In re Zimmerman

Stages of a Project

In project management, we frequently say that the stages of a project go like this:

1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Despair
4. Panic
5. Search for the Guilty
6. Punishment of the Innocent
7. Praise for Non-Participants

The key problem comes in Step 5, “Search for the Guilty,” as opposed to the alternative, “Fix the Problem.” The overwhelming need to punish the offender outweighs the need to fix the problem.

In re Zimmerman

These days, I’ve mostly sworn off political topics. I hate that I’ve lost friends that way. But the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman also raises issues relevant to project management, cognitive bias, and fallacies of logic, all of which are legitimate subjects of this blog.

As is too often the case in any sensational media matter, the professional outrage machinery is in full swing. The most extreme and definite opinions on both sides receive the majority of coverage, even though they are a minority of the population, and in response, both defenders and accusers try to delegitimize the comments and opinions of those who disagree.

My goal in writing this is not to start an argument about the relative culpability of either Zimmerman or Martin — and in fact, I’d vastly prefer not to have one. There are many other places you can go to have that argument. Right now, let's look at the nature of those opinions.

In the case of Zimmerman — or, for that matter, any criminal suspect — there are four separate questions:

1. Should Zimmerman be suspected?
2. Should Zimmerman have been arrested?
3. Should Zimmerman be put on trial?
4. Should Zimmerman be convicted?

The Decision Hierarchy

Decision-making processes are normally hierarchical. There are earlier, tentative decisions we make before we reach our final conclusion. Should we, for example, do a particular project? The initial decision may be to do a feasibility study, or a pilot test. Only when those results are in will we make our final choice and commit resources to the solution.

The legal concept of level of proof is particularly meaningful. Depending on the stage of the process, different levels of proof are required to support a given decision.

Should Zimmerman be suspected? The legal standard for suspecting someone of a crime is a low bar: reasonable suspicion. This standard is based on "specific and articulable facts", "taken together with rational inferences from those facts," to distinguish it from an "unparticularized suspicion" or a hunch. In Zimmerman's case, there's no real doubt that Zimmerman shot Martin. Even Zimmerman admits as much.

In project management, a related question is whether the environment contains opportunities or problems worthy of addressing. Coming up with a target list doesn't mean you've made a final decision, so the burden of proof is low.

Should Zimmerman have been arrested? The standard for an arrest is probable cause. That standard is higher than "reasonable suspicion," but much lower than the standard required for a criminal conviction. The best-known definition of probable cause is "a reasonable belief that a person has committed a crime." Another common definition is "a reasonable amount of suspicion, supported by circumstances sufficiently strong to justify a prudent and cautious person's belief that certain facts are probably true." 

This question, not the question of whether Zimmerman is ultimately found guilty, is the core of the current controversy. Frankly, had Zimmerman been charged and tried at the time — even if he were subsequently acquitted — it’s hard to believe that this case would have ever achieved national prominence. It’s not exactly as if shootings are an uncommon occurrence in the United States.

"Probable cause" also has a role in project management. Feasibility studies aren't free, so you have to pick your shots. Establishing a proof level equivalent to "probable cause" helps you focus on the issues that matter most.

Should Zimmerman be put on trial? Prosecutors can bring charges based on no more than probable cause, but a grand jury, which reviews the case prior to trial, is supposed to make its judgment based on the preponderance of the evidence, that is, whether is charge is more likely to be true than not true. Prosecutors also have the benefit of a more comprehensive investigation than is normally performed at the time an arrest is made. The additional information may well alter an initial determination.

A full-fledged project is the equivalent of a trial, because you have to do all the work, and in the process, you may discover surprises and risks not part of the initial process. The initial project plan rests not on final determinations, but rather on the preponderance of the evidence available in the initiating and planning stages.

Should Zimmerman be convicted? Depending on the charge, two standards may apply: clear and convincing evidence, or proof beyond reasonable doubt. The first standard applies in some civil cases; the second in criminal cases. Zimmerman clearly falls into the second category. Our adversarial legal system is designed to put the strongest burden on the shoulders of those who would convict someone of a crime.

There is a final standard of proof, proof beyond a shadow of a doubt, but that is often an impossible burden to meet, so that standard doesn't apply in a criminal case. Indeed, given that there are only two people with full knowledge, and one of them is dead, the "shadow of doubt" may never be completely eliminated.

At the end of the project, the results must necessarily speak for themselves. Did you solve the issue that led to the project? Perhaps clear and convincing evidence is all you need, but sometimes a higher burden of proof rests on the project manager.

Justified and Unjustified Opinions

If there's one fundamental American right, it's the right to an opinion, but not all opinions are equal. To have a legitimate, justified opinion, you need to have some actual facts and apply an appropriate standard of proof. As long as you're clear about what stage of the decision is currently on the table, saying "yes" to one level doesn't necessarily equate to a final determination.

In an imperfect world, armed with imperfect knowledge, we cannot escape the reality that we must necessarily make some decisions and hold some opinions in advance of all the facts. And that raises the question about what makes an opinion justified and legitimate.

It's often argued that [insert side of the argument] has already convicted [Zimmerman] [Martin], rather than wait for the judicial machinery to work its course. And, of course, some extremists have already rushed to final judgment on the matter. But the vast majority of us have not.

That doesn't mean judgments, even in preliminary stages, are inappropriate. As noted, there's no reasonable doubt of the basic fact that Zimmerman shot Martin. It's hard for anyone to argue that the police should not have looked into the matter.

Can a "prudent and cautious person" reasonably conclude, at this stage of the investigation, that Zimmerman should be arrested? Clearly, the answer is yes. Even without the discredited claim of a racial slur, the 911 call, in which Zimmerman disregarded the recommendation of the dispatcher not to get out of his car, casts a "reasonable amount of suspicion" on Zimmerman's actions.

Does the preponderance of the evidence lean in favor of putting Zimmerman on trial? The Florida prosecutor assigned to the case has determined the answer to be yes, so it's not unreasonable or unjustified for an outsider to agree with it.

It's possible, and even legitimate, to have a definite opinion on the questions of arrest and trial. It's much less justified to have a definite and final opinion about Zimmerman's ultimate guilt. The standard of "reasonable doubt" has not yet been overcome, and will not be until all the evidence — including evidence presented by the defense — is out in the open.

The claim is often made that Trayvon Martin's supporters have already convicted Zimmerman, but that's an exaggeration. It's true that Martin's supporters have generally concluded that Zimmerman should be arrested and tried, but those opinions are valid at a much lower standard of proof. It's not "convicting" Zimmerman to argue that the evidence supports arrest and trial.

Bias and Judgment

When it comes to the final decision, a prudent person should be cautious. You not only need evidence, but the evidence itself often needs to be challenged and validated. But that doesn't mean you can't hold a preliminary opinion, as long as you're willing to modify it in the face of persuasive information to the contrary.

If you rate opinions about Zimmerman on a scale of 10 (certain he's guilty) to 0 (certain he's innocent), people with scores of 10 or 0 are clearly making decisions ahead of the facts. For such people, the outcome of a trial will mean nothing: if the verdict goes their way, they knew it all along, but if the verdict goes against their opinions, it will mean that the trial was rigged and thus invalid. People who are unwilling to revise their opinions in the face of new facts aren't reasonable. Fortunately, their number isn't large.

More common is people whose opinions are 8-2, strongly convinced of Zimmerman's guilt or innocence, but not so locked into their positions that persuasive contrary evidence is incapable of changing their minds. People in this category need to be extremely careful of the actions of cognitive bias in their information processing and decision process. Even if you are trying to be open-minded, once a mind's made up, inertia takes hold. Change is difficult.

People with opinions in the 4-6 range are in less danger from cognitive bias, because their opinions are inherently more tentative. In my case, I am not paying detailed attention to the story, because of the general unreliability of most of what's published at this point. That's not the same as saying I have no opinion, or that I don't lean toward one side, but I'm fully aware that the eventual factual record may not support my tentative ideas. Even so, cognitive bias can have its effects even on people of more moderate opinion, so it's important to stay on one's guard.

But that's opinions about Zimmerman's guilt. Opinions about arrest or trial fall into different standards of proof.

The Process of Proof

After watching innumerable crime shows, we all should have a pretty good idea how the police and trial process is supposed to work. When it goes according to plan, it does a reasonably good job of establishing a factual record in support of a decision. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Even if the story seems straightforward at first glance, investigators still go through the process of reconstructing the story, gathering physical evidence, and taking initial testimony. Raw evidence, of course, is of little use until it’s processed — the body examined, witnesses interviewed in detail, a timeline reconstructed, DNA tests performed, etc. In processing evidence, investigators create a story, a timeline of events and people that ideally reveals the truth of a situation.

Stories, of course, always begin as outlines, and as they take shape and form, you can fill in greater detail. Sometimes, stories surprise you, and you find yourself in an unexpected place. Minor characters (“persons of interest”) become suspects — people with motive, means, and opportunity. Some suspects are ruled out as the process moves forward; other suspects are eventually charged with a crime.

But all that assumes police and prosecutors are doing their jobs properly. To me, the most important question is not whether George Zimmerman committed second degree murder in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, but whether he should have been arrested in the first place.

What's the Real Problem?

Questions about the process will probably not be part of the trial, because it’s Zimmerman, not the police department, who is its subject. One hopes that the Justice Department investigation will address these matters. Again, I don’t claim to know the right answers. But as a management consultant, my job is to ask the right questions. Here are some things I'd like to know.

First, was the behavior of the Sanford Police Department appropriate? To measure "appropriate," consider the following: Did the department follow established protocols? Were those protocols adequate to the situation? Did any special circumstances make it more difficult to follow the protocols? What can we do about that in the future?

If protocols were not followed, why not? Are there management or organizational issues, problems with internal culture, changes in the environment, or other factors? And if so, what can we do to address those issues? Even if the more serious allegations of political interference by Zimmerman’s father (a retired Virginia magistrate) or charges of institutional racism turn out to be true, the reflexive “search for the guilty” is a much less effective response than fix the problem.

Wasting a Crisis

I have a stronger opinion about process in this case than I have about guilt. One of the facts of management consulting is that if you have a really bad outcome, you need to adjust your process as necessary to keep it from happening again.

The Sanford police were, no doubt, shocked at the public response and degree of national interest. Regardless of the assignment of fault or blame, they have to adapt to the new reality that their work will receive increasing scrutiny in the future. The 1982 Chicago Tylenol murders were clearly not the fault of the manufacturer, but the ubiquitous tamper-evident seals on all that we eat or drink date from that crime. And if they truly are at fault, then there’s all the more reason to work harder and better in the future.

Too much emphasis on determining guilt can, unfortunately, detract from the more important matter of change. In the cognitive biases series, I covered my version of the “Semmelweis Effect," the reality that peoples’ views harden when you accuse them of terrible crimes. Moral indignation can backfire, and that does no one any good.

Because it’s so easy to identify the most inflammatory and outrageous pieces on either side, it’s equally easy to miss the large amount of reasonable, proportionate commentary—also on both sides. A crisis, as has been noted, is a terrible thing to waste. That doesn’t mean we want a crisis or welcome it when it comes, but if we waste the crisis, we’re often doomed to experience it again. That’s the worst possible outcome.

It’s clear that something went terribly wrong in the Trayvon Martin case. Less clear is what went wrong, and the purpose of trial and investigation is to establish the narrative in an authoritative manner. Whether the trial and investigation accomplish that goal remains to be seen.

But it’s truly the most important part of the matter. Because once we answer that question, we can move forward to the two questions that matter in the long run:

• Why did it happen?

• And how can we keep it from happening again?

Why Projects Fail

The following piece is from my book with Ted Leemann, Creative Project Management, published in 2010.

 * * *

If project management is so good, why do 70% of all projects, including those led by experienced and capable project managers, fail to get done within the Triple Constraints of time, cost, and performance — or in layman’s language, on time, on budget, and to spec?

Here are a few instructive examples.

• In 2006, a $400 million purchasing system for Ford Motor Company was simply abandoned.

• Software errors in a UK Inland Revenue system resulted in a $3.45 billion tax-credit overpayment.

• The infamous automated baggage system at Denver International Airport burned through $250 million before being abandoned as unworkable.

• The Department of Defense’s $6 billion Kinetic Energy Interceptor program was terminated in 2009 after it was determined that it would not achieve its goals.

That’s not all. Let’s look at some numbers on project performance.

The Standish Group has tracked project performance since 1994. Every two years, it issues the CHAOS Report. In the 2009 CHAOS Report, they reported these abysmal numbers:

• 32% of projects were delivered on time, on budget, and with the required features and functions.

• 44% were finished either late, overbudget, or only partially completed

• 24% failed altogether, and were cancelled or abandoned.

There’s good news and bad news here. The good news is that in 1994, when the Standish Group began tracking, only 16% of projects succeeded in meeting the trifecta of the Triple Constraints (on time, on budget, to spec). On the other hand, the 2009 report shows that there’s been a downtick in success (34% to 32%) and a significant uptick in failure (from a low of 15% to today’s 24%).

For challenged projects, those that succeed in some elements and fail in others, the good news is that average budget overrun has dropped from 180% to only 43%. On the less positive side, time overruns have gone up 30%, and the percentage of features that made it into the final product has dropped from 67% to 52%.

During this time, nearly 260,000 project managers earned the prestigious Project Management Professional (PMP®) designation from the Project Management Institute (PMI). But the track record of improved project performance is lackluster at best.

What’s going on?

A significant amount of study and reporting has attempted to discover the reasons for these failures.

• The 1998 Bull Survey, conducted by the French computer company of the same name, identified the major causes of IT project failure as a breakdown of communications, a lack of planning, and poor quality control. 

• KPMG Canada, in 1997, identified the core issues as poor planning, weak business case, and a lack of top management involvement and support. 

• The Standish 1995’s Chaos Report named incomplete requirements and lack of user involvement. 

• The OASIG Study, also published in 1995, cited lack of attention to the human and organizational aspects, poor project management, and poor articulation of user requirements.

But poor planning, weak business case, and inattention to human and organizational aspects aren’t causes, but rather symptoms of a much large systemic shortcoming.

Treating the symptoms isn’t the same as treating the underlying medical conditions. We know some of the root causes. People with poor interpersonal or team leadership skills and stakeholder conflict create friction in the project environment, and friction increases inefficiency and waste. The mass and complexity of the organization increases its moment of inertia, and getting anything to move takes enormous effort. People come and go, missions mutate, information goes missing, and that increases entropy, the tendency to move from order toward chaos.

Things fall apart.

It’s been said that there are only two reasons for project failure:

1. Things that happened that nobody thought of and that they accordingly didn’t prepare for.
2. Things that happened that everybody knew was going to happen, but nobody did anything about.

How often have you experienced project problems because something came along halfway through your project and they had to pull two people off the team ? How about someone wanting a major change in one or more of the triple constraints when the project is  three-quarters completed? Somewhere in your project environment, there’s probably some recurrent problem that happens every single time. Things take longer than you expected. Not everybody is really on board. There’s always a layer of technical complexity no one expected. Important people don’t really know what they want, or expect you to figure it out magically.

But do you account for these situations in your project planning? For a few outstanding project managers, the answer is at least a partial “yes.” For most of us, the answer rests somewhere between seldom and never.

Maybe it’s something you can’t afford to recognize officially because the organization’s in denial. But maybe it’s something in your project management blind spot.

If you take the list of reasons from the studies above, you can boil them down into the following four (seven, if you count clauses) often unasked and unanswered questions:

• Why are we doing this? (Business case)

• Who has an interest in what we’re doing, and what do they each want and need? (Human and organizational aspects)

• What do we have to do, and how are we going to do it? (Project management, including planning and quality control)

• Who needs to be involved, and in what way? (Top management and user involvement and support)

The official standards of professional project management are designed to make sure these issues get appropriate consideration. But let’s face it — these are pretty obvious. It shouldn’t take a PMP to grasp these concepts.

And all too often, having a PMP doesn’t mean someone does.

Some Notes About Decision Making

Some of this material appears in my chapter in Applied Space Systems Engineering: Space Technology Series, which I wrote a few years ago. While originally aimed at making mission-critical decision in a complex engineering environment, some of the ideas are more generally applicable.



“A decision,” wrote author Fletcher Knebel, “is what a man makes when he can’t find anybody to serve on a committee.”

Committees and teamwork are often an essential part of decision-making, but even in that framework, each of us must sooner or later take our stand, knowing full well the range of potential consequences. In an organization, a decision-making process must often be open and auditable. We must know not only the decision we make, but also the process that led us to that decision.

Decisions often require tradeoffs. A perfect solution may not exist. Each potential choice may have a downside, or may be fraught with risk. In some ways, making the least bad choice out of a set of poor alternatives takes greater skill and courage than making a conventionally “good” decision. Napoleon Bonaparte observed, “Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than being able to decide.”

The outcome of a decision, whether positive or negative, is not in itself proof of the decision’s quality, especially where probability is concerned. The odds may be dramatically in favor of a positive outcome, yet the dice may come up boxcars. Equally, if someone makes a stupid decision but gets lucky, the decision is no less stupid in spite of a good outcome. A good decision process improves our odds and results in the desired outcome the majority of the time.

Decision-making is tightly woven into the risk management process, but one does not follow automatically from another. An engineering evaluation might tell us that there is a 42% probability of an event happening, and that the consequence involves the loss of $20 million and three lives. What the evaluation does not tell us is whether the risk is worth running. Values—organizational values, mission-related values, ethical values—address the consideration of worth.

There are two types of complexity in decision-making. The first, and most obvious, is the technical complexity of the issue and the tradeoffs that may be required. The second, though not always openly addressed, is the organizational complexity: the number of people involved, the number of departments or workgroups that must be consulted, the existing relationships that shape communication among people and groups, the organizational culture, and the pressure of the political process.

Decisions also vary in their importance. Importance can be measured in terms of the consequences of the decision and the constraints imposed on the decision process.

There are two slogans about decision-making: “Don’t just stand there, do something!” and its reverse, “Don’t just do something, stand there!” Both can be worthwhile pieces of advice; the trick is deciding which philosophy applies to the decision at hand. The first question is whether an actual problem exists, and, if so, the nature of that problem. The second is whether an action should be taken, and if so, the nature of that action.

At different times in the decision-making process, consider the opportunities as well as the negative consequences that can result both from the decision to act and from the decision to wait. If the consequences of a missed opportunity are greater, then the appropriate bias is in the direction of action. If an inappropriate decision could cause greater harm, the bias should fall in the direction of delay: gather more information and reassess.

Threats and opportunities both require proactive management, but opportunities even more so. Good luck and bad luck operate differently. If a person, say, loses $100, it’s gone, and all the consequences of that loss flow automatically. If, on the other hand, there’s a $100 bill somewhere in the area, it’s possible to miss it, there is no requirement to pick it up, and no obligation to spend it wisely. Exploiting opportunity requires observation, initiative, and wisdom.

A good process does not necessarily result in a good consequence. Predicting the future is never an exact science, especially when probabilities are involved. Evaluate the decision process separately from the decision outcome. Hindsight is a useful tool, though teams must remember that what seems so clear in light of actual events looked different to the decision-makers.

Dobson’s Laws of Project Management and Other Things (Part 5)

I’ve been writing and publishing daily management tweets since August 2009. In March 2010, I published a collection of the ones I’d written to that date. Here is the third of three more installments, covering Dobson’s Laws from the beginning of April 2010 through the end of December 2010. Copyright © 2012 by Michael Dobson under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license. 

• 
If you don’t know where you’re going, it’s hard to figure out how to get there — or know when you have.


• 
Literal truth can mislead. If you want people to drive 55, you need to put 45 (or better yet, 40) on the speed limit sign.

• 
Whether you have the right answer usually depends on whether you asked the right question—which may be the greater challenge.


• 
Moderation in all things. You need to leverage your assets without letting them turn you into a full-blown ass.


• 
People assume stakeholders are positive. Not true. Stakeholders can be positive, negative, or tangential to your objective.

1. Positive stakeholders win when you win. Because their interests are aligned, they have an incentive to help you. 
2. Negative stakeholders may oppose your project because they dislike the outcome or because they suffer from the process.
3. Tangential stakeholders have a secondary interest in your project. Which way they go often depends on you.

• People tend to have the morality and ethics they perceive they can afford.


• There are universal professions. No matter what else you do, you are a salesperson, a negotiator, and a firefighter.


• 
In an imperfect world, it is useful to remember that better, even if insufficient, is still better.


• 
There are real problems and real obstacles between ourselves and our goals. There are also fake ones, but they can be quite convincing.


• Always look for the thinking behind a proposed project. Sometimes you will discover that there has not been any.


• 
There are many reasons for hidden agendas. A common one is lack of communication.


• 
To discover hidden agendas, look for personal benefits that accrue to individuals. They may differ from the official goals.


• 
A deadline can be real but still unknown, as long as there are consequences for failing to meet it.
 

• Your official project sponsor is not necessarily the real one: the real one is the most powerful person who wants you to succeed.


• 
No matter how important your current project, tomorrow is another day. Avoid spending relationship capital you may need in the future.


• 
Even win/win negotiation can involve hardball. Decisions and choices have consequences, and conflict cannot always be avoided.

• 
No project plan ever survives first contact with reality. Yours will not be an exception.


• 
The project manager who plans has power. The one who does not is at the mercy of events.


• At the beginning of the project, the big picture is known and the details are often sketchy. Unfortunately, the details *are* the project.


• 
Requirements management is the central tool for planning quality into the project.


• 
Even if they fail to share the goal with you, they can still hold you accountable for failing to meet it.

• Three ways to compress a schedule: (1) Add resources to tasks, (2) Change scope, (3) Change dependencies from sequential to parallel.


• 
A risk is not a problem. Problem is present tense; risk future. Every risk will eventually either turn into a problem or fail to occur.

• 
When risks are managed, there is still normally a level of residual risk left in the background. They are either minor or too expensive.


• 
For all the emphasis on cost, it is actually unusual for the cost constraint to be the driver of the project.


• 
Cost estimating is figuring out how much the project will cost. Cost budgeting is figuring out how to do it with what they give you.


• 
Project managers have far more responsibility than they have power. This is also true for managers in general.


• 
Operational quality is not necessarily part of the performance criteria, but can also include elements of the time and cost constraints.


• Often, the best way to get what you want is to figure out how to give the other person what he or she wants.


• 
Some people are never late, over budget, or under spec — because they rebaseline the project in real time.


• You’re not too old as long as your age is a lower number than your IQ.


• No matter what the time horizon of your project, the time horizon of management is longer.


• 
Problems that aren’t solvable may still be manageable.


• 
Pay for work is always smaller than pay for knowledge or skill. Still higher pay comes from taking risks.


• When I first became a supervisor, I was so naive I actually thought that meant people would do what I told them to.

• Your staff has power, too. If they want to ruin your career and get rid of you, they always have the power to do so.


• 
Supervisors and managers don’t work...at least not in the same sense as workers. They get jobs done through the agency of other people.


• 
Sometimes the best communications strategy is to say absolutely nothing.


• The medium is part of the message. After 6,000 years, some messages still work best when chiseled into rock.


• 
A leader changes focus: from ideas to people, from self to others, from short to long term, and from simple to complicated.


• 
If you give a performance appraisal and the person is surprised, you clearly did a rotten job of giving feedback all year long.


• 
In the real world, credentials often trump actual ability. Fortunately, there are usually all kinds of ways to manufacture good credentials.

Dobson’s Laws of Project Management and Other Things (Part 4)

http://xkcd.com/951/

I’ve been writing and publishing daily management tweets since August 2009. In March 2010, I published a collection of the ones I’d written to that date. Here is the second of three more installments, covering Dobson’s Laws from the beginning of April 2010 through the end of December 2010. Copyright © 2012 by Michael Dobson under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license. 

• 
No matter how vital your mission, you’re never the only game in town. What else is competing for your resources?

• 
The problem isn’t following the crowd; the crowd is often right. The problem is following the crowd *mindlessly*.


• Don’t underestimate the value of accidents. Accidents gave us penicillin, vulcanized rubber, and PostIt® notes.


• 
One of the top mental illnesses is OPD: Obnoxious Personality Disorder. Have you checked yourself for warning signs lately?

• 
Looking for evidence you’re wrong is harder than looking for evidence you’re right, but potentially much more valuable.


• Constraints can be tight or loose, flexible or inflexible. Here are 3 things to do with restrictive constraints: 

1. Negotiate. Is there more money, more time, or flexibility in the deliverables?
 
2. Analyze assumptions. Does the Miami customer really need the item to work in -30° weather?
 
3. Be creative. Is there an alternate way to get the job done?

• There’s always a question that if asked early enough will reveal what’s about to happen. Maybe you can figure out how to ask it next time.

• If you don't know where you’re going, hard work won’t get you there.


• 
Life is like baseball. If you’re batting 1.000, you’re not playing in the major leagues.


• 
If you need to take big risks in order to achieve your objective, it’s a good idea to minimize the cost and consequence of failure.


• 
People always tell the truth...especially when they lie. We choose our lies, so they speak volumes about us — if you know how to listen.


• 
If people are involved, the shortest distance between two points is *never* a straight line.

• The physics of organizations — Friction. When moving parts interface, friction reduces efficiency and creates waste heat. Lubrication is necessary.


• 
The physics of organizations — Entropy. All systems are entropic; they move from order toward chaos unless outside energy is applied.


• The physics of organizations — Inertia: People at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. Once they move, they keep moving, at least until friction and entropy grind them down.

• 
Annoyance is another mother of invention.


• 
Unpleasant processes can bring desirable results...but wouldn’t it be great if being fit and slim didn’t require diet or exercise?


• 
Unless you have an education or do the research, you do not have an educated opinion on the subject.


• 
Research suggests that stupid people think they are smarter than they are, and smart people think they are less smart. How smart did you say you were again?

• Those who can, do. Those who cannot make better teachers, because they understand why you are having trouble.


• One dimension of creativity is the willingness to bellyflop in public and then do it over again.


• 
Forgiving your enemies is one of the most selfishly valuable things you can do. Let go of the negative emotion...but remember their names.


• 
Pessimists see the world more clearly, but optimists tend to live longer and make more money.


• 
The average IQ is 100. Two-thirds of the population have IQs between 80 and 120. Be patient, be generous, and be unsurprised. 


• 
We associate age with wisdom, but age only provides experience. Wisdom is optional.


• 
Dare to be stupid. Smart people know better than to color outside the lines.

• It is better to give than to receive, but receiving is pretty cool, too.


• 
The majority of people try to be decent and honest within the limits of their ability and understanding. Be generous as well as prudent.


• 
Generosity pays. The more you give, the more you get, in surprising and varied ways.


• 
Four dimensions of a risk: 

1. Goodness - People equate risk with threat, but events can be beneficial or harmful. Sometimes you can choose.
  
2. Impact - What it means to *you.* The net impact of a risk (good or bad) often depends on how you play it.
3. Probability - When impact is variable, there is usually a lesser chance of a greater impact.
 
4. Time - What we knew yesterday is different from what we will know tomorrow. Risks and choices are not static.

• Risk taker? Risk avoider? A false distinction. We all embrace risk in some areas of our lives and eschew it in others.


• Stakeholders often create project risk for you by the act of offloading their own risk.


• 
The end of the technical work is not the end of the project. Turnover and closeout are often fraught with risk; plan for them.


• 
Three pillars of civilization: economic development, universal education, and a commitment to treat people better than they deserve.


• 
Zero-sum games only rearrange things: the same number of poker chips leave the table, only in different pockets. Winners require losers.
 
Non-zero-sum games can create or destroy value. If I want your stuff more than I want my money, and you feel the opposite, we both win.
 Common sense makes people think most games are zero-sum. The opposite is almost always true — there *is* such a thing as a free lunch. The zero-sum mindset is a trap. Assume opportunity...and then look for it.


• What is half of thirteen? Six and a half is one right answer, but so is *thir.* Many questions have more than one right answer.


• 
Picasso was once asked what it felt like to be a great artist. He drew a sketch on a $1 bill. “Now it is $1000,”he said.


• “Picasso, draw things as they really look, like this photo of my wife!” said the drunk. Picasso said, “Your wife? She seems rather small. And flat.”

• *Can* does not imply *should.* But it definitely implies *will.*

• It is highly improbable that nothing highly improbable will happen.

• 
Your mind is designed to cope with life in the Stone Age. This means your first reaction is often the opposite of what it needs to be. 


• 
For every problem, there is a simple, clear, and straightforward answer. It is almost certainly wrong.

• You don’t know how good you’ve got it until you can’t get at it.


• To paraphrase Holmes, when all better options have been foreclosed, whatever remains, no matter how rotten, is your solution set.


Dobson’s Laws of Project Management and Other Things (Part 3)

I’ve been writing and publishing daily management tweets since August 2009. In March 2010, I published a collection of the ones I’d written to that date. Here is the first of three more installments, covering Dobson’s Laws from the beginning of April 2010 through the end of December 2010. Copyright © 2012 by Michael Dobson under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license. 

• Two metrics for ethical decisions: Will anyone suffer a negative outcome? Would you like it if other people did the same thing?

• Work is like an iceberg. 90% of it is below the surface and not readily apparent to bosses or customers.

• If you don’t change your mind from time to time, you’re probably not thinking.


• 
If your project has enemies, your underperformance in any area is their target of opportunity. Be prepared to counter-spin the story.


• 
For Earth Day, take a green approach to dead projects. Recycle processes, lessons learned, resources, and incidental byproducts.


• 
The amount of emphasis placed on a performance element doesn’t necessarily correlate with its actual importance.


• 
Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can put off until the day after tomorrow. By then, it may be overtaken by events.


• 
Identify bad projects early. You may not always be able to dodge them, but if you’re in charge of a sinking ship, you need to know when to bail.

• You’re not there to do what the customer says, but what the customer wants. 


• 
Failure at a project or phase level doesn’t necessarily mean failure of the overall objective — or vice versa.

• 
If there’s more than one reason why a project should be done, some stakeholder wants it done for *that* reason and no other.

• 
No one in the world needs a power drill. What people *need* are holes. Don’t confuse means with ends.

• In a finite environment, someone else can always make use of your resources. Don’t think this hasn’t occurred to them already.

• There’s always some picture in the mind of the boss or customer. Whether it’s right or wrong, you still have to manage it.


• A constraint is only a constraint if it blocks a route to your objective.


• 
A deadline is the latest you can get it done, the budget is the most you can spend, and the scope is the least you can do.


• 
People and politics are responsible for most project risk. Project risk plans, in contrast, focus primarily on technical risks.


• The difference between what you can do without extraordinary effort and what’s desired is the measure of project difficulty.


• 
If you can’t figure out how you *can* solve the problem, try asking why you *can’t* solve it. Sometimes that yields new insights.


• 
Change creates loss. It makes things worse in the short term. Payoffs aren’t ever guaranteed. Don’t trivialize change resistance.


• 
Finishing the work isn’t the same thing as finishing the project. But most project plans ignore the closeout stage altogether.


• 
How are you going to transition the project to its next stage? If you don’t have a plan, the project sticks to you like flypaper.

• 
Sometimes a project really needs to die, and the project manager has to reenact the final scene from Ol’ Yeller.


• 
The best way for you to kill a project is to help the key stakeholders and decision-makers reach the conclusion on their own.

• 
Operationally, a project is impossible if you can’t do what you need to do in the available time or with available resources.


• 
If your assumptions turn out to be even slightly different than you expect, what would be the net effect, both good and bad?


• 
One trick of structured creativity is learning to look first in the places most likely to contain useful insights and opportunities.


• 
When you know why the customer objects, you learn what’s important, and often learn what you can do to overcome the objections.


Project: Impossible — The Savior of Mothers

Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis

My 26th book will be Project: Impossible, an exploration of how people achieved goals any reasonable person would have thought impossible. This week, the story of the Doctor's Plague.

Childbed Fever

The advent of hospitals and the establishment of obstetrics as a medical discipline had an unanticipated side effect: a dramatic increase in cases of puerperal fever, commonly known as childbed fever.

It was a horrific disease. Death rates for all women giving birth in hospitals ranged from 20-25%. From time to time, there were epidemics of the disease, with death rates approaching 100%. Famous victims included the mother and two wives of Henry VIII and famous feminist and mother of the author of Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft. (Today, puerperal fever is known to be a collection of several different diseases, including endometriosis, routinely treated with antibiotics, though it still occasionally results in death.)

The advent of pathological anatomy as a medical practice correlated strongly with the increase in cases of puerperal fever, though this link did not become clear until much later.

Childbed fever deaths spiked at the Vienna hospital, where pathological anatomy was performed, but not at the Dublin hospital, which did not practice it.

Paging Dr. Semmelweis

As the 19th century opened, the crown jewel, the largest hospital in the world, the center of medical practice in 18th Century Europe was the Allgemeines Krankenhaus der Stadt Wien, the Vienna General Hospital. Ignaz Semmelweis, newly admitted to the practice of obstetrics, spurred by the recent death of his mother, became obsessed with childbed fever.

The obstetrics department had two clinics: the First Clinic, staffed by doctors, and the Second Clinic, staffed by midwives.  Women often pleaded to be admitted to the Second Clinic rather than submit themselves to the care of doctors. Their fear was well founded, as there was a dramatic difference in mortality rates between the two clinics.

The First Clinic, staffed by doctors, had a death rate from childbed fever as high as 16%, but the Second Clinic, staffed by midwives, had a corresponding rate as low as 2%.

The most common theory was that the disease was simply a general miasma, just one of those things. It was nobody’s fault. Especially not the doctors.

An unhappy accident pointed Semmelweis to the answer, when his friend and mentor Professor Jakob Kolletschka died suddenly. The symptoms and progress of his disease were identical to childbed fever. It turned out that Kolletschka’s finger had been nicked by a student with the same knife that was being used in the autopsy. Somehow, contact with the corpse during the autopsy had led to the disease.

And it was in the performance of autopsies that the doctors of the First Clinic differed from the midwives of the Second Clinic.

Cadaver Particles

Ignorant of microscopes, microbes, and the germ theory of disease, Semmelweis could only observe one fact: that there was a connection of some sort between the cadaver and the death of Kolletschka, and by extension, between the cadavers used in pathology to the deaths of the childbed fever victims. What the agency of infection was, Semmelweis did not know and had at the time no way of finding out. He referred to them as “cadaver particles,” although he could not see them, measure them, or learn much about them directly.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t come up with a treatment. What distinguished cadavers was the putrid smell, and what got rid of the putrid smell was a solution of chloride. In May 1847, Semmelweis embarked on a clinical experiment by placing a dilute concentration of chlorine at the entrance to the obstetrics ward and insisting that everyone who would touch a patient washed in it.

Today, of course, cleanliness for physicians is a matter of routine, but at the time, this was a radical break with traditional practice. Most Europeans at the time felt that a few baths a year were sufficient, and doctors were no exception. In fact, the blood-stained frock was a sign that a physician was hard working and professional. If doctors scrubbed themselves, who would know how hard they worked?

Against the criticism, however, the statistics spoke loudly and clearly. Semmelweis began his handwashing process in May, and by June the drop in puerperal fever was dramatic. First Clinic death rates fell to Second Clinic levels.

Change in death rates from childbed fever following the introduction of handwashing.

You’d expect that to be conclusive, but that turned out not to be the case.

The Semmelweis Reflex

Elsewhere in this blog, I’ve written about the Semmelweis Reflex, originally defined as “the automatic rejection of the obvious, without thought, inspection, or experiment.” As I've argued, what triggers the Semmelweis Reflex, however, isn't new knowledge per se,  but the implied criticism of previous behavior that results.

To accept the Semmelweis approach, doctors had to also accept the idea that they themselves had been responsible for the deaths of thousands of women. Who wants to think of himself or herself as a killer, however inadvertent? It’s not surprising that there is a human tendency to reject or challenge scientific or other factual information that portrays us in a negative light.

You don’t have to look far to find contemporary illustrations, from tobacco executives aghast someone dared accuse them of making a deadly product to the notorious Ford Motor Company indifference to safety in designing the Ford Pinto. The people involved weren’t trying to be unethical or immoral; they were in the grips of denial triggered by the Semmelweis Reflex. This denial was strong enough to make them ignore or trivialize evidence that in retrospect appears conclusive.

There was a dramatic reaction against Semmelweis and his theory by the medical establishment, both in Vienna and elsewhere. Puerperal fever is now known as the “Doctor’s Plague,” because it was a case in which medical treatment made things worse — a lot worse. Semmelweis himself was terribly shocked and depressed to realize that it was his own actions that had resulted in the deaths of many women. And if Semmelweis was shocked, one can only imagine the reaction of other healers to being told that they were in practice, if not in intent, killers.

 Semmelweis continued to make things worse by attacking those who criticized his work. He accused his fellow physicians of murder and worse, and his own behavior became increasingly erratic. Showing increasing signs of mental illness and breakdown, his wife committed him to an asylum in 1857, where he died under mysterious circumstances.

Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson

Managing the Impossible Project: Inertia and Friction

Semmelweis succeeded in his “impossible project” to determine the basic cause and treatment of childbed fever, but failed to win widespread support for his ideas at the time. It would not be until the latter part of the 19th Century that the germ theory of disease became widely accepted.

If we consider Semmelweis’s project to be identifying the cause and treatment of childbed fever, he was a remarkable success. As noted, he was much less effective in gaining widespread acceptance for his ideas.

The natural human resistance to new ideas and the role of persuasion and influence management in achieving change are a constant source of frustration — and sometimes despair — for leaders of all stripes. It may help to extend our scientific metaphor and describe the obstacles in light of physics: people and organization, no less than other objects in the real world, are subject to inertia and friction.

Whatever the etiology of the Semmelweis Reflex, the idea of resistance to change is well established in management literature, and it’s just inertia under another name. A body at rest tends to stay at rest until acted upon by an outside force. The good news is that if you can just get the motion started, inertia changes from your enemy to your friend and helps sustain the motion.

Friction, of course, is one of those “outside forces” that hamper inertia. Moving parts have friction, and friction results in the degradation of useful energy. In the human sphere, we’ve all witnessed the results of friction in every human encounter. In mechanics, one way to lessen the effects of friction is through lubrication. The discipline of emotional intelligence, good manners, politeness, and office politics all work to lessen the friction in organizational interaction. It’s just as much a part of the job as the technical work, and leaders ignore it at their peril.