March 3, 2010
· Filed under Organizations, Project Management, Projects · Tagged Contaminated Processes, Controlling Processes, Flexible Processes, Procedures, Processes, Pure Processes, Tyranny of the Minority
No one needs to beat the drum about the importance of processes in business. Processes have been a valuable tool since the start of the industrial revolution, establishing uniformity and gaining efficiencies. Some processes are documented into formal procedures. Others remain informal but are still commonly understood. Most processes are composed of action steps with strategically placed gates points to obtain consensus or establish authority for moving forward. Pure processes are processes that are true to their intent, serve that function only and exert the least amount of effort while providing the most value. Processes that become contaminated usually do so in two different ways: by trying to accommodate for all possible situations and attempting to control malicious participants.
Processes That Accommodate for all Possible Situations
Processes are usually designed to accommodate about 90% of situations that occur. When an extremely rare situation presents itself and it leads to a negative result, management will be tempted to change the process in order to handle the rare situation when it occurs again (regardless of the impact on the process). The extra effort that is imposed to cover an extremely rare situation usually has no payoff. Furthermore, all processes have inherent risk but most of the risk is never encountered and, rightly so, is off our radar screen of concern. Just because we encounter a risk does not mean we should track it on our radar forever.
Processes That are Derived to Control Malicious Participants
Sometimes individuals feel they have special needs which compel them to deviate from the defined processes. It may be to avoid a gate point or to leverage a loophole so the individual can have greater access to resources for their personal gain. These deviations may or may not go unnoticed. But when they are noticed management always wants to include additional steps or gate points to ensure these abuses do not occur in the future. The addition of gate points due to one person’s actions is commonly known as “tyranny of the minority”. When tyranny of the minority occurs everyone has to expend additional time and effort into the process just because of the actions of one individual.
The best thing to do in this case is to address the behavior of the rouge individual. They will often play victim when confronted saying they didn’t know better or didn’t understand the situation, but do not hesitate or withdraw from your position. If the majority can follow the process then the rogue individual can too. It is up to them to learn what the right way is and how to stick to it.
Regardless of how they came to be, these appendages to the original processes are usually unjustified; stay past their need; and end up being followed blindly, wasting people’s effort and time. They diminish the value of the process and cause frustration.
Let’s take Alice for example. She is the manager of a systems engineering organization and her department is responsible for the integration of various spacecraft subsystems. Because these subsystems are being built in different parts of the country Alice’s team travels extensively. Her company has travel guidelines but because her department is currently over budget she has been keeping a close eye on travel expenditures. Over time Alice began to realize that one of her employees, Tim, was constantly exceeding the guidelines. He always had excuses and Alice has been struggling with how to rein him in. At her wits end, Alice decided to add an additional gate point in the travel procedure that requires everyone to get authority from her before they deviate from the guidelines. While this action did stop Tim from abusing the department’s travel budget but, it also caused everyone else on the team (who wasn’t abusing the travel guidelines) to put forth extra effort and time to get approval for unique situations they typically dealt with on their own. In one situation an employee, Jennifer, could not get authority to change her air travel plans to come home early because Alice was out sick. This resulted in additional lodging costs since Jennifer had to stay two days longer than needed, and not to mention a loss in productivity from being away from the office unnecessarily.
In your organization fight for pure process and procedures. Make it a personal campaign. It will mean moving away from a controlling mindset and towards personal responsibility. It will also entail moving away from risk aversion and towards embracing ambiguity. While doing this may be hard the end result will be a much more efficient organization.
February 23, 2010
· Filed under Project Management, Projects · Tagged Actuals-to-Date, Dynamic Project Schedules, Estimates-To-Complete, Gannt Charts, Microsoft Project, On Time Project Management Schedules, Project Management Schedules
Most everyone starts their project with a schedule. They define the work that needs to be completed in the form of activities with varying levels of detail. They then identify the duration of each activity and sequence them based on interdependencies, and may also associate the level of effort (hrs) to each activity. When all is said and done the final product is a schedule that documents the overall duration of the project and perhaps the total level of effort as well. Great! There’s nothing better than a good plan at the start of a project.
However, no sooner than the first week of the project something happens . . . things don’t go as planned. Activities that should be completed aren’t. Others that were scheduled to take the entire week finish early allowing for new activities to begin that weren’t originally scheduled to start until the following week. So much for a good plan. Now we have a schedule that doesn’t reflect reality.
There is nothing unusual about this situation. It happens to every project. But, one of the things that separate the good project managers from the bad is how dynamic their project schedules are.
As work begins on projects actuals-to-date are recorded and estimates-to-complete are re-evaluated for some subsets of activities. This often results in a change to the initial predictions; however, these changes may or may not be realized in a timely fashion depending on how dynamic the schedule is. Knowing the true current status of a project is paramount to delivering it close to the initial time, cost, and scope predictions. It’s all dependent on the frequency of the updates (actuals-to-date and estimates-to-complete) and the underlying structure of the schedule.
Highly dynamic schedules are always built using the full functionality of a project management software tool such as Microsoft® Project. There is just no way to get around it. Managing the current status of all the activities, maintaining the interdependencies, and calculating the estimated completion date on a weekly basis can only be accomplished with these tools. When updates are only accounted for once or twice a month and the underlying structure of the schedule is in the head of the project manager then scheduled updates will be infrequent and often not reflect reality.
This is what Kevin experienced when he was asked by the CIO of a Fortune 100 company to audit an ongoing $20 million project that would overhaul the financial applications for the company. He began his quest by interviewing the project sponsors, program manager, and project managers. The general feeling he got was the project was progressing well but was a little behind schedule. After his interview with the program manager, Jessica, he asked if he could get a copy of her schedule. Jessica inquired if he wanted it in the standard format; however, Kevin didn’t know a standard format existed. Jessica led him to the break room and showed him a large four foot by eight foot, six phase Gantt chart with a version date of seven weeks ago. Kevin’s stomach sank as he realized that the project audit was not going to go very well.
Small and simple projects can be effectively managed in the heads of the project managers using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to record major milestone dates, but don’t try this with larger more complex projects. It will lead to major surprises, lots of bad news, and missed opportunities. Build your schedules using a highly dynamic underlying structure and you’ll save yourself time and a lot of headaches.
January 21, 2010
· Filed under People · Tagged Differences in People, Differences in the Workplace, Different Personalitities in the Workplace, Myers Brigg Assessment and Learning Differences, Uniqueness and People, You Are Not the Norm
It’s fun to encounter different cultures. Whether through travel or reading we marvel at the differences and share them enthusiastically with our friends. When traveling abroad we look forward to experiencing others and come to expect the oddities. It actually makes our travel experience more invigorating and personal.
But, when it comes to differences in our day-to-day lives others can throw us off. They frustrate us and make life more difficult, causing us to say things like “I can’t believe they thought that,” “do they really enjoy doing that”, “why weren’t they more concerned about what happened”, or “that’s not how I would have done it.” The root cause to all of this is our belief that we are the norm, the standard. We believe anyone who is different from us is odd, lesser than, wrong, or bad.
Bluntly stated though, you are not the norm. Your thought process is different than most people. Your background, lifestyle, political views, and religious beliefs are all different than most people. No matter how you see, do, say, perceive, or think about things, it’s not necessarily the same for others. You’re not always right, good, or better than others. You are who you are and they are who they are. Period.
So, why don’t we naturally see ourselves as the norm? Because we tend to associate and interact with people we are most like. Our friends have the same level of education and affluence, type of profession, and involvement in various hobbies and activities. This lulls us into the simplistic view that everyone else is just like us, making life appear more predictable and causing us less anxiety and fear.
But the reality is there is no one right way, superior perspective, or dominate viewpoint. There is many of each and this is what we must tackle to become better in our professional lives. We don’t need to change who we are, we just need to understand that others are different and that there are rewards to be gained in embracing this reality.
Take Eric who was tasked with leading a project to provide an automated tool for a customer service process currently done manually. This tool would be used by over a hundred customer service representatives in five different regions. He had a handful of team members and a short deadline. Eric interviewed several customer service supervisors to understand the current process and felt he had a firm grasp on the details. His team began designing and building the tool and he made several assumptions and decisions on behalf of the customer service representatives. He felt he could do so because of his detailed knowledge and his proven ability to refine processes. The application was delivered on time and with very few bugs, but it’s acceptance by the customer services representatives was a complete failure. The assumptions and decisions Eric made on the customer service representative’s behalf turned out to be completely incongruent with how they performed their work. As a result the application did not assist the customer service representatives as required in their work environment. Had Eric not believed his assumptions and decision for the customer service representatives were what most people would think and want, he would have pursued their opinions more aggressively and ultimately delivered a well received product.
Not seeing ourselves as the norm and searching out what could be different from how we are will make us better professionals. We will build better products, manage others better, motivate others more effectively, be more tolerant of others, and be less surprised and frustrated when dealing with others. But, it does take some work to get there.
To better understand and embrace other’s differences try taking the Myers Briggs assessment to understand yourself and how others are too. Learn in detail about another profession that is much different from yours. Get involved in an association that has a diverse social economic membership. Put yourself deep into other peoples shoes related to current events and seek to understand how they feel and think thing about the situation. All of this will expand your perspective and cause you to consider more intently how you see, think, and act related to others. You may even begin realizing there are just as may cultural peculiarities within your own country as there are outside of it.
January 12, 2010
· Filed under Organizations, People · Tagged Consistency in Organizations, Great Organizations, Make Your Organization Better, Organizational Performance, Raise Your Organization's Performance, Track Organizational Performance
It’s not uncommon for leaders of organizations to think that their organization’s performance is subpar when compared to similar organizations in other companies. They feel that others must be much more sophisticated and produce far better results. While these feelings may be true the reality is far from it. As with most things in life the distribution of performance follows the bell curve. A small percentage of organizations are spectacular and another small percentage are complete failures. The rest . . . well they are smack dab in the middle, not great, not bad, just good.
There is nothing wrong with being good, but when most leaders think about where they want their organizations to be they set their sights on being great. It’s common for them to believe that the quality of their people is the biggest impediment holding them back from being great. If they could just hire the best people they would be much further down the road to being a great organization. On the surface this seems to be a realistic plan but if you take a step back and look at the big picture the plan begins to crumble. Assuming that people’s performance follows a bell curve too, then there are only so many “best” people in the work force, the majority are average performers. No one organization can afford or entice all the best people to work for them. Therefore, the path to becoming a great organization must follow a different direction.
In athletics, they say that on any given day, any team or individual can beat any other team or individual. What that means is the talent, or raw potential, of any individual or team at the same level of competition is not the overall deciding factor in winning. All professional scouts, coaches and players know what makes great players and teams is the ability to take the raw potential they have and consistently perform at the required level to win. In sports there are individuals with great raw talent who can only intermittently perform as needed to win and there are others with less raw talent who have found a way to consistently perform.
So the question that needs to be asked is, “how does an organization take the raw talent it has in its people and consistently perform at high levels of achievement?” The answer, the same way athletic teams and individuals do.
Know how you are performing. Don’t guess, don’t generalize, just track your performance and find out exactly how you are doing. What this does is help you establish a range of good performance. If you can compare that range to industry standards, that would be even better. Professional baseball players know that if they hit over .300 they are doing really well. That means they get three hits out of every ten at bats. The last five World Series winners averaged a winning percentage of .583. Teams can only know these statistics if they track them. So track your organizational performance, you may be better off than you think. Then publicize it to all your employees. Keep it top of mind for them.
Also, know the best practices that are related to the functions your organization performs. Research it on the web or bring in consultants. You have to know what is possible. Then you can develop a common language around each function. Standardize the way functions are to be performed and identify check points that tell you if you are following the standards or are varying from them. Baseball pitchers have check points in their wind up that tells them if they are off or not. It helps them correct in the wind up or in the middle of an inning. They have a common langue amongst each other that facilitates communication when corrections are needed. They use terms like “stay within yourself”, “you’re rushing” and “get on top of the ball”.
Finally, cycle through the experience, observe, and refine the loop as many times as possible. Managers need to be coaches to their employees. They need to help employees break down their functions into smaller components to work on them independently to get better. Use peer reviews on actual experiences to enhance learning opportunities for everyone. Hitters have drills that help them with each component of their swing. Coaches tape them in games and batting practices to facilitate the experience, observe, and refine the loop. Coaches and players watch them together to gain input. No one gets beat up. There is only constructive criticism and the desire to help each other get better.
For the most part you have the right talent to be a great organization. Yeah, you may need to exchange out a few bad performers but the most important thing is to take what you’ve got and raise the level of consistency in your organizational performance. People will take notice. It’s a great reputation to have.
December 15, 2009
· Filed under Project Management, Projects · Tagged Certainty in Project Management, Effort in Project Management, Importance Level of Projects, Predicting Projects, Project Management, Project Management Results, Project Management Return on Investment, Project Management ROI
All project managers see their job differently. Some are very lofty in describing their role; others seem lost still trying to discover it. There is talk of making customers happy, working with users, managing risk, and many other activities. But, if you ask a director of projects managers, “what is the role of a project manager?” they are very clear: plan the project, put a stick in the ground, and meet it.
A formal definition of projects management is predicting, with as much certainty as is possible or required, the project’s scope, time, and cost at completion, and then embracing reality and influencing activities to meet these predictions.
It is a very scary thing for project managers to predict where a project will end up because it holds them accountable, but it is imperative. If there isn’t an end point for the project manager to drive towards there won’t be any management or direction of the project, there is only drifting. Who wants a project drifter leading their project?
There is no such thing as “one size fits all” when it comes to project management. Every project has different constraints, requiring different levels of certainty when it comes to predicting and meeting scope, time, and cost. This is important because the amount of effort expended managing a project is directly related to the amount of certainty obtained. The relationship between certainty and effort is known as project management ROI. With just a little effort, a fair amount of certainty can be achieved. The more effort you apply, the more certainty you obtain. Today’s project managers often identify how much time they have available to manage a project and let the certainty be determined as a result. This tends to result in poor project results and dissatisfaction across the board. In fact, for this approach, the average cost overrun is 189%, time overrun is 222%, and scope reduction is 61%. While these results may be reasonable for some low priority projects, higher priority projects require more certainty.
The proper way to approach a project is to first identify the level of certainty required and then let the amount of effort be determined as a result. This approach will drive who is selected to manage the project, the expectations set for them, and whether they manage it fulltime or part time. It also drives the amount of process and rigger the project manager follows.
Know the importance of your project, determine the certainty needed, get the right Project Manager, have them predict the end result, and expend the required effort to bring it to a reality. That’s the pathway to project success.
November 24, 2009
· Filed under Business Analysis · Tagged Business Analysis, Business Analysis Requirements, How to Write Good Requirements, Identifying Requirements, Requirements and Project Management, Requirements and Stakeholders, Writing Good Requirements
Writing good requirements is frequently portrayed as a unique skill to business analysts, it’s not, it’s a unique skill to good writers. Requirements are simply a condition or capability needed by a stakeholder (user) to solve a problem or achieve an objective. Identifying requirements is a unique skill to business analysts; however, writing good requirements has more to do with what you learned in high school English class. Remember your English teachers? They would spend a semester teaching you to know your topic, be thorough and concise, eliminate ambiguity, and organize your writing to create a smooth flow for the reader.
We all can relate to this story: Your teacher gives you an assignment to write a convincing article on a popular debate in current events. Your first draft is due next week so you select and research a topic. You put the first draft together, review it, make changes several times, and hand it in. Your teacher reads it over the weekend and marks it up. She hands back the bloody red draft and asks you to address her comments. You can’t believe she marked it up so much. You spend the next few days rewriting it and hand it in for another review and it comes back with more red marks. You get incredibly frustrated. All you want is to be done with this assignment. You wish it wasn’t so hard.
Times haven’t changed much. Many business analysts find it hard to write good requirements. When they get assigned to a project there is a sense of excitement and anticipation. They start researching and interviewing stakeholders to find out what they need to be successful at their jobs. After compiling all the information, they begin writing the requirements. They work hard and put in a lot of hours, resulting in a cherished first draft. They send it out to the users and developers for review. When the comments start coming in they feel hurt and frustrated. They make changes and send it out once more for review. Again, comments come back announcing dissatisfaction and more work. At this point all a business analyst wants is to be done with this particular task.
If you can relate to the above scenario it may be because you struggle with writing in general or you are a little rusty at it. Let’s review what makes a good set of requirements:
- First of all, you have to know in detail what the problem and solution is. You can’t have a casual understanding. If you do, it will sink you for sure.
- Next, each requirement needs to be specific and concise. You are creating an image of the solution in the minds of your users and developers, one grain of sand at a time. Choose your words wisely, each one matters. Eliminate ambiguity by looking at what you have written from different points of view.
- Lastly, organize your work so it flows smoothly for the reader. You are taking them on a journey, there should not be any holes in the image you are creating. Be thorough in describing all the facets of the solution.
If writing is not one of your strengths, work on it. Take a couple of English classes at a local junior college at night. You may not become John Grisham, but you will get better. Besides, what gave you trouble in English classes when you were younger most likely won’t materialize for you now. Life has a funny way of changing us without us even recognizing it.
Writing good requirements is hard and takes a lot of effort. It’s much harder than any writing assignment you received in high school. Of course, the consequences of writing bad requirements are far greater than any you encountered in high school too.
October 28, 2009
· Filed under Project Management · Tagged New Constraints Versus The Project Triangle, PMBOK and The Project Triangle, PMI No Longer Recognizes The Project Triangle, Project Management and the Project Management Triangle, Scope Time and Cost, The Project Triangle, The Project Triangle in The Fourth Edition PMBOK, The Triple Constraint, The Triple Constraint and Project Management
The theorists have won. The latest version of Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) has done away with the project triangle, often referred to as the triple constraint. For more than fifty years this simple model allowed people inside and outside the profession of project management to understand the high level dynamics involved in projects.
The project triangle represents the relationships between scope, time, and cost. Scope is the sum of all products and services to be provided. It includes all the work that must be performed to deliver the product or service (tasks and activities) at the negotiated grade (level of quality and amount of redundancy). Time is the duration that is needed to complete all the associated project work (calendar days, months, and years). Cost is the monetary value of the labor expended and all other direct charges that will be incurred during the project (travel, hardware, and software).
When the value of one side is changed, one or both of the other sides are almost always affected. Successfully managing projects requires an understanding of the dynamics of these relationships. When one side of the triangle is an accurate reflection of the demands of the other two sides, the project triangle is said to be harmonized. For example, a project with a scope of building a 5,000 sq. ft. home in two months at a cost of $40,000 is unrealistic; time does not accurately represent the demands of scope and cost. To harmonize the triangular relationship of this project, the cost of the home would have to be increased or its scope decreased, or both.
Boo-yah . . . that’s it. This straight forward concept has allowed numerous project managers, project sponsors, and team members to come together and work through project issues. PMI has replaced the project triangle with an infinite number of constraints. While the change is not wrong it provides no practical utility.
PMI may not recognize the project triangle anymore, but it is still a good thing to have in your tool belt.
October 21, 2009
· Filed under People, Project Management, Projects · Tagged Deadlines and Project Management, Deadlines on Projects, How To Make Deadlines Less Stressful, Minimize The Emotional Toll of Deadlines
Working on projects can be very demanding, taxing our energy and resiliency. There are often spurts of overtime that have to be put in to get a project back on track. Sometimes you have to work months upon months of long hours just to stay a little behind. If you worked on just one project at a time you might catch a break; however, most people these days seem to be working on multiple projects at any given time.
There has been a lot published on the effects of working overtime for prolonged periods. Researchers have determined that only spurts of overtime are effective. Dr. Jim Loehr of the Human Performance Institute talks about viewing effort at work like wave making. You have to make time for breaks so you can be more effective when working. While it sounds easy, this is hard to put into practice. Thankfully companies have instituted policies for holidays and vacations that allow us to get away from our work environments and enjoy doing other things or nothing at all.
Vacations and holidays take care of the physical and mental effects of working long hours, but what about the emotional effects of constantly chasing deadlines? Deadlines are points in time that were negotiated in the past and are not easily changed. When we are on holiday or vacation deadlines do not simply go away and they don’t care if we are on scheduled time off.
Deadlines can be a source of accomplishment if you are not overwhelmed by them, however, this is not the case for most folks. Deadlines are a major source of stress that distract us and take us away from our family and friends. Those of you who are working on multiple projects know that they haunt you, even to the point of disrupting your sleep and causing nightmares. Six to twelve months of constantly challenging deadlines can drain and numb you emotionally, potentially resulting in depression and mood swings.
Unfortunately, deadlines are a core component of projects. They have to exist to facilitate completing the project at an expected point in time. Deadlines are not going to go away. The solution to the problem then is to learn how to minimize their emotional toll.
Joe noticed his project team was getting overly stressed towards the end of a nine month period of continuously tight deadlines. Some members were getting very thin on patience. Others were becoming prone to emotional outbursts. Joe knew he was driving them pretty hard and forced each of them to take a mandatory one week vacation. When they returned he noticed that they remained stressed.
After a significant emotional outburst in a meeting by one of his team members, Joe called a time out and told his team to go back to their desks and write down five work related things they have wanted to do but have not had time for because of the constant deadlines. He then instructed them to start doing the things on their list and to stop working on the project all together for one week. He then contacted his Department Head and negotiated a delay of two weeks for all deadlines. After the one week break ended his team began work on the project with a totally new emotional disposition. They completed the project over the next three months without missing a single deadline.
Joe’s story is a great example of how to mitigate the emotional stress of haunting deadlines. The key to his success was to unconditionally slip the deadlines. This gave his team a tangible sign for releasing the stress they were carrying. This could have been combined with a one week vacation; but, it seems to produce better results if team members stay at work and do something that they’ve been wanting to do. Usually this includes researching tools for becoming more efficient or gaining knowledge that will help them be more effective.
Everyone handles the stress of constant deadlines differently. That means everyone has to be aware of their own emotional state and take steps to keep themselves from going over the edge. That being said, it helps to have a manager who is aware and looks out for the welfare of his team members as well as the project deadlines.
September 28, 2009
· Filed under Organizations, Projects · Tagged Limited Resource Environment, Limited Resource Organizations, Limited Resource Projects, Making Project Resources More Efficeint, Skill Training To Make Project Resources More Efficient
All organizations operate in a limited resource environment. There is always more work that can be done than there are resources to do it. And, given our current economic conditions, this is even truer today. Denying or ignoring this fact sets off a chain reaction in organizations.
Executives at the top need better business results so they push on middle level managers to produce more. Middle level managers say yes to more projects because they don’t want to appear unresponsive to business needs. These decisions then lead to more projects being launched which in turn heighten work demands on folks who actually do the work.
With this, projects start slipping because people in the trenches have too much to do. Then pressure comes from on high, and of course, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Not that the squeaky wheels are the highest priority projects, they are just the loudest or most noticed ones. So now there’s a good chance the projects with the most potential to bring about business results are receiving the least attention. It’s madness.
In this situation there are only three options for organizations. Hire more resources, make the current resources more efficient, or launch fewer projects. As I said earlier, there is always more work that can be done and if acquiring more resources was an option most organizations would have hired them already. So that leaves us with either becoming more efficient in the way employees work or working on fewer projects.
Inside every manager is some level of belief that their employees are not working as hard as they can. Some are very trusting of their employees but still have this thought in the back of their mind even though it may be very small. Some managers are very distrusting and overwhelmingly believe their employees are sandbagging. No one really knows the truth; and, they only have intuition guiding them. Pushing employees past what they say they can accomplish within a specified period of time is one way to increase efficiency, but it is exactly what brings on the madness described above.
A better way to increase efficiency is to invest in skill training and engage in process improvement initiatives. Yes, this will cause efficiency to decrease at first but then you’ll reap the rewards and surge past where you started. Regardless, if you don’t do anything, you can’t magically think greater efficiencies will appear.
When it comes to working on fewer projects this action often feels defeating. You know what needs to be accomplished to make your company more competitive and if you can’t do it, you feel as though you are going to lose the fight. While these feelings are real the end result is never that dramatic. Take the time to prioritize the importance of each project against your strategic plans. First, number them 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on. Next, start with the highest priority project and then add the next priority, making sure you get buy-in on what work can be accomplished during that period of time. Then, when you reach your work capacity limit draw a line and stop adding projects until you gain more capacity. Employees will feel better and be more capable of surges in effort when they are required to make a deadline.
The symptoms of exceeding the capacity of your resources are easy to see; however, fixing the problem is hard to do. It requires restraint and investment. No one said management is easy.
September 9, 2009
· Filed under People · Tagged Cause and Effect, Discovering the Truth Involves Others, Reality Testing
My dog, Wyatt, eats rocks. He devours rocks, gets sick and can’t keep food or water down. He then wallows around for several days until he passes the rocks-not a pretty image, I admit.
You’d think Wyatt would have learned after the second or third time, but he hasn’t. My wife Dawn and I are on our sixth or seventh run at trying to keep him from indulging in this nonsense. But somehow he hasn’t connected the dots between picking up a rock in the yard, inadvertently swallowing it in his play, and becoming, well, “sick as a dog.” To us, it’s a simple cause and effect pattern.
But is it really that simple? You see, there’s a delay between the cause and effect here. After he swallows the rocks, it takes several days for his digestive system to become inhibited. As outsiders, Dawn and I clearly see the connection and the obvious solution: Stop-eating rocks! But our dog, with this limited perspective and knowledge, can’t connect the dots. We as humans have this same problem, too. When a delay between cause and effect takes place, there’s always the chance additional events will occur, preventing us from connecting the dots and understanding the original problem’s cause. We’re left to conclude, “Was it this action or that action that brought about the issue?” And we may think we see the answer clearly, but is it really as we believe it is? No matter how emphatic we feel toward our convictions or viewpoints, we could be wrong.
Luckily, we can reach out to the people in our lives, those who surround us on a daily basis. Their past experiences and knowledge, along with a different perspective, can bring clarity to the situation – but only if you allow it.
If you’ve been unable to grasp the root of the problem, it might help to embark on a little “reality testing.” Present your “reality”, communicating the facts, as you perceive them, with your judgments on the situation, and then ask for others’ perspectives.
From their feedback, you’ll either have your reality validated or have data to adjust it. In our own “little world,” we may think we are right on target and all knowing. But are we really? It comes down to this: Do we care more about being right, or discovering the truth? If we remain trapped in darkness and refuse to engage in reality testing, it’s likely that we’d rather be right. And right we’ll be, right in the dark!
But if we uncover the truth, we’ll quite literally feel enlightened, as the learning brings us out of our ignorance. Discovering truth almost always involves others, and, importantly, they’re not just the ones who view or feel about things the way you do. The more often you solicit unbiased perspectives from others, the more likely you’ll be living in reality. The truth is worth it.
Processes are usually designed to accommodate about 90% of situations that occur. When an extremely rare situation presents itself and it leads to a negative result, management will be tempted to change the process in order to handle the rare situation when it occurs again (regardless of the impact on the process). The extra effort that is imposed to cover an extremely rare situation usually has no payoff. Furthermore, all processes have inherent risk but most of the risk is never encountered and, rightly so, is off our radar screen of concern. Just because we encounter a risk does not mean we should track it on our radar forever.
