Commitment-phobic organizations

The contrast between consensus and commitment has fascinated me ever since I first heard that distinction made.  During my conversation on strategic commitment,  Josh Leibner and Gershon Mader laid out some of the challenges of relying on consensus:

• There will always be “the unforeseen” when executing strategy.   Those who only give consent feel free to remain spectators.  The committed become partners in fixing, adapting, etc. to the unforeseen.
• Consensus devolves into choosing the “least-offensive” solution.  I forget whether this came from Josh or Gershon, but struck me as an excellent turn of phrase.
• Commitment means that you give up the right to second guess.  More importantly, the truly committed don’t want to second guess.

This last point gets to some of the symptoms of a less-than-committed organization.  None are surprising, but they make a a nice checklist:

• Existing dysfunctions resume immediately after meetings/workshops/agreements to proceed in a different direction.
• No change in communication styles or channels… collaboration patterns and alliances persist.
• Excuses about the lack of change abound.  Hallway meetings and sidebars arethe only places where the true causes are aired (rather than public forums).
• Silence may equal consent, but it doesn’t equal commitment. 

PM Quote of the Day — Harold J. Smith

More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying them.

Power of Strategic Commitment — Interview Intro

I’m catching up on some great material — at least great IMHO — that has been locked away in my notebook. Last month, I got a chance to talk strategy with Josh Leibner and Gershon Mader, founding partners of Quantum Performance, Inc.   They have worked with Fortune 500 companies around the world including: Capital One, Cisco, The United Way, AT&T, Campbell Soup, and others. 

What prompted our discussion was the recent release of their book (with co-author Alan Weiss), The Power of Strategic Commitment: Achieving Extraordinary Results Through TOTAL Alignment and Engagement.  We had an excellent chat that centered on four topics:

1. What are the symptoms of a commitment-phobic initiative or organization?
2. How can one maintain motivation and ownership across diverse groups of stakeholders?
3. What should new managers focus on to be “strategic”?
4. Why hasn’t HR been able to play a more constructive role in strategy?

PM Quote of the Day — St. Thomas Aquinas

Beware of the person of one book.

“Live” prototying/proof of concepts

It has been a busy few weeks here at MJN as we get the transition to stand-alone rolling. Like many large programs, our main transformation initiative — Sunrise (nice name, eh?) — sometimes acts as if it were the first program of any importance ever executed. Its size and stature also obscure other major initiatives.

We have been, however, executing global HR and LIMS (laboratory information mgmt system) implementations all along. One of the ways we keep these programs spotlighted is to communicate lessons learned from these global projects. One of our Global LIMS leaders — Brent Endsley — yesterday went through lessons learned from a pilot he lead in our Nijmegen plant.

Brent highlighted a concept — the “live” pilot — that I hadn’t seen before. We used the new Global LIMS prototype with [relatively] real data in parallel with real production systems and work — in essence the team brought a conference room pilot to the plant floor. While I’ve seen parallel work in testing and controlled go-lives, synching live and prototype systems struck me as particularly clever and effective.

PM Quote of the Day — Carol Burnett

You have to go through the falling down in order to learn to walk. It helps to know that you can survive it. That’s an education in itself.

PM Quote of the Day — Joseph F. Newton

A duty dodged is like a debt unpaid; it is only deferred, and we must come back and settle the account at last.  

Which PM “faux pas” make your hair stand on end?

In my last post about the “school solution,” I noted that there’s something unnerving about project and program managers who skip over the basics.  As Glen Alleman noted in his comment, the PM school solution or black letter law almost always has some merit as a start.

Thinking about this post brought to mind the various project management myths, missteps, and mistakes that put me on edge.  These three always make me wonder about the person who says them:

• Calling a project schedule a project plan.
• Not knowing the difference between an issue and a risk.
• Suggesting that planning is useless if we don’t know all of the activities.

What are your pet peeves?  Which PM faux pas makes you nervous, irritable, and discontented with those who make them?

I smell a poll here!

PM Quote of the Day — Truman Capote

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

At least acknowledge the “school solution”

“School solution” is a military-phrase for the standard way in which one would approach a problem or scenario.  While the phrase often is applied pejoratively, it doesn’t have to be so.  In fact, sometimes I wish I heard more folks at least make a gesture towards such standards.

This concept came to mind when I reviewed a proposed risk management process for our transformation program.  While the basics were OK, there were a few indications that the author didn’t know the school solution.  For example, every response was assumed to be “mitigation”.  The proposal also assumed that the risk evaluation would be a “one and done” process… he seemed surprised that we wanted reviews more frequently than quarterly.

There are valid reasons to structure a risk process in a way that doesn’t go strictly by the book.  For example, I can see using a different review cycle for risks where mitigation is the response than those risks one is accepting.  But please show me that you’ve read the book before you propose that we re-write it!