Or: When No One Wants to Do the Commonsense Thing, and Goes Their Own Way
Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Overcommunication, let’s talk about it.
“In business, there is no such thing as overcommunication.” I’ve had professors say it, I’ve had bosses say it, I’ve heard motivational business types say it; you cannot overcommunicate in business, because overcommunication doesn’t exist.
I don’t know of a single PM that would agree with this. As a PM, one of the first things you learn is how to strategically communicate bad news. In a previous article, we discussed strategic misrepresentation, but in this article, I want to discuss, in part, strategic representation.
Recently, I had the difficult conversation informing a client that we had a schedule slip of about 8 months, but when all was said and done, if things didn’t change, we were going to see a slip of about 12-18 months.
I told the broader project team that we encountered a few issues that had led us to look at a few things that had been done already and perform some clean up and rework. Short, to the point, not necessarily lying, and no one needs to know that the issue was that the client couldn’t make a decision for himself and is constantly relying on their boss to make the decisions for them.
The client wanted me to communicate with everyone what had happened. What went down was a slow-motion train wreck in 4k.
There was hurt feelings, finger pointing, accusations, and yelling, oh god was there yelling.
The thing was, everyone was fine hearing that there was rework involved. It happens. They were happy just knowing that it had been caught, acknowledged, and was being addressed. What they weren’t happy finding out was that the requirements that were handed to us were garbage, the communication even worse, and that the client had scuttled the damn project due to their fucking indecisiveness.
It highlighted that the project had accomplished nothing in the four months my team had been involved with the project, and nothing in the nearly three years that the PO had been trying to get this project up and going.
After much deliberating, the decision was made to scrap what we had, do a full discovery session, build out a comprehensive road map, and establish what needs to be done prior to starting the bigger work. No one wants to hear it, but at the point we were at, it was the only thing that could possibly salvage the project.
Managers Going Their Own Way
The problem with starting everything anew, was that no one wanted to go through this bs anymore. It had been three years of non-stop discussions, and nothing had gotten done. Why then, the fuck, would anyone provide a shit-stain worth of input anymore? What did over-communicating do for these people? It just fueled their frustrations more.
Everyone was tired of the bullshit, and as a result, everyone had their own solution. The client’s indecision had bred contempt within the managing team, and their continued involvement was creating a vacuum that led managers to figure out their own damn solutions. Strangely, he seemed to be fine with this.
In my expert opinion, the client, and those like him, use over-communication as a way of covering up the fact that they are inept. The more they share, the more they stick their noses in everything, the more it looks like they know their shit; but they don’t.
What do you do when a client/product owner doesn’t own the product? What do you do when their insistence of over-sharing is actively sewing discord among the team?
Well…
Why iPad Parents are the Key to Successful Project Management
Sometimes you need to sit the PO down with their Lil’ Tykes brand tablet with their favorite NPR podcast on it, sit them in a corner somewhere so that mommy and daddy can have a few mid-morning caipirinhas.
I remember watching a friend of mine give their twin daughters an iPad with some cartoons on it and sent off to enjoy Spongebob for an hour. While typically criticized by many today, it really isn’t any different than putting them in front of a TV, sending them to their room to play video games, sending them outside, to a movie, the arcade, etc. The point is to get the kids out of your goddamn way for a bit so you can get some shit done.
It's babysitting by proxy in a way, only, instead of someone standing in as a babysitter, something is standing in.
Sometimes, you need to babysit a project team member, but don’t have the time or energy to constantly hover over them. Give them something to occupy themselves so they don’t get in your way.
Many PMs have done this with a developer (who here has assigned needless spike tickets? Anyone? Anyone? Just me? Shit).
In my case, I asked the client to come up with a plan for the change management when updates were made. We already had this documented, but it gave them something that sounded important, but wasn’t something that would break the entire damn project if they fucked it up. I then started working with the clients “strategic analyst.”
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
If I asked my friend why she would just let her twins watch cartoons, rather than teaching them to not be such little shits, she would tell you that she wishes it were that easy. Her daughters, see, are 3 years old, so they are at that age where they don’t give a shit what mom says, they are going to systematically destroy everything in the house.
If you think about it, though, if they just behaved, they would have a better outcome, right? They would be given a bit more freedom or rewarded, right? It’s in their best interest to let mommy do her shit. But kids are dumb and won’t listen to reason when they are 3 years old.
Sometimes project members are the same way. If they just behaved and trusted your expertise, things would be better for everyone involved, but POs/Clients aren’t always rational. Their little smooth brains are inclined to go screech at everything that they come across.
We need to do a full requirement gathering for each of these tasks that you’ve outlined – reeeee
You have this item as occurring later in the process, but it needs to be done before this other job you want done now – reeeee
I think we need to rethink our goals for this project – reeeee
As a PM, your goal is to finish the project successfully. When you have input, it’s in the client’s best interest to listen and respond in a reasonable way, not to instantly lose their shit.
My manager says that it’s because people think PMs are magic, and as soon as that curtain falls, and they see that you’re just some dude, they become pissed.
I don’t think it’s that simple. I personally think that it’s related to the need to be a hero.
You’re Not Mavrick, You’re Jim ‘Wash Out’ Pfaffenback
Is that a deep cut? Well, look it up.
A dipshit executive at a previous gig once said “do you know how Elongated Muskrat became a billionaire? By being a rogue, by being a technology cowboy, by going his own way and blazing his own path.”
No, Phil, he became a billionaire by lying and being born to emerald mine owners, who exploits everyone within 100-air-mile radius for their own narcissistic gains. He’s a dipshit and shouldn’t be imitated.
Unfortunately, many suit-bros try to imitate the dumb-fuck, and the blazing your own path, going your own way attitude has become a serious problem.
Why?
The Increasingly Obviously Mistitled Role of Project “Manager”
We all know that a project manager is actually a people manager. We’re required to get it tattooed on our asses when we get our PMP. The issue is many people hear manager and they imagine someone making decisions, running people’s lives, giving them PTSD… wait, that might just be me again.
The truth of the matter is we aren’t managers in the typical sense. Our job is to manage a project, and part of that is leading a team of resources, but they don’t report to us, anot in the traditional sense, you get me?
Project managers are conduits of project expertise. They are subject experts, but the subject they are an expert on isn’t necessarily related to the business itself, which is a key problem for many PMs.
I’ll give you an example; back when I was working for a well-known fortune 500 company, we had a fresh out of college guy show up who was part of an initiative to increase efficiency for the sales team. Part of that was updating how we interacted with the handheld computers. He stressed that the first thing that needed to be done was to talk to the sales representatives, to see how the computers were being used today, and where there are opportunities for improvement. This was met with hostility by local leadership. The zone and regional management felt that no one knew the process better than they did, and so, the poor kid interviewed them, and that was it. The initiative was an absolute shit show.
The fresh-faced bastard had expertise in how to run a process improvement project. One of the most important parts being: interviewing the ones who are involved in the process on a regular basis. What he lacked, was expertise on how the company was run, which was seen as a shortcoming by leadership. They knew more than he did about how the company was run, therefore any input that he might have wasn’t valuable to the leadership team, since they were clearly smarter.
And so, they bullied him into going against that expertise, and did things the way that they wanted to do.
Pretty fucked up, right?
Baby Steps: Tell Them to Go Fuck Themselves
Ok, maybe don’t go that far.
The keystone holding this shitty arch together isn’t necessarily human nature, it’s organizational culture.
As with most of the bad behaviors we’ve discussed on this blog, the root of the issue is organizational culture. How do you fight organizational culture? With a different culture. Specifically Jewish and French culture.
Confused? Stay with me for a bit.
Growing up I had a Jewish friend, who’s father was a Rabbi. It was surprising when I heard them, along with a few other friends arguing about things related to their faith. They explained it as being an important part of Jewish culture… arguing the law, finding loopholes in the law, and poking holes in the foundations of the law. They did this because it strengthened their faith. Tearing their belief structure apart, analyzing it, critiquing it, and then looking at the mess you’ve made actually strengthened their beliefs.
Christina explained an interesting aspect of French culture. They love to argue politics. I mean, love it. The French love wine, brie cheese, and arguing politics, and of these three arguing politics is their greatest love. The thing that makes their arguments different than the type of political discourse we enjoy in the US is that there isn’t any hard feelings. Each states their opinion, you counter it, they counter it, you go back and forth, and in the end (hopefully), you’ve changed your opinion even if only slightly.
What these two cultures represent is an ability to argue without completely destroying relationships, and (most importantly) a culture that embraces differences in opinion and uses that to strengthen their beliefs or change how they see things. In other words, it’s healthy banter.
This requires a shift in culture, which is very difficult.
Yes, when you establish that you have very specific expertise that gives you more insight into how to run a project and therefore you need to be listened to, it will sound like you are telling them to go fuck themselves. Baby steps. The first step is making sure that your expertise is respected, and that in turn, their knowledge is also respected.
Baby Steps: Have Them Watch Spongebob
Both literally and figuratively. I believe many c-suiters would benefit from watching an episode or two of Spongebob.
Sometimes, you need to get the problem kids out of the way so mommy can do a bit of cleaning.
Now, the sponge with an annoying laugh isn’t exactly mentally stimulating, especially for an MBA (or maybe it is, I don’t judge). The secret, then, is to give them something that will engage them long enough for you to do what you need to do. I recommend a task that taps into their knowledge. Something that lets them flex their talents in a way that feels meaningful.
That’s right, it doesn’t have to be meaningful, it just has to feel meaningful.
Going back to assigning spike tickets. There was a developer that was such a pain to work with. Not just for me, but everyone he encountered. If there was nothing for him to work on, or the thing he was working on wasn’t sufficiently complex, he would make his fellow devs life miserable by constantly being up in their shit.
The thing about him was that he was actually really smart. Had a great eye for design and could come up with solutions that were intuitive and easy to implement. You know, someone you want to keep around. What to do? We started assigning him spike tickets. We let the other developers take on the smaller tasks and had him do these deep dives into various future work. He didn’t need to, we already had solutions in place that were planned well ahead of time, but it felt like what he was doing was valuable, and therefore it kept him occupied and out of everyone else’s shit.
Baby Steps: Learn to Fucking Lie by Omission
You don’t need to tell them the meaningless busy work is meaningless, nor do you need to tell them it’s busy work. Just tell them they need to work on the task.
You don’t need to explain in detail why the schedule slipped, you just need to tell them enough to know that it slipped and that the problem is being addressed.
Let me ask this: would you tell your client that we’re waiting on signoffs on the pull request? Or would you say that we’re reviewing the completed work before sending it for testing. I’m guessing the second. Who wants to have to explain the process of a fucking pull request? Even if you did, how much detail are you going to give them on it? Are you going to tell them that Mike will signoff on literally every PR that is sent to him? Are you going to tell them that Brian is notoriously difficult to get to commit to anything, and therefore will take weeks to finally signoff on it? Would you say that Janette will fail literally everything because she’s old school and doesn’t like this newfangled way that the damn kids do things now-days (in her defense, she still longs for the day of punch cards and machine code, which is surprising considering she’s only 23).
I’m guessing you would avoid all of that, and just tell them it was being reviewed (or something to that effect). Who wants to explain that a PR, which sounds like it should be knocked out in an afternoon, can take weeks, depending on who is responsible for it?
No, Madam CIO, You Can’t Eat a Gallon of Ice Cream Before Going Nite-Nite
I never babysat when I was younger, but I had plenty of friends who did. Each of them had a story of the children asking if they could skip dinner and just have ice cream. No matter what the babysitter said, the kids wouldn’t get it.
No, it’ll give you a tummy ache.
“No it won’t, dad lets us do it all the time and we’re fine.”
No, it’ll make you fat.
“Nuh-uh, because I’ll totally run a hundred miles tomorrow and burn it off.”
No, because I don’t like you and I feed off your sadness and frustration.
“Your guileful response fails to mask your true intentions. If you didn’t like us, you wouldn’t agree to babysit us. Our sadness and frustration are not within your direct control. If you consider the great stoic philosophies, especially vis a vie Aristotle, ones happiness is the purpose of human existence, so one should focus on things within their control and not follow the nihilistic belief that my misery is a byproduct of your happiness and vice versa. Our happiness when you babysit us would only feed your misery. Why then would you subject yourself to misery? At the slim chance that our misery might nurture your happiness?”
You don’t always have to have this argument. Sometimes the answer is simply, because those are the house rules.
Real life example. Really bad storms forced work on a new sub-division to a complete stop for about three weeks. Those three weeks ended up costing the project about six months. The reason was unresolvable resource constraints. There was specific tools and equipment that needed to be rented, there was only one source to acquire them in that area, and it was in very high demand.
When the developer was told, they suggested renting it from a company that was over 200 miles away, cost 50% more, and would require the equipment to be shipped at the construction company’s expense. When that was shot down, the next option suggested was they jerry rig together a bunch of other tools to try and accomplish the same thing as the specialty tools, thereby putting the workers at risk of injury.
The real solution was to invent a fucking time machine and start a month earlier. What should have been communicated was that there was going to be a significant delay due to resource issues, but options are being explored. End of fucking sentence.
As time passes, communicate that you’ve exhausted all options, and we’re looking at a six month delay. You don’t need to tell them that you knew it was going to be six months from the outset. You just need them to believe that you did your due diligence, even if that due diligence only took an hour or so of phone calls. Time will make anyone believe that you’ve done more work that you actually have.
But It Shouldn’t Have to be This Way
You’re right, it shouldn’t.
Wait, Is That All You’re Going to Say About It?
Yup.
Ok, fine.
I understand that frequently, we can come across as Machiavellian. We agree, a PM shouldn’t have to be calculated when it comes to how they respond, or what information they give out. We shouldn’t have to be manipulative. We shouldn’t have to occupy troublesome individuals with busy work. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to.
In reality, however, you’re going to encounter problems, and knowing how to deal with people is a vital skill when it comes to working with project teams. It’s knowing that giving a PO too much detail will cause them to overreact and scuttle the project by trying to “fix things.” It’s knowing that a developer would rather chew through money like it’s table bacon, rather than taking a controlled look at all the options. It’s knowing that the head developer won’t be happy unless you over state how much you tried to dissuade the client from this new bullshit feature.
Where Do We Go Now?
There's always going to be a pain in the ass. There is always going to be someone who insists on over-communicating, regardless of the detrimental effect it has on the project. Frequently the best you can do is to reduce the negative impact they might have. It means occupying their attention away from things that they have the worst impact on. It means being hyper aware of what you say, to whom you say it, and how it's expressed. Most importantly, it means being able to argue why you are being selective in how you communicate, and sticking to it.
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