Jurgen Appelo has posted about the #STOOS Network and its focus on management improvement. I followed a link to Steve Denning's materials. All good stuff at the principles level. What came to mind through these voices is the difference between a project focused organization and a process or production focused organization. It seems Denning speaks to the issues of found in process or production organizations, where the mission is to keep the system running.
I work exclusively in project focused organization. I've come to this position through a career of building products with other peoples money. Either government money, external customer money, or internal funding from the firm I work for.
When I read the materials from people like Steve Denning, I've started to understand that many of the things we take for granted in the project focused organization are missing from the process oriented organizations.
I have several experiences with Enterprise IT in process focused orgs, where no clear mission, defined set of needed capabilities, and tangible measures of "DONE" are present. I learned recently (in the past 5 years) that I don't fit well in environments where these are missing. I came to this through some painful experiences, where I learned that in the absence of mission and vision, definitive capabilities connected to those mission outcomes, hard high level requirements, a fixed schedule and budget, and technical complexity, people tend to focus on the interpersonal aspects of the project. The self actualization for their own needs and desires. The softer side of project management. All important stuff, but only secondary connected with the production of products.
The seminal example of the opposite of production can be found in manned space flight, weapons systems development, and my crucible experience - Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site (RFETS). RFETS was a wonderful marketing term for retiring a nuclear weapons plant.
The book shown above is the case study for that program. Here are some contents of the book that I now live by and may add value to those of you working in the process focused business domain where people focus on their self actualization and not on the outcomes of those efforts.
The book's principle is Heliotropic Abundance (HA). After reading the book (long after I worked there) I had an understanding of how my bosses performed inside the context of HA and how I learned how to manage projects.
HA is the counter to conventional management principles. The tables below describe the differences between these two approaches, along with quotes from the book by the participants that I use in my our approach to managing projects, programs, and portfolio.
- One key role of top management is to ensure that effective leadership is present throughout an organization.
- We can have a great plan, we can have the money to implement the plan, but if we don't have the human commitment and the will to execute the plan, it all falls apart.
- There are three (3) leadership roles needed for change to occur: (1) Idea champion, sponsor, and orchestrator (in Developing Management Skills, Chameron, 2005)
- Idea champions are often the most visible leaders. They are the ones who receive most of the credit for success.
- Sponsorship acquires resources, but are seldom recognized for their contributions.
- Orchestrators bring individual together for implementation of the vision or idea.
The successful leadership of extraordinary change require the pursuit of simultaneously conflicting strategies
- Effective articulation of a motivating and inspiring vision is always dependent on visual images and symbols.
- One of the most significant symbolic events was the announcement that a substantial portion of the profits ... would be shared with the work force.
- If you don't like problem solving you won't like working here.
- ... an attitude of try it, find a way, and learn from mistakes.
- Being told no opened a door so that we could do something else that woudl be successful.
- The idea of following through on commitments - at almost any cost - was driven by top management from the very outset of the project.
- Challenges and opportunities must be created that make the current culture appear inadequate and incapable.
- Proactively, not reactivity ... in sharing performance news build trust.
- Small wins and small problems should be surfaced quickly and early.
In the end having a clear and concise goal, derived from a mission and vision establishes the basis of success. We all knew what done looked like on a daily basis. Early in the project the Plan of the Month was used to develop our work efforts. Then the Plan of the Week and finally the Plan of the Day.
I've used the Plan of the Week many times, sometimes with success sometimes without. The idea of the PoW is to state upfront what will be accomplished at the end of the week by the team. These accomplishments MUST be in tangible units of measure meaningful to the team. Never I'm going to make 4 sales calls or I'm going to work on the marketing brochure for our new offering, or I'm going to work on getting the new baseline back to GREEN in the EV Engine. This is called Level of Effort, Train Watching and measuring it is a waste of time.
The outcomes at the end of the week must be tangible, move the project forward in its maturity, reduce risk, stay on budget and generally contribute to the increasing probability of success.
The goal paradigm at RFETS was...
If your work doesn't do that, you need to look somewhere else for employement
Thanks to my supervisors (CFO, VP Programs) for teaching me that in an environment of Heliotropic Abundance.
I hope the efforts of Jurgenm come to the same conclusion.
