It took me 2 hours to convince him that he was completely wrong, but I did it. Maybe I’m the one who’s wrong, but he didn’t convinced me of the contrary. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that, here in Japan or at least in my organization, in front of any bug or defect, the usual reaction is to stop the operations or projects, until… until forever.

He tells me that he absolutely want to stop sending this bullshit report to all users. It ruins the reporting tool’s image which is already quite bad. When the figures will be fixed, he would accept to send it again by mail. Until then he prefers the users to log on the system and check the reports instead of receiving such a bad report by mail and be forced to see wrong data.

He have a good reason to stop sending his report. Users don’t like it! And I don’t even care the reason. Yes, users don’t like it and therefore we have to improve it, but stopping the sending won’t help us to improve it, on the contrary. If they don’t like it they won’t log on the system to check the accuracy of the data, they will just ignore it and tell us “fix it and then, we will go…”. But everytime we will ask them to start using it they will give as a pretext a new bug we didn’t here about until now that would forbid the usage of it and we will lose time again to fix and convince them to check it, but they will come up with this argument: “You never provided us something we needed! We are sure to find bugs in your reports even though we already checked once, so we don’t even want to check it again! We have to focus on our own work!”

We failed hundreds of implementation in my department because of this way of doing.

I suggested him a new method. Just keep sending the report, the worst the better! I received this morning for the first sending, only one comment but he received several, meaning several bugs to fix. Lets keep this report in front of their eyes as long as possible so that we can identify everything that need to be improved. Meanwhile we get to learn everything that is important for them. Where are they looking in our gigantic tables? What are the key figures? and so on…

The report gives a bad image to the reporting tool ? I strongly disagree ! We give a bad image of this tool and of ourselves. We provide them a tool that they need to perform their tasks. But we don’t have a clue about their tasks. The tool is not adapted and they resent having to use it. Every time we provide a new report template that has been suggested by other countries, specifically in Japan, we know that they won’t use it, they don’t even want to try it. They stick to the POS database old fashion data download in Excel to build their report from scratch.

Sending our “unadapted” report right in front on their face every morning will force them to force us to improve it. For every comment, I suggest him to thank the user and try to identify how to fix the bug, We will come back to them when we’ll find a solution. Meanwhile we gather information about what they need and learn how to provide it. The main issue is only the relationship we have with them.

Keep doing mistakes, to have people help you to improve yourself so that you can provide them what they need. It’s a win-win process. They might resent to work with you, but if you don’t proceed like this, you won’t improve yourself anyway and be useless sooner than you thought. The risk of being considered unskilled because of showing to your colleagues a work that doesn’t satisfy them 100%, is lower that the absolute certainty of getting unskilled if you hide all works that are not 100% correct. There is nothing that can be 100% correct. Ask questions and make sure to learn something from the answer, even if they add at the end of they explanations “… you idiot”…

I spent so much time thinking about work outside work, that It paralyzed my will and motivation to do anything else. The first change is to stop anything linked with work when I leave my office. I have already tried the workaholic way of life, and even though I enjoyed it when the motivation was at its top, I have to admit that the unbalance is not healthy. Refer to this video (sorry, it’s in French). To summarize, If work goes beyond the office borders, no matter how much fun it is, and takes over personal life or part of it, personal life is on stand-by. The risk is to extend that pattern on a long enough period to forget the personal life objectives and the small things that make it fun.

I don’t recommend leaving the office at a defined hour no matter the necessity to finish something important. I’m not that drastic. Sometimes it’s necessary to finish something, SOMETIMES. I recommend balancing personal life and leave work at an appropriate time to switch into personal time, if the professional deadlines don’t justify the contrary. Work taking over personal life can only be accepted temporarily and exceptionally! If that’s a permanent life pattern, it testifies a problem at the management or personal level. In any case, the result cannot be positive.

Dedicate enough time to all personal things, and during those don’t lose time and mood for professional issues. That’s not fair to your family and friends, but mainly that’s not fair to yourself!

I started Guitar in April 2009 and practiced frequently every week. I almost stopped after July when the situation got very bad at work, even though I continue to go to my classes every 2 weeks. I was practicing 20 minutes every morning. I stopped practicing but it didn’t make me arrive earlier at the office. I wake up at the same time, and I arrive at the same time at the office. Meanwhile, I also almost stopped cooking, I buy prepared food or eat outside which does not give me more free time despite the higher price.

All for the same reason. As soon as I was thinking of doing something, I was paralyzed by the problem at work. As if I was telling to myself: “I first need to fix that, then I can go cooking… playing… practicing… reading…”. I call this the cat syndrome. When a cat cross a road and suddenly sees a car, it often stops right in front of it. That’s more relevant with dogs but I prefer cats. I sometimes see it with colleagues or project team members who know what they have to do but are just paralyzed and wait that the deadline is passed to blame themselves. That’s part of my job to give them confidence and find out what paralyzes them and get rid of it.

I know for myself what paralyzes me. See previous post. I’m in a dead-end and all my attempts to get out of it are unsuccessful so far.

The only thing I can do is consider the worst scenario and see if my private life is affected: Clearly if I’m fired “Je suis dans la merde” but Asako is also working and I have a good experience is my field, and a good resume to find back a job. The market is not as “job-seekers-friendly” as it was before the sub-prime crisis though.

Even fired, I have my apartment, enough money to leave for several months while searching a job. I may need to postpone the wedding, and cut on Tokyo-Paris trips. But I won’t need to stop practicing guitar, I won’t need to stop blogging, I won’t need to stop editing my videos nor cooking…

I already put all of them on stand-by, by fear of being fired. Let’s not assume what didn’t happened! I still have my job. So let’s get back in touch with what I like to do and leave the fears of being fired at the office. besides changing my work’s situation is one of my business objectives. So I restart from January 2010 the monthly personal development plan as I left it last year. The latest item was the Jogging and Guitar practice every morning… I never stopped to run every day but I don’t feel comfortable with the guitar in the morning. That’s weird. I need a new time slot for that but I don’t have any good one. Why not try to do it after diner, meaning 20 minutes around 9:30pm.

…

List of things I have in mind for a long time now and rally want to start this year, but lets focus on only one each month.

• Cooking on regular basis (3 to 4 times a week)
• Stop eating after a defined hour and cut added sugar to my nutrition
• Blogging on regular basis: not only writting here or reading my feeds but commenting on the Blogosphere
• Go to bed at 23:30 no matter what, even if it’s to read a book or anything else.
• Restart playing video games
• Edit one video footage per week!
• Flying bird
• Restart to practice Farsi

Moreover they are some stuff I really want to do not as a habit, but exceptionally

• Prepare the wedding (a crazy one)
• Children!!!
• Buy an apartment in Paris in 2011 (Even if I don’t live there)
• Make a 2 months trip in Iran
• Switch into linux and use Windows only when it’s absolutly necessary
• Implement a Backup & Recovery solution, and a Disaster Recovery Solution for my personal data including

Today, I almost don’t do anything beside work. I almost stopped cooking even if I love this, I don’t practice a bit for my guitar lessons, I don’t go out, watch movies, invite friends at home, go on holiday (except a trip to Cambodia organized by 2 friends. I just joined) and I postponed my proposal to Asako (better late than never).

In 2009, I realized that all my efforts to exceed my objectives and reach higher level goals were not taken into account at all. On the contrary, the more I did the less it has been recognized. Worst! I suddenly lost my security of employment. That’s another think about Japan. No one is sure to keep his job contrary to what is often said. Since late 2008 I can count 8 people I know directly who have simply been fired by their respective company in Japan. In my case, I’ve been told that my performance has no impact on the final decision. I have not been given any reason any measurable criteria that justifies to keep me or not. There is nothing to improve, given the fact that all expectations are reached and even exceeded. Nothing to justify a fault.

According to my boss, due to the crisis, we have no serious project or objective for 2010. Months in that situation now I have seen the decline in my own motivation to bring outstanding contribution to my company. No mobility has been accorded to me so that I can go somewhere else and do something serious and value-added to the company. The current situation is the “sideline”. No reason to have me out, so I’m in, but with no objectives. That is the nightmare!

When there is no objective to reach, their is no way any progress can be done. When there are objectives but not measurable ones, you never know if you reach them. You cannot switch to new objectives since you never know if the previous ones are achieved. For example, I’ve decided to improve my Japanese proficiency during the free time I’m having, but because no one is checking the improvement, because no daily deliverables testify that something has been done in that way, because nothing shows that the objective is reached, the motivation for improvement is also declining automatically.

Since my last one year project, I only had one project that deserved to be called so. Clear objectives, deadlines, team members, deliverables! On those projects, the motivation was very high.

The only solution is to fix some objectives for myself and in order to get motivation I can only apply the same methodology to those. Anything that I plan to achieve this year can follow this pattern. Moreover, having a third party checking the results, is a guarantee of real progress assessment and achievement.

To summarize, here are the necessary criteria to gain motivation:

• Measurable Objective
• Measurable Deadline
• Measurable Action plan (Planning and Deliverables)
• Measurable Progress Indicators

Now, lets formalize my professional 2010 Objectives:

Improve my Business Intelligence proficiency

I’m in charge of BI projects for Japan and already have implemented different tools or upgrades for my users. But I don’t know what they do with BI. They have a bunch of reports coming from all systems and we are trying to balance them but I don’t know why they are using those reports, what is important for them… how they read those and define their strategy. In other word, I provide them tools that are mysteries for myself, mainly because I don’t know what is their job. Everyone knows what the Supply Chain, Accounting or Merchandising people are doing, or thinks so. I don’t know what are there objectives and challenge and in order to reach those, what are the figures they analyse in the pile of reports the tools I provide to them extracts every morning.

The Objective should be rephrased as follow: Understand what are the respective jobs of the colleagues I provide BI tools to, and what are the KPI (Key Performance Indicators) they need me to provide them.

Deadline: I give myself until end of February to reach this objective.

Action plan:

• Read all documents shared on the knowledge database or in related mails: before Feb. 9th: BI Zone meeting
• Contact each department colleagues one by one to have an explanation of what they do, their short-term, mid-term objectives, the tools and KPI they are using or would need, the difficulties and where I can help them. List of currently used reports and what they read on the report: On week per department (SC, MD, RS, BPC): End of February
• Learn to use myself the different tools I provide them: before Feb. 9th: BI Zone meeting
• List all reports that my tools can provide and ask users the reason being of each report.
• Check in the business literature all BI terms: END

Progress indicator: document all information/definition/workflow I get from each department or found out in the literature

They is no third party here who can attest that I have learned well about BI. I don’t plan to get an MBA or Master degree of BI just to attest about my knowledge. I would consider I reached this objective when I would be able to explain to someone knowing nothing about BI, what is each department doing and what are the KPI each of them needs to analyse in order to reach as efficiently as possible their objectives.

Improve my Japanese proficiency

The few times I saw I improved, were when I was practicing for Exams. I took the JLPT 2-Kyu exam 1 month ago and when I would have passed it (results mid-February) I would need to practice for the 1-Kyu (for fluent people, reading and writing) but this one requires another 4 to 5 years study. Meanwhile, there is the Business Japanese tests, resembling to he English TOEIC test.

Objective: Reach a defined level (J1: Above 530 points /800) at the next BJT. This level represents an ability to communicate appropriately in Japanese in a wide range of business situation.

Deadline: The next test will be held late June 2010.

Action plan: Although, contrary to the JLPT, there isn’t a defined list of Kanji, vocabulary & grammatical points to master specifically for this level, There is a limited number of each anyway. For the JLPT I needed the common 1000 Kanji. I will start with “finishing to learn” those and master them, I have the books and exercises. same for grammar. Then, taking a blank test we’ll see if I need to add the 500 next set of Kanji and Grammar points.

• Practice Kanji in the train (on-going): 30 minutes every week day
• Review 1 pages of Grammar exercises: 20 minutes maximum every week night
• Check the vocabulary of 1 complete discussion by mail (about 5 mails): 2 hours per week
• Japanese lessons to review the difficult grammar points (on-going): 2 hours per week

Progress indicator: I can see whether I’m comfortable or not to read the Japanese mails at a glance or explain business matters with the appropriate vocabulary. The progress can be evaluated measuring the part of items learned on the defined list. At mid-period I take a mock test…

Improve my management skills

Getting certifications is one way to improve my skills usable in my daily work and add on my resume items that can justify a clear career plan. For each certifications, the training and expected skills are usually clearly defined. The PMP PMI can justify my skills regarding project management and seems to be well known by recruiters. Still need to check out about this test. Schedule, cost, training materials…

to be continued…

Change the situation

As explained, I’m currently in a dead-end. Nothing changes despite what I’m trying, precisely because what I do is not taken into account. I struggled to convince my hierarchy that we have a problem to solve to save our organization. It resulted in me being sidelined. Almost everything have been tried to inverse the situation, apologies, double the efforts to bring even more results, mediation with HR and Executives… but my hierarchy stays deaf. There is a real will to keep the current situation. That’s sad to see them choose that suicidal strategy trying to maintain an unstable and unfair organization.
This objective is the hardest and need much more that a small analysis here. I’m currently pushing to change department in my company. I have no desire to leave or work for a specific competitor yet. That’s a very short-term attempt. I will develop this objective in a further analysis.

to be continued…

Mid-life crisis strikes when we settle for a comfortable challenge-less life.

Sorry, the video is in French, but the following text describes almost the same thing. Besides, I’m not really satisfied with the current special effects. It just doesn’t… fit… The part with the blablabla is not as dynamic as I imagined, I’ll redo it when I have time…

Last year, when I posted this video, I was struggling to balance my private life and my work, mainly negotiating with my boss, the boss of my boss and colleagues in Japan and overseas for that. French colleagues think Japanese colleagues have to do more because they have this reputation. So they maintain that situation. Japanese colleagues don’t try to balance their private life and work, because Work is the priority and opposing a request is BAD! Personally I think that’s immature, on the contrary. I mean, not trying to balance work and personal life or not sharing the workload fairly with all colleagues in Local and overseas, is immature. That might look cool to accept any crazy request, but that is just stupid.

Anyway, discussing with my hierarchy, I discovered that, fixing this unbalance was not only far from being a priority, but also that somehow it was sought. The situation was much more “complicated” than what I thought!

I almost stopped to blog here, in June 2009 (except during the August euphoria). Which means that I was blogging somewhere else. The mere (and selfish) objective of that blog is to improve myself by analyzing my professional (and private) situation, to be a better manager. Some situation cannot be shared publicly. So those are analyzed somewhere else. The result of the analysis though, worse being mentioned here:

From January to June my n+1 and I have several discussions that lead to arguments with our n+2. The contents of the discussions won’t be mentioned here (until the situation changes) but only the conclusion. (the following posts gives also more information about this)

In June, meaning after 6 months of disagreements, I decided to have a 3 people’s meeting with my n+1 and n+2 to clear all these points out and restart from scratch on reasonable and fair basis. 5 hours of meeting were I was exposing to my n+2 the problems (and stomach aches) we were having. 5 hours during which she, my n+1 didn’t said a word, 5 hours during which my n+2 answered all my questions by: If she decided “A” she must have understood that “A” was the only solution!

I was too naive to stop the meeting at the first answer of my n+2. The output of the meeting was only according to him, the fact that I refused to perform as she requested and that I have to learn that when she says or do something, it means: That’s the appropriate thing to say or do. Besides, if she doesn’t do something it means that it does not need to be done. Wouhaha! I wish I had this kind of supreme power…

Since that meeting, everything has changed, and not in the good way. I had to rethink my career plan, my future in my organization and still I was making sure to provide high-level results even not expected. That’s interesting how life put you in situations you did’t think about or even could only imagine in movies.

Now, one year exactly after my new boss has arrived, It’s time to understand that everything has been tried to improve the way we work together.
So, this year is the year during which everything will change! My professional short-term situation, my mid-term career plan and my personal life. I was planning to get married last year but given the events, I postponed until… until I realize that there will always be professional reasons to postpone, so that there is NO professional reasons to postpone.

This year my resolutions are simple:

• Change the professional situation ASAP
• Start to enjoy my life again

For both resolutions, I have an action plan coming in further posts.

During this one year experience, I learned crazy stuff about how a bitter situation at work can make bitter everything! Really Everything! From the guy on TV in the morning until the 3 minutes waiting for the water to bowl. Everything is frustrating when only one is. If this one is your job, you’re doomed! During this one year, I learned that no matter what the problem is, you have to resolve it early to be able to enjoy your life, even if the main part of it has no like with the problem. With no peace of mind you can’t (I can’t) enjoy life fully. Cut the tumor and move on! Waiting is just postponing the resolving of the problem, meaning waiting to enjoy your life. Life is too short to accept to wait, in other words: Don’t lose a part of it, to have he opportunity to enjoy the remaining.

Even though all the actions were done, not always on track, not always the way wanted, they were all done. The reason for changing the document’s format was to usually attract some members’ attention on a specific deadline or task. Every time I was just thinking “Hey, I’m just changing the format of the same old document, with same content ! How come this guys doesn’t like this one? Last time it was the other guy who made me change the document before he accepts to read it!”

At a very critical moment of the project, a manager in charge of half of the project members and I decided to have a monitoring tool to be filled by members of his team regarding when they will perform the tasks they have defined themselves. We tried to be very democratic, not to ask them to write down any specific task not to share the documents outside the team, we tried not to boss anyone and give them time to fill the document and review it every week, with as much necessary time dedicated to do it. Those review meetings quickly became nightmares ! At the pic moment (just before we stop it), 2 of the people were systematically late 30 minutes (not 5 minutes), didn’t prepare anything, filled the documents or even didn’t do the tasks they defined themselves. The worst moment was when one member was presenting his document and in the meantime, the 2 others were updating the document of the previous week. The previous week they were already updating the document while the same guy was presenting.

How is it possible to be more fair and democratic? What did we miss?

I’ve been studying Process Communication model for the last months and even though I feel like, it answers much more to the question: “What you should not do in that case?” instead of “what you should do in that case?”, it was incredibly interesting.

The main thing to understand is that, everyone has his or her own personality and the communication process may be efficient only if it fits his or her needs. Among the 3 project members participating to the nightmare meeting, 2 of them were not satisfied with the communication way. Not because they didn’t want to communicate their works, or couldn’t be in line with the global schedule. They were just incredibly not comfortable with the way to communicate what they do.

The mistake was to try to satisfy to our (their manager and I) needs. I believe being a democratic person, seeking for agreements and compromise, trying to have an official planning for everything, shared with all my colleagues so that they have all necessary information from me and about me. I’m maniacally organized.

What if they’re not? At the beginning I thought that it was more valuable to have a low-efficiency team member who is monitored, than a high efficiency member whose achievements are kept secret. I was wrong. There is nothing to compare here.

Now I understand that the only person who was filling the document and improved his efficiency was comfortable with it because we have the same personality. The 2 others, they don’t and this has no link with their efficiency. They had periods of surprising high efficiency, without any monitoring tools.

Trying to be democratic and transparent with people not needing it but needing something else is dangerous.

Provide to people what THEY NEED so that they are on time with YOUR schedule. They want to have a table to fill with their task ? Fine for those who want it. They need to have intimacy to define their tasks ? Fine for those people! provide it to them. They need to be monitored, boosted regularly with review of their task? Fine for those people.

Trying to manage all the people the same way because it really feels fair and honest is usually not appropriate. Some of them need something different. Trying to be directive or democratic with everyone is not appropriate. Some need to be directed, some need not to!

The manager’s job is to deal with each person providing him what he needs. Therefore he will be efficient and fit the planning YOU defined and update. Finally this is the only document you need in order to monitor people. Nothing else. Don’t ask people to fill monitoring document if it’s only for your personal needs. If they don’t need those, it will destroy there efficiency.

I’ve just finished the biggest project I’ve been working on for the last 13 months and I started to list down all the mistakes I’ve done as a project manager. Although the project is a success and the objectives were achieved and exceeded, mistakes have been done. By me, I mean! I won’t get into the detail. I just feel like I have to right down the biggest one to make sure I won’t ever do it again !

I’ve been upset, showed it, and blamed people several times.

Although It didn’t happened in the second half on the project, for the last 6 months, it happened several times at the beginning and sometimes time to time. No matter How much I thought I was right, no matter how much I thought other people were wrong! Being upset, showing it, or worst blaming or scolding people (anyone) makes people forget about anything else and focus on the only person who is now wrong: me for being upset, blaming or scolding someone. There are always other ways. If the person, is wrong, bad or even evil, there is at least one, if not hundreds of way to show it, fix it and move one without getting upset, blaming and hurting anyone.

That’s the biggest mistake I have done. This is going to follow me for a long time and I completely ruined the fact that I was trying to show some evil things happening. Those are now done, and won’t ever be fixed, at least not by me. I’m officially not allowed to say anything about it since I already failed once.

As project manager, it’s very easy to get hasty and jump into this mistake. Here is the difference between the one with experience and the younger one.

As a person, it’s just a wrong way to do things. Not only project managers have to avoid this mistakes, any manager, any business person, anyone! As a manager, as a person who is responsible of other people, the negative impact of this mistake is just dangerously multiplied for one-self and for other!

Keeping a planning is important. Wasting time and being late due to wrong information, carelessness, loafing is the project manager’s phobia. Being Upset and blaming people is not a solution to fix it. It makes it worst.

There are solutions though, I’ve been trying that are working incredibly well but need a specific environment. There is one that should work anywhere (ideally). In a middle/big organization, the hierarchy is normally very strict and well defined. People are responsible for there hierarchical line, I mean for the results of for there junior coworkers. When an issue happens between 2 people of different lines, it’s useless trying to show the mistake of each other as explained earlier. Using the hierarchical lever can solve thing without harm. The 2 people facing the disagreement shouldn’t urge into a fight. This is not their job. A person unsatisfied with the job of a person in another line should ask his own boss to discuss with the boss of the person he has issues with. The superiors not being directly in the disagreement can analyze the situation more clearly and discuss without spinning, resentment and urges. When the superiors refuse the talk, it can go one level higher, but it means that there is a deeper problem to be solved. This is usually very rare.

Sometime the person complaining can be wrong and can avoid a big issues by just requesting his bosses help. He can realize his mistake before causing harm and blaming others.

I recommend this book I just stared to read: How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie

The Video is a little long (about 6 minutes), the first 2 minutes are great!