The Well Dressed Gorilla



Image courtesty of http://www.fundraw.com/

 Or- The project manager's uniform

I was madly typing away, on the latest project status report, when Doug rapped on the door to my office (Doug was our HR guy).  Pushing away from my keyboard I smiled up at him, instantly making him the focus of my attention.

"Doug, good to see you please have a seat… Umm" I looked around my office. Every vertical surface, that was not the floor (and then even some of that), was covered by stacks of paperwork, boxes or other "objects de work." I scooped up the pile of papers on the guest chair and deposited them precariously on another pile on my meeting table. "There you go!"

With the meeting table two feet high in boxes and papers, I had to sit back down at my desk. Finding a space small enough to rest my hands I stared across at Doug. "So, when can the candidate start?" I'd had an open req for a new project manager open for three months.  Last week I finally extended an offer to a great candidate.

Doug shifted in his seat, his hand coming up with a single Birkenstock . "Hey, there it is, I was looking for that." I said, as I took it and slipped it back on my bare left foot. 

Free of the physical discomfort Doug glanced down at his moleskin folio. Running his fingers down some notes he then looked up and spoke. "The candidate turned down our offer. She said she was looking for  something a little more…" Doug looked back up at me, "polished."

"Polished?" I asked, "What the heck does that mean?"

Doug's eyes wandered around the my office before he gave a shrug, "I'm not exactly sure, she didn't go into details."

"Well dang," I said "guess we go back to the we'll and start reviewing applications again." Doug gave a non-committal shrug and stood to leave. "Thanks anyway, Doug. Let me know when you've got more resumes to look at." The HR representative didn't say anything as he sidestepped his way out of my office.

I muttered and reached for the donut on my desk. Nearly breaking a tooth on it I realized I'd picked up the, half-eaten, stale donut from last week. Tossing it in the empty garbage can I reached for the powered monstrosity I'd picked up on the way to work today. Sugar spraying from my mouth I grumbled, "More polished! This is a damn dream job! Why the hell did she turn it down?"

It had been a rhetorical question, but the problem with rhetorical questions and the gorilla in the room, is the gorilla usually answers. Whether you want them to or not.

"When looking for the source of a problem, start in ever expanding circles around one self." Hogarth said from the only clean corner of the office. He was using the window glass to tie a tie with a perfectly proper Windsor knot.

"I know the mantra, but this isn't some project failure to analyze. I made a, more than, good offer and she turned it down because the company didn't have enough "polish"? A billion dollar a year firm, considered one of the places to work in the Valley and she turned down the job?"

Hogarth turned around and I noticed he was looking neater than even is typical for him. He flashed me a toothy smile, before responding to my quizzical stare "I'm headed to a lunch with some other professional gorillas, want to look good." Fishing a slim leather bound notepad out of the mess of my table he used it to wave over the office dramatically. "She didn't turn down working for the company because it lacked polish. She turned down working for you. Just look at yourself."

I turned to look at my reflection in my blackened monitor. What I saw made me almost cry. Frantically brushing away a layer of powered sugar, I worried my finger into a hole just below my shoulder. "Oh no, I'm getting a hole in my Spinal Tap t-shirt! This shirt is irreplaceable." Turning back to look at Hogarth, I opened my mouth to continue my complaint. I didn't get a chance though. Hogarth had turned and was none too gently banging his head against the wall. I think he was saying something along the lines of "it's hopeless."

"Hogarth? What?"

My gorilla let up from the head pounding to stare at me as if I had two heads. I almost had to check and make sure I didn't. "Your office looks like a tornado just touched down and you're dressed so badly Jimmy Buffet probably wouldn't let you into Margaritaville."

"Hey now!" I objected, "I look like every engineer in the group."

Hogarth leveled his gaze at me. "You aren't an engineer. You're the project leader. You aren't just representing you, you're representing the entire project."

I stared back him with a blank expression of incomprehension.

Hogarth sighed, "Look. a firefighter wears a flame proof coat and helmet. A cop wears a badge and bullet-proof vest. A politician wears a suit that will look good on camera.  The Pope wears his vestments and miter. Every job has a uniform and you're out of uniform!"

The project manager's uniform:

John F. Kennedy was the last president to wear a top hat at his inauguration.  Even on Wall Street there are places where you can walk through a business and see not a single man in a tie. In Silicon Valley, one of the most famous CEOs is known for wearing a trademark black mock-turtle neck and engineers wearing shorts and flip flips is as common as email spam.

So why the heck am I worried about wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt to work? And why on earth do I care if my desk is messy or not? I mean I get the job done, right?

Yes, but I could be a lot more effective…

I work in Silicon Valley, a place so famous for its casualness, it has almost become a uniform in and of itself. Seeing someone in a tie usually means they are either a C level exec, presenting to the public, or headed to a job interview (and there are some that would argue you don't even need a tie for a job interview anymore). You'd think someplace like the Valley, it wouldn't matter what a good project manager wears.

Can a project manager get the job done in blue jeans and a t-shirt? Sure he can. And a SCUBA diver can swim without fins, but he won't be nearly as effective. Just because you can do something in a certain way does not mean it's the most effective way. My grade schooler is still learning this lesson the hard way. He can shove all his pants into his dresser drawer. But unless he folds them, he has to struggle to open or close the drawer and invariably three or four pair fall out when he tries to pull out a single pair. If he took the time to fold his pants, the drawer would open smoothly and he could just pull one pair of pants from the top.

The same principles apply to the uniform of an effective project manager. Very few places enforce any formal dress code beyond general decency and hygiene (UBS Employees being a notable, recent, exception). That does not mean you shouldn't be very aware of how you look, and how your professional work place looks.  It all boils down to perception. You've probably heard the adage, perception is 9/10s of reality. While it may not really be 9/10s it doesn't really matter, because the perception is it is (Yes we've entered one of those strange cyclical, self-powering conundrums).

I was fortunate to learn this concept very early in my professional career. While still in my early 20's I did temporary work in San Francisco. After a month working in the property management office, for one of the hottest new buildings in the City, I had my contract abruptly cut short. It wasn't a lack of knowledge, I knew their phone system perfectly and had nearly memorized the location of every single tenet. I was the most proficient user of the new fangled PC in the office and I had a native's knowledge of the area. It certainly wasn't my personality. I was bright, cheerful and attentive, early markers of my future success in customer service. It wasn't even because my clothes were unprofessional. I had nice slacks, button down shirts and the whole nine yards.

It was because I didn't iron my clothes…

"Your appearance looks unkempt. This comes off as a lack of caring which translates into not caring for the clients."

Wow…. Ironing? Really?

Less than 10% of human communication is verbal, with the majority of communication being visual in nature. How you look affects how you are perceived and treated. Just take a look at the comedy classic Trading Places. At the start of the movie, Dan Aykroyd's character is treated as a rising star on Wall Street (back in the day when being a banking executive essentially made you American royalty). By the middle of the movie his beggar's clothes led him to be treated as a beggar, despite his Ivy League education.

"The people around me dress in jeans and t-shirts, why can't I?" (Also add to this "Won't I be overdressed?)

"If all the other boys jumped off a cliff, would you?" The time tested Lemming defense. In high tech project management, you are often working with engineers and other, task focused individuals. They may well have a completely different dress style. There are many who argue you need to fit in and I can only say I've had no problem fitting in with the engineers on the teams I've managed. You are the project guide/leader/facilitator. Some even jokingly call project managers, "the grown up in the room." As a project manager you need to interact with all levels of the company and you are often the face of the project. Do you want the face of your million dollar project to be an AC/DC shirt?

As for being overdressed. No one is espousing wearing a tuxedo to work. The general guidelines I've heard from many fellow PMs is to dress at least one notch above your team. This might set the bar a little low if your team regularly wears flip flops and shorts, so I tend to look at what the corner office is wearing and what the team is wearing and seek a middle ground.

"Yeah, but I can dress up when I need to. Why do it all the time?"

You can never redo a first impression. Is today the day the head of your division pops into your boss's staff meeting? The archetypal American Mom has oft been quoted, "Always wear a clean pair of underwear, you never know what's going to happen." Well I don't plan to show my underwear to the CEO,  but I'd rather not meet him wearing my Rodney Atkins concert shirt.

"What about Steve Jobs? You mentioned Steve Jobs. He always wears a black mock-turtle neck."

And he's Steve Jobs. I bet you that Jobs wore a suit and tie many a time in his early days. Before he was the oracle of Apple, he was just another Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He can get away with the casual black  now because he's become an icon. When you run one of the the biggest software companies in the world, you set your own rules. Exceptions don't make the rules, exceptions define the rules by what they are not. A colleague of mine told me a story of a man, at a very straight laced company, who'd gotten his dog certified as a service animal under the heading "psychological support." It reportedly helped him to stay calm and unstressed. Sure you could probably make this happen and even if it were a legitimate aid, I'm not sure I'd ever want to do it. Unless you are a Steve Jobs, being the exception makes you stand out in a not good way.

My own dress code:

As a project manager and Silicon Valley professional I've developed a personal dress code over the last twenty years. (Though no small amount of credit goes to my, wonderful, wife who has the good fashion sense to know if that particular belt looks good or looks cheep and other vital fashion things I'm a stranger too.)

Disclaimer 1: I am in no way saying this is the only way to dress. In some jobs I would probably be over dressed (and in some I'd be underdressed).  This is just what has worked for me.

Disclaimer 2: Ladies, my sincere apologies, these are guy centric. Some stuff does apply (particularly if wearing male influenced fashions) but this isn't your example guide. I do recommend Manager-Tools for this though. They have a couple of podcasts that talk about professional dress and have reliable women's advice .

• Button down collared or high quality polo shirts: Buttons… 99% of the shirts I wear to work have buttons of some kind. Most of the time I wear solid or basic patterned dress shirts. That said, even a good quality polo shirt (solids or weave patterns only) can be perfectly professional. For me, the polo is my 'dress down' wear.
• Slacks or Dockers: My own style has evolved over time. I used to wear primarily Docker-style pants, mostly because I could iron them myself. I've begun to migrate to the classic black and blue wool slacks because they are more universal and hide wrinkles a lot better so you don't look wilted at the end of the day.
• No blue jeans: Yes, you can have some very nice looking blue jeans and if you only wear them for work, they will probably stay fairly nice. I have many colleagues who wear jeans and they are very effective. For me though, blue jeans are a mark I'm not at work. It may be that it just helps me stay in the right mindset, jeans mean home, slacks mean work. Whatever it is, it works and I don't wear jeans to work.
• Matching Belt and Shoes: One of the things I learned from my wonderful spouse, if you're going to wear brown shoes, wear a brown belt. Something I'm still getting the hang of myself is gold vs silver buckles, and how they change based on the color of the shirt/pants you wear. (Yes, this means no tennis shoes. And no complaints on comfort, I have dress shoes that are more comfortable that the best running shoe.)
• Wear a T-shirt: Dress shirts were designed to be wore with a t-shirt. The t-shirt gives a neutral canvas for light colored shirts (Ever seen a man wearing a white dress shirt and you could see how much back hair he had?). T-shirts absorb sweat, preventing unsightly arm pit stains. Finally they cover your chest. If you're not going to wear a tie, then your chest shows a lot more. Even a v-neck (my preference) gives you a professional edge in your appearance.
• Calf Length Socks: Took me a long time to learn this. Unless you never move your legs, if you don't wear socks that go up to mid-calf, then you will show off your leg. It seems trivial, but if you're wearing black socks, black shoes and black pants and you cross your leg to show off screaming white legs, people are drawn to them like a bad accident on the freeway. (okay I'm of Northern European ancestry, others of you may not be as impacted).
• Shave (yes, the neck too) and keep groomed: I'm not espousing being clean shaven. My own profile photo shows my preference for facial hair. It also shows someone who keeps his beard closely trimmed. This goes for the neck as well. If it looks like you have a fur blanket growing out of your collar, its like the white leg surrounded by black clothes, it draws the eye.
• Wear a watch: I give a lot of effective reasons for wearing a watch in a recent blog. For men, a watch is also one of the few accessories you can wear. A nice watch is another way to project a professional appearance. For this reason I espouse analog watches. There are some really nice digital watches, but they are like Steve Jobs, the exception. Analog watches are classic and professional.
• Dress Up for Presentations: If you are going to be making a major presentation, then dress up a notch. Manager-Tools has great advice for this and I've followed it to great effect myself.

How you dress effects people's perceptions of you. Perception effects how people react to you. People's reactions to you effect how effective you are.

The Professional Office Space:

The blog is already running long, so I'll just add that much the same rules apply to your professional work space. Following the iPhone mantra or there's an App for that, there is an Manager Tools podcast for this, where they discuss an effective professional work space. For me its mostly about clutter and neatness. If your office has more paper in it than you have hair, then you probably need to clean it (yeah we balding people have to keep neater offices).  Personalization is fine, but having more knick knacks then you do pens could be a sign of clutter.

Keep your appearance and office space professional, and keep being effective.

Joel Bancroft-Connors

The Gorilla Project Manager

Want me to talk to your gorilla? Send me an email

You can follow me on twitter, @JBC_PMP

Who is Hogarth? Read Blog 001 to find out all about my personal gorilla.

Wake up and smell the gorilla

Or: Finding my own business philosophy on project management (and other business management)

The training room was packed. Nearly everyone from the department was there and we were all interested to know what the all hands meeting was about. Things were going really good. The company was doing great. We'd gotten past the uber release of the year and were all breathing a sigh of relief. My job might not have been exciting or "filled with growth opportunity" but it was nice and safe.

Then boss of all the bosses in the room stepped up to speak and we all settled into quiet, ears listening.

I know he said other things, but somehow everything he said was lost in an unrelenting roar of six words as they repeated in my head, over and over again. "Your services are no longer required."

My jaw dropped. That's okay though, the floor had fallen out from under me and my jaw was just trying to keep up with the rest of my body. What happened? This was a safe job! How did I miss the writing on the wall, I mean there's always writing on the wall. Isn't there?

"Of course there is." I turned to look for the source of the voice. I didn't recognize it, but the voice was familiar somehow. It was almost like I should know and was just having amnesia.

"Selective amnesia, sure I'll give you that." The voice was attached to two rather large, extremely hairy feet. Said feet were propped up on the table next to me. Following the feet back up the equally hairy legs I was eventually greeted by the visage of a 900 pound gorilla.

"What the hell are you?" Not exactly the most sane response to meeting a talking gorilla but I can't imagine Elwood P. Dowd handled meeting Harvey much better.

"I'm your fairy career gorilla." He grinned, showing a mouthful of blindingly white teeth. "Well technically I'm your 'So blindingly obvious you can't avoid it' combined with 'That problem you know is there but would rather ignore gorilla.' Course you could just call me Hogarth, that's my name."

"I must be hallucinating. Or maybe this is just a bad dream. I've been under a lot of stress lately, this is just stress giving me bad dreams. Yeah, that's the ticke…"

Smack!

I think I've mentioned before how unnerving it is to be smacked by a figment of your imagination. The first time was no less so. And it's damn  hard to ignore figment of your imagination that makes you see double. Blinking, I looked at the fuzzy image of two gorillas. "How long have you been sitting there?"

Hogarth folded his ample hands over his chest and spoke serenely, "I have always been here, you just were not prepared to see me."

"How the hell can you miss a 900 pound gorilla in the room?" I asked in complete disbelief.

Hogarth's reply was to wave about the room. All about me were faces in shock, disbelief and sadness. HR Minions, their dislike of their own job right then evident on their faces, moved about the recently dispossessed like clerics ministering to their flock. But no one paid any attention to Hogarth. "People see what they want to see, they understand what they want to understand."

"To truly understand the source of a problem, one must be prepared to look for it in ever increasing circles about oneself"*

*This quote is paraphrased from Mark Horstman

And so was my "aha moment", my "game changer", my "Waterloo". Or in normal speak, it was getting laid off from this "safe" job that finally made me stick my head up over the cube wall and look around. 

In the days right after the event I went through the normal five cycles of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. It was with acceptance that I found out something fundamental. Something that changed how I looked at everything. With acceptance I gained the realization that getting laid off was the best thing that could have happened to my career. I felt like that guy in the romance comedy movie. You know, the one who's in love with the super perfect, if not a little boring, woman and is devastated when she leaves him, only to realize his best friend has been the girl of his dreams all along? Being shaken from the safety of my job made me realize how much I was to blame for where I was.

For some of us, it takes a two by four to the head to see the blindingly obvious. My two by four was being laid off and what I ended up seeing was Hogarth. Okay, I didn't really see a 900 pound gorilla, but what I did see were things that had been right in front of my face all along and I was too focused, blind or in denial to notice.

And so I began to make the changes to take control of my career. At first it was the absorption of knowledge I'd ignored for so long. Reading books I'd long owned, long had looking impressive on my office shelf and had never read. Checking in with the real world and what was going on. And discovering new voices that spoke words of common sense, words I'd been deaf to before.

And then I began to realize I had most everything I needed to take charge of my career. I learned enough to see that I already knew how to be more than what I was. I started to understand I already had a set of principles, a personal business philosophy. I just needed to start following my own inner gorilla.

Over the last two years I've put to writing my own guiding business philosophy. Covey might call it a mission statement, Agile calls them values and Manager Tools just calls it being Effective. They are still a work in progress, but they color my daily work and the blogs I write here. 

The one caveat I should give is that this isn't anything new or profound. This isn't rocket science, or as the fine gentlemen at Manager Tools like to say "Management is boring, but it is effective." I'm not the guru of a new world order, I've just put some common sense into a coherent form and am doing my best to follow my own guidance.

The Gorilla Philosophy:

1- People, not projects

2- It's all about communication

3- Process is a tool, not a roadblock (corollary, there is no, one, right way)

4- Everything leads back to the Customer (Stakeholder, End User, etc.)

Stick your head up and look around, is there a gorilla waiting to talk to you?

Joel Bancroft-Connors

The Gorilla Project Manager

Want me to talk to your gorilla? Send me an email

You can follow me on twitter, @JBC_PMP

Who is Hogarth? Read Blog 001 to find out all about my personal gorilla.

It's 3:30, do you know where your gorilla is?

We were really cranking through the PowerPoint. I was so energized. We were finally making some honest to goodness progress on the project plan and I had some glimmer of hope that we'd make the next milestone.

All of a sudden Jake looks down at his phone. His face soured for a second and then he quickly shut his computer. "I've got to go to another meeting."

Another meeting? I started to panic, but we were making so much headway! We had a great agenda and we were plowing through it. And besides, I'd scheduled this meeting weeks in advance and everyone knew just how important it was. Why was he leaving early?

Then Bob glanced at his phone, tapped a couple of keys and stood up. "Yeah, I'm late for a client meeting. Gotta run."

Sigh… I was used to Bob texting in the meeting, but again this was scheduled! He knew it was scheduled.

Sue and Carlos started packing up their gear as well. No…

What was happening?

Hogarth leaned forward. His large size meant he could easily sit in a chair on the wall and still whisper into my ear. "Maybe you should check the time?" he offered.

The time? Wait, what? I looked down in the right corner of my computer screen… dang, in PowerPoint slide mode you can't see your task bar, no clock. I looked up on the wall. Oh, right. The clock in this room was missing. Finally I dug into my back pocket to dredge out my iPhone.

3:05! Five minutes over? How did we get to be five minutes over? I had an agenda!!

Hogarth was there to offer his "helpful" advice. "Maybe a watch would help?"

I looked down at my bare wrist… "A watch? How 20th century, I've got an iPhone and a computer."

He began to casually peal a banana, "How's that working out for you?"

A Wrist Watch? A Wall Clock? Really?

It's the digital age. I've got a clock in my car, a clock on my computer, a clock in my iPhone, a clock on the desk phone. There are clocks in almost every piece of technology out there. So why then do we need wrist watches and wall clocks anymore?

Why indeed…

Perception and Effectiveness

I have talked about Effectiveness many times, you can read an entire blog on it here. And Perception is really just another aspect of effectiveness. If perception is off, then you can't be fully effective.  So it can be said that perception is effectiveness.

So why isn't my iPhone effective? It does everything I need!

Efficiency is not always effective. The iPhone (or any other smart phone) is a wonderful tool and it is not unlike my own mantra of a $200 tool box over a $1000 dollar screwdriver. And while the iPhone can do everything, it is sometimes like trying to use a Swiss Army knife the size of a loaf of bread to screw together a set of eyeglasses, big and cumbersome. Or in the iPhone's case, it is the perception that is an issue. The toolbox is better than the platinum screwdriver, but you have to take tools out of the toolbox to be effective.

Look from the outside. You see someone pulls their phone from their pocket. They do something with it, and then they put it back. What did they just do? There in lies the problem. When you can do any of a thousand things, people may well assume he's doing something other than checking the time. "Did he just get a text message from Bob? I knew Bob didn't like me." Much like in the "I can see you Gorilla", people typically will assume you are doing something not productive when you are fiddling with your phone. This  isn't just about being in meetings. A wrist watch may be a single tasker device and thus not "efficient", but it is a highly effective device. When you look at it, people know exactly what you are doing. It is incredibly easy to use as well. Sure, your cell phone is on the table and you just have to push a button. Your watch is on your wrist, just roll your arm two inches and look down, simple.

An analog wall clocks serves an equal value, especially in meetings. If you run an effective meeting, you have a time boxed agenda. Each item starts at a specific time. That wall clock makes it easy for everyone to know what time it is. Post the agenda right next to it and people can see exactly where the meeting is.

Everyone has a computer, they all know what time it is!

 In an ideal world, only the presenter would have a laptop. Of course we don't live in an ideal world and most folks will have their own laptop, so why not just have everyone use the clock on the screen? Is their computer's time correct? Can they see the clock with the stuff on their screen? Do they look at the clock? Manager Tools also pointed out that a digital clock can lead to a disassociation with time passage. You look at the clock and it say 1:30. That's a single snapshot in time. You look at a wall clock and you can see a visual representation of how much time is left, is passing, has passed.

My advice

Wear a watch: It's a highly effective tool. People know exactly what you are doing when you look at it. An added bonus is the watch can help to improve your overall appearance and looking professional is effective.

Own a wall clock: I have my own clock. I take it with me to any meeting where I'm not 100% sure the wall clock works and is easily visible (If the clock is on one wall and the projection screen on the opposite wall, people have to turn around to see the time). Fashion up a little stand for it and place it at the end of the table.

Keep you phone in your pocket: Put it on stun and leave it in your pocket. Remove the temptation to check it .

No computers in the meeting: I already referred to the "I can see you Gorilla", but it bears repeating. Recently it was reported that the head of Google declared no more laptops in his meetings. If the uber technology head of Google sees the value of leaving the laptop home, maybe there is something to this thing…

Stay on time, stay effective:

Joel Bancroft-Connors

The Gorilla Project Manager

Want me to talk to your gorilla? Send me an email

You can follow me on twitter, @JBC_PMP

Who is Hogarth? Read Blog 001 to find out all about my personal gorilla.

The gorilla in the forest, through the trees

"Man! Did you see that pass, it was sweet!"

"Apparently the team's chopper had a malfunction, the explosion was the scuttling charges."

I wound my way through the incomprehensible hallway conversations, making for my desk and the incredibly long to do list waiting for me.

"Hey!" Bob called out to me. "Some speech, wasn't it?"

I gave a half nod and walked faster.  "Speech?" What the heck was he talking about?

I settled into my desk chair, just in time for Molly to wander into my cube. "So you thinking about applying for that Agile certification?" Molly was a project manager over in the IT organization and she loved to talk project management shop. I just wish I knew what she was talking about half the time.

"Uh, not sure. What do you think?" I asked.

She gave a shrug. "Dunno, Tobias Mayer certainly has panned it. Not surprising though, he's not big on traditional PM. Rory Corkle wrote a good blog on why he's behind it, but I think he's going to make money training so not sure if he's unbiased."

"Tobias, Corkle? What the heck is she talking about?" I asked myself. Thoroughly lost I shrugged and gave what I hoped was an interested answer. "Tough call."

She cocked her head to the side, giving me that same look she always seemed to give me. She said something pleasant and wandered off. Supposedly Molly is a big information junkie, but I don't think I've ever had a conversation that lasted more than a couple minutes. Guess she doesn't know as much as folks think.

I turned back to my computer, way to much to do on this proje...

THWAPPPP!

"Ow!" I yelped. Grabbing the back of my head, I spun around. "Hogarth! What the heck was that fore?"

Hogarth grunted and glared at me. "For someone so smart, you sure are thick."

"What?"

"Do you have any clue what's going on around you?"

I sat up straight, offended at his question. "Of course I do. Quality just finished sanity on build 42. Bob's working on a change order for support of the new MacroFirm browser. And the prewire for the design review went off without a hitch. This project is going great!"

Hogarth waved a freshly peeled banana at me. "There is more to the world than the project, you know that?"

"No, there's not. If I don't get this project out on time, I lose my bonus. Heck, the way things are going I might get a pink slip. If its not the project, then I don't care.."

Spwap, spwap…. The sound of a banana peel smacking across my cheeks was strange to my ears. Fortunately the peel didn't hurt that much.

"You need to care," said Hogarth. "For example, Jake is a rabid Sharks fan. Did you know they were in the playoffs and if the Sharks win he'll probably take a couple days off?" He pointed the direction Molly had gone, "Molly just got a cold recruitment call from someone she met at the last PM Chapter meeting. Seems he was impressed with her grasp of how the recent changes in Agile are impacting the business bottom line. Oh and the most notorious terrorist in the world was killed, Bob was talking about the President's speech on that."

"Why would the CEO being talking about a dead terrorist?"

THWAPPP!

"You are hopeless!" Hogarth growled. "It doesn't matter if you are the best damn Gantt chart master in the world, if you don't know what's going on in the world you won't stay relevant and won't be able to communicate with your co-workers!"

Right then one of my co-workers poked my head into my cube. "Hey, some of us are headed to In and Out Burger* for lunch. Want to come?"

"Is that a new burger place?" I asked.

THWAPPP!

*- In and Out burger is a popular fast food restaurant in the southwestern portion of the United States. It has been around for several decades.

We work forty or more hours a week. During the work day if we don't look insanely busy, people wonder why we're not working hard enough. When we get home, most of us are dog tired and just want to collapse on the couch.

And now we're supposed to take time to pay attention to world? Okay, so I'll catch the evening news headlines. I can do that from the couch. What more do I need to do?

I have a friend and fellow project manager. He had worked for eighteen straight years, most of that at one company. He'd not had to look for a job in all that time. When he did change jobs, the new job found him. In that time he never thought about looking for work, never factored that into something he needed to stay current.

So when he found himself out of work, in 2009, he suddenly discovered he was completely out of touch with how job hunting worked now. The last time he'd updated his resume, it was expected that you put your mailing address on it. When was the last time you put your mailing address on your resume?

I don't follow sports that much. Never been much of an interest to me. Sure, if the local team makes it to the playoffs, I'll turn into a loyal fan (Go Giants). But once the World Series is over I'm back to my normal indifference. At one of my prior companies, the guy down the hall from me was a rabid Giants fan (US Baseball). If I wanted to relate to him, I had to at least understand the basic language of baseball. If I didn't I wouldn't have understood half his explanations. "Oh that project is a base hit." (Translation- "That's easy to do, won't take much effort").

Ever come into the office, only to discover the company you work for is now owned by some holding company in India? Stealth acquisitions are not unheard of, but most of the time you can see change in the wind, if you just pay attention to your company in the news.

Did you hear about the new PMI test standards? Yeah, you have to stand on your head when you take the test. (Okay, not really. But if you don't keep up on the PM community how would you know?)

It comes back to effectiveness. When communication is about what the listener does, you need to communicate in their language. To do that, you have to make an effort. If you come to work everyday, go to your cube, do you job and then go home, nothing more, well you're not going to be effective. It doesn't matter if you're the best project manager in the world, master of the Gantt chart, queen of risk analysis. If you can't communicate effectively then you fail.

I learned this lesson the hard way. The best thing that ever happened to me, was getting laid off when I least expected to be. It challenged my assumptions. It woke me up and it caused me to take a second look at things. If something as obvious as that layoff could catch me by surprise, then what else was I missing? It was this moment, when I realized the huge forest of my career was made up of thousands of individual trees. Being laid off set me on the path I am on now. As I looked back on my career I started to realize just how many mistakes I'd made.

And not staying current has been one of the biggest. I used to not grasp that at least knowing if the local sports teams were winning more than they were losing would be useful to my career. Who cares if there are layoffs on Wall Street? That doesn't impact me in Silicon Valley, right?

So what do I do?:

I don't work any less hours, but I do make my non-work my time more effective.

Stay up on Current Events: Manager Tools hands down recommends reading the Wall Street Journal. Excellent advice but not something I could take myself. With a two hour commute I can't read. Fortunately we now live in an age of information overload. You can stay current very easily.

Podcasts are you friends: There is a podcast for darn near anything you need. Below I give an example of what I follow. The important point here is you would be surprised how much "down time" you have when you can listen to something.

 Walking the dog, Using the Stairmaster, driving to work, walking at lunch, etc. You may not have the time to sit down with the WSJ (or other print publication), but few of us don't have time in the day when we can listen.

I've recently started using the Stitcher Radio iPhone app (also available for the Android). This has made podcasts even easier. I don't have to worry if I synced my phone, I just stream the podcasts I follow. For most of my daily or short podcasts I use Stitcher. For weekly or longer podcasts I still use iTunes.

My Podcasts:

Some of these keep me up on current news. Some of these keep me up on interesting trends.  Some (like Dinner Party Download), give me conversation starters.

APM Marketplace (daily)

APM Marketplace Morning Report(daily)

NPR Hourly News Summary (daily)

APM Marketplace Tech Report (daily)

Wall Street Journal What's News (daily)

APM: The Dinner Party Download (weekly)

Freakonomics Radio (weekly)

BBC Click Radio (weekly)

Quick and Dirty Tips Podcasts: Grammar Girl, Get it Done Guy, Legal Lad, Money Girl and The Public Speaker (weekly)

Manager Tools (weekly)

Career Tools (weekly)

NPR Wait, Wait, Don't tell me (weekly)

60 Minutes (weekly)

The Project Management Podcast (Bi-Monthly)

The Cranky Middle Manager (weekly)

Stay up current on your industry: Things change, even in the most stagnant industry things will change. People change, as well, a lot more often. You need to know what is going on, who is saying what and why. You don't have to be an expert, but you should at least have an idea.

RSS Feeds- I use Google Reader to follow several PM and Management blogs. I try and read it twice a week. If I fall behind, I don't kick myself and I don't let it keep me from reading. If I'm really behind, I mark it all read and try better next week.

Forums/Discussion Groups- There are a wealth of forums on every industry. LinkedIn alone is a great resource. Read and participate! Same rules as the RSS feeds. Don't feel you have to read it all. On a bad week, I'll not even touch them, but I always come back to them. In addition to the many project management related LinkedIn groups, I highly recommend the project management board on stack exchange.

Stay current with your network and peers: If you never leave your cube, you'll never meet your next boss. Staying current with your peers and professional network is vital. If I get a request for help from two people, one I haven't spoken to in ten years and one I just saw at a breakfast meeting last week, who am I more likely to help? You don't have to even leave your cube! My two tips:

Networking Events: Here in Silicon Valley, the PMI chapter hosts several morning and evening events each month. Beyond that there are dozens of relevant groups on Meetup.com. Even if your PMI chapter doesn't do this, or you don't have Meetup events around you, there are people meeting and talking. Find them and meet with them. I attend PMI events as well as local Agile related events. Oh and I'm part of my local PTA. Yes, the PTA. A good chunk of my fellow parents are also professionals in the valley and we have a lot to talk about.

Send an emai!: The easiest way to stay current. Go through your address book (or LinkedIn contacts) and set yourself a reminder. One person a day, send an email. Just drop a line, ask how they are doing, share something you learned, etc. At a loss for words? Check their LinkedIn profile. Nine times out of ten, they'll be something there to talk about.

So the next time you walk down the hall and hear "What a pass," know if they are talking about the latest hockey game or the latest football game. When someone asks about the latest PMI certification respond with, "yeah I read a great blog about that, made me type up one in response."

Stay current, stay effective.

Joel Bancroft-Connors

The Gorilla Project Manager

Want me to talk to your gorilla? Send me an email

You can follow me on twitter, @JBC_PMP

Who is Hogarth? Read Blog 001 to find out all about my personal gorilla.

Armchair gorilla

Note: For new Gorilla Blogs, head over to The Gorilla Coach

- Or walk a mile in the gorilla's shoes

This blog inspired by Tobias Meyer's recent blog "Scrum is not Project Management"

Normally I don't let Hogarth follow me home. There are limits and that's just one of them. The thought of an 800 pound gorilla on my couch is a terrifying one. And then there is what he does to the refrigerator. Did I mention gorilla hair on the white carpet? But it was the Superbowl and I had a moment of weakness.

"Come on! You call that a pass? My mother can throw better than that." I angrily waved at the TV while speaking through a mouthful of Dorritos. "Can you believe this guy, Hogarth? That play had blitz written all over it. I swear even a deaf bat could have seen it."

Hogarth looked at the dried banana chip poised to be popped into his mouth, then looked at me, then looked back to the chip. Sighing he lowered the chip and gave me a reproachful look.

"How much football have you played?" He asked.

I looked aghast, "Me? Last time I played footbal, it was with flags and I was still too young to vote."

Hogarth gave a sage nod. "I see. I bet you didn't even stay in a Holiday In Express last night."

It was my turn to sigh. "Okay, okay, I get the point. Not only am I not there, but I'm not a quarterback, have never been a quarterback and don't have the first clue how to be a real quarterback." I shook my head, "I'm sitting here trying to second guess the expert. Talk about stupid."

Hogarth nodded again. And then he spoke, his words breaking the 4th wall and my own train of thought. "So why are you trying so hard to prove Tobias wrong?"

I turned to stare at Hogarth my mouth agape. No sound came forth despite the repeated opening and closing of my bass like mouth.

Why indeed?

I make my living doing a job that typically has the job title of "Project Manager" or "Program Manager." Given that, it may be understandable to you that my emotional reaction to Tobias' blog was to disagree.  I certainly did this initially. The first few comments I thought about leaving to his blog were much less reasoned than what I ended up posting.

And then, much like my revelation in "A Project Manager's Poker Hand," I came to a realization that I was trying to impose my own value on someone else. Worse yet, my value was based purely on emotional reaction, where as the opinion espoused by Tobias was based on subject matter expertise.

Yes, I have Scrum training, I've studied Scrum and I've even incorporated some Scrum concepts into product development efforts I've been involved in. But I am most certainly not a Scrum expert. I've never worked on a classic Scrum team and I can't speak from first hand experience.

Tobias on the other hand has. He is a recognized expert on Scrum teams and Scrum development. Without my own "traditional" Scrum experiences, I have to put faith and trust on Tobias speaking from that expertise.  I don't know enough about a straight Scrum project to know if a "traditional" project manager would bring any value. I certainly hope to learn and understand more as I delve into the Agile philosophy, but for now I have to take Tobias at his word. Just as the Product Owner must trust the teams estimates, I should trust Tobias' expertise.

So as the saying goes, "Don't judge another, until you've walked a mile in their shoes."

All right, so Scrum is not Project Management.

What is project management then?

It was something of a wake up call to read some of the very acerbic comments posted both in Tobias' blog and Ken Schwaber's blog that inspired Tobias' blog (Yes I'm a response to a response). That people think project management is an evil tool of "corporate" or an "idea whose time has passed," was not something to cross my mind. Even Ken's own words had me blinking in confusion.

"We have found that the role of the project manager is counterproductive in complex, creative work. The project manager’s thinking, as represented by the project plan, constrains the creativity and intelligence of everyone else on the project to that of the plan, rather than engaging everyone’s intelligence to best solve the problems."

"Wow, that's not the project management I know" was my initial thought. I certainly have never felt I was stifling creativity or constraining anyone's intelligence. I was an art major in college and write science fiction as a hobby, not exactly what I would think of as an oppressive personality. Yet, the comments posted certainly had me wondering. I had to check myself in the mirror and make sure I wasn't wearing a black mask and breathing funny. <Darth Vader voice> You underestimate the power of project management.</voice>

So before I accepted my role in the dark side of corporate america, I decided to look for other definitions.

PMI's PMBoK defines project management as:

"Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements."

And they define a project as:

"A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. "

Okay, so not the most evocative words ever written. And I can already see issues with the definition of a project and the normal evolution of software. When version 1.0 ships, the team has usually already begun on version 1.1. Is the project the software as a whole or just v1.0. What is "done"?

Wikipedia, font of all knowledge, real, imagined and inaccurate, defines project management as:

"Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives."

And Wiki defines a project as:

"A project in business and science is a collaborative enterprise, frequently involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim."

Okay, so neither source's definition is going to make a kid say "Daddy, I want to be a project manager when I grow up." And honestly, neither source really describes what it is I do in my day to day job.

Certainly I spend time organizing and planning. I've both helped develop goals and objectives for a project and served as a gatekeeper to ask if we'd met them. Goodness knows I have built a lot of knowledge, practiced a lot of skills and developed a big old toolbox of techniques. But I don't think that defines what I do in my job or why my boss keeps paying me to do that job.

I know some folks think of project management as the "Owner" of a project. I've known project managers who "owned" the project. They were the almighty power and controlled the budget, the people, the project and final deliverables. This does still happen, but at least in the high tech firms I've worked for, this is less and less common. The guy in charge of building a bridge is a project manager and also the head engineer, this guy is the "owner." A guy managing a software team doing an IT integration project is not the "owner". The team all report to functional managers and the guy managing is more like the cat herder (We won't go into the myth today).

So what is being a PM mean to me?

Well not to sound like a broken record, but I would stat by reaching back to my "The gorilla with too many hats" and "Project Managers are SMES" blogs to start answering this question.

"If you have four engineers working on the project..., adding a fifth one is already starting to hit that wall of diminishing return. If you add a program manager, you can get more productivity from those four engineers, than you would from adding a fifth engineer and expecting one or more of those engineers to also manage the customer relationships, deadlines, certifications, interface with marketing, etc."

"A Project Manager's SME knowledge is in getting a project from inception to launch with in the bounds of the project's constraints and while keeping the team from flying apart like wine glass shattering when it hits the floor."

I've been doing dedicated project/program management for a decade now. In that time I've never had any illusions of being "in charge" of a project. Long before I heard the first utterance of "Agile" or "Scrum" I was practicing servant-leadership.

I am the broom:  Pam Stanton as well as a good friend and fellow project manager, Carl Jones have both used an example that I think speaks to what a 21st century project manager is. They compare our job to that of the game of curling. The curler and the stone are the product/project team and the product being built. The Curler's (team's) goal is to get the stone (product) to the center of target area (release date, objectives, value needed, etc.). The Curler is the main person. Without him you don't have a game. But he is not alone.  The sweepers use brooms to alter the state of the ice in front of the stone.

A good project manager is like a curling sweeper. He gets in front of the product and makes sure there are no impediments (Test equipment was ordered, team has a place to work, external vendor is managed to deliver its dependencies, etc.), but also makes sure those things that have to be done (certifications, compliance, sponsor updates, etc.) get done.

Over the years I've developed my own personal philosophy/methodology to being what I am as a professional:

1. People, not projects
2. It's all about communication
3. Process is a tool, not a roadblock
4. There is no one, right way

I don't know if I'm a traditional project manager or program manager. I know I'm not a traditional scrum master and there isn't even a standard definition of an agile project manager. But at the end of the day I don't think any of that matters. Because what I know I am is:

Effective

Joel Bancroft-Connors

The Gorilla Project Manager

Want me to talk to your gorilla? Send me an email

You can follow me on twitter, @JBC_PMP

Who is Hogarth? Read Blog 001 to find out all about my personal gorilla.