projectified

Out of the mouths of babes...the true nature of blogs

My 6 year old daughter just came and asked me why they call them blogs.

“Is it because they just go bla bla bla?” She asked.

I thought I was going to have to give my wife the Heimlich she was laughing so hard.

“Not quite honey” I said. “but close”

How to Make a Customer Feel Welcome 101

I have recently re-taken up hiking. I live in the Valley of the South Fork of the Nooksack river surrounded on just about all sides by the foothills of Mt Baker. (There are at least 25 good trails within 10 miles of my front door.) But Anyway…

On Friday I joined the Washington Trails Association (WTA), a local group that does VERY cool things with the building, using, maintaining and funding of trails of all kinds in Washington State. For the tiny sum of $35 bucks I joined up. That was about 10am on Friday. Now these guys are busy people working for a non-profit so I figure I would hear something back in a week or two, right? Nope. These guys must have some kick ass staff people because I got a freakin’ hand written post card thanking me for joining in my mail box on SATURDAY MORNING! Sure they are only 90 miles away so mail time was not a big factor but this still means that they hand wrote a postcard (and a nice one at that!) within at least 3 hours of my having joined on the website for it to get into the mail and up to me in the Bellingham area from Seattle (where the office of the WTA is located.)

Talk about exceeding expectations! I always figured that any non-profit I donate money to has better things to do than make me feel good THAT fast but when you think about this is brilliant. Nonprofits, just like for-profits, depend on what? Brand Loyalty. Satisfaction with purchase. A connection with the customer that makes them want to do it again some time. With a 50 cent post card, a stamp and 5 mins they made me feel good about my purchase. They made me want to tell people. They made me want to write a blog post about it.

So like with everything else I ever read, ever, I tried to think of how to apply this lesson to the management of a project. :-) The obvious answer looks at dealings between the Project Manager and stake-holders but I think the bonus points answer hits on the dealings between PM and team members. Sure team members are getting paid for their work but lets remove that for a second. Team Members are basically choosing to spend their talent on your project. It is not quite the big time market it used to be but most good people in any field could find another job if they got tired of you. So how do you as a PM make these team members WANT to spend their talent on you? How can PMs inspire brand loyalty in the project and in their leadership? Rapid communications of good news. Well of any news really. Information is everything. The more people have the better they feel, even if that feeling is just a feeling. Sure you could starve your resources and give them just enough for their little section of the product but in my experience that never really works well. They might not NEED to know the big picture (I think it helps often) but keeping people informed makes them feel more invested in the project. It inspires brand loyalty and satisfaction with their purchase and it makes them want to do it again!

OK so maybe the metaphor is not dead on but I think it still works. Oh and be watching for more hiking similies and metaphors in later posts as I get more miles under my belt. :-)

KM and PM: The Redheaded Step Children of all Organizations?

(Full apologies to any actual redheaded step children in my VAST reading audience)

My conversation with Jack on my Call to Arms Redux post got me thinking about the shared trials and tribulations of Knowledge Management and Project Management.

Both have great promise to better the performance of organizations. Both have been hyped to certain degrees by their proponents. Both have, to certain degrees and by certain people, been accused of being all hype and of “failing” to deliver any value.

I think one other thing they both share is the problem of organizations reading about them, getting fired up about them, doing some ‘research’ on software (since as all Executives know Software will solve any problem), installing software and then being disappointed that their organizations are not suddenly transformed into the case study they read in CIO magazine.

Obviously this is not just an Exec problem, it is a pretty wide spread human problem. People see lots of problems being “solved” with software so they get the idea that software is what actually solved the problem. In some cases like in database systems making it easier to find information this is mostly true but the general misconception stands: Software fixes problems.

This is what, I feel, is to blame for things like KM and certain PM initiatives ‘failing’. Too many people feel that it is the job of software to Manage their Ks and their P’s. They feel that spending $100,000 on software will fix any problem. The reality is much more difficult. The reality is about changing the way people think about their jobs and the way that what they know defines their value to the company and it’s about how they manage and organize their work and the work of those on their teams.

KM and PM initiatives fail because the people involved have not yet decided that KM and PM are good for them. Something about the sharing of knowledge and changing the way projects, resources and work are managed makes them uncomfortable and they do they natural thing: they resist. They find things wrong with the system. They don't use it. They poke holes in it and try to kill it. The whole range of defense mechanisms come into play. The most common is to just not use it. It is not an active hatred that kills the new system or process but a slow passive death from starvation.

Anyway: PM and KM “systems” are about people being comfortable with changing the way they do things.

 

The Project 50

Steven over at ProjectSteps, in his post about WOW Projects, reminded me about two of the coolest books I have read: The Project 50 and the Brand You 50 by Tom Peters. I read them both (and the third one in the series the Professional Services Firm 50) all in about 3 days and then turned around and read the Project and Brand You books again! In them he promised another in the series but, sadly, it never got published. As far as I know Mr. Peter’s concept of a “WOW Project” as Steven talks about in his post was first laid out clearly in The Project 50. I was working for Pacific Edge when I found these books and I begged my boss to let me buy copies for the other Project Managers and Program Managers in my group but was not able to convince him it would be worth the $60! (Ironic that the man managing a group of PMs that were designing and managing the building of Project Management applications would not let me spend $60 on Project Management books.) So I bought a set of them out of my own pocket so the group could use them. I feel that strongly about these books. They changed the way I looked at work and about the work I do and how that work is seen and thought of by my boss, my coworkers, my company and my industry (and myself for that matter).

Buy these books (at least the Project and Brand You books). I just dug them out of my moving boxes where they were since my last move and I am re-reading them this week! You will not be sorry!

Call to Arms Redux

Way back in March of 2004 I did three posts I called A Call to Arms for Project Managers

Part I, Part II, Part III

In them I talked about my hopes for how project managers might use things like blogs and other KM type tools within their work.

I wonder how things have changed in the last year? Post a comment or email me if you have seen the types of tools mentioned in the above articles being used for Project Management purposes.

Oh and it should be noted that in Part I, I get in a little dig on Gantthead that was not quite fair. I had some notions of how their content shaped up based on an opinion I must have formed quite a while ago (like 1999). I have visited them recently and I must say that my comment was certainly out of date. They do have some very good stuff over there. In fact Gantthead and Project Connections both have a surprising amount of great stuff to check out. I have been up and checked out the premium side of Project Connections and must say I was happy with what I found. I have not seen the premium stuff at Gantthead (but I'm sure it is excellent as well). Both sites are worth your time to check out for sure.