There’s no success like failure

Anyone who knows the Bob Dylan song ‘Love minus zero, no limit’ will know that the following line is ‘and yet failure is no success at all’.

While the officials are handing out runner up medals to the German football team this evening, the Germans can take some solace in Dylan’s words. But what the words really mean to me is that in order to be successful you need to make mistakes and even fail along the way. In order to fail you have at least had to try, and it is mostly through failure that we learn and progress.

Last week I was coaching some company employees in the fine art of project management and people motivation, in the classroom things were going well but the real problem was that some of them were struggling with the fact that their managers were not giving them the space they needed to do their job. When talking to the managers in question I found a genuine desire not to expose the new PM’s to making mistakes in front of senior management.

Giving people just enough room to make mistakes but not so much that they hang themselves is tricky at the best of times. The tendency to step in too soon is difficult to resist, so much so that I found myself doing it on Monday when a colleague asked for my opinion and received the solution instead.

As the Spanish nation celebrates this evening, it is worthwhile for the Germans to contemplate upon the fact that the Spanish jubilation is born from the tears and disappointments they have suffered for the last decades, always coming so close but not achieving the expected result.

It’s a wise coach that can stay on the side line and watch their team fail, knowing all too well, that even if they could somehow step onto the pitch and win it for them, the team would not appreciate it.

The downside of growing too fast

If your career is racing upwards, at a pace much faster than everyone you know, be happy, but only be happy for now. People, who only ever take the lift, never appreciate how high they have climbed until it is too late. There is something to be said for stepping back once in a while and standing still to take a look around, you might even enjoy it.

Taking the stairs instead of the lift, is not only good for your physical health and for the environment, it forces you to take notice of the small details. Ironically, people who are ‘fast tracked’, often come undone just at the point when they feel that their experience is matching the level to which their superiors have placed them.

When I look at careers spread over a period of twenty years or so, many of the high fliers who started out so strong, end up falling behind their slower running mates. And when they fall, then they tend to fall far and hard. An optimistic CEO who sees something special in a young recruit and brings them too soon into the board room, can only defend them from jealous board members for as long as the young executive comes up with brilliant ideas and the CEO is able to deflect the barrage of resistance thrown at him or her.

I write this because recently I have seen a few people very close to burn out and a letter from an old friend described the failures of a number of people that I knew to be once brilliant.

I knew someone who wanted to be a Vice President of his multi-national company within ten years of his joining the firm, something that no one else had ever achieved. And although his career went from strength to strength, the VP title only came after fifteen years and not ten, and probably not a day too soon.

In life, taking risks and learning new skills are the two things that keep ambitious people energized, but it is essential to always feel comfortable in your chair. It is not a good idea to have to deal with personal insecurity at a time when cool judgment is needed.

Team, what team?

This week I was asked the question whether a team must have a common vision. My answer was clear. A team without a shared objective was merely a collection of individuals. For a team to really be considered a team it must have the following:

1. A common objective (clear in the mind of everyone)
2. A structure from which every team player knows their role and responsibilities
3. A method of measuring success, on both an individual and group level
4. A set of commonly accepted rules

If your team does not have this, then do not be surprised if individuals are not performing as team players.

In my book Making a Difference (Maak het Verschil) I suggest the use of a job description template for everyone in the team. (You can download it for free from the book's website). But this week while setting up a new project I noticed a gaping hole in it (the project's objective)and made the necessary changes. From now on all my function descriptions will include the following sections:

1. The Name of the Project (and/or department)
2. The Function Title
3. The objective of the project (short two line description)
4. The Function description (short three line summary)
5. The place of the function holder in the team (who they report to)
6. The authorities of the function holder (direct & indirect reports + other authorities)
7. The Responsibilities of the Function Holder
8. The measure by which they are to be assessed (Key Performance Indicators)
9. The required qualifications and experience
10. The required Personal characteristics
11. The signatures of the Functional holder, Project Manager and Program director

You might find this ‘over the top’ but I assure you that completing function descriptions is relatively quick and it forces you to think through what is required and why. By linking them together the PM can ensure that they have all the right resources for the project and that they eliminate function overlap and confusion in general. (So much time is wasted discussing who will do what and why and when and how). Making a clear structure allows the team members to do the creative work by focusing on the things that matter.

By ensuring you select the right people for each of the functions, you can ensure the success of your project, even before it begins. So, as long as you keep your teams focused and motivated - and also ensure that everyone understands the dependency that they have on each other - then you can be confident that you will have a real ‘Team’.

However you must regularly check to see if everyone still has the true Project Objective in their hearts and minds (that which is written in the job descriptions) and not some other mutation that they find more convenient!

Creating, building and managing a really focused and driven team is one of the most exhilarating privileges that a manager can ever experience in their professional career.

Accepting Criticism

It is a strange but an understandable phenomenon that most of us find taking criticism so hard. Mankind progresses by means of open minded observation and learning from its mistakes, and yet, at a personal level, taking criticism is often such a painful experience that we do everything in our powers to avoid it.

When someone criticizes us, our first reaction is to see it as some kind of attack, a direct challenge on who we are, on our competence. And yet criticism gives us the chance to question and improve, and by improving we become better and therefore more valuable in both our business and private lives.

Look around you and check your own friends, family and colleagues. Which of them are actively seeking feedback and criticism and moving forward with their lives, and which of them are standing still unwilling to improve and move on?

Because constructive criticism is a gift we should always say ‘thank you’ to the person who gave it to us (even if it is a day or so later). We should do this for two reasons: One, because the giver is the one putting themselves out and is therefore taking all the risks, and two, we are the real benefactors at the end of the day.

Terrible at Remembering Names?

On Thursday I took part in a charity ‘community day’. The group of people I was working with were all employees of one of my clients. Our task was to clear a very overgrown garden that would be used by blind people as a place where they can meet, work together and have fun. Anyway, keeping a long story short, at the beginning of the day we were introduced to one another, ‘hello I am Harley, what’s your name?’ kind of thing (a nightmare for anyone with a bad memory for names). During this exercise, I was amazed by the fact that so many people seemed to be able to remember the names of the thirty people they were introduced to. (Sometimes I even forget the name of one person I am introduced to immediately after they have told me)! My wife says it is because I am lazy. I believe that it is because my brain is not programmed sufficiently well for this kind of activity.

Over they years I have noticed that men tend to be worse than women, so it was a great relief when I got speaking with a women (sorry I have forgotten her name) from Germany who also admitted to having exactly the same problem as me. The difference between me and her is that her theory (excuse, as my wife would put it) is much better than mine. She said that her bad memory for names was because that when she is introduced to someone for the first time, she concentrates very much on their appearance; their face, clothes, the way they stand, the timbre of their voice etc. In fact she does this in so much detail that the name she has just been given is not stored at all.

I once worked for a boss who’s memory for names was even worse than mine. I had found him three good candidates for a new position in the company. Unfortunately on the day that his chosen candidate arrived in reception to begin his first day of work, the boss came rushing into my office asking “What’s that guy doing in reception”?
“What do you mean, I asked”?
“I didn’t select that guy, I wanted Michael, you know - the guy with the ginger hair! oh my God this guy won’t do at all, get rid of him”!
My boss had remembered the names of the person he interviewed incorrectly and selected the wrong one! From that day onwards all candidates had their photographs taken on the day of their interview, to be absolutely sure that the right one began with the company! In life there is always someone that has what you have, but worse!

Tip 1: When it is very important to remember someone’s name, take the first observation that you make about them and link it to something negative. For example, if you are introduced to someone called Jane and she is very thin, then try and remember her as ‘fat - Jane’. Or, if the man you meet is obviously nervous, you could try remembering him as ‘cool hand - John’. The next time you meet them you will find you will remember their nick name first and their real name will spring into your mind a split second later (hopefully)!
Tip 2: If you forget someone’s name and it is very important you can always say to them “I am sorry I have forgotten your name”. Nine times out of ten they will reply with their first name, if so, you can simply add: “No, sorry what I meant to say is that I have forgotten your family name”. They will obviously give it to you and then you have them both, all you need then is an excuse to turn your back and to write it down before you forget again. This trick is a little dishonest, but it has worked for me on many occasions!

Lewis Hamilton and the Business simulator

Ron Denis, the boss of the formula 1 McLaren team described Lewis Hamilton, the 22 year old racing driver, as “A strategist with the guts to take risks”. He went on to say “Confidence is often coupled with arrogance, but there isn’t an ounce of arrogance in Lewis”. When you consider these words, the synergy with business acumen becomes crystal clear. But the real story for me is the amazing truth that in his first year of F1 racing, Lewis Hamilton very nearly won the world title. Now, in his second season, he is currently standing in third place with his old team mate Alonso way down at number 9.

I have been told that Lewis is of the first generation drivers brought up with race simulators, and although I can believe that these machines must have helped him, it surely must be his experience in Karting (since a boy of 11) that perfected his craft, or am I wrong?

The question, for me is: can we apply the same techniques in business? Perhaps we could persuade Unilever or Sir Richard Branson, or even Sir Alan Sugar to put together a consortium of investors to finance the building of a business simulator, where young aspiring eleven year olds can sit for hours everyday, perfecting the craft of business plan creation,, market positioning, deal negotiation and sales techniques. In fact all the facets that brilliant CEO’s need but take years of experience to acquire? Such a machine would eliminate the loss of real cash by blistering mistakes. Thinking about it, on a slightly more mundane level, perhaps we could even have a simulator for Project Managers, possibly sponsored by Cap Gemini and Accenture?

The day of the simulator is here, it must only be a matter of time before we see MBA students sitting in them, desperately trying to obtain years of experience within a summer semester.

How Do You Make God Laugh?

I was asked this question by a Jewish Rabbi a very long time ago and still the ramifications of it linger on, nearly thirty years later.

I can attempt to answer the question by asking a second one, ‘What is the difference between the song ‘Born to be Wild’ by Mars Bonfire (made famous by the band Steppenwolf) and the great B Minor Mass from J.S. Bach?’ There are a number of obvious answers, the first being length: Steppenwolf’s song takes only 2 minutes fifty five seconds to perform and the B Minor mass very much longer. The B Minor Mass has a (necessarily) complex structure; Born to be Wild does not. But the real difference is that one represents unbridled adventure and the other duty and sense of purpose. But both portray the very passion of life in their deepest forms.

Our lives are a necessary balance between three key items; pure fun (‘feel good’ actions), work and responsibility. The trouble is that too often we long to try to combine all three. The result being that we become dissatisfied and ineffective in all of them.

Project Managers need structure to be able to plot the tasks that need to be performed in order to achieve the goals that combine together to reach the overall objective of their projects. In most cases, the more understanding of the structure they and their project team have, the better. Like the B Minor Mass, it is the structure that guides and enables their creativity, giving it form and meaning. (Give a child a massive sheet of paper and twenty different colored pens, twenty tubes of paint with differing sized brushes and ask them to draw whatever they like, and then give the same child a small sheet of writing paper and two colored pens and ask them to draw a picture of happiness. Observe which result is the most creative and which gives the child the most pleasure).
For most teenagers the important things in life are all driven by passion and are necessarily short lived; parties, concerts, one night stands, friendships. Therefore, a song that simply bursts life and passion and fires the brain with an incredible desire for something more than what their parents have, need only last a few minutes.

In the spirit of ‘Born to be Wild’ an entrepreneur may start a new business, a new adventure. An adventure is exciting, it is always new and unknown, it nearly always involves risks and that drives the adrenaline. But without structure and planning adventures quickly become dull and too difficult, and more often than not fail. Over time we find the necessary balance between adventure and project management, and we learn to separate the two, keeping just enough controlled energy and passion over to make our work as much fun as it can be.

So what is the answer to the Rabbi’s question; ‘How do you Make God Laugh?’
Answer: ‘You tell him your plans’.