Tag Archives: Project Management

Are you a Frustrated and Overworked Project Manager?

Strategy & Execution, , , , , , , ,

For over 30 years now I’ve trained and worked with project managers in Fortune 100s, government agencies, research institutions and fast-growing businesses all over the world. I believe that project managers like you are the unsung heroes of our time because we are responsible for 90% of the positive changes in the world.

But I’m upset. In the last two years, I’ve noticed a huge problem for project managers and teams. And it’s getting worse. While the pressure to deliver successful projects is increasing, so are the obstacles in our way.

Let me candidly ask you – ever had a day when your project was/is a nightmare of frustration?

  • Can’t get stakeholders on the same page?
  • Nasty problems suddenly arise?
  • Your team is busy … but not productive?
  • Blindsided by impossible deadlines?
  • The goals are constantly changing?
  • Endless and unproductive meetings?
  • You get blamed for failure when it’s not fault?

If so you are not alone.

That drives me crazy, and I’m on the hunt for solutions to help you do your work better, protect your job, and advance your company and your career. I am fully committed to finding practical solutions that let you get home on time for dinner with your family for a change, instead of having to work late into the evening and on weekends fixing problems that should never have occurred in the first place.

But first I need to know what’s bothering you the most.

So help me out. I’m doing a 2-question survey to identify the main problems you are having and to offer practical solutions. It’ll only take 2 minutes and I’ll share the results with you and my suggested solutions. Go here now.

I am so sick and tired of seeing smart and committed men and women battling obstacles that shouldn’t even be there. Aren’t you? Share your frustration now.

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Terry Schmidt is a business strategist and author of Strategic Project Management Made Simple, and chief honcho at ManagementPro.com. He helps people of all backgrounds to transform their ability to get great results faster and smoother.  Check out the video lesson titled THE PROJECT SUPER HERO SYSTEM to discover the #1 preventable reason most projects fail before they even start. (This lesson will be taken down in 48 hours, so see it now.)

An Innovation Lesson: How a Snarling Dog Saved American Airlines Money

Life Mastery, , , , , , , , ,

A story about Robert Crandall, the legendary former chairman of American Airlines, demonstrates how creative thinking can simplify operations and reduce costs.

Crandall visited each AA location annually and discovered that a low-traffic Caribbean cargo warehouse employed an expensive night watchman to deter theft.  Crandall suggested reducing the watchman to just three nights a week (the thieves wouldn’t know). A year later, with no theft, Crandall suggested further cost savings.

Crandall ordered that “Vicious Dog” signs are prominently placed around the facility, and they found the meanest and scariest dog to patrol inside the facility.  Months later, after no theft attempts, they put the dog on part-time duty.

But times were tough for the airline, and more budget cuts were needed. Crandall then instructed that the dog not is fed for a day to make him mean, then had staff tape-record the snarling animal. The dog was laid off after the recording was hooked to speakers and put on a random timer so that thieves would be fooled into thinking a vicious dog was still patrolling the warehouse.

And it worked!

How can you adapt this concept to your own situation?

Start by asking “what is the purpose of any system or process”, then look for better, cheaper, simpler ways to accomplish that objective.

In Crandall’s case, there were superior ways to deter potential robbers.

It is so easy to fall into the trap of habit, and continue doing things the current way, without periodically searching for better ways to achieve the essential purpose the process is designed to achieve.

Give this a whirl:  First, make a list of the top three time-consuming or resource-intensive processes in your business. Second, pinpoint the essential purpose of each, the “why” we are doing this. Third, identify at least three alternative approaches or simplifications to achieve the purpose in a better way. And finally, put the best ideas into action.

But please, reject any approaches that require you to starve and snarl your dog.

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Terry Schmidt is a business strategist and author of Strategic Project Management Made Simple, and chief honcho at ManagementPro.com. He helps people of all backgrounds to develop Project Super Hero skills that transform their ability to get great results faster and smoother. Learn how here.

Outfox Murphy’s Law by Managing Your Project Assumptions — or Else!

Strategy & Execution, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

After NASA’s $125 million Mars Orbiter crashed during the landing phase, a later analysis showed that the spacecraft builders worked in the metric system. NASA assumed, but for some reason failed to verify, that the builders were using the English measurement system of feet and inches. Thus, the Orbiter’s computer contained bogus data and the mission failed.

And when “Company XYZ’s” strategic plan crashed during execution, a review showed that the core strategic planning team defined the future vision and set vague goals without much stakeholder involvement. They assumed, but failed to obtain, that there would be strong support those affected by their plans. This assumption was bogus and their strategy failed.

Whether you are shooting for Mars or aiming someplace closer, many missions that matter crash on the hard rocks of reality when an implicit but unmanaged assumption went awry.

Murphy and his infamous law dwell in the murky mess of invalid assumptions — those conditions which must exist for the strategy to be valid. The graveyard of failed strategic plans is littered with undefined, unexamined, and untested assumptions such as:

  • Top management support is etched in stone on this one.
  • Everyone is in the loop and on-board for the entire ride.
  • We have a good balanced scorecard and that should be sufficient.
  • No use wasting too much ink because we all know plans change.

Assumptions Matter

Invalid assumptions are the soft underbelly of achieving strategic goals. When bad things happen to good strategies, erroneous assumptions are often to blame.

Every strategy and project plan rests on assumptions—whether or not they are acknowledged or verified.

The best strategic thinkers, planners, and change agents take the time to identify, examine, and validate their underlying assumptions. Faulty assumptions act as invisible beds of quicksand, eager to suck good intentions under. How do you surface the most relevant ones?

There are two levels at which assumptions analysis can help planners to reality-base their work. One level concerns assumptions made about the implications of trends and factors that show up during an environmental scan.

There’s an old story about two European shoe salesmen sent to adjacent regions of Africa to study sales potential. The first reported back that since no one wore shoes, there was zero sales potential. The second reported that since no one wore shoes, the potential was infinite. Both salesmen noted the same underlying facts, but reached diametrically opposed conclusions. These contrasting conclusions reveal very different mental models and assumption at play. This phenomenon can also occur during strategic planning and among strategic planner as well, because we seldom bother to make explicit our implicit assumptions.

Ask yourself, “What should we assume?” or “What are we assuming?” in such categories as:

  • Planning Team Members
  • Related Projects
  • Stakeholders Interests
  • Willingness to Change
  • Management Support
  • Customer Expectations
  • Technical Issues
  • Political Climate
  • Resource Availability
  • Competing Concerns

Three Steps for Managing Assumptions

Your own experience may confirm just how many strategic initiatives fall flat due to faulty, ill-formed, undefined or unexamined assumptions.

Assumptions always exist, whether or not we acknowledge or verify them. You need to get them out of your head and onto paper.

Try this simple three-step process to surface easily-overlooked potential deal beakers which deserve your attention.

Step 1. Identify Key Assumptions.

Get your core team together, or fly solo, and use these kick-off questions to surface underlying Assumptions:

  • What conditions must exist, and what factors must be true, for this effort to work?
  • How must the world cooperate with us?
  • What else must happen for this to succeed?
  • What else should we assume?

Step 2. Analyze and Test Them

Now you can analyze and test each with questions like these:

  • How important is this Assumption to strategy success or failure?
  • How valid or probable is this Assumption? What are the odds? How do we know?
  • If the Assumptions fails, what is the impact? Does it diminish level of accomplishment? Delay it? Destroy it?
  • What could cause this Assumption to not be valid?” (Note: This one triggers specific risk factors).

Use this first-cut analysis as a jumping-off point for more rigorous risk assessments using conventional risk management techniques.

Step 3. Act On Them

Now subject each assumptions to the following:

  • Is this a reasonable risk to take?
  • To what extent is it amenable to control? Can we manage it? Influence and nudge it? Or only monitor it?
  • How can we design our initiatives to minimize the impact of, or work around, risky Assumptions?
  • What contingency plans might have handy just in case?

Managing Assumptions requires making contingency plans and putting preventive solutions in place. For example, if it absolutely, positively must get there overnight, send identical packages by DHL, UPS and FedEx. If dark storms are brewing, do the organizational equivalent of nailing on plywood and getting a gasoline-powered pump before the hurricane hits! You get the idea.

Steering Assumptions In Your Direction

Question #3 of the 4 Cornerstone Questions helps surface and test your assumptions, so you can either deal with them before they crush your strategy, or monitor them and have a “Plan B” waiting in the wings

When you and your team become adept at managing assumptions, you’ll be better prepared to sail skillfully and courageously across the sea of change washing over us, rather than getting drowned by a strategic tsunami you didn’t see rolling in on the horizon.

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To learn the 4 Cornerstone Questions that result in bullet-proof project plans, click here to register for my one hour Project Super Power System training at no cost.

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Terry Schmidt is a business strategist, keynoter, author of Strategic Project Management Made Simple, and chief honcho at ManagementPro.com. He helps leaders at all levels to develop the skill set and mindset to accomplish outstanding results.

The #1 Preventable Reason Projects Fail Before they even Begin is…

Business Excellence, , , , , , ,

Hopefully, something like this has never happened to you.

The big boss assigns you what could be a career make or break a project and asks for a plan on her desk in three days. The project is bigger than those you’ve done before and outside your mainstream expertise. You begin by jotting down some action items, then you walk the halls getting input from colleagues and put together a big task list.

You crank up your project software, put in the tasks, add a timeline, hit PRINT and voila, out comes a beautifully formatted Gantt chart. Mission accomplished!

You send it to the boss and get back an email saying “see me in ten minutes.” You walk into her office, expecting praise for producing such excellent work so quickly. But the look on her face spells trouble.

“What the heck is this? I asked for a PLAN, what you gave me is a SCHEDULE. This is just a big FAT to-do list. I don’t need glorified list makers, I need strategic thinkers!”

Guess what — you’ve just fallen into the dreaded FATTrap.

The impact of falling into the FATTrap is predictable — your project gets FRIED. Maybe your career gets fried as well.

Here are some indicators your plan suffers from the FATTrap syndrome:

  • Lots of tasks, but no clear connection between tasks and the deliverables they should produce.
  • Fuzzy deliverables – no clarity on what “done good enough” looks like
  • No distinction between the project being COMPLETE (deliverables in place) and the project being SUCCESSFUL (changed conditions resulting from deliverables)
  • Confusion in implementation, fingerpointing, delay, and wasted resources.

Look, it’s easy to fall into the FATTrap. It’s our default planning approach due to time pressure and lack of a simple planning language that gets everyone on the same page quickly. We want to get the plan done ASAP, get it off our plates, move onto something else.

And there is nothing wrong with task lists and Gantt charts – we need them for implementation. The problem is when they are developed out of sequence – before we have a clear understanding of the causal connections from activities to deliverables to the goals.

Gantt charts and other action plans answer the question How Do We Get There?, but skip over the 3 Cornerstone questions that MUST be answered first.

Give your projects a fighting chance for success. Become a Project Super Hero with a reputation for delivering project results, not excuses. Plan them right – from the start.

To learn the 4 Cornerstone Questions that eliminate the FATTrap and result in bullet-proof project plans, click here to register for my one hour Project Super Power System training at no cost.

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Terry Schmidt is a business strategist, keynoter, author of Strategic Project Management Made Simple, and chief honcho at ManagementPro.com. He helps leaders at all levels to develop the skill set and mindset to accomplish outstanding results.

Your Assignment: Get Rejected

Life Mastery, Uncategorized, , , , ,

“You want us to do what?!”

That’s what the forty engineers and IT experts in my Reinvent Yourself and Thrive course at UCLA Extension’s Technical Management Program said when I gave them their out-of-class assignment. Their homework was to make an unusual, strange, or ridiculous request of a total stranger where the odds of rejection were high.

The results of that assignment were life-changing to many of my participants because they busted through a mental barrier that had stopped them from taking some real-world risks that could pay off in positive ways.

I have seen far too many competent men and women restrict their behavior and avoid taking survivable risks because of internal censoring and disempowering self-talk. Whether it is speaking up more in meetings, asking someone for a date, or initiating an unpopular idea, we often stop because we imagine the pain of rejection and mentally magnify.

Half of the class actually did the “rejection therapy” with both instructive and humorous results and reported their results. The next day Joe (changing all names here) asked a total stranger to give him $100.  José asked the hotel valet if he could park cars for an hour. Mary requested her waiter at dinner to give her a foot massage.  Luis asked the construction worker on the UCLA campus if he could operate the bulldozer. Fred asked a homeless man for some spare change. Sarah requested a free refill on the meat in her hamburger. Joseph pleaded with a well-dressed business guy to loan him his shoes for the evening.

Everyone succeeded in getting totally rejected, except for Mary. The waiter politely explained that he could not her feet right now, but he would be getting off shift in an hour. (she declined)

What was the learning lesson? It is so easy to stop ourselves from taking action, because of stories we make up in our mind, that we would get rejected, people would think badly of us, etc. In real life, for things that really matter, we often do the same thing. We create flimsy excuses in our mind not to go for things just to avoid the imagined pain.

I challenge you to go out and get rejected today. Be respectful, don’t be creepy, but make a request that is so outlandish you’re guaranteed to get rejected. As the saying goes, whenever doesn’t kill you makes stronger. Knowing that you can handle rejection, strengthens your courage muscle, so its ready when it really counts.

I’d love to hear your rejection story, post it below.

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Terry Schmidt facilitates culture-changing and life-inspiring event which boost performance and productivity.  His audiences have included nuclear engineers, psychiatric nurses, state governors, geeks, and CEOs. Check out www.ManagementPro.com for more information.