Hi everyone,
Doug Russell here. It has been a while since I sent a blog/story, so I thought an update might be in order. I have been busier than I ever was working for a W2!
(1) Have I stopped writing blogs? No, the earlier blogs ( http://executiveteamleadership.blogspot.com/ ) and a few new stories have been incorporated into presentations and a book proposal that is now with my agent. The book proposal was a lot of work! I had to outline every chapter with a one page summary, include a full chapter (not chapter 1) and a five page synopsis of the book. The whole point is that my agent and potential editors/publishers can see the idea as a whole and not worry that it is half-baked. The proposal took a lot of research. It is a non-fiction book aimed to help managers thrive in the project management jungle. I also snuck some leadership and general philosophy in there. I couldn't help myself!
What I request from you: If any of you (or you know another applicable person) want to include a story with integrity, transparency, accountability, communication, or trust as a central theme (the way the blogs are constructed), I do need a few stories from others in the book. This is ensure that the book doesn't seem to be a paean to my ego, with only stories about me. You do not have to be mentioned by name, we can obscure that by saying "A manager from AZ," Tom from AZ," or similar. What is needed are good stories!
(2) I have volunteered to be the lead for the IEEE Austin Technology Management Council chapter.
(3) I am coaching individuals who hire me after presentations or seminars.
(4) I am coaching Emma and Matt's "Y" basketball teams (both 1-0) and am assistant coaching Matt at his school. His foot surgery has greatly increased his speed (still not 100%) and helped his confidence. He has played decently for his school, is the only 7th grade starter, but not as confidently as he did against the "Y" competition, where he scored 32 points with 20 rebounds on Saturday. Much time is spent on basketball! All three kids are doing well at school work.
(5) I belong to several biz networking groups and have presented to several orgs around town. I plan on doing the same in NC, AZ, possibly Northern CA, depending on a variety of factors. One of the organizations, VISTAGE, has a speaker's bureau, for which I am working to become qualified.
(5) I intend to self-publish my fiction biz novel The Project, which shows the vastly different results on a project managed in two very different ways. It is about 1/4 finished. It had to wait on the non-fiction book proposal, but now I should be able to get back to it.
That's about it for now! Let me know how you are!
Doug
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Monday, June 30, 2008
Lack of Trust and the Irony Thereof-A Tale from the Project Management Jungle(tm)
The project I worked on immediately after the one called “Three Letter Agency” (see Blog 4) we will call Project X. Project X was my “reward” for the success of the TLA project. “A new challenge for you, Doug!” my VP said.
I worked for a division of Motorola at that time. That fact is key to the story, or I would have masked it in addition to labeling the project “X”.
We were responsible for a computer/radio subsystem within a larger system.
We were the sub to another company (called the “prime”), who was a sub to us on a similar competing contract. The prime contractor and the government customer on Project X suspected us of trying to ensure the project our company was prime for would somehow ultimately win out over Project X, so they looked on everything we did with skepticism. Needless to say, this made my job as PM less than a barrel of laughs. It is when I learned a person can function with a chronic headache, and where I learned many of my diplomatic skills. Feeble attempt at humor…
Even though we worked for Motorola, we had designed an Intel 486 into the Engineering models. The customer always wondered why we didn’t push for one of the Motorola 68000 series microprocessors. We were engineers, we had no agenda other than technical. The Intel processors were better matches to the overall system requirements. Might sound weird, but that is the truth.
Then we heard about the Pentium. Without using much (any?) emotional intelligence, I allowed the enthusiasm of our engineers to talk me into creating a demonstration of the functionality in the system of what was at that time a brand new Pentium microprocessor. Without asking the prime contractor or otherwise announcing what we had done, we showed it to a visiting Government customer when he stopped by.
The Pentium was so much better than the 486 (although it used more power) that it seemed obvious to us that a change to the Pentium should be made NOW, and we pushed for that with the Government customer, who then went to visit our Prime contractor. Of course, all Hades broke loose, because there was no trust on the team.
I know I should have worked through protocol, through the chain of command. I can only say we were incredibly busy and I have always had a blind spot when it comes to asking for permission when something seems obvious. That comes across as arrogance sometimes, something I have tried to modulate over the years. Not too successfully, I suppose.
Somehow, they imagined a plot to reopen the debate on the microprocessor choice for Project X, and thought we were maybe going to try to push a Motorola processor into the project. WHY we would use the Pentium as the wedge to make that happen still seems a bit weird to me, but there you have it.
After a whole bunch of blustering, screaming, hurt feelings and otherwise testosterone-based chest pounding, the change was made to the Pentium. From a technical standpoint, it was beyond a no-brainer.
The message phase of the story (requested by a prominent member of my editing team):
(1) The effect of the lack of trust on the team is what I am trying to demonstrate. I will discipline myself to not comment on how the weirdness of such a contractual situation might have exacerbated the situation.
(2) We were overly focused on technical detail. As PM, I particularly did not act very smart (maybe still numb from The Three Letter Agency contract). Also in my role as PM, I suppose I was point man for political conniving, but I wasn’t conniving at all when we showed the demo to the customer. Too smart by half, or something. Maybe too dumb by half.
(3) The irony of the whole thing is beyond my power of description, and still amazes me to this day.
All rights Reserved, Executive Team Leadership, LLC, 2008
I worked for a division of Motorola at that time. That fact is key to the story, or I would have masked it in addition to labeling the project “X”.
We were responsible for a computer/radio subsystem within a larger system.
We were the sub to another company (called the “prime”), who was a sub to us on a similar competing contract. The prime contractor and the government customer on Project X suspected us of trying to ensure the project our company was prime for would somehow ultimately win out over Project X, so they looked on everything we did with skepticism. Needless to say, this made my job as PM less than a barrel of laughs. It is when I learned a person can function with a chronic headache, and where I learned many of my diplomatic skills. Feeble attempt at humor…
Even though we worked for Motorola, we had designed an Intel 486 into the Engineering models. The customer always wondered why we didn’t push for one of the Motorola 68000 series microprocessors. We were engineers, we had no agenda other than technical. The Intel processors were better matches to the overall system requirements. Might sound weird, but that is the truth.
Then we heard about the Pentium. Without using much (any?) emotional intelligence, I allowed the enthusiasm of our engineers to talk me into creating a demonstration of the functionality in the system of what was at that time a brand new Pentium microprocessor. Without asking the prime contractor or otherwise announcing what we had done, we showed it to a visiting Government customer when he stopped by.
The Pentium was so much better than the 486 (although it used more power) that it seemed obvious to us that a change to the Pentium should be made NOW, and we pushed for that with the Government customer, who then went to visit our Prime contractor. Of course, all Hades broke loose, because there was no trust on the team.
I know I should have worked through protocol, through the chain of command. I can only say we were incredibly busy and I have always had a blind spot when it comes to asking for permission when something seems obvious. That comes across as arrogance sometimes, something I have tried to modulate over the years. Not too successfully, I suppose.
Somehow, they imagined a plot to reopen the debate on the microprocessor choice for Project X, and thought we were maybe going to try to push a Motorola processor into the project. WHY we would use the Pentium as the wedge to make that happen still seems a bit weird to me, but there you have it.
After a whole bunch of blustering, screaming, hurt feelings and otherwise testosterone-based chest pounding, the change was made to the Pentium. From a technical standpoint, it was beyond a no-brainer.
The message phase of the story (requested by a prominent member of my editing team):
(1) The effect of the lack of trust on the team is what I am trying to demonstrate. I will discipline myself to not comment on how the weirdness of such a contractual situation might have exacerbated the situation.
(2) We were overly focused on technical detail. As PM, I particularly did not act very smart (maybe still numb from The Three Letter Agency contract). Also in my role as PM, I suppose I was point man for political conniving, but I wasn’t conniving at all when we showed the demo to the customer. Too smart by half, or something. Maybe too dumb by half.
(3) The irony of the whole thing is beyond my power of description, and still amazes me to this day.
All rights Reserved, Executive Team Leadership, LLC, 2008
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Monday, June 2, 2008
Building a Successful Team Culture (part 1)
I am turning a bit more serious for this blog, no funny stories this week. In many ways, the first eight blogs I wrote were meant to set this one up, an “op-ed piece” as Esteri Hinman—an ex-colleague at Intel--used to teasingly refer to some of my fierier communications when I was there.
The stress on knowledge worker teams in the workplace has never been greater. In a down economy, the drive for increasing profits is unrelenting. Product development cycles grow shorter, the projects themselves are increasingly more complex with shifting and uncertain requirements, projects are multi-sited around the world and companies find it increasingly more difficult to get enough of the right kind of people. And yet only 10% of knowledge worker teams are high-performance*.
Meanwhile, many good workers--having had enough of the pressure and the demands--are leaving the workplace, taking their experience and wisdom with them. Many more demoralized and unhappy people stay.
To be sure, there are a lot of people trying to help with these problems. There are literally hundreds of management and leadership books on the shelves at your local Barnes & Noble. I tried to count them once, and got as high as 300 before stopping. The large increase in the numbers of executive and business coaches is another sign of this.
My business is based on the belief that people need team cultures: (1) that support them and validate them as individuals and members of the team; (2) where they are told the truth and feel comfortable speaking the truth; (3) where everyone knows their role and is held accountable, including project and senior management. As a leader, create this kind of culture and your teams have a much better chance of being in that 10% of high-performance teams.
I use the three words integrity, transparency, and accountability to encapsulate that mental construct. I call this the culture of integrity, and I am going to spell out the basics of that culture in the next few blogs.
Helping people understand how to turn these abstract words into the concrete actions that are required to successfully manage complex teams requires more than a few blogs, so I have created a 45-minute slide set chock full of anecdotes and helpful hints that I am currently scheduling (for free, of course) with organizations around Austin. I will be glad to do so in Phoenix, Folsom, Carolina or the DC area as well in the coming months.
There will likely not be a blog next week, as our son Matt is having rather complex foot surgery on Tuesday June 10. If you are so inclined, please include him in your prayers.
*Contagious Success, Susan Lucia Annunzio, 2004
All Rights Reserved, 2008, Executive Team Leadership, LLC
The stress on knowledge worker teams in the workplace has never been greater. In a down economy, the drive for increasing profits is unrelenting. Product development cycles grow shorter, the projects themselves are increasingly more complex with shifting and uncertain requirements, projects are multi-sited around the world and companies find it increasingly more difficult to get enough of the right kind of people. And yet only 10% of knowledge worker teams are high-performance*.
Meanwhile, many good workers--having had enough of the pressure and the demands--are leaving the workplace, taking their experience and wisdom with them. Many more demoralized and unhappy people stay.
To be sure, there are a lot of people trying to help with these problems. There are literally hundreds of management and leadership books on the shelves at your local Barnes & Noble. I tried to count them once, and got as high as 300 before stopping. The large increase in the numbers of executive and business coaches is another sign of this.
My business is based on the belief that people need team cultures: (1) that support them and validate them as individuals and members of the team; (2) where they are told the truth and feel comfortable speaking the truth; (3) where everyone knows their role and is held accountable, including project and senior management. As a leader, create this kind of culture and your teams have a much better chance of being in that 10% of high-performance teams.
I use the three words integrity, transparency, and accountability to encapsulate that mental construct. I call this the culture of integrity, and I am going to spell out the basics of that culture in the next few blogs.
Helping people understand how to turn these abstract words into the concrete actions that are required to successfully manage complex teams requires more than a few blogs, so I have created a 45-minute slide set chock full of anecdotes and helpful hints that I am currently scheduling (for free, of course) with organizations around Austin. I will be glad to do so in Phoenix, Folsom, Carolina or the DC area as well in the coming months.
There will likely not be a blog next week, as our son Matt is having rather complex foot surgery on Tuesday June 10. If you are so inclined, please include him in your prayers.
*Contagious Success, Susan Lucia Annunzio, 2004
All Rights Reserved, 2008, Executive Team Leadership, LLC
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