“Appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.”

                                       MACHIAVELLI

I found this quote from Machiavelli in something I was reading this morning.  I generally like to focus on positive management behaviors but this one hit too close to home.  Many years ago I worked for a man who I later found out used The Prince as his personal management bible. 

When I first met this gentleman I reacted the way everyone did when they met him.  I was captivated and delighted that I would be privileged to work for such a terrific individual.  He was brilliant, he was funny, he knew everyone in the company and he was a master glad-hander.  He also promised me that I could go out and do my job with the complete understanding that his job was to have me back and that he wouldn’t let me down. 

Two years later I had finally figured out that everything he said wasn’t even close to the truth. If you are tempted to laugh at my naiveté – let me ask you to hold those guffaws.  I am not, nor have I ever been politically unsophisticated.  I never trust easily and I can spot a liar a mile a way.  What I couldn’t spot was a sociopath.  And make no mistake what Machiavelli is advocating in his quote above is sociopathic behavior. 

I admit that I was warned.  A few people in the company came up to me and said “Watch your back – you really can’t trust him” .  Being prudent by nature I promptly began quietly asking the opinion of others who knew my sponsor.  When I got back nothing but praise I decided that the warnings were a result of unique circumstances and wouldn’t pertain to me.  Was I wrong. 

Over the next year and half little things happened that seemed strange (randomly finding that I’d been knifed in the back over small things) and then one day the mask slipped.  I was facilitating an offsite meeting and 20 people had flown in from all corners of the globe to work out some issues we had.  Essentially no one in the field was happy with the way corporate was doing things and this was the meeting were we hoped to work out a plan to resolve the issues.  I was running the meeting because in theory I was the one person who both sides (the field and corporate) trusted. 

As meetings sometimes do – this one quickly started to go downhill with the corporate senior VP basically telling everyone he didn’t give a d*** what they wanted – he was in charge and everyone could live with the service he chose to provide.  Just before the meeting reached the boiling point my sponsor stepped in and pulled rank on the corporate VP.  He told the field that he had heard and appreciated their difficulties and that he would personally work with the corporate VP to make sure that the changes that needed to happen happened.  The tension level dissipated and the buzz in the room immediately became how lucky everyone was that they worked with a man of the stature of my sponsor.  Except….

Five minutes later I was in the hall (away from the meeting) with my sponsor and the Corporate VP when my sponsor turned to the corporate VP and said “Do whatever you want.  I’ve got them calmed down and as soon as we get them on their airplanes and away from here it won’t matter what you do.”

I admit I was shocked.  He had just assured 20 people that he would make things right and five minutes later he had effectively sold them all down the river, while leaving them singing his praises.  I transferred from that project three weeks later and six months later was working in another division (as far away from my former sponsor as possible). 

What’s the moral of this story?  A lesson that it took me years to learn.  There are sociopaths working in organizations.  As PMs our job is to identify them early and avoid them as much as possible, even if it means that we have to deliberately chose to de-scope part of the project.  Even writing these words makes me crazy.  In my heart of hearts I still think I was doing the right thing and on the surface it worked exactly as planned (if you weren’t privy to the hallway conversation) but doing the right thing only lead to a pyric victory. 

Running projects and programs is some of the most difficult work I’ve ever done in my life and doing it perfectly requires almost prescient judgment and a deep understanding of the difference between what is right and what is correct.  The right things to do was have the meeting.  The correct thing to do was to avoid the confrontation especially since 8 months later the organization was dissolved and the corporate VP retired.

Sharing stories of lessons learned – especially the painful ones is risky for the teller of the tale, but I wish someone had been honest with me about this subject earlier in my career. Whether acknowledged or not there are people in corporations who behave exactly as Machiavelli suggested.  Your job as a PPM professional, if you chose to accept it, is to identify them and work around them with craft and guile equal to their own.  It won’t be easier and it won’t be comfortable but you can do it and still preserve your own integrity if you are smart.

Years ago, I used to schedule 2 days a month to work from home with the intention of actually thinking about what was going on around me and making sure that I understood the bigger picture (how my boss was looking at things, how things might be affecting my staff, what the ultimate outcome would be of all the work we were busy doing, etc). I also tried to read divergent material to make sure my world view didn’t get too insular. The truth is that while I scheduled 2 days a month I only actually took about 1 day every two months, but even that level of reflection proved valuable.

Things have changed for many of us since we went into an office every day. Working from home can make the work day expand to something approaching 24/7. It can also make it much harder to gain the altitude necessary to see the big picture. Twitter helps with the alternative perspectives if we are careful to follow the right mix of people. But we still need to take time to think.

I’d like to suggest that everyone designate at least one Friday a month to getting out of your normal work-a-day mentality and think about what you and your team members are actually accomplishing. What value are you really delivering for all your hard work? Who are you making happy? Then add a triple loop learning concept to your reflections. Based on the way you are working today what culture and ultimate outcomes are you building for tomorrow?

It might take a couple of months to get the hang of building the big picture but I have always found the process a valuable one when I’ve taken the time to do it. I often discover that there’s a risk lurking in the dark corner of possibility that if I get on it now I can keep it from ever happening. I have also realized that a class of work that we’ve done no longer needs as much time and energy as it did in the past and that we should refocus our priorities to something that is of much higher value now. I also found that taking this time made me a much better leader, if for no other reason than my team knew they could trust me to keep them safe from things they didn’t have time to see themselves because they were so busy doing the work we paid them to do.

I’d be interested to hear how what approach others use to accomplish the same thing. Also if you decide to spend a Fridays getting a big picture view I’d love to hear how that pays off for you as well.

This morning I woke up thinking about how important safety is as a concept in a project environment and the proverbial light-blub went on over my head.   In the Agile world, safety is an important element in team building.  Effectively if your team is spending too much time watching their collective backs or playing politics (or even ranting about politics) then they aren’t getting anything done.  As leaders it’s our job to make our teams feel safe to get their work done.  The only way to accomplish this that I know of  is to be willing to give up most of our own safety issues and that — the last time I checked–takes courage.

Obviously it’s not my intention to demand anyone take a risk they aren’t comfortable with but some jobs are more ‘risky” than others.  Back when I started my career we had the simple statement “if you don’t like the heat get out of the kitchen”.  We all knew what it meant and we all accepted that we were playing bet your career when we took on a difficult project.  Back then part of the basis on which I took a project was a calculation of the odds of succeeding.  I used to joke that 51% was a sure bet and I’ve even taken a program where management put the odds of success at 20% and still been successful.  Obviously the quality of the team and the support factors available to the project had to go up as the odds of success went down, but the truth was most things aren’t quite as difficult as people feared once there was true commit to achieving the goal.  There are exceptions of course.  Some projects I’ve been offered have been suicide missions–carelessly crafted and designed to fail for political purposes.  I will never forget a gentleman offering me a job leading an ERP implementation all the while chortling that they’d pick my bones for supper.  (Yes, it really did feel like a bad fairy tale – needless to say I ran as fast in the other direction as humanly possible)

Reflecting back on what I’ve seen in my own experience and my discussion with clients I think there’s a simple rule of thumb.  Anyone who needs to be completely safe can’t lead and shouldn’t be asked to.  Additionally high process, excessive rules and responsibility delegated upward under the guise of governance all contribute to environments were the possibility of leadership has been sacrificed on the altar of risk avoidance. 

Projects are risky, uncertain undertakings with no guarantees of success.  As leaders we need to be very clear about that to everyone involved and make the appropriate decisions about who we put in charge.  My suggestion is we shift our perspective and focus a away from things like certification and a whole lot more on things like leadership born through an innate sense of courage.  Bottom line:  I can train someone on how to create a Gantt chart or how to put together a scope document.  I can’t put steel in spine where it isn’t already.

“Progress doesn’t come from early risers — progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.”

If you didn’t grow up reading science fiction the quote might lose something in translation because Heinlein wasn’t advocating either sloth or hedonism.  He just felt that there was so much to do in life that anything that could be simplified should be.

Now on to my point; I’m not seeing the increase in creativity or innovation I would be expecting as part of our changing economy and I’m not sure why.  I’ve got a gut instinct that says we’ve cut too far and adopted too much of an attitude that if we have enough process than any trained monkey can do the work.  The problem is that trained monkeys don’t innovate.

Part of my concern comes from a recent personal trip I took.  Almost everyone I spoke with in my travels was angry, over worked and stressed almost to the point of breaking.  Stress kills creativity.  It also kills productivity over the long haul (though not unfortunately in the short run). 

So here’s what interests me.  How do we as managers and leaders identify when we’ve crossed the line?  I’m sure most of you reading this will be saying – “I’m on the receiving end of this – it’s the folks in the c- suite who make decisions” and my answer would be that we don’t help them make decisions if we can’t show them facts or if we don’t have facts at least a cogent model that makes a case that we have to do something different.

I really don’t have a definitive answer to this problem especially since I think the surface, easy answers you’ll hear advocated on television aren’t right (and here I’m including pundits on both side of the political equation).  I’d love to know what the rest of you are thinking and more specifically what you as a manager think YOU can do to help turn the corner on this issue.

If I were still managing I know I’d be doing everything I could to get the stress level down and I’d probably be doing that by talking to my people and seeing what work we could eliminate… And maybe, just maybe if we eliminated some work we’d find we made some progress…

Comments?  Agree?  Disagree?

In my world a request of information is always one of the first ways that any individual can begin to prove their leadership capabilities to an organization. If the boss says “Can you ask Gartner about X? Can we improve it, reduce it, change it, etc?” then what should come back is an answer that includes the requested information AND a well thought out recommendation as to what the organization should do to actually make good use of the offered advice (which by the way we are always happy to help you prepare if you are a client). In my experience the people who get ahead in organization have all these recommendations. Even if they weren’t accepted, there’s generally often unspoken credit for effort. The rule of thumb is usually that while the first time doesn’t have to work, the goal is to figure out why the proposal was rejected and how to use the next opportunity that presents itself to provide recommendation that are a little closer to the needs and desires of management until the stars align and the proposal is accepted with a “looks good, why don’t you run with it” response.

If you are a senior manager, then I suggest that you owe it to your staff to make sure they understand that they will ultimately be judged by their willingness to contribute solutions, not just effort to the organization. If you are having trouble getting this point across, because you let them upward delegate too much then get a copy of Managing Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey? by William Oncken and Kenneth H. Blanchard. It’s been out of print for years BUT it’s the single best guide I’ve ever found for solving this problem. If you aren’t yet a senior manager and you’ve passed up opportunities to prepare these recommendations then I suggest you also get a copy of the book. A little bit of initiative doing what’s important to management rather than just what’s important to you has never been known to hurt a career.

 Looking at Daniel’s pictures I was struck by how many things had changed.  Going to Japan just seemed like a big deal to me in 2006.  Today it’s just one more long airplane flight.  In 2006 I knew lots of people who had been to Japan but seeing their pictures would have been a process of going to their house, waiting for them to find them and then flipping through the hard copies.  Today tweetdeck offers me a personal slideshow, delivered to my family room 24 hours a day, and Daniel isn’t even back from Japan yet. As far as its come, technology isn’t completely ubiquitous yet.  We loaded Skype to Daniel’s computer the day before he left only to find out that there isn’t any Wi-Fi available in his dorm room.  Our assumption that it would be there is almost laughable but it reflects how we all see the world today.

So what does all this have to do with PPM?  Two things; the first is our potential project staff really is global and we need to begin understanding how to work effectively with a geographically dispersed team (especially those of us in the United States).  If this sounds like old news, I’m not sure it is.  We all went international years ago but I think we did it with our eyes closed.  We just treated everyone the same and tried to adjust for time differences )or at least that’s how I handled it).   Now I think we owe our team members a little more personal touch (which means a little more travel on somebody’s part no matter how grueling).  The second point is back to my refrain that PMs are luddities.  We need to not just embrace communication and social networking technology.  We need to lead because we’re the ones on the front line.

I know we’re all busy, but our professional lives are not completely defined and bounded by the PMBOK.  To be perceived as leaders in our organizations we should be looking for areas where we can establish leadership naturally and I think collaborative technologies and the fine art of managing in a global world is a golden opportunity that is being handed to us on a platter.

Thoughts?  Opposing opinions?

One of the things I like about writing this column is that it gives me the opportunity to poke at topics until I can come up with something concrete (which then generally turns into a Gartner research piece).  Obviously leadership is one of my hot buttons this year since I spend a lot of time talking to heads of PMOs about the leadership crisis they face. Their PMs at best approach the three elements of leadership in reverse order — and yes order makes a difference — and at worst fail on all three elements in their entirety. 

I’d been thinking that the problem was the PMs that they’d hired were simply unsuited to the work but what I now realize is that nobody has actually taught them how to lead and more importantly no one has given them “permission” to see themselves as leaders.  Some of us simply lead through inclination.  We see something that needs to be done, it takes more than a single person to do it, we go enlist other people and viola instant team and instant leadership.  The Darwinian method worked for me but I now realize that I spent my early career in an environment that naturally produced leaders (Silicon Valley in its heyday).  If a company culture isn’t designed to encourage this natural formation then we actually have to learn to grow them ourselves.

Now the light bulb has turned on over my head, I realize that I’ll have to figure out how we can begin to design a sustainable method for growing a crop of leaders. And YES it really is OUR responsibility since it turns out we have the most fertile fields.  Projects and programs are fantastic places to develop the skills and abilities we need in our future leaders.

By the way for those of you already in a PPM leadership position, I might suggest that I’m offering you a golden opportunity to improve your own cache.  One of the fastest ways to move up the ranks is to not only do your own job exceptionally well but to do something completely above and beyond your current job assignment.  Most people do that by picking something their boss is passionate about.  I have found that it works even better is you pick something the company as a whole values to work on.  For a whole lot of reasons I won’t go into here — you’ll ruffle less political feathers if you do it smartly.

Maybe there’s no room for that in companies any more, since we’ve created the cult of the celebrity CEO and the new aristocracy but it seems such a waste.  About 5 or 6 years ago I had the privilege of sharing a picnic bench with Ken Oshman, the original CEO and one of the founders of Rolm.  In reflecting on old times it was clear to me that Ken still had a vision of what the company should have been and where he would have headed the business if we hadn’t sold to IBM.   Ken had a Vision and he had no trouble sharing it.  I worked at Intel before that and it went without saying that Andy Grove had a vision.  I worked for Sun after I left Rolm and Scott McNealy was happy to share his vision for the company with me as we chatted in the hallway one morning.  The key of this story isn’t that I was in a position to rub elbows with these gentlemen – the key was that I could then carry these conversations back to my own team and make sure that the work we did supported where Ken or Andy or Scott wanted us to go.  I also don’t mean to imply that the transmission of vision needs to come directly from the CEO.  I’ve worked in companies where the CEO was so far away from me that he could have been on another planet, but I knew where we were heading because the EVP I worked for was the vision carrier.

Maybe I’ve been in unusual circumstances but I don’t think so.  A couple of months ago, someone reminded me of the story of President Johnson’s visit to the Kennedy space center.  It seems as he was touring the facility he stopped and talked with the custodian and asked him about what he did at the space center.  His answer was “Mr. President, I’m helping send a man to the moon.”  That to me is still the most classic example of a shared vision.

As PPM leaders we are natural vision carriers and vision is viral.  I think we should concentrate more on sharing it early and often to ensure it gets into our projects rather than on worrying about creating a Process for insuring compliance.