A day with His Holiness the Dalai Lama

I had the privilege of spending the day getting to hear His Holiness The Dalai Lama speak. He was at the University of Arkansas today as part of a set of visits around the US.

The morning session was a panel discussion on non-violence with Sister Helen Prejean and Vincent Harding. One moment that stuck with me was when Sister Prejean brought up the fact that as people watch more television, they develop more fear. His Holiness expanded on the thought by saying there are two types of fear. One fear is real, such as when a mad dog is charging you. In his humorous style, the Dalai Lama said meditating about compassion won't help you here; the dog will still bite you. The other kind of fear comes from within but it isn't based on fact.

If a problem has a solution, there is no need to be overwhelmed and if there's no solution there's no point to be overwhelmed - The Dalai Lama

The other speakers had some amazing stories as well. Sister Prejean told about the first time she met with the parents of the victim of a murder after the murderer had been executed on death row. While there is a lot of pressure for the family of victims to help support the death penalty, they don't necessarily feel this way.

Vincent Harding had a story about when a church in Alabama was bombed in 1963, killing four girls and injuring many others. He remembers people close to the event who's first reaction was to get even, people that stood for non-violence. However, they turned this feeling around and what eventually came out was the march from Selma to Montgomery.

My favorite sound bite was when the Dalai Lama said "your enemy is your best teacher." He went on to explain that we won't learn how to practice compassions from our friends. We will only truly learn how to practice compassion and forgiveness by engaging our enemies.

The afternoon session started with the University conferring an honorary degree on the Dalai Lama and a short lecture by him. This was followed by a question and answer session, with topics from the recent events in Egypt, censorship, and even the first time the Dalai Lama drove a car (it didn't end well). The real message throughout both sessions was a call to action. In order to stop violence, we can't go meditate about it. We have to go out and do something.

Snakes in the Garden

There's an Arab expression "When you allow a snake to live in your garden, it will eventually come into your house." I heard it used this week in reference to Osama Bin Laden, but that's not what this blog post is about.

When I was first learning about Scrum, one of the thoughts that kept surfacing is that Scrum won't fix all your problems, but it will make them more visible, kind of like making that snake visible. The next step then would be to fix the problems (get rid of the snake). While Scrum does talk about inspect and adapt, it's really focused on the team level. Sometimes the problems you may face are bigger then that, and Scrum doesn't provide the solution to fix them.

This is where Lean can help out. A key principle of Lean is looking at the entire value stream, not just your development lifecycle. I had a conversation lately about organizations that have separate QA teams that do the testing after development. In a non-Lean organization I was working at, there was a handoff to QA after development, which resulted in a number of problems that caused delays. If we took a Lean approach, we would have worked with QA to optimize the entire process. So we failed to get the snake out of our garden.

What snakes are in your garden?

Personal Kanban - Week 1

So I'm in my first week of using a personal kanban board. So far I think it's a success.

I set it up last Friday afternoon. It was a good way to wrap up the week and make sure I wasn't forgetting any tasks that had to get done before I called it a day. It also worked well when I walked in my office on Monday morning - a quick, visual reminder of what I have going on.

Here's how I set things up;

• I have two swim lanes, one for work, the other for home/other projects (such as volunteer work). Within each, I set a limit of 2 items for work in progress. We'll see how well that works in a couple weeks when I'm running 2 different projects.
• I use small stickies for tasks that are small, around a couple hours or less. I have big notes for more involved work. On these, I jotted down important details. For example, the task to prepare for my presentation at PMI has key dates I have to meet.
• I'm going to keep things in "done" throughout the week and use this to help me do my timesheet at the end of the week.
• I am still keeping a "To-Do" list of short, quick things I have to do. I haven't made up my mind on the best way to handle these items.

I haven't figured out what I'm going to do when I'm traveling. I think I'm going to use a notebook to capture what I have to do when traveling and write things down that have to go on the board when I get home. Stay tuned for updates.

Pirates and Leadership

There was an interesting article in Harvard Business Review last fall about star and guardian tasks. Star tasks are those that are more strategic while guardian tasks are more operational. The article discussed how effective pirate ships were at dividing these tasks, since one person is typically not good at performing both kinds of tasks.

The world of project management is the same. The star tasks would be having a vision for the product or seeing the big picture. These are tasks often associated with the product owner or sponsor. The guardian tasks would include planning out the work, getting the right resources, or managing the budget; obviously more in line with the project manager.

So just like the pirate ship, with a captain to handle the star tasks and a quartermaster to handle the guardian tasks; you should keep these to roles separate on your project. And as the project manager, if you have a team member out of line, you can make them walk the plank.

Divisive Speech

Part of Buddhist practice includes avoiding the 10 non-virtuous actions. One of these actions is divisive speech. I think this project managers should pay attention to this one.

Divisive speech can be thought of as any words that can bring disharmony or create animosity. Politicians do this a lot; trying to create a division between themselves and their opponents while making their opponents look bad.

This type of speech can happen on a project team as well. While I feel conflict can be good, if the conflict includes divisive speech, it can hurt the team. For example, discussing the merits of .NET or Java can be a healthy discussion, but when it turns to insults, there's no benefit.

A successful project relies on a effective project team. This takes time to develop. It's the project manager's job to see that this happens. It can be as simple as having some ground rules established at the start of the project that guides the right behavior. Once the team gets rolling, these rules won't be necessary but during the forming/storming stages, they can help the team move in the right direction. What ground rules do you put in place at the start of a project to ensure your team's success?

Problem Solving and Climbing

This past weekend I did some rock climbing at Horseshoe Canyon Ranch in Jasper Arkansas. This was the first time I've ever done any climbing outdoors, after doing gym climbing for the past few months.

Outdoor climbing was a lot different from climbing in the gym. In the gym there are a set of holds that you follow as you climb up, all marked with colored tape so you know where to go next. Outdoors, you have to figure out where to grab and step. It becomes a problem solving activity as much as a test of physical capability to get to the top.

I thought about how this resembles the difference between taking a training class and working in the real world. A training class is like the gym, you are guided along. In the real world, you have to take what you learned in training and use that to solve problems you didn't face in the gym, or class.

As this was my first time outdoors, I have a lot to learn about climbing, just like a new project manager. It will only be through experience that I learn how to climb better. The other thing I had was a group of more experienced people to help show me the way, just like a new project manager should have a coach or mentor to help show them the way. No one can climb that cliff for me, but they can help me see the path.

Multi-tasking and Creativity

I've written before about multi-tasking (here, here, and here). In general, I think multi-tasking doesn't work and should be avoided. But does it hamper creativity?

In a study done by Teresa Amabile and others (see footnote), they found that having a fragmented day (ie, multi-tasking) didn't help bring out more ideas. Focusing on a single topic and collaborating with a single individual increased creativity.

I think about my typical day on site with a client. I have multiple meetings on different topics and don't seem to get a lot deep thinking work done. On Fridays, when I work from home and have more control over my day (and less meetings), I can carve out a large chunk of time to focus on a single topic and that's when I come up with some good solutions.

I've heard of organizations that are going to no email Fridays. I think the benefits will be the same. Without the distraction of email, they can focus on a single problem and let the creativity flow.

So pick a problem you've been trying to solve, block your calendar for half the day Friday, turn off the email, and get creative.

Teresa M. Amabile et al., “Time pressure and creativity in organizations: A longitudinal field study,” Harvard Business School working paper, Number 02-073, 2002