It’s not that if there isn’t an ice-skating track you don’t meet. But this is just such a great opportunity. And a natural one. You don’t have to plan. You just go there. Show up. That’s it. The track is a catalyst for conversations.

Communities have more places like that. Libraries for example:

“For some, the building remains essential: engagement with the library is a ticket to – and a membership card for – a local community. Some say the building needs to be there, but not as “a warehouse of dead books”, but as a place to invent yourself, individually and socially.”

In some weird and twisted way, back in the days when I still smoked cigarettes, the smoking area in my company had a similar function for me: I was the most informed Project Manager around. I knew a lot of people that weren’t in the direct surroundings of my project. It’s not that the individuals weren’t approachable. It’s just that I am not the kind of guy that is randomly stopping people in the hallway to ask what they do.

Organizations have these natural places where people bump into each other.

Coffee corner. Lunch room. Places where you experience that you are part of a certain group, just by having the same rhythm. “Hey, we drink coffee in the same pace!”

Architects can actually design these places.

The best we can do is recognize the opportunities. Or make use of social objects:

“For a while I  had  a bowling bag to carry my papers and other work related stuff. I bought it, because everybody else was carrying the same black Samsonite briefcase. The bag was blue with white letters and oddly shaped. Colleagues and clients would say something about it. Complementing me on my fine exquisite taste. Making fun of my stupid bag.

The bowling bag created engagement. A conversation starter. Something to trigger a spontaneous moment of interaction. And never in a negative mood. The plastic bag from the supermarket I carried around for months after that triggered some different comments though.”

Image by Frau Shrink.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - An Ice Skating Track And Opportunities To Start Conversations. is a post from: Project Shrink.

What do you draw when you are visualizing a project on a whiteboard?

I draw an arrow from left to right that represents a timeline. Not always. But many times.

The way you visualize, determines your focus.

I’ve been playing with the simple but powerful concept of a Project Story Circle.

The project is represented by a circular arrow and is divided in half with a horizontal line.

The idea behind it is the following:

• An organization has the need for something. A challenge has to be conquered. A group of people starts a journey and brings back their result to the organization.
• The upper half of the circle represents time spent outside the project. Preparing for the voyage. And getting the results back to the place where it is needed.
• The bottom half makes up for project time.
• This will focus attention on the transitions organization-project and project-organization.
• This will focus attention on the idea that you undertake the project long before the actual project starts and that it only ends when you have gone full circle; when the actual benefits are realized.

You can use this shape when discussing projects.

• Where do people join the journey? (indicate on the circle)
• In which parts are they active? (indicate on the circle)
• Where do they expect problems? (indicate on the circle)

This basic shape is inspired by The Hero’s Journey, the universal structure of myths. What makes this narrative structure so interesting is not that many movies are based upon it. It’s more the reason why so many stories are following this flow. There is a certain appeal to it, we all recognize parts of how we experience our own life story.

One essential part of the Hero’s Journey is the transformation the hero is going through. In the storyline there is a defining moment when the hero is experiencing a major set back where he is hitting a brick wall. And this wall will be the turning point. During the bottom half of the circle you can also bring in the concept of the red convertible:

“I think a project can have a “red convertible” moment. It’s that breakdown, or more that revelation, in which you remember why you were doing something in the first place. … This transition is the “red convertible”.”

Talking about transitions is important. Transitions reveal patterns. And antipatterns. It’s the moment when contrast is at its peak. When everything remains the same, we don’t notice our rhythms and boundaries that much. When all of a sudden everything is changing, we start to notice what felt natural before.

I think the Project Story Circle can assist you in discussing those transitions.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - The Project Story Circle. Talking About Transitions. is a post from: Project Shrink.

So. I enter a room looking like my old aunt, only because we both carry way too much luggage for such a short period of time. I carry two plastic bags with post-it notes, index cards, colored paper of different thickness, permanent markers, white board markers, color markers, and tape.

Yes. I know. It’s ridiculous.

In the beginning I run through all kinds of techniques in a fast pace.

“Please put on post-it notes …”
“You can write on the index card …”
“Draw a picture of …”

I observe which one is catching on. If one sticks, I keep that one.

I don’t know if this is the “proper way” to do things. But it’s the same strategy I talked about when revealing a culture.

You throw stuff to the wall and see what sticks.

I think we use the same strategy to facilitate the process of turning “what we know” into a representation of “what must be”. You know. Sensemaking.

In projects we have learned that to make it all work we need to have a couple of essential conversations. Between our team members, our stakeholders and ourselves.

Discussing things like:

• What does “done” look like?
• How do we get there?
• How do we know how far we are?
• Who cares?
• Why are you on the project?
• Why does the project take place?

Ideally these conversations “just happen”. People hear they are part of a project, they get together and turn collectively everything they know about the topic into a picture for how things must be.

Sometimes these things don’t “just happen”. They need a catalyst to get the conversation started.

What we actually are looking for are pebbles that when dropped cause larger ripples.

What we are looking for are small things that trigger a conversation and keep it going. Without having the need to keep throwing bricks in the water every morning.

We have to try different things. Different pebbles. We have to. Not everyone is responding in a similar way to the same catalyst. There is a huge diversity in human interaction.

So. We take our bag of tools: visualizations, social objects and dressing up environments, narrative structures, questions, exploration/reframing and Shrinkonian exercises.

We throw them to a wall. And see which one sticks.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Dropping Pebbles. Facilitating Sensemaking. is a post from: Project Shrink.

Some knew that the earth was a sphere. A globe. A ball. A round thing. Some maps were created representing the world as a sphere, without having all the information available.

This is important for people working together in uncertain and ambiguous situations.

The coin dropped when I read this story by Cynthia Kurtz where she talks about reading the book “Maps: Finding Our Place in the World” (affiliate link) with her son:

“What amazes me about these early globes is that people built a coherent representation of the world as a sphere even though they were missing part of it. They sewed together the edges of what they knew to be so as to make it into the shape they knew it had to take. This is a perfect analogue to sensemaking: we take what we know and form it into something that represents what must be.”

Aha. Sensemaking.

According to Wikipedia sensemaking is “… a collaborative process of creating shared awareness and understanding out of different individuals’ perspectives and varied interests.”

Although, the way Cythia Kurtz wrote it, sticks longer in my brain: “we take what we know and form it into something that represents what must be.”

Someone recently told me that the topic of sensemaking is a hot item. Especially due to the books by Karl Weick (affiliate link), who covers this topic at the organizational level. It is his work that is “… providing insight into factors that surface as organizations address either uncertain or ambiguous situations.”

Properties of Sensemaking.

Weick describes seven properties of sensemaking. And when I read them, I recognized every topic I have been discussing on this blog. So. Sorry for confusing you all these years. But know you know. I am talking about sensemaking. How we turn what we know into a representation of what must be to handle uncertain or ambiguous situations.

Here are Weick’s seven properties:

1. Identity and identification is central – who people think they are in their context shapes what they enact and how they interpret events (…).
2. Retrospection provides the opportunity for sensemaking: the point of retrospection in time affects what people notice (…), thus attention and interruptions to that attention are highly relevant to the process (…).
3. People enact the environments they face in dialogues and narratives (…). As people speak, and build narrative accounts, it helps them understand what they think, organize their experiences and control and predict events (…).
4. Sensemaking is a social activity in that plausible stories are preserved, retained or shared (…).
5. Sensemaking is ongoing, so individuals simultaneously shape and react to the environments they face. As they project themselves onto this environment and observe the consequences they learn about their identities and the accuracy of their accounts of the world (…).
6. People extract cues from the context to help them decide on what information is relevant and what explanations are acceptable (…) Extracted cues provide points of reference for linking ideas to broader networks of meaning and are ‘simple, familiar structures that are seeds from which people develop a larger sense of what may be occurring.”
7. People favour plausibility over accuracy in accounts of events and contexts (…)

(source Wikipedia. Removed references for brevity.)

This links directly to the role of identity in projects, the importance of narratives, the use of social cues (flags!) and the need for context.

That makes perfectly good sense. To me.

Yes. Couldn’t resist.

That was a wordplay on “sensemaking“.

Yes.

Now I know why I am a map maker.

Image from Wikimedia.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Sensemaking: Turning What We Know Into What Must Be. is a post from: Project Shrink.

I was partying like it was 1999. Actually it was. I spent half of the first hour of 2000 stuck in an elevator. Not because of a software bug, but because 8 friends and me were in an elevator that had a capacity of four.

When we switched from 1999 to 2000 we really expected a change. There was going to be a difference. There was a reason we had to do things before January 1st. You know. The big “division by zero” scare. When computers would use 00 as the year, it would have a devastating effect. This deadline wasn’t just an arbitrary line in the sand. It was real.

At least, we thought it was.

“Oh. Grandpa. Please tell more about the old days of the previous century.” Yeah. Yeah. I’ll shut up for now.

In Projectistan (land of the projects, home of the deadline – a term coined by Jon Whitty) January 1st is a magical date. It’s not that something is really happening between the last day of December and the first day of January. Things are the same. Heck. Most people aren’t even in the office. It’s artificial time. Someone drew a line in the sand. For accounting purposes.

But somehow it has effected the natural rhythms of the inhabitants of Projectistan. The excitement of new beginnings. Big Adventures are coming! Epic Journeys are at the horizon!

Regardless of the actual starting date of the work, new years day marks an exit and an entry.

Perhaps more so in our mind and bodies than on our to-do lists.

As projects are about time and rhythms, it makes sense to me to be more conscious about our relationships with them. Conscious about entry and exit. Conscious about moving from one thing to another. Conscious about transitions.

Havi Brooks has a nice exercise to enhance your awareness about markers in time. Providing them names. The idea is that you use moons (full moons or new moons) as markers of natural time. To become aware of our more natural rhythms instead of artificial time.

But, as hamsters in our treadmills running from one reporting period to another, we might start out with calender months. And provide it with names of episodes from our Big Adventure.

That will be weird enough.

This could go like this:
January: Embarking The Beagle.
This blog is my Beagle in the journey to discover how temporary tribes operate. And this month I’m getting ready. Again

Or you might like these:
The Prologue.
Courtship.
“I Ate So Much, It’s Time For Action.”

If you had to provide a name for the coming episode in your work or personal life, what would it be?

Oh yeah. Happy New Year!

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Embarking The Beagle. Hello 2012. is a post from: Project Shrink.

I realized I need a different language for writing about projects. I realized I need embarrassing drawings to express my thoughts on projects. I know projects are about humans. Heck, it has been my tagline for many years. But how can I talk about people stuff when the tools I have to communicate with are technocratic, cold and impersonal? You see why I need Shrinkonia?

So. I turned 40, started drawing and became emperor of my own imaginary state. Go figure.

Shrinkonia: a place where project teams find connection and flow, so they can create amazing things together. It’s located all over the world. And mobile. So it moves around. And people come and go. They move to Shrinkonia fluently and leave as they have done their thing. Also home of The Project Shrink. And MacGuyver. Although. They do not really live together.

I am going to declare Shrinkonian royalty. People that may use an imaginary title for one year.

In this case, the best bloggers of 2011.

Judged by me and MacGuyver. Exactly.

I like blogs more than books. Well. Certain types of blogs. Blogs that are like television series. Blogs that show how the authors cope with gaps in their thinking. I like blogs that write about work in the context of identity and belonging. Penelope Trunk explains:

“But I want to keep writing about careers because I think the topic is actually mostly about belonging. We each want to contribute to something, and we each want to feel safe. Work is so much more than just earning money. Work is about figuring out where we belong in a wider context than our circle of friends and family. Writing about the workplace and careers is writing about belonging in the most fundamental sense of the word.”

So. Here we go. The best Shrinkonian blogs of 2011. All may use the title Duchess or Duke of Shrinkonia for a year. There! Congratulations.

Fluent Self by Havi Brooks.

There is no other blog that influenced me as much as the Fluent Self blog by Havi Brooks. I link to her writings very often in my postings. I like it so much that after reading it intensively the last couple of years, I started to adopt some of her layout techniques, use of words and topics. Yes! Exactly.

She’s a biggified teacher of stuff, organizes week-long “workshops” during which people can work on their thing. It’s actually kind of difficult to explain when you aren’t a regular reader of her blog. One explanation: “So there’s this woman? I kind of sort of know her from online. No, not like that. She has a duck! Anyway, she runs a playground. Yes. It’s like preschool, but for grownups.”

See.

Penelope Trunk by herself.

Penelope Trunk writes about work and careers. She mixes her advice with extremely personal stories about her family and relationships. Penelope has Asperger syndrome. This makes it difficult for her to sense which social behavior is appropriate under certain conditions. So, she studies the rules in the workplace and society about which social behavior is when appropriate and she behaves according to these rules.

She used to live in New York. Currently she lives on a farm in Wisconsin. Her insights in combination with her brutal honesty makes this one of the Best Shrinkonian Blogs of 2011!

Collective Self by Lori Kane.

Lori is the resident self-organizing group researcher from Collective Self. She writes about her experiences being a member of several self-organizing groups, from consulting groups to flash mobs. She describes the inner working and feelings as a member of the groups. What I personally find fascinating about her writings is that they are personal, they are about things she experienced herself. They are mostly stories. And we all know, I love stories!

Her posts remind me that the feelings inside your body, your emotions are also telling you a lot about your place in a group. She is also an awesome friend I am currently writing an ebook series with.

The Altucher Confidential by James Altucher.

James is a trader, investor, writer, and entrepreneur living in New York City. A little over a year ago he started to write about his life in the most honest way he can. He talks about how he earned and lost millions as a trader. He writes about his fears and wishes using fascinating true stories. This man really knows how to write. And he writes often. It’s both fascinating and authentic, that’s for sure.

Scott Berkun by himself.

Scott Berkun used to be a Project Manager at Microsoft. And then he wrote a lot of famous best selling books (three!). And a fantastic blog. And essays. And stuff. As Elizabeth wrote perfectly in her nomination: “He writes well about project management and other business topics like public speaking and innovation, which is perfect for Shrinkonia. And his colophons are always really funny.”

The Gorilla Is Named Hogarth by Joel Bancroft-Connors.

A Project Manager that has conversations with his imaginary gorilla? And the gorilla’s name is Hogarth?

Meet Joel Bancroft-Connors: “Oh, right! Meet  Hogarth. He’s sitting down the table, wedged between the QA director and the product manager, quietly reading his newspaper and ignoring everyone else. It’s a bit of tight fit, but what do you expect from an 800 pound gorilla?”

Joel took a gorilla instead of the elephant that is normally used in the phrase “the elephant in the room”. And he writes about it on his blog.

I mean. Come on.

A GORILLA!

NAMED HOGARTH!!

Yeah.

That’s Shrinkonian royalty for you!

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Best Shrinkonian Blogs Of 2011. is a post from: Project Shrink.

The last time anyone looked, it was located between the United Agilist and PMBoktoe. But that map is already a few months old.

If I would have to write a Wikipedia page about it, the first sentences would read:

Shrinkonia: a place where project teams find connection and flow, so they can create amazing things together. It’s located all over the world. And mobile. So it moves around. And people come and go. They move to Shrinkonia fluently and leave as they have done their thing. Also home of The Project Shrink. And MacGuyver. Although they do not live together.

Do you remember when we talked about containers: “The function of containers is to hold the energy, life, identity, or “presence” of the group.” To use a “tent” analogy: a tent is what we need to hold our culture. Or, if you like, we fill the tent with our culture like a hot air balloon.

The mobile state of Shrinkonia is a container. A tent. Fantastic. Metaphors to describe a metaphor.

Anyway. As ruler of my own imaginary state, I have the power to make up any title I can think of. I can declare you Coolest Shrinkonian Researcher. Or. Shrinkonian Duke Of Blogging.

And I have decided to do just that.

To declare some Shrinkonian royalty.

But positions are only valid for a year. So it’s more like The Oscars than old French royalty. Or English. Or Dutch.

Yes. yes. I am talking about the 2011 Shrinkies!

The only time we ever used this award was back in 2008. Remember? Kimberly Wiefling went home with the Shrinkie For Best PM Blog.

The winners of the awards will be announced mid December. The current inhabitants of Shrinkonia are allowed to vote. Mac and Me.

But first we need nominees!

Please leave your suggestions in the comments.

The possible categories:

• Best Blogger.
• Best Podcaster.
• Best Author.
• Most Coolest Researcher.
• Most Innovative Company/Organization.

Or any other category you can think of. The winners will get amazing titles. And their name in the Shrinkonian Hall Of Fame.

Some would say, it’s the “honor” they get. I would say, it is much more.

And for those of you who are wondering, what the deal is with MacGuyver and me… A short piece from the legendary Welcome To Shrinkonia post:

Mac explained: “Shrinkonia is my kingdom. I have full authority over it. It is so small that this sign hardly fits in it. I am the only inhabitant at this moment. But the cool thing is that every one who sees the sign, my Swiss army knife and thinks “wow. cool!” will join in. Shrinkonia is a very dynamic state. In size.”

Please nominate your favorite Shrinkonians!

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - The 2011 Shrinkies. Awards For Awesome People. Request For Nominees. is a post from: Project Shrink.

You will be surprised how big your family can be.

Especially if you count in all those relatives that you don’t know. Never met. Perhaps you have heard some stories about them (never in a good way of course). But you wouldn’t recognize them if they were dancing the polka with a penguin in front of you.

Well. You would recognize them the next time you see them. As the guys dancing the polka with a penguin. That is an image hard to erase from memory.

Do you know how big the group is you are working in?

People hop from one project to another. Collaboration is temporary and fluent. Teammates will come and go. You might not have seen them. You open up a log from a couple of weeks ago and you see an entry from someone you have never heard off. He was one of your team members at that time.

If you are working with an offshore team, you might know the team lead. But do you know all his colleagues? All the people he asks for help?

I have talked about the importance of identity and culture. And one of the assumptions I had was that you know who’s in your group. You might not know those people very well. But you are at least aware that you are both contributing to a shared cause. But as I just realized, this might not be the case.

This sounds like a problem to me.

“Organizational analysts refer to the challenge of establishing team identity as a boundary definition problem for teams, when members are spread across large distances whether geographic or cultural in nature,” writes Larry Irons, in an insightful post titled “Social Learning, Collaboration and Team Identity“.

Is it necessary for (distributed) teams to know every member, to all agree on who is a member, to reduce boundary definition problems, to perform well?

Larry Irons quotes research performed by Mark Mortensen that looks into the effect of boundary disagreement in distributed teams and the team performance. He summarizes the findings as “In other words, lack of an agreement on who is a member of a distributed team does not present a problem that needs solving in order to manage performance.”

That’s good news. We are truly capable of operating in an ever changing web of working relationships.

The main problem I see for me personally is to write about groups, identity and culture as something diffuse and fluent. It’s one thing to say that nothing is fixed and everything is changing, but it gets incredibly difficult to describe.

Ah well.

Let me draw it for you. Perhaps doodling helps.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - How Big Is Your Family? Boundary Definition Problems For Teams. is a post from: Project Shrink.

Ah. The beauty of modern communication technology.

A few years before I also hosted a webinar. This time I was ill. So. There I was in my pajamas in my bedroom speaking to employees of a large organization on three continents. Awesome.

Anyway. A webinar about storytelling in projects. I had the pleasure of participating in this years “Project Management 2012: Findings Of The Year“. Below is a recording of my session: “Storytelling In Projects: Making Project Communication Human.” Many thanks to the organization for providing the recording.

Happy to talk about stories. Because. People love stories. It is what brings them together. It helps them to identify and connect with a mission or project. It makes our working environment more human.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Storytelling In Projects. Making Project Communication Human. is a post from: Project Shrink.

“It feels I am repeating myself. I think I brought my ideas as far as I can, on my own.” I said.
“Well. That is because you’re not supposed to do this on your own.” Someone replied.

I know this to be true.

Fish Pond.

At the beginning of this blog I was struggling to grasp the concepts around complexity. And leadership. And especially the combination. I felt the connections, but not quite clearly. And I was surely unable to express my own thoughts about the topic.

Then I wrote a series of blog posts together with my fantastic friend Ali Anani.

We called the series “The Fish Pond Metaphor: Complexity In Management“. The numerous email exchanges and the resulting ebook shaped my understanding of social networks, how groups are formed and dissolved and the role of leadership and management.

I consider the free ebook one of our best writings.

Social Media.

In 2009 I started creating a video podcast. Somehow along my journey I got an interest in virtual team work. I thought going through the steps of making a podcast would allow me to experiment with online communication. It did. But I couldn’t quite connect my experiences.

Early 2009 I felt the similarity between blogging, co-writing, podcasting and virtual team work. But I was lacking the words.

Somehow I got an invitation to speak on the topic of Social Media and Project Management at a major conference. I sensed the connections, but was lacking the depth and insight to put it in a coherent story. I had no clue about what to say.

I asked on this blog: “How can people use Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, LinkedIn, Flickr, Youtube, etc.) in their projects?” The larger community was able to tell me what I was looking for. And this resulted in “Everything A Project Manager Should Know About Social Media.”

What Is There Left To Say?

“It feels I am repeating myself. I think I brought my ideas as far as I can, on my own.” I said.

So. Here I am.

What is there left to tell?

I know this is a pattern. There is a point where I get stuck. Where I cannot see the next step. I start to create more maps. Maps always help. Well. Apparently not always.

This is the point where I normally switch from individual writer to collective writer. This is not something that is planned. It just is. These opportunities pop up at the right moment. I wasn’t aware of this. Until I got this reply.

“Well. That is because you’re not supposed to do this on your own.” Lori replied.

Well then.

I’m about to start co-writing an eBook series on “different work.” Yes. Together with my awesome friend Lori, the resident self-organizing group researcher from Collective Self.

I am looking for an introduction to a group that you think I should interview. “Different work” means a group that:

• deeply loves their work,
• together are working differently from the way they once believed they should work as individuals, and
• are significantly redefining what successful work looks and feels like for themselves and/or their organizations.

Please leave a comment or email bas -AT projectshrink.com if you can swing me an introduction to a group like this.

Thanks!

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - The Collective And The Individual. What Happens When I Get Stuck. is a post from: Project Shrink.