been reached or not?
In the example: “discuss the schedule”, everybody would be able to see that a discussion has happened – but that’s not the desired outcome. The desired outcome is an agreement. However, the agreement is not visible to an outsider until it’s documented in an email. Hence the re-worded HDWKTWD…
My first impression is that “user observable behavior” ‘s doing good for project management, too.
Decision Analysis III
It’s already a while ago that I presented my Influence Diagram to our sponsors (one may remember the Decision Analysis II article). The main value of the presentation was – as so often – in its preparation:
- I’ve had my own mind clear on what I suggest and why
- In the preparation meetings, peers and sponsors had to wrap their head around the entire topic.
So, eventually we had an engaged discussion about a situation most people had pretty well understood. While we didn’t really go through the presentation, we still arrived at – from my point of view – the right conclusions.
And a few days after the meetings, I received an email with four words: “good meeting – unlike most”.
It works.
The importance of respect in the business of software
I found a reference to the article “Opinion: The unspoken truth about managing geeks“.
The reference is from Awasu’s “Anti-stupidity“. Thanks for drawing my attention to it!
Thanks to both your articles, I have nothing to add.
Hmmm… there’s always something to add, so how about this: The IT geniuses I’ve had the good fortune to meet all behave like that. But with IT becoming more of a profession and less of a vocation, I see first signs of IT pros turning “normal”. I don’t like it. Respect is – for all people involved – a better currency than credit.
I’ve been fiddling with the notion of trust, especially in distributed teams, for quite a while now, but respect is something that matters as much. I guess that – keeping honest respect in mind – even the quote “Unlike in many industries, the fight in most IT groups is in how to get things done, not how to avoid work. IT pros will self-organize, disrupt and subvert in the name of accomplishing work…” is not correct: I believe where mutual, honest respect is handled well, it will lead anybody to accomplishing their best and a little more. Which in turn tells us a bit about “most industries”.
… and nothing is going to happen
Today, I had an interesting discussion about empowerment, especially in a weak matrix organization. Eventually, the discussion reminded me of the Obituary of Richard Neustadt, the adviser to several presidents ($) of the USA, in The Economist (November 2003). The central part is (quoted from memory):
“He’ll sit here,” he [Truman] said [about Eisenhower], drumming his fingers on the desk, “and he’ll say, “Do this! Do that! – and nothing is going to happen! – it won’t be a bit like in the army!”
Well… if this is the amount of empowerment the most powerful man on this planet can command – how could I as a project manager as a project manager ask for more?
I think that project management is a lot about convincing and only a little about “empowerment”, and this means that there are three potential problems:
- First, it so happens every once in a while that somebody confuses “empowerment” with “veto right”. Such cases are particularly frequent among so-called internal governance bodies. Yes, this is empowerment in a sense… but it’s “wrong-way-round”. Real empowerment is the power to make things happen, not the power to stop.
- Second, the power to influence or convince actually means that the project manager can build a “bridge” between the project member’s personal goals and the project goals. Clear, aligned, specific goals within the company are a fairly obvious prerequisite to make that work.
- Third (or actually “2b”), incompatibilities of interests between different organizations that contribute to a project obviously break the “empowerment” of the project manager.
So what?
Upon closer inspection, the so-called line managers are often not more empowered: They can’t fire (at least not in Germany), and at least now in the financial crisis, they may have only very little financial freedom like over salaries etc. Don’t tell anybody, though 🙂
Eventually, what it all boils down to is, provocatively exaggerated:
There is no empowerment!
There is dis-empowerment.
There is an illusion of empowerment, and a good project manager knows how to sustain that.
The elephant – again
A kick-off meeting to a project.
Situation: People already know each other, views have already diverged significantly. Over the past month, outside communication was strong (so expectations are huge), but inwards communication was weak (so opinions are scattered).
Complication: How to turn this bunch of minds into a team with “punch”?
Solution: Enter the story of the elephant… Continue reading The elephant – again