The Ninety Day Gorilla

[Non-legal mumbo jumbo: This piece is wholly made up based on multiple experiences I've seen and heard over the last 20 years. It does not reflect any actual single event. ]

They say walls have ears. Well they may not have ears, but the rice paper thin walls here means it's hard not to hear the conversation in the next office over.


"Thank you for coming, 'Bob'." shuffle, shuffle, "It's been an interesting four months, I have to say you've tackled this job with an impressive level of vigor."


"Uh oh…" I hear from behind me. I turn around to look at Hogarth. He's perched on the window sill soaking up what little sun makes it through the cloud cover. "That doesn't sound good…" I try to puzzle out what he means by that, in the process missing the next bit of the conversation next door. The raised voice pulls me back to my eavesdropping.


"I don't understand!" 'Bob' voices plaintively " When you hired me, you said you wanted me to shake things up, hit the ground running, get things done. Didn't I do that?"


Long pause, "Yes, you definitely hit the ground running and the Project Meddigo processes will definitely improve delivery time. The problem is, 'Bob', no one wants to work with you, everyone has complained about how you shoved the process through. one of the team went so far as to say if he heard you utter "in my last company" one more time, he was going to shove you out a window…"


I turned to look at Hogarth. He shook his big, black, hairy head, "Ouch."


I nodded in return. Poor 'Bob', he just ran head long into the 90 day Gorilla and it smacked him down, hard.



Ask yourself this, when was the last time you saw a new CEO come into a company and instantly start changing everything? Unless you're Donald Trump or Lee Iacocca, most CEOs won't last long doing that. Almost without fail a new C-Level exec doesn't change a thing in his first three to six months.

It is fundamentally no different for a Project Manager. It doesn't matter if you spent twenty years at HP, at Mid Size Company X, you just joined. Even if you've got friends in the team, you are still a new face, a new change, something to get used to. And in business, first impressions are king.

When you join a new company, or even a new department, those initial few weeks are when you either become part of the team, or forever place yourself on the outside. Some relationship experts say it takes over 600 positive events, to erase a single negative event. So how you first interact with your co-workers, your bosses, your reports, will be pretty much be how you are seen for the remainder of your time in that job.

In a job interview once, I told the interviewer "Virtually any project manager can get virtually any project from point A to point B essentially on time and in scope, once." That "once" is the key. A PM that burns out their team, will be hard pressed to motivate them again. It's the difference between building a team and driving a team. Unless you are a highly paid consultant than you can't really storm the gates to get the job done (and good consultants don't even try to do this). If you do storm the gates, when it is time to do it all over again, the team won't want anything to do with you. A good project manager can get most projects from point A to point B, but then he can do it all over again, with the same people.

I personally believe in the mantra of "Do no harm in your first ninety days." This is your time to listen, to watch, to ask questions, to learn and most importantly, to build trust. You need to build that trust with your new team and one of the best ways to build trust is the listen and ask, intelligent, questions. One way to ask intelligent questions is to "interview" the people you interact with. I've successfully used the ManagerTools PodCast entitled "Jump Starting Internal Customer Relationships." There is an incredible amount of value in sitting down with the people you work with to ask "what can I do to help you?"

I had someone challenge me on this rule recently. They said that if you hadn't made an impact in the first 90 days, then you'd be out. To this I say, there is a difference between "making and impact" and "doing no harm." If you spend your first three months learning, asking questions, finding out how things work, then you've made an impact and you've built trust. And that trust will allow you to have a much greater impact in the next nine months, that overshadows any amount of quick wins you might have gotten in those first 90 days.

You don't start a friendship by telling them how great and wonderful your last friend was, so don't start your job the same way.

On the front lines,
Joel BC
Veteran, the Project Manager wars
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.

Gorilla Documentation- Why did we do this?

I sat back in my chair, trying to determine at what point I had lost all control of the meeting. I mean as a project manager it is pretty important to be in control, so it is doubly so to know at what point you absolutely and without a doubt lost control.


I think it was the moment the Exec asked "Why the hell is unicorn blue?!" (Okay it's not a unicorn and it wasn't blue, but for the sake of this blog it's a unicorn and it's now blue). This was promptly followed by a verbal scramble and near physical scramble. The QA guy looked at the engineering guy, who looked at the product manager, who did the fish out of water routine for a moment. He then launched into a halting rendition on how the unicorn priorities had changed based on competitive market differentiation (Our chief competitor already had a white unicorn and all), but when questioned on details (you know, cost of change, can we charge more, how this would change our market mix, etc) he fumbled with his computer trying to look up the data. At this point I vainly stepped into the fray to meekly say "We reviewed this a couple of months ago and you agreed." To which the Exec replied, "I don't remember that. I wanted it white, change it back."


No, I guess when I really lost control was when the engineering guy helpfully piped up that it would be a four week slip to change back to white. Yes, that's where I lost control.

"You know…" drawled Hogarth from the corner. I turned my head to look at the hulky form of my gorilla. He was sipping on a banana daiquiri without a care in the world. "If you had a Change Control process in place…" he left his sentence unfinished. Not that he really needed to finish it, I was all too aware of the unspoken end of this statement.


Yes, I'd run smack dab into the "We already decided this" gorilla. I tend to call him Deja, as in "Haven't we done this already?"



Change Control is an often forgotten process. Whether you call them Engineering Change Requests, Project Change Requests, replace Request with Order or something else, the process of documenting changes to the project, after the project has been kicked off is often left at the side of the curb of the project management super store.

It can start innocently and well meaning enough, "Oh, we just had the Plan of Record, we'll just update that", or "The schedule slip can't be changed, no point in going through a PCO review", and the best one "It's just a little change."

It's a slippery slope, do you let process paralyze you, slow you down, impede needed change? Or do you dive forward, intent on the end goal and not know exactly what you have when you get there.

How about neither? It's a fine line. Agile's Scrum demonstrates that change is a good thing, you don't want to have a product that isn't what you need when it is finally done. On the opposite side, if you have no clear idea of what the product is, how do you sell it? Even better, how are the poor souls in Customer Support supposed to support it?

I always approach this with a simple concept. I tell my team two key things. First, "Change isn't bad. This isn't about putting a roadblock up to stop change, it's about making sure everyone knows what is happening and what they need to do. The second thing is, "Six months from now, when the CEO asks why the hell it's pink, we can show her why and the reasoning why."

I even use the PCO form to document the undeniable. Our primary source of Widget Goo burned down and the product will be four weeks late as a result. It's not like anyone is going to reject the schedule change PCO for that, right? Right? So I go and fill out the PCO form, document it was a forced approval and file it with the rest.

PCOs are like a breadcrumb trail. They take you from the final product, all the way back to the project contract and show you how you got from a White Unicorn, to a Green Ogre.

And another big this about change control, change isn't a bad thin…

"Ah, ah…" Hogarth piped up. "That's a whole other gorilla."

He's right, change is good is a topic for another day. F
On the front lines,
Joel BC
Veteran, the Project Manager wars
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.

[Non-legal mumbo jumbo: As a reminder, all these tales are either based on a wide amalgam of events over my career or completely made up tales to convey a certain point. None of these blogs represents a specific instance or specific people.]

Lost in Blackberry menus

Hogarth has the day off today. This is just a quick snap shot from the Project Manager wars.

 
 

I've worked in Silicon Valley for a very long time. In that time I have managed to completely avoid ever having to carry a BlackBerry. In fact until last year I avoided any kind of mobile email device. Last year I became an iPhone user at work and have kept using it as a personal device. Never having used a smart phone, I came up to speed on the iPhone in about two days. The interface was easy to understand, the menus were logical, and it was fast to make changes. Two weeks in, I was a pro. I could make my iPhone sit up and do tricks and I started not carrying my laptop around. I had all the data I needed right there on my phone.

 
 

I got a BlackBerry two weeks ago….

 
 

It took me about three days to understand why BlackBerry is still such a power house. It's spent the last fifteen years training its users. I'm two weeks in and the urge to hurl the device across the parking lot comes about twice a day. It does everything but wash the windows, but figuring out how to get it to not vibrate for anything but Calendar reminders is still baffling me. Heck, I even googled it and I'm still confused. If you have been using the BB for years, I'm sure it is all second nature to you. For someone new to the interface, I feel like I'm trying to understand how reverse derivative debt swaps work with a kindergarten level user manual.

 
 

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm six menus into the ring tone preferences and I need to call for a St Bernard rescue dog to lead me out.

 
 

Joel BC

Veteran, the Project Manager wars

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

 
 

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

 
 

The Career Management Gorilla

There I sat, skimming through Monster job listings. "Out of state, not enough pay, under qualified, over qualified.. Ah ha!" Like it was outlined in glowing neon letters, it jumped out at me. Perfect location, good benefits, looked like it would pay just right.

I clicked on the 'apply now' button with eager glee. I browsed to my job hunting folder and found my resume, jbancroftconnors_resume. Smiling ear to ear I moved my mouse over the submit button. And that's when the smell of ripe banana hit me.

"Yur not gonna send that are you?"

Turning in my seat I looked up at Hogarth. "Of course I am. I'm perfect for this job. Heck it even ties into my old art school background."

Waving his half eaten banana at the screen my resident gorilla grunted, "Yeah but your resume doesn't mention that. And look here, the job is asking for someone who's worked with call centers in Ireland."

I grin cheerfully, "Right! And I've worked with Ireland in my last two jobs!"

"And your resume doesn't say that. Aren't you gonna customize it for this job?"

Sigh… The dreaded resume tailoring gorilla. We all know we should do it. Some of us do it, some of us never do it and others agonize for days to make each and every resume just perfectly right. Two things are a given with resume tailoring. 1- It's a good idea. 2- It's time consuming.

Regular exercise is a good idea too, want to know the last time I hit the gym?

Still, Hogarth had a point. I had fallen into the online application rut. I was using a 'good enough' resume and no cover letter. It's a wonder I got any phone calls (okay so to be fair, I was doing the networking thing and writing cover letters, but I was not customizing my resume).

Knowing I was doing it wrong but also being an efficiency minded project manager I sought a better way of doing things.

Enter the "Career Management Document". Full credit goes to Mike and Mark of Manager Tools. Their "Your Resume Stinks!" and "Accomplishments- Connecting your Resume and Interviews" pod casts gave me the idea for this. In these casts Mark Horstman describes how your resume should never be more than a single page, but your list of job accomplishments are not tied to the actual resume. Create a "Career Management" document (CMD) in which you have all the jobs you've worked. Under each job you list all your notable accomplishments, not just the ones that are current. Every three months you go through your CMD and look at all the jobs. Maybe you just got done with an ugly budget process and you remember that ten years ago you had to fix a budget on short notice. So you go back and update that old job with the accomplishment.

Then for every job you apply for, you go through and pick 3-5 accomplishments that make the most sense. Instead of manually crafting every resume, for every job, you take your 'Chinese menu' and pick what works.

Personally I use Mindmanager, from Mindjet to manage my CMD. I've got a Mind Map with bubbles for each of my jobs, career over view and my professional qualifications. I can export it to a word document, cut out what I don't need and bam! I have a tailored resume.

Here's a sample of what it looks like:

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b128/Welshman_BC/CMDTemplate.jpg

So with my career management gorilla appeased, I hit submit on my next great career. And a few months later, I'm very happy with that new job.

If you are interested in a copy of my MindMap template or want a PDF of the template, just send an email.

So until next time, don't forget to talk to your gorilla.

Joel BC

Veteran, the Project Manager wars

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

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

The gorilla with too many hats

"So that said, can you code?"


I look across the interview table. Well okay I look at the telephone, cause I'm in the companies office but the person I'm interviewing with is sitting in his house 20 miles away. But that's another gorilla.


So I look at the phone.


I look down at my resume.


I look at the job description for this job.


Apparently, my interviewer takes my stunned silence for a request for more information. "Cause you see, we're running lean and we need people to do more than one thing. We might have to send you out to do a customer implementation by yourself. So how's your coding?"


Now Hogarth doesn't mind that the guy is on the phone. He's taking advantage of that by taking up the other two chairs in the room. "Welcome to the Teens, dude. If you can't do it all, then you're not good enough. Everyone has to work harder these days. If you can't code, do a balance sheet, fly to Malaysia for the weekend to close a sale and then get back on Monday to make sure the 300 person software roll out is on schedule, then you're no good to them."



Sigh… The "multi-hat gorilla"

Now Hogarth is right, to an extent. 2010 will probably go down as the year of 'do more'. With the global recession we are all being asked to work harder and do more in our jobs. It's part of the downside of the recession and the trend of higher productivity.

I'm all for productivity, but there's a difference between productivity and continuous partial attention. As you might guess, I'm not a fan of the CPA concept. Studies have proven (UCSD Study, MSFT Findings, just to name the first two I Googled) interruptions seriously affect performance. A single 30 second interruption can result in a 15 minute work loss.

I look back at the phone, "I don't code, that's what the engineer is for. My value is in making it so the engineer can focus on his job and not on the surrounding project issues. If you have four engineers working on the project of this size, adding a fifth one is already starting to hit that wall of diminishing return. If you add a dedicated 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."

"Uh huh…." came the reply from the phone. "So you don't code?"

Some gorillas are just better to let be.

There is value in improved productivity and we're doing more with less is the new norm. But all that said, a good, solid, project manager can make a team run more efficiently than just tossing another engineer on the pile. At least that's what Hogarth and I think.

Joel BC
Veteran, the Project Manager wars
Want me to talk to your gorilla? Send me an email