Socialutions (free ebook)

"Companies must begin to apply Socialutions to their existing and future problems before the problems become social and public relations nightmares. For this reason we have just released a free eBook titled Socialutions: New Management Methods for the Social Era. This is a short ebook has nine chapters which cover the following topics:promotes this concept and is a movement for users to organize and set the agenda for the future of the web."

Bioteaming (free manifesto)

"A Conceptual Framework For The Successful Management Of Physically Distributed Collaborative Business Networks And Highly Mobile Virtual Teams."

Tribes (free audio book by Seth Godin)

"A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). It's our nature."

Peer-To-Peer

"P2P is a specific form of relational dynamic, is based on the assumed equipotency of its participants, organized through the free cooperation of equals in view of the performance of a common task, for the creation of a common good, with forms of decision-making and autonomy that are widely distributed throughout the network."

4 Big Ideas For Management

Hey Project Manager! Beware of Fool's Gold!

"Project managers often find themselves in situations where doing what's asked will lead to failure. The reminders in this post have been helpful to me in finding ways to move such projects in a different direction."

6 Lessons on Leadership from Captain Bligh

"We've all had to work with difficult bosses at times. Bligh is a nearly perfect example of what not to do on your projects."

How to Say Goodbye When a Workmate Leaves

"Many of us are having to say goodbye to colleagues. This post can help make our goodbyes a little more meaningful for the person leaving as well as for us."

Proud Postings: Making Project Management Better

"… our ability to gauge what is really important from a very narrow period of experience. In other words, spontaneous decisions are often as good as—or even better than—carefully planned and considered ones." (Wikipedia)

This "thin slice of reality" is a pattern of all things happening in your surroundings. You take the slice and compare it with patterns stored in your mind. When you find a matching pattern, you have made up your mind about a particular situation. This is an unconscious process.

I don't want to suggest that Project Managers should stop thinking. But I do think that if we want to train the mind of Project Managers and bring it more in line with Three Sphere Project Management, improving spontaneous decisions is a good target.

If you want to improve the accuracy of your thin-slicing abilities you need to

1. Increase the amount and quality of patterns in your mental database, and
2. Increase your ability to search and switch through this mental database.

In other words, 1) you need to know different views of the project world (e.g. metaphors) and 2) you need to have a flexible mind to search through your set of patterns.

Yes, dear loyal reader, two recurring themes on this site.

Oh, the point of this post?

In my previous entry I ended with the question: "How to hack the brain of a Project Manager?'

The short answer: train in different mental models and train mental flexibility.

The long answer: The Four Dharmas Of Project Management… (now this is what I call a cliffhanger to a next post :))

Thin-slicing Project Managers

ARE YOU ALL OUT OF YOUR MIND?

YOU ALL AGREE THAT "PEOPLE PROBLEMS" ARE OUR BIGGEST ISSUES AND THEN YOU START FUMBLING WITH THE ITEMS YOU FIND IN YOUR BIG SHINY PROJECT MANAGEMENT BOX.

ARE YOU NUTS?

I know that if you only have the left side of a brain, the only job you can perform is Project Management. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t even try to use the rest of your brain.

Left side: Logical, Sequential, Rational, Analytical, Objective, Looks at parts (source)

Makes you proud to have a hyper developed left part, not?

In an earlier post this year, Richard Bernheim reflected on the issues that a PM has to deal with:

"Ernst & Young and numerous others state that there are three categories of Project Management issues:

• People-related issues which on average represent 80%
• Process-related issues which on average represent 10%
• Technology-related issues which on average represent 10%"

Mix that with increasing complexity, uncertainty, mobility, flexibility and diversity of our projects and surroundings, and your left brain will come up short … BIG TIME!

80% of our issues are in an area where our left brain sucks!

We need to invoke all three parts of the brain: left side, right side and heart!

Right side: Random, Intuitive, Holistic, Synthesizing, Subjective, Looks at wholes
Heart: Passion, Emotion, Inspiration, Feeling

For this you are going to need major brain surgery!

Hack The Man. (or woman, although their internal wiring is better suited for 3 Sphere Project Management).

This is not about expanding the PM discipline, this is about enhancing PM people.

Seek to understand.

How to hack the brain of a Project Manager? It took me a while to figure it out, but the answer is coming soon.

Three Sphere Project Management: Using All 3 Parts of Your Brain

But there is no denying that they are pushing hard to move forward. I was amazed by the amount of "Training Centers" and official educational institutions aimed at high valued labor for our global market, like IT and health care research. It would be over the top to claim that there is an institution on every street corner… although I am not quite sure if it would be an overstatement.

A Call Center In A Rural Area

During this journey I read Thomas Friedman's most recent book "Hot, Flat and Crowded". In it, among thousand of other things, he describes a company operating in India, that changed the way I look at how what we do as Project Managers can contribute to global problems. Friedman describes a call center in India that handles telephone inquiries for US corporations. But instead of being located in one of the large cities like Mumbai or Madras, this company is located in rural villages.

The original inhabitants of the village who got an education in the city are now able to return to their village because there are good jobs. The employees are extremely loyal to the company, income of the villagers is going up and the level of eduction is rising. If you have nothing to eat, do you think you care about environmental issues? But having an income, education, a job you love, living in the town you love surrounded by your family you start caring about the future.

That is how you create a sustainable future!

Translate this to IT: we have the jobs (currently a little less than we used to), we have the technology to perform this partly location independent. Wouldn't it be awesome if we can make it work? And this isn't just about India.

It is about reducing urbanization and its heavy toll on the environment (no commute is no pollute).
It is about a more healthy (sustainable) distribution of wealth.
It is about improving education in general.
It is about The Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.

But this is also about getting rid of certain things. We cannot afford having unmotivated people, extensive corporate politics or bloated organization with an enormous amount of overhead. The hot, fat and crowded world has showed us that we are out of time. The current recession has showed us we are also out of money.

No time. No money.

Lets go to work.

"The mission of SoftwareProjects.org is to make global, virtual and multi cultural software projects work. By this we don't only mean delivering the proper end result within agreed constraints, but also by running the projects in such a way that they provide a genuine contribution towards a sustainable global society. SoftwareProjects.org will accomplish this by seeking to understand the underlying problems and opportunities and distribute the acquired knowledge."

A New Mission For SoftwareProjects.org

I have visited some amazing places in the provinces of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Goa. If you need an inspiring environment to clear your head, this is the place to go! I have enough notes in my Moleskin notebooks to last me another blogging year

Thanks for waiting! I promise you, you will be glad you did!

Guess Who Is Back?

Judging Project Managers In 10 Minutes

"If you have 10 minutes, how do you judge a project manager?" The best summary of the responses is given by this statement: "If they just use jargon from the PMBok, I put them on the lower end of the scale. If they talk about the importance of stakeholders and people in general I put them on the high end of the scale. The PMBok hardly covers stakeholders, so they must have been in the trenches."

Rome

Filter And Drainage - Trust Running Through The Team

"As anyone that has worked some time in projects will tell you, the purifying element in teams is trust. Trust will enable smooth operations among the group members, it creates flexibility and creativity. Not every free floating developer will be able to enter the pond. The project should have some kind of filter, some door-policy who may enter and who doesn't."

Bottoms Up: Leadership Style For A Better World

"A main force behind my thinking is the conviction that a management style from the bottom up, instead of top down is more effective. Main reason for this is that by being stimulating and facilitating people are better equipped to perform their tasks: higher motivation, less stressed and more able to absorb complexity. … I am convinced that if this style of management is in your brain, you have a more tolerating, productive and positive mind set, one that is based upon trust instead of fear. I am convinced that educating around the globe about this style (instead of the old top-down directive leadership style) will have an amazing impact on more than just how businesses are run. It is about a better human-human interaction."

Challenges For Trust On A Global Scale

But even when the (reputation) system is working properly, even when transparency makes sure people's behavior will be noted around the globe, this doesn't mean you can reap the benefits for your project or business. With a good reputation there is a lot to gain, but having a bad rep puts a lot at stake. So people will play things safe. They will create low-risk behavior, ultimately resulting in mediocrity…"

Project Shrink Rerun: Importance Of Trust

1) why is the most popular way of doing Project Management plan driven?
2) why did agile methods pop up during the mid-nineties and not earlier or later?

Red Square - Moscow

The answers resulted in two papers published last year at PMWorldToday and spurred the birth of "Project Shrink" (yeah, this blog).

You have to read them to see where this blog is coming from

How Male Machismo Shaped Project Management
Why Agile Popped Up on the Radar When it Did

Project Shrink Rerun: Why You Are Doing PM Like You Do?

The Big Pond: Global Village

"Until now we didn't touch on the current trends that are taking place. The world is shrinking. But what does that mean? The world is getting flat is a statement we hear a lot. It reflects the effect of globalization on economic needs."

Tiananmen Square - Bejing

Lessons From The Pond For The Project Workforce

"As projects start and end within organizations the demand for employees fluctuates. It seems that in certain times the workforce is just too small to handle all tasks, and in slow times many employees are doing nothing. With change and with projects come the tidal movement of need of labor force. Most projects will be done in times of change, when economic forces are up or down. Times of stability don't call for much projects."

Go To The Spike And Become Adaptive

"Say you are living on a small rural village in Jordan, somewhere in a dessert. You have internet access, a telephone, you speak English and have all the skills that are in high demand. You don't know anyone outside your village. You start calling people up using the phone book and start by the letter A-Z… every week you learn one person that is connected with something you want to do."

Project Shrink Rerun: Globalization

The animation is 3 minutes long and you can find it here on YouTube.

Other postings that get you started:

Deviant Behavior In Project Management
Do You Know Why Every Manager Wears A Suit?
Project Sociology - Part One (video)
Project Sociology - Part Two (video)
Change Perspective: Working In Bangalore

Starting A Discussion About Team Diversity