Out with the Old/In with the New

So have you made your New Year Resolution? I heard a quote that 4 out of 5 people fail to achieve their resolutions. It sounds like we need a better plan to succeed.

For many years, fire has been used in ceremonies; from Buddhist monks or Native Americans burning prayers to the Burning Man ceremony; this has been a way to get rid of bad karma and move on. I've participated in a burning bowl ceremony, where people write down what they want to get rid of (bad habits etc) and put them in a bowl to burn. I like the idea of getting rid of something old in order to make room for something new. If we want to lose weight, we need to give up our bad eating habits.

This might be a symbolic first step, but we still need a plan if we want to succeed. This time of year I plan out my racing plans for the coming season; key races I plan on participating in, goals I want to achieve etc. Based on that, I plan out the type of training I need to be doing, down to a weekly level. As I get into the year, the plan may get modified, but I have a plan to follow, not just a vague resolution to exercise more. We need this for any of our resolutions; a plan to ensure we can achieve success. So set some goals for the year (resolutions) and plan out how you're going to reach them. What are you doing this week to help reach those goals?

More on Culture

As I mentioned in my last blog post, one of the presentations at last week's P2P was on the challenges of implementing Agile in the Egyptian culture. Since I'm working with a team in India, I wanted to take a look at how Indian culture aligns with Agile.

One area of consideration is that of the self-organizing team. Indian culture supports team work. However, there is also respect for hierarchy, so the team may not feel empowered to make decisions. The team may feel the need to defer to a senior person for decisions. I have found that I am being asked to make more decisions compared to a US based team.

Indian culture also tends to avoid open confrontation. I think some conflict can be good as the team is developing. On my US-based teams, it isn't unusual for one developer to provide constructive criticism to another's work. This type of feedback should be delivered with a softer tongue for my off-shore team.

Another area that I have noticed relates to communications. Indian culture puts more emphasis on written communications. I know my off-shore teams have often asked for more formal requirements documents than what I expect from a US based team. One adjustment I've had to make is to provide more documentation for my off-shore team to work from.

Indian businesspeople tend to be tough, smart negotiators. While this conflicts the idea of customer collaboration over contract negotiation, successful negotiation is built on trust. However, building this trust can take time. In my case, I had time to start working on building that trust before the project work started up.

So what does this really mean? First, my points are just generalizations. For anyone working with other cultures, this type of understanding is just the starting point. You shouldn't rely solely on generalizations for determining how to work with your team any more than you would use New Yorkers as a benchmark for working with Americans from other parts of the US. For any cross-culture work, take the time to know the people you are working with.

Projects to the Point 1st Impressions

Day 2 of Projects to the Point has wrapped up and so far it has been an interesting conference. One of the themes of the opening day was change. Emad Aziz from Brisk Consulting talked about how change is the only constant. As project managers, this is what we have to deal with. Related to that, Dr Mohamed Tewfik Elmasri talked about organizations that are transforming (such as through a merger/acquisition) and how a key part of the change management process is communications; "People can deal with bad news, people can't deal with uncertainty."

Another interesting presentation was by Ali Zewail and ElMohanned Ahmed. They discussed the challenges of implementing agile in an Egyptian company from a cultural perspective. They even compared the principles of the Agile Manifesto to the cultural attributes of Egyptians. It made me think about my team in India and how agile aligns or conflicts with some of their cultural characteristics.

Motivation

I was re-reading parts of Daniel Pink's Drive in preparation for one of the presentations I am giving next week at Projects to the Point in Cairo. My talk is on what makes a good leader for agile projects and his book fits in good with his thoughts on motivation.

In the book, Pink sites why the "carrot and stick" approach to motivation doesn't work. You can read the book for the details, but in summary, this approach tends to drive the wrong behavior, only works in the short term, and kills creativity.

So what do you do to motivate people? There are three things people need to be intrinsically motivated; autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is letting people decide how they accomplish their goals, or even what some of their goals are. Mastery is becoming an expert at what you do. Purpose is knowing that what you do has some higher purpose than just adding to the bottom line of a corporation.

One example that brings this home is the battle between Microsoft's Encarta and Wikipedia. Microsoft used money to motivate people to build their encyclopedia while Wikipedia was build by a bunch of volunteers. Encarta failed while Wikipedia is extremely successful. So if you have a team to motivate, money isn't the answer, nor is a autocratic leadership style. Providing them the tools they need to succeed, giving them the freedom to use those tools how they want, and providing a vision for what is needed are going to get you closer to your goal.

Organizational Multi-tasking

I had the opportunity to talk to Sanjeev Gupta, the CEO of Realization last week. His company is applying the principles of Critical Chain to help companies out.

We talked about multi-tasking; one of my favorite topics. I often think of multi-tasking at the personal level. If I have one of my developers working on 2 different tasks at once, they are less efficient at both and loss time to context switching. Sanjeev pointed out the organizations multi-task as well, something I don't think about as often, but in hindsight, have observed frequently.

This situation occurs when organizations are trying to run to many projects at once. Teams are getting pulled back and forth; again resulting in all the projects coming in later than they could if a more focused approach was taken. Sanjeev often recommends to clients that they cut back on the number of active projects going at one time. It made me think of Kanban, but at an organizational level; you pick the most important project and get it completely done before starting the next.

The other part of effective delivery from Sanjeev's perspective is ensuring everyone knows the priority of the work at a task level. This is the project manager's job to drive this message. So instead of having a complex project plan with resources assigned to multiple tasks (with no priority), you provide each resource a prioritized task list and have them focus on the highest priority first. Just like having a prioritized product backlog.

So does everyone on your team understand the priorities? Do you find them working on tasks that may not be so important? At an organizational level, does everyone understand the priority of the projects?

The Importance of Design

In A Whole New Mind, Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the World, Daniel Pink sites 6 key areas that will help us master right-brained thinking; Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. I plan on going into each of these, starting with design.

One example given in the book is when school children are asked if they are artist. In first grade, everyone says yes, only a few say yes in third grade, and none by sixth grade. As the education process evolves, we teach our children to focus on left-brain thinking and the creative side is pushed out.

However, the need for good design is growing. I'm a fan of Apple products. I watched yesterday as a colleague opened a new iPod Touch. Even the packaging was well designed. Apple knows that enough people are willing to pay extra for good design to make them successful.

So how does design play into a project manager's life. Do you prepare a lot of PowerPoint presentations? Have you read one of the books on good PowerPoint design such as Presentation Zen or slide:ology? A well designed presentation will go farther in communicating your point than a poorly designed set of slides will.

There are other areas where design can play into your role as a PM. If you're delivering any kind of product, you should be thinking about design. Even if someone else is responsible for that aspect, you should still know what good design is. Even the way you're team's workspace is designed can impact their productivity.

Moving to the Right

I'm currently reading Daniel Pink's latest book, A Whole New Mind, Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the World. The book is based on the premise that just like manufacturing jobs went overseas, so to are the more analytic tasks associated with our left-brain; things like computer programming or accounting. So in order to succeed in this coming age, we have to tap into our right brain; the creative, holistic, intuitive side.

Pink sites three reasons for this change; abundance, Asia, and Automation. Abundance can be seen be going to the local Target store; affordable designer products down every aisle, from clothes to kitchen utensils. In the US, there are more cars than registered drivers; no shortage there.

Asia of course refers to the cheaper labor available to perform those left-brain tasks overseas, whether it be India, China, or the Philippines. These countries are producing plenty of people that can perform these tasks, though it isn't limited to just Asia. Eastern Europe, South America and other countries with low labor rates/cost of living are jumping in. According to one survey, one out of four IT jobs will be offshored by the end of this year.

Automation is the final factor. Computers can do work that people performed not that long ago; from playing chess to doing your taxes, to even programming computers. Think about the act of creating a legal document. You no longer need a lawyer, you can tab into a web site for much cheaper today.

The answer for us is to evolve, learn to use our more creative side to help us succeed. So in a project context, it's no longer good enough to make sure the programmers are producing software that meets the requirements. We need to become engaged with our customers in order to create something more. Pink talks about high concept and high touch. High concept can involve detecting patterns or combining what may appear to be unrelated ideas in order to create a unique solution. High touch involves understanding the subtlety of human interaction.

In my next post, I'll explore some ways that Pink discusses to move in this new direction. For now, ask yourself these questions about your work; 1) can someone overseas do it? or 2) can it be done by a computer? If the answer to either is yes, you need to start thinking about your future.