One of the most common "diseases" I witness in leaders, teams, and organizations is failure to act in a centered and grounded way. When we fail to ground our actions in reality, we undermine our chances of being successful and increase our chances of getting stuck.
Here's a common example of not grounding action in reality. Several years ago,
I attended a project review for a team of about ten people who were in
the middle or toward the end - we couldn't tell - of a project originally
estimated to take nine months. I was asked to give an assessment of
what was going wrong and make some recommendations to get the project on
track because the project manager had, for the third month in a row,
slipped the schedule by one month.
During the review, the project manager presented a list of all the
tasks that had been completed since the last review and a newly revised
schedule and completion date. There was some discussion of how some
tasks were completed and a discussion of the potential negative impact
of the slipped schedule. Based on this, the project manager was asked
to do some rescheduling, shift people and task assignments around and
pull the date in by two weeks. However, no one talked about where the
project actually was that day. The decisions that were made in this
review weren't centered and grounded in what was actually happening.
Instead, they were a response to what had happened, what might happen,
and the fear of the impact of what might happen.
After the meeting was over I pulled the project manager aside to ask
him some questions. I started by observing, "You presented what
happened in the past month and a prediction for what might happen in
the months to come. Thank you. That was really helpful context. And it
was good to get an update on when you believe the project will finish.
However, I still don't know where the project is today and I can't make
any sound recommendations." He looked at me with some surprise. "What
do you mean? We're 75 days away from completing the project," he said.
"Well, last month you where about 75 days away from completing the
project too and clearly a lot of work has been done in the last month.
You probably aren't in the same place today as you were a month ago. So
where are you today?"
What was happening was that he was inferring where the project is today
by looking at what's happened in the past and what he predicted will
happen in the future. Grounding action in reality means knowing where
the project is today and responding to that, not responding to
predictions. He was making a common mistake of doing
planning only for prediction.
A better use of planning is to create a language for identifying where the project is today. Discussing where the project is
today grounds action in reality and enables successful management of
the project to completion. Planning that creates a language to identify
where the project is today is different than planning that only creates
a prediction for completion. Before we example how planning creates a
language that helps us coordinate action and create value, let's look
at the structure and content of a good project review.
Project reviews are structured conversations in which managing happens. Since
managing happens at multiple levels there, multiple levels of review
are needed. In general, each higher level of review will have
decreasing depth of visibility with increasing breadth of managerial
scope. However, any review can reach any level of depth in the service
of achieving its purpose. For example, reviews by more senior
management will tend toward reviewing exceptions and quality and
process effectiveness rather than status about every task
on every project.
The purposes of all project reviews, regardless of level, are:
- To assess where we are today
- To make decisions about what to do next
- To create commitments that create boundaries of responsibility
- To learn and improve our effectiveness in meeting commitments
This is accomplished by increasing the visibility of commitments, assessments, breakdowns, and resolutions and enabling decision-making. Regardless of level (depth of content discussed), project reviews follow the same basic format.
1. Assess the current state of projects against the plan and process of record
- What has happened since the last review? What is done?
- What is happening now? What is in-process?
- Are we on plan? Are we on process?
- What is our prediction about future milestones?
2. Identify project and process breakdowns (openings for new commitments and actions)
- Where are we not on plan?
- Where are we not on process?
- What commitments have we failed to meet?
- Where are we stuck? Where are we not taking needed action?
3. Learning from our breakdowns (where we are failing to meeting our commitments)
- What was our commitment (including conditions for satisfaction)? Is it still relevant and needed?
- What was our strategy (plan or process) for meeting it?
- What action did we take?
- What happened when we did that? How do we know that that's what happened?
- Do we have all the necessary perspectives on what happened? If not, how can we get them?
- What did we assume that turned our to be false (if anything)?
- What didn't we account for in our plan or process? Where are our blind spots?
- How do our actions and/or strategy need to change, based on what we learned from this breakdown?
4. Taking (new) action
- What new commitments are we establishing? What are the conditions of satisfaction? Who are the customer's of the committed action? Who are the performers of the committed action?
- What has to happen immediately, if anything? (What fires need to be put out?)
- What new action must take place? What is the new and revised plan?
- Who is responsible for what?
- How will the change in plans be communicated? To whom?
- What do we expect to happen by the next review?
Based on
this structure and content of a project review, we can see how central
commitment negotiation is to project planning and tracking.
Best wishes on the success of your next project review.
Take care,
-Steve
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