Ron’s Short Review: Disorder and change are the times we live in. This books helps in dealing with this new reality. This and a couple of other books like “Predictably Irrational” remind us that the world is not really the logical, orderly world that we assume (or desire) and we need to learn how to function well in an irrational, disordered world.
Image Source: Caleb Roenigk, Creative Commons
Is your arrow headed up or down?
Over the last twenty years of consulting work, I’ve seen many of the ups and downs of the American Corporate landscape. In the nineties the high-tech industry was on an extreme upward climb. And then the dot.com bust. The large Pharma industry was doing great through the nineties and into the “oughts” and then the patents began to expire causing extensive downsizing and mergers. The collapse of the American auto industry and the industrial age has been dramatic. And those are just the major industrial cycles. Every business has its own cycles as well. At any point in time your arrow can be headed up or down as industries and businesses cycle.
It always seems to be easier to exhibit patience when the arrow is headed up. When it’s headed down there seems to be less tolerance, more friction and increased pressure to just do it “my way” that breaks down the fiber and fabric of a team. But, if these cycles of ups and downs seem to be inevitable and a natural part of our business, how do we maintain patience equally well during the up swings and down turns?
Hope! Teams with no hope have no room for patience. Teams with hope seem to maintain patience even in the most difficult of circumstance.
Now hope is one of those words that has lost much of its original intent or has certainly taken on at least two definitions. Most people think of hope as a wished for feeling that all will turn out positive in the end despite current circumstance. But some of the original understandings of the word and concept of hope is a positive assurance that things can and will be accomplished in spite of current circumstance.
One of the experiences that I’ve had through the years is that no matter how difficult or poor circumstances may be for the overall corporation, I have always been able to fine “pockets of excellence.” There is always a team or a division or a unit where the people are positive, energized, respectful and patient as they work toward their desired results even under difficult circumstance.
One of the results that you can work toward and you can maintain, even when the business may be suffering (maybe through no fault of your own) is how the team will actually work together.
Teams that commit to positive team interactions, understandings, and support in the face of daunting circumstances survive better than those who let the circumstances dictate. You’ll find that patience can be experienced even in difficult times with a little planning, fore thought and commitment.
Image Source: Amy, Creative Commons
A while back (June of 2010 actually) I wrote my first blog on Patience. Good patience is one of those elements that can help build great teams or more importantly, lack of good patience can quickly break down a team. In that first blog on patience, I referred to a client who would lose his patience when he didn’t see sufficient progress as critical deadlines approached. I’m convinced there is one key part of that statement that must not be overlooked – “As critical deadlines approached.”
Coming out of engineering school, I spent the first decade of my career immersed in project management for several large projects. That decade left me with a couple of very deeply held beliefs:
1. You can only make up about 10% of a remaining schedule.
2. Projects schedules are lost at the beginning, not at the end of the schedule.
I do not consider these belief’s as hard and fast rules but more solid “rule-of-thumb” concepts. After closely tracking many major projects from engineering to construction to software design and development, I became convinced that you could only make up about 10% of the remainder of any schedule. In other words, if you are tackling a project that will take about four weeks of effort (20 working days) you will run into difficulties if you let the first two days slip by without accomplishing the first stages of the project. It seems so innocent, “The project is not due until next month and it won’t make much difference if I don’t get started until the end of the week or first thing next week.” Wrong! While it’s likely that you will in fact complete the project on time, you’ll not fully appreciate how much those first lost days will add to the stress, overworked, overwhelming feeling of not having enough time to accomplish everything as the weeks move along and all of your other projects get layered on top of these “delayed” projects.
Which leads me to my second belief: projects schedules are lost at the beginning, not at the end of the schedule. It’s not what you accomplish or don’t accomplish during that last week of a four week schedule that makes the difference between success and failure (or stress vs an orderly pace), it’s what you did or didn’t do during that first week of the four week schedule that makes the difference. Unfortunately, we’ve forgotten all about what we put off during that first week and therefore don’t associate with that feeling of being overwhelmed and overworked during the last week of the project.
Patience doesn’t happen by reacting calmly to missed deadlines. Patience is induced by setting aggressive early checkpoints on projects so that they experience an orderly pace as the deadline approaches.
Patience:
• Don’t forget your own learning curve (from the first blog). Leaders must work harder than they expect to help people understand new expectations, learn new processes, and have a vision of the new normal.
• Patience is improved and put to better use when there is more discipline at the beginning of a project instead of trying to handle the pressure better at the end of a project.
Image Source: Biking Nikon SFO, Creative Commons
It takes as much work to build great teams as it does to build or become a great leader.
I believe that if you were to ask my family (wife and two daughters) they would tell you that I’m the most patient man in the world…. until I’m not! I seem to have a great deal of patience for most situations but when I run out of patience I don’t come down gradually. Nor do I stair step down one level at a time. My patience ends like a rock being kicked off a 1,000 foot cliff that plummets with the acceleration of gravity until it smashes on the floor of the canyon. My girls actually developed into an early warning system for me. When I would see them quickly jump up and bolt from the room in unison, I began to understand that my patience was approaching the cliff and they had picked up the warning signs.
One of my clients currently has a similar trait. He has a great deal of desire and compassion to grow and develop his team and constantly pushes them to become better then they were the year before. He will start a project that is going to challenge and grow them over time and then gives them enough time to accomplish the task. But, if he is not seeing sufficient progress as critical deadlines approach, his rock will eventually get kicked over the cliff and then he jumps in with great fury and gets the task completed.
Why do we reach this cliff where things go bad in a hurry? A couple of reasons are very obvious to me.
1. Leaders mistakenly assume that members of their team will “see it” (understand all that needs to be figured out in order for the growth spurt to take place) or will figure it out along the way in their effort to complete the task or project
2. A basic misunderstanding of good project management
By definition, a growth experience can’t necessarily be figured out ahead of time. It’s a new experience. You’re figuring out something that you’ve never seen or experienced before. You’ll either not see it at all or if you do you may not execute in a very efficient or effective manner. Leaders often forget their own learning curve experiences. They made these same mistakes years ago or even if it was only recently that they figured it out, they now only remember the end state of the new knowledge, not what they went through to learn the new behavior or understanding.
Leaders must work harder then they expect to help people understand the new expectations, learn the processes it will take to get there, and have a vision of the new normal. Develop patience for the sake of your teams.
Ron’s Short Review: This book may be better than his Five Dysfunctions of a Team.