Really?

I had the honor of reviewing a transformation program and providing a health check.  The program is ambitious; technology intensive, process demanding, and can truly redefine the rules of the industry.  But there is a catch, the transformation program had progressed to a point where it had raised serious business issues, but the program and its sponsor did not have the authority to answer.

Sitting at this crossroads, the teams did what they could, keeping busy until there was a decision from the executive level.  The health check became necessary as the program sat stalled for more than six months and instead of creating pressure for decisions, it created calls to cancel the transformation.

It was clearly time for the executive team that sponsored the effort to step in and make some hard choices.  In the report recommending that action, among other recommendations, the Executive Team came back with the following reply:

“Why are you not telling us more about IT and where it has failed?  Why are you talking about where they are going wrong?  Why are you saying that we need clearer business direction, your just covering for IT and their failings.”

When I pointed out that there were several highly critical points in the report related to IT, which had little effect.  All the executive team heard was that there needed to be more business direction.  Their reply:

“If you say we haaave to be involved then please know that we are tired of having to make every decision.”

I was not surprised.

I was stunned.

Here was a major multi-multi million-dollar transformation program that had done the work, found the tough issues, gone as far as it could and now needed active executive sponsorship in the form of some hard decisions to go forward.

The executive team commented that their job was to be ‘above all of this’, to think strategically, and to be visionary rather than making operational level decisions.  The only problem was that the open issues were not just operational; they were strategic in the sense that the answers would determine the performance profile of the company in the future.

As I reflected on the meeting a few things became clear.

• The executive team assumed that saying it is should be so is the same as making it so. “We said yes, so we consider it done.”

• The executive team did not see making hard decisions as an expression of their leadership.  They wanted to remain ‘above it all’ and not create winners and losers on an issue.  They believed that you demonstrated leadership by guiding without getting their hands dirty.

• The executive team was ready to criticize the decisions or direction others had taken but they did not have the time, energy or political will to lead in creating that future.  “I can tell you what your did wrong, but its not my job to help you make it right.”

• The executive team did not welcome evidence to the contrary nor recommendations on how to move forward that required their active participation.  I will listen if you confirm my suspicion, your motives are suspicous if you do not say what I expect to hear.

These reflections give the impression of an incapable executive team.  But that is not the case, this team runs one of the most successful, global, industry leading companies in their market.

So what gives?

These executives were giving the level and type of sponsorship that had worked in the past.  Their responses, comments and attitude was appropriate for the type of relatively incremental, back office, administrative changes that have dominated the executive agenda for the past 10 years or so.

The level of sponsorship that worked when we talked about IT.

While the quality of that sponsorship was fine for then, it is totally in appropriate for the types of changes we are doing now.

The level of sponsorship required when technology becomes greater than IT.

Executive sponsorship needs a significant upgrade as the demands for transformation have outstripped current sponsorship models.  Enterprises are going through real and deep change, like this one, requires direct executive action, decisions and direction.  Not delegation.

If figuring out how your business needs to operate to create value is not part of the executive team’s job, then I do not know what is.

What are the changes, if any, you are seeing in the type, nature or level of executive sponsorship?  Not just for technology, but for any transformation.

So far so good, people going up to the wall to see where they need to be, I am sure you have seen it a hundred times.  But then the word came down, the company CEO was going to be visiting the meeting.  Suddenly the information that was helpful was taken down.  ‘It was too messy for the CEO to see,’ argued one of the suddenly present members of the corporate staff.   They will see the mess and assume that that what you are doing is a mess.

So, about 30 minutes before the CEO was expected to arrive, corporate staff swooped in, cleaned up and encouraged people to look busy.  Funny thing was that they were already busy, very busy in fact and the paper, while a little messy was helping them be productive.

People talk about senior executives being distant and disconnected from the front line people, their challenges and their reality.  The idea that corporate needs to come and clean up for the front line associates is not only offensive but also detrimental to the business.

Hiding information from the CEO is never a good idea.  It gives the CEO incomplete information that quickly forms into assumptions and expectations that neither sustainable nor supportable.

We all work hard.  We are all inventive in improving the way we work.  Some of those inventions, while not pretty, work really well.  Some of those inventions are indicative of real operational problems.

Hiding reality from the CEO distorts their view to your and everyone’s determent. It is a sign of weak management. To find others see links below or use the keyword ‘signs of weak management’ on this blog.

Besides how will things ever improve unless we are all honest about the way things are?

Selected links to other signs of weak management

Blame storming – one of the signs of weak management

Strategic constipation – one of the signs of weak management

The Little Red Hen – one of the signs of weak management

Working your way stupid – one of the signs of weak management

Sophie’s Choice metrics – one of the signs of weak management

Just about every, conversation I have about project management centers on what is wrong with the project managers, their tools, their processes, their skills, the number of managers, etc.

There is never a conversation about the degree to which IT and organizational leadership supports project managers.  That is wrong.  As long as we think of poor project management performance as a function of tools, training or talent we will get what we deserve – poor project management.

It is no wonder that there are not enough ‘good’ project managers, particularly considering the way organizations treat them.  You see while its true that good project managers are successful, in many cases they are successful despite the organization rather than because of it.

Project managers often are left out alone on an island.   They find themselves with little intelligent oversight, active executive support, help or the opportunity to exercise judgment.   They have to play the cards they are dealt and if they have the wrong cards success rests on personality, bravado and the occasional bluff.

If you have ever been a project manager you know what I mean, particular when things start to hit the fan. You are suddenly alone.  It is up to you to figure out what happened, make the changes necessary and convince others to follow you.   No amount of project management tools, critical path analysis, spreadsheets or other tools will help you.  Likewise complying with the PMBOK offers no guarantee of success.

No wonder then, that when projects fail, we place part of blame on the project manager, their tools, their skills or abilities, etc.

As long as we talk about the personal or positional or tool failures of project management we will never make true progress.  We will never get the type of project managers we need and project managers get the support they deserve.

Project managers should not be deserted on a project island.   Their job is too important.  The resources they manage are too dear.  While the most professional managers never intentionally put themselves on an island, projects wind up there.

What do you think?  Share your thoughts as to how to avoid marooning project managers.

Here are 10 questions to help determine the degree of TAD in your organization:

• If you like technology so much that you don’t just have a copy of everything, but at least two of everything, then you may have TAD.
• If you are getting constantly invited out to vendor dinners, sporting events, and other appreciation events, then you may just have TAD.
• If your business leadership has to have the latest thing, if you have rushed into smartphone, tablet and mobility solutions and often have buyer’s remorse as soon as you complete a major project, then chances are you may have TAD.
• If those same business leaders have ‘buyer’s remorse’ as soon as you complete a major project, then there is a chance you have TAD.
• If business leaders forget about past failures, challenges, under delivery and poor business results, then you might have TAD.
• If your business leaders or IT sees that a new technology will avoid the past and fix your issues, then you probably have TAD.
• If a vendor cannot tell you how their solution simplifies your technical infrastructure, removing cost, resource requirements and improving quality of service, then you probably have TAD.
• If you do not have an inventory or your technologies and their connection to business processes and operations, then you are giving yourself TAD.
• When presented with a new business issue, if you always look for new technology rather than seeing where you may have solved the problem before, then you are actively promoting TAD.
• If your business cases do not consider time to market, implementation/operational risk, or operational cost, then you are encouraging TAD.

Avoiding technology deficit disorder is challenging.  The Tech market exists to create TAD, as there is always a new new thing, a better thing, and a thing that your competition is using better than you are.  If vendors were not creating TAD, then there would be no Gartner Hype Cycle, Commodity Clock, or other market frameworks.

The consumerization of IT further creates TAD, as individuals are consumers of technologies on the personal as well as professional levels.

Recognizing that you may have TAD is the first step; the next step is to put in place actions that manage attention rather than implementing draconian management controls or policies.  How you manage technology attention is the subject of a subsequent post.

So is TAD real, do you know of organizations that have it?  What are the symptoms?

Please be reminded that this post uses the description of an organization having an ‘attention deficit disorder’ as a means to highlight a management challenge.  It means no offense to people who have ADD or ADHD which are serious biological disorders.

Two words that have lost some of their meaning are migration and transition.

Earlier in my career I had the pleasure of working for a really smart, really picky and somewhat prickly executive who was very exact with his language. He pointed out that ‘systems do not migrate, ducks migrate, caribou migrate, not systems.” When I asked why he was so instant that migration be banned from IT discussions, his answer was simple:

Migration means you go somewhere and then you come back.

He pointed out that in IT there is no going back only going forward.

Transition is the word that most accurately reflects what is going on. When you transit you move from one place to another without a promise of return.

I know that it sounds a little pedantic, but IT changes are transitions not migrations.

Implementing a transition requires IT to do some things differently, things that they are not really doing now.

In a transition you:

Transition the operation/organization rather than deploy an application. This means that you look at deployment from the perspective of the deployment unit rather than from the projects perspective.

Transition changes the way you manage, measure and guide the organization. If these things do not change then you are going to get the same old result, but after a significant investment and often higher operating cost structure.

Transition requires removing old assets, processes, policies, practices etc. You burn your bridges when making a transition as there is no going back because there should not be a way back because that is only a way back into the problems that led to the transition in the first place.

Transition creates the opportunity to start fresh and move forward to get the benefits rather than revisiting the past. This is a major flaw in many organizations that would rather relive the past today than move forward toward tomorrow. That is possible in a migration as change is viewed as circular rather than directional. In a transition, the past is the past and all the value is in the future.

The Talking Heads had a great way of thinking about this in their song “Give Me Back My Name”

“There’s a word for it And words don’t mean a thing

There’s name for it And names make all the difference in the world”

Migration is a word.

Transition needs to be a name for the type of change we need to deliver.

A surprising amount of technology branding and marketing is fundamentally driven by fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD).  “No one ever was fired by buying XYZ”  “You will not be able to complete if you do not have what everyone else has”  “You cannot do that because its either too risky, costs too much, or will take too much time.”  Words that hold us back, rather than help us move forward.

Now there is nothing wrong with leaders making a frank and fact based assessment of their capability and capacity before starting a major initiative. Know where you are essential in figuring out how you are going to get to your destination.  However, when that need for making an honest assessment is replaced with an all out campaign of fear

Driving the technology market and industry via FUD is detrimental to the industry and individual CIO’s and their IT organizations.

FUD exists because we allow it to exist.

Whenever a vendor or pundit raises the issue of risk, security, or being left behind unless you act now –

Stop the conversation,

Ask them for facts,

Ask them for proven approaches and practices for addressing the issue,

Ask then about the experience of others, etc.

If they cannot answer you clearly, suggest that this meeting is over, because the value portion certainly is.

Your CEO would, why not you?

If they answer with generic considerations, their personal opinion, or the old response “It depends.” Then ask a follow-up question that is specific to your situation.  Even if its expressed as a hypothetical, the response will tell you if someone is spreading FUD or providing helpful information.

Sure you will become known as a ‘tough’ leader and someone who does not suffer fools.  But who has time to listen to fools with everything else you have to do. But you will do something even more important to your personal and your organization’s success.  You will be:

• Replacing FEAR with FACT, that is required to make sound business and technical decisions,
• Replacing UNCERTAINTY with UNITY of purpose involved in achieving real change
• Replacing DOUBT with DECISIONS, in order to take action in the face of challenge and the need to change.

I know that I am setting a high bar, but no one really benefits from FUD.

We have too many important decisions to make and important actions to take to allow FUD into the equation.

It seems that the more you achieve, the more resistance you pick up for future achievement.  That is the achievement paradox — the more you do, the less other want you to do.

• The Australian’s call this the ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’ where the tallest poppy in the field is assumed to be the first one to be cut. The moral of the story is achieving more, standing out leads to being singled out and cut down.

• Bill Cosby calls this the “Good student penalty” as he pointed out that he learned as a child that when he did well in school people gave him more work and expected him to do better with that addition work.  As he points out, what incentive is that?

• Mary Ann Maxwell, a colleague, calls this the good management penalty as effective managers get more work and harder problems.

The achievement paradox is deeply embedded in organization design and human resource practices and policies.  Predefined jobs, prescriptive responsibilities, crude measures of accountability and subjective performance measurements and rewards all fuel the achievement paradox.

What is so bad about making sure people know what their jobs are and measuring their performance against those jobs?  Nothing on the surface as clarity of role and responsibility is essential to coordinating multiple people working in complex and critical processes.

Nothing

So long as structure does not prohibit or inhibit achievement

Individual achievement is an essential part of organization or team achievement.  While there is no “I” in team there is always a “U” in success.  Too often corporate and organization structures, critics, competing interests see to feel better about themselves by tearing down what others and other groups have achieved.

Shortsighted business pundits call this competition, or creative tension. It creates unnecessary cost, conflict and friction.

Organizations who have a history of high performance, a history of achievement work different than others.  They are just different places to be in.

Overcoming the paradox of achievement, letting all poppy’s grow tall and people not be penalized for doing better requires a number of changes in the way we think about work and manage that work.  Here are a few thoughts.

You need to define real achievement — where results make the pie bigger rather than just change the size of my piece relative to yours.  Achievement is not a zero-sum game.  If your winning requires others losing, that is exploitation not achievement.

Loosen up job descriptions to encourage people to work together rather than work to rule. Narrowly defined jobs — often described in three words like SAP Design Analyst — give people ample opportunities to exclude people and their ideas.  A leading European company raised its level of achievement by replacing 38 different job descriptions with 8 broader roles.  The broader descriptions enabled people to see each other as peers — we are all analysts, or all designers, etc.  which reduced the formalities required to bring people together to solve complex issues.

Migrate from individual to team/project responsibilities as there are only so many hours in the day and only so much one person can do.  Narrow responsibilities lead to narrow results and require greater coordination and ‘management’ to knit together.  However, a team has more capacity, knowledge, experience and raw power than each person.  Giving the project responsibilities creates a common purpose for the team that allows achievement to happen.

Be able to recognize the current situation for what it is, rather than what we would like it to be or the history of how we got here.  Achievers look at the world and take it for what is and then ask – where do we go from here?

Achieving leaders do not punish people at the start of the problem solving process; rather they know that those who created the problem are those most familiar with the situation.  Coaching, correction and support come as part of the plan to move forward not as remedial steps before we start.

Reward for actual rather than perceived performance.  Subjective criteria is important in identifying performance that falls outside of the norm, provided it does not punish people who do more than is required of them.  Leaders recognize that achievers will tend to upset people, be perceived as rocking the boat, and attract negative feelings from those who feel the achiever is making others look bad.

Too often, people who achieve, teams that achieve are criticized for their results.  This is a sign of weak management and weak culture.  Achievers attract criticism for the simple reason that they have done something that can be criticized.  Others who are in meetings, discussing, socializing, coordinating have not.

There are always reasons not to do something.

A leader, an achiever and achieving team or organization moves forward, makes something happen, and then follows that up with creating more value.

So last week was a big week, there were achievements around the world and now its time to ask, where do we go from here?

One thing we can do is look at our organizations and sees are we creating an environment for achievement or are we fostering a culture of criticism and grudging acceptance.  I have worked in both kinds of organizations and I can tell you, its a lot more fun for everyone when people are getting things done.

Break the achievement paradox and see what you and your people can do.

Strategic inflammation is one of the signs of weak management.  Along with things like blame storming, false precision in measurement, among others strategic inflammation eats away at your organization’s ability to formulation and execute its strategy.

Here are a few different sources for inflammation with their own symptoms.

• Inflammation through repetition the same old ideas and actions packaged in a new powerpoint deck do not make a strategy.  While continuing a successful strategy into the future for a year or two may be a sign of strength it is also a source of cynicism across the organization.  At best people fall into the ‘habit’ of doing the same old stuff.  Or it says to the organization that the leadership can think of nothing better to do.  At worse it can be an indicator of your industry becoming stable and stagnant.  Three years with the same strategy is not a charm.

• Budgetary inflammation which occurs when organizational strategies diminish from statements about as Dave Aron says ‘how we win” to banal reports about how we spend our money.   This leads to another sign of weak management such as +/-  5-10% annual planning.   When strategy becomes budgeting it creates inflammation as people compete for dollars rather than great ideas.

• Aspirational inflammation — setting goals without providing poles creates inflammation by placing new demands without giving people the tools or time to achieve these goals.  Its like setting the bar for a pole vaulter and then taking away their pole.  This is a surpassing frequent occurrence that is actually purported to be a leadership best practice such as Management By Objectives, Setting Stretch Goals, etc.  Strategic goals without the means to achieve them is not leadership its organizational bullying that drives people to under commit and under delver.

• Rational inflammation is not something that only Mr. Spock gets.  This form happens with strategy setting loses touch with reality.  A strategy that defines ‘where the rubber hits the sky’   It is one thing when setting strategy not to be bound by the past, it is another thing to not be bound by common sense or even a sense of reality.  I have observed that the organization rally’s against this type of inflammation, containing it as much as possible within the executive suite and corporate development where it can survive in an environment of magical thinking.

Executives and leaders creating the inflammation probably do not realize it or often see inflammation as a sign that they have a breakthrough strategy — breakout in terms of creating a rash is more likely.  Each of these forms of inflammation represent either overemphasizing one aspect of strategy or general ignorance of what makes a good strategy.  In either case, the effect is the same, growing cynicism, limited support and therefore limited results.

I am sure that there are other types of strategic inflammation and it would be great to build up a list — particularly at this time of year as we all will embark on new strategies, well maybe not all of use.

If you propose a source of inflammation it would be great to know what the remedy is — the Preparation S so to speak.  I will provide some thoughts on the treatment for tees inflammations in a follow-up post.

Thanks and welcome to the new year.

Sure, I might have been interested in what you were going to say – after all, I am here  – but now you just turned me off.

Why?

Well people come to a meeting or a presentation to learn more about the subject they care about the subject. They care more about that subject than about the speaker.  This is fine because the value is in the information they hear; the rest is either entertainment or packaging.

The words ‘what I want to talk about’ place the emphasis on the ‘I’ and are often the entre into the speaker going off topic.  Politicians use it all the time to redirect the conversation or debate.  These words are the speakers equivalent to a stiff arm in football.

I raise this point as we are entering an intense period of communications as the year ends and a new one begins. The end of the fourth quarter and the start of the first are heavy with communication as we set the past in context and plan for the future.

Audiences need to be aware of these words, recognize the stiff arm and step forward and assert themselves to have the speaker address the topic rather than tell you what they think.  Sure there is value in experience, but experience is by definition occurred in the past and is worth less unless it is put in the context of the subject of the meeting.

Speakers need to recognize what they are truly saying to the audience when they use these words.  Hopefully, a little alarm bell will go off in their heads when the words slip out of their lips, as they will recognize what they just told the audience.  It is easy to get back on track and the audience will appreciate it – after all that is what they came for the information.

“What I want to talk about” is one of those little things that people say without thinking what it really says to the audience and says about the speaker.

This observation came up when we were discussing the nature of executive briefings and presentations.  To often the presenter believes that more is better.  They create an expansive presentation that frankly in the belief that they need to show how smart they are rather than recognizing the value of the information to the intended audience.

PowerPoint proliferation, particularly unnecessary proliferation, tells your audience all the wrong things about you, your team, your leadership etc.  Here are a few observations about how audiences perceive a presentation with a large number of slides.

• The longer the deck the more complex the audience sees your subject and complexity is rarely good. After all if you cannot describe the topic, the issues and decisions in a few minutes, then what ever it is must be very complex and complexity breeds risk, a lack of agility and an area of weakness rather than strength.

• The longer the deck the more you subject must cost as the audience sees in your subject as all of this detail must be expensive because you felt it necessary to take me through all of this and each piece caries a cost or requires a resource to operate.

• The longer the deck the less confidence the audience may have in you as a leader.  Comprehensiveness is an indication of a limited comprehension as it becomes apparent that you cannot differentiate the most important aspects of the subject — the parts that matter — from everything else.

• The longer the deck the more you tell the audience that you do not want to engage them in a discussion.  When you need to ‘get through your slides’ the focus changes from is on presenting the entirety of your slides which signals that you matter more than your audience presents.   A dangerous thing when you are looking to enlist their support.

• The longer the deck the less opportunity you have to demonstrate your leadership, experience, capability, intelligence etc.  You simply do not allow the audience the time or indicate that you are open to a discussions that demonstrate how good you really are.   The audience cannot see you as a leader when you are a presenter.

Here are a few thoughts on the key topics you need to address in presentations as a way to keep it brief. In each situation, a bullet constitutes a slide that provides a clear answer to the question and room for you to discuss the answer in depth as required by the audience rather than as presumed by you.  I am sure that there are other ‘templates’ for presentations, but I thought I would choose three common ones

Briefing a new leader on your group and function should involve no more than 5 – 10 slides that answer the following questions:

• Who are we? What are our resources?  Our responsibilities? Our role?
• How do we contribute value to the enterprise and IT?
• What are our measures of success?
• What we are working on now?
• Where the teams skills, abilities and resources best applied in the enterprise?
• What we need from you to deliver on our potential?

Briefing the board or executive team on a request for project funding requires brevity and being succinct, as you want to activate their expert judgment in support of the project rather than beating them into submission via bullet points.

• What is the decision you are presenting?
• What is the business reason for the decision?
• What are the options and why did you choose a particular course of action?
• How do you know that you have the capability to deliver on the commitment?
• What are the measures you will use to demonstrate progress and success?
• What you need from the board and the enterprise to be successful?

Presenting your groups status, either to your boss or to the team should concentrate on how you are all moving forward and the issues/challenges that impede progress.

• Where is the group relative to its plans and commitments?
• What are the issues and decisions that are outside the group’s control?
• What resources (peep, budget, authority, decisions, etc do you need to resolve your issues?
• What are the decisions and actions you have taken that will bind others?

These three question sets illustrate some of the common communication types.   Answering these questions and only these questions in your decks should help to keep them clear and focused.  Other issues well think of that as an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge and command of your job.

So, the next time you are creating a presentation. Think about the size of your deck.