quantmleap

According to Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to gain expertise in performance-based fields. We can conservatively assume that a working year is made up of 220 days (the rest is weekends, holiday and other personal and public leave days). We can further conservatively assume that the actual time spend on gaining specific experience is 6 hours per day (with the remaining time spent on non productive or non experience gaining activities). With that in mind, it would take an average person 7 – 8 years to acquire a sufficient level of proficiency in any performance-based area of expertise.

From a Project Management perspective this is important to consider when making recruitment decisions. To understand why, we should examine the meaning and consequences of achieving the 10,000 hours target.

According to Malcolm Gladwell, spending 10,000 hours on any performance-based vocation is required to make the person an expert in that field. If ‘expert’ represents the end of the scale it can be safely assumed that the level of expertise is subject to a periodical growth, either a linear growth in which every 1,000 hours equate to additional growth of 1/10 of the total expertise, or non linear, in which case every subsequent 1,000 hours contributes exponentially more to the overall experience gained. Either way, recruiting a project manager with an experience of less than 7 – 8 years implies recruiting someone with lower capabilities who is not yet fully proficient in the execution of the complete requirements associated with being a project manager. Assuming a linear progression, recruiting a person with 5 years experience would imply 62% of total proficiency, and similarly, recruiting someone with only 4 years experience would imply 50% of total proficiency, etc. If a more exponential behaviour is assumed then the results will be closer to  40% and 30% respectively.

Some job ads look for junior project managers with 4 or 5 years experience. That’s ok, provided that it is clearly understood that the person hired for the position would not have sufficient experience to fully fulfil any of the pre-requisites required for a fully proficient project manager. It should also be recognized that such a person would need to be monitored and mentored in order to ensure they provide the level of service necessary to do his/her job correctly.

Think about it!

I can’t prove it but my intuition tells me that most project managers will respond affirmatively to the following question:

Do you believe your project will end up being a success?

This intuition of mine is not entirely baseless. Known psychological study have identified, for instance, that 90% of drivers rate themselves as better drivers than the average driver.

In our own project management field, the very fact that a considerable number of projects end up in failure (what ever ‘failure’ actually means) is a clear sign that at least a number of project managers (quite a few in fact) start their project endeavour with some level of delusional hopes.

Now, if you are one of those (just like me) who would be willing to bet right now that their next project will be a successful one, shouldn’t you be pausing for a second and asking yourself why the hell do you think you are special? What makes you think you are different? What special skills and knowledge do you posses that others don’t? Like the driver above, should you not at least consider the possibility that your next project, if nothing else, will be amongst the large number of projects of which we read day in and day out, the ones that end up in some form of failure?

The above behaviour is beautifully explained in Daniel Kahneman’s latest book “Thinking, Fast and Slow“. It is a result of a number of psychological effects, most specifically our inability to integrate our knowledge of known statistics into assessing our own position. The ratio of projects that fail is publicly known to be substantial. This ratio needs to be taken as the base rate, as  the standard against which our own project needs to be measured. Now, whether your project is “special” and should  be awarded a different chance of failure is a matter of more contemplation. Being “special” does not necessarily mean that your chances of success are better, as they could  easily mean that your chances are lower than the standard base rate.

Not considering the industry base rate is a self-inflicted deficiency which we are all subjected to. We all read, hear and discuss failures in other projects but fail miserably to see the implications of this information on our very own project – because we are blind to our own weaknesses and our own ‘average-ness’.

The reasons for our irrational behaviour is explained by Daniel Kahneman as follows:

• “We focus on our goal, anchor on our plan, and neglect relevant base rates, exposing ourselves to the planning fallacy.
• We focus on what we want to do and can do, neglecting the plans and skills of others.
• Both in explaining the past and in predicting the future, we focus on the causal role of skill and neglect the role of luck. We are therefore prone to an illusion of control.
• We focus on what we know and neglect what we do not know, which makes us overly confident in our beliefs.”

The take from this is simple. Although you are special (well, we all are) it is unlikely that your project is outstandingly different to all other projects and you should therefore consider your position vis-a-vis other projects. Given that a large proportion of other projects is likely to fail make sure you adjust your estimates such they present a less optimistic and thus more realistic outcome.

Think about it!

Another action packed year is coming to an end and with it comes the need to reflect.

My biggest satisfaction this year has come from being able to allocate sufficient time to reading. In addition to ‘consuming’ and ‘devouring’ large number of blogs, using my News Reader, I have also managed to squeeze in quite a few ‘real’ books as well. My areas of interest included such diverse topics as Technology, Psychology, Science, Rational Thinking and Philosophy. And yes, Project Management as well.

In my writing I have tried to incorporate all these varying disciplines. My key learning this year has been the importance of and the impact that various psychological effects and biases have on our behaviour. This, in my mind, is a much bigger issue, with more extreme impact, than any other factor affecting project performance. Other parameters (like the implementation of an Earned Value Management System, scope management, etc.) are easily learned (although may be difficult to execute) but do not need cognitive adaptation. Being aware of our own deficiencies is a much more complicated concept to grasp, and more needs to be done to raise the awareness about its impact and consequences.

On this note, more on this will be written next year. In the meantime I would like to wish you all a happy and safe new year and looking forward engaging with you after the holidays.

Cheers,

Shim.

I am often asked by colleagues and friends to explain my motivation behind writing this blog. Their argument is as follows: The blog seems to target topics that touch on project management, but only just. While other project management blogs focus on core issues like PMP Exams, Earned Value Management, Scope Management, etc., my blog could seem to an outside observer as being all over the place. I, too, write about core project management topics, but I also address areas of knowledge that are not necessarily unique to project management but can be applied to project management. Topics that fall into this grey area would include discussions about Social Media, Multi-tasking, Psychological aspects of decision-making, and others.

I had to give this some thought as the answer did not seem to present itself to me intuitively.

The conclusion I reached, which I am personally happy with, is as follows:

While a large number of authors out there write to project managers, I write to people who happen to be project managers. What do I mean in that? Writing a blog is a conversational journey. I want the messages I broadcast via my blog to be universal, as much as practically possible, such that they will appeal to the reader via their own individual personality and not because of their professional orientation. While other writers target the professional side of their readers, and without diminishing the value of their effort, I want to communicate at a personal level that is beyond the profession and therefore much more difficult to disseminate than dry project management functions.

Whether I do a good job or not is not for me to judge but I hope the above clarifies why I do what I do and how it is reflected in my writing.

Think about it!

I wrote before about the organizational and technological drive to increased complexity in organizational processes (see Related Posts section at the end of this post). I have speculated that one of the reasons for the increased complexity is the hope that by introducing ever more robust process the quality of our delivery products will increase.

I call the above process ‘the quality chase’. It is the vicious cycle that goes as follows:

1. Poor quality – results in…
2. Introduce more QA steps – results in…
3. Increased complexity – results in…
4. Still poor quality – results in…
5. Go to 2

The obvious observation, arising from the above, should be that increasing quality is not necessarily the result of more QA. If you want the process to deliver better results you’d better change the process itself. And change does not necessarily mean that the process needs to become more complex. It only means that the process should be adjusted to produce better, more targeted, results.

There is another reason why organizations introduce more processes. Organizations are made up on individuals and these individuals have varying degrees of responsibilities and accountabilities towards the delivery of various products. Most organizations exhibit an unforgiving attitude towards production mistakes. If you made a mistake and this mistake has caused a process to fail you will be named and shamed. The main attribute of any ‘name and shame’ campaign is that it judges people about decision that they should have made, given the benefit of an hindsight. And as observed by Daniel Kahneman in “Thinking, Fast and Slow“, “Because adherence to standard operating procedures is difficult to second-guess, decision makers who expect to have their decisions scrutinized with hindsight are driven to bureaucratic solutions—and to an extreme reluctance to take risks.”

The take from the above discussion is twofold:

1. Fixing a broken process does not necessarily require the introduction of even more process.
2. Increasing bureaucracy to address increased personal risk does not result in reduced process risk

Think about it!

As citizens of the world we have become accustomed to making a mental differentiation between personal, individual commitments to those made by organizations. It is not, I believe, because we expect less of organizations, it is rather that we have learned from bitter experience, that organizations are not subject to the same moral and ethical behaviour we would expect from our fellow-men and women. This is, in some respect, awkward as what is an organization if not a collection of individuals, all (more or less) like you and me – faceless individuals, but still people with families, belief systems and ethical values not different to ours.

There is a wonderful saying by Aldous Huxley that “One of the many reasons for the bewildering and tragic character of human existence is the fact that social organization is at once necessary and fatal. Men are forever creating such organizations for their own convenience and forever finding themselves the victims of their home-made monsters.”

There is a profound message behind this quote as it suggests that, on one hand we are (at least the majority of us) members of some organization, while on the other hand we are the victims of such organizations. Put differently, while our livelihood is dependent on our association with Organizaion A, our quality of life could be severely affected by the behaviour of Organization B. At the same time, should you be employed by Organization B, you might be personally affected by the behaviour and business dealings of Organizaiton A and thus I might be ethically responsible for any wrong doing propagated by my organization.

One of the ways in which organizations express their concern to their customers is a Customer Charter. It, usually, represents their value system within the context of their interaction with you, the customer. it outlines their commitment to serve you in the best possible way, outlining how your welfare is top on their priority list.

I have always thought there is something sinister about Customer Charters as they are inherently misleading and a priori incomplete. Commercial organizations are not about customer service as their raison d’être is to maximize share holders’ value. So when a customer charter makes performance and accessibility promises, what it really is saying is that the organization will honour it’s word on the condition that it will not negatively affect shareholders’ value.

The following commitment is made in the Customer Charter of an Australian Insurance company called AAMI:

“We will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Simply call us on ….”

What does this actually mean? Does it only mean that the company’s switch board will take my call 24 hours a day? What does it tell me about the call wait time, would they answer and respond to my call within 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes? And when I rang AAMI yesterday and was kept on hold for 65 minutes! – does this constitute availability of “24 hours a day, seven days a week“?

And what about the following commitment?

“we will contact you…during the course of the claim to keep you informed“

This is yet another empty commitment as in practice it does not specify what “during the course of the claim” actually means. Does it mean daily, weekly, once off only?

So, without elaborating on this point any further, it is clear that an organizational commitment to its customers is only as good as the contractual Service Level Agreement the organization is willing to commit to, including financial penalties should they not meet their prescribed obligations.

The lesson to me as a consumer is simple. Next time a service provider waves their customer charter in front of me, attempting to show their beautiful customer oriented culture and attitude, I’ll ask them the following two questions:

1. What is your SLA on these commitments? and,
2. What penalty would you pay should you not be able to meet them?

Think about it!

Today’s quote is dedicated to Christopher Hitchens who died yesterday, age 62.

Clearly not about project management but rather much more important thing:

 ”The gods that we’ve made are exactly the gods you’d expect to be made by a species that’s about half a chromosome away from being chimpanzee”

Think about it!

One of the great innovations arising from the use of electronic mail is the ability to group people together into Distribution Lists (DLs). Every company that respects itself institute corporate and departmental distribution lists. There is a DL for the DBA’s and a DL for the Windows Administrators, and a DL for the project team, and a DL for the QA department, for the network engineers, for the various business areas, etc., etc., etc.

DL’s are a great tool when you want to convey information to teams of people. They take away the burden of remembering which individual belongs to which group and allow you to quickly address the many while referring to them as a single addressee.

But there is also a dark side to Distribution Lists. While using DL’s is productive when attempting to distribute information to a collection of individuals, they are less than productive when a call for action is required. Submitting requests to DL can result in a…silence. As no specific individual is asked to respond or take action it can (as quite often occurs) result in no one raising their hand to confirm they will take the responsibility to get the ‘thing’ done.

Although immensely annoying, this phenomenon is hardly surprising. Real time events, as well as psychological lab experiments (see for instance HERE) have clearly shown that individuals will relinquish their natural responsibility in circumstances where they were conscientiously aware that they are part of a group. In a DL scenario, the fact that an e-mail is distributed to a list of individuals, not signaling any one individual specifically, allows the individuals to incorrectly assume that someone else will pick up the call. As the research suggests, not raising one’s hand is not a result of carelessness of lack of motivation but more a psychological phenomenon that inhibits people’s behaviour in a group environment.

The concluding lesson is obvious. If you are required to communicate with teams via a Distribution List make sure your requests for action are directed as specific individuals.

If you don’t follow this rule you will be disappointed but you will have only yourself to blame.

Think about it!

Having thoroughly read (and immensely enjoyed) Daniel Kahneman’s latest book “Thinking, Fast and Slow“, I am beginning to look at things around me with a new set of spectacles. Adopting and being cognizant of some of the effects and biases discussed in his book is not an easy task. Being aware of these, however, is an eye opener as it allows one to ask questions and explore the motives behind perceptions that for a while seemed to be almost intuitive.

One of the effect which heavily influences our judgement is the Availability Effect. In a nutshell, the Availability Heuristic is that element of our decision-making process that gets biased towards information to which we had higher levels of exposure, regardless of whether this information is correct, true or even logical.

Let’s try to build up a hypothetical scenario and look at the impact this scenario can have on the manifestation of the Availability Heuristic, in the context of the discussion surrounding Projects’ Failure Rate.

A project with high public impact is having some sort of problems. These problems reach the public domain via a media publication and as a result get registered in the public awareness as an event worth noting. At this point in time it is only a single record stored in our collective consciousness awaiting to be retrieved should the circumstances require it.

If you are a consultant, project manager or blogger operating in this area you are more likely to make a mental note of the event. You are likely to bookmark the news record or make a note in your diary, marking this for a possible future use.

Sometime later, not much after the original news coverage, another project hits the news. Another project with a relative high public interest is in trouble. It doesn’t matter, for the sake of this discussion, whether the project is indeed in serious problems, whether they are temporary or terminal. Irrespective of the real story, as a new reader, as someone with interest in this industry or this domain, your senses are triggered to smell that something bigger is happening, that a trend is emerging.

If you are a consultant of blogger you are most likely going to embark on a series of analysis reports and blog posts analyzing the emerging trend of failed projects. You will more than likely base your analysis on recent media events and use your power of extrapolation to explain how a serious and worrying trend is emerging.

It is all slippery slope from here on.

The media, ever looking for such news breaks, is more than likely to quote the analysis papers and expand further on the worrying trend. If you are a consultant and blogger you are most likely going to embark on a further round of analysis, based now on recent media articles, dealing with this issue in an ever-growing frequency.

Now the Availability Heuristic is in full motion and the cycle is well on its merry way, simultaneously feeding and being fed by anecdotal and self-serving information.

Throw into the above mix a number of other real or perceived failures and you have a fully self-contained and self-propelled media frenzy, analysing, elaborating and discussing the sorry state of affairs in project world, where most projects are likely to fail.

Fiction? I think not! 

Think about it!

p.s. Can you see a scenario where Agile discussions might be subject to the same effect?

Jerry Bishop from The Higher ED CIO published recently a post titled “Bad Behaviors Negate Good Leadership Traits” in which he discussed some observations having read “Why CEO’s Fail: The 11 Behaviors That Can Derail Your Climb to The Top”.

 Based on the book, Jerry summarises the 11 bad behaviors, as follows:

1. Arrogance: You’re right and everyone else is wrong
2. Melodrama: You always grab the center of attention
3. Volatility: Your mood shifts are sudden and unpredictable
4. Excessive Caution: The next decision you make may be your first
5. Habitual Distrust: You focus on the negative
6. aloofness: You disengage and disconnect
7. Mischievousness: You know that the rules are only suggestions
8. Eccentricity: It’s fun to be different just for the sake of it
9. Passive Resistance: Your silence is misinterpreted as agreement
10. Perfectionism: You get little things right while the big things go wrong
11. Eagerness to Please: You want to win any popularity contest

 What I liked the most about this post is Jerry’s observation that the above reasons of leadership failure are universal in their nature and apply to any leadership position, not just CEOs. It is therefore incumbent on anyone in a leadership role (and that includes Project Managers) to study these factors and take personal corrective or mitigating actions to prevent them from affecting their performance.

Think about it!