Silence Fails, Part A
The title of this entry will take you to a website that will enable you to download a .pdf entitled Silence Fails.
In the process of determining what the proposal for the targeted 135 producers (T135) will be. It is necessary to review the project completely. The scope has changed slightly. The target market is different and I think they need a fundamentally different approach. Particularly from the point of view of the knowledge, ideas and undertakings discussed here in this blog. These ideas and the basic premise that the Joint Operating Committee (JOC) is the key organizational construct for oil and gas. Unless they stumbled onto the blog they would have heard very little about this project. Specifically the May 2004 research report was not targeted at them. Times have changed and the need to start over again is the approach that has to be made to them. Therefore I have revised the first years budget requirements at $375,000.00 and will be looking for a number of T135 producers fund this first year. The purpose of these funds has changed radically as well. As opposed to doing any construction of the project deliverables I want to create a number of "conversations" with the industry. This will be done by continuing on with reviewing the pertinent academic research as I have been on the innovation in oil and gas blog. This is the most effective area of where I can spend the next year. The addition of a Wiki to deal with the project scope, budget, deliverables and associated material gets developed. These need to be determined through the population of users that this project is targeted at. They need to be involved in these determinations. This change in tactical approach is as a result of the prompting of the "Silence Fails" research report that I am in receipt of.
Silence Fails is the name of a research report that has been published by it two research sponsors VitalSmarts and The Concours Group. These companies are described as follows.
VitalSmarts
"An innovator in corporate training and organizational performance, VitalSmarts helps teams and organizations achieve the results they care about most. With award-winning training products based on more than 25 years of ongoing research, VitalSmarts has helped more than 300 of the Fortune 500 realize significant results using a proven method for driving rapid, sustainable, and measurable change in behaviors. VitalSmarts has been ranked twice by Inc. magazine as one of the fastest growing companies in America and has trained more than 500,000 people worldwide"
The Concours Group
"The Concours Group is a new breed of professional services firm, supporting senior executives through the blend of leading-edge intellectual capital and pragmatic business applications. The firm works with more than 300 of the Global 1,000 firms, helping leaders turn human and technological potential into business value. The Concours Institute is the research and education arm of The Concours Group. Concours research discovers and develops future best practices in business, technology, and human capital; its education articulates them and motivates their adoption; and its innovative senior-person Advisory Services enables clients to implement them quickly and achieve business results."
The sponsors research involved approaching a variety of companies with more then 2,200 projects ranging from $10,000 to billion dollar organizational restructuring efforts. It sounds like these research projects are almost directly in-line within the scope of what this project entails, organizational change with information technology.
Silence Fails; The Five Crucial Conversations for Flawless Execution.
The project focused on five conversations that should occur within the project, however rarely do. These five conversations, or rather their lack of them, were determined to be the reason for "91% of all large scale corporate initiatives fail". These five conversations make it clear to me that I was on the wrong path. Expecting that a top heavy project would be able to lead the Users to the ultimate destination of better systems is clearly the result of the lack of the conversations that need to be done. Going through these five conversations also show me how it could be done with less risk, greater accountability and potential success.
The five conversations are simply conversations that should be carried out, but aren't for a variety of human resource and psychological reasons. They are:
- "Fact Free Planning"
- "A project is set up to fail when deadlines or resource limits are set with no consideration for reality."
- "Away With Out Leave (AWOL) Sponsors"
- "A sponsor doesn't provide leadership, political clout, time, or energy to see a project through to completion."
- "Skirting"
- "People work around the priority-setting process."
- "Project Chicken"
- "Team leaders and members don't admit when there are problems with a project but instead wait for someone else to speak up."
- "Team Failures"
- "Team members are unwilling or unable to support the project."
The Silent Crisis
To mitigate failure, management has turned to hedge against failure by implementing
"Formal systems. Over the past twenty years, project professionals and management experts have focused on improving the formal systems related to program governance, project management, and project related technologies." pp. 3
"This study... demonstrates that project leaders can substantially improve their organizations ability to execute on high-stakes projects and initiatives by breaking a code of silence on five astoundingly common yet largely un-discussed and ignored problems that contribute significantly to almost all project failures." pp. 3
Key Findings
"When one or more of these problems is not controlled - or not confronted well - it festers, sets off workarounds, and produces politics." pp. 5
One of the key findings is that when four out of five of the projects fail when one or more of these conversations is missing. The good news is that one in five projects succeeds because the conversation was used by the project leaders or the project was turned around based on introducing the conversations. The authors of this report go on to note;
- "Does it affect project success when project leaders speak up effectively?"
- "Can others be taught to speak up more skillfully with similar results?"
"Senior leaders can predict and prevent the failure of high-stakes business initiatives by creating a culture where the five conversations are held quickly and effectively. Silence Fails Also provides insights and recommendation on how senior leaders can develop a business case for change, measure behaviors, invest in skills, hold senior management accountable, and make heroes of early adopters." pp. 6
Crucial Problem # 1:
Fact Free Planning
"A project is set up to fail when deadlines or resource limits are set with no consideration for reality." pp. 8
To this I plead guilty. Using a top down approach as I did, didn't feel right. Yet this un-asked question was never raised outside of the comment that the total amount that was deemed necessary was "sticker shock" the real and necessary conversation about the resources and the sources of project funding did not occur. Therefore it is necessary to start this conversation and have the input from all stakeholders and users detail a plan and budget that can instill the accountability and ownership to the agreed to deliverables. Immediately I can see one source of this problem being the users. In retrospect I was expecting the users to provide their involvement and participation out of the greater good of their employer or in the case of independent workers their time. This is wrong and the developers and users should be paid equally to provide the long term motivation and sustenance of the project. This will form the basis of the conversation as we go forward. It should also be understood that the resources to carry out this conversation are not available. Participation in this next / first year should provide some direction with respect to who the leaders and resources are in the user community so that when the project does have its sponsors their participation can be recognized. The report goes on to say.
"Fact free planning reflects bad planning behaviors at every level. When project leaders realize these practices are taking place, they must be willing and able to call the bluff. If they avoid this crucial conversation and either commit to something they know can't happen or fake their way to success, they set themselves and their projects up to fail."
"Similarly, executives who avoid discussing their doubts about an estimates validity or the team's competence instead use their power in a way that generates political rather than valid agreements. Then when failures follow, their doubts about the team are confirmed, and they feel justified in using more fact-free planning to re-establish their sense of control."
The only way out of this vicious cycle is for project leaders and executives to candidly and effectively express their suspicions, doubts, and data. While these crucial conversations aren't easy, they are the only path to rational commitments."How common are these problems? Eighty-Five percent of project leaders are faced with "fact-free planning"."
Crucial Problem # 2
AWOL Sponsors
"A sponsor doesn't provide leadership, political clout, time, or energy to see a project through to completion."
Not something that I want to experience. This is a long life project and to have sponsors disappear is not what I want for this project. I don't even know of whom the project sponsor would be. Since this is an industry wide initiative the need to have several committed to the success would be necessary, and therefore possibly the CEO's. This conversation therefore needs to be undertaken in the next year with the funding being sourced.
"Project Sponsors are responsible to provide leadership and political support. And they frequently don't. When the sponsor is AWOL, the project team is stranded and exposed. They're sent off to accomplish a task and don't have the firepower needed to implement the project. For example, key leaders whose help or resources are needed to enable the project may not come through, and the sponsor who has the organizational muscle to hold them accountable fails to do so." pp. 11Crucial Problem # 3
Skirting
"People work around the priority-setting process."
"Powerful stakeholders and senior leaders often skirt the formal decision making, planning, and prioritization processes. They need what they need, and they don't want to be burdened with practical considerations. So they work around the process. The results are often outrageous overcommitment, disappointment, and burnout. Projects get approved for which there are no resources, scope creep bloats approved projects far beyond the resources originally budgeted, and team members deliver a succession of disappointing results from battered morale."Yikes this one hurts just thinking about the possibility. The authors break this category down even further into the various culprits that cause skirting.
- New projects added without revisiting priorities. 59%
- Too many projects on my plate. 53%
- Politics determine highest priorities. 52%
- Too many high priority on my plate. 52%
- Low priority projects become emergencies. 49%
- Some projects should be cancelled but are not. 33%
Project Chicken
Team Leaders and members don't admit when there are problems with a project but instead wait for someone else to speak up first.
"When project leaders play project chicken, the status and review process becomes a joke. The team loses opportunities to gracefully respond to problems by revising goal, shifting resources, reorganizing plans, and more. Instead, the project hurtles forward on a collision course with failure while everyone watches - nervous but silent."As with all of these crucial problems, the issue resonates with the experience and understanding of why some things did not work.
Crucial Problem # 5
Team Failures
Team Members are unwilling or unable to support the project.
Firstly the change I mentioned in Crucial Problem # 1 where users will be compensated for their efforts as well as the developers will help mitigate this problems exposure. Specific problems include Team members;
- Don't have the right skill set for the projects. 55%
- Don't put enough time or energy into the project. 51%
- Not raising issues when they are met. 48%
- Not making a real contribution. 46%
- Don't attend meetings or respond to requests. 43%
- Are difficult to work with. 42%
- Are remote or otherwise not participating fully. 23%
This glaring problem of the users not getting compensated was not seen earlier by me, but thankfully has been rectified. How many more of these types of problems are lurking in this project, to be honest most if not all these are resident within the project. Effectively with this posting I am setting this project back to day one for a re-start. The need to have the resources be represented in the necessary discussion's is obvious for this projects success. As I indicated I will continue to conduct the research that I was doing, the review of the LEM working paper series, and the authors that are on topic with the efforts in this new community. Secondly, with the budget for next year, I will set up and maintain a Wiki and run the Collabnet software so that the community process is completed in the time frame that is requires. I would suggest that this may involve more then one year to establish and conduct these conversations. The key point is, the time - line needs to be established in these conversations. What I can do to help this process is contained within the second entry of this paper I will publish on Wednesday.
Technorati Tags: Genesys, Fact-Free-Planning, AWOL-Sponsors, Skirting, Project-Chicken, Team-Failures, Silence-Fails