It seems they like it and plan to use it. on unethical. services the with for that not Before that employed nuclear industry. Neither these workplaces badly nor was tobacco industry. of society have changed will notI wonder how you would have responded?
the other business, to make these they seek to associate and with certain least, is "ethical" rather than
those executive mind in deeper inspection will
putting
high/mid level wealth security decisions some as unethical. never to then to situation.
Tuesday 31 January 2012
An Ethical Career in Financial Services?
I wasn't sure if what I might say would be of interest, but responded with the piece below.
Monday 30 January 2012
Cycle Sensitivity and Change Delivery
A discussion group I am part of has been discussing why "mega-projects" appear have a higher failure rate than smaller ones.
Now the scales quoted are way beyond my experience ie a mega-project was over $1 billion!!!! , but I have seen differences driven by the scale of a planned change.
There was general concensus that the increased complexity was a contributin factor, with complexity growing exponentially with size. Just the communication lines between a large group of people (ie those involved) is rises exponentially, but then the scale of the solution and those involved will merely compounded that.
The interesting piece for me was a comment that the mega-projects tend to become like corporate entities and that is when they struggle. This resonated with something I have observed in more modest, mere £ multi-million projects and programmes so I though I would share it here.
Once again I draw upon my science background to illustrate the issue and I look at frequency and synchronicity.
In business and in politics there are cycles. The main cycle is typified by the periodicity of personal and business reviews, budget setting, reward allocation and personal promotion/shifting. In business this is typically an annual cycle, though in politics one can consider the duration of an administration as the relevant cycle.
What I have observed is that if a programme is conceived in one cycle then it really needs to deliver in that cycle or the next. If it is planned or turns out to stretch into the third cycle then the pressure to deliver is turned up and the risks of changes in requirements, diminishing support and perceived failure raises exponentially. I cannot think of any change that spread four cycles that was considered a success even if it did deliver what it set out to.
This is the result of both movement of key personnel and the resultant challenges and shifts in support that result PLUS the fact that the world will have moved in a significant degree changing the opportunity to deliver benefit and/or the environment into which the change will be delivered.
I think that should an endeavour span three or more cycles it is no surprise that it starts looking like a corporate entity as it needs all the trapping of such an organisation, such as succession planning.
The other significance of this is that the over-arching cycles can change. In times of stress and crisis the cycles will shorten, sometimes dramatically (eg from annual to quarterly) or the cycle may reset at an odd time when for example the CEO changes or a new government is required. At these times it is beholden to the intelligent change leader to review and revise their approach to change and look to re-synchronise to the new background cycle. Just continuing as previously planned is rarely the best option.
I would be interested to know if this resonates with others? Is it something you consider when leading change?
I would be interested to know if this resonates with others? Is it something you consider when leading change?
Wednesday 25 January 2012
Evolutionary Project Management - An unappreciated jewel?
Wouldn't it be good to construct change and projects where the biggest benefits are delivered early and that is you are forced to divert investment/stop a project you are still left with a sustainable product that will continue to deliver business benefit ie you have the opportunity to make real business decisions rather than the stark write-off vs good money after bad option?
There is a way. It is not easy and will require courage, but the approach exists today and is being used by some leading companies. Citigroup, NATO and HP are cited as organisations looking at this approach.
Many years ago a colleague shared a book called "Principles of Software Engineering Management" by Tom Gilb. I can and have programmed, but do not claim that as a key competence, but what struck me from that book was the articulation that ANYTHING can be measured with a little imagination so all the soft or so-called intangible benefits can be quantified and tracked if one approaches things pragmatically.
The piece that stuck was that "usability" in terms of new systems could be measured. This was and remains a common requirement without being clearly articulated. The suggestion was something like
"a new user can, without any external intervention or assitance, set up a new account ( or whatever ) correctly in less than x minutes"
This sort of thinking really helped drive out requirements and influence solution design. It was relatively unusual thinking at the time and stuck with me.
Through this initial contact I became aware of one of Tom's other developments "Evolutionary Project Management". The principle driving this is the early delivery of real sustainable benefits from a project/change. This may sound obvious, but in my experience is rarely achieved in more "traditional" approaches such as the waterfall approach.
Typically significant benefits are only delivered towards the end or after the completion of the project ie the investment of time and money is all but spent before any value is seen. This is often manifested in a situation such as this ; 60% of the time and money have been spent, with no realisable benefit and it looks like it requires the rest of the money plus another 10% plus an additional three months if one is to have any chance of seeing a positive outcome. If one decides to stop the project "now" then the investment is a complete write off.
This is not a good place to be, but is one I suspect you will recognise. The argument is usually that what has happened is in the past and cannot be undone. Therefore the decision rests on solely making remaining investment, thereby riding over the disappointment to date.
This is so common and why projects get a bad name and the majority are considered to have failed to deliver what was promised.
I won't go into Earned Value Analysis (the attempt to measure the level of value created against the investment spent) which attempts, in my opinion to justify the investment at each stage. In practice it seems to tell you that you have spent 70% of something to create 60% of nothing; I say nothing because unless you complete the work you will not realise any benefit at all.
There are many attempts to address these failings in the form of AGILE, SCRUM, etc which essentially try and break the project into smaller parts, trying to create momentum and confidence through a series of small deliveries. The key question that drives these approaches is simply "What can we do in the following (short) time?" It is more about "do-ability" than benefits and should you need to stop the project part way there is a real risk that you will have an incomplete set of "complete" components, that do not deliver anywhere near the benefits to justify the investment.
I won't attempt to explain the whole of EVO Project Management. I am neither licenced nor the best to do so, but one can look at the Gilb website as linked above. What I will do here is draw out what I understand to be the key principles and challenges.
The key principle is what I would call "time optimised benefit chunking". There is a time value to benefits that needs to be recognised. The delivery of 50% of the benefits for 40% of the time and investment with subsequent incremental benefits is usually better than hanging on for 100% at a later stage.
That is once one has understood the overall objective the challenge is "How can I deliver the best real benefit in the minimum time?" The benefit will not be all the objective, but should be the largest discretely achievable element. It must be able to stand alone ie one would not be spending 200 to realise 100 and must at the end be a whole sustainable solution in itself.
One key thing this accepts is that components of this "next" delivery, may be sub-optimal ie they may need reworking in subsequent deliveries to meet the strategic, long-term goal. This acceptance of future rework seems wasteful to many is frequently a stumbling block. It offends the strategists, but the key is the early delivery of benefit that outweighs the future additional cost. Indeed the reworking itself will only happen if it is justified in the benefit case for the next delivery project. This ensures that any incremental cost created by this approach is more than compensated for by realised benefit.
The other issue here is that in delivering this timely element it may that not all stakeholders see a benefit. In fact some may see a dis-benefit ie it is more troublesome. This needs to be managed if the overall benefit is good enough.
One then works in cycles. What is the next biggest benefit that can be achieved and sustained, taking the cost of any rework, etc into this next investment case. The cycles can continue on teh basis of diminishing returns until a) the next one is not justified or b) there is a better investment opportunity elsewhere. The key is that at the end of each phase one could make the decision to invest no more, yet still have sustained benefits already being realised and contributing to the business' performance. This would seem to be a good place to be.
This approach is driven by realisable sustainable benefits rather than just do-ability.
As I said it is not easy and it will face opposition in many organisations.
I would be very interested to know if others have looked at this? Even better if they have tried to use it? I wonder what the experiences have been. In truth mine have been less than successful to date, with the disciples of waterfall and activity tending to with over my arguments around benefits and evolution, but I will continue as, despite all this I believe that there and indeed must be a place for the evolutionary approach to the way we deliver change going forward.
There is a way. It is not easy and will require courage, but the approach exists today and is being used by some leading companies. Citigroup, NATO and HP are cited as organisations looking at this approach.
Many years ago a colleague shared a book called "Principles of Software Engineering Management" by Tom Gilb. I can and have programmed, but do not claim that as a key competence, but what struck me from that book was the articulation that ANYTHING can be measured with a little imagination so all the soft or so-called intangible benefits can be quantified and tracked if one approaches things pragmatically.
The piece that stuck was that "usability" in terms of new systems could be measured. This was and remains a common requirement without being clearly articulated. The suggestion was something like
"a new user can, without any external intervention or assitance, set up a new account ( or whatever ) correctly in less than x minutes"
This sort of thinking really helped drive out requirements and influence solution design. It was relatively unusual thinking at the time and stuck with me.
Through this initial contact I became aware of one of Tom's other developments "Evolutionary Project Management". The principle driving this is the early delivery of real sustainable benefits from a project/change. This may sound obvious, but in my experience is rarely achieved in more "traditional" approaches such as the waterfall approach.
Typically significant benefits are only delivered towards the end or after the completion of the project ie the investment of time and money is all but spent before any value is seen. This is often manifested in a situation such as this ; 60% of the time and money have been spent, with no realisable benefit and it looks like it requires the rest of the money plus another 10% plus an additional three months if one is to have any chance of seeing a positive outcome. If one decides to stop the project "now" then the investment is a complete write off.
This is not a good place to be, but is one I suspect you will recognise. The argument is usually that what has happened is in the past and cannot be undone. Therefore the decision rests on solely making remaining investment, thereby riding over the disappointment to date.
This is so common and why projects get a bad name and the majority are considered to have failed to deliver what was promised.
I won't go into Earned Value Analysis (the attempt to measure the level of value created against the investment spent) which attempts, in my opinion to justify the investment at each stage. In practice it seems to tell you that you have spent 70% of something to create 60% of nothing; I say nothing because unless you complete the work you will not realise any benefit at all.
There are many attempts to address these failings in the form of AGILE, SCRUM, etc which essentially try and break the project into smaller parts, trying to create momentum and confidence through a series of small deliveries. The key question that drives these approaches is simply "What can we do in the following (short) time?" It is more about "do-ability" than benefits and should you need to stop the project part way there is a real risk that you will have an incomplete set of "complete" components, that do not deliver anywhere near the benefits to justify the investment.
I won't attempt to explain the whole of EVO Project Management. I am neither licenced nor the best to do so, but one can look at the Gilb website as linked above. What I will do here is draw out what I understand to be the key principles and challenges.
The key principle is what I would call "time optimised benefit chunking". There is a time value to benefits that needs to be recognised. The delivery of 50% of the benefits for 40% of the time and investment with subsequent incremental benefits is usually better than hanging on for 100% at a later stage.
That is once one has understood the overall objective the challenge is "How can I deliver the best real benefit in the minimum time?" The benefit will not be all the objective, but should be the largest discretely achievable element. It must be able to stand alone ie one would not be spending 200 to realise 100 and must at the end be a whole sustainable solution in itself.
One key thing this accepts is that components of this "next" delivery, may be sub-optimal ie they may need reworking in subsequent deliveries to meet the strategic, long-term goal. This acceptance of future rework seems wasteful to many is frequently a stumbling block. It offends the strategists, but the key is the early delivery of benefit that outweighs the future additional cost. Indeed the reworking itself will only happen if it is justified in the benefit case for the next delivery project. This ensures that any incremental cost created by this approach is more than compensated for by realised benefit.
The other issue here is that in delivering this timely element it may that not all stakeholders see a benefit. In fact some may see a dis-benefit ie it is more troublesome. This needs to be managed if the overall benefit is good enough.
One then works in cycles. What is the next biggest benefit that can be achieved and sustained, taking the cost of any rework, etc into this next investment case. The cycles can continue on teh basis of diminishing returns until a) the next one is not justified or b) there is a better investment opportunity elsewhere. The key is that at the end of each phase one could make the decision to invest no more, yet still have sustained benefits already being realised and contributing to the business' performance. This would seem to be a good place to be.
This approach is driven by realisable sustainable benefits rather than just do-ability.
As I said it is not easy and it will face opposition in many organisations.
- The strategists will fear that their full vision will never be delivered. This may be the case, but I would argue that when well executed the early delivery of benefits is more valuable.
- Some stakeholders may be disadvantaged in the shorter term, but this is justified by the overall benefit. It may need an alignment of stakeholder objectives.
- Project people may not like the uncertainty they perceive in that the whole may never be delivered, but I would argue that the business will be more appreciative and complimentary about optimising the timing of benefits.
- It focusses achievement on benefits rather than activity or simple product - this may not suit everyone.
I would be very interested to know if others have looked at this? Even better if they have tried to use it? I wonder what the experiences have been. In truth mine have been less than successful to date, with the disciples of waterfall and activity tending to with over my arguments around benefits and evolution, but I will continue as, despite all this I believe that there and indeed must be a place for the evolutionary approach to the way we deliver change going forward.
Sunday 22 January 2012
2012 is the year of the black water dragon.
Today, 23 January, is the Chinese New Year. 2012 is the year of the dragon, more specifically the (black) water dragon.
I won't try and summarise all the aspects of Chinese Astrology, but I have found that this year us Jen Ch'en and symbolises action, energy, leadership and vitality.
Given the trials of 2011 we could all do a lot worse than remembering those four qualities.
This particular "year" comes around every 60 years, so previous black water dragons are 1952? 1892 and 1832. A quick review shows that in 1952 Queen Elizabeth II succeeded her father to the British throne, the first hydrogen bomb was exploded and the foundation of the European Community were laid. In 1892 Ellis Island opened and the first Sherlock Holmes stories were published. Lastly in 1832 the Parliamentary Reform Act was introduced in the UK and Greece was recognised as a sovereign state.
Happy New Year.
Wednesday 18 January 2012
Serendipitous Self Care
Today's blog is a bit different. I wanted to share a couple of recent discoveries that I have enjoyed and maybe others will.
The first is a series of TV programmes, namely those by Anthony Bourdain entitled "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservation Required". In his own words the presenter he is someone who writes, travels and eats. His programmes are part travelogue, part celebration of food, but they are not a cooking programme.
Each one has a theme and a story and I find them both entertaining and in a way energising. He usually has a relevant, often local guide, looking at the origin of the food and visiting a variety of establishments or events, primarily ones open to ordinary people. He samples street food, local restaurants, community parties and the like. He did one that culminated in an extraordinary meal at El Bulli, arguably the best restaurant in the world that is now closed.
I confess I like eating and trying different foods and I find his blatant enjoyment of food infectious. It is something my wife and daughter don't share so this programme has become my guilty pleasure.
In the UK, the programme is available on Sky and I have seen DVD sets.
The other discovery is also personal. Some time ago I bought a device that connects and plays internet radio channels. The other night I put it on and after selecting the comedy genre chances upon Abacus.FM . It seems to be playing endless episodes of old British radio comedies. At the moment is seems to be an interleaving of Hancock Half Hours and The Clitheroe Kid.
I expect many readers will have heard about first set, being classics. That said they were before my time and to be honest they don't resonate with me.
It is The Clitheroe Kid with Jimmy Clitheroe that has my attention. I am not sure it was or ever be a classic. It is not the content of the comedy that grabs me, but rather that it sends me back to Sunday afternoons of my childhood. At time when Sundays we more family oriented, and no shops opened. In that environment we had a family Sunday roast pretty much every week and on radio (BBC 2 I think) there was a comedy hour at 2pm, something we as a family took time to listen to. the Clitheroe Kid was one of the shows as was The Navy Lark and many more.
Nostalgia tells me these were good times and usually followed later in the evening by "tea by the fire" with crumpets and cake and listening the official BBC Pop charts between 6 and 7.
These are good memories and it is good for the soul to be reminded of them.
These are relevant to me, but we will each have them. It is important to savour them when we find them as they nurture our inner well being and sustain us during difficult times.
What are yours?
Post Script: I turned on last night and there was an episode of "The Navy Lark"!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
The first is a series of TV programmes, namely those by Anthony Bourdain entitled "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservation Required". In his own words the presenter he is someone who writes, travels and eats. His programmes are part travelogue, part celebration of food, but they are not a cooking programme.
Each one has a theme and a story and I find them both entertaining and in a way energising. He usually has a relevant, often local guide, looking at the origin of the food and visiting a variety of establishments or events, primarily ones open to ordinary people. He samples street food, local restaurants, community parties and the like. He did one that culminated in an extraordinary meal at El Bulli, arguably the best restaurant in the world that is now closed.
I confess I like eating and trying different foods and I find his blatant enjoyment of food infectious. It is something my wife and daughter don't share so this programme has become my guilty pleasure.
In the UK, the programme is available on Sky and I have seen DVD sets.
The other discovery is also personal. Some time ago I bought a device that connects and plays internet radio channels. The other night I put it on and after selecting the comedy genre chances upon Abacus.FM . It seems to be playing endless episodes of old British radio comedies. At the moment is seems to be an interleaving of Hancock Half Hours and The Clitheroe Kid.
I expect many readers will have heard about first set, being classics. That said they were before my time and to be honest they don't resonate with me.
It is The Clitheroe Kid with Jimmy Clitheroe that has my attention. I am not sure it was or ever be a classic. It is not the content of the comedy that grabs me, but rather that it sends me back to Sunday afternoons of my childhood. At time when Sundays we more family oriented, and no shops opened. In that environment we had a family Sunday roast pretty much every week and on radio (BBC 2 I think) there was a comedy hour at 2pm, something we as a family took time to listen to. the Clitheroe Kid was one of the shows as was The Navy Lark and many more.
Nostalgia tells me these were good times and usually followed later in the evening by "tea by the fire" with crumpets and cake and listening the official BBC Pop charts between 6 and 7.
These are good memories and it is good for the soul to be reminded of them.
These are relevant to me, but we will each have them. It is important to savour them when we find them as they nurture our inner well being and sustain us during difficult times.
What are yours?
Post Script: I turned on last night and there was an episode of "The Navy Lark"!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Tuesday 17 January 2012
Social Media - Time to reflect on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Blogging and everything else it play in my life?
Not long ago I realised that I in the new world, work and family, "Brand Me" was becoming more important. I heard loads of people talking about Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, blogging, etc. At that point I had not really embraced any of these.
Two things, maybe three things, triggered me to do something. I am not sure of the order, but one was reading an ebook on self-branding that pointed out that no matter what one though one had a presence, an image in the digital online world, from emails, news items, other people posting pictures etc. By and large anything that has been produced on the internet is still available somewhere so someone and much that was not produced in the internet is being converted eg old school photographs. The point that was made was one can embrace it, be positive and contribute content you want to be available, thereby endeavouring to keep that overall impression positive or one can just let it go and not know what a google search will bring up.
The second was the fact that my wife and daughter had "got into" Facebook and kept asking me questions about how to do things; questions to which I did not have answers. This was something of a first in the technology/internet world.
The last was the convergence of two developments, a) the purchase of an iPad and thus more instant and easy access to the online world (ie no heavy laptop or long boot up delays) and b) a decision to work on my written skills. I don't think these are bad, in fact compared with many project managers I encounter they are positively advanced, but the written word has always been the least of my skills and I wanted to improve where I could.
So.........I took action. I already had a Linkedin account so I took the brand "IanJSutherland" as domains (.com and .co.uk). I also took Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. I decided to blog using Blogger (ie here) though I did not feel I had a "Brand Ian" that warranted blogging, instead I used the moniker "tales of an active mind" and took the twitter account "theactivemind" to link with it. Later I started my own limited company for when I was contracting in the name Kellian and took out similar accounts.
Now is time for reflection on what I have found works, what doesn't, what I see in my wife and daughter's usage and maybe some of the potential.
So what works for me? Well undoubtedly for professional networking Linkedin works and is my primary tool. Others have offered membership eg Plaxo and Talent.me. In many cases I have taken an account, but cannot honestly remember the last time I accessed them let alone found them useful. By contrast I use Linkedin every day and the evidence of leads coming my way is that others use Linkedin too. My approach is to keep it "professional, but with personality". What I mean by "with personality" is that I do post things that I find interesting and think will interest others using the status (that includes some blog posts). I also use the additional tools to keep a reading list up to date, etc , etc.
I use Facebook now, but this is very much a "personal" tool that keeps me connected to three primary groups; old school and college friends, my golf group and, of course, family. Interestingly my daughter refuses to let me connect on Facebook - it is so uncool to be connected with your father, or so it seems. On face book I can be the proud father, poor golfer or just a friend.
By contrast, while I still have the MySpace account ( I just checked ), but have not done anything with it and not felt the need. It seems that Myspace is about self-promotion and maybe the fact that I use Linkedin so much means that MySpace is redundant for me. At least having the account means that no one else does and thus won't damage the brand.
I have Twitter. Well, in fact I have a number of Twitter feeds and I do use some of them though maybe not in the same way others do. I have linked mine to this blog, Linkedin, to my websites and indeed to each other. In practice I generally use Twitter to "advertise" a blog. The limited text capacity and pure uncontrolled broadcast nature of it makes it hard to develop and idea or create any dialogue. I do "follow" a few names and occasionally find something interest, but it is not compulsive viewing.
My daughter is a Twitter fan, both tweeting and following others, friends and celebrities. I guess with enough friends tweeting there could come a critical mass that might make me track it, but that may be for the younger generation. Interestingly is the intimacy and directness (ie straight to the reader personally) of the celebrity posts that seems to hook her, When "Alan" ie Alan Sugar, or "Piers" ie Piers Morgan tweet (or at least one of their minions does) she reacts as if it was a personal communication.
So if Linkedin and Facebook are "Yes" and MySpace is a "No" then Twitter is "OK'ish".
The one that has caught me is the blogging, as evidence here. I find it energising, cathartic, not as hard as I thought and I keep coming back. It probably helps that I set the blog up to be an eclectic collection as it allows me to go as I wish. There is a general theme of "change" and managing change, but any review will show a mixed set of topics. For me I would make blogging a "Yes" too.
It would be easy to argue that blogging is self-indulgent and to an extent I would certainly agree, but as an arena to home ones skills and make new connections it has huge potential. Shown below are the tracking stats (excluding my own accesses) for my blog since I started in mid-2009. They have not been startling, though the recent lift has been. Even this month, January, I am expecting over 1,000 visits (it stands at 582 on the 16th of the month)
Even more intriguing to me is the origin of these visitors. The top countries in the all-time list are shown below. Outside the UK and US the numbers are modest but significant and there is a long tail of smaller records. This week has seen visitors from Nepal, Denmark, Ireland, Cayman Island, Oman and Singapore. When before would someone like me reach such wide audience?
Before closing, it is probably worth picking up on two other social media tools that have caught my eye.
The first is WhatsApp a cross platform messenger for iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Nokia. My wife has a group of golfing ladies, many of who travel and they have all picked up WhatsApp. It is very common for them to be spread across two or three continents, upwards to half a dozen locations, yet all be communicating with ease, near real time using WhatsApp. As long as they have internet access, preferably via WiFi then it is all free too. This seems to be the way forward in the messenger space. Certainly if Blackberry's demise is to be believed and Apple keep their platforms heavily protected, then WhatsApp seems to be well positioned.
The other I will mention is Yammer. This is like Twitter for companies. It allows you to set membership criteria (usually via email address) before someone can join a Yammer set. There after it works much like Twitter in that one broadcasts a short message and those who have elected to follow you will see it. I feel there is a role for something like this in companies and probably in change endeavours and that the more protected nature of Yammer makes it better suited. In truth this is largely a feeling for me right now and I have not yet crystallised how and where I would use it in anger.
Two things, maybe three things, triggered me to do something. I am not sure of the order, but one was reading an ebook on self-branding that pointed out that no matter what one though one had a presence, an image in the digital online world, from emails, news items, other people posting pictures etc. By and large anything that has been produced on the internet is still available somewhere so someone and much that was not produced in the internet is being converted eg old school photographs. The point that was made was one can embrace it, be positive and contribute content you want to be available, thereby endeavouring to keep that overall impression positive or one can just let it go and not know what a google search will bring up.
The second was the fact that my wife and daughter had "got into" Facebook and kept asking me questions about how to do things; questions to which I did not have answers. This was something of a first in the technology/internet world.
The last was the convergence of two developments, a) the purchase of an iPad and thus more instant and easy access to the online world (ie no heavy laptop or long boot up delays) and b) a decision to work on my written skills. I don't think these are bad, in fact compared with many project managers I encounter they are positively advanced, but the written word has always been the least of my skills and I wanted to improve where I could.
So.........I took action. I already had a Linkedin account so I took the brand "IanJSutherland" as domains (.com and .co.uk). I also took Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. I decided to blog using Blogger (ie here) though I did not feel I had a "Brand Ian" that warranted blogging, instead I used the moniker "tales of an active mind" and took the twitter account "theactivemind" to link with it. Later I started my own limited company for when I was contracting in the name Kellian and took out similar accounts.
Now is time for reflection on what I have found works, what doesn't, what I see in my wife and daughter's usage and maybe some of the potential.
So what works for me? Well undoubtedly for professional networking Linkedin works and is my primary tool. Others have offered membership eg Plaxo and Talent.me. In many cases I have taken an account, but cannot honestly remember the last time I accessed them let alone found them useful. By contrast I use Linkedin every day and the evidence of leads coming my way is that others use Linkedin too. My approach is to keep it "professional, but with personality". What I mean by "with personality" is that I do post things that I find interesting and think will interest others using the status (that includes some blog posts). I also use the additional tools to keep a reading list up to date, etc , etc.
I use Facebook now, but this is very much a "personal" tool that keeps me connected to three primary groups; old school and college friends, my golf group and, of course, family. Interestingly my daughter refuses to let me connect on Facebook - it is so uncool to be connected with your father, or so it seems. On face book I can be the proud father, poor golfer or just a friend.
By contrast, while I still have the MySpace account ( I just checked ), but have not done anything with it and not felt the need. It seems that Myspace is about self-promotion and maybe the fact that I use Linkedin so much means that MySpace is redundant for me. At least having the account means that no one else does and thus won't damage the brand.
I have Twitter. Well, in fact I have a number of Twitter feeds and I do use some of them though maybe not in the same way others do. I have linked mine to this blog, Linkedin, to my websites and indeed to each other. In practice I generally use Twitter to "advertise" a blog. The limited text capacity and pure uncontrolled broadcast nature of it makes it hard to develop and idea or create any dialogue. I do "follow" a few names and occasionally find something interest, but it is not compulsive viewing.
My daughter is a Twitter fan, both tweeting and following others, friends and celebrities. I guess with enough friends tweeting there could come a critical mass that might make me track it, but that may be for the younger generation. Interestingly is the intimacy and directness (ie straight to the reader personally) of the celebrity posts that seems to hook her, When "Alan" ie Alan Sugar, or "Piers" ie Piers Morgan tweet (or at least one of their minions does) she reacts as if it was a personal communication.
So if Linkedin and Facebook are "Yes" and MySpace is a "No" then Twitter is "OK'ish".
The one that has caught me is the blogging, as evidence here. I find it energising, cathartic, not as hard as I thought and I keep coming back. It probably helps that I set the blog up to be an eclectic collection as it allows me to go as I wish. There is a general theme of "change" and managing change, but any review will show a mixed set of topics. For me I would make blogging a "Yes" too.
It would be easy to argue that blogging is self-indulgent and to an extent I would certainly agree, but as an arena to home ones skills and make new connections it has huge potential. Shown below are the tracking stats (excluding my own accesses) for my blog since I started in mid-2009. They have not been startling, though the recent lift has been. Even this month, January, I am expecting over 1,000 visits (it stands at 582 on the 16th of the month)
Even more intriguing to me is the origin of these visitors. The top countries in the all-time list are shown below. Outside the UK and US the numbers are modest but significant and there is a long tail of smaller records. This week has seen visitors from Nepal, Denmark, Ireland, Cayman Island, Oman and Singapore. When before would someone like me reach such wide audience?
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Before closing, it is probably worth picking up on two other social media tools that have caught my eye.
The first is WhatsApp a cross platform messenger for iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Nokia. My wife has a group of golfing ladies, many of who travel and they have all picked up WhatsApp. It is very common for them to be spread across two or three continents, upwards to half a dozen locations, yet all be communicating with ease, near real time using WhatsApp. As long as they have internet access, preferably via WiFi then it is all free too. This seems to be the way forward in the messenger space. Certainly if Blackberry's demise is to be believed and Apple keep their platforms heavily protected, then WhatsApp seems to be well positioned.
The other I will mention is Yammer. This is like Twitter for companies. It allows you to set membership criteria (usually via email address) before someone can join a Yammer set. There after it works much like Twitter in that one broadcasts a short message and those who have elected to follow you will see it. I feel there is a role for something like this in companies and probably in change endeavours and that the more protected nature of Yammer makes it better suited. In truth this is largely a feeling for me right now and I have not yet crystallised how and where I would use it in anger.
Monday 16 January 2012
Pace vs Haste - Finding the right pace for change initiatives
Some years ago a friend drew me a picture of the life of a project. Many of the things he illustrated resonated loudly, especially as a way of illustrating what not to do. I have used this diagram a number of times since and thought I would share it here now.
I will be interested to know if it makes sense to my readers.
We start with two components of the diagram. The first illustrates the relationship between the level of unknowns and therefore risk to the successful completion of the project and the effort put into resolving them. By effort I am talking about the real thinking, problem solving and decision making needed to illuminate aspects to make them into "knowns", and not just about the number of meetings one attends, reports written or the size of the team assigned to the project. While one has a software bug, its resolution is an unknown and it is a risk. Once you know how to solve it you are almost there and the risk reduced. Once it is solved and proven, then it becomes a "known" and is no longer a risk.
At the beginning of the project we know little or nothing, by definition this is a new endeavour, and we have spent no effort in resolving the unknowns. By the time we reach the end of a successful project we should have put in all the effort we need to and have no "unknowns".
This is illustrated in a pair of stacked graphs like so
The horizontal scale is clearly time and this now allows us to track progress. Broadly speaking the more of the right effort put in the fewer the remaining unknowns and the less risk.
Now lets illustrate a project. This is slightly simplistic, but is effective and shows five phases,
Now in an ideal world some effort will go into resolving items during initiation, at least enough to develop a fair plan of action. A lot more into the design work with more being resolved during the building phase. This would mean that there would be relatively little in the way of issues and rework to come out of testing and virtually nothing during implementation. By implementation pretty much everything is running sweetly.
In this case the graph may look like this
See the two red lines moving in concert from the start to the finish. A good question is how much needs to be known before moving to the next phase. That is really a matter of judgement and experience, but the simple answer is enough to proceed with reasonable confidence. This sets an appropriate pace for the work.
A number of methodologies use formal gateway reviews to control the movement from one phase to the next. This endeavours to capture broad experience, but when poorly applied can in my experience add inappropriate and unnecessary rigour and actually detract from the endeavour.
This is something of an ideal illustration. In the real world there are often two compounding issues that impact matters. The first is the push for early action. While it is good to build an early momentum, this is often translated into "ticking things off quickly" and thereby rushing the early stages ie haste.
In the model that looks like this
Too little preparation and a poor and incomplete design are the usual manifestions. This means that most of the effort to resolve the unknowns takes place in extended build and test phases. This can be painful for the project teams and frustrating for the business as it sees early "advances" eroded by delays and rework. This erodes confidence.
With strong management and hard work the experience of implementation could be largely unchanged, but in practice implementation suffers as well. This is especially true when the second item kicks in and that is the lack of real management effort to resolve items early. This can be delayed decisions, a bravado to just carry on an hope it will come out in the wash so to speak, or indeed a just a lack of focus from key people.
This means that unknowns are resolved later in the process and the model looks like this and places the majority of the discovery and thus the project pain in implementation.
I wonder how much of this resonates with the reader. For many of the people I have used this with (usually interactively with a whiteboard) it has been something of an "Aha" moment. They start seeing the cause of the discomfort they have experienced and maybe contributed to.
The best way to resolve this is to utilise the experience of change professionals. By all means push them and challenge them, but be aware that a) there are lines beyond which the matters start deteriorating and b) that everyone has a part to play, even if it is about putting in the right effort at the right time.
Trying to rush the early, foundation phases is rarely a good thing.
Keep a good pace, show progress and exercise good judgement, while avoiding haste. The irony is that in the project of the model each scenario starts in the same place and ends in the same place, but the journey is very different and can be painful.
I will be interested to know if it makes sense to my readers.
We start with two components of the diagram. The first illustrates the relationship between the level of unknowns and therefore risk to the successful completion of the project and the effort put into resolving them. By effort I am talking about the real thinking, problem solving and decision making needed to illuminate aspects to make them into "knowns", and not just about the number of meetings one attends, reports written or the size of the team assigned to the project. While one has a software bug, its resolution is an unknown and it is a risk. Once you know how to solve it you are almost there and the risk reduced. Once it is solved and proven, then it becomes a "known" and is no longer a risk.
At the beginning of the project we know little or nothing, by definition this is a new endeavour, and we have spent no effort in resolving the unknowns. By the time we reach the end of a successful project we should have put in all the effort we need to and have no "unknowns".
This is illustrated in a pair of stacked graphs like so
Now lets illustrate a project. This is slightly simplistic, but is effective and shows five phases,
- Initiation - ie agreement of the business case, planning, resource acquisition, etc.
- Design - ie working out what the solution needs to be and how it will work
- Build - ie producing everything that is needed to execute the design
- Test - ie check that it all works as it should, alone, together and with the rest of the world
- Implement - ie make it live and part of business as usual going forward
Of course many project plans look more complex than this, but this is a generalised view and works for this illustration.
The duration of each phase will differ for each project, but I assure you that every project will need to go through each, however briefly. For this article and at this stage of the argument each phase has the same duration so please bear with me.
Now in an ideal world some effort will go into resolving items during initiation, at least enough to develop a fair plan of action. A lot more into the design work with more being resolved during the building phase. This would mean that there would be relatively little in the way of issues and rework to come out of testing and virtually nothing during implementation. By implementation pretty much everything is running sweetly.
In this case the graph may look like this
A number of methodologies use formal gateway reviews to control the movement from one phase to the next. This endeavours to capture broad experience, but when poorly applied can in my experience add inappropriate and unnecessary rigour and actually detract from the endeavour.
This is something of an ideal illustration. In the real world there are often two compounding issues that impact matters. The first is the push for early action. While it is good to build an early momentum, this is often translated into "ticking things off quickly" and thereby rushing the early stages ie haste.
In the model that looks like this
With strong management and hard work the experience of implementation could be largely unchanged, but in practice implementation suffers as well. This is especially true when the second item kicks in and that is the lack of real management effort to resolve items early. This can be delayed decisions, a bravado to just carry on an hope it will come out in the wash so to speak, or indeed a just a lack of focus from key people.
This means that unknowns are resolved later in the process and the model looks like this and places the majority of the discovery and thus the project pain in implementation.
The best way to resolve this is to utilise the experience of change professionals. By all means push them and challenge them, but be aware that a) there are lines beyond which the matters start deteriorating and b) that everyone has a part to play, even if it is about putting in the right effort at the right time.
Trying to rush the early, foundation phases is rarely a good thing.
Keep a good pace, show progress and exercise good judgement, while avoiding haste. The irony is that in the project of the model each scenario starts in the same place and ends in the same place, but the journey is very different and can be painful.
As a sponsor or project manager, to a large extent the choice is yours!
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