Mother Hen Leadership

Project Managers can learn from watching a mother hen taking care of her chicks. It's a neverending job keeping watch over those chicks to make sure they are safe and don't wander off and get lost or into trouble.

The Project Team needs a good leader. The Project Manager needs to always keep an eye on the team to make sure everyone stays on track. You need to be involved, but do not micromanage your team. Let them be independent like chicks so they can develop and become valuable team members. Be there to steer the team members back on track when you notice that they are lost and need some guidance.

Having good intuition is a plus. The picture I snapped illustrates the mother hen being concerned because she has a feeling that one chick is missing because there are only five chicks around her so she takes to higher ground to get a better view of whats going on.

(Note - this article was originally written by Drake Settsu and published on projectmanagement.com/blogs/419316/Project-Management-in-Real-Life in December 2019)

The Project Presentation

The big day is here to present a proposed project to stakeholders. You prepared a slideshow to provide visual aids so you make a clear presentation. Looks like you are well prepared for this presentation.

I have been to two presentations that blew up with displeased stakeholders. 

Presentation of a proposed cell phone tower in a residential community. It was presented at a neighborhood board meeting. The Project Coordinator started the slideshow and fielded questions that could not be answered. The Project Coordinator started to get nervous and stopped the slideshow and kept dodging all questions from the angry stakeholders. The chairman of the board had to jump in to address the Project Coordinator, he said can you provide the answers? He could not. The presentation was a failure. The Project Coordinator was not sincere to say I will get back to you on that question and just kept on presenting without being able to answer any questions.

Presentation of a proposed major neighborhood road work improvement project at a community town hall meeting. This presentation was slick and well prepared, but it ended in the community disapproving of it. The Project Managers did not crack under fire from the community. They kept their composure. Why did their presentation fail? They did not do a good job collecting traffic data and community input for the presentation. I call the examples they gave cherry picking and the community knew that they were cherry picking. 

Lessons to be learned from the two failed presentations.

1) Have subject matter experts available to help you field questions that you cannot properly answer. You need to anticipate the questions of the stakeholders in advance so you need to be well prepared. It's just common sense.

2) You think you have a polished presentation that will wow the stakeholders. Make sure you have accurate data to support your presentation.

(Note - this article was originally written by Drake Settsu and published on projectmanagement.com/blogs/419316/Project-Management-in-Real-Life in October 2018)

Project Management in Real Life

The Project Manager

Having project management certifications and taking classes will help you prepare for the adventure that you will go on when you accept a Project Manager position. Now for reality. Do think you can serve PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) or Agile Project Management on a platter to your team to deliver a project on schedule. Well wake up or go back to sleep and keep on dreaming. PMBOK is a must to know but know how to make it work to your advantage.

Being a good PM means that you should be staying on top of trends in the profession. Read blogs from project managers that have real life experience walking the walk to help you gain knowledge that might be helpful for future projects someday. Approaches and techniques are a hit and miss. Just keep on trying to you hit pay dirt. You will. Being a good PM means that you have genuine desire to take on a role to have people trust in you to follow your roadmap to achievement. 

Chicks Assembled 

The Team

Every team you come across in your PM role will be different. You need to get into their heads to understand where they are coming from. You want to bring out their best and not go to battle with them. Not an easy task but who said being a PM is a cakewalk. Groom your team one day at a time. You must gain the trust in your team to be successful or it will be a bumpy ride following your roadmap to success. Everyone on the team plays an important role no matter how small it is.

Getting Your Chicks Assembled

The ultimate reward is when the team is on the same page. You might not have ducks to get in a row. You might have chicks to corral. The main objective is that everyone knows their role on the team.

How to Win and Lose like a Team

Leadership through difficult times 

A good lesson was illustrated in a Sunday Night NFL Football game on 10-23-2016 between the Seattle Seahawks and the Arizona Cardinals that ended in an overtime tie of 6 - 6. The lowest overtime score in NFL history.

Arizona was the first to strike with a winning field goal. The ball hit the left goal post. The Arizona coach slammed his playboard to the ground from his head with an angry face when he realized the kick was bad. Seattle received a big gift from Arizona. 

Seattle was able to get in position with a game winning field goal with time running out. The kick went wide missing the inside of the left goal post. The Seattle coach reacted with anticipation for the kick and then showed disappointment in his face with the bad kick.

The Seahawks coach Carroll:

“I love him and he’s our guy,’’ Carroll said of Hauschka.

The Cardinals coach Arians:

Arians said of Catanzaro “Make it. He’s a professional. This ain’t high school. You get paid to make it.”

Two different reactions and comments towards players that could have been a game hero. 

The Cardinals coach is not a leader. Slamming a player is poor leadership. Develop and work with the player.

The Seahawks coach is a real leader. He knows he will need that kicker in the future and he stands by him.

In the business world we should lose as a team and win as a team. No finger pointing. Learn from failure and regroup. Move on with synergy. It's all about a cohesive team.

The High Risk Project

Project Management has been around from the beginning of time. Just think about the wonders of the world that have been built. A form of project management had to have been used to accomplish such feats. The Romans and Egyptians are examples of accomplishing amazing construction projects with only primitive tools and slaves. The use of slaves must have been ingrained into project teams through the years to joke about Project Managers being slave drivers.      

Fast forward to modern times. Project Management is a critical discipline to ensure successful delivery of projects on time within the budget. Projects are tied to a budget with a reasonable variance for the bumps in the road that could pop up. The bumps in the road are the project risks that should be identified and monitored all the time. The entire team needs to be onboard with open communication to immediately report any risks that are starting to materialize. If you stick your head in the sand and hope that the risk goes away without any mitigation, good luck, get your resume ready. 

The person overseaing the entire high profile project needs to be transparent, accessible and have integrity. Knowing when to say timeout takes guts when it's starting to look bad. Slapping on workarounds for deficiencies that eventually catch up with the project is just pure stupidity. Money and time are just wasted and your competency will questioned. 

Having an unrealistic attitude that we have put in many hours and spent big money on the project already so it's unstoppable because we are at the point of no return will not work in your favor. Any failing project can be shutdown to repurpose it or dismantle it to stop further financial loss. Repurpose or dismantling will come at a cost, but if you continue on with a poorly planned project that should have never gotten a green light to proceed, you better have deep pockets to keep funding that White Elephant. A lot of people will be outraged and at the same time relieved that bleeding will be stopped. 

It's all about gathering the required cost and time to complete a project on-time within the budget. Not an easy job for some projects, but it needs to be done properly without cutting corners to get an approval. That's the expectation you expect when you entrust a project team to embark on a major high risk project that is very expensive. 

Just A Good Project Manager

A Project Manager needs good people skills to be a leader. Project Managers need to exude confidence not arrogance, but have humility. True respect is earned remember that. You are the captain of the ship running the project with your team members looking to you for guidance. It’s a team effort that everyone’s contribution no matter how small it may look plays an important part of the project. You as a Project Manager need to create that atmosphere in your team.

It’s your choice on the approach to delivering a successful on-time projects. Remember you might have to work with these people again unless you’re a consultant or contractor who moves on and does not care how success is achieved.

In closing a good Project Manager does not have to come across as a person to fear. Be the Project Manager with charisma that everyone wants to work for and be around. Respect goes a long way and people will watch your back when you are respected.

I have seen an dealt with many arrogant Project Managers that give the profession a black eye.

Your Database is toast get out the butter and jelly

It's Aloha Friday morning on my way to work and I get get a call from the Data Center that the mission critical system for the organization is acting strange. Users are unable to access the system. Moments latter I get a text page from the system that a process that needs to run is gone. I had scripts monitoring the system so I knew something bad happened. 

I logon on to the system and it's not normal and the process that needs to be running was missing. I spoke with the Data Center staff and determined that an operator error caused the problem. The database that was in production was an interim database version to migrate to a new permanent database later in the month. It had known bugs that we just stepped on by accident.

I call an emergency meeting with management to brief them that the database has been corrupted. I contacted the application vendor to take a look at the database integrity. I advised management to implement downtime procedures. Hours elapsed working to fix the database with no luck. The database cannot be repaired. My only option now is the last system backup. I asked the Data Center Manager to bring the backup tapes to me. I’m holding in my hands the tapes of the mission critical system of the organization. I need a successful restore to minimize the window of data loss.

I call another meeting to break the bad news to management and staff. It’s going to be a long night we need to inform our users that the system will be down for an extended time and we will be giving periodic updates on the recovery progress. Key personal needs to be on standby and available when called.

The restore process is initiated. Restoring a large system takes hours and patience waiting for it to complete. Once the restore completes we need to run the integrity checker utilities to make sure no corruption exists on the restore. The system was validated to release back to the users with some minimal data loss between the backup and the time of the database corruption. Made some minor tweaks on the system. It's back on-line for everyone to use.

I got in the office at 8am Friday and it’s now Saturday 8am. I just experienced a System Administrators nightmare. When you are coordinating a major Disaster Recovery effort it's all about teamwork. You need to remain calm as you become the point person that knows everything that's going on. All eyes are on you. My Project Management experience definitely came into play on this recovery effort that had to be put together on the fly. You really know what you are made of when you go through an experience like a major system outage. It's a real good feeling seeing everyone work together as a team. 

A quote to live by if you're a real leader

Project Management - Qualities of a leader

Leaders are born and made, they rise when they have the calling. A good leader will embrace the respect of the team not having to force their leadership skills on the team. The bad leaders are the ones that try to force their leadership and just do not connect with the team wasting everyone's time with a dog and pony show they put on to call attention to themselves. 

Something to remember on how you conduct your leadership. Put yourself in your teams shoes and step back and look at yourself and see if you like that person.

Qualities of a good leader:

1) Vision - Have enthusiasm conveying to your team what we are going to undertake and deliver.

2) Good listener - Let others speak their view point to get a good understanding of them.

3) Approachable - Create an atmosphere that you can be contacted anytime.

4) Confidence - Believe in yourself without portraying an arrogant attitude.    

5) Credibility - You must have the trust of your team.

6) Keep one's word - Deliver what you promise.  

7) Accountability - The Buck Stops Here. 

8) Charisma - Inspire your team.