Knowledge Jolt with Jack

Why Plans Fail or It's Your Own Darned Fault

2012-02-02T02:48:32Z

I breezed through Jim Benson's short and informative Why Plans Fail: Cognitive Bias, Decision Making, and Your Business. As you can see from the subtitle, it isn't about blaming someone else for why plans fail. It's about helping us see how our own thinking gets us in this mess.

I have seen many discussions of cognitive biases in popular writing (Gladwell, the Heaths, etc), but those books tend to be much more discursive. I like that Benson has decided to keep the discussion closely limited to cognitive biases connected to planning and managing knowledge work. And that he is drawing from his own experience and that of his client engagements.

I could comment on nearly all of the biases and thinking errors that Benson describes. They are all so evident in things I do every day - and things I see in my interactions with others. His book doesn't try to talk about how to overcome these biases, other than suggesting that there is power in knowing that they exist. That said, knowing about these biases is a starting point to thinking about how to eliminate the effect.

The best example of this is his discussion of the planning fallacy "and its helper apps." Our estimates (predictions, really) are taken as gospel and then we are surprised when they don't come true. Given that, maybe we should be doing a lot less estimating and much more doing. Plan a general direction, move along that path, and then check to see if the wind hasn't blown you off course. Then correct. Plan-Do-Check-Act. Observe-Orient-Decide-Act. Take your pick. But act. Don't drown in trying to be perfect, just get up and get going WITH a commitment to stop and check that you are still heading in the right direction.

Of course, this leads me to my own conflict. I am very comfortable with the idea that we can't predict how long project work will take. It's a core tenant of the Critical Chain Project Management work I've done over 10+ years. When dumping these estimates into plans, the claim goes that people put in all sorts of padding to account for interruptions, multitasking, shifting priorities, Murphy's Law, etc, etc. An element of the CCPM solution is to reduce the padding and create a time buffer for the whole project, so that when anomalies happen, the buffer can absorb the change and the project remains on track.

The problem I find here is that Benson references Hofstadter's Law that says people consistently under-estimate the time it will take them to do something, even if they know they are going to underestimate. If they are underestimating what does this mean for the CCPM crowd? Is there less padding than we think? But the overwhelming evidence from my experience and that of others in CCPM is that project networks are built with significant "extra time" in the individual tasks. I think this may be the source of comments I have seen that suggest project management is a symptom of a larger problem - rather than a solution.

If you are curious, there are over 100 types of cognitive bias listed on Wikipedia. Not all of them are connected to planning - though many could be.

Activity streams emanating from the business

2012-01-30T17:10:58Z

Activity Streams seem to be everywhere. Even business tools are starting to publish them. I wonder if this has implications for how we consume streams?

Most of use know about activity streams from the various social tools we are using that publish some kind of history of updates or statuses: blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, etc. The fun thing about activity streams is that you can mix and match them to your own purposes. Only want the activities of your family, go ahead and bundle those and pay attention to your family news and photos. Only want activities from people on a specific topic? Bundle them. Of course, most of us are used to the firehose of all the updates coming form Twitter or Facebook or the like - essentially unfiltered news from all of your contacts. One thing people have had to learn is that we can't possibly see everything. Just dip your toes into the stream when you have the time / feel like relaxing. But don't expect to see everything. It's not possible, once you get beyond a certain size.

This aspect of being okay with tasting the waters, rather than drinking them all, has me curious about the proliferation of additional activity streams in our world. I think people can (almost) forgive you if you don't see their every written word or photo or Spotify-shared song. But what if your billing system or shop-floor management system starts sharing an activity stream, as discussed in Derek Singleton's The Benefits of Activity Streams in Manufacturing UIs? Does this mean that I must monitor the full history of the activity stream to find out what's going on? Or can I dip my toes from time to time? Of course, the purpose of the activity stream from a system or process is very different from the people-based activity streams of our social tools. These activity streams let you know the health and status of the process. If it's your job to know this, then it is probably something you follow closely. (Of course, if it's your job, maybe you live in the tools, rather than needing an activity stream feeding into a different location.) One of the great things about these kinds of activity streams is that they should be able to live outside of the tool itself - even bundled into a general feed of information that you carry in your pocket. (I'm assuming security and permissions are handled well - the bane of easy access.)

I don't think the idea of activity streams everywhere is brand new. People in the blogging world - those familiar with the technology - have been touting the benefits of "web feeds" (based on RSS or Atom) for many years. That's the underlying technology of activity streams, and the benefits still hold. People and devices and processes can spit out updates in a specific format, and these can be repackaged and filtered and bundled into just about any form or place as needed. And even software / hardware that doesn't have the capability built in can be enhanced with activity feeds. People have written scripts on top of business intelligence engines and even for simple machines that can convert events or data points into a time-stamped activity stream for consumption elsewhere.

[Photo: My own photo, taken in Cascade Park, North Adams, MA, October 2011.]

Organizations Don't Tweet, People Do

2012-01-29T04:20:10Z

I picked up Euan Semple's Organization's Don't Tweet, People Do as soon as it was available and enjoyed it greatly. It helps that I've known Euan and his style for many years now. The idea of letting people be human, rather than corporate automatons resonates throughout his writing. Recommended for anyone seeking to make this change happen - or who wish to participate in it.

Funny enough for a book with this title, the book really isn't about Twitter - or any other specific service. Twitter simply serves as the most familiar vehicle to have a discussion around how we operate in the world of blogging and forums and Twitter and Facebook and all the other social services that are out there. And how we need to operate has been changing for a while - it's just that there have been too many people with a hierarchical or command-and-control mindset to be able to see it.

As I read this book, I saw many connections to other ideas that have been floating through my brain. In this case, I have probably seen Euan blog about many of these topics. For example, I recall him saying versions of, "If you don't trust your people, why have you hired them" several times in the past in relation to the oft-expressed fear that people are going to do something "inappropriate." There were many other connections too.

Leandro Herrero made an observation in his recent book that people often say, "We already do that," in relation to his suggested change management practices. Euan has a similar concern when people say, "Oh, we do digital." There is so much more to it than having an intranet or even turned on the social features. The book is all about making the shift to restoring the human element to running the organization.

Implementing social tools requires patience and a willingness to try things to see where they will go. It's very difficult to do this as a forced march, because it is the people themselves who need to set the direction - they should be pulling to where they need to go. This idea has all sorts of connections to Lean / Agile and the various learning loops (OODA, PDCA, etc). I could also hear similar arguments coming from Stephen Denning (Radical Management) and John Hegel (Pull) around creating the environment and looking for the nuggets.

I happened to listen to a TVO podcast with Clay Shirky discussing his Cognitive Surplus. He articulated something about the "people share too much" complaint that was new to me. It used to be that publicly-available comments were directed at the public: if it is available to anyone, it must be for anyone. This isn't the case anymore: people aren't writing about their lunch for everyone, they are writing for their friends. It just so happens that anyone can read it. Euan makes a similar point. And he talks about the value of seeing the messiness of "thinking in public" (Jim McGee) for developing ideas as well as developing a sense of who people are.

Along with all the connections to other ideas above, I originally discovered Euan through of our shared interest in knowledge management. Many of the comments he peppers throughout the book reminded me of those connections once again. "Knowledge retention" doesn't work by simply sticking documents into a repository - you have to let people share what they know in a context where they know they will be helping - and where others can easily reference and use it again. (And that is definitely NOT in your document management system.) There was also a strong element of the idea of observable work: if people don't know you are doing something, then how can they help you? How will they know you have interest / expertise in that arena?

Euan organized the book for people like me with short bursts of reading time on the commute to and from my new project. It was easy to take in a chapter or three, and not get lost midway through because my ride was coming to an end. And since I've been reading and following Euan for many years on the interwebs, the style and topic were quite familiar. To prove I made it all the way through, here is the main point of the book:

If you are going to say what you thin in public you have to become happy about what you are thinking. If you are not happy about what you are saying, don’t say it and do something about it until you are happy. This is the bottom line message of this book.

And now, having read this, I wonder about a new client. I am working with them on an "operational excellence" basis, so the KM angle isn't part of my relationship with them, but they have setup internal social media tools (SharePoint mySite). It's clear that there isn't a lot of engagement yet, but it will be interesting to see what becomes of it during my time with them.

Do we really need rules?

2012-01-26T14:29:39Z

I see that the FDA and NFL have both published rules / guidelines on how to use social media recently. Really?

We have two articles: FDA issues first social media rules for drug companies and NFL: Players can tweet during Pro Bowl game, not with phones. Both of these seem foolish and a waste of energy. At least the FDA and pharmaceutical companies have a long history of trying to figure out how to say things without over-reaching on claims of efficacy (advertising rules). But now they are telling pharma companies to NOT engage publicly with customers and doctors and others when they ask questions on social media. Shouldn't we want them to engage publicly so that the next person who has the same question can find it, rather than going through the same back-channel to gain the information. Of course, we know how this will work. People already get the information from "non validated" sources online, and they will continue to do so until the FDA and other regulatory agencies open their minds to the idea of companies engaging with their constituencies online. If the companies lie or go too far in their statement, that should be out there too - so that other people can call them on it.

The NFL policy is just silly. It's not that I want players tweeting from their huddles or taunting their oponents after impressive touchdowns. It's just that the NFL should not be making these policies. The coaching staff should tell their players to put their phones away and FOCUS ON THE GAME. That's why they've been hired, and that's what they should be doing. Forcing the teams to buy a purpose-built kiosk for 'net access? You've got to be kidding.

Okay, back to my irregularly scheduled programming.

Why blog?

2012-01-21T21:39:10Z

A friend is setting up a new personal blog (yes, people still do that), and he asked me a few questions about the style and layout. But this got me thinking why it is that blogs are still valuable - at least for me.

Even though I haven't been blogging as much as I would like*, the blog is still the one place where I keep interesting-to-me stuff stored and sorted. I cannot do this with Twitter or Facebook or GooglePlus. Sure I can write long-form stuff on GooglePlus, and I usually get much more interaction there and on Facebook when I have a relevant topic for my followers. But I haven't had much look in finding the materials when I try to remember where I posted it and when I did so. On my blog - it is always in one place, and I can (usually) find it again.

So, I promise to continue blogging stuff that I find interesting. Maybe I'll even find some time to blog again with regularity.

* I haven't been on Twitter, Facebook or GooglePlus with much regularity either. I've a new project that is consuming my time and energy as I learn the ins and outs of the client and what they need. (What they need is different from what they've asked of me.)

[Photo: "x is the new y" by Roo Reynolds]

Good questions tame the overload fairy

2012-01-06T03:14:51Z

Another day, another new-book reference in my blog. This time, it is an American Management Association article on Why You Need to Drink from the Fire Hose. It's a brief interview with Christopher Frank and Paul Magnone, coauthors of the new book Drinking from the Fire Hose: Making Smarter Decisions Without Drowning in Information.

The key to their story seems to be asking good questions, rather than allowing yourself to be overwhelmed with the (possible) flood of information coming to you. Here are their questions, in brief:

What is the essential question?
Where is your customer’s North Star?
Should you believe the squiggly line?
What surprised you?
What does the lighthouse reveal?
Who are your swing voters?
What? So what? Now what? Expose insights.

The gist of these questions is that "information overload" is the wrong statement of the problem. Sure, there is a lot of stuff out there. But if you know what you are looking for - or why you are looking - it is a lot easier to hone in on the right things.

Ask yourself - and your colleagues - some good questions, rather than worry about getting buried in information. Somehow I tie this line of thinking into my own personal effectiveness ideas. It's so easy to get lost in the "stuff" without really knowing why I am there. I think this is one reason so many people get lost in "dealing with email" without ever getting things done. Here are a few more questions that come to mind as I ponder this blog.

How is this (activity, information, meeting, etc.) going to help me answer the question? (Reflecting #1 above.)
If I answer the question, what then?
Do I need to do this right now?
What would be surprising to learn in this context?
Can anyone else help me with this?
How can I make this work better the next time? Should there be a next time?

Take a peak at the article for a little more detail. Or read the book. (And tell me how it is.)

[Photo: "Firehose" by joevans1234]

Nothing is fixed - context matters

2012-01-04T20:55:32Z

Context matters. I've said this for years. And now, Sam Sommers has a new book out that says the same thing. And since it is 2012, he has a brief video promotion that has inspired this post. SITUATIONS MATTER by Sam Sommers - YouTube

The idea that he talks about both makes sense and runs counter to prevailing wisdom. The prevailing wisdom is that people have a fixed way they respond to any situation - their personality. And if you understand their personality, you can then predict (or guess) how they will respond in any given circumstance.

The problem is that this isn't right. How people respond has so much to do with what is going on with them that "personality" is only one element of that. Just think about the last time you ran into screaming children (yours or on a visit to Ikea). Did you get annoyed? Did you just laugh? Something else? Is that the way you respond every time? I know that in my case, I respond differently, depending on all sorts of factors: stress, health, relationships, what you just said to me, etc, etc.

So, what do you do in response? Remember that, just like you, everyone else brings their world with them in your next encounter. What they've been reading, seeing, hearing, doing, not doing - it all creates a context for people that no one can fully know.

Respect your environment

2012-01-03T13:58:41Z

Respect is something our kids are learning in grade school. It's also a good reminder to respect the world around me - it's always providing lessons for me to learn.

Erik Jackson's Forbes column showed up at the top of LinkedIn today, remembering an article (and book) from eight years ago: The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives.

Sydney Finkelstein, the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, published “Why Smart Executives Fail” 8 years ago.

The "anti-habits" discussed here are familiar, but good reminders. The thing that caught my attention, though, is are "warning signs" associated with each of the habits. Specifically, the first habit is "They see themselves and their companies as dominating their environment." And the warning sign? A lack of respect.

Respect for others is something that the elementary school is attempting to impress upon my children. The fact that it needs to be taught suggests that it isn't something that comes naturally - or that it is easily unlearned. If I don't respect the people around me and the environment in which I operate, I stop watching for opportunities to grow. I stop watching for the mistakes that I will inevitably make. Yes, I make mistakes. So do you. So do your colleagues and friends and opponents. It's those mistakes that give me an opportunity to learn and grow and see things from new perspectives.

Without a healthy respect, I start taking on more and more of the anti-habits discussed by Finkelstein.

The why smart executives fail website appears to be a treasure trove of case studies and reference materials on failures of leadership and management. If you are interested in that kind of thing.

[Photo: "failure" by Beat Küng - cool stop action of an incandescent lightbulb failing]

Homo Imitans - The art of social infection

2011-12-23T02:36:05Z

I received a review copy of Leandro Herrero's Homo Imitans: The Art of Social Infection: Viral Change in Action. This is another installment in his series on the Viral Change concept. At heart, it is a unabashed call to people responsible for creating change to stop the stand-and-deliver mode of operation and look to creating the key underlying behaviors that are the desired result.

To create change we have to move people to a new way of acting with each other (behaviors). The concept behind Viral Change is to make those behaviors infection: spread, copy, reinforce, and spread more.

The title comes from the wide body of research that shows how people learn by imitating one another. In particular, it is behaviors that are imitated through an organization or community. There have been a variety of studies that show people with good and bad health behaviors tend to mimic each other. And the same can be found in organization. When people model desired behaviors, these get reinforced by the people around - especially when that reinforcement is in the form of explicit thanks and organizational story telling. Those same good behaviors vanish when they are ignored or opposing behaviors are rewarded. Classic example: asking people to be collaborative (whatever that means) but rewarding people for individual / heroic efforts.

The book and writing are in Herrero's usual casual and comfortable style. I thought it was more discursive than previous books - more information to set the stage and describe why he suggests that Viral Change should be done in this way. That is neither bad nor good, just different and noticeable to me, having read the previous installments and expecting faster-to-consume segments.

As is typical in my reading, I draw connections to many other things. There were elements of the idea of tribes in that people use behaviors and other norms to reinforce tribes. This can be both good and bad. Viral Change is looking for those behaviors that create the desired outcome.

I could see thinking about child-rearing: one of the refrains is that children need consistent direction from their parents. Having direction that is unclear is very confusing to children. It's confusing to adults as well. Create clear behavioral direction and link that to your reinforcement mechanisms.

Herrero brings in the ideas of push and pull, which naturally makes me think of the Theory of Constraints work I have been doing. I also think of the recent books by Hagel, Pull, and Denning, Radical Management, which both look at creating pull within organizations to move the organization in new directions. Connected to this thought of pull, I latched onto Herrero's discussion of "what gets attention, get multiplied" when thinking about creating visual status boards for project teams. When they can't see what is going on, it is difficult for them to know where to focus. But when things are visual, the teams can have a different conversation about the status of their work. Herrero mostly focuses on using stories to help spread the word and reinforce, but I think visuals can be quite powerful as well.

An important element of the methodology behind Viral Change is exploiting the network of people in the organization (or society). And that then reminds me of many of the social network analysis thinkers, Anklam's Net Work in particular, as Herrero makes many references to the simple fact that work gets done through the network, rather than via the hierarchy. (Yes, I know a hierarchy is a form of network.)

Having just finished the book, it was top of mind in the SIKM Boston meeting this morning. The topics in the book seemed particularly relevant to our conversation. The idea of you-will-do-this dictates came up over and over again. (They don't work, except in extreme cases.) I also liked hearing about "centers of excellence" that seem to get ignored or left behind. This relates to some of the topics Herrero discussed in relation to moving the change from something simple and small to something that becomes viral. It has to grow from a small cluster to more and more of those clusters. Not one-to-one-to-one (Chinese whispers), but one to many to many to many.

There are many little tidbit winners throughout the book. Too many to catalog. I suggest you pick up a copy, if the above has been intriguing.

Expand the duration - with task switching

2011-12-19T15:24:27Z

The local weekly in our area has a piece on multitasking by a local psychiatrist and author, Dr. Blaise Aguirre, The myth of multitasking. The article centers around helping kids do better in school, but he also summarizes a lot of the recent research on the topic in less than a thousand words. I particularly like this quote:

Worse, we waste time when we multitask as it takes four times longer to do two tasks effectively than it takes to do each one individually.

While there is no additional attribution (it's a newspaper after all), this is in line with my observations. And how often are people doing only two things at a time? Note that this is talking about tasks that require attention and focus, not the more automatic tasks that can operate in the background. People often use the term "task switching" to be clearer about which variety of multitasking is being discussed.

Look at organizations where people are dependent upon one another to get things done - just about every organization. Working in a multitasking (or task-switching) mode makes it look like everyone is busy, but that isn't what people need. People need to FINISH things. Multitasking in this way ensures lots of stuff is happening, but it doesn't get things DONE.

The take away? Please learn how to say, "No" to attention-sinks from yourself and to your colleagues. Finish what you've started, and then move to the next thing. You will be surprised.

Just don't ask me how long it took for me to get everything in place to write this simple blog entry.

[Photo: "Myth" by liquidnight]

Ideas for monitoring (measuring) knowledge work

2011-12-16T00:28:35Z

No, I am not suggesting measuring knowledge work from the perspective of "productivity." This link suggests a way of monitoring the health of a knowledge work organization.

James Slavet has an interesting set of Five New Management Metrics You Need To Know on the Forbes technology blog. Rather than look specifically at throughput, he suggests some internal metrics that might be leading indicators. These kinds of ideas are geared towards organizations that have more knowledge workers - people doing work that you can't SEE.

Flow State Percentage. What percentage of the day are people able to FOCUS and get stuff done? Slavet suggests it is going to be incredibly low, and I can't help but agree. If your business relies on people doing design, or coding or intense documentation, it won't be very successful if they keep getting pulled away from that work.
The Anxiety-Boredom Continuum. People like some anxiety to keep them on their toes, but not too much. I'm not quite sure how you would measure this, other than getting a sense of people.
Meeting Promoter Score. Just like the net promoter, how do people perceive meetings in your company? While killing meetings altogether is attractive, maybe making the ones that are necessary more interesting and useful could be just as valuable.
Compound Weekly Learning Rate. How much are your people learning? Do they keep learning, or are they getting stuck?
Positive Feedback Ratio. How much are people providing each other with positive feedback vs negative? I would ask if they are taking the opportunity to provide ANY feedback. Slavet suggests that the ratio of positive to negative interaction needs to be close to 5:1 - a number from John Gottman's analysis of interactions amongst married couples. Clearly "feedback" is different from "interactions," but the concept still fits. Negative feedback and interaction can create a death spiral.

What do you think of these? How might you use them? Comment here or on the original article.

Focus implies one

2011-12-14T03:33:29Z

Dilbert is often entertaining, though sometimes frustrating in his response to the world. Sunday's comic had me laughing from the first panel, and I think Asok's response is right on. What is your response when you see this opener?

Go ahead, have a look at the response.

I read this to my kids and asked them if they understood the problem. After a little prompting they could see how it might just be a problem to focus on 25 things. But how many times have phrases like this come up in your organization? "I have to focus on everything!" Really?

The whole point of "focus" is that you look at one thing. Ideally, you keep looking at it until it reaches a sufficient resolution.

This is one of the reasons I like systems thinking and Theory of Constraints. The idea is to take a look at the system and look for the one place where a change will have the biggest impact. Sure, you can try to fix everything, but most organizations don't have the time and money to do that. So, given that limitation, maybe it would be a good idea to find the area where a change will make the biggest difference. Make a change, step back to see if it is working, and decide what to do next.

MAKE 2011 Awards

2011-12-01T03:27:53Z

Teleos and the KNOW Network have announced the Latest MAKE Summaries (Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises) with the awards for North America, Europe, Asia and Global. The summaries are PDF's available through their website.

The global winners this year are

Accenture (Ireland)
Apple (USA)
APQC (USA)
ConocoPhillips (USA)
Fluor (USA)
Google (USA)
Hewlett-Packard (USA)
IBM (USA)
Infosys Limited (India)
McKinsey & Company (Global)
Microsoft (USA)
POSCO (S. Korea)
PwC (Global)
Royal Dutch Shell (the Netherlands)
Samsung (S. Korea)
Schlumberger (France/the Netherlands/USA)
Siemens (Germany)
Tata (India)
Toyota (Japan)
Unilever (the Netherlands/United Kingdom)
Wikipedia (Global)

Interesting to see the range of companies. Several have been in the awards lists previously. The summary reports give some hint as to the categories in which the companies took the honors.

A different way to reach Inbox Zero

2011-11-30T05:39:56Z

Here is a new way to reach Inbox Zero.

LinkedIn had a top article with the story of Tech Firm Implements 'Zero Email' Policy for internal emails. The claim in the story is that Atos, a French company, is going to phase out email for internal communication and shift to instant messaging and other more appropriate tools. The CEO is quoted in the article as saying he hasn't sent email in three years.

I guess this means we are starting to see whether we can live a life without email, as Luis Suarez has envisioned. And there is this discussion from Adam Britten about a conference topic along the same lines: Can a Workplace Survive without Email?

Be careful how you define "waste"

2011-11-30T05:11:28Z

Michael Krigsman has a nice summary of an academic article he found about project management, Six lessons for intelligent project management:

Traditional approaches can isolate project goals from business outcomes. The solution is bringing project managers closer to those working in lines of business.

Be sure to jump ahead to page 2 for details around the six lessons. Here they are in brief:

Having staff wait for work is better than having work wait for staff.
Multitasking is more prevalent and more harmful than anyone thinks.
Eliminate “apple polishing.”
Don’t overdefine the tasks.
Be aggressive about business improvement.
Provide a holistic view for all team members.

I love these. I've touched upon all of these over the years in this blog, and these are certainly elements of discussion with clients in project organizations.

I particularly like the wording of #1. The belief that "idle" people is an evil to be eliminated means that organizations jam more and more work into the system - generating item number 2: multitasking. And with so much work in the system, people have no idea what is important or what should be worked on next: they just have a long list of things to be done and work on the things that they enjoy (or that are associated with the current yelling project manager). This means that all those other tasks associated with all the projects that have been jammed into the system just sit there, waiting for someone to pay attention. Project-based organizations don't succeed by having lots of projects running. They succeed by finishing projects that their customers want.

Idleness is not always a waste in project environments (or manufacturing environments). The waste happens when valuable work sits idle, waiting for people. Be careful how you define these things. Be careful what you look for.

[Photo: "No Idling" by Rob Friesel]